Longbottoms/Lestranges/Bagman/Lockhart (plus Rookwood & Fudge)

[Debbie]

No: HPFGUIDX 119872


::grabs mouldy old FEATHERBOAS and rushes to join the Longbottom 
party::

In my mind, this is the most intriguing bit of information JKR has 
revealed yet.

* The Lestranges "were very definitely sent after Neville's parents."
* This tidbit "touches on the Prophecy and how many people knew 
about it."
* The Lestranges were not in on the secret.

> Jen Reese wrote: 

Whew! This wasn't what I expected to hear. I've always believed 
> the Lestranges attacked Neville's parents to get information about 
> the prophecy, to get an explanation of why LV turned to vapour at 
GH.

 
Well, no one ever seems to have questioned the explanation that 
Frank Longbottom was tortured for information about LV's 
whereabouts.  Even Voldemort himself, in the graveyard, praises the 
Lestranges for attempting to find him.  So it seems reasonable to 
assume that Frank had been sent to search for Vapormort, either in 
his capacity as an Auror or for the Order, and that spies were aware 
of that fact.  Since espionage at the Ministry is much more 
appealing to me, I surmise that Frank was acting as an Auror in 
searching for Vapormort.  Of course, this doesn't preclude the 
existence of dual motives.  ;-)

As imamommy points out:

> Yes, but DD said something about the attacks on the Longbottoms 
> coming just when the wizarding community was starting to feel 
> safe...so probably not until at least a significant number of DE's 
> had been arrested.

 
Agreed; the DEs engaged in plenty of mayhem -- some of it for fun, 
we are told -- and I would expect that people would not feel safe 
until a period of time had elapsed without any more attacks.  The 
phrasing "beginning to feel safe" also suggests the passage of some 
time (lone enough to remove any Fidelius Charm or Disillusionment 
Charm that might have been protecting the Longbottoms).  Which gives 
Frank enough time to return from his search for Voldemort (IMO, 
successful, since Dumbledore seems to have always known where 
Voldemort was hiding). 

So, who did the sending?

dcgmck wrote:

> Barty, Jr. sprang to mind for me as well when I first read JKR's 
> latest teasers. Though young, he put me very much in mind of Tom 
> Riddle at Hogwarts: accomplished yet dissatisfied with the 
> recognition (and lack thereof). He is clearly fueled by an 
enormous 
> amount of hate, especially for his father. This combination of 
talent 
> and animosity makes him an excellent choice as favored pet for LV. 
It 
> also puts him in perfect position to discredit Crouch, Sr. in a 
way 
> unavailable to anyone else. 

I absolutely love this theory that Barty Jr. masterminded it all.  
It's so in character for him.   

The problem I see is that Barty Jr. was there and therefore cannot 
accurately be said to have "sent" the Lestranges.  It could be 
sloppy wordsmithing on JKR's part, but maybe not. 

So if not Barty Crouch Jr., who else?  Why not Fudge?  

Oh, wait.  SSSusan has beaten me to the punch:

> What about Fudge?  Is there any way he could've had a role in 
this, 
> does anyone think?

He definitely had motivation, if even back then he coveted the MoM 
position.  He would have loved to take out the heir apparent to the 
job.  The Ministry's actions in OOP should make clear that Fudge has 
few scruples (even if it was Umbridge who sicced the Dementors on 
Harry).  Fortunately for him, nobody asked Barty Crouch about the 
attack while he was under the influence of Veritaserum at the end of 
GoF, but don't you think Fudge was just a mite too anxious to feed 
Barty's soul to the Dementor?   The problem with Fudge as a 
candidate, though, is that there's really no evidence that he was a 
DE, or that he knew or cared about the Prophecy.  But on the other 
hand, he might have planted the idea in the head of another Ministry 
employee who *was* a DE.

Or, there's Kneasy's suggestion:

> What information could Bagman have that would interest a Voldy spy
already inside the Ministry? Bagman wasn't working at the Ministry
then, though he had expectations - he says that Rookwood offered to
help. Yet it was Old Rookwood - a friend of Bagman's father - he was
passing the information to. <snip>
Is Bagman just an associate of young Barty or does he have a more 
> significant role? And what information could he possibly have had 
that 
> someone working in the MoM didn't have?

 
I think Bagman is a bagman, whether he's taking bets for the goblins 
or passing information for the DEs.  The most important thing about 
his trial is, IMO, that we learn he was passing information, and 
Rookwood was collecting it.  

Rookwood is a very plausible candidate for the role of sender, I 
think.  Rookwood was not brought into custody until some time after 
Voldemort's fall, as it was Karkaroff who tipped off the Ministry.  
Also, since he was in Azkaban, he wasn't on the receiving end of 
Voldemort's "Why didn't you try to find me?" lament in the 
graveyard.  Not to mention that he's probably seen the prophecy orb 
sitting on the shelf at the Department of Mysteries.  And someone 
with a network of spies might well know about the prophecy, say, 
from Lucius Malfoy, even if Voldemort didn't confide in him. 

One of the best things about this clue is the revival of interest in 
my favorite Memory Charm theories.

Neri wrote: 

> The Barty Jr possibility again raises the "something rotten in the
> Ministry" scenario.

Yes, but the question is just what was rotten there?  Did someone at 
the Ministry with an agenda order the assaults, or was the Order 
simply riddled with spies? 

> The bubblegum puzzler suggests that the big mystery about the 
attack
> is not necessarily WHO dunnit, but WHY. As I wrote here before, the
> secret that the Longbottoms try to pass to Neville must be 
something
> critical and new, or it will be an anticlimax when it is finally
> revealed. It might be the way to get rid of Voldy. And after the
> demise of the Crouches, possibly the Longbottom are the only people
> who still know the details. 

I'm not a big fan of the droobles gum-as-message theories, as I 
think the wrappers stand for something much more poignant.  

Kneasy wrote:

> While we're looking at the Longbottom affair - they are supposed 
to 
> have lost their memories/sanity while under torture. All very 
possible. 
> But I keep remembering who is the maestro of the Obliviate! spell -
 
> Lockhart. A devious, ambitious, vain, unscrupulous creep. Zapping 
> helpless people would be just up his street. Could he have been 
> involved? If he was it would imply that the DEs thought it best 
that 
> the Longbottoms didn't remember something important - besides the 
> identity of their torturers, that is. I never have been able to 
figure 
> out why Bella didn't kill them, it's unlikely it would have 
bothered 
> her much.

One of my oldest (and very few original) theories is that the elder 
Longbottoms were *not* tortured into insanity, but instead are 
victims of Memory Charms.  In one version of this theory, the 
Lestranges escaped and were rounded up later after the Ministry 
destroyed their minds breaking through the Memory Charm.  In another 
version, the Memory Charms themselves are responsible for their 
condition.  The reappearance of Lockhart in OOP, aside from 
providing comic relief, seems only there to reinforce to the reader 
that Memory Charms can cause insanity.  Even though the Longbottoms' 
condition was strikingly different from Lockhart's, perhaps that 
reflects their different personalities.  There's a dignity to Alice 
Longbottom that Lockhart will never have.  

Under either version, though, the Longbottoms will not be able to 
tell us *why* they were tortured.  We'll have to figure it out for 
themselves.  Given this new information, though, one reason to have 
put a Memory Charm on the Longbottoms rather than kill them outright 
(always a nagging question about this episode) would be that the 
Lestranges did it just as the Order (read: Snape) arrived so that 
they or someone else could return another day to break the charm and 
find out the information.  I'll have to think on this some more, but 
I don't have the time.

Pippin wrote:

> Dumbledore says Snape defected before the fall of Voldemort, 
> and the attack on the Longbottoms happened afterward, so not 
> possible, unless Dumbledore is lying. I think more likely Snape 
> was involved in rescuing Neville, and Neville was memory 
> charmed to forget. But he still has a subconscious memory of 
> Snape drawing his wand.

I, too, think it's likely that Snape rescued Neville, but believe 
the Memory Charm was imposed by his attackers just as Snape arrived 
on the scene, so that Neville's earliest memory is a feeling of 
terror as Snape stood over him with a wand.

Debbie