Still-Life With Memory Charm

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 36794

Porphyria <porphyria at m...> wrote:

[Lots About Memory Charms, mirroring Neville with Harry, families, 
etc]

> So Neville's problem is either an echo or a counter-example to 
Harry's. 

I'd go a step further. How's this for an idea? 

Neville suffers not from a memory *charm*, but a memory *curse*.

What I mean by that, is that the trauma of his parents' torture 
hasn't been wiped from his mind, but on the contrary, has been 
deliberately embedded in such detail and so inextricably, that every 
waking moment, he relives the experience over and over and over again.

Thus his short-term memory has been shot, his self-confidence is 
shot, and his whole self-image is damaged. Secondarily, his psyche 
reasons that if this is what being "powerful" can do to you, he wants 
no part of it. He therefore deals with it by being a wimp on top of 
being forgetful. The overt and visible power which Snape represents 
is a constant reminder to him, and it is that power which he fears in 
Snape, rather than anything else. 

As several people have pointed out in this thread, memory is an oft-
recurring thread in the ongoing storyline. The penseive, through 
which Dumbly-Dore disposseses himself of memories not relevant to the 
present, Harry's repeated pain at recalling details of his parents' 
death (which in some respects he would prefer to forget), and the 
notion of the memory charm itself (a huge sub-text element of Book 
Two), are all about forgetting. 

The ability to forget is as important to the health of the human 
psyche as the ability to remember. What if Neville is, quite simply, 
incapable of forgetting? This, of course, also juxtaposes his 
parents' situation, in that they can't remember...

And while I'm here... Something not directly related which I've been 
trying to figure out.

The main way in which Neville's problems with Snape show up is his 
knack of destroying cauldrons. We're reminded of this several times. 
What's so important about that element, or am I just reading too much 
into it?