Longbottoms' memory charm (was Re: Ginny Weasley, Neville, thestrals

[naamagatus]

No: HPFGUIDX 89746

Hi, I'm replying here both to Jen and to Debby.


Jen:

This is a very compelling theory! 

Naama:

Thank you!!

Jen:

<snip>
I'm wondering about Neville, though. He would still be a baby at the
time of his parent's attack and unable to really understand any
complex secrets. From the scene in GOF where Neville turns white
watching Fake!Moody and the spiders, I'm wondering if the memory
charm wasn't put on him AFTER the torture, which he witnessed. Even
a baby would sense the tension of hearing his mother and father
screaming. We already know Harry is capable of recalling the scene
of his parent's murder, albeit with the help of Dementors, at around
the same age.

Naama:

I'm very bad at timeline calculations, but wasn't it said that the 
Longbottoms incident happened some time *after* Voldemort's downfall? 
If it was one or two years after, Neville would have been around 
three years of age – he could have absorbed, without maybe 
understanding, some piece of information (a name, for instance). In 
fact, my theory has an additional extension to it: that his parents, 
knowing that DEs were after them, told Neville the secret (maybe even 
making him a Secret Keeper in some way). Then they sent him away, 
with a memory charm for protection. What I like about this, is that 
it opens the possiblity that the information Neville carries, 
unbeknowest, will be the missing piece to Voldemort's final downfall.

As I pointed out a long time ago, if Neville was with his parents, 
the DEs wouldn't have hesitated to torture him, or threaten him with 
death, in order to make his parents reveal the secret. But that 
doesn't seem to be the case. So, if Neville wasn't a witness, then of 
course there was no need to memory charm him *after* the event. If we 
accept that Neville shows symptoms of having been memeory charmed 
(being forgetful and so on), then it must have happened prior to the 
event, very probably by his parents.

Debby also favors my theory (Yay!):

I have to say that I really like this idea. Even though I'm partial to
scenarios that involve nefarious deeds, especially by the Ministry, 
the
possibility that they charmed themselves can't be discounted. I do 
think, however, that the Longbottoms had more information than simply 
the location of Voldemort that they needed to hide.

Naama:

I agree. Frank may have been one of the Aurors specifically assigned 
to hunt down Voldemort. It makes sense that there were such Aurors, 
since we know that some people (Dumbledore, for instance) never 
believed that Voldemort was completely vanquished. So, if that was 
Frank's mission, he might have had time to delve into Voldemort's 
history, particularly the "magical transformations" that turned him 
from human into what he is now. Possibly Frank had in his hands a 
piece of information that could bring Voldemort down, a weak spot of 
some sort. If so, it would explain why he would go to such lengths to 
protect that knowledge.



Naama