Dear People Who Underestimate Neville Longbottom,
I want to talk about Neville Longbottom, the pureblood who everyone treated like a squib. I want to talk about a boy that everyone shunted to the side, the boy who everyone saw as powerless and a nuisance, the boy who sat there in a class for seven years with a teacher that was his greatest fear, the boy who walked into the Forbidden Forest at night with Hagrid and didn't shed a single tear.
Neville stood up to his classmates because he thought they were doing wrong and he wanted to prove that he could do something right.
When Seamus came back from Charms with soot and minor burns all up and down his face and arms, Neville quietly took him and Dean (who wouldn't release his hold on Seamus' hand) aside to the greenhouse and showed them the bubotuber plants and how they worked. He quietly told them all about the plants, pride showing through his nervous whisper. Neville wasn't very good at most of their classes, but Herbology he excelled in.
Let's think about how nervous he was to enter the Forbidden forest but still did it anyway.
Neville Longbottom was a child, just like Harry Potter, and then he was a teenager, just like Harry.
He did not come to Hogwarts where groups of people would automatically vilify and lionize him, expect him to be a hero- he came in tripping over his robes, losing his frog, and just generally causing a mess. First impressions are nasty little things, and that's how Hogwarts greeted him. That's the clumsy memory that most chose to hang on to when they thought of Neville Longbottom. Not the fantastic Herbology grades, or his support of Harry, or his victory at the Ministry- just little Neville Longbottom tripping over his too-long robes.
Children can be cruel, and Neville spent the next few years being called useless and squib and 'Puff.
Everyone said Neville was a talentless Hufflepuff- he took it stride. Hufflepuffs were fair, and hard-working, and loyal. Neville would have been glad to be put in Hufflepuff, where everyone cared about one another and supported each other.
During his third year Millicent Bulstrode plopped herself down next to him while he was studying and said "So, Longbottom, mind telling me the answers to the Herbology homework?" He smiled and started in on a monologue while she stole bites of the biscuit he'd snuck in. When she nodded at the end and gruffly thanked him he didn't expect she'd be back, but he was still proud that he'd managed to successfully teach someone something.
(He wasn't completely worthless.)
When she returned the next week he grinned and offered her a bite of his biscuit.
It became their thing, meeting every week with Neville's snuck in biscuits and Millicent's Herbology textbook. It continued through that year the next year when Neville would meet Luna Lovegood and he would bring her too. It was quite a sight, the bare-footed turnip-wearing blood traitor and one of the future members of the Inquisition Squad sitting side by side and debating the existence of Nargles and Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, all the while discreetly eating burnt biscuits that Neville had brought in.
Neville knew things about Luna and Millicent that no one else did.
He knew that Millicent's family, the Bulstrodes, were not Death-eaters but rather a neutral family. He knew that underneath her cool, gruff demeanor she was scared, just like everyone else, but she chose to hide it better. Millicent was cunning, a perfect snake to the eyes of everyone, but Neville knew she was more than that. She wasn't a lion or a snake, no, Millicent was something much different, something uniquely admirable- like a dragon. She joined the Inquisition Squad to feed information to Neville and Luna, and she was the one who summoned Dobby (who she'd been told about by Neville, who'd been told by Harry in one of his stories of second year) and told him about what was going on. Neville knew that Millicent could see thestrals but chose to hide it because she knew what they meant.
He knew that Luna Lovegood, underneath her turnip-earrings and spiral glasses and bare feet, embodied what Ravenclaw stood for in every way, even if no one else could see it. Integrity and honor- Luna held these qualities in spades. He knew that she always wore one sock because her mother had, that she preferred apple juice to pumpkin and burned biscuits to fresh. He knew that Luna truly believed in the creatures she talked about, not because she was insane or innocent, but because her mother and father had told her about them.
He became friends with a snake and an eagle. He was a lion, so together that made them a griffin.
Millicent raised an eyebrow when he burst into giggles one day in library as he thought of that. She didn't say anything about it, just waiting for him to calm down.
"It's the Nargles," Luna whispered, and a corner of Millicent's mouth quirked upwards.
(Millicent knew that Neville's parents were in St. Mungo's because of Bellatrix Lestrange. She knew that he felt happiest and most comfortable in the greenhouses. She knew that he'd witnessed the death of his grandfather and that was why he could see thestrals. She knew that Millicent knew how Neville didn't want to be a hero, never had, but that he just wanted someone to tell him he was brave.
She thought that was silly, that Neville was more than brave in his own right, but she held her tongue. Slytherin did teach a few useful skills.
Luna knew that Neville was kind, and that he was loyal. She knew that he loved chocolate. She knew that he didn't belong in Hufflepuff, as he occasionally mentioned- his strength was brave, and constant, and it wasn't typical Hufflepuff or Gryffindor, but she knew that he was a lion, and that one day everyone else would see it.
Neville wasn't the only person who paid attention to his friends.)
When it came to Dumbledore's Army everyone was shocked to see Neville grow from the bumbling first-year he was to firing spell after spell to get it right.
(First impressions are nasty little things, remember? None of them paused to consider Neville in his second, third, or fourth years. Not even Ginny, who had seen him at the Yule Ball after he'd spent ages practicing, realized the man he was growing into. No, that distinction belonged to Luna, who smiled that distant smile of hers as he cast a successful Disarming Spell, and Millicent, who wasn't even in the room.
No, people saw Neville and they could only think of him tripping, stumbling over the hem of his robes as he lunged for his lost toad.
Millicent and Luna looked at him and they saw strength.)
Neville's happy thought was last year, when he was preparing to ask Ginny to the Yule Ball, and Millicent and Luna had taught him how to dance. Millicent had laughed, once, and had genuinely smiled at him a few times as she taught him to waltz. Luna taught him how to dance like a bird, to dance with the lights that floated above their heads.
His Patronus was non-corporeal.
(Millicent, in the times she practiced alone after hours, Neville and Luna teaching her what she could not learn from Umbridge, thought of afternoons in the library and burnt biscuits and distant smiles.
She managed a non-corporeal Patronus, and Luna and Neville grinned at her.
Luna thought of kind Snakes, smiling Lions, and Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.
Her Patronus was a rabbit, a creature equally at home on earth and in spirit.)
Let's talk about how Neville was able to pull the Sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat not because he was the only one who was willing to yell at Voldemort but because two years ago a girl with a faraway smile and turnip-earrings spent Saturdays teaching him about Thestrals.
Because one year ago he ran into the Department of Mysteries on the panicked words of a friend and confronted his parents' torturer.
Because three years ago a teacher tortured a spider in front of him and then afterward sat him down with a cup of tea and told him that emotion was not weakness- hatred, anger, and sorrow were just as powerful as love, politeness, and joy.
Because for the past year he'd become a General, not because he wanted to but because he would not let younger kids get hurt for nonsensical reasons.
Because four years ago a girl, his supposed enemy, had plopped herself down and listened to him talk, all the while stealing bites of his biscuit.
Because seventeen years ago his parents were tortured into insanity because they'd dared to go against the ideals of the families they were a part of.
Because six years ago he stood in front of his only friends and dared them to knock him down.
He did not pull that sword out nicely- he yanked it out, pouring out his anger and frustration and sorrow into the movement. He screamed at Voldemort, shouting out in defiance.
Defiance was what Neville was, in a word. When they told him he was talentless, a squib in wizard's robes, he got the highest Herbology grades in their year. When they told Neville that he was clumsy and friendless, he found his own friends in the corners of libraries and the crumbs of burnt biscuits. They said he would never amount to anything and he became one of the three Generals in Dumbledore's Army, and then, after Ginny and Luna both disappeared, became the sole leader of an army of desperate students.
Neville Longbottom became a leader without knowing of the prophecy that could have branded him the Boy-Who-Lived. He became a hero not because he was destined for it or because a headmaster trained him for the position but because Neville Longbottom had spent the last seventeen years of his life being underestimated and torn down and the only people who had ever cared about him were being hurt.
Neville had been spending so long defying everyone and their expectations that when Voldemort called on Neville to join him Neville had no trouble fighting back.
Let's talk about how later on in the fight he fought back-to-back with Millicent, who shot off Stunning Spells that hit his opponents as much as hers.
Let's talk about how he smiled at her at the end before they ran into the Hall after everyone else, and how she nodded grimly back at him.
Gryffindors and Slytherins weren't supposed to be friends, but let's talk about how as soon as Neville bought his flat in London Luna and Millicent were the first to visit, Luna in her turnip earrings and Millicent carrying a familiar tub of burnt biscuits.
Neville accepted the biscuits with a smile and invited them both in. They spent the afternoon eating the biscuits and discussing who they thought was going to be the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor.
Luna, Millicent, and Neville- a Ravenclaw who believed in what had proven impossible, a Slytherin who would rather hang out with a Lovegood and a Longbottom than anyone who would advance her station, and a Gryffindor who'd fought side-by-side with a Slytherin.
Who could have predicted that?
