Arthur Weasley, With Imperius Curse (WAS: What's In A Name?)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 37121

Debbie wrote, about the Weasleys:

> There certainly doesn't appear to be anything "weaselly" about 
> them. Quite the contrary. I think the Weasleys are among the most 
> straightforward characters in HP, and quite comfortable in their 
> own commoner shoes. (Now, is there an English town called 
> "Weasley"?)

> Debbie, waiting for someone to prove her wrong by posting the 
> sinister Weasley backstory (no, I don't think Molly's sandwich 
> crimes will do)

<Elkins, alerted by the words "Weasley" and "backstory" appearing in 
the same sentence, comes running around the corner, gasping for 
breath, clutching at her side, and waving a platter of Arthur-Weasley-
With-Imperius-Curse teacakes madly about in the air.>

Weasley backstory?  Did somebody request a Weasley backstory?

You don't want your Weasleys straightforward, eh?  You want someone 
to suggest something that will make you lie awake nights, worrying 
about them?  You want something a bit more dire than Molly's culinary 
amnesia to make you feel paranoid and unsettled about the dear old 
Weasley clan?  You asked for an improbable backstory speculation?

<Elkins bows>

At your service, Debbie.  I don't know if this is quite what you
hoped for -- it's not really so much sinister as it is sad -- but 
would you care for a bite of Arthur Weasley With Imperius Curse?

<wheedling tone>

Aw, come on.  Just a nibble?  Can't I get anyone to swallow one of 
these?  They may be only half-baked, but I did make them myself, and 
with real canon!

Here.  I'll show you.


Okay.  Presumably, there were indeed at least a *few* wizards who 
really were placed under the Imperius Curse against their will during
Voldemort's first rise, rather than just claiming that they had been
to escape punishment for their crimes.  In the Pensieve chapter of
GoF, Karkaroff names Mulciber: "he specialized in the Imperius Curse,
forced countless people to do horrific things!"  In Chapter Four of
PS, Hagrid tells Harry that after Voldemort's disappearance: "People 
who was on his side came back ter ours.  Some of 'em came outta kinda 
trances.  Don' reckon they could've done if he was coming back."  Nor
do I think that Hagrid is talking about the likes of Lucius Malfoy: 
Hagrid seems steadfastly unimpressed with the Malfoys and their claims
of innocence.  And when talking to Harry about the dark days of 
Voldemort's rise, both Hagrid and Sirius emphasize the difficulties 
of knowing who could really be trusted.  So although everyone we have 
yet seen who claims to have been a victim of the Imperius Curse in 
canon has been lying, I nonetheless do believe that there were a
number of genuine victims of the curse as well.

I believe that Arthur Weasley might have been one of them.  For 
one thing, at the time he would have been a relatively young 
and likely low-ranked ministry official: precisely the sort of 
person most likely to be targetted by the Death Eaters for 
exploitation.  From Ludo Bagman's trial, we already know that the 
organization sought to make use of the ministry's younger and more 
vulnerable workers.  It seems quite likely to me that they would 
have done so not only by deceiving the gullible (as with Bagman), 
but also through judicious use of the Imperius Curse.  In fact, 
Crouch/Moody implies as much in Chapter 14 of GoF, when he says: 
"Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse."

And then there is Ron's knowledge of the precise details of Lucius 
Malfoy's acquittal.  At the beginning of PS/SS, he tells Harry:

"'I've heard of his family,' said Ron darkly. 'They were 
some of the first to come back to our side after You-Know-Who
disappeared. Said they'd been bewitched. My dad doesn't
believe it. He says Malfoy's father didn't need an excuse
to go over to the Dark Side.'"

This is very specific knowledge for a kid who was raised in a 
culture that displays a pathological aversion to the idea of ever 
talking -- or even of thinking -- about those days.  The Weasley
parents do not seem to make a practice of speaking to their 
children about such matters.  Ron doesn't give the impression of
knowing about the Longbottoms, for example.  He doesn't recognize
the Dark Mark when he sees it, either.  For that matter, he doesn't 
even know what the Dark Mark *is!*  And yet he happens to know the
specific grounds on which Lucius Malfoy was acquitted ten years
ago?

Why would Arthur have told Ron about Lucius Malfoy's acquittal,
when he's never even explained to the kid what the Dark Mark was?

Well, if he really had *sincerely* been placed under the Imperius
Curse at some point during Voldemort's reign, then the fact that 
Lucius Malfoy got off on the same claim must have really rankled.
It might even have rankled badly enough for him to have told his 
younger children about it, in spite of the evident reluctance of 
wizarding culture -- the Weasley family included -- to speak of
such matters.

Primarily, though, I find the "The Unforgivable Curses" chapter
of GoF strongly suggestive of the possibility that Arthur Weasley
was one of Voldemort's Imperius victims.

Although "several hands rose tentatively into the air" when
Crouch, as Moody, invites his students to name the Unforgivables 
for him, he chooses to call upon Ron.  He has already, at the
very beginning of the DADA class, identified Ron as Arthur Weasley's
son.  Ron names the Imperius Curse, adding that he knows of it
because his father has mentioned it to him.  This seems to please
Crouch immensely.

'Ah, yes,' said Moody appreciatively. 'Your father *would*
know that one. Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one
time, the Imperius Curse.'"

Now, we all know what Crouch is, right?  He's both a sadist and a 
show-off; and he's sly.  He just *loves* to entertain himself by 
making double-edged statements with malicious secondary meanings.  
Just about everything he says throughout the novel has some nasty 
message lurking beneath it.  So is it possible that there could
have been a second meaning underlying that "your father *would* 
know that one," as well as some reason for him to be so 
"appreciative" of Ron's answer?

Oh, yes.  I think that's possible.  I think that's definitely 
possible.

I also see a certain symmetry emerging in this chapter if we accept
as our hypothesis that Ron's father was indeed, at one time, a victim 
of the Imperius Curse.  Crouch calls on Ron to volunteer the name of 
the Imperius.  He calls on Neville to volunteer the name of the 
Cruciatus.  I feel absolutely certain that he was just *dying* for 
Harry to raise his hand, so that he could force him to speak the name 
of the Avada Kedavra.  Alas for Crouch, though, Harry was an 
ignoramus, and so he was forced to call on Hermione instead; all the 
same, he *did* go out of his way to draw the class' attention to 
Harry after his demonstration of the curse.  Crouch is just like 
that.  He's a sadist, and he has some...well, let's just say some 
parental issues.

And finally, in defense of my Imperio'd Arthur Weasley theory, I 
would point out that Ron seems to find fighting off the Imperius 
Curse unusually difficult.  Nowhere else in canon is Ron depicted as 
a poor student.  He does have some difficulties in CoS, but only 
because of his broken wand; he doesn't take Divination at all 
seriously, but then, neither do any of the other male Gryffindor 
students.  Ordinarily, Ron is canonically depicted as a perfectly 
average student.  So why the trouble with the Imperius Curse?  He's 
not a weak-willed person at all, really.

Well, could it be a family trait?  Riddle's diary did quite the job on
Ginny too.

Of course, if poor Arthur Weasley really *had* spent some time under 
the Imperius Curse back in the bad old days, then clearly no one has 
ever told Ron or the Twins about it.  While Ron doesn't care at all 
for those spiders, Crouch's Imperius demonstration doesn't otherwise 
seem to bother him at all -- he thinks that it's cool -- and he has
no negative reaction to Crouch's comment about his father.  Similarly,
the Twins show no signs of distress over Crouch/Moody's DADA class; 
on the contrary, they are overflowing with enthusiasm about it.

No, if Arthur Weasley ever had a little Imperius problem, then that's 
been kept a secret from the children -- or at least from the younger
ones.  Bill and Charlie might know about it, but Ron, Ginny and the 
Twins certainly don't.  Percy...

Well, Percy might, or he might not.  Hard to say, really.

At any rate, if it's true, then it's a rather large secret, don't you
think?  Rather a nasty secret.  Rather an ugly secret.  A Deep Dark 
secret.  A Skeleton In the Weasley Family Closet sort of secret.

So I'm hoping that it's true.  Because not only do I think that the 
it would be interesting for the Weasleys to have one of those; I also
think that the Weasleys *act* as if they have one of those.  There's
something festering away somewhere in that family dynamic, and I 
don't think that it's just a matter of financial stress.  I think 
that there's something swept under the carpet somewhere in that 
household.  Something secret, and sad.

Further speculations about missing Weasley children, Arthur's 
particular demeanor when telling the children about the significance 
of the Dark Mark at the end of Chapter 9 of GoF, Bill's contributions 
to that particular conversation, literary parallels between Percy 
Weasley and Barty Crouch, and how any of that might intersect with 
the series' thematic emphasis on damaged families, secrets, the 
effects of the past upon the present, and father-son relationships, I 
will leave to the cruel and ruthlessly bloody minds of my fellow 
FEATHERBOAS.


-- Elkins, who really does adore Arthur Weasley.