Memory charms, Imperius, Harry and Neville

[atelecky at mit.edu]

No: HPFGUIDX 5775

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, Peg Kerr <pkerr06 at a...> wrote:

> I think it isn't the faux Moody's encouragement that's making 
Neville lie
> awake that night.  I think it's because he's suffering 
post-traumatic stress
> syndrome from seeing faux Moody perform the Crucio curse in class 
that day.
> Someone floated the idea awhile ago that Neville might have had his 
memory
> altered with memory charms because he witnessed the attack on his 
parents.
> Neville's poor memory is notorious--but he's obviously struggling 
with
> something after class that day.  Is it just the knowledge that his 
parents
> underwent what he just witnessed?  Or did his original memory 
suddenly come
> flooding back?
> 

I think that is a neat idea-that Neville was given a memory charm to 
forget what he saw when his parents were tortured by the Lestranges 
and Crouch fils. I wonder if Harry himself might not have been given a 
memory charm when he was young? It has been mentioned that Harry 
whereabouts for 24 hours after his parents' death are unknown, and 
furthermore, there is a strange thing about the final scene in GoF. 
When Voldemort puts Harry under the Imperius Curse, the narrator 
informs us that this is the third time in his life that Harry has felt 
the strange sort of pleasure that this curse causes. Harry has been 
put under the Imperius Curse before by Moody, but only on the one 
occasion. He was put under several times during this one class "until 
he could shake it off entirely", but we are told this took "no less 
than four times", so these are not being counted as separate. The 
symptoms of a memory charm are supposed to be very similar to those of 
the Imperius Curse--when Mr. Roberts the Muggle is given a memory 
charm, Harry recognizes his "look of dreamy unconcern" as the look of 
one whose memory has been recently modified. Since the narrator says 
it is the third time that Harry himself has felt this way, not the 
third time that he was hit with the Imperius Curse, a memory charm 
might fit the bill. It might even have been Harry's mother who gave 
him the memory charm, if it was for his own good; her wand was 
supposed to have been a "nice wand for charm work". 
Thoughts on this, anyone?
Alexandra