Neville/Memory Charm

[cynthiaanncoe at home.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 26847

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> > 
> 
> 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..."
> 
> > 
<snip> 

> 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 . . .
> 

I'm still trying to noodle through the timeline of the Longbottom 
attacks.  We have Sirius getting locked up without a trial in early 
November 1981.  So we know Crouch Jr. gets there sometime afterward 
when he is 19 (after a rather expedited trial that took about 4 
minutes), which is also 1981, although it could be a few months into 
1982.  So in the two months or so after Voldemort's fall, we have to 
have the Lestranges get released from Azkaban, hook up with Crouch, 
torture the Longbottoms, get caught, get tried, and get tossed back 
into Azkaban.  Seems plausible to me, given that wizards don't seem 
very interested in frills like due process.  

Of course, for the Lestranges to be apprehended so quickly (or at 
all), there must have been some Really Big Clue Or Witness left 
behind after the attack.  Neville, perhaps?

As for Neville's age, even if he is 2 years old instead of 1, there's 
still no good reason to modify his memory.  Even a 2 year old can't 
identify people, understand a crime, or remember anything later, 
unless the crime were committed by Teletubbies.

Perhaps JKR will try to tell us that the Lestranges modified 
Neville's toddler memory to cover their tracks.  If so, how did they 
get caught?  If so, don't they know that a toddler is not a threat to 
them?  If so, and they really think Neville can incriminate them, 
don't they know memory charms can be broken, so the only way to 
silence Neville is to kill him?  As JKR has a child and knows that a 
toddler can't be trusted to communicate any information reliably, 
I'll really have to raise an eyebrow if it turns out that someone put 
a memory charm on toddler Neville.  And if it turns out that someone 
put a memory charm on Neville to spare him the pain of witnessing his 
parents' torture, I'd also be forced to ask the question why no one 
put such a charm on Harry, as the events he witnessed were equally 
horrible.

Cindy (officially declaring her defection from the "Neville Has A 
Memory Charm" camp)