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

[sistermagpie at earthlink.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 188218

> 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). 

Magpie:
I agree that her reason is to make it harder to track down and interrogate her parents and therefore to protect herself and Harry and not them. I don't see what her parents could possibly know that would make Hermione's death any more or less likely. She's already allegedly risking death about as much as any person can. She's kept her parents in the dark about the details of Voldemort, according to OotP, so whatever she's told her parents about Harry is personal. Yet I can't see what personal thing would put her in any more danger than she's in just as a companion to Harry. Or what more danger it puts Harry in. We know now that it was never an issue.

The memory wipe and false identities are about giving them a push to take themselves out of the country without question which, I agree with Carol, they could have done on their own. It's what's making them hard to track down. That's the main protection against interrogation. If Voldemort tracks them down the memory charm won't hold, as we've seen before.

Zara: 
> 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.

Magpie:
If the problem is she doesn't want them to say anything about Harry, she could have asked if she could wipe their memories of anything to do with Harry before asking them to move to Australia under different names and they'd have been fine with that. No reason to wipe their entire memories of themselves and Hermione, potentially forever. Which is basically what she says: she's modified their memories *not* so that they no longer know anything about Harry Potter, but so that they think they're a couple who want to move to Australia and do it. As with all the other examples of Muggles given false impulses, it's about deceiving the Muggles to make them do their bidding while they think they're doing their own. She wound them up like toys and pointed them towards Australia out of Voldemort's reach should he think to speak with them.

-m