(no subject)

[borgin.livejournal.com]

One of the things that makes me happy about this RPG is that Neville still has his parents.  He's one of my very favorite characters in canon, and it made me so sad that he never had a normal relationship with them.  Of course, he still lives with his grandmother (and little sister), probably because his parents are locating Muggle-born children and helping them in some way.

But while I'm glad he's basically a good kid, I'm afraid that he's going to get himself into trouble after only three weeks at Hogwarts.

Comments

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm very interested in how this situation will play out. Neville knows he's not supposed to interfere, but how can you stand by and watch somebody suffering when you know you have the power to stop it?

For Harry, it's all about rationalizing why it's logical to mistreat muggleborns (http://alt-harry.livejournal.com/2399.html). I love how he lays it all out step by step. He and Michael seem like good people trying to rationalize why they, and the people they love, do morally questionable things. I really like the thread between the two of them where they're trying to puzzle through the details of this.

The other option is that their beliefs are lies and their loved ones can't be trusted to tell them the truth. That's going to be hard for them to accept, no matter how many holes Ron tries to poke in their magic-theft theories.

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

And OMG, I just realized

Harry's reason why Muggles are awful is that they kill each other in wars, but his parents were killed by his adopted father IN A NON-MUGGLE WAR.

It's easy to eliminate war when you set up an absolute dictatorship and kill or enslave everyone who disagrees with you.

[borgin.livejournal.com]

Yes, and this comment by Harry (http://alt-harry.livejournal.com/2399.html?thread=46175#t46175) is almost a summation of the difference between growing up with Voldemort versus growing up with the Dursleys.

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that this Neville is much, much more proactive than his canonical counterpart. He seems not to have been subjected to gran's campaign to make a pseudo-squib of him as a protection.

I get the sense that she hoped his magic would never materialize; she made sure he had his dad's wand rather than one of his own (so he could never get much spell power out of it); and she talked up his lack of ability until he believed he was little more than a squib. If I'd seen my son and daughter-in-law reduced to vegetables by Crucio, I might do the same sort of thing in a bid to protect my grandchild, but in this AU, Neville's gran doesn't have the same motivations and she seems to have raised him to be brave like his parents rather than to be a mouse in hopes he'd never risk his life like them.

I like this Neville, too, and I think we may see him play some of the roles Hermione and Harry played in canon as a Gryffindor partner-in-daring-do for Ron. And I agree that he is putting himself at risk already. More than Ron is.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

This is such a great Neville. Obviously stronger, more resilient, more capable than canon!Neville at the same age, probably for all the family reasons you mention, but he's still recognizably Neville -- only, self-deprecating rather than self-abasing, a bit melancholy rather than depressive, anxious sometimes but able to push through it, decent and willing to act on his sense of decency. All the things that eventually emerge about canon!Neville and that surely would have been more strongly marked in his personality if he hadn't been so traumatized by his parents' death and smothered by his Gran. I love the way he holds his own with Ron, and is pretty sophisticated about dealing with Draco's prickliness. He and Ron make a great pair, and I suspect Harry being at arms' length, rather than a dominant personality right in the middle of their dorm, is a good thing for both of them, too. (Though this version of Neville (and Ron) could probably handle that.)

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

This is probably painfully obvious to everyone else, but I just realized it on re-reading: Neville has witnessed Carrow abusing Boot in the past, and didn't say or do anything, and he may have come to feel guilty about that. On September 6 (http://alt-neville.livejournal.com/1198.html), when he went to see Carrow about his homework, Neville "didn't see him [Carrow]" but did see something that seriously upset him. This is the same day Boot reports his nose broken, and Hermione asks for bruise salve. Neville apparently chooses not to confide even in Ron. But he remains really creeped out by Carrow afterwards and Transfiguration is the one class he struggles in.

Neville also goes to see Percy that same day to talk about whatever upset him, but apparently has an unsatisfying conversation with him. Later the same day, Percy makes that oddly defensive post (http://alt-percy-w.livejournal.com/816.html) summing up the first week: "some things you have seen or otherwise encountered this week may surprise or seem quite strange to you. I wish to assure you all that you may put the utmost trust in your professors and the rest of the professional staff . . ." Lucius praises Percy in a comment for his perceptiveness and his value as a Prefect.

So I can sort of see Neville having thought this over and just decided, at a gut level, that he wasn't going to be silent again. And I'm also interested in Percy's defensiveness, which gets to the question of how much absolute power, how much impunity, the Lord Protector's allies really have in this society. Are there limits, especially when the elite students at Hogwarts are involved?

Could it be that Carrow's behavior is so over the top that it's a bit of an embarassment to the side? In other words -- they might do this sort of thing in the camps or behind closed doors, but you don't do it where Hogwarts students can see it and talk about it.

Meanwhile, in the new incident, Madame Pomfrey doesn't hesitate to help Terry (though she reminds Hermione to be discreet).

So I wonder how much actual trouble Neville will get into, though surely there will be rumblings. It's going to be very interesting to see how this plays out, to see whether there are signs of embarassment or recognition of public relations limits/dangers among Voldemort's people. Or if they really are capable of just crushing dissent, even among the "elite" and Pureblood circles at Hogwarts.

[longstrider.livejournal.com]

How much trouble he gets in will tell us a fair bit about who actually reads the comments on the muggleborn's journal entries. If you're not supposed to pay attention to the 'undesirables' on the journals, but you got far enough to know that Neville's involved... well that's interesting information.

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

Too true!

Food for thought (and a prompt for closer attention).