Neville Longbottom personality type: ISFJ

At the end of Harry’s first year, the House Cup comes down to ten points, and Dumbledore awards them to Neville Longbottom for standing up to his friends. It is easy to read that as a sweet consolation prize. Read the whole series and it turns out to be the thesis of Neville’s entire character.

Neville is an ISFJ, a type built on memory, routine and the people it belongs to. He carries a quiet, private loyalty to his parents, Frank and Alice, who were tortured into madness by Bellatrix Lestrange and her accomplices. He visits them at St Mungo’s, and he keeps the gum wrappers his mother hands him. His warmth and sensitivity to what other people think work against him for years. He believes every teacher who treats him as hopeless.

His expertise is Herbology. Give Neville a plant and he becomes calm, careful and precise. Anywhere else, an anxious imagination pictures every way things could go wrong. In Snape’s class that fear turns into melted cauldrons. In Lupin’s class his boggart turns into Snape, and Neville gets to dress it in his grandmother’s hat and handbag. On the enneagram he is a Six with a Five wing. Sixes run on fear and loyalty, and their courage tends to arrive late and all at once. Neville spends years sure he is the weak link, then follows Harry into the Department of Mysteries, keeps fighting with a broken nose, and endures the Cruciatus Curse from the same woman who destroyed his parents. The Five wing gives him his quiet, studious streak.

His biggest growth happens while Harry is away. In Deathly Hallows, Neville revives Dumbledore’s Army, takes punishments from the Carrows, and hides younger students in the Room of Requirement. When Voldemort jams the Sorting Hat on his head and sets it alight, Neville pulls Gryffindor’s sword out of it and kills Nagini. The boy who once had to write the passwords down ends up destroying the last Horcrux left, with Harry’s own piece already gone. Some fans call Neville an INFP, pointing to his gentle values and slow-blooming courage. That is a sensible read. Still, his bravery grows out of memory and duty, especially to his parents.