Neville as Witness (was Re: TBAY: Memory Charm Neville

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 38879

Naama wrote:

> Erm. Am I the only one with a dark enough mind to realize that if 
> the torturing DEs had Neville there, in the house with his parents, 
> they would have used torture on him as the best and quickest means 
> to get what they want from the parents? 

No, you aren't.  I agree, and I've raised that objection before.  If 
Neville had been there, and if the DEs had known that he was there, 
then they definitely would have brutalized him.  He would have to 
have been hiding in a closet, or something similarly cheesy.

But there's an even worse problem with the entire body of Neville-as-
witness theories, you know.  There's a *big* problem, a problem that 
cuts to the heart of every single one of the Neville-as-witness 
speculations.

Debbie asked:

> But then again, is there any canon evidence that this happened at 
> home?

No.  In fact...

<pause>

Oh.  I can't just *believe* that I'm doing this.  But sometimes you
really do just have to go with What Is Right over What Is Interesting.

<takes deep breath>

Yeah.  Okay.  All right.

Not only is it nowhere stated in canon that the Longbottoms were 
attacked at home, but the canon actually suggests that it did *not* 
happen in their own home.  Look.

Crouch's summary of the charges against the Pensieve Four begins 
with:

"The four of you stand accused of capturing an Auror -- Frank
Longbottom -- and subjecting him to the Cruciatus Curse..."

Yup.  That's right.  "Capturing."

Now, you really don't call it "capturing" when somebody is assaulted 
in his very own home, do you?  I mean, to my mind, "capturing"
has quite different connotations.  If you stand accused of
"capturing" someone, then what that implies to me is that you 
probably snatched them off the street, or that if you did abduct them 
from their own home, then you thereafter took them somewhere else.

Yeah, yeah.  I know, I know.  It's a real bummer, isn't it?  


-- Elkins, mentally cursing her own scruples, even as she hopes that 
the word "capturing" will prove to be just yet another example of 
JKR's sloppy writing.