Muggles v wizards redux

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 183261

Alla:
> > 
> > I get the impression that good guys in the books want not as much
 as treat muggles as second class citizens, but just to keep their 
affairs a secret from muggles as much as it is possible and that is 
why probably charms that I usually would hate do not bother me, since
 to me they are nothing more than metaphor for please leave us alone.
> 
> Magpie:
> Yes, they do want to keep it secret but it's obviously also led to 
Muggles being okay to interfere with in general. Memory charms when 
performed on Wizards are treated very differently--often as crimes by
bad guys. <snip>

Carol responds:

With regard to Memory Charms performed by Wizards on other Wizards, I
think we have to consider who performed them and why. Lockhart's
Memory Charms are never excusable. He's either taking credit for
someone else's knowledge and exploits (as in all his books) or he's
trying to wipe out the memories of two boys completely (laeving ginny
to die). The backfiring Memory Charm is poetic justice, to say the
least. Kingsley's Memory Charm on Marietta is something else again.
sure, it's a quick-thinking response to DD's and Harry's predicament,
but now Marietta is being punished through long-lasting, disfiguring
pustules spelling out "SNEAK," for a misdeed she can't even remember.
A Confundus Charm that would wear off would have been more
appropriate, IMO. IIRC, Hermione also performs one on Xenophilius as
they're leaving his house. Exactly how that's supposed to help him, I
don't know. (Using a Memory Charm on DEs earlier in the book is, of
course, a different matter.)

Memory Charms on Muggles are another matter. They seem to be
necessitated by the Statute of Secrecy, which started out as a way of
protecting the WW from Muggles but seems to have gotten out of hand.
If a Muggle sees magic performed, or sees a giant and lives, or sees a
dragon and lives, the memory of the event has to be wiped out. It
would be different if the only deterrent to Muggles knowing that the
WW existed in their midst was Muggle-repelling Charms like the one on
the Leaky Cauldron (and the Muggles' own tendency to deny the
existence of magic and find some other explanation). But once dragons
and giants and Death Eaters come in contact with Muggles, JKR has to
have a way to make the Muggles forget the experience. 

Just out of curiosity, what do others think would have happened to the
Robinson family had their memories not been modified after they were
exposed to Hover Charms, Levicorpus, and other indignities such as
being spun around, all the while in terror of falling sixty feet to
their deaths, if their memories hadn't been altered? How could they
explain their experience and their terror, to other Muggles, who would
think that the whole family were either lying or had gone mad?

JKR has to have the Statute of Secrecy so that the WW is unknown to
most Muggles (those who aren't Prime Minister and don't have
Muggle-born Wizards or witches as children), and Memory Charms, like
Muggle-Repelling Charms, seem to be a natural extension of that need
for secrecy, a means of insuring it almost absolutely. But it seems to
me that they're overused, in fact, abused, and I tend to agree that
whatever Hermione did to her patents' memories (not technically a
Memory Charm) was entirely unnecessary and presumptuous. It would have
been much better to tell them part of the truth and convince them to
leave the country with their identities and memories intact.

Why not let the Robinsons tell their story, which wouldn't be
believed, in any case? Why make the Muggles who witnessed the "murder"
of Peter Pettigrew believe that a gas main exploded rather than a
Wizard blowing up the street? It all boils down to the Statute of
Secrecy, which also justifies the tricks that Dumbledore plays on Mrs.
Cole at the orphanage so that he can learn what he needs to know about
Tom Riddle and ensure that Tom is allowed to attend Hogwarts.

IMO, JKR has written herself into a corner. Once she's created the
Statute of Secrecy (which enables the nonmagical reader to believe
that a hidden magical world exists within our own), she has to find
the means to keep that world a secret, including various spells. The
problem is that some of these spells, even when used by specially
authorized Obliviators, really do seem invasive and as bad, in their
way, as the actions of the DEs at the QWC.

Carol, who realizes that the whole Lockhart subplot depends on Memory
Charms being performed on Witches and Wizards but would like to think
that *Muggles* don't need them (cf. the Prime Minister, who will never
tell anyone what he's seen, knowing that he won't be believed)