Cracking Frank (was Neville As Witness)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 38886

In response to Cindy's suggestion the the DEs didn't get around
to torturing EyeWitness!Neville until Frank had already lost his
mind, at which point they decided there would be no point, Naama 
wrote:

> What I am suggesting, is that if Neville was there, they would have 
> tortured him first - to break down the parents...

Yeah, I'm with Naama here.  *Especially* if they had his wife there
as well.  See, that way you get two types of pressure in one.  You
get the tortured toddler pressure, which is pretty harsh in and of 
itself, and then you also stand a very good chance of getting the 
wife to do half your job for you by applying a bit of pressure of her 
own.  You know, the "Frank, *do* something!  *Stop* them!" sort of 
pressure.  I mean, that would be by far the best strategy.  Any self-
respecting sadist would have realized that.

What?  What are you all looking at?  We're just talking 
*hypothetically* here, okay?


Naama:

> (then why didn't they first torture the wife, you ask. Well.. maybe 
> they didn't think very highly of marital love? <g>)

Because she wasn't there either.  Not at first.

"The four of you stand accused of capturing an Auror. . . .You are
further accused...of using the Cruciatus Curse on Frank Longbottom's
wife, when he would not give you information."

The phrasing does make it seem quite likely that they first captured
only Frank.  When they couldn't get him to talk, *then* they sent
someone out to nab his wife.

If you really want a DEPRECIATION, or a "Cover Your Tracks" style 
memory charm theory (one which proposes that Neville was given a 
memory charm by a Death Eater to prevent him from giving damaging 
testimony), though, then I suppose that you could imagine that once 
the culprits found that even torturing Frank's wife was *still* not 
sufficient to crack him, then *that* was when they sent someone out 
to look for his son -- but were forced to flee the scene before their 
colleague returned with Neville in tow.  Their colleague, having 
already abducted Neville, then got wind of the fact that the game was 
up, panicked, Memory Charmed the kid, dumped him somewhere, and fled.

This scenario adheres to canon's suggestion that the Longbottoms' 
condition was known to the public for quite some time before an 
arrest was made ("The Ministry was under great pressure to catch
those who had done it," says Dumbledore), as well as sparing Neville
from having actually witnessed any parent-torture at all.  It does,
however, offer a suggestion as to what the plot-relevant information
hidden by his memory charm might be: namely, the identity of that
unknown fifth conspirator.


Cindy, rather uncharacteristically sweetly, suggested:

> > Even DEs aren't evil enough to torture a small child.

Naama wasn't biting:

> Nope, sorry. People who kill and torture other people for *fun* 
> would have no scruples to torture a child in order to achieve an 
> important goal.

Oh, but they don't kill and torture *wizards* for fun!  They only
kill and torture *Muggles* for fun.  Whenever we've seen or heard
about DEs killing or torturing wizards, there has always been some 
practical motive for it -- even if it's sometimes a rather dubious
one.  Even Voldemort himself doesn't really spend all of that time 
torturing Harry in the graveyard just for kicks; he does it to prove 
to his Death Eaters that he *can.*

But still.  Restoring Voldemort to power was obviously the most
important thing in the world to those guys at that particular
moment in time, so I very much doubt that they would have allowed 
even great big pure-blooded toddler eyes to stand in their way.

As for the Imperius quibble, though...

Cindy:

> Now as for me, I'm still waiting for an answer to why the DEs 
> didn't use the undisputed quickest and most efficient way to get 
> the information out of Frank -- The Imperius Curse. 

The Imperius Curse?

Oh, please.  Frank Longbottom was a trained Auror.  I'm sure that
he knew how to resist the Imperius Curse.  It is a skill that can be 
taught -- otherwise, why would Dumbledore have asked Crouch/Moody to 
cover it in his DADA class? -- and while Crouch/Moody does concede 
that some people can never get the hang of it, other people can, 
given the proper training.  

I'd be willing to bet that you don't become an Auror unless you're 
one of those people who can.  

-- Elkins