Here's to the Quiet Ones - Neville Longbottom
Title: Here's to the Quiet Ones
Author: neko_chelle
Spoilers: Entire Harry Potter series
Email: fivefootnothing [at] gmail.com
Notes: Special thanks to the members of nevillosity for constantly reminding me of why I love this character and for the very helpful feedback!
"You're Harry Potter," she [Luna] added.
"I know I am," said Harry.
Neville chuckled. Luna turned her pale eyes on him instead.
"And I don't know who you are."
"I'm nobody," said Neville hurriedly. - OotP, Chapter 10
At first glance, Neville Longbottom may be an odd essay choice. Surely, the boy is just a secondary character in the Harry Potter universe? He's colorful background dressing, bumbling comic relief with an eccentric, overbearing grandmother and a strange pet. But delve a little deeper into this character, and we begin to discover that Neville is hardly the "nobody" he thinks he is. The Trio's initial meeting on the Hogwarts Express came about because Hermione was helping him look for Trevor. His Remembrall was the reason why McGonagall chose Harry as a candidate for the Gryffindor Quidditch team. He helped Gryffindor earn enough points to win the House Cup for the first time in terms. And all of that happened while he was still a firstie.
Good-natured, shy, clumsy, awkward, forgetful, but ultimately noble in his own right, Neville is perhaps one of the most complex student characters in the Potter series. He lingers at the edges of the Trio, interacting with Harry and the others but never quite an active part of that relationship. This, I think, is one of the most intriguing things about him. As JKR is fond of telling her story through Harry's eyes, Neville, poor guy, hardly ever gets his time in the spotlight. He just doesn't call that much attention to himself. And when he does call attention to himself, it's because he's either doing something extremely stupid (like forgetting to skip over a trick step on the staircase and slipping halfway through it) or extremely brave (like getting severely pissed off because Draco Malfoy insulted his parents).
I first met Neville Longbottom in the summer of 2002, when GoF was first released in paperback. My circle of friends in college kept raving about the Harry Potter series, and I initially dismissed them because they were for kids. But curiosity and the offer of free books won me over. One of the best things about the Harry Potter books is that they're page-turners. You can breeze through each book in a day or two because you wonder what's going to happen next. I finished off books 1-4 in little more than a week, and I'd already chosen my favorite character. It wasn't Harry Potter, the Hero. It wasn't Ron Weasley, the lovable Best Friend, and it wasn't Brainy Hermione. Nope, it was definitely Neville Longbottom.
I must confess here that I have the highest respect and fascination with these kinds of characters: the background roles, the bumblers, the ones with enormous amounts of potential. I identify with them, and I love watching them challenged and coming out on top. They are proof that if they can survive these hardships, then anyone can.
Getting to Know You
Neville's first appearance in the Harry Potter universe isn't very momentous. Harry rushes through Platform 9 3/4 on his first journey to Hogwarts, and he overhears a "round-faced boy" confess to his grandmother that he has lost his toad. Harry's still in sensory overload mode, and doesn't think twice about the exchange. I didn't think too much of the encounter, either. After all, in the very next paragraph, Harry catches sight of Lee Jordan and his pet tarantula, and then Harry is hurried aboard the Express with the Weasleys' help. There's so much for him (and the readers) to take in that everything gets buried in a huge crush of students.
Neville didn't really capture my attention until he spoke about himself during the Welcoming Feast.
"My Great Uncle Algie kept trying to catch me off my guard and force some magic out of me -- he pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, I nearly drowned -- but nothing happened until I was eight. Great Uncle Algie came round for dinner, and he was hanging me out of an upstairs window by the ankles when my Great Auntie Enid offered him a meringue and he accidentally let go. But I bounced -- all the way down the garden and into the road." -- PS/SS, Chapter 7
This glimpse into a pureblooded wizarding family, where magical ability is so highly prized that people are willing to risk a young boy's life to find it, endeared me to the character. The pressure to live up to family expectations was something I could identify with, and the image of a young boy bouncing down the road was engagingly cute. I was besotten with this boy, and although he wasn't the main character of the books, I started to silently cheer every time he appeared. And as Neville's past slowly unfolded with each installment, I grew to love him more and more.
Neville's family life is somewhat unique in the Harry Potter universe. When we hear about or see other students' families, mother and father are usually in their household, and sometimes siblings as well. In fact, out of the main characters, only two were raised by people other than their parents: Harry and Neville. We are told that Frank and Alice Longbottom, Neville's parents, were well-liked Aurors and members of the original Order of the Phoenix. After Voldemort's defeat, Death Eaters (led by Bellatrix Lestrange) tracked down the Longbottoms and tortured them with the Cruciatus curse as they tried to extract information regarding the location of their Lord. The agony was so great that Frank and Alice went completely insane because of it.
A popular fan theory suggests that baby or toddler Neville witnessed his parents' unbearable suffering, and the scene was so traumatic that he was later Obliviated. The event was magically wiped clean from his memory, and one major side effect of memory charms is forgetfulness. Is this the reason for "extremely forgetful" Neville? Nobody except JKR knows for sure, and she's not talking. Not yet, anyway.
Neville can't have a real relationship with his parents, and we're only given a single glimpse of him interacting with his mother. Yet this exchange is at once sweet and heartbreaking, and it's one of my personal favorite Neville scenes in the series.
Neville had already stretched out his hand, into which his mother dropped an empty Drooble's Best Blowing Gum wrapper.
"Very nice, dear," said Neville's grandmother in a falsely cheery voice, patting his mother on the shoulder.
But Neville said quietly, "Thanks, Mum."
His mother tottered away, back up the ward, humming to herself. Neville looked around at the others, his expression defiant, as though daring them to laugh, but Harry did not think he'd ever found anything less funny in his life.
"Well, we'd better get back," sighed Mrs. Longbottom, drawing on long green gloves. "Very nice to have met you all. Neville, put that wrapper in the bin, she must have given you enough of them to paper your bedroom by now."
But as they left, Harry was sure he saw Neville slip the sweet wrapper into his pocket. -- OotP, Chapter 23
Neville is painfully aware that his mother isn't normal, but he's not embarrassed by her, and it's clear that he does still love her. He takes Alice's gift and keeps it, even though it should be thrown into the trash. It's physical evidence that deep down inside, beneath the madness, there still lurks a mother who senses her connection with her son.
With his parents incapacitated and set up as near-permanent residents of St. Mungo's, Neville was placed in the care of his paternal grandparents. His Grandad remains unnamed and is already gone in current book chronology. Neville is able to see Thestrals because he saw his grandfather die. But Augusta Longbottom is still alive and very much a part of Neville's life. She's described as "formidable" and "overbearing," and she rarely changes her appearance. She always wears a tall hat with a stuffed vulture perched on it, a moth-eaten foxfur scarf, and a long green dress. She seems positively ancient, extending a "shriveled, clawlike hand" to Harry in OotP. We're shown her attitude towards her grandson in OotP as well.
"He's a good boy," she said, casting a sternly appraising look down her rather bony nose at Neville, "but he hasn't got his father's talent, I'm afraid to say." -- OotP, Chapter 23
An interesting exchange occurs between Neville and Professor McGonagall in HBP. As the sixth years sign up for the classes dictated by their O.W.L.s, McGonagall tells Neville that he can't continue on with Transfiguration because his O.W.L. result is too low. When she asks him why he was trying to enter the class in the first place, Neville says that it's what his grandmother wants. McGonagall then tells him:
"It's high time your grandmother learned to be proud of the grandson she's got, rather than the one she thinks she ought to have -- particularly after what happened at the Ministry." - HBP, Chapter 9
Augusta may be trying to build Neville up to be Frank's clone. She might have forced Neville to accept his father's wand as his own. If, as Ollivander suggests, "the wand choses the wizard," then another person's wand would never work as well as the one specially chosen for him. Much fan speculation suggests that Neville's shoddy magical skills early on in the books can be blamed on his mismatched wand. Yet, there's some degree of hope. After Neville broke his father's wand in the Ministry battle, he received a new wand, cherry and unicorn hair. True to this, there's no evidence of Neville screwing up in any of his subjects in HBP. This wand was the very last one sold by Ollivander himself before he closed up his shop and disappeared. We'll have to see if this fact means anything.
Still Waters Run Deep
Many times, particularly in the earlier books, Neville is set up as the lovable loser character. Take a look at the series of Neville scenes in PS/SS. He runs off still wearing the Sorting Hat after he's placed in Gryffindor. His anxiousness causes him to spill off his broom during his first flying lesson. His reaction to encountering Fluffy is the stuff of Three Stooges-type comedy. Yet, it's Neville who tosses a few punches at Crabbe and Goyle to defend the honor of his house and his friends, and it's Neville who tries to stop the Trio from getting into trouble as they hurry after the Stone. Harry Potter was plunged into the Hero's Journey in Book 1, but Neville has gone through an odyssey of his own.
As the series progresses, Neville becomes less of a background bumbler and more of a major player. This transformation begins in PoA, as we see Neville in two classrooms, with two completely different instructors. First, we're shown Neville in Potions, where he and the rest of the class brew cauldrons of Shrinking Solution. He's harangued by Snape and pressured to do well, which means that he's barely holding himself together. And since Hermione ends up helping him, Neville is partly responsible for Gryffindor losing five points. Contrast this to Defense Against the Dark Arts with Lupin. Here, Neville is again singled out, but to different effect. Lupin encourages Neville to help dispose of a boggart, a magical creature that takes the form of whatever its viewer fears most. At the end of this lesson, Neville earns ten points for facing his worst fear and conquering it...twice, and he's the only student to do so throughout the entire class.
These little acts of bravery continue in GoF. He asks Hermione and Ginny to the Yule Ball before Harry and Ron even starts to plan their potential dates. He stands in DADA and watches a spider get hit with a Cruciatus curse, the same curse that drove both his parents insane. He's a victim of the Weasley Twins' prank sweets and still laughs about it afterwards. And he has never run away from these problems; he's faced them head-on, the very definition of the brave Gryffindor. The most crucial piece of Neville information is also given in GoF, as Dumbledore tells Harry the truth about Frank and Alice and how Neville is as much an orphan as Harry is. Both the Potters and the Longbottoms are strangers to their sons.
More revelations are shared in OotP, and we see Neville's most dramatic transformation yet. When Dumbledore's Army first forms, Neville is counted as one of the group's weakest members. No one wants to partner with him during the first meeting, so Harry has to take up the challenge. When news of the Death Eater escape from Azkaban reaches the school, Neville's study of defensive spells intensifies.
The news of his parents' attackers' escape had wrought a strange and even slightly alarming change in him. [...] In fact, Neville barely spoke during the DA meetings any more, but worked relentlessly on every new jinx and counter-curse Harry taught them, his plump face screwed up in concentration, apparently indifferent to injuries or accidents and working harder than anyone else in the room. He was improving so fast it was quite unnerving and when Harry taught them the Shield Charm - a means of deflecting minor jinxes so that they rebounded upon the attacker - only Hermione mastered the charm faster than Neville. -- OotP, Chapter 25
Neville fights fiercely in the Ministry battle and stands with Harry as one of the only two of the Hogwarts group left near the end of the chaos. What changed? Purpose. Neville is given a purpose and a means to achieve it. The Death Eaters' escape is the catalyst for Neville's transformation. Maybe he sees this as an opportunity to take revenge on the ones who made his parents crazy. His loyalty to his family, despite their (or at least Gran's) constant disappointment in him, is boundless. He'll fight to the death for the people he loves, and I think that's a pretty good reason why Neville was Sorted into Gryffindor.
If he is given a chance to shine, he will, brilliantly. The problem is that not everyone is willing to give Neville the time of day, let alone a purpose. This makes the disclosure of the prophecy much more telling. Neville could have had a destiny. He could easily have been The Boy Who Lived if Voldemort decided that the pureblooded child was a greater threat than the half-blood. Actually, there are quite a few interesting parallels between Harry and Neville. As mentioned before, they're both essentially orphans, not knowing their parents. Their birthdays are close, and Neville's only older by a single day. Although his childhood isn't nearly as bad as Harry's (there's no mention of Neville living in a broom cupboard), Neville is raised to think he is second-rate, nearly a Squib, not as good as his father and mother.
I think the most interesting parallel is their shared link to Bellatrix Lestrange. Bella is responsible for leading the Death Eaters to torture the Longbottoms. Essentially, she is the one Neville blames for taking their sanity away. Bella is also responsible for the death of Sirius Black, the man whom Harry sees as a father figure. Bella has destroyed the boys' "guardians," the ones they should have been able to go to for guidance, support, and mentoring. This gives both boys a shared loss, and another tragic link to each other.
Remember when Neville recounts his very first act of magic? How he was dropped from a second-story window by his Great Uncle Algie and ending up bouncing? This might be a physical manifestation of his greatest strength: his resiliency. He will always bounce back, regardless of what the world may do to knock him down. Snape may have verbally abused him, but to our knowledge, Neville has never skived off Potions. He can be counted on in a time of crisis, as seen in HBP. He and Luna are the only two members of the DA who heeded their fake galleons. He has fortitude by the bucketful, but he's much too modest to call any attention to himself. He's accident prone and forgetful, but this makes his bravery all the more endearing. He's the guy you want to cheer for, the underdog who strives for something greater.
Neville is also a nurturer. His favorite class is Herbology, the study of magical plants. So it stands to reason that he knows a great deal about the subject. His rare mimbulus mimbletonia specimen grew from a little seedling to a thriving crooning plant by the end of his fifth year, after all. His affinity for plants can be understood as a metaphor for Neville himself. Plants are often overlooked or dismissed as merely window dressing, but Herbology teaches Hogwarts students that certain magical species are useful. Also, every seed contains hidden potential, just like Neville.
Familiar Stranger
For all we know about him from the six books of the Harry Potter series, Neville Longbottom is a mystery. Many questions are still left unanswered. How many members of the Longbottom family are there? What happened to his grandfather? Will Neville ever find out about the prophecy? Will his parents ever be cured? What's the deal with Trevor? What role will Neville play in the Second War?
Neville teeters on the edge of familiarity. We're shown just enough of his background and his personality to make him out as more than a background character, and yet, it's scarcely enough. There's more than enough speculation about him to create another whole series of books with him as the main character. This is what I'd want JKR to work on next, but that's just me.
Neville Longbottom, a true (and adorable) Gryffindor.
ETA: pegkerr wrote an essay on Neville, focusing on him as the embodiment of fortitude.
Author: neko_chelle
Spoilers: Entire Harry Potter series
Email: fivefootnothing [at] gmail.com
Notes: Special thanks to the members of nevillosity for constantly reminding me of why I love this character and for the very helpful feedback!
"You're Harry Potter," she [Luna] added.
"I know I am," said Harry.
Neville chuckled. Luna turned her pale eyes on him instead.
"And I don't know who you are."
"I'm nobody," said Neville hurriedly. - OotP, Chapter 10
At first glance, Neville Longbottom may be an odd essay choice. Surely, the boy is just a secondary character in the Harry Potter universe? He's colorful background dressing, bumbling comic relief with an eccentric, overbearing grandmother and a strange pet. But delve a little deeper into this character, and we begin to discover that Neville is hardly the "nobody" he thinks he is. The Trio's initial meeting on the Hogwarts Express came about because Hermione was helping him look for Trevor. His Remembrall was the reason why McGonagall chose Harry as a candidate for the Gryffindor Quidditch team. He helped Gryffindor earn enough points to win the House Cup for the first time in terms. And all of that happened while he was still a firstie.
Good-natured, shy, clumsy, awkward, forgetful, but ultimately noble in his own right, Neville is perhaps one of the most complex student characters in the Potter series. He lingers at the edges of the Trio, interacting with Harry and the others but never quite an active part of that relationship. This, I think, is one of the most intriguing things about him. As JKR is fond of telling her story through Harry's eyes, Neville, poor guy, hardly ever gets his time in the spotlight. He just doesn't call that much attention to himself. And when he does call attention to himself, it's because he's either doing something extremely stupid (like forgetting to skip over a trick step on the staircase and slipping halfway through it) or extremely brave (like getting severely pissed off because Draco Malfoy insulted his parents).
I first met Neville Longbottom in the summer of 2002, when GoF was first released in paperback. My circle of friends in college kept raving about the Harry Potter series, and I initially dismissed them because they were for kids. But curiosity and the offer of free books won me over. One of the best things about the Harry Potter books is that they're page-turners. You can breeze through each book in a day or two because you wonder what's going to happen next. I finished off books 1-4 in little more than a week, and I'd already chosen my favorite character. It wasn't Harry Potter, the Hero. It wasn't Ron Weasley, the lovable Best Friend, and it wasn't Brainy Hermione. Nope, it was definitely Neville Longbottom.
I must confess here that I have the highest respect and fascination with these kinds of characters: the background roles, the bumblers, the ones with enormous amounts of potential. I identify with them, and I love watching them challenged and coming out on top. They are proof that if they can survive these hardships, then anyone can.
Getting to Know You
Neville's first appearance in the Harry Potter universe isn't very momentous. Harry rushes through Platform 9 3/4 on his first journey to Hogwarts, and he overhears a "round-faced boy" confess to his grandmother that he has lost his toad. Harry's still in sensory overload mode, and doesn't think twice about the exchange. I didn't think too much of the encounter, either. After all, in the very next paragraph, Harry catches sight of Lee Jordan and his pet tarantula, and then Harry is hurried aboard the Express with the Weasleys' help. There's so much for him (and the readers) to take in that everything gets buried in a huge crush of students.
Neville didn't really capture my attention until he spoke about himself during the Welcoming Feast.
"My Great Uncle Algie kept trying to catch me off my guard and force some magic out of me -- he pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, I nearly drowned -- but nothing happened until I was eight. Great Uncle Algie came round for dinner, and he was hanging me out of an upstairs window by the ankles when my Great Auntie Enid offered him a meringue and he accidentally let go. But I bounced -- all the way down the garden and into the road." -- PS/SS, Chapter 7
This glimpse into a pureblooded wizarding family, where magical ability is so highly prized that people are willing to risk a young boy's life to find it, endeared me to the character. The pressure to live up to family expectations was something I could identify with, and the image of a young boy bouncing down the road was engagingly cute. I was besotten with this boy, and although he wasn't the main character of the books, I started to silently cheer every time he appeared. And as Neville's past slowly unfolded with each installment, I grew to love him more and more.
Neville's family life is somewhat unique in the Harry Potter universe. When we hear about or see other students' families, mother and father are usually in their household, and sometimes siblings as well. In fact, out of the main characters, only two were raised by people other than their parents: Harry and Neville. We are told that Frank and Alice Longbottom, Neville's parents, were well-liked Aurors and members of the original Order of the Phoenix. After Voldemort's defeat, Death Eaters (led by Bellatrix Lestrange) tracked down the Longbottoms and tortured them with the Cruciatus curse as they tried to extract information regarding the location of their Lord. The agony was so great that Frank and Alice went completely insane because of it.
A popular fan theory suggests that baby or toddler Neville witnessed his parents' unbearable suffering, and the scene was so traumatic that he was later Obliviated. The event was magically wiped clean from his memory, and one major side effect of memory charms is forgetfulness. Is this the reason for "extremely forgetful" Neville? Nobody except JKR knows for sure, and she's not talking. Not yet, anyway.
Neville can't have a real relationship with his parents, and we're only given a single glimpse of him interacting with his mother. Yet this exchange is at once sweet and heartbreaking, and it's one of my personal favorite Neville scenes in the series.
Neville had already stretched out his hand, into which his mother dropped an empty Drooble's Best Blowing Gum wrapper.
"Very nice, dear," said Neville's grandmother in a falsely cheery voice, patting his mother on the shoulder.
But Neville said quietly, "Thanks, Mum."
His mother tottered away, back up the ward, humming to herself. Neville looked around at the others, his expression defiant, as though daring them to laugh, but Harry did not think he'd ever found anything less funny in his life.
"Well, we'd better get back," sighed Mrs. Longbottom, drawing on long green gloves. "Very nice to have met you all. Neville, put that wrapper in the bin, she must have given you enough of them to paper your bedroom by now."
But as they left, Harry was sure he saw Neville slip the sweet wrapper into his pocket. -- OotP, Chapter 23
Neville is painfully aware that his mother isn't normal, but he's not embarrassed by her, and it's clear that he does still love her. He takes Alice's gift and keeps it, even though it should be thrown into the trash. It's physical evidence that deep down inside, beneath the madness, there still lurks a mother who senses her connection with her son.
With his parents incapacitated and set up as near-permanent residents of St. Mungo's, Neville was placed in the care of his paternal grandparents. His Grandad remains unnamed and is already gone in current book chronology. Neville is able to see Thestrals because he saw his grandfather die. But Augusta Longbottom is still alive and very much a part of Neville's life. She's described as "formidable" and "overbearing," and she rarely changes her appearance. She always wears a tall hat with a stuffed vulture perched on it, a moth-eaten foxfur scarf, and a long green dress. She seems positively ancient, extending a "shriveled, clawlike hand" to Harry in OotP. We're shown her attitude towards her grandson in OotP as well.
"He's a good boy," she said, casting a sternly appraising look down her rather bony nose at Neville, "but he hasn't got his father's talent, I'm afraid to say." -- OotP, Chapter 23
An interesting exchange occurs between Neville and Professor McGonagall in HBP. As the sixth years sign up for the classes dictated by their O.W.L.s, McGonagall tells Neville that he can't continue on with Transfiguration because his O.W.L. result is too low. When she asks him why he was trying to enter the class in the first place, Neville says that it's what his grandmother wants. McGonagall then tells him:
"It's high time your grandmother learned to be proud of the grandson she's got, rather than the one she thinks she ought to have -- particularly after what happened at the Ministry." - HBP, Chapter 9
Augusta may be trying to build Neville up to be Frank's clone. She might have forced Neville to accept his father's wand as his own. If, as Ollivander suggests, "the wand choses the wizard," then another person's wand would never work as well as the one specially chosen for him. Much fan speculation suggests that Neville's shoddy magical skills early on in the books can be blamed on his mismatched wand. Yet, there's some degree of hope. After Neville broke his father's wand in the Ministry battle, he received a new wand, cherry and unicorn hair. True to this, there's no evidence of Neville screwing up in any of his subjects in HBP. This wand was the very last one sold by Ollivander himself before he closed up his shop and disappeared. We'll have to see if this fact means anything.
Still Waters Run Deep
Many times, particularly in the earlier books, Neville is set up as the lovable loser character. Take a look at the series of Neville scenes in PS/SS. He runs off still wearing the Sorting Hat after he's placed in Gryffindor. His anxiousness causes him to spill off his broom during his first flying lesson. His reaction to encountering Fluffy is the stuff of Three Stooges-type comedy. Yet, it's Neville who tosses a few punches at Crabbe and Goyle to defend the honor of his house and his friends, and it's Neville who tries to stop the Trio from getting into trouble as they hurry after the Stone. Harry Potter was plunged into the Hero's Journey in Book 1, but Neville has gone through an odyssey of his own.
As the series progresses, Neville becomes less of a background bumbler and more of a major player. This transformation begins in PoA, as we see Neville in two classrooms, with two completely different instructors. First, we're shown Neville in Potions, where he and the rest of the class brew cauldrons of Shrinking Solution. He's harangued by Snape and pressured to do well, which means that he's barely holding himself together. And since Hermione ends up helping him, Neville is partly responsible for Gryffindor losing five points. Contrast this to Defense Against the Dark Arts with Lupin. Here, Neville is again singled out, but to different effect. Lupin encourages Neville to help dispose of a boggart, a magical creature that takes the form of whatever its viewer fears most. At the end of this lesson, Neville earns ten points for facing his worst fear and conquering it...twice, and he's the only student to do so throughout the entire class.
These little acts of bravery continue in GoF. He asks Hermione and Ginny to the Yule Ball before Harry and Ron even starts to plan their potential dates. He stands in DADA and watches a spider get hit with a Cruciatus curse, the same curse that drove both his parents insane. He's a victim of the Weasley Twins' prank sweets and still laughs about it afterwards. And he has never run away from these problems; he's faced them head-on, the very definition of the brave Gryffindor. The most crucial piece of Neville information is also given in GoF, as Dumbledore tells Harry the truth about Frank and Alice and how Neville is as much an orphan as Harry is. Both the Potters and the Longbottoms are strangers to their sons.
More revelations are shared in OotP, and we see Neville's most dramatic transformation yet. When Dumbledore's Army first forms, Neville is counted as one of the group's weakest members. No one wants to partner with him during the first meeting, so Harry has to take up the challenge. When news of the Death Eater escape from Azkaban reaches the school, Neville's study of defensive spells intensifies.
The news of his parents' attackers' escape had wrought a strange and even slightly alarming change in him. [...] In fact, Neville barely spoke during the DA meetings any more, but worked relentlessly on every new jinx and counter-curse Harry taught them, his plump face screwed up in concentration, apparently indifferent to injuries or accidents and working harder than anyone else in the room. He was improving so fast it was quite unnerving and when Harry taught them the Shield Charm - a means of deflecting minor jinxes so that they rebounded upon the attacker - only Hermione mastered the charm faster than Neville. -- OotP, Chapter 25
Neville fights fiercely in the Ministry battle and stands with Harry as one of the only two of the Hogwarts group left near the end of the chaos. What changed? Purpose. Neville is given a purpose and a means to achieve it. The Death Eaters' escape is the catalyst for Neville's transformation. Maybe he sees this as an opportunity to take revenge on the ones who made his parents crazy. His loyalty to his family, despite their (or at least Gran's) constant disappointment in him, is boundless. He'll fight to the death for the people he loves, and I think that's a pretty good reason why Neville was Sorted into Gryffindor.
If he is given a chance to shine, he will, brilliantly. The problem is that not everyone is willing to give Neville the time of day, let alone a purpose. This makes the disclosure of the prophecy much more telling. Neville could have had a destiny. He could easily have been The Boy Who Lived if Voldemort decided that the pureblooded child was a greater threat than the half-blood. Actually, there are quite a few interesting parallels between Harry and Neville. As mentioned before, they're both essentially orphans, not knowing their parents. Their birthdays are close, and Neville's only older by a single day. Although his childhood isn't nearly as bad as Harry's (there's no mention of Neville living in a broom cupboard), Neville is raised to think he is second-rate, nearly a Squib, not as good as his father and mother.
I think the most interesting parallel is their shared link to Bellatrix Lestrange. Bella is responsible for leading the Death Eaters to torture the Longbottoms. Essentially, she is the one Neville blames for taking their sanity away. Bella is also responsible for the death of Sirius Black, the man whom Harry sees as a father figure. Bella has destroyed the boys' "guardians," the ones they should have been able to go to for guidance, support, and mentoring. This gives both boys a shared loss, and another tragic link to each other.
Remember when Neville recounts his very first act of magic? How he was dropped from a second-story window by his Great Uncle Algie and ending up bouncing? This might be a physical manifestation of his greatest strength: his resiliency. He will always bounce back, regardless of what the world may do to knock him down. Snape may have verbally abused him, but to our knowledge, Neville has never skived off Potions. He can be counted on in a time of crisis, as seen in HBP. He and Luna are the only two members of the DA who heeded their fake galleons. He has fortitude by the bucketful, but he's much too modest to call any attention to himself. He's accident prone and forgetful, but this makes his bravery all the more endearing. He's the guy you want to cheer for, the underdog who strives for something greater.
Neville is also a nurturer. His favorite class is Herbology, the study of magical plants. So it stands to reason that he knows a great deal about the subject. His rare mimbulus mimbletonia specimen grew from a little seedling to a thriving crooning plant by the end of his fifth year, after all. His affinity for plants can be understood as a metaphor for Neville himself. Plants are often overlooked or dismissed as merely window dressing, but Herbology teaches Hogwarts students that certain magical species are useful. Also, every seed contains hidden potential, just like Neville.
Familiar Stranger
For all we know about him from the six books of the Harry Potter series, Neville Longbottom is a mystery. Many questions are still left unanswered. How many members of the Longbottom family are there? What happened to his grandfather? Will Neville ever find out about the prophecy? Will his parents ever be cured? What's the deal with Trevor? What role will Neville play in the Second War?
Neville teeters on the edge of familiarity. We're shown just enough of his background and his personality to make him out as more than a background character, and yet, it's scarcely enough. There's more than enough speculation about him to create another whole series of books with him as the main character. This is what I'd want JKR to work on next, but that's just me.
Neville Longbottom, a true (and adorable) Gryffindor.
ETA: pegkerr wrote an essay on Neville, focusing on him as the embodiment of fortitude.