Neville You go, boy!/Memory Charm

[cynthiaanncoe at home.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 26826

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., lake4fam at e... wrote:
>    >   Therefore, I believe that the Sorting Hat knows something I 
don't 
> know (YET) and that's why Neville is a Gryffindor. >   

As a "Neville has a memory charm" believer, I have a question that 
just occurred to me.  Assume Neville witnessed the torture of his mom 
and dad.  If I'm doing the math correctly, he was about 1 year old 
when this happened.  One year olds have almost no awareness of what's 
going on around them, and I doubt that they would have any memory of 
witnessing something traumatic at that age.  So why would anyone put 
a memory charm on a one-year old, particularly if the side-effects 
turn them into a klutz?

Is there any chance the DEs put the memory charm on Neville so that 
he couldn't identify them?  Again, that seems unlikely.  One year old 
kids make dreadful witnesses even without memory charms.

So maybe someone put a charm on Neville not to make him forget what 
he saw, but to make him remember and communicate what he saw as part 
of the investigation of what happened.  Recall that Dumbledore tells 
us that Neville's parents were in no condition to tell us who was 
involved in the Longbottoms' torture.  Perhaps Neville was able to 
remember, with a little magical assistance.  If not, then how did MoM 
figure out who was involved?

If you want a really outlandish theory, consider this.  If someone 
put a charm on Neville to turn him into a witness, it was Moody.  The 
real Moody might have gone to any lengths to find the people who 
harmed his fellow Auror(s).  That would explain why Crouch/Moody is 
nice to Neville in GoF and understands how he would react to the 
cruciatus curse.

Cindy