List of Chekhov's Guns, unanswered questions.

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 171982

Eggplant:
> >14. Neville -- memory, toad, Herbology 
> 
> Neville was older than Harry was when his parents were attacked, so
> normally you'd expect him to remember it, however it was so 
horrible
> he may be suppressing it, and as a result be uneasy of memory in
> general. I expect he will improve over time. And I don't think 
there
> is any great mystery about the Herbology, he just enjoys the 
subject
> and is good at it.  

Magpie:
This has never seemed like a gun to me--except as a fanon theory. 
Many people don't remember things that happened to them at that age--
technically it's impossible that Harry could remember any of the 
things that he remembers when he's near a Dementor. He was pre-
verbal at the time.

So we know "real" memory has nothing to do with it one way or the 
other, but we don't know that Neville was even present when his 
parents were tortured. He could have been with someone else at the 
time or in a different room. Personally, that makes more sense to me-
-if Neville was there I'd think both Barty and Bellatrix would 
realize it would be far more sadistic to zap him with Cruciatus than 
his parents. We see him upset by the whole idea of what happened to 
them in GoF, and he's seen them presumably every year since then; I 
don't know what there would be left to repress. I mean, it seems 
like by this point he'd probably have imagined exactly what happened 
to them many times over. He could just have a poor memory.

-m