Was Alice an Auror (Was: Subject: Trevor is a Horcrux )

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 151082

DA Jones:
> > Another minor point. It seems to me a lot of peole say Alice is an 
> Auror. Frank is an auror obviously, but isthere canon for Alice?  I 
> don't recall.  
> 
> Potioncat:
> I think, but would not swear on my books, that Frank was an Auror, 
> but that we were never told Alice was.
>
Carol responds:
In GoF, Barty Crouch Sr. accuses the Lestranges and his son Barty Jr.
of torturing the Auror Frank Longbottom to obtain information on
Voldemort's whereabouts, and when he failed to give it to him, of
torturing his wife as well. No mention is made in that scene, which
occurs in "The Pensieve" (GoF Am. ed. 595), of Alice's being an Auror.
A few pages later, Dumbledore tells Harry that Frank was an Auror, but
again, no mention is made of Alice's being one as well (602). (Side
note to Neri: Here's more canon on the Lestranges' torturing the
Longbottoms for information on Voldie.) However, in OoP ("Christmas on
the Closed Ward"), Neville's gran tells HRH and Ginny that both
Longbottoms were Aurors, "tortured into insanity by You kKnow Who's
followers." She adds that both of them were "highly gifted" (OoP Am.
ed. 514). If there's another reference to Alice as Auror, I don't
remember it, which is not to say that it doesn't exist. And Gran,
certainly, is an authoritative source, unlikely to be mistaken on the
point.

Since the books do contain inconsistencies, it may be that JKR, being
human, simply forgot to mention that Alice was an Auror the first time
around, but I don't think that's the case. It really reads as if the
Lestranges were specifically after Frank, and when he didn't talk,
they went after his wife as well as a terror tactic. (And if he didn't
talk when they tortured her, it's quite likely that he really didn't
know Voldie's whereabouts.) Or she could simply have become confused
and thought that she had identified them both as Aurors in GoF and
consequently made them both Aurors in OoP, but that seems even more
likely.

I could be all wet here, but I think what happened is that she reacted
to the public outcry (well, grumbling) along the lines of "Why is
Frank Longbottom an Auror but Alice isn't? Where's the equality in the
WW?" and so, to appease her readers, she made Alice an Auror, too.

That's just my take on it. There could be other explanations.

Carol, thanking Potioncat for her excellent explanation of why Trevor
the Toad probably isn't a Horcrux