let’s put the pitchforks down for a second. snape bad snape mean snape death eater blah blah blah.
sure, neville’s boggart takes snape’s form.
but hermione’s takes the form of mcgonagall. lupin’s is the full moon. ron’s is a spider. harry’s is a dementor.
why do i mention these?
hermione isn’t scared of mcgonagall. she’s scared of what mcgonagall’s saying: that she failed her exams and is going to be expelled. for hermione, a muggle-born, expulsion would mean losing every magical thing she’s ever known- her friends, her educational progress, her future- it’s a much bigger fear than just not wanting a teacher to have a go at her work.
lupin isn’t literally scared of the full moon. he’s scared of what he becomes under it, scared of the pain and of the risk posed to himself and to others. once again, this boggart represents a life-changing fear, much deeper than the surface-level interpretation suggests.
i mention ron because oh my god. he nearly died in magic chess two years ago; his little sister was kidnapped and almost killed by the dark lord last year; his best friend is actively being hunted by a mass murderer at this moment in time; he, harry, and hermione risk their lives on a daily basis. and you’re telling me his worst fear is a giant spider? to me, it takes this form because it seems to be a very long-running fear for ron (when first boarding the hogwarts express in TPS, ron recoils at the sight of lee jordan’s tarantula’s leg, so he already has this deep fear by the age of 11). the rest of the class have similarly strange boggarts, such as the blood-stained mummy, the single eyeball, and the disembodied hand- the kind of stuff you see in kids’ horror (eg. for the hand, think thing from the addam’s family): not really threatening, just unnatural. this seems to point to the idea that a person’s “worst” fear can also be defined as their longest-held fear, regardless of severity. it is equally possible that you simply can’t definitively measure a fear.
and then there’s harry. lupin literally says that his boggart suggests that what he fears most is fear itself. not having his soul sucked and becoming irreversibly catatonic, but being vulnerable and scared when there’s such pressure on him to be the saviour. so that’s canon confirmation that boggarts are not literal.
then why does neville’s boggart take the form of snape?
easy.
earlier that day, snape had been his usual vindictive self, and fed neville’s shrinking solution to trevor the toad (and, by the way, i truly don’t think trevor would have died even without hermione’s intervention- snape’s perfectly capable of any antidote, and he wouldn’t kill a student’s pet. not only would that probably end worse for him than it would for neville, but what would he even gain from that? it was a mean but empty threat / incredibly misguided attempt to motivate neville to improve). and it was a potions lesson, neville’s worst subject by far, with a teacher who doesn’t bother to soften the blow when criticising his students. when they came to DADA, snape was already sitting in the staff room, and made a snide comment about neville to lupin. all this to say, snape was very much on neville’s mind during the boggart lesson. coming back to the idea that fear cannot be measured, it may be that a boggart mimics whatever you fear the most at that moment in time. harry’s first thought is that his boggart would be voldemort, until he remembers the dementors. perhaps, if the lesson had happened after a recent encounter with voldemort, the boggart would have taken that form.
i also want to point out trevor’s significance. trevor was a present from neville’s great uncle algie- the same great uncle algie that pushed him off the end of blackpool pier, and who dropped him out of a window when he was eight, to try and scare some signs of magic out of him (i mean the fact that neville’s boggart isn’t algie is proof enough for me that severity is not a measurement applied to boggarts). trevor was a rewardfor neville after his first signs of accidental magic saved his life during the window incident. trevor literally represents neville’s ability to perform magic at all, and, during that potions lesson, he thought his magical incompetence was going to bring harm to a beloved pet with such striking symbolism to him.
so, much like hermione, neville fears not being good enough at magic and, by extension, at school. both are terrified of the scale of those consequences. it makes sense, then, that the two strictest people who rate their magical abilities everyday are the physical manifestations of these fears.
add to this that neville feels like a complete disappointment to his parents, war heroes, and it’s no wonder he takes criticism so badly (not just from snape, although granted he’s the meanest).
which brings me to his parents:
they were tortured INTO INSANITY. people often use this fact to exaggerate how awful snape must have been and how he must have acted even worse towards neville than we, the readers, know. but why on earth would the boggart turn into bellatrix? for one, neville doesn’t want his peers to know about his parents, so he’s not going to say that bellatrix is his worst fear. for another, neville doesn’t even know what bellatrix looks like yet, so the boggart cannot take the form- and it would be pointless to try. additionally, i don’t think he is scared of bellatrix at this point. traumatised by her actions? yes. but she’s been in azkaban since before neville could eat solid food, so, to him, she isn’t currently a threat.
“Er- yes, said Neville nervously. “But I don’t want the boggart to turn into her* either.”
*augusta longbottom, neville’s gran.
the reason the boggart takes snape’s form is because neville is constantly self-conscious about his lack of magical skills, a source of extreme risk and insecurity since he was a kid, and, during the DADA lesson, the wound from potions earlier is still fresh. snape is one of the most critical people in neville’s life- the other being his gran. the only thing the two have in common (apart from looking great in a green dress) is their attitudes towards and criticisms of neville’s magical aptitude. the quote above shows neville becoming nervous at the idea of an augusta boggart, suggesting that, in neville’s mind, the two are equally scary and equally possible candidates- and neville’s mind is all that matters, because it’s his fear.
in conclusion:
neville’s worst fear is being an unworthy son to his highly-talented and heroic parents
we know this because he considered both snape and augusta as equal possibilities, and this is the only real common denominator between the two
given the day he’s had, and the fact that this is the third year in a row that he is living with snape longer than he lives with his gran, it’s no wonder snape comes to mind first
i’m going to say it again. snape was the physical manifestation at the time because he was the most recent person to stoke neville’s fear. that’s not me saying that snape is actually super nice to his students and it was all just a misunderstanding. i’m just stating the fact that severus snape himself is not neville’s worst fear. that is not how boggarts work.
