Neville Has A Memory Charm? Not! & Catching the Lestranges

[lipglossusa]

No: HPFGUIDX 31885

cindy wrote:

Dumbledore gives the impression that catching the Lestranges was not 
> a simple matter, and it was a terribly high priority.  
> Does canon tell us that Neville was present when the attacks 
> occurred?  No.  I would guess that the logical place for a toddler 
> would be with his parents, but that is sheer speculation.  BTW, if 
> the attacks occurred in the presence of a toddler, that would be 
> further reason for there to be a wave of fury over them.  In any 
> event, there is nothing in canon to suggest anyone else was present 
> other than the Longbottoms, possibly Neville, and the DEs.
Pressure was mounting and Crouch Sr. figured 
> his rise to Minister of Magic if he could solve this last crime, so 
> Crouch Sr. did something awful -- enhanced Neville's memory to 
> extract the information.  Yes, this is nasty stuff, but Sirius 
> suggests Crouch Sr. was more than capable of it:  "I would say he 
> became as ruthless and cruel as many on the Dark Side."
snip-
> So I think Snape had no advance information about who the 
> perpetrators were in the Longbottom case, and if he did, he would 
> have ratted out the Lestranges before they attacked the 
Longbottoms, 
> not afterward.  



Cindy, sign me up immediately to join the N.U.A.N.C.E. (Neville's 
Under A Nasty Cognitive Extraction) Club!

It would appear that despite Neville's age, he was the only person 
who was likely to have been present during the attacks.  I agree that 
old Crouch Sr is/was definitely capable of resorting to nasty 
cognitive extraction to find out who attacked the Longbottoms, 
despite Neville's tender youth.  My only question is why the 
Lestranges didn't kill Neville-- and I suspect that they either
a)didn't know he was there (perhaps in another room) or
b)didn't have time.
(Note-- The reason I'm not including Barty Jr in all this is because 
I still have my doubts as to whether he was really guilty or not.)

I do suspect that Snape had some involvement, at least in 
corroborating all this--  he probably didn't rat the Lestranges out, 
but he could have provided evidence that they were Death Eaters.  It 
seems pretty clear from the graveyard scene in GoF that the 
Lestranges were among those working for Voldemort that the other DE's 
knew about.  So, Snape could still have provided evidence that the 
Lestranges were known DE's, and that he suspected them of torturing 
the Longbottoms, which would give Crouch Sr a reason to "extract" 
Neville and find out for sure.

Marina