Neville/Memory Charm

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 26844

Cindy wrote:

> 
> OK, OK.  I need a few more facts to make the math work.  First, I'll 
> hide behind the Lexicon for the proposition that Harry and Neville 
> are both born in 1981, as it expressly says so on the master 
> timeline.  So Neville can't be any more than 7 months older than 
> Harry, and he could easily be younger.

Whoops, typo--I think you mean 1980, not 1981.  But anyway, how does 
the Lexicon know?  This doesn't seem quite up to the Binnsian standard 
we have come to expect.
 
> But you're right that we aren't expressly told how soon after 
> Voldemort's downfall the Longbottom's were attacked.  I always 
> assumed it was soon after.  
> 
> So we go back to canon and the Lexicon.  
> 
> Here's the best I can do in canon to figure this out.  In Padfoot 
> Returns, Sirius tells us about the circumstances under which Barty 
> Crouch Jr. is brought to Azkaban and everything going on at the 
> time.  He says:
> 
> "When Voldemort disappeared, it looked like only a matter of time 
> until Crouch got the top job.  But then something rather unfortunate 
> happened. <snip> Crouch's own son was caught with a group of Death 
> Eaters who'd managed to talk their way out of Azkaban.  Apparently 
> they were trying to find Voldemort and return him to power.  <snip> 
I 
> saw the Dementors bringing him in. <snip> He can't have been more 
> than nineteen."
> 
> The Lexicon list Barty Crouch Jr.'s birthday as 1962.  So if he is 
19 
> when he goes to Azkaban, that would be 1981 -- making Neville around 
> 1 when the Longbottoms are tortured.
> 
> Also, I think JKR writes the dialogue for Sirius expressly to 
support 
> this timeline.  When a person estimates someone's age, they probably 
> wouldn't use an expression like "He can't have been more than 19."  
> Most people would pick a round number, like 20.  The use of 19 is 
> probably to make the timeline work perfectly.

Also, Sirius was at school with Crouch Jr., a few years ahead of him. 
 So he might be able to guess not only based on someone's appearance 
but because "let's see, he entered Hogwarts when I was a fourth-year, 
right?  Poor sod must be 19 at the most then..."

> 
> Cindy (who can't figure out how we can be so sure about the date of 
> Crouch Jr.'s birth year)

I bet this is circular--that Steve used the age 19 from Padfoot 
Returns and worked backwards from 1981 to get Jr.'s birth year.  
Steve?

But also, how do we know that Crouch Jr. was brought into Azkaban in 
1981?  That begs the question--it makes the Longbottoms' attack and 
the subsequent trial take place in the 2 months remaining in 1981.  
I'm sure the trial was a, shall we say, speedy one, but we can't know 
for sure that the attack took place before the turn of the year.  All 
Padfoot Returns really tells us about when Jr. arrived at prison was 
that Sirius was already there--which we learn from Dumbledore later 
anyway.

BTW, I agree that Neville was probably born in 1980 and that the 
attack on his parents took place within a few months, late 1981 or 
early 1982.  I also really like your opposite-of-a-Memory-Charm 
theory.  I'm just letting my inner L.O.O.N. have free rein . . .

Amy Z

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 "And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could =never
 stop reading=!  You just had to wander around with your nose 
 in it, trying to do everything one-handed."
                    --Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
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