The Boggart Issue - Tumblr Posts

Trevor and Neville’s Boggart

I have long advocated that Boggarts are representations as opposed to literal fears - for instance, we don’t believe that Remus was terrified of the moon; he’s terrified of his illness, and what the moon represents.  Similarly, it’s likely that Hermione’s Boggart was a fear of failure and subsequent rejection from the wizarding world due to her background - not that she wouldn’t pass a few exams.

Consequently, I have often suggested that Neville’s Boggart being Snape is not necessarily a deep-seated fear of Snape himself.  Instead, Neville’s worst fear is being a failure as a wizard - he frets that he is not magical enough and is incapable of living up to both the legacy of his parents and his family’s expectations.  

But one thing I hadn’t noticed until @the-great-snape-debate​ posted this passage from PS earlier, is this:

Trevor the toad was purchased for Neville by Great Uncle Algie - the same Great Uncle Algie who dropped him out of an upstairs window and pushed him off Blackpool pier, which had the consequence of Neville almost dying.  It is explicitly made clear that Trevor wasn’t just any familiar, but Trevor was explicitly a reward for Neville finally being deemed sufficiently magical.

Despite being accepted into Hogwarts, Neville’s struggle at school is well documented in both PS and CoS and occurs across a number of classes, and he frets that he is almost a Squib.  

In PoA, in the Potions class immediately before Lupin’s Defence lesson on Boggarts, Neville fails to brew his potion correctly and midway through, Snape laments that Neville doesn’t listen to his instructions:

“Didn’t you hear me say, quite clearly, that only one cat spleen was needed?  Didn’t I state plainly that a dash of leech juice would suffice? What do I have to do to make you understand, Longbottom?”

Snape then threatens Trevor:

“At the end of this lesson we will feed a few drops of this potion to your toad and see what happens.  Perhaps that will encourage you to do it properly.”

Of course, Snape has no way of knowing exactly what Trevor represents to Neville - it is incredibly unlikely that Snape would know Neville’s history with Great Uncle Algie or that the toad was bought as a reward.  

Snape presumably sees the toad as just a familiar and his threat is simply a dark way of motivating Neville to concentrate.  In contrast, Neville sees Trevor as being representative of his success at being a legitimate wizard.

This explains why Neville is so fearful of Snape specifically - a few minutes prior to the Boggart scene, Snape threatened Trevor - both figuratively and literally.  Importantly, Snape doesn’t threaten Trevor because he thinks it’s a funny thing to do or because he understands what Trevor represents - Snape explicitly threatens Trevor because of Neville’s performance in his class.

Incidentally, this also goes some way to explain why the Boggart is pushed into Neville’s grandmother’s clothes - when Neville was accepted into Hogwarts, his grandmother had to concede that she was incorrect and Neville was sufficiently magical.  By forcing Boggart-Snape into those same clothes, Neville is meant to see that this is exactly the same problem he’s already confronted; he is magical enough and this new authority figure will also eventually be proven to be wrong, just as his grandmother was.

TL,DR:  Neville’s worst fear is being a Squib.  Snape, as an authority figure in the school, deemed Neville magically inept and threatened to remove Neville’s reward for being magical enough (Trevor) as a direct consequence of Neville’s own failure.