Hermione and her parents Redux WAS: Re: Wizarding Top Ten

[ZaraG]

No: HPFGUIDX 188214

> Carol responds:
> But there's no indication whatever that Hermione will die because her parents didn't have their memories wiped. She wipes their memories so that they'll forget about her and won't grieve if she dies--*not* a reason for wiping a parent's memory that *any* parent would agree to.

Zara:
No, that is not what the book/Hermione says. Her reasons for hiding her parents are given by her in DH.

> DH, "The Ghoul in Pajamas":
> "I've also modified my parents' memories so they're convinced they're really called Wendell and Monica Wilkins, and that their life's ambition is to move to Australia, which they have now done. That's to make it more difficult for Voldemort to track them down and interrogate them about me - or you, because unfortunately, I've told them quite a bit about you."

Zara:
She goes on to note that in the event she dies, her parents will remain oblivious, and remain Wendell and Monica forever. But this is not *why* she does it, this is a side-effect of her having done it, and of having done it in secret, without sharing it with other witches or wizards of equal or greater magical cpompetence. 

And personally, I don't think it is a stretch to suggest that Voldemort knowing everything Hermione ever told (or inadvertently gave away to) her parents about herself and Harry would increase the likelihood of her death. Though her own death is not, as I see it, her only concern, she is also worried about Harry (likely both as her friend, and as the guy who is carrying out Dumbledore's plan to defeat Voldemort). 

The text does not tell us what she told them, but she knows. And even if she is not sure she told them anything too useful, what if she is wrong? Or, what might they have seen that Voldemort could get use out of (say, a dusty pile of old books, the titles of which mean little to the Grangers, but which Tom would remember as having once resided in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library, before Dumbledore became Headmaster...for example). She certainly knows a bunch of stuff that Voldemort should not know, as of the summer before DH.