TBAY: ELKINS AVENGED (2 of 4)

[nkafkafi]

No: HPFGUIDX 130839

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(continued from post #130838)


Captain Neri pulled out his wand and tapped the Pensieve. The small,
slowly revolving figure of a woman floated out of it. The woman was
coated with grime and covered with scratches. Her clothing was
tattered and her hair matted. Her eyes rolled wildly in their sockets.  

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/45290

> "Repent!" she screamed.  "The day of reckoning is at hand!  Oh, 
> can't you smell it on the air?  Can't you hear it in the wind?" 
> "Oh, it is later than you think!  It is later than you think!"
> "It's *coming!*
> The Author!  She is coming back to claim what is Hers!  She will 
> divide the Righteous from the Unrighteous, and the Faith-ful from the 
> Subversive!  She will--"


"Oops, sorry, wrong post." Captain Neri hastily eliminated the image
with a wave of his wand. "Must've forgotten to rewind". He frantically
stirred the content of the Pensieve fifteen or twenty revolutions
counterclockwise and tapped it again. The slowly revolving woman
reappeared, but she was much tidier now, and her voice was calm and
rational:  

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/38812

> As I've said 
> before, I'm not totally sold on the whole Memory Charm thing myself.  
> I think, though, that if there is a red herring swimming around in 
> this aquarium, then it is far more likely to be darting around 
> somewhere in the vicinity of the notion that Neville witnessed his 
> parents' torture at *all.*  I am far more willing to abandon MC'd 
> Neville altogether than to buy into the notion that Neville both 
> witnessed something so unspeakably horrible as a child *and* that he 
> can remember it clearly.  This is because, to my mind, there is far 
> too much evidence in the text to suggest that Neville is *not,* in 
> fact, ordinarily very much troubled by traumatic remembrance.


Neri removed the image with his wand. "Yes, I absolutely agree with
Elkins here," he said. "I think baby Neville had never witnessed his
parents' torture". 

"Well, what a discovery," scoffed Faith. "*I* have said it since the
day I was born".

"Yes, but you see," said Neri apologetically, "it is necessary to
start with the torture. Because for years we have all believed that
Neville's story parallels Harry's story". He raised his eyebrows at
Faith. "Am I right to assume that you have believed it yourself?"

"Er
 yes", admitted Faith. "Of course Neville's story parallels
Harry's story. The parallels cannot be denied. Both lost both of their
parents when they were very young to Unforgivable curses. Both grew up
with relatives that, erm
 did not treat them very well. Both sorted to
Gryffindor, both harassed by Snape. Harry even borrowed Neville's name
once. And unlike some theories I could name, this parallelism proved
true in OotP - we have learned that both pairs of parents were in the
Order, both escaped Voldemort three times, both children were born
within a day of each other, and both were implicated by the prophecy.
If this isn't a literary parallelism, I don't know what a literary
parallelism is."

"Indeed," said Neri. "But several weeks ago, JKR herself told us that
this parallelism only goes *this* far. Neville is a might-have-been,
but he's not prophecy boy and not a replacement: 

*********************************************************************
http://www.wizardnews.com/story.200505163.html
 
<snip> So where does this leave Neville, the boy who was so nearly
King? Well, it does not give him either hidden powers or a mysterious
destiny. He remains a 'normal' wizarding boy, albeit one with a past,
in its way, as tragic as Harry's. 
<snip> Some of you, who have been convinced that the prophecy marked
Neville, in some mystical fashion, for a fate intertwined with
Harry's, may find this answer rather dull. 
*********************************************************************


"I admit that I indeed find this break of the parallelism rather
dull," said Neri. "It doesn't fit well with the trend JKR had set. But
this is what Herself ruled. Maybe in the end she will somehow rescue
this parallelism, but for now, she has told us that Neville is on his
own".

"And several months ago," added Neri, "JKR also told us that the
Lestranges were *not* sent after Neville, but after his parents, and
*not* because of the prophecy. This too breaks the parallelism between
the two families. There is now no special reason to assume that the
Longbottoms were attacked at their home, as the Potters were, and that
Neville was present, as Harry was. There is no canon for that at all,
AFAIK not even a suggestion or an allusion, except for the now-broken
parallelism. It is now much more reasonable to assume that the
Longbottoms were attacked while doing their job as aurors. I submit
that Neville did not witness the torture of his parents because he
wasn't even there."

"Some might feel that your scenario lacks Bang," commented Faith,
"although *I'm* not complaining, naturally. But haven't you mentioned
a Memory Charm earlier? Why would anybody bother using a Memory Charm
on Neville if he didn't witness the torture, never suffered a trauma,
never heard some terrible secret, and wasn't even at the scene of the
crime? I submit the whole Memory Charm thing is a bogus."

"Maybe, and maybe not", Neri smiled mysteriously. "I'll return to the
Memory Charm later. But first, as you point out so graciously, this
scenario seems to lack Bang. So lets raise the Bang quotient a bit. In
fact, lets turn it all the way up to max. Deep inside the Longbottoms'
tortured minds must be hidden some big secret, and I mean BIG. It's
not the prophecy. The prophecy wasn't such a big Bang even when it was
revealed in the end of OotP, but solving the Longbottoms' mystery in
Book 6 or 7 only to find the prophecy *again*, that would definitely
be a Dud. Besides, JKR already told us that the Lestranges didn't know
about the prophecy."

Neri considered again. "No," he said resolutely. "It can't be the
prophecy or anything similar. There are only two books left, and this
late in the game JKR doesn't have much time for goose chases. And she
has already promised us `some answers'." 

"So what would such a BIG secret be?" asked Faith, unable to hide her
curiosity. "Please don't tell me that *both* Lupin and McGonagall are
Ever So Evil?"

"Actually, the theory would work regardless of *what* the secret is,"
said Neri. "It only requires that the secret exists, and that it's
BIG. But personally I don't think it's ESE!this or ESE!that. I think
it's a way to vanquish Voldemort. A way that even Dumbledore doesn't
know about. Now *that* would be big enough for me."

"And why," asked Faith skeptically, "would Frank and Alice know a way
to vanquish Voldemort that even Dumbledore doesn't know? And if they
did know it, why didn't they tell him?"

"Here we come to the next part of the theory," said Neri. "I find it
quite suspicious that the Longbottoms are canonically connected with
the Ministry in three different ways:

1. They were both aurors, and thus their direct boss was Crouch Sr.,
the ambitious and ruthless Head of the Department of Magical Law
Enforcement.

2. One of their attackers just happened to be one Crouch Jr., the very
son of said boss.

3. In the end of GoF, the current Minster Cornelius Fudge was
uncharacteristically determined to silence said Crouch Jr.
permanently, so he never had the chance to tell us anything about the
attack on the Longbottoms.

"Very convenient coincidences, don't you think?" Said Neri. "Now add
another tip from JKR: Fudge is going to lose his job in Book 6. Why?
Denying Voldemort's return for a whole year apparently wasn't enough
of a bungle to kick him out of office, so what can he possibly do in
Book 6 that would be even worse?" 

"So here is a theory to explain all the above: After Voldemort was
vaporized in Godric Hollow, Crouch Sr. secretly devised a plan to
find, capture and annihilate him for good. This plan was highly
controversial, and involved some Dark and questionable means, but
that's OK if it's for a good cause, isn't it? We probably don't have
enough information to deduce what exactly was this plan, but my guess
is that it involved the veil in the DoM. This would explain why the
"death room" is shaped like an amphitheater with spectator seats:
Crouch planed a public trial for Vapor!mort in front of the Wizengamut
and as many wizards as possible, then an execution by pushing
Vapor!mort through the veil. After such a public display of power
Crouch would not only be made Minister, but surely be considered the
greatest wizard in the world. Even greatest than one Albus Dumbledore
who, after all, had only managed to defeat the comparably
insignificant Grindelwald."

"Ah
 yes, that does sound like our old Barty Crouch," allowed Faith. 

"Crouch had all the experts, resources and knowledge kept in the DoM
under his command," continued Neri. "And he could investigate the
captured DEs to learn about the steps that Voldemort took to make
himself deathproof (we know that the DEs knew about these steps, and
Karkaroff for example would probably tell Crouch anything to get out
of Azkaban). Fudge, as a Junior Minister in the Department of Magical
Catastrophes, apparently knew about the plan, although he probably
wasn't given an important task (Crouch was over-ambitious, not
stupid). The Longbottoms as aurors were assigned the mission of
finding Vapor!mort and bringing him to justice. We can assume that
they had a good plan how to achieve this too, although I don't have a
clue what it was. Why didn't they tell Dumbledore? Perhaps because
Crouch swore them to secrecy, or maybe he sealed the whole plan under
a Fidelius and made himself the Secret Keeper."

"So where did the plan went wrong? Crouch Sr. himself, out of
carelessness, or more likely out of an urge to brag, let slipped
something about it to his son. Young Barty, unknowingly to his father
already a junior DE, realized that the Longbottoms were the key to
locating Vapor!mort, and immediately recruited the Lestranges to
attack them. A Fidelius Charm on the plan would explain why Crouch Sr.
was so certain in the Pensieve trial that his son was guilty - he knew
that as the Secret Keeper, only he himself was able to give the plan
away, and he knew he had gave it away only to his son."

"The Lestranges and Young Barty were captured only after they managed
to torture the Longbottoms, but the Longbottoms didn't give away
anything. As an aside: I believe that Moody lost his leg and eye while
battling the Lestranges, because in the Pensieve trials in GoF, Moody
was present in the preceding trials with both his eyes intact, but in
the Lestranges' trial he wasn't there. He was probably still at St.
Mungo's at the time. However, I believe Moody was just doing his job
protecting fellow aurors. He had never known about the plan. Crouch
Sr. wouldn't tell him because he was openly Dumbledore's close friend,
sitting beside him in all these trials. But it's quite possible that
Crouch didn't know about the Longbottoms being Order members. They
could have been double agents similar to Shacklebolt and Tonks in the
present Order. So Crouch drafted the Longbottoms instead of Moody for
his plan. Them being younger and less paranoid, he could perhaps
convince them that his plan was better than Dumbledore's `do nothing'
strategy." 

"Naturally, after Crouch's colossal failure, he was shunted to a side
department and Fudge, who managed to avoid responsibility, was
appointed Minister instead. The whole story was hushed and buried
*very* deep. So deep, in fact, that when it turned out in the end of
GoF that Crouch Jr. was alive and talking, Fudge panicked and summoned
a dementor to silence him."  

"Hmmm", said Faith. "All this sounds horribly familiar somehow".

"Yes," said Neri. "It's loosely based on the theory that Elkins, in
the third part of the Memory Charm Symposium, termed `Cover-up In The
Ministry'. The difference is that in the original scenario the
Ministry was covering up that the DEs were actually framed (the `Round
Up the Usual Suspects' sub-theory), or that the torture was actually
done by corrupted aurors (the "Bad Aurors" sub-theory). Elkins,
however, was quick to point out the problem with these scenarios."

Captain Neri summoned the Elkins image out of the Pensieve again:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/38848

> The problem that I can see with this, though, is that it leaves the 
> Bang potential just a little bit Duddy.  If there were no DE 
> conspiracy, then what could the great shocker revelation when Neville 
> or his parents are finally freed from their memory charms be?  That 
> the Ministry is corrupt?  That some Aurors (whom we don't know and 
> don't care about) are Evil, Evil, Evil?


"I agree," nodded Neri and eliminated the Elkins image with a wand
wave. "This would be insufficient Bang, even if it turns out that the
evil aurors are Moody or Shacklebolt. My upgraded theory therefore
solves this problem by assuming that the secret is the way to
eliminate Voldemort."

"Still sounds far-fetched to me," remarked Faith. "But there's another
difference between your theory and the old `Cover-up In The Ministry'
scenarios. They assume that Neville was zapped by a Memory Charm
because he was in the house with his parents during the attack, but
you hypothesize that the attack wasn't in the house at all and Neville
wasn't present. So again, why would he end up with a Memory Charm?"

"Well," said Neri, "I guess it's time for the Memory Charm part." 



(to be continued)
 
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