#<-- im tagging so people can blacklist the tag and leave me aloneeee

[lesbeet]

Thoughts on Neville Longbottom in general nd his being another candidate for the prophecy

ok so seeing as my dash has been clogged with spn for the past month i feel like i should be allowed to answer this sdfjksd

but. god idk! you’d think for someone who has an opinion on absolutely everything that i’d have more of an opinion on neville, but i really don’t? like...i guess if i had to make a criticism it would be that he’s Too good yknow, like i might just be blanking bc it’s been quite a while since i did a reread, but i can’t really think of a time that neville did anything wrong out of like...malice or a lack of consideration for others or anything like that. it’s always bc he’s anxious (which, mood), obviously to highlight his growth once he kinda sheds that part of himself and lets his inner gryffindor shine through or whatever

and i honestly don’t know if that critique even holds up because i can’t really picture neville doing something intentionally unkind lmao like there are a few situations i can think of where he could easily claim peer pressure or groupthink or just not fully understanding the situation (basically all the times when the entire school turns against harry—when they all think he’s the heir of slytherin, when they think he put his name in the goblet of fire, when they think he’s lying about voldemort, etc), but i think part of what makes his character so great is that even with all his anxiety, he ALWAYS stands up for what he believes is right, and he has good enough judgment to usually be correct about it, probably in part because of what happened to his parents but also just bc he’s a good person 

i think the idea that he was another candidate for the prophecy is interesting, but more than that i think it’s one of the few redeeming parts of a series whose themes really end up sort of contradicting each other. i’m not really interested in all the alt-universe “what if neville were the chosen one” narratives, bc....idk i guess i don’t find him compelling enough to want to get his perspective on that? but i think, despite one of the main takeaways from the actual text of the books being that blood doesn’t matter/doesn’t define you, a lot of the subtext kinda ends up saying the opposite.

and i think without adding the possibility of neville being the chosen one, the entire storyline surrounding the prophecy would be the same old “you were designated Special at birth and now must fulfill your destiny or the world will die” kinda thing that shows up in a lot of other fantasy stories. i mean honestly i’m not sure how i feel about the idea of prophecies in general within the magic system of the series, and i think the story would’ve worked perfectly fine without them, but since they WERE included i’m glad they were handled the way they were.

although like......then you kinda get into the question of whether the prophecy really could’ve meant neville, or if it actually always meant harry bc voldemort would always choose the half-blood or whatever (honestly i think that being the sole reason he chose the potters over the longbottoms is dumb). but then it’s just a spiral into the nature of time and free will and whether prophecies account for their subjects becoming aware of them and potentially altering their behavior as a result, etc etc etc, which imo doesn’t add anything to my understanding of the series bc so much of it spends all this time talking about how divination is a joke—except for prophecies, which are super secret but totally real, except you don’t really have to follow them, except you end up following them anyway

what i think is most effective about this little twist though is the conversation harry has w dumbledore where dumbledore is trying to make him understand all this, that he’s not actually bound by the prophecy etc etc, bc once harry finally grasps the concept it of course doesn’t change anything. a worse person, or at least someone w less moral conviction, might take that information as an excuse to bow out (not that voldemort wouldve let him anyway, but yknow), but harry doesn’t. 

although again, at this point voldemort has not only chosen harry all those years ago, but now he’s used harry’s blood to regenerate himself and their wands did the priori incantatem so like.....does harry really have a choice? everything is already set up so that voldemort can’t die unless harry does, even if he doesn’t know that yet. so it’s like, good on you for choosing to do the right thing (even though you would’ve been forced to do it anyway if you tried to make a different decision)! yay free will! kind of!

lmao do you like how i started this with “i don’t really have an opinion” and still ended up writing all this <3