Wizarding Top Ten

[ceridwennight]

No: HPFGUIDX 188071

> > Ceridwen:
> > Only if I intend never to regain my memory and come back to my ruined dental practice and the house that went back to the mortgage company because I thought I was someone else for a year and didn't make the payments.  By doing this, Hermione effectively ruined her parents' lives and livelihoods.  They probably lost patients, their practice, their home and everything they had collected through their lives.  Families have been torn apart for less.

Pippin:
> Funny, nobody doubts that Lily was willing to give up her life to save her child, and yet you think the Grangers wouldn't consider  putting their lives on hold and their memories in temporary storage to keep those memories from being used against their daughter? 

Ceridwen:
Right.  Giving up one's life in the heat of an emergency - and Voldemort on the stairs is an emergency - is different than sitting calmly in a kitchen or on the living room sofa and deciding that, yes, I'll let you remove my memories of you.  I would never suggest the Grangers wouldn't throw themselves in front of any spell they saw cast at Hermione even if it meant death or mind-wiping or the fate of the Longbottoms.  I am suggesting that if I was Mrs Granger, I wouldn't want anyone, my daughter included, to wipe my memory of my child.

I'm also doubting Hermione's ability to perform this spell given that she admitted to not knowing memory spells a few days later.  Though the memory wiping spell we saw in OotP works quickly and secretively, that doesn't mean that it is simple to perform for a first-timer.  It looks incredibly easy to go en pointe but it takes years of practice to do it.

Pippin:
> Imagine that your child is in danger -- is there  something that was yours to give that you wouldn't give to save her? 

Ceridwen:
Convince me that my daughter would be in danger if I did not give this thing.  We're not talking clothes or a car, we're talking a lifetime of memories.  I wouldn't want my child taken from me, that includes the memories I have of this child.

Pippin:
> If Hermione can give the Grangers new identities, I don't think it would be much of a stretch to restore their old ones. 

Ceridwen:
I'm not so sure that Hermione is capable of doing both.  She may be the "smartest witch in her generation" but she doesn't know it all.  The smartest kid coming out of high school at age 18 still doesn't know as much as an adult who has been specifically trained past the secondary level in a given application.  How many people do you know who can take something apart but can't put it back together ("where did these two screws come from?")

Pippin:
> Especially given that a lot of people who mysteriously disappeared when their wizard neighbors took them into hiding will be coming back. I suppose the Ministry was quite busy for a while charming people to think their neighbors had gone on Sabbatical to Peru. Okay, that would be interfering with people's minds. But ordinary lies do that too.

Ceridwen:
And we don't like ordinary lies under most circumstances.  Hermione isn't the Ministry, she isn't a trained professional mind-wiper.  She admits to knowing nothing about memory spells after having performed this spell on her parents.

Pippin:
> Putting people in an Order safe house is evidently easier said than done.  In the first place,  Hermione couldn't tell the Order she was going on a  mission, especially since it seemed like their might be a spy. In the second place, there must be a limit to the number of safe houses the Order could set up, or they could have just set them up for everyone.

Ceridwen:
Hermione wouldn't have to tell them she was going.  Given her involvement with everything else Harry has done, she would have to tell them that she wasn't going.  More to the point, she would have to tell the Death Eaters that she wouldn't be involved with any of Harry's business this year, unlike other years.  The three key people in all of Harry's adventures have been Harry, Hermione and Ron.  The Weasleys are already fighting and so placing themselves at risk, they've already done everything they could to protect their property.  The Dursleys and the Grangers are the only two families left to protect.  Why protect the Dursleys and not the Grangers?  There is no other family in "everyone" - that only includes the Dursleys and the Grangers.

Pippin:
> I'd imagine that the Secret Keeper spell takes years and years to learn, like the Animagus transformation, and  several months at least to execute. 

Ceridwen:
It doesn't seem to take months to execute.  The Potters apparently managed it without months of preparation and casting, Bill and Fleur apparently managed it in a very short space of time.  If it is so difficult a spell, then move the Dursleys and the Grangers into a duplex house and protect the entire property with one spell.

But that doesn't address the question of Hermione's place on the evil list.  Kemper gave several instances from canon that convince some of us that Hermione probably didn't discuss this with her parents before subjecting them to a very personal violation.  If my child did that to me, I would be hurt and angry and I could never, not would never but could never, never be able to trust that child again.

Ceridwen.