The Longbottoms revisited

[Gregory Lynn]

No: HPFGUIDX 55221

Sorry for dredging again, still catching up and the "The Longbottoms" discussion fit in with a sort of half formed semi theory that's been floating around the deep dark recesses of my mind.

To recap the discussion, some were wondering if Malfoy donated to Saint Mungo's in order to keep control over the Longbottoms who may or may not have been Secret Keeping and/or had their memories erased by Death Eaters after the fall of Voldemort.

My half formed theory begins with the notion that Neville has been memory charmed which someone mentioned has been mentioned before.  My "evidence" if you want to call it that is just that Neville doesn't seem stupid, slow, or incompetent, just incredibly forgetful.  He always forgets to pack something, his gran sends him a remembrall, et cetera and so forth.  This struck me as similar to the way folks describe the adult Bertha Jorkins while Sirius remembers the young Bertha as having a very good memory.  Ultimately we find out that this is because of a strong memory charm.  So far so good, nothing terribly earth shattering.

Now I ask you, why were the Longbottoms tortured?  Answer: Because the Death Eaters were trying to locate Lord Voldemort.  And yet, it was just the Longbottoms who were tortured, why is that?  Wouldn't you think that if you were a Death Eater and you were looking to locate Voldemort, that you would start with the people you thought most likely to have the answer?  Is there anything to suggest that the Longbottoms were involved in Voldemort's downfall?  Not that I can see.

So if there's nothing connecting the Longbottoms to Voldemort's disappearance, why would they be the first ones targeted?  Because someone told these Death Eaters that the Longbottoms were keeping a very important secret.

My sort of half formed theory is this:

The good guys have an incredibly important secret to keep.  They have just seen the weakness of a Fidelius Charm demonstrated rather vividly.  They know that at the very least there is some confusion over who is and who isn't a Death Eater, and that it is quite likely that there are spies in their midst.  So they know that if they name a Secret Keeper there's a good chance that the bad guys will find out who it is.

They go to Frank Longbottom, who has a young son.  They make Neville the Secret Keeper and immediately put a memory charm on him to make him not only forget the secret but the very fact that he's keeping one.  They know that memory charms can be broken however so if/when they need to get at the secret they can break it out of Neville's head.

So Crouch et al hear through their sources that the Longbottoms are keeping an important secret and assume that it is the location of Voldemort.  They torture Frank and Mrs. Longbottom (do we ever know her first name?) but neither of them actually know the secret so they can't tell, and Neville not only doesn't know he's holding a secret, but may not even be old enough to talk so they probably don't even bother trying to get anything out of him.

Granted if being a Secret Keeper requires some affirmative acceptance of the secret, this is exceedingly unlikely.  I don't think we know how long after the fall of Voldemort the Longbottoms were attacked.  It wasn't immediately since people had begun to feel safe again.  How long does that take, several months to a year?  I think we need to assume that Harry and Neville would both be in the range of a year and a half to three years old.  Far too young for any serious consideration on the part of either of them so if such consideration is necessary for the whole thing to work then this theory dies right there.

But assume for the moment that it isn't necessary for the Secret Keeper to make an affirmative acceptance of the Secret, that it can just be placed in there.

Now, what kind of secret is that important?  I don't think there's anything that actually suggests that the good guys knew Voldemort's location, or even that they knew he had survived.  While the Death Eaters knew that Voldemort had been trying to cheat death I think it's quite possible that the good guys didn't.

We know that Professor Trelawney made a previous legitimate prediction.  We know that she didn't remember the one at the end of PoA so I assume she wouldn't remember the first one.  We have no idea what it was.  At the end of SS, Dumbledore says he "cannot" tell Harry why Voldemort wanted to kill him.

I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that the prediction involved the Potter/Voldemort conflict more specifically something to the effect of a Potter (or Gryffindor's heir) ending Voldemort's reign forever.  So not knowing whether Voldemort was alive or dead, they sealed that prediction up inside Neville and made him forget that he even had it.

I like a few things about this theory.  It makes Neville less of an idiot for one, and I think Neville deserves better than that.  It furthers the parallel with Peter Pettigrew.  It gives Neville a real reason to be in Gryffindor even if he doesn't know it yet.
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Gregory Lynn


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