TBAY: Memory Charm Symposium (3 of 3) (Long)

Sat May 18 10:12:42 UTC 2002

No: HPFGUIDX 38848

Three shall be the number of the Symposium posts, and the number
of the Symposium posts shall be three!

Yes.  Well.  Let's try this again, shall we?

-----------

All fortified now?

Good.  Because now we're going to be delving into those theories that 
assume unquestionably venal motives underlying Neville's memory 
charm.  Here is where we get into all of those callous cover-ups, 
spiteful spell-castings, and family failings that are, let's face it, 
just ever so much more *fun* than all of those sappy well-intentioned 
memory charm theories.

Flying Hedgehogs abound once we get into this territory, and the 
degree of explanation necessary to outline the canonical support goes 
waaaaaaaay up.  So I'm going to be doing a lot of message number 
citation in this last segment, as many of these theories are not only 
far too complicated, but also far too beautifully defended elsewhere 
for me to feel that I can really do justice to them in summary form.

This last part of the symposium deals with the Cover-Up At the 
Ministry, the DEPRECIATION, and the Memory Charm Most Foul theories.  
There's quite a bit of overlap between these three, admittedly, but 
for the purposes of analysis, I have attempted to draw a few bright 
lines to distinguish them from each other.

Ready?  Okay.  First up on our list is...

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

--The "Cover-Up At the Ministry" Theory--

(Otherwise Known As: "Longbottomgate," "We Was Framed!," "Rounding Up 
the Usual Suspects," "Bad Aurors," The "Palace Intrigue" Theory.)

Neville was placed under a memory charm by someone at the Ministry, 
in order to cover up the fact that one (or two, or three, or perhaps 
even all four) of the Pensieve defendents were innocent of the crime 
for which they were sent to prison.  The real culprit(s) are still 
out there.  At large.  And many within the Ministry *know* it.  But 
they just don't care.  Not because they're Death Eaters or anything 
like that, mind -- that would be DEPRECIATION -- but rather, because 
they're too busy looking out for their own interests to worry about 
trifling little matters like the public weal.

---------------------

There are quite a number of variants on this theory.  Nearly all of 
them focus on the canonically-derived notion that in the wake of the 
Longbottom Incident, the Ministry was absolutely *desperate* to get a 
conviction in order to appease the mood of the mob and thus to avert 
a public relations disaster.  

The canon here mainly derives from Chapter 30 of GoF, "The Pensieve," 
in which the extent to which the mood of the crowd defines the 
judicial process is strongly emphasized, as is the lynch-mob 
atmosphere presiding over the trial of the Longbottoms' alleged 
assailants.  This alone would probably have sufficed to alert the 
reader to the possibility that the Ministry had been under a great 
deal of pressure to get someone, *anyone,* put away for the attack on 
the Longbottoms, but just in case we missed the implication, JKR then 
makes it explicit in Dumbledore's conversation with Harry shortly 
thereafter:

"'The attacks on them came after Voldemort's fall from power, just 
when everyone thought they were safe.  Those attacks caused a wave of 
fury such as I have never known.  The Ministry was under great 
pressure to catch those who had done it.  Unfortunately, the 
Longbottoms' evidence was -- given their condition -- none too 
reliable.'"

Dumbledore then confesses to Harry that he has "no idea" whether 
Crouch Jr. had really been involved in the affair at all.

The secondary canon for Cover-Up derives from Sirius' description of 
Crouch Jr's arrest in Chapter 27, as well as from his description of 
the status of the young man's co-defendents, generally assumed to be
the Lestranges and...er, Fourth Man.  Sirius, too, expresses doubts 
as to young Crouch's guilty verdict: "...he might have been in the 
wrong place at the wrong time..."  More to the point, though, Sirius
also describes the Lestranges and Fourth Man as "a group of Death 
Eaters who'd managed to talk their way out of Azkaban," and as 
"people I'd bet my life were Death Eaters."

So a picture begins to emerge here.  We have a Ministry of Magic that
is absolutely desperate to get someone convicted of this crime.  We
have as the only two eye-witnesses the victims themselves, a couple 
of gibbering wrecks unable to provide any reliable testimony.  We 
have a Department of Magical Law Enforcement still filled with Aurors 
who, if Sirius is to be believed, have grown accustomed to operating 
according to somewhat less than stringent standards.  

And then we have the Lestranges and Fourth Man, who from the 
ambiguity in Sirius' description of them would seem to have been 
people who even at the time were widely believed to have been Death 
Eaters who only escaped justice in the first place on the basis of 
some lame legal technicality.  If they are the same age as Snape, 
then they would have been very young at the time as well.  Young 
enough, perhaps, that they lacked much in the way of political 
power or social clout?  That seems likely enough, particularly in the 
wake of Voldemort's fall, when possible patrons like the Malfoys 
would presumably have been keeping their heads down.

They *do* begin to look like appealing suspects, don't they?  Very 
appealing suspects.  Particularly for a Department of Magical Law 
Enforcement that is desperate to get a conviction, and that has been 
known to ignore due process in the past, when it has suited its 
purposes.

Did someone in the DMLE decide to go with What Was Easy over What Was 
Right when it came to closing the file on the Longbottom Incident?  
Did someone then put a Memory Charm on Neville to cover their tracks?

Eileen objected to this theory on the grounds that it provides 
insufficient Bang.  After all, she wrote, we the readers already 
*know* that the Ministry is corrupt, so for this to be the great 
revelation Neville has to offer would be a total Dud.

Eileen:

> If Neville snaps out of the charm and yells, "Corrupt Cover-up," no-
> one will bat an eye.

True enough.  Ah, but the Bang in *this* theory, you see, isn't 
really the revelation that the Ministry is corrupt at all.  Nor is it 
the identity of the perpetrator of the Memory Charm itself.  It 
doesn't really matter who in the Ministry might have performed the 
actual spell.

No, what *matters* in the context of the Cover-Up At the Ministry is 
the question of just who the real culprits in the Longbottom Affair 
were.  Who *were* those secret DE torturers for whom the Lestranges 
and Fourth Man were willing to take the fall?  They must have been 
pretty *important* secret DE torturers, right?  

So who were they?  Someone we know, surely, because otherwise it 
would be a Dud.  So could we be looking at an Ever So Evil Moody 
here?  An Ever So Evil Minerva McGonagall?  An Ever So Evil 
Dumbledore?  Oh my, could it be that Neville's own dear Herbology 
mentor is actually the Ever So Evil Death Eating Sprout?  Or could 
we be overlapping with Memory Charm Most Foul here, to give us an 
Ever So Evil Granny Longbottom, or an Ever So Evil Bent Uncle Algie?

Why, the possibilities for Big Loud Bangs are just *endless!*

Porphyria remained unconvinced:

> See, this is fun. But I'm not quite sure what would have gone on. 

Well, that all depends on which version of the Cover-Up you favor.

The most extreme version of this theory, "Rounding Up the Usual 
Suspects," proposes that not *one* of the Pensieve Four was really 
guilty of the charges against them.  Although they were indeed 
cognizant of a DE conspiracy to restore Voldemort to power and likely 
involved with the plot in some other capacity, they were not the 
Longbottoms' torturers.  

In this scenario, the fact that Crouch's own son just happened to be 
hanging out with the Usual Suspects on the night that the Aurors 
battered down the door is viewed as nothing more than a horrible 
coincidence, a complication which no one could possibly have 
foreseen.  

Nor, of course, could anyone in the Department possibly have foreseen 
that after the trial and the conviction and the verdict, the 
Longbottoms' son would turn out to have seen something, or perhaps 
heard something -- something that, if anyone ever found out about it, 
would absolutely require that the verdict be overturned and the 
search for the Longbottoms' *real* assailants begin once more.  I 
mean, we're talking total public relations nightmare here.  A 
political disaster.  Particularly if Crouch Jr. had already 
ostensibly died in prison and his father's fall from power begun.

So.  Memory Charm.  Problem solved.

Porphyria objected to the full frame-up theory on the grounds that 
Mrs. Lestrange actually confesses her guilt in the Pensieve scene and 
would seem to be confessing not only on her own behalf, but also on 
behalf of the entire party.  She wrote:

> In the Pensieve scene, Mrs. Lestrange admits to the guilt of her 
> party, doesn't she? 

Well, she certainly does admit to her own guilt.  Who precisely she 
means to include by her use of the first person plural, though, is 
something that I've always found fairly ambiguous.

"He will rise again and will come for us, he will reward us beyond 
any of his other supporters!  We alone were faithful!  We alone tried 
to find him!"

Does that "we" really refer to all *four* of the defendents, do you 
think?  Or is it, perhaps, only meant to refer the three of them who 
have *not* been sitting there shrieking hysterial denials and pleas 
throughout the entire sentencing?  

I can read it either way.  I can also read it quite comfortably as a 
use of the marital "we," in which case she means to include only her 
husband in her boastful confession.

But at any rate, there's no question that she admits her own guilt.  
She not only admits it, she *proclaims* it.  Proudly.  Defiantly.  
And in a manner that seems designed to strike fear -- and perhaps 
even a slight stirring of reluctant admiration -- into the hearts of 
all those who witness it.

Just like Good Terrorists are supposed to do.

*Especially* when they're claiming responsibility for an act that 
they did not in fact commit.  

I mean, aren't fanatical members of terrorist organizations notorious 
for doing that?  That's par for the course, isn't it?  It's a 
terrorism trope.  It's very nearly a cliche.

Porphyria:

> I guess what I'm asking here is, if there were a cover up, if 
> either someone of the four was innocent or someone else was also 
> guilty, what do you think her reaction would be? 

Well, as we don't know all that much about her, it's a bit hard to 
say.  But assuming that she is indeed loyal, strong-willed and 
fanatical, and that while innocent of the attack on the Longbottoms, 
she nonetheless *was* cognizant of or involved with a DE conspiracy 
to seek out Voldemort and restore him to power, then I imagine that 
her reaction might well have been to do whatever she could over
the course of her trial to draw as much attention to herself as 
humanly possible, in the hopes that she might leave absolutely _no 
doubt_ in the mind of the tribunal that they had caught the entirety 
of the conspiracy, thus leaving her unknown but still-at-large 
colleagues with a much clearer field to seek out their fallen master 
without having to worry about any Aurors out searching for them.

Anyway, that's probably what I'd do, if I were brave and loyal and 
slightly mad, and had a fanatic's faith in Voldemort's power.

If I were not only brave and loyal and fanatical, but also rather 
clever, then it occurs to me that I might also go out of my way to 
*exaggerate* all of my defiance and pride and True Warrior 
Spiritedness -- just to provide a clear example to the convened 
tribunal of what a Real Death Eater is supposed to look like, and 
thus to plant seeds of doubt in their minds that hysterical little 
Barty Crouch could *possibly* really be one.  I can easily imagine 
Mrs. Lestrange figuring that young Crouch is the only one of the four 
of them who stands even the slightest chance of getting off the hook 
and so doing what she can to improve his chances.  Not only might 
this enable him to walk free, which since he *is* a loyal DE devoted 
to the cause would be a Very Good Thing, but it might also harm his 
father's career, which because his father is a loyal Ministry 
official and an Enemy of the Cause would be an Even Better Thing.

Certainly I do find the Pensieve defendents' reaction -- or, rather, 
their utter *lack* of reaction -- to Crouch's hysteria at the 
sentencing extremely interesting.  They don't respond to him at all.  
They neither back him up nor try to debunk his claims of innocence.  
They even resist the temptation to hiss a quick "shut up" in 
his general direction.  All three of them simply ignore him 
completely.  It does serve to bolster the impression that perhaps he 
really wasn't involved, and I sometimes find myself wondering if that 
might not have been their very intent.

Porphyria:

> Would she be too proud to quibble with the court? Or would she try 
> to expose the real culprit? She has very little to lose. 

You think?

See, I'd say that she has nothing to *gain,* myself.  Given the mood 
of the court, I don't think that anything that she did or said would 
have kept her from being sentenced to life in prison, and I suspect 
that she was well aware of that.  So she had absolutely nothing to 
gain by trying to proclaim her innocence, but if she really is as 
fanatical and devoted a follower as she seems to be, then I'd 
say that from her own perspective, she had absolutely *everything* to 
lose.  I mean, voldemort is coming back, right?  One way or another, 
he's coming back, and when he does, he's going to reward the faithful 
and punish the faithless.  And taking the fall for your colleagues 
(whom presumably she believed would continue the search for their 
absent Master, rather than abandoning it) certainly ought to count as 
loyalty worthy of some great reward.

No, Mrs. Lestrange's behavior in the Pensieve scene isn't really all 
that troublesome for me when it comes to my willingness to run with 
the full-fledged frame-up theory.  I could live quite happily with 
that.  The *graveyard* scene, on the other hand, is a different 
story.  It is very difficult, IMO, to parse Voldemort's lines in the 
graveyard in any manner that supports the idea that all four of the 
Longbottom defendents were sent down the river as a frame-up job.

Fortunately, however, in message #36889, Debbie proposed an even 
Darker and Dirtier -- and also *far* more blackly humorous -- version 
of the full frame-up job than the rather pedestrian "Usual Suspects" 
spec, and this one does offer some possible explanation for both 
Lestrange's confession and Voldemort's praise in the graveyard, as 
well as providing one possible defense for young Barty Crouch's 
insistence that his loyalty to Voldemort never wavered, in spite 
of all of his pathetic squealing at his trial.  

Debbie suggested that Aurors not only framed the Pensieve defendents, 
but that they were *themselves* the Longbottoms' torturers.  And that 
they were responsible for the Longbottoms' current mind-blitzed 
states, as well, because what's really wrong with the Longbottoms, 
you see, isn't that they were tortured at all.  It's that they were 
very badly *Memory Charm'd!*

Ooooooh, those Bad Aurors!

Debbie also dangled the tantalizing suggestion of inter-departmental 
rivalries within the spook divisions of the MoM before our amazed 
eyes:

> Frank may have had information on people that would shock 
> us. . . .The MOM would have at least as great an interest in this 
> information as the DE's, and if Aurors were in effect secret 
> agents, they would not want to reveal their secrets to the average 
> MOM employee.

She then got herself up to quite a bit of dark mischief by proposing 
a scenario in which ruthless Aurors, either because they suspected 
that Frank Longbottom was a DE double-agent or because they worked 
for a different division and were keen to know what their rivals were 
up to (and perhaps also driven by a touch of envy over Frank's 
massive popularity?), were right in the middle of interrogating their 
colleague by torturing him, and his innocent wife, and even possibly 
their blameless young son...

<Elkins pauses.>

And even possibly their blameless young son?

Boy.  You guys really do have nasty little minds, don't you?  You 
know, I've run right *out* of FEATHERBOAs?  That's how vicious and 
unkind you people are.  

Shocking.

So anyway, Debbie suggested that just as the Aurors were right in the 
middle of perpetrating atrocities on the entire Longbottom family, 
that was when the Pensieve Four (who in this version are 
only "innocent" by virtue of having been beaten to the punch by the 
Bad Aurors) showed up at the exact same location -- and with the 
exact same plan in mind.  

Panicked, the Aurors fired off Memory Charms at the Longbottoms and 
fled.

Debbie:

> The torturers don't want to kill the Longbottoms at this point 
> because he hasn't cracked yet and they think they can return and 
> continue the torture at a later date (believing they can break the 
> charm as Voldemort did to Bertha). But they're in a rush since 
> the...[DEs] are at the door, so they quickly execute an enormous, 
> cover-your-rear Obliviate that would do Lockhart proud, as there's 
> no time for surgical precision. Then they Disapparate. . . .The 
> Longbottoms, now clueless as to (presumably) their own and
>  Neville's identity, may have little more than a vague recollection 
> of Crucio, which allows the Ministry great latitude in sweeping up 
> suspects. The Longbottoms are misdiagnosed based on the sketchy 
> information and sent to St. Mungo's.

And of course, it's easy enough for the Aurors to whip up a 
compelling case against the Usual Suspects, isn't it?  After all, the 
Usual Suspects really *were* there that night -- the Aurors saw them 
there themselves.  And they really *had* been planning to question 
Longbottom about Voldemort's whereabouts, so all of those "to-do" 
lists and the like that they left lying around on the dining room 
table make for pretty good evidence against them.

Well!

You know?  I just have to say this.  I absolutely *love* this 
theory.  I am floudering in a sea of hopeless envy over here, wishing 
that I had come up with it myself.  It just has everything, doesn't 
it?  It has wicked Aurors and dirty politics and tragic medical 
misdiagnoses...and it's even got that lovely bit of farce, with the 
DEs coming knocking on the door, and the Aurors getting big eyes and 
whispering, "Uh-oh.  Cheese it!  Someone's at the door," and then the 
Usual Suspects walking in to find that their expected victims have, 
well, already been victimized, which I imagine must have *really* 
freaked them out, and...

And, well, yes.  Black farce.  You *know* how I feel about black 
farce, right?

Also, by my careful snipping, I have even obscured one of the best 
parts of Debbie's theory: namely, that it is completely 
Schrodingered.  It works equally well as a DEPRECIATION theory.  All 
you need to do is to switch the positions of the Usual Suspects and 
the Bad Aurors, and you've got yourself a workable version of 
DEPRECIATION, with an option on a Memory Charm Most Foul side-dish of
Evil!Gran.

Ah, flexibility!  The hallmark of great speculation.

Mainly, though, what impresses me here is the extremely compelling 
canonical defense that Debbie provided for the notion that what 
afflicts Neville's parents may not be trauma at all, but a Memory 
Charm.  Having first brought up all of the usual objections to the 
Longbottom subplot -- that the Longbottoms' amnesiac state is simply 
not in the least bit believable as a normal human response to 
extended abuse, that it seems even more unlikely that *two* people 
should have responded in precisely the same idiosyncratic way to 
trauma, and so forth -- Debbie then wrote:

> On the other hand, the description of the Longbottom's condition is 
> completely consistent with a Memory Charm. For support, I compare 
> the description of the Longbottoms (about whom Dumbledore 
> says "They are insane. . . . They do not recognize [Neville]") with 
> Prof. Lockhart (about whom Ron reports "Hasn't got a clue who he 
> is, or where he is, or who we are.") I think the descriptions sound 
> very similar.

Wow, Debbie!

Yeah, so do I.  I think that you may just have sold me on this idea.  
Memory Charm'd Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom really does makes perfect 
sense to me, and it also provides for quite the opportunity for 
Banginess later on.  Just think of all the dirt that Frank Longbottom 
might be able to spill, if only he could, well, you know.  Stop 
drooling for just a little while.   

"Bad Aurors" also fixes many of the holes that "Rounding Up the Usual 
Suspects" falls headlong into.  It explains why the Pensieve 
defendents seem so utterly convinced of their loyalty in being 
the "only ones" who were loyal enough to go looking for Voldemort: 
because in fact, they were.  No additional conspirators are 
necessary, as they are in Usual Suspects.  It also explains why 
Voldemort himself seems so convinced of their loyalty.  After all, who
knows that those Bad Aurors beat them to the punch anyway?  No one.  
Except for those Bad Aurors themselves, that is -- but they're not 
talking.

The problem that I can see with this, though, is that it leaves the 
Bang potential just a little bit Duddy.  If there were no DE 
conspiracy, then what could the great shocker revelation when Neville 
or his parents are finally freed from their memory charms be?  That 
the Ministry is corrupt?  That some Aurors (whom we don't know and 
don't care about) are Evil, Evil, Evil?

To give this one a good Bang, I think that you either have to return 
to the DE conspiracy (in which case you're left with the problems of 
the graveyard scene) or to assume that an Ever So Evil Alastor Moody 
was one of those Bad Bad Aurors.

Not, of course, that I ever have a problem with Evil!Moody. 

The full frame-up varieties of the Cover-Up At the Ministry are 
certainly a good deal of fun, but the less extreme versions are far 
more easily defended.  The idea that young Crouch was actually 
innocent, for example, has ample enough canonical support that many 
readers have found it an instinctive reading.  If we assume that 
Crouch Jr. was innocent, then it is very tempting to suspect that his 
implication might have been engineered as a political attack on his 
father.

This, the "Palace Intrigue" Theory, was the possibility that I was 
hoping to suggest when, in response to Finwitch's suggestion that 
young Crouch might have been innocent after all, I wrote:

> So tell me something here. Am I the only person so deeply and 
> profoundly mistrustful of the Ministry that my immediate thought 
> upon reading Finwitch's above suggestion was that if a memory charm 
> had indeed been placed on Neville to suppress this particular piece 
> of knowledge, then the culprit probably wasn't a _Death Eater_ at 
> all?

No sooner had those words passed through my proverbial lips than 
Dicentra immediately leapt forward, blurting in a state of great 
excitement:

> I'm not ready to claim that Fudge tortured the Longbottoms, but 
> I'll always vote for him covering up something evil.

Heh.  Why, yes!  I thought that Dicentra might like this idea, for 
some wacky reason.

::Dicentra displays her FIDEDIGNO badge, which when pressed flashes 
FISHFINGERS in green, and when pressed again shows FIE in orange, and 
when pressed again shows FIEONGOODNESS in blue.::

<Elkins, entranced by all of those bright colors and pretty flashing 
lights, is alarmed to find herself reaching out as if to accept a 
badge of her own.  She tightens her lips and shakes her head firmly, 
snatching her hand back down to her side.  She reminds herself 
crossly of just how *fond* she is of her own Fudge badge, the one 
that bears upon it but a single sad little acronym: O.S.T.R.I.C.H.>

<Elkins' OSTRICH badge is not, it is true, nearly as attractive as 
Dicentra's.  It is not very shiny.  It has no flash.  And it really 
is a very drab color.  It is, in fact, precisely the same dull matte 
black of a cannon.  It really doesn't go with the rest of Elkins' 
wardrobe at *all*.  But she's had it with her for such a long 
time now, and she's grown accustomed to it, and it's...well, it's 
comfortable.  And besides, it does sort of match her SYCOPHANTS 
badge.  So she guesses that she'll just stick with it.  For now.>

<sigh>

Yeah.  You know, I try, I really do try, to resist the seductive lure 
of Ever So Evil Fudge.  I fight against it with all of my might.  
See, I'm just way too fond of reading Fudge and Crouch as literary 
doubles in GoF, and that reading goes all to *pieces* once you start 
wagging your finger at Fudge and crying "FIE!"  It really does.  It 
throws everything hopelessly out of balance.

But all that said, I have to admit that poor old Cornelius really 
*does* make by far the most appealing culprit for this particular 
version of the Ministry Cover-Up Theory.  As Debbie wrote:

> Interesting possibilities here: if the MOM was responsible, could 
> Fudge (now presumably and up-and-comer in the Ministry after his 
> role in the Sirius/Pettigrew affair) have somehow had something to 
> do with getting Crouch Jr. framed to perhaps clear Crouch Sr. out 
> of the path to the Minister of Magic Position? 

He certainly is the most likely candidate, isn't he?  He was working 
within the Ministry and therefore might well have had just enough 
insight into Crouch's character to guess that if Crouch's son were 
implicated in the affair, Crouch would behave precisely the way that 
he did.  He also was working for the Department of Magical 
Catastrophes at the time.  The DMC might well have been the division 
that was first called in to deal with the mess that the Longbottoms' 
assailants had left behind.  If Fudge were first on the scene, as he 
was in the Sirius Black affair, then that would have placed him in an 
ideal position to take stock of the situation, realize that Neville 
was the only person present in any condition to reveal the truth 
of what had transpired, and then to take the appropriate action to 
ensure the boy's silence.  And of course, most damning of all, Fudge 
is the one who benefitted the most from Crouch's political fall.

Debbie:

> ....it's possible that the real problem with the Longbottoms is 
> that either (a) the Memory Charm was botched, Lockhart-style, so 
> they lost their entire memories, or (b) the MOM attempted to break 
> their Memory Charms so they could testify but in doing so damaged 
> their minds beyond repair, as happened to Bertha Jorkins. And so 
> the MOM claimed that the Cruciatus Curse caused their insanity, to 
> cover their own tracks. This would make their evidence *seem* quite 
> unreliable.

Oh, my!

Okay.  So what if we propose that *this* is in fact the memory which 
the Ministry was so very keen to remove from Neville's mind -- not 
the memory of vile DEs tormenting his parents but rather, the memory 
of his parents' relatively coherent behavior after the original 
attack, but before they were then broken completely by the Ministry's 
ham-handed attempts to smash through those memory charms? 

That's pretty dire, all right.  Mainly, though, I like it because it 
offers the possibility that once Neville finally figures out what's 
up, he will respond by becoming...

Yes!  You guessed it!  An *iconoclast,* that's what.  An enemy of the 
status quo.  A revolutionary.  He will lead protests against the 
MoM.  He will distribute pamphlets and fliers and badges.  He will 
agitate for reform.  He will join an anarcho-syndicalist commune and 
dye his hair strange colors.  He will jaywalk for the fun of it and 
stay up far too late at night.

Aw, come on, guys.  Let me have my dreams, won't you?

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

--DEPRECIATION-- 

("Death Eaters Provoked a Really Evil Charm-Induced Amnesia to 
Incapacitate Our Neville")  

Neville was given his memory charm by a Wicked Death Eater, in order 
to prevent him from giving testimony or in some other way exposing 
the culprit's true identity.  The reason that Neville's memory is in 
such bad shape is because the perp used a truly *massive* Memory 
Charm on him...just to be on the safe side.  After all, Real 
Death Eaters Aren't Compassionate.

---------------------

Ah, Depreciation!  Such a classic Memory Charm approach, with so many 
dire and paranoid and vicious variations!  Where to begin?

Well, first off there's the Classic version of Depreciation.  This 
one proposes that Neville was a witness to the assault on his 
parents, and that he therefore was given his memory charm by one of 
the perps, to prevent him from being able to finger them to the 
ministry.

It's got the weight of tradition behind it, this one does.  But as 
with that other fine old classic, the Well-Intended Memory Charm, it 
has come under a great deal of attack.  Really, everyone raises 
pretty much the same objections to this theory, as it has some 
obvious continuity problems.  If the DEs had known that Neville was 
there, then wouldn't they have subjected him to the same treatment as 
his mother in their efforts to persuade Frank to talk?  If so, then 
wouldn't he be in the same catatonic state as his parents?  And even 
if for some reason he weren't (perhaps due to the resiliency of 
youth?), then why on earth wouldn't the DEs simply have killed him, 
if they were so worried about the possibility that he might give them 
away?  

All very good questions (although they do also beg that troubling and 
even IMO somewhat FLINTy question of why the DEs didn't kill the 
Longbottoms themselves, once they had finished with them).

Tabouli wrote:

> What happened to Dead Men Don't Tell Tales? Come on, these Death 
> Eaters were trained by Lord "Kill the Spare" Voldemort! If Neville 
> was watching and they thought his toddler testimony would be a 
> threat, why not use the one spell you have time for to AK him? Why 
> bother with a Memory Charm (unless you go for the AK is too 
> exhausting theory)? For that matter, given the fact that they left 
> the Longbottoms alive convicted them in the end (through the 
> action of none too reliable information, given their condition), 
> why didn't they just kill them off when they found them of no use, 
> to safeguard themselves? 

Agreed in full.  Classic Depreciation has never made very much sense 
to me, either.  Even Debbie's marvellous "Oh, no!  Someone's knocking 
on the door!  Let's Memory Charm them for now, and then finish the 
job later on" speculation works far less well for me in its 
DEPRECIATION version than in its Ministry Cover-Up manifestation.  I 
can easily believe that Bad Aurors might have thought they'd get a 
chance to continue with their interrogation later on and so might 
have smacked the Longbottoms with a couple of killer Memory Charms.  
But I can't even begin to imagine how a group of Death Eaters could 
have thought that they'd get such a second chance.

No, the notion that Neville's Memory Charm was cast on him to prevent 
him from fingering the Pensieve Four to the Ministry just doesn't 
work for me at all.  Far more workable, I think, are the variants 
that assume that Neville's Memory Charm was intended to prevent him 
from revealing the identity of some Death Eater *not* among the 
Pensieve Four -- someone who possibly didn't even realize that 
Neville had witnessed something important until quite some time 
*after* the after the fact.

But who could this person have been?

Ah.  Well, that's where it starts to get interesting.  

Cindy suggested that the culprit might have been none other than Real!
Moody himself, whom Neville saw tampering with a bit of evidence at 
the scene of the crime in order to help to cover up for the 
Longbottoms' assailants.

Cindy:

> Neville *saw* Moody do something the night Neville's parents were 
> tortured. Something that would blow Moody's cover if it came to 
> light. It might not necessarily be Big. Maybe just some evidence 
> destruction or some such. . . .But whatever Neville sees Moody do, 
> Moody has a Big problem now. He can't kill Neville, because it 
> would be too weird for the perpetrators to kill the toddler and 
> leave the parents alive. Also, Moody is worried that killing 
> Neville will cause MoM to do an investigation, and Moody would hate 
> for Neville's shadow to come crawling out of Moody's wand. So Moody 
> does a ::gulp:: Memory Charm. And a big one, too, much bigger than 
> is really needed. Moody isn't taking any chances.

Mmmmmm.  It definitely has possibilities.  It explains, for example, 
why Neville should have seemed so very frightened of Crouch/Moody in 
GoF.  It also allows one to assume that Neville *never* witnessed his 
parents being tortured, thus averting all of those pesky little 
problems with the Second Task Egg's mermaid song, and the Dementor on 
the train, and so forth.  And yet, it still has quite a bit of Bang 
potential, particularly as JKR has already promised us in interview 
that Real!Moody will be a character in his own right in later volumes.

Yes indeed.

It does, however, take quite a bit of juggling to reconcile with the 
fact that neither Crouch Jr. nor Wormtail nor Voldemort himself seem 
to have the slightest *idea* that Real!Moody is in fact a Death Eater.

Fortunately, Cindy's already taken care of this problem.  For her 
full canonical defense of Secret Death Eater Moody, see message 
#36829.  In brief summary, she there suggests that Real!Moody was 
actually one of Rookwood's people, and that therefore although he was 
indeed an ally of Voldemort's, Voldemort himself was unaware of this 
fact, as were the vast majority of his Death Eaters.  The irony 
abounds, naturally, once Crouch and Wormtail and Voldemort are all 
overpowering their devoted ally Moody and shoving him into a trunk. 

If you don't care for Ever So Evil Moody, though, then how about Ever 
So Evil Frank Longbottom?

Caroline risked a yellow flag violation by suggesting that the 
Longbottoms were never tortured at all, but instead are under the 
influence of Insanity Curses, with only Neville having been given a 
memory charm.  But why was he given a memory charm?  Merely to 
prevent him from blabbing about the identity of the Lestranges et al?

Not precisely.  You see, in Caroline's DEPRECIATION theory, Frank 
Longbottom was Ever So Evil.  (Message #36825)

Caroline:

> How about—Frank L. is really a bad guy. Evil as they come. Knows 
> *exactly* where Voldemort is floating around. But his sweet 
> innocent wife has no idea about all this, until she overhears Frank 
> & the gang of 4 plotting. She goes all hysterical and someone slaps 
> an insanity curse on her. Someone (Dead Sexy Mrs. Lestrange, 
> anyone?) decides that Frank is now a liability and can't be 
> trusted. He gets an insanity curse, Neville gets a memory charm, 
> the gang gets the heck out of there. (This can come with an added 
> bonus of an innocent-of-torture-Crouch Jr if you'd like!)

I'm always happy to accept an innocent-of-torture-Crouch-Jr option.

The nice thing about this one, to my mind, is that it implies that 
deep down in their heart of hearts, the DEs have Neville mentally 
filed away as a future ally.  (It can therefore be nicely reconciled 
with TOADKEEPER II, if you are so inclined.)  It also provides 
acceptable answers to all of the usual questions raised by 
DEPRECIATION theories.  

Why don't the DEs want to kill Neville?  Well, because he's 
Longbottom's heir, of course, and while Frank did unfortunately turn 
out to be just a wee bit unreliable when it came to his wife, he was 
on the whole a good and loyal Death Eater, and the others would like 
for his son to follow right in his footsteps (only without that pesky 
reliability problem) when the time comes.  

So why wipe Neville's memory of the event at all?  Well, really!  The 
lad is hardly old enough to appreciate the sad necessities of Evil 
Overlordship at the age of *two,* is he?  Children can get a little 
bit funny about their parents being cursed sometimes.  If he could 
remember what really went down, it might just turn him against the 
Cause.  So best just to keep the truth from him for now.  The full 
story can be explained to him later, when he is old enough to 
understand such things and ready to take up his father's mantle of 
Devoted Death Eating.

(We might want to call this one the "Human psychology?  Oops! I 
forgot!" approach to long-term DE planning.)

I'm sure that there are many other revisionist DEPRECIATION 
variations out there somewhere, just *waiting* to be proposed.  
Anyone?  Anyone?

Finally, although I've such huge problems with classic DEPRECIATION, 
Amanda did come up with a spin on it that I love so dearly that I am 
unwilling to reject it out of hand.  I'm therefore hoping that I 
might be able to snatch it right out of the Classic DEPRECIATION 
context in which Amanda first suggested it and instead stick it into 
a different theory altogether.

Amanda wrote:

> Has anyone suggested (as I am), that Crouch/Moody was the 
> perpetrator of the crime against the Longbottoms, that he saw 
> Neville's reaction to his class, and held Neville back to reinforce 
> the memory charm that he himself cast, years ago? Neville is loopy 
> in the hall because he's *just* had a memory charm cast on him.

Ooooooooh, Amanda!

I *really* like this, although I can't see how Crouch could have done 
so in the classroom.  I don't think that he would have had time, for 
one thing -- Neville's already standing in the hallway when the Trio 
emerge from the room -- and for another, Neville seems if anything 
*more* in touch with his memories in the hallway than he does later 
on, when Harry runs into him again in their dormitory.  Neville
is indeed acting loopy and Mr. Robertsish in the hallway, but he is 
also quite evidently distressed, and he seems to be absolutely 
terrified of Crouch/Moody. I'm therefore more inclined to view his 
loopiness there as a symptom of his latent memory charm having 
activated in response to his own attempts to fight his way through it.

But what if this happened during Crouch/Moody and Neville's little 
tea party?

That tea party goes on for an awfully long time, doesn't it?  Neville 
seems to have missed out on lunch altogether.  And when Harry runs 
into him in the dormitory afterwards, there is a strange incongruity 
in how Harry perceives him.  On the one hand, Harry thinks that 
Neville "looked a good deal calmer than at the end of Moody's 
lesson."  Harry also notes the touch of pride in Neville's tone as he 
relates what Crouch/Moody told him about Sprout's praise for his work 
in Herbology class and deduces from it that Crouch/Moody has "cheered 
Neville up."  On the other hand, Neville still doesn't look entirely
"normal" to Harry, and his eyes are red -- he has obviously been 
crying -- and although Harry doesn't notice it, he lies awake for 
much of that night.

So how does this sound?  Let us suppose, for the moment, that Crouch 
was *not* in fact the original caster of Neville's Memory Charm.  
Someone else was.  Who it was is up to you -- you could go for a 
Ministry Cover-Up, or a Spontaneous Magic approach, or even a classic 
well-intended Memory Charm. It really doesn't matter, so long as you 
maintain two assumptions: that Neville did indeed witness his 
parents' torture, and that Crouch Jr. was one of the perps. 

Let us also assume that Crouch *knows* that Neville has a Memory 
Charm.  He learned about it, let us say, at some point during all of 
those years he spent hanging around in Daddy's kitchen under the 
Imperius Curse.  Crouch knows that Neville has a Memory Charm, which 
as far as he's concerned is a Good Thing, because even though he's 
polyjuiced and one heck of an actor, the possibility that the kid 
might recognize him *still* makes him a little bit nervous.

As well it should.  Because in DADA class, his demonstration of the 
Cruciatus Curse doesn't just upset Neville.  (Upsetting him would be 
fine; Crouch likes that sort of thing.)  It also seems to...trigger 
something.  The kid isn't just acting upset.  He's acting like 
someone whose memory charm might just be *degrading.*  Crouch was a 
terrific student in his day, and so he knows his charms.  He 
recognizes all the signs: Neville's _remembering_ something, and 
he's also giving Crouch/Moody all of these terrified looks...could he 
possibly be *onto* Crouch somehow?  Could he possibly have recognized 
him even through the polyjuice disguise?  Was there, perhaps, 
something horribly *familiar* about that look of relish in Crouch's 
eyes while he was practicing his Cruciatus on that spider?  Something 
that triggered a memory?

Perhaps.

At any rate, Crouch is taking no chances.  He drags Neville (who 
looks as if he thinks he's being led off to his execution -- as 
indeed, perhaps he really does) off to his office, and he gives him a 
Memory Charm.  But memory charms only work properly for discrete 
events, so Crouch has to make a judgment call here.  Is he going to 
try to reinforce the original charm?  No, that's far too complicated: 
since he wasn't the one who cast it in the first place, he doesn't 
know precisely what it was initially designed to suppress.  And 
besides, his immediate problem isn't really that Neville might 
remember something about the attack on his parents.  His problem is 
that in spite of his polyjuice disguise, Neville seems to have been 
struck by the suspicion that he isn't really who he claims to be.  

Crouch figures that the spider is probably what gave him away, so he 
casts a memory charm designed to blitz that half of his DADA lesson 
right out of Neville's mind.  He casts it, and then he spends the 
rest of the afternoon chatting up Neville about his heroic Auror 
father, and about his Herbology lessons, and about whatever else he 
can think of that might reinforce the notion that he is *Moody,* and 
that he's really a very nice fellow underneath that gruff exterior.

So Neville is indeed cheered when Harry sees him again in the 
dormitory, because he is no longer haunted by the notion that there 
is something horribly familiar -- and something very very *bad* -- 
about the new DADA Professor, and because he's just been chatted up 
by an old buddy of his Father's, and because he's just been stroked 
about his herbology talent.  But he's also disturbed, because his 
memories of the entire afternoon are fuzzy, and because since his 
original memory charm really *is* degrading, these sort of fugue 
states are already becoming more and more frequent occurrences for 
him, but not usually this *bad,* I mean, he's lost like the entire 
*afternoon* this time, and oh God it's just getting *worse,* isn't 
it, and how is he ever going to pass all of his classes if this sort 
of thing keeps up anyway?

And on top of all of that, he's just hit puberty, and he thinks that 
Hermione is cute.

I mean, I'd lie awake at night too, if I had to deal with all of that.

And of course, the reason that his eyes are red is because the 
instant that Crouch/Moody got Neville alone in his office, the poor 
kid went all to pieces.  He probably snivelled and pleaded and begged 
and all sorts of embarrassing things, but that's okay: he can't 
remember a bit of it now, so he's feeling absolutely no shame.  And 
boy, did Crouch enjoy it, while it lasted!  So you see, that part of 
the afternoon was really win-win for everyone.  

<Elkins nods with satisfaction>

There.  How's that?  Does that work for everyone?

What's that?  You think that it's a little bit...what?  Twisted?  
Sick?  

Oh, please.  You don't know from sick.  You want to hear *sick,* then 
we're going to have to move on to...

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

--Memory Charm Most Foul--

(Otherwise known as: "A Family Affair," "Something Rotten In the 
State of Denmark," "Amnesia Begins At Home," The Skeletons In the 
Closet Theory, and "Ever So Evil Granny Longbottom")

So what is this hidden knowledge anyway, this secret so very dire 
that Neville cannot, will not, or *must* not look upon it?  

Well, that's obvious, isn't it?  Someone in Neville's family circle 
must be culpable.  Very culpable.  No other explanation will suffice.

------------------------

For purposes of classification, I have adopted "Memory Charm Most 
Foul" as the umbrella designation for all of those theories which 
propose that whatever afflicts Neville's memory *must* be chalked 
down to something ugly festering away at the heart of the Longbottom 
family dynamic itself.

Porphyria made a strong case for viewing this approach as not merely 
canonically supported, but indeed as thematically inevitable.

Porphyria:

> And I'd have to answer that the deadly problem within the immediate 
> family is a theme that keeps coming up over and over, isn't 
> it? . . . .Maybe my problem is that I'm too steeped in Freudian 
> thought, but it seems to me that the overall trajectory of the HP 
> series is of finding out scandalous crap about your parents, your 
> family and by extension, yourself.

She cited her reasons for believing that Harry himself is on a 
collision course with discovering some quite unsavory things about 
his own family, and then concluded:

> I'm not saying that Harry's parents are bad, by any means, but I am 
> saying that the theme of the books seems to be ugly secrets that 
> revolve somewhere around the general vicinity of where your parents 
> are.

And so, if we read Neville as some form of literary double to Harry 
(as indeed I think that we must), then whatever afflicts Neville's 
memory *must* have something to do with some ugly secret involving 
his own family, yes?

Yes.

Of course, one might well argue that *all* of these theories already
incorporate this thematic thrust perfectly adequately, dealing as 
they do with the sorry fate of Neville's parents.  But mere 
victimization is just not *ugly* enough for the Memory Charm Most 
Foul adherents.  Nope.  Not ugly enough by half.  Memory Charm Most 
Foul people insist that it must be worse than that.  

Much worse.

Memory Charm Most Foul theories, much like their benevolent 
counterparts, the Classic Well-Intended Memory Charm theories, focus 
overwhelmingly on Neville's grandmother as the culprit.  In these 
theories, however, her motives are not good.  They are not good at 
all.

I was startled -- startled and a little bit bemused -- to realize 
that *I* was in fact the person who started people off on this train 
of thought, with all of my nattering on about the significance of the 
Snape boggart dressed in Gran's clothing.  I mean, my goodness!  I 
was just thinking about the cultural demands of the wizarding world!  
But Porphyria came to a somewhat different conclusion.

Porphyria:

> Hmmm. Maybe I'm way misinterpreting you here, but are you 
> suggesting that one might not have to go so far from the Longbottom 
> home to find an accessory to his parents torture?

And then Eileen waxed positively Shakespearean on this subject:

> Porphyria has an even worse theory about murder, murder most foul, 
> as in the best it is, but this most foul, strange, and unnatural...

> The murderous DE grandmother: a little more than kin and less than 
> kind.

Ever So Evil Gran.  What else can one say? 

Of course, dear old Gran does not *necessarily* have to be a DE in a 
Memory Charm Most Foul Spec.  As Eileen wrote:

> Even if Gran did not torture the Longbottoms, did someone trade 
> exact rectitude for a beter result, under the illusion that there's 
> nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so? 

And indeed, in Porphyria's own Memory Charm Most Foul, dear old Gran 
isn't at all a Death Eater.  She's just, well, a little bit venal, 
that's all.  A little bit greedy.  A little bit selfish.  And a whole 
lot culpable.

I would not dream of attempting to summarize Porphyria's Memory Charm 
Most Foul theory here.  Suffice it to say that it involves a 
frustrated and dispossessed Granny Longbottom, desperate to get her 
hands on a piece of the Longbottom estate which, to her great dismay, 
was left entire to Frank.  It involves a SHIP between Gran and Lucius 
Malfoy.  It involves an explanation of how slippery old Lucius 
managed to get his hands on all of Tom Riddle's old school things in 
the first place.  And it makes Gran directly responsible for the fate 
of her son and his wife.

It is message #36840.

And I solemnly swear never to call Porphyria "canonically pure" again.

Some people, though, just weren't *content* with Venal!Gran.  No.  
No, they wanted Gran to be a full-fledged Death Eater.  People like 
Debbie, for instance, who not only made a case for Gran-as-DE, but 
also insisted on a DEPRECIATION scenario in which Gran herself was 
one of the Longbottoms' torturers.

Debbie:

> Assuming [Neville] was no more than 2 or 3 at the time of the 
> events, he wouldn't be able to identify the participants 
> (e.g., "Barty Crouch was there") and I don't think he would fare 
> much better identifying the perpetrators by sight. That is, of 
> course, unless he already knew that person. Unless that person he 
> knew did unspeakably horrible things to his parents. 

Mmmmmmm.  Yeah, okay.  Actually, I can buy this.  In fact, this may 
well be the *only* version of Classic DEPRECIATION that I find 
believable.  I am not willing to accept that Crouch, or the 
Lestranges, or Fourth Man (regardless of how Remorseful he might 
later have become), or any other group of random Death Eaters would 
have cast a memory charm on Eyewitness Toddler Neville, rather than 
just killing him outright to prevent him from squealing.

But if one of the DEs was his own *grandmother*?

Yeah.  Yeah, actually, you know, I really *can* buy that one.  After 
all, they may be Very Bad People, but they're still *human,* right?  
I can accept the notion that even an Evil!Gran evil enough to torture 
her own son into a state of raving lunacy might nonetheless have 
prevailed on the rest of her party to spare her grandchild's life and 
use a Memory Charm instead to ensure his silence.

Because you *know* how people can get about their grandkids.

Debbie's Evil!Gran gets herself up to quite a lot of mischief, 
actually. She is the one responsible for keeping her son and his wife 
in their state of incurable amnesia.

Debbie:

> But a powerful Auror such as Frank Longbottom would eventually have 
> been able to throw off the Memory Charm, you say. That's true, but 
> Gran may be forestalling that eventuality by refreshing it every 
> time she takes Neville to see his parents. 

She's the one responsible for Neville's constant state of befuddled 
forgetfulness:

> If so, she's probably refreshing Neville's as well. 

And she's also the one who has for years been coldly and deliberately 
subverting his self-esteem:

> She's got to find cover for Neville's charm-induced forgetfulness 
> and other ill effects. And she needs to keep Neville from figuring 
> out that he's powerful enough to shake the Memory Charm. So she 
> begins to tell the relatives after she gets custody of Neville that 
> she's worried he's a Squib, and she makes sure Neville hears it, 
> too, so he thinks he's incapable of magic. 

Ah, yes.  There's just nothing quite like family, is there?

Evil!Gran, whether she is a full Death Eater or merely an accomplice, 
certainly is a promising notion.  She is thematically consistent with 
the rest of the series.  She explains Neville's nervousness at the 
prospect of having his boggart turn into her.  She is easily 
reconciled with TOADKEEPER II.  She is Big, and she is Bangy, and as 
Porphyria pointed out, she wears a stuffed *vulture* on her hat, for 
crying out loud!  How can one resist?

And of course, she also fits in wonderfully with the Spontaneous 
Magic Theory. What motivated Neville to wipe his own memory?  Merely 
the trauma of seeing two of the people he loved the most tortured?  
Nonsense!  It was the trauma of realizing that two of the people he 
loved the most were tortured into a state of insanity because of one 
of the *other* people that he loved the most!

Small wonder he doesn't want to remember anything.  Or to accept the 
vengeance-driven warrior ethos of his own culture.  Or to grow up to 
become a big powerful wizard.

Porphyria:

> And herein lies the problem. This is the real reason he's keeping 
> himself back. He knows all about his parents. He visits them every 
> holiday. He knows all about their torturers because it's a matter 
> of public record. But why would he be so afraid of finding his 
> power when he really doesn't have to wreak vengeance on behalf of 
> his parents -- all the culprits are already in jail! No, his memory 
> is self-damaged because the person he'd go ballistic upon is the
> person he loves more than anything in the world.

Yup.  There you have it.  Neville.  He's effectively an orphan, his 
memory is shot, he's got a crazy Great-Uncle who tries to kill him 
all the time, he's not good at sport, he's not good at schoolwork, 
his social skills are minimal, he's scared of just about everything, 
he has to visit his drooling catatonic parents in the hospital over 
all of his holidays, he dresses funny and he's pudgy and no one 
really wants to go to the Ball with him and he gets no respect from 
either his peers or his teachers and he has an unfashionable pet who 
may even be an Evil!Spy...

But hey, that's okay!  Because sooner or later Neville's going to 
*kick* that Memory Charm of his.  And when *that* happens, Things Are 
Going To Change, all right.  When *that* happens, we're going to see 
some serious worm-turning action.  Because when *that* happens...

Well, when that happens, then Neville will discover that his one and 
only responsible caregiver, whom he loves more than anyone else in 
the world, is actually an Ever So Evil Death Eater who helped to 
torture his parents half to death and has in fact been deliberately 
keeping him in a state of helpless amnesia for all of his life!

So don't worry.  Be happy.

><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><(("> <>((">

Well.  That about wraps it up, I think.

Except, of course, for all of those new Memory Charm theories that 
have hit the Bay of late.  Double Memory Charm.  Memory Charm meets 
Fourth Man.  Not to mention, of course, the Ever So Memorably 
acronymed 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.

Somebody else can deal with those.  I'm going to bed.

-- Elkins, toddling away from her lectern and hoping that somebody 
else will take care of the clean up, because otherwise there is just 
no way that the Museum is *ever* going to give her that deposit back.

For an explanation of the acronyms and theories in this post, visit
Hypothetic Alley at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/files/Admin20Files/hypothe
ticalley.htm 
and Inish Alley at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database?
method=reportRows&tbl=13