Augusta character study - PJ looky here.
No pics. This is just research on Augusta I am posting here for my own use. But PJ and others have asked how do you do a "secondary" or obscure character. The answer is you do a little research. What I like about Augusta is she hasn't been visually spoiled by the movies. Her looks is a lot more specified than Ollivander, but Ollivander had a lot more personality and dialog.
Augusta character:
Augusta "Gran" Longbottom
Neville's grandmother who raised him in the absence of his parents. She is a forceful, strong woman and a powerful witch who wears green robes, a fox-fur scarf, a distinctive hat topped with a stuffed vulture, and carries a large red handbag. Neville loves her, but he's a bit scared of her as well. She is Frank's mother and she treats both Neville and his parents very unsentimentally. When Alice gives Neville a bubblegum wrapper, Gran dismisses it and tells Neville to throw it away (Neville doesn't listen) (OP23).
Neville came into his own after joining the D.A., and Augusta was quoted in the Daily Prophet saying very positive things about him. In the spring of 1998, Death Eaters sent Dawlish to try to take her into custody. It didn’t go so well for Dawlish. As a result, a few weeks later Dawlish was still in the hospital (DH29), while Gran fought in the Battle of Hogwarts (DH31).
Book 1 -
He passed a round-faced boy who was saying, “Gran, I’ve lost my toad again.”
“Oh, Neville,” he heard the old woman sigh.
Neville had never been on a broomstick in his life, because his grandmother had never let him near one.
“Well, my gran brought me up and she’s a witch,” said Neville, “but the family thought I was all-Muggle for ages. 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. They were all really pleased, Gran was crying, she was so happy. And you should have seen their faces when I got in here - they thought I might not be magic enough to come, you see. Great Uncle Algie was so pleased he bought me my toad.”
Book 2- nothing of import.
Book 3-
Neville appeared to have mislaid his booklist and was being told off by his very formidable-looking grandmother.
Boggart-
“Professor Snape…hmmm…Neville, I believe you live with your grandmother?”
“Er - yes,” said Neville nervously. “But - I don’t want the Boggart to turn into her either.”
“No, no, you misunderstand me,” said Professor Lupin, now smiling. “I wonder, could you tellus what sort of clothes your grandmother usually wears?”
Neville looked startled, but said, “Well…always the same hat. A tall one with a stuffed vultureon top. And a long dress…green, normally…and sometimes a fox-fur scarf.”
“And a handbag?” prompted Professor Lupin.
“A big red one,” said Neville.
Discussion-
Neville put up his hand.
“Please, Professor, I - I think I’ve lost -”
“Your grandmother sent yours to me directly, Longbottom,” said Professor McGonagall.
She seemed to think it was safer. Well, that’s all, you may leave.”
The howler-
None of these punishments, however, came close to matching the one his grandmother had in store for him. Two days after Black’s break-in, she sent Neville the very worst thing a Hogwarts student could receive over breakfast - a Howler.
The school owls swooped into the Great Hall carrying the mail as usual, and Neville choked as a huge barn owl landed in front of him, a scarlet envelope clutched in its beak. Harry and Ron, who were sitting opposite him, recognized the letter as a Howler at once - Ron had got one from his mother the year before.
“Run for it, Neville,” Ron advised.
Neville didn’t need telling twice. He seized the envelope, and holding it before him like a bomb, sprinted out of the hall, while the Slytherin table exploded with laughter at the sight of him. They heard the Howler go off in the entrance hall - Neville’s grandmother’s voice, magically magnified to a hundred times its usual volume, shrieking about how he had brought shame on the whole family.
Book 4-
Neville listened jealously to the others’ conversation as they relived the Cup match.
“Gran didn’t want to go,” he said miserably. “Wouldn’t buy tickets. It sounded amazing though.”
Nothing new reported in book 4.
Book 5-
“My gran says that’s rubbish,” piped up Neville. “She says it’s the Daily Prophet that’s going downhill, not Dumbledore. She’s cancelled our subscription. We believe Harry” said Neville simply. He climbed into bed and pulled the covers up to his chin, looking owlishly over them at Seamus. “My gran’s always said You-Know-Who would come back one day. She says if Dumbledore says he’s back, he’s back.”
Harry felt a rush of gratitude towards Neville.
The hospital scene-
“And - oh, Mrs. Longbottom, are you leaving already?”
….a formidable-looking old witch wearing a long green dress, a moth-eaten fox fur and a pointed hat decorated with what was unmistakeably a stuffed vulture and, trailing behind her looking thoroughly depressed - Neville.
“It’s us, Neville!” said Ron brightly, getting to h i s feet. “Have you seen -? Lockhart’s here! Who’ve you been visiting?”
“Friends of yours, Neville, dear?” said Neville’s grandmother graciously, bearing down upon them all.
Neville looked as though he would rather be anywhere in the world but here. A dull purple flush was creeping up his plump face and he was not making eye contact with any of them.
“Ah, yes,” said his grandmother, looking closely at Harry and sticking out a shrivelled, clawlike hand for him to shake. “Yes, yes, I know who you are, of course. Neville speaks most highly of you.”
“Er - thanks,” said Harry, shaking hands. Neville did not look at him, but surveyed his own feet, the color deepening in his face all the while.
“And you two are clearly Weasleys,” Mrs. Longbottom continued, proffering her hand regally to Ron and Ginny in turn. “Yes, I know your parents - not well, of course - but fine people, fine people…and you must be Hermione Granger?”
Hermione looked rather startled that Mrs. Longbottom knew her name, but shook hands all the same.
“Yes, Neville’s told me all about you. Helped him out of a few sticky spots, haven’t you? 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.” And she jerked her head in the direction of the two beds at the end of the ward, so that the stuffed vulture on her hat trembled alarmingly.
“What?” said Ron, looking amazed. (Harry wanted to stamp on Ron’s foot, but that sort of thing is much harder to bring off unnoticed when you’re wearing jeans rather than robes.) “Is that your dad down the end, Neville?”
“What’s this?” said Mrs. Longbottom sharply. “Haven’t you told your friends about your parents, Neville?”
Neville took a deep breath, looked up at the ceiling and shook his head. Harry could not remember ever feeling sorrier for anyone, but he could not think of any way of helping Neville out of the situation.
“Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of!” said Mrs. Longbottom angrily. “You should be proud, Neville, proud! They didn’t give their health and their sanity so their only son would be ashamed of them, you know!”
“I’m not ashamed,” said Neville, very faintly, still looking anywhere but at Harry and the others. Ron was now standing on tiptoe to look over at the inhabitants of the two beds.
“Well, you’ve got a funny way of showing it!” said Mrs. Longbottom. “My son and his wife,” she said, turning haughtily to Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny, “were tortured into insanity by You- Know-Who’s followers.”
Hermione and Ginny both clapped their hands over their mouths. Ron stopped craning his neck to catch a glimpse of Neville’s parents and looked mortified.
“They were Aurors, you know, and very well respected within the wizarding community” Mrs. Longbottom went on. “Highly gifted, the pair of them. I - yes, Alice dear, what is it?”
Neville’s mother had come edging down the ward in her nightdress…
.
“Again?” said Mrs. Longbottom, sounding slightly weary. “Very well, Alice dear, very well - Neville, take it, whatever it is.”
But 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.”
…
“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 candy wrapper into his pocket.
The door closed behind them.
Meanwhile, Draco Malfoy had found a different way to induce panic.
“Of course, it’s not what you know,” he was heard to tell Crabbe and Goyle loudly outside Potions a few days before the exams were to start, “it’s who you know. Now, Father’s been friendly with the head of the Wizarding Examinations Authority for years - old Griselda Marchbanks - we’ve had her round for dinner and everything…”
“Do you think that’s true?” Hermione whispered in alarm to Harry and Ron.
“Nothing we can do about it if it is,” said Ron gloomily.
“I don’t think it’s true,” said Neville quietly from behind them. “Because Griselda Marchbanks is a friend of my gran’s, and she’s never mentioned the Malfoys.”
“What’s she like, Neville?” asked Hermione at once. “Is she strict?”
“Bit like Gran, really,” said Neville in a subdued voice.
“Knowing her won’t hurt your chances, though, will it?” Ron told him encouragingly.
“Oh, I don’t think it will make any difference,” said Neville, still more miserably. “Grans always telling Professor Marchbanks I’m not as good as my dad…well…you saw what she’s like at St. Mungo’s” Neville looked fixedly at the floor. Harry, Ron and Hermione glanced at each other, but didn’t know what to say. It was the first time Neville had acknowledged that they had met at the wizarding hospital.
Angsty bits-
One of the largest Death Eaters seized Neville from behind, pinioning his arms to his sides. He struggled and kicked; several of the Death Eaters laughed.
“It’s Longbottom, isn’t it” sneered Lucius Malfoy. “Well, your grandmother is used to losing family members to our cause…your death will not come as a great shock.”
Book 6-
“They’re staring at you because you were at the Ministry too,” said Harry, as he hoisted his trunk into the luggage rack. “Our little adventure there was all over the Daily Prophet, you must’ve seen it.”
“Yes, I thought Gran would be angry about all the publicity,” said Neville, “but she was really pleased. Says I’m starting to live up to my dad at long last. She bought me a new wand, look!”
He pulled it out and showed it to Harry.
“Cherry and unicorn hair,” he said proudly. “We think it was one of the last Ollivander ever sold, he vanished next day…oy, come back here, Trevor!”
“We didn’t face him, though,” said Neville, emerging from under the seat with fluff and dust in his hair and a resigned-looking Trevor in his hand. “You did. You should hear my gran talk about you. ‘That Harry Potter’s got more backbone than the whole Ministry of Magic put together!’ She’d give anything to have you as a grandson…”
Harry laughed uncomfortably and changed the subject to OWL. results as soon as he could.
Minerva has opinions. =)
Neville hung his head. Professor McGonagall peered at him through her square spectacles.
“Why do you want to continue with Transfiguration, anyway? I’ve never had the impression that you particularly enjoyed it.”
Neville looked miserable and muttered something about “my grandmother wants.”
“Hmph,” snorted Professor McGonagall. “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.”
Neville turned very pink and blinked confusedly; Professor McGonagall had never paid him a compliment before.
“I’m sorry, Longbottom, but I cannot let you into my N.E.W.T. class. I see that you have an ‘Exceeds Expectations’ in Charm however - why not try for a N.E.W.T. in Charms?”
“My grandmother thinks Charms is a soft option,” mumbled Neville.
“Take Charms,” said Professor McGonagall, “and I shall drop Augusta a line reminding her that just because she failed her Charms O.W.L., the subject is not necessarily worthless.” Smiling slightly at the look of delighted incredulity on Neville’s face, Professor McGonagall tapped a blank schedule with the tip of her wand and handed it, now carrying details of his new classes, to Neville.
Book 7 -
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t ask people to go through what Michael did, so we dropped those kinds of stunts. But we were still fighting, doing underground stuff, right up until a couple of weeks ago. That’s when they decided there was only one way to stop me, I suppose, and they went for Gran.”
“They what?” said Harry, Ron, and Hermione together.
“Yeah,” said Neville, panting a little now, because the passage was climbing so steeply, “well, you can see their thinking. It had worked really well, kidnapping kids to force their relatives to behave. I s’pose it was only a matter of time before they did it the other way around. Thing was,” he faced them, and Harry was astonished to see that he was grinning, “they bit off a bit more than they could chew with Gran. Little old witch living alone, they probably thought hey didn’t need to send anyone particularly powerful. Anyway,” Neville laughed, “Dawlish is still in St. Mungo’s and Gran’s on the run. She sent me a letter,” he clapped a hand to the breast pocket of his robes, “telling me she was proud of me, that I’m my parent’s son, and to keep it up.”
It was empty except for three women: Ginny, Tonks and an elderly witch wearing a moth-eaten hat, whom Harry recognized immediately as Neville’s grandmother.
“Ah, Potter,” she said crisply as if she had been waiting for him. “You can tell us what’s going on.”
“Is everyone okay?” said Ginny and Tonks together.
“’S far as we know,” said Harry. “Are there still people in the passage to the Hog’s Head?”
He knew that the room would not be able to transform while there were still users inside it.
“I was the last to come through,” said Mrs. Longbottom. “I sealed it, I think it unwise to leave it open now Aberforth has left his pub. Have you seen my grandson?”
“He’s fighting,” said Harry.
“Naturally,” said the old lady proudly. “Excuse me, I must go and assist him.” With surprising speed she trotted off toward the stone steps.