Okay so ﻿-Today, we're going to be talking
about why Neville Longbottom is my chosen one.
If you're new to my channel, I have a lot of Harry Potter videos.
I'll link the playlist up there and down in the description.
Neville Longbottom is my favorite character in the series.
I have many times mentioned in passing
that Neville Longbottom is my chosen one.
I get so many comments on this, people asking me to make a video
about it, people just outright
telling me I'm wrong and all the reasons why, and that's fine.
Today, I have a video talking about Neville Longbottom,
and we're going to discuss why I think of him this way.
The video is going to start out with me just talking about Neville.
I'm going to take you through his life and his general arc.
This will be much faster than my Snape analysis video.
I won't go as in-depth.
After we quickly go over Neville's life and his
arc, then I'm going to discuss why I think of him as a companion chosen
one to Harry and how it does fit into the canon of the series.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that
Neville is canon chosen one.
Obviously, Harry is the only chosen one as the series is written.
However, my thoughts, my hopes,
my dreams, my wishes of Neville also being
the chosen one does actually fit into the canon.
It could have ended this way, and I just would have loved to have seen it.
We're going to start chatting about Neville.
Then we're going to dive into why
this theory works and why I'm so attached to it.
Here we go, the character of Neville Longbottom.
Alice and Frank Longbottom were members of the original Order of the Phoenix.
They were very popular in their age and were
integral members in resisting the Dark Lord.
When he fell, Bellatrix tortured the Longbottoms
for information on Voldemort's whereabouts.
She eventually broke them, torturing them into insanity.
They live on, but they reside
in St Mungo's Hospital as their minds are gone.
Neville Longbottom, after losing his
parents and watching his grandfather die, was raised by his gran.
While his gran was always hard on him and looked down on him for not
being a natural at magic like his father, we also
get a glimpse into the abuse
he experienced from his family growing up.
No wonder that toad meant so much to him.
It was the gift his uncle gave him after
he was finally accepted into the family after he
showed his magical abilities.
Neville visits his parents regularly in the hospital.
Despite the way his gran treats them, he values
the time with them and what little love they're capable
of showing him, keeping their gifts of gum
wrappers and missing them deeply.
Neville grew up as a boy afraid:
afraid he was never good enough,
afraid of his abusive teacher, afraid of the people who were
capable of the torture that ripped his family apart.
Largely due to that fear, and my theory is also partly because he
wasn't using a wand that chose him, he did not excel
in school or in anything pertaining to magic, except
herbology which he always had a knack for.
Despite that fear and general lacking in ability, he stood up to his
friends when he believed they were wrong.
He fought for what he believed to be right, stood
up to the bullies who picked on him, faced his greatest
fear every day in class, repeatedly insisted on being
a help any way he could, was integral in the Department
of Ministries, and even stood for what was right when being
tortured by the very person that destroyed his parents' minds.
He made a lot of mistakes through all of this, but you know what?
Despite constantly messing up and constantly
being made fun of or discounted because of those
mistakes and constantly being afraid, he never stopped fighting
and never stopped doing what he felt was right.
Year five was when his rise began.
This was when his parents'
torturer was out of Azkaban, and he started working harder than
anyone to learn to defend himself.
Incidentally, shortly after, when he was truly becoming a good
wizard was also the time his gran started believing in him and when he
got a new wand rather than a hand-me-down.
Neville was there when Harry needed
the DA to guard the walls while he and Dumbledore left the school.
He was fighting the Death Eaters when they showed up.
In Book seven, he rose up to be the leader of the DA.
He was the one that kept the group together and looked after the members.
He was sneaking out and leaving messages on the walls as well as
standing up to the people that were
running the school, giving the other students hope.
He was being tortured but wouldn't back down because again, he
stood for what he knew was right.
He figured out how the Room of Requirement worked
and made a safe haven for those who had pushed
the school leaders too far and needed a place to hide.
He called everyone back to Hogwarts to fight when Harry showed up.
He fought in the final battle not only with magic, but with plants because
that was what he knew well, and it worked.
During the reprieve, he helped to collect bodies of the fallen.
He was the one Harry trusted to kill
the last Horcrux, if Ron and Hermione couldn't.
When Harry died, [?] and Voldemort was telling the school that he had won.
Neville was the one who continued to fight, no matter how hopeless
it looked, no matter how badly Voldemort hurt him.
And then he cut Nagini's head off, destroying the last Horcrux so that
Harry could face off against Voldemort in the end.
Neville is my favorite character in the series.
Maybe this video is half an excuse to make a hype
video for him, but he's honestly such an inspiration.
Why do I consider him the chosen one or a chosen one?
Let's look at the prophecy.
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to
those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies.
And the Dark Lord will make him as an equal,
but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not.
And either must die at the hand of the other
for neither can live while the other survives".
This prophecy has seven points:
the one who fits this prophecy has to have been born to those who had
defied the Dark Lord thrice times;
born at the end of July; male.
The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he
will have power the Dark Lord knows not.
Either must die at the hands of the other,
and neither can live while the other survives.
The first three are easy.
Neville was a male whose parents defied the Dark Lord three times,
and he was born at the end of July. We know this.
This is also where we're told the qualifications end.
However, I don't think they do. I think he fits all of them.
Now, we're getting into the discussion
part of this video where I'm going to pitch you my idea.
Stick with me because while it may look feeble in the beginning, hopefully
you'll see how it all comes together too.
Qualifier number four, the Dark Lord marked him as his equal.
This one I don't think is that hard to figure out.
How did the Dark Lord mark Harry as his equal?
It wasn't by trying to kill him.
Obviously, he tried to kill tons of people.
He successfully killed tons of people.
It wasn't the act of trying to kill Harry.
It was the choice of "I'm going to kill you because I think that you're
who the prophecy is about", but here's the thing.
Voldemort didn't know about the full prophecy.
He only heard the first part, the first three qualifiers:
male, born of someone who's
defied you thrice times, born at the end of July.
That's all Voldy knew. He didn't know about anything else.
Going off of those qualifiers, I'm sure
Voldy understood there are two people that fit this category, just like
everybody else was able to figure that out.
So one of two things happened:
either Voldy is really dumb, which we've already established
sometimes he can be, and he just decided
I'm going to pick one of these two and just
really hope that that's the correct one.
Because Voldemort doesn't know that marking him as his equal is what's
going to make him the one that the prophecy is about.
He has no concept that he has to choose only one.
All he knows is that there are two boys that this
prophecy might be about, and he doesn't know that
it's his choice that makes the prophecy about one of them.
Why in the world would he only pick one?
Why would he say, "I'm going to pick Harry, and hopefully
I'm right, and hopefully Neville won't grow up to defeat me"?
No, that doesn't make sense.
What Voldemort would have more likely done is decided, "I'm going
to kill both of these babies, and it's not going
to be a problem for me because they're babies.
This will mean that the prophecy can't be fulfilled".
My theory, my head canon.
Again, to be clear, I'm not suggesting that this is canon.
I'm talking about my head canon that
could fit into the books if it were written this way.
My head canon, because we have such a limited point of view to where
we have no idea how that scene actually played out
when Voldy got this prophecy, all we
know is that he told Snape he was going to kill Harry, and then
Snape freaked out and said, "Please don't kill Lily too".
My theory is that Voldemort decided to kill both boys
because that's the only logical decision to make here.
It doesn't make sense to only pick one and hope that you're right.
He picked both boys, therefore marking both boys as his equal because
it was the choice of you're who I'm going after.
That was what marked them as the equal, not the act of trying to kill
Harry, which means that both could have been marked as his equal.
I think he could have marked both as his equal, told Snape,
"Hey, I'm going to kill Harry", and planned on saying "and Neville",
but when he saw Snape's reaction, he stopped and decided not to say
anymore because it was odd how Snape was very bothered by this.
Then Voldy went off to kill Harry.
The spell rebounded, and he couldn't finish his mission.
Then, from then on out, his goal was to kill Harry because either, one--
We know that Voldy is a super fixated guy.
He gets really stuck on something and then he has to do it.
Either, one, he got really fixated on Harry
because his pride was hurt by being beat by a baby,
so he wanted to kill Harry first then go after Neville.
Or, two, he just thought okay, this is proof that Harry was the one
that the prophecy was about.
He dropped Neville, and then Harry was his main goal.
But that doesn't change the fact
that he marked both as his equal if he did indeed
plan to kill them both, which is only logical, in my opinion.
Stick with me because there's more.
The next qualifier is, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not.
Okay, no problem. We know that this is the power that
Harry's mom gave him when she sacrificed herself for him.
This is something that Voldemort didn't understand.
Even up to Book seven when he finally knew what this spell was that
was protecting Harry, he still
didn't really get it and kept underestimating it.
So that knocks Neville out.
His mom or parent, anyone didn't die saving him.
Neville never had this protection
on him, and so he can't be the one, right? Wrong.
In Book seven, Harry sacrificed himself,
and in sacrificing himself, the same spell that
his mother put on him when she died for him was
then put on all of Hogwarts minus the Death Eaters.
That protected them in the end
so that in the final battle they stopped dying.
The spells started missing because of Harry's protection spell.
Who else did that cover? Neville.
Granted, it covered a whole bunch of people,
but those people don't fit the rest of the prophecy.
Neville does.
Neville did have this power that the Dark Lord knew not.
Why did Neville have it?
Because he's a part of the prophecy and he was destined to have it because
he's one of the two chosen ones.
Both boys had powers that the Dark Lord knew not.
There is no qualifier that says they had to have
had it since they were a baby.
They both had it.
Next is either must die at the hand of the other.
Again, I think this one's pretty easy.
Neville Longbottom pulled the sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat.
Something that I might remind you
only two people did throughout the entire series
and two people did in all of existence that we know of.
He pulled the sword of Gryffindor out of the hat,
and he sliced Nagini's head off killing
the very last Horcrux therefore defeating
the Dark Lord in his power.
From that moment on, JK Rowling starts referring to
Voldemort as Tom or Tom Riddle more and more because that was
the moment that he became mortal again.
He lost his powers of the Dark Lord and just became Tom again.
In fact, even in that final showdown
between Harry and Voldemort, Harry wasn't the one that killed him.
It was Voldemort's own rebounding
spell that killed him, which Harry was a part
of because they both cast their spells
at the same time and the spells hit each other.
However, it was Voldemort's spell that killed him.
Harry wasn't even the one that killed
Voldemort exactly, technically, and yet, he's
the one that fulfilled the prophecy.
I feel like Neville being the one that defeated the Dark Lord in his
power and made him mortal again should also count.
He was an integral part of bringing him down to his mortality so that he
could die in the end from his own spell.
The last one is neither can live while the other survives.
This one, again, is super easy.
Harry can't live while the other one
survives simply because Voldemort is going to kill him.
That's easy to say okay, so if we're taking this
theory and we're accepting it, then in the beginning, Voldemort
had chosen both, marked both as equal.
Always would have come back to kill Neville just to make sure that
all of his T's are crossed and his I's are dotted and there's no chance
that the chosen one still survives.
It's not hard to assume that he
would have made sure that Neville was dead too, just to be sure.
Hey, Luck. It's easy to assume that if Voldemort
survived, Neville wouldn't have because he
would have made sure that both of those
that he marked as his equal are gone, or both
of the two that could have possibly been
the chosen one are gone for good measure.
Again, I know this isn't canon,
but the prophecy is vague, and it does fit into canon.
Imagine the image of at the end,
instead of it being Harry versus Voldy and it ending the way it did.
Instead, it's Harry and Neville standing
side by side against the man who destroyed their
lives, and side by side, they cast a spell and face
off against him, and their combined power brings him down.
We don't have to have known the whole
time that the two boys are actually the chosen one.
In fact, the series could look exactly
the same as it did throughout all seven
books as it was written except one little change,
and that's at the very end the two boys face
off together and take him down together.
Then they realize, "Actually, we still
both fit this, and it was always meant to be us at the end".
Why do I care? Why do I like this head canon so much?
Mostly it's because I think that Neville
and his arc throughout the series are so inspiring.
I also just really think that would have been such a satisfying end.
It would have fit Neville's arc
that we watched him have over seven books.
It would have fit the prophecy as it was written.
It just would have been so satisfying to see these two boys stand up
together and take him down together.
Maybe it's true that we followed Harry alone
throughout the series, but we still got to see Neville's arc.
It would have been a really great surprise that fit
within the series, and it also would have just been so inspiring to see
both of them stand shoulder-to-shoulder facing off together.
Again, I know this isn't cannon.
Harry is obviously the chosen one of the books, but this is
why I love this head canon so much.
This is why I've been asked to make
this video so many times finally talking about
why I keep calling Neville my chosen one.
In my eyes, they both are.
I used to have a head canon that Harry died for real when he died when
the Horcrux was destroyed and then Neville came and finished it off,
but I've since adjusted it, and I now
see the two boys facing him side-by-side.
I like that image much better, and I think
it fits to the series really well.
I know everybody won't accept
this and make it their own head canon, and that's fine.
But I finally made a video about it.
I finally talked about why I think this, why I love this so much, and that is
the way I wish the series had ended and the way I like to pretend it does.
I hope you enjoy this video.
I hope that at the very least I've convinced you that
Neville is a phenomenal character.
I have several more Harry Porter videos coming up.
In fact, my next one is going to be an in-depth look into Draco
Malfoy and some thoughts I have on that.
Be sure to continue chatting with me about this in the comments.
I post videos every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
I'll see you guys again soon. Bye.
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