TBAY: Memory Charm Neville Meets Reverse Memory Charm Ne...

[cindysphynx]

No: HPFGUIDX 38797

<Gulp!>

Uh oh.

Reverse Memory Charm Neville is seriously on the ropes now.  I sense 
that he has taken a flurry of body blows, not to mention several 
direct headshots that have badly blurred his vision.

Let's see if I can clear things up for the poor lad:

*****************

The Dastardly Debbie maligned:

> I don't believe the Reverse Memory Charm is necessary to explain 
>the Cover Your Tracks Memory Charm (erm, I think we need an acronym 
>for this).  

Yes, this is true.  Memory Charm Neville has quite a few dandy 
acronyms, but Cover Their Tracks Memory Charm Neville is practically 
naked, as no one has even *tried* to grind out an acronym for him.  

Well, how hard can this acronym thing be, anyway?  Anyone can do it 
if you just set your mind to it.  To prove this point, I have 
wrestled control of the TAGSWATCH acronym generator from Tabouli 
and, if I twiddle the knobs juuuuuust so, I'm sure I can come up 
with the single longest and best acronym ever generated on the board:

"Toddler Neville Received A Memory Charm Not To Spare Him Pain, But 
To Allow For A Successful Escape That Ultimately Didn't Work Out, 
I'm Thinking" (T.N.R.A.M.C.N.T.S.H.P.B.T.A.F.A.S.E.T.U.D.W.O.I.T).

Now, how hard was that?

Debbie continued:

>This assumes that Neville's testimony was necessary to identify the 
>Pensieve defendants.  While Neville's testimony would have been 
>helpful, I'm not convinced he would have been capable of giving it, 
>even if the Memory Charm was removed.  It's equally possible that 
>one of the Pensieve defendants was caught and ratted on the others, 
>after a little, er, persuasion (either of the unidentified men 
>would do here, as one had a blank look and the other was very 
>nervous).  

Well, as much as I like Reverse Memory Charm Neville, I do have to 
nod to the brilliance and creativity of Debbie's theory.  

Could one of the four Pensieve Four have Cracked and ratted out the 
group?  Let's use the process of elimination.

1.  Mrs. Lestrange.  Is there anyone, even a single soul, who thinks 
there is any chance at all that heavily-lidded Mrs. Lestrange 
Cracked?  Mrs. "Throw us into Azkaban; we will wait!" Lestrange?  
Mrs. "This chained chair feels just like a throne" Lestrange?  

No, Mrs. Lestrange doesn't Crack; other people Crack when Mrs. 
Lestrange *tells* them to Crack.

2.  Crouch Jr.  Given his hysteria in the Pensieve scene, one gets 
the idea that he believes is really going to Azkaban.  Mum and Dad 
sure seem to think so.  And he does, which suggests that he didn't 
rat out the group.  Also, Crouch Jr. as Fake Moody expresses no fear 
under Veritaserum that he might be in hot water for being disloyal.

3.  Mr. Lestrange (blank stare variant or nervous variant).  Well, 
maybe.  Maybe Mr. Lestrange has been looking for a way out of that 
steel cage of a marriage for some time now, terrified of what might 
happen if Mrs. Lestrange learns he is planning to end it.  But 
Sirius tells us that Mr. Lestrange is in Azkaban.  So if he Cracked 
and gave up Mrs. Lestrange, then we have to assume he is dead, dead, 
dead because . . . Mrs. Lestrange would have beheaded him.  I think 
that Sirius would know if Mr. Lestrange died in Azkaban from 
beheading or anything else, so I think he's *still* alive and 
perhaps seeking an annullment.

4.  Fourth Man.  Avery, if you like.  Nervous darty-eyed Avery.  Now 
this is where things get interesting.  Maybe, just maybe, the way 
Avery wormed his way out of trouble was by mustering the courage to 
rat out Mrs. Lestrange.  He stands there silent in the Pensieve 
scene (well, there probably was some trembling and sniffing and 
sniveling going on that young Harry missed), knowing he has cut a 
deal to be sprung from Azkaban.  Yes, that's why he didn't prostrate 
himself before Crouch Jr. like he did in the graveyard.  That guilt 
certainly does give Avery good reason to Crack in the graveyard all 
those many years later, doesn't it?  

It's possible.  Definitely possible.

Let's check the canon.  

I think I'm seeing some hurdles for Cracked Fourth Man.  First, I 
always like to assume that Moody was involved in the arrest of the 
Pensieve Four.  This explains Neville's terrified reaction to Moody, 
and it gives me a nifty way to explain the absence of Moody's leg 
and eye.  It also explains Moody's absence from the trial of the 
Pensieve Four -- Moody was undergoing some *serious* physical 
therapy at the time.  

Now, I doubt that Real Moody would resort to a Cruciatus Curse to 
get Avery to Crack.  Sirius says, "[Moody] was tough, but he never 
descended to the level of the Death Eaters."  Now, Sirius was either 
in Azkaban or possibly hunting down Peter when the Longbottoms' 
torture occured, so maybe he is unaware that Moody used the 
Cruciatus Curse to get Avery to Crack.  But I rather doubt it.

Besides, Sirius tells us exactly how Avery wormed his way out of 
trouble:  "From what I've heard he wormed his way out of trouble by 
saying he'd been acting under the Imperius Curse."  Sirius also 
makes it clear how Karkaroff gets off -- he "did a deal" with the 
Ministry.  So Sirius definitely knows the difference between getting 
off by claiming Imperius and doing a deal, so I think it's fair to 
assume Fourth Man Avery didn't turn in his accomplices.

The only one who might have ratted them out would be Mr. Lestrange.  
And his continued presence in Azkaban rules that out entirely, IMO.

Debbie continues:

>Actually, I think there's been little 
> speculation from Memory Charm proponents on who performed the 
>charm because 
> it could have been anyone, including someone other than the person 
>doing the torturing.  The only possible limitation is that after 
>the Memory Charm was performed, you don't want Neville remembering 
>a strange DE standing in front of him.  There are three ways around 
>this:
> 
> 1.  Neville was too young to recognize a stranger.  However, I 
think some 
> time had elapsed between Voldemort's defeat and the Longbottom 
affair, so 
> Neville may have been old enough for the perpetrator to at least 
be concerned 
> about this.   So this is perhaps not the most likely scenario.

I agree that this is unlikely.  If Neville is old enough to 
recognize the perpetrators, or heaven forbid, if he actually *knew* 
one of them, I don't see how they would have left him alive, Memory 
Charm or no Memory Charm.  And if they were worried about him, why 
not Stun him immediately so he doesn't even witness the crime?

See, I'm thinking that the Cover Their Tracks Memory Charm theory 
requires Mrs. Lestrange to be about as forgetful as Voldemort.  She 
would have to somehow overlook a toddler.  That's hard to swallow, 
to tell you the truth.

> 2.  Before performing the memory charm, the perpetrator executed 
>some curse (such as the ones used on Snape in the Shrieking Shack 
>in PoA or the ones used on Draco & Co. at the end of GoF) to knock 
>poor Neville out, and left him apparently sleeping in his bed.  
>This would have been easy.   It even has a Bang.

Again, if they think to knock him out, why not do so *before* the 
crime?

Besides, Neville can't be in bed.  He has to be standing there 
wearing pajamas with feet in them.  Having Neville snoring through 
this unspeakable torture is a bit of a Dud, I think.

> 3.  The perpetrator was someone Neville knew.  <snip> After all, 
they needed to get into the house and breaking down the door 
> might have given the Longbottoms enough warning to escape.  There 
>are lots of possibilities for this person, among them the Pensieve 
>defendants themselves.  This leaves 
> only one person among the Pensieve defendants:  Fourth Man.  The 
>very same Fourth Man whose identity as Avery I doubted only a 
>couple of short weeks ago.  Besides, Fourth Man Friend of the 
>Longbottoms has equal plausibility whether or not Avery is our 
>Fourth Man.  After all, Avery cannot be counted out as a relative 
>of Neville's; Mrs.Longbottom may be the former Miss Avery.  

This is interesting on several levels.

1.  Why didn't the Longbottoms escape?  You know, Big Bad Frank 
should have held them off while Mrs. Longbottom followed the example 
of Lily Potter and . . . fled into a back room and begged for her 
life instead of even *trying* to defend herself or escape.  Witches 
aren't very good at making clever escapes, are they?  ;-)

2.  I don't think we need to assume that the Pensieve Four knew the 
Longbottoms to explain how they located the Longbottoms.  Frank 
Longbottom was a *hero*.  Well, OK, he wasn't a hero, exactly.  
Dumbledore says he was "very popular."  And how does an Auror get 
popular?  By being a *hero*.  I figure it wouldn't be that hard to 
track down a popular auror at his home.

3.  Then there's the idea that Fourth Man knew the Longbottoms and 
used that relationship to set them up.  Ooooh, my FEATHERBOAS have 
become rather perky at the very idea of this.  Debbie is right that 
this is *tremendously* Bangy.  

But I want to push this idea in a different direction.  If you'll 
just give me Avery as Fourth Man, I can produce an ear-shattering 
Bang for you -- bigger than Fourth Man Anonymous Friend.  If Avery 
is Fourth Man and knows the Longbottoms, imagine the looks on their 
faces when they swing open the door, expecting Avery to present them 
with a nice hostess gift and a plate of his special homemade 
brownies, only to be staring straight into Mrs. Lestrange's heavily-
lidded eyes.  Oh, there's no time for escape at all under that 
scenario, is there?  

And what of poor Neville?  Oh, he is a bit of a night owl and is 
toddling around.  Mrs. Lestrange doesn't bother to knock him out or 
anything, because she's planning to kill him once she has the 
information she needs.  But Avery stops her from killing Neville or 
killing the Longbottoms either.  Avery was raised right and knows it 
is really *rude* to kill the host and hostess after an evening at 
their home.  

And this is where I'm willing to offer up a compromise.  Avery 
proposes a Memory Charm on the kid.  Mrs. Lestrange agrees, 
persuaded by Avery's plea that Mrs. Lestrange recruited him for this 
mission by *promising* no one would get hurt.  (For DEs, "get hurt" 
doesn't preclude hours of the Cruciatus Curse.) Avery does the 
Memory Charm, but being a bit of a coward, he doesn't do a really 
*Big* Memory Charm.  He takes a little something off of it because 
he doesn't want to hurt Frank's boy.  But when Moody arrives, he and 
Crouch Sr. use a *monster* Reverse Memory Charm, which breaks 
through Avery's mini-Memory Charm and gets Moody an identification 
of the Pensieve Four.

So you can have Cover Your Tracks Memory Charm Neville followed 
closely by my Reverse Memory Charm Neville.  The Double Memory Charm 
theory!

No wonder the poor boy is so screwed up.

Cindy (noting that there is no room *at all* in the Double Memory 
Charm theory for a Benevolent Memory Charm)

********************

For an explanation of the acronyms and theories in this post, visit
Hypothetic Alley at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin%
20Files/hypotheticalley.htm 
and Inish Alley at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database?
method=reportRows&tbl=13