The Longbottom's secret message

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 102976

>Neri wrote:
<snip>. Now, what if this message that Alice is 
> trying to tell Neville is the same information for which she was tortured?
> 
> If so, it's not likely to be the whereabouts of Vapormort 14 years ago. This would be an 
> anticlimax. No, it should be something else. Something that was extremely important 14 
years 
> ago and is still extremely important today. It is not the prophecy either. This will also 
be 
> an anticlimax. It should be something that DD doesn't know, maybe doesn't even guess. 
Bella 
> might have inkling what it is about (or why did she take the risk that landed her in 
Azkaban 
> for trying to pry it out of the Longbottoms) but she doesn't know the important part and 
she 
> probably believes it was erased with the rest of the Longbottom's minds and lost forever.  
> 
> So what is it? Any suggestions?


Neri (answering his own post):
 
OK, the members cleraly didn't like my idea very much, so I'll contribute some of my own 
wild speculations:

WS1) Prophecy implications: I still think that for the Longbottoms' secret message to be 
just the prophecy would be an anticlimax. I mean, picture a large portion of Book 6 devoted 
to the trio and Neville solving the Droobles Bubble Gum puzzler and deciphering the message, 
and then it turns out to be the prophecy and Harry says: "oh yeah, DD told me about it last 
year". No, no, that wouldn't do at all. But what if the message is some unknown twist of 
the prophecy? For example, did Frank and Alice realize somehow that Neville, not Harry, was 
actually "the One"? Or that Neville is "the other", or "the hand", or has another 
connection with the Prophecy that DD doesn't know about? Or did Trelawney made a third 
prophecy when only Frank and Alice were present, and they realized it is about Neville? 
After all, just TWO prophecies are clearly not enough. There must be THREE prophecies ;-) .

So Bella could have tortured the Longbottoms for the prophecy, but they were actually hiding 
more than that. And baby Neville was perhaps also in the house, but Frank and Alice had 
managed to put a disillusionment charm or something on him, so Bella et al couldn't find 
him. So the torture continues but Frank and Alice divulge nothing. Then young Barty shouts 
from the door: "The aurors are here!" and there isn't time for anything, so the frantic 
Bella hits Frank and Alice with a very powerful memory charm, and the hidden Neville gets 
hit with the skirts of it.

WS2) Something's rotten in the Ministry: Frank and Alice were aurors, so they new something 
about what's going on in the Ministry. Had they perhaps got hint of some secret plan, maybe 
something in the DoM regarding the locked room, or the death room? Was it perhaps some way 
to destroy Voldy that went terribly wrong? The reason I suspect it is that in GoF Fudge was 
so anxious to get rid of Barty Jr., before Barty had time to tell about why Bella and he had 
tortured the Longbottoms. Was Fudge covering after the Ministry debacles? 

So, what if the DoM guys, under instructions from the Ministry, discovered the ancient death 
arch and brought it to the DoM as a mean of executing Voldy, or even Vapormort (after the GH 
incident). This would explain the spectators seats in the death room: there was going to be 
a trial. The Longbottoms as aurors were appointed for the job of bringing Vapormort to 
justice and guarding him until the execution. DD had strongly objected to this idea, of 
course, because he knew only Harry can vanquish Voldy, so Crouch Sr. and Fudge kept the 
operation secret from him. Frank and Alice had a problem of double loyalty: they were Order 
members but as aurors they were also sworn to the Ministry. Perhaps even the secrecy of the 
whole project was protected with the Fidelius, so they couldn't tell DD anyway.

What went wrong? Or maybe Bella got the word from Rockwood and this is why the Longbottoms 
were attacked? Or maybe even she heard about it from Barty Jr., who got it from something 
that his father let slipped in front of him? Was Crouch Sr. the Secret Keeper for the 
project, and therefore knew for sure that his son is guilty, that only he could have told 
the DEs? Of course, if Crouch Sr. was indeed a Secret Keeper, then Barty Jr. couldn't have 
told Bella about the project, but he still could have told her that the Longbottoms know 
about it. So maybe Bella doesn't really know what was this all about. The Crouches are dead. 
The DoM people who brought the death arch don't know what it was for. This leaves only Fudge 
and the addle Frank and Alice who still know about it, and Fudge is terrified that this 
debacle will be discovered.

All wild speculations of course, without much support in canon, but it still seems likely to 
me that the message Alice tries to pass to her son is the same message she was tortured for, 
and in this case it is something that was extremely important then and is still extremely 
important today. And it is something even DD doesn't know about. It might be the key for 
everything.

Neri