Modified Memories Vs. Memory Charms

[urghiggi]

No: HPFGUIDX 175994

Taylor:
> Now am I mixing up my charms and spells and such or didn't Hermione
> use a memory charm on her parents? Convincing them that they had never
> had a daughter and that their ambition was to move to Australia seems
> a bit more complex then just a Confunding charm or something of the
> sort? What does everybody else think? 
> 

Julie H:
Ahhhhh, Taylor, Taylor, Taylor. Shame on you, looking for consistency where it does not 
exist :-)

IIRC (and confirmed in the 'Lexicon'), "obliviate" is the memory charm spell, and we're 
given no other means in canon for memory modification. Ergo Hermione's explanation that 
she modified her parents' memories, followed not too many pages later by the info that 
she'd never done a memory charm, is indeed quite puzzling. I'd agree that the erasing of 
all memories of Hermione and the implanting of completely false identies a la the witness 
protection program is indeed beyond anything we've seen done via Confundus. (Esp given 
the books' reverence for mother love, you'd think such a wipeout woud be pretty danged 
difficult.)

Here, to me, is yet another case where an editor should have said "unnnh, Jo, about those 
memory charms, how did Hermione modify her parents' memories if she can't perform a 
memory charm?" Upon which Jo would've made some slight alteration in the text that 
would've clarified that point. (After she finished the clarifications about the Elder Wand 
succession that aren't there either. :-)

Sorry folks, I do love these books -- but as an editor myself -- something went wrong in 
the author/editor partnership in this series, especially from book 5 onward. These little 
things just grate at my enjoyment of the whole, making me pause to scratch my head and 
say, "hunnh?" -- and the vast, vast majority of them would've been so easy to rectify....

Julie H, chicago