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

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 188217

Alla wrote:
> > I do not think that we need to come up with every possible detail as to what exactly Hermione told them about Harry that may help Voldemort to catch them. I think that the umbrella of **told them a lot about Harry** covers a lot of things that we may not even guess that Voldemort will use against them.
> 
Montavilla47 replied:
> I'm going to agree with you here.  I don't think we need to question whether or not Hermione told them something valuable.  Let's go ahead and assume that she did.
> 
> Alla: 
> > Anything, any detail, any small fact can give DE a clue how to catch them IMO. And they will not care about Harry loving Ginny? Same as Voldemort did not care to use Sirius against Harry?
> > 
> > I think it will be perfect idea for them to use Ginny as a bait, <snip>
> 
> Montavilla47:
> Now that's an excellent thing they could use.  Not that they do--since the *entire* school was talking about Ginny and Harry in HBP (K-I-S-S-I-N-G).  They didn't need to ask the Grangers about that.  

Carol:
Right on both counts. They didn't need the Grangers for that and they didn't use the information. We have absolutely no evidence that anything they knew could have been used against Harry, and, IMO, Hermione is only fooling herself, and excusing her own actions, by thinking that she was protecting him. 

Protecting her *parents* as opposed to Harry (and herself) is a somewhat more justifiable excuse, since they probably were in real danger, but there we get into Magic Is Might and protecting Muggles for the Muggles' own good whether they consent or not. The *kind* of protection matters, as does their consent. And we have the Muggle Dursleys as our counterexample. They left their home, Vernon's job and Dudley's school by their own choice, identities intact, and no harm came to them or JKR would have had Harry learn about it.

Montavilla 47:
> But, you're right. We don't need to know what the DE's might have wanted from the Grangers that they didn't think they could get from the Weasleys or the hundreds of other students at Hogwarts.  It's enough to know that Hermione thought they knew something important and that Voldemort might want to question them about it.

Carol:
I disagree. It's enough to know that Hermione thought that they might be tortured and needed protection--and up to that point I think that she's correct even though I doubt that either the DEs or Voldemort would expect to acquire any important information from a "Mud-Blood's" Muggle parents. They'd find other reasons to torture them.

But even supposing that she's right about the reasons for the torture, the question is whether memory modification, especially without their consent, is necessary and appropriate or a needless and inappropriate violation of their human rights. And that's where I think that Hermione crosses the line of acceptable behavior toward Muggles in general and her parents in particular.
> 
> Alla:
> > Just as I think that DE having trouble finding and using Muggle camera to fake Hermione's kidnapping is not a reason to discard the possibility that they will do so. <snip>
> 
> Montavilla47:
> I don't think it's very likely, since people like Arthur--who loves Muggle inventions--are terrible at figuring out what they do and how to work them.  
> 
> More importantly, it's completely outside the actual story. So, to make that possibility an important part of Hermione's thought process is to bring in something irrelevant.

Carol:
Exactly. Let's stay within the realm of what Hermione herself thinks will happen, which is that her parents will be tortured if they stay in England, and her reasons for depriving them of their memories of their daughter and their own lives, not just what she's told them about Harry.

Montavilla 47:

> <snip> Continuing with that analogy of the Grangers as a book that the Death Eaters would want to read, Hermione has changed all the type to invisible ink, I suppose.  <snip> those who are trained to detect them would certainly try their best to bring the words back and probably would succeed.
> 
> And even if they didn't, they'd still tear out all the pages trying.  
> 
> Which is what would happen to the Grangers if they were found--regardless of whether or not Hermione non-Memory-Charmed them.
>
Carol responds:
Just to be clear, you're saying that altering their memories is pointless because if they were found, a skilled DE or LV himself could break the charm and find the true memories?

If so, I agree with you on principle though I don't think there would be any memories worth finding. *But the memories that she deprived them of were not just those relating to Harry but even the knowledge of their own names and their daughter's existence, neither of which had anything to do with protecting Harry.* Her motive there was supposedly protecting them from grief if their daughter died. And that has nothing to do with what the DEs might or might not find.

If your point is that, yes, the Grangers needed to be safely out of the country for their own protection, but altering their memories provided no additional protection either to the Grangers or to Harry and Hermione, I agree with you. That's not even considering the harm that such an action could potentially inflict on the Grangers' minds and their relationship with their daughter.

I don't agree that the Grangers would have had anything valuable to contribute, but that's beside the point. *If* they or LV himself wanted to break through the charm, they could have done so--if and only if they could find the Grangers in Australia, which, given the limited range of brooms and Apparition and the focus of LV's takeover on Britain itself, is, IMO, extremely unlikely.

So we're back to the question of whether Hermione's action was justified, with or without her parents' consent. I can't quite tell where you stand on that question. Do you agree with me that sending them to Australia, with their consent, is sufficient, and that the memory modification is both unnecessary and wrong, or do you hold some other biew?

BTW, in my previous sign off about Morfin Gaunt and the crime he went to prison for being much less bad than what Hermione did to her parents, I meant, of course, disfiguring handsome Tom Riddle with a hex, not, of course, the murder of the Riddles, a crime he didn't commit despite being imprisoned for it. My apologies for the lack of clarity.

Carol, who feels no empathy for Hermione at all in this situation