Welcome back.
This second batch of variants on the Memory Charm Theory moves away from the idea that Neville's memory was suppressed for psychological or purely humanitarian reasons. Instead, these theories ascribe far more pragmatic (if still generally good-intentioned) motives to the perpetrators of the proposed memory charm. We're delving into some darker territory here, to be sure, and the motives get greyer and greyer the deeper in we go. With luck, this should mean that by the time we get to the truly Dark and nasty variations on MC'd Neville, we should all be thoroughly inured.
In this segment of our symposium, we'll be looking at the Wizarding Witness Protection Program, The "Wizards In Black" Theory, The "Hidden Source" Theory, and the Reverse Memory Charm, or MATCHINGARMCHAIR.
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The Wizarding Witness Protection Program
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Neville was given a Memory Charm by well-meaning Ministry officials, in order to protect him from those (still-at-large Death Eaters, for example) who might otherwise target him to prevent him from revealing something incriminating about them.
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A number of people have suggested this theory in the past, although none of them stepped forward on the Still Life thread.
The main problem that I have with this theory is that nobody has ever been able to explain it to me in a way that enables me to understand the motive. I just don't get it. At all. I mean, if Neville had actually known something useful, then wouldn't the Ministry have heard his testimony before they gave him a Memory Charm? But in that case, the damage would already have been done, right? And if Neville's testimony was insufficient to put away some still-at-large culprit the first time around, then why would said culprit even bother to target him thereafter? The only possible reason to do so would be revenge -- or possibly pure malice. But how would a memory charm serve to protect Neville from someone out for revenge, or from someone acting out of murderous spite? Why would such a person care what the kid could or could not remember? It's not as if Neville's name has been changed, or he's been given a new identity, or anything like that. It's not even as if the fact that he was given a Memory Charm has been widely publicized. On the contrary, it seems to be a deep dark secret. So how—
Oh, well. You get the idea, I trust. No matter how I try to approach this one, I just can't seem to work it so that it makes any sense to me. Maybe one of its adherents can explain it to me? Because I feel as if I'm quite likely missing something when it comes to this theory.
I do think that the underlying premise here—that Neville was placed under a memory charm for somebody's physical (rather than emotional) protection—is indeed very compelling. For now, though, it works a whole lot better for me as it is used in Cover-Up at the Ministry, or any of the variants on DEPRECIATION, or in Memory Charm Most Foul. Or, for that matter, in our next theory...
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The "Wizards In Black" Theory
(Includes such variants as: The Double Agent Protection Program; Fifth Man; The Rescue Scenario; and Fourth Man With Deep Undercover.)
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Neville was given a Memory Charm in order to prevent him from revealing top-secret and strategically vital information about someone or something related to the assault on his parents. Unlike "Depreciation" or "Cover-Up at the Ministry," however, the culprit in this case is not a Death Eater or any other garden variety evil-doer, but instead someone working for the forces of good, albeit in a creepy, secretive, "never let the right hand know what the left hand is doing," black-budgety sort of way.
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This theory is particularly appealing to paranoids and fans of espionage plotlines. Probably its most common manifestation is the "Double Agent Protection Program" version, in which Neville's Memory Charm was cast on him to preserve the cover of some spook or another.
Of course, if Neville was given a Memory Charm in order to protect the identity of somebody working deep undercover within the DE organization, then we all know who that somebody must have been, right?
<Elkins waits, beaming, for the expected audience response>
That's right! It was—
What? WHAT? What did you all just say? You said Snape? You think that it was Snape?
Oh, please. You're joking, right? Surely you must be joking. You're all just having me on here. You can't honestly believe that, can you?
Come on, people. Let's be serious here for just a minute, okay? You all know perfectly well that Snape is hardly an important enough character to be the person that Neville's Memory Charm was cast to protect.
But we all know who really is important enough to fulfill such a plot function, don't we? Sure we do! Who do we all know to be the Most Important Character In Canon? Who do we all know JKR has all lined up to serve as the big surprise hero of Book Five? Who do we all know absolutely must have been the real mole in the Longbottom Affair, who is in fact still working for the Ministry in a very active role, whose true allegiance has been kept secret from even Dumbledore himself? Who must it be whose work is so absolutely vital to the security of the entire Wizarding World that the Ministry would go to any lengths to protect him from exposure?
<Elkins waits again, tapping her foot irritably as the silence drags on and on and on...>
Oh, for heaven's...
It was AVERY, you fools! Avery! Sheesh. What's wrong with you tonight?
Of course it had to have been Avery! Who else could it have been? It was Unspeakable Fourth Man, that's who it was!
Unspeakable Fourth Man. Department-of-Mysteries Fourth Man. Tough-As-Nails Fourth Man. Avery-Means-King-of-the-Elves Fourth Man. So-Deep-Undercover-That-At-First-Glance-The-Bed-Looks-Completely-Unoccupied Fourth Man. Fourth Man who eats men like Mad Eye for breakfast, out-Oscars even young Barty Crouch, and makes Snape's purported talent for snooping about look just plain pathetic. Fourth Man who thinks nothing—nothing, I tell you!—of enduring years of imprisonment in Azkaban, over a decade of suspicion and mistrust from the rest of the law-abiding wizarding world, the contempt and scorn of other Death Eaters, and even the reincorporated Voldemort's very best Cruciatus, if that's what it will take to allow him to maintain his cover as grovelling, hysterical, in-over-his-head SYCOPHANTSish Fourth Man so that he may continue his heroic and loyal service to—
What? What's that you say? You still think that the Undercover Agent must have been Snape? Really? Still?
::sigh::
Oh all right. I guess we can talk about that possibility, if you guys absolutely insist. But I'm warning you right now -- Fourth Man With Deep Undercover is actually a whole lot more canonically defensible, in the long run.
By far the most popular interpretation of this version of the Memory Charm speculation is that the purpose of Neville's memory charm was to protect Snape, who was somehow involved in the Longbottom Incident in his role as Dumbledore's agent.
Talon DG suggested that Snape might in fact have been a Fifth Man:
What if Snape were involved? He could have been there, involved, undercover, and perhaps his testimony is what sent the torturers to Azkaban. Could Neville's memory charm be there to prevent him from inadvertantly blowing Snape's cover?
Fifth Man Snape, eh?
Well, it's certainly possible. I do see a big problem with the timeline, though. Snape's role as undercover agent was discussed openly at Karkaroff's hearing, which predated the attack on the Longbottoms. It seems highly unlikely to me that Snape was still in active service at that point in time, or that he would have been able to return to active service after his role had become so widely known. There were about two hundred people seated on the tribunal when Dumbledore pronounced Snape's status as a mole, and I find it very difficult to believe that Dumbledore was so certain that each and every one of those two hundred people could be trusted that he would have first blown Snape's cover to them, and then sent him right back out to work. Certainly I wouldn't have been too pleased about that, if I had been Snape.
The other big problem that I see here is that Dumbledore himself seems so very doubtful about Crouch Jr's guilt when he discusses the affair with Harry in Chapter 30 of GoF, and that he so strongly implies that the only evidence against the Pensieve defendants was the highly dubious testimony of the Longbottoms themselves:
'Unfortunately, the Longbottoms' evidence was -- given their condition -- none too reliable.'
'Then Mr. Crouch's son might not have been involved?' said Harry slowly.
Dumbldore shook his head. 'As to that, I have no idea.'
I find this exchange very difficult to reconcile with a scenario in which Snape's testimony was in fact what put the Pensieve defendents away. Given that Harry has learned of Snape's undercover role only minutes previous to this conversation, I just can't imagine why Dumbledore would feel the need to be so exceptionally duplicitous with him here. It also just doesn't jibe with his character for me. As I read him, Dumbledore is indeed often evasive, but he is never duplicitous in quite that outright a manner.
Although Fifth Man Snape is so hard to reconcile with canon, though, the suggestion that Neville's memory charm must exist to protect Snape in some fashion really does have teeth, following up as it does on canon's strong suggestion that there must exist some important connection or relationship between Neville and Snape.
Pippin wrote:
I think we have to account for the fact that Neville's main antagonist is Snape, and therefore the drama around Neville ought to be Snape-centric.
Finwitch agreed, even abandoning her usual hard-line anti-Snape stance just long enough to concede the possibility that Snape might have been present for the Longbottoms' torture as an agent of good:
Yes, it is necessary that Snape was somehow involved with Neville's worst experience to become his worst fear. I believe it also has to do with why Dumbledore trusts Snape. Yes, he may have been the double-agent. . . .Perhaps Snape was trying to save the Longbottoms?
Perhaps he was at that. After all...
<Elkins grips the edge of her lectern, leaning forward as a mad gleam appears in her eyes>
After all, since as we all know, Snape is secretly and hopelessly in love with Neville's mother, and has been ever since their schooldays together at Hogwarts, it makes perfect sense that...OW! Hey! Come on! Quit it!
::ducks down behind the lectern to take refuge from the pencils, beer cans, rotten tomatoes, and bowling balls which have suddenly come flying towards her from the audience::
Okay! All right! Sheesh.
::straightens, eying the audience warily::
Boy.
Tough crowd.
Okay. Well, staying on target then, this brings us to the "Rescue Scenario" version of "Wizards In Black," in which Snape was indeed present at the scene of the attack on the Longbottoms, but found himself incapable of helping anyone but toddler Neville, whom he rescued from the scene and possibly saved from suffering his parents' fate.
This speculation appeals on so many different levels. First, it provides a highly convincing explanation for Neville's fear of Snape. If both Snape and Neville were present for the attack on the Longbottoms, and if Neville's memory blockage is wearing off or degrading in some fashion, then he could well retain some trace memory of Snape which associates him with the traumatic event, thus leading to Neville's identification of Snape as his "worst fear."
Second, the rescue scenario maintains, with beautifully cruel irony, the canonically-established pattern of Snape's actions and motivations being misinterpreted in the worst possible way by others.
The rescue scenario also avoids some (although by no means all) of the pitfalls of "Fifth Man." If Snape was for some reason unable to save any of the Longbottoms but Neville, then it seems equally possible that he was also unable to learn the identities of the culprits. The rescue scenario still doesn't explain, however, why Snape's role in the affair should have been believed to be so very sensitive that it would warrant wiping Neville's memory of the event, especially since at the time, Snape's role hardly seems to have been a terribly carefully-guarded secret.
In message #36922 Pippin, while standing back and preparing to be pelted with FEATHERBOAs, put forward a "psychological repression" version of the rescue scenario in which Snape was himself responsible for setting up Frank Longbottom, as a part of an entrapment scenario gone horribly awry. That in and of itself warrants a featherboa as far as I'm concerned, but she also threw in not one, but two bloody ambushes, as well as much betrayal among old school chums. And use of the word "gibbering." So...
<Elkins pulls a feather boa made from glossy—if also still rather sticky—black feathers out of one of her very deep pockets and looks it over comtemplatively>
Hmmmm. Well, since I know how much you like that whole "dressing in black" thing, Pippin, how about this one? I made it from these two big black birds that I ran into the other day. It was the weirdest thing, actually: one of them kept saying "wei...wei...wei..." but every time I tried to tell it why, it just wouldn't listen to me. And then the other one started croaking "mr-no...mr-no...mr-no..." which just made no sense to me at all. I mean, I had no idea what that stupid bird was nattering on about, and I couldn't find Eileen or anyone else with one of those Viking helmets to translate for me. So I figured that I'd best just wring both their necks and have done with it.
::shrugs::
Oh, well. It couldn't have been anything all that important, right? After all, neither of them put up much of a fight. So here you go, Pippin! Enjoy!
<Elkins tosses the shiny black feather boa over to Pippin, then frowns. It occurs to her that she's definitely beginning to...drift. Perhaps, she thinks, she had better move on to a new Memory Charm variant. This whole Wizards In Black line of thought seems to be inspiring her to digress wildly, for some strange reason. And it's beginning to give her a headache as well. Most odd, that.>
Okay. So what's next? Oh, that's right. We were just talking about ravens, weren't we? That must mean that the next one up is...
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The "Hidden Source" Theory
(Otherwise known as: "Neville As Raven")
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Neville's father, or perhaps both of his parents, really were in possession of some crucial information regarding Voldemort, possibly even knowledge of the means by which he could be utterly defeated. Either Neville stumbled across this knowledge by chance, or he had it magically hidden away in his mind when his parents realized that they were likely to come under attack. In either case, his parents then gave him the Memory Charm themselves, in order to keep hidden the vital information that he carries.
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This marriage of "Wizards In Black" and "Memory Charm Most Foul," proposed by Naama, has the undeniable advantage that it avoids all of the problems inherent in the idea that Neville was witness to the assault on his parents, while still allowing him to possess a highly plot-relevant memory charm. It also has a certain "worm-turning" appeal, suggesting as it does that whatever secret knowledge Neville carries hidden deep within his mind will likely be absolutely vital to Voldemort's eventual defeat.
Naama:
If so, then it makes sense that the memory charm has an inbuilt expiration mechanism. Maybe the charm will expire once Neville reaches a certain age? Or, maybe the hidden knowledge is supposed to be triggered by some event (meeting with Voldemort, maybe)? What if Neville carries, unbeknowest to him, the information that Harry will need in order to vanquish Voldemort?
And so, somewhere in Book Seven, Neville will help to save the day!
Mm. Well, there is a certain pleasure to be found in that notion, to be sure, as well as in the incongruity of Neville in the role as the repository of secret knowledge. And certainly I agree with Naama that if Neville has a memory charm, then there is surely something important hidden away by it. Otherwise there would seem little point, from the authorial perspective, of introducing such a plotline in the first place.
I'm having a lot of problems with the details of the Hidden Source Theory, though. I almost wish that I weren't, as I find the ironic juxtaposition, if I may steal Tabouli's pet phrase, to be so very delightful. Take this, for example:
Naama:
Neville, the Raven (whatsitsname?), carrier of secret information, the unexpected source, etc.
Now, how can I bring myself to argue with the idea of Neville-as-Raven? It's...well, it's almost like putting a single pink flamingo right in the middle of a gloomy old Gothic Cathedral, isn't it? I mean, it's just plain beautiful.
But it does make the Longbottoms themselves seem rather ruthless, don't you think? To place their only son at such a terrible risk? Not that I really mind Ruthless!Frank—in my more perverse moods, I even enjoy a little bit of Ever So Evil Frank—but I do find myself struggling with the idea that even Ruthless!Frank would have chosen his own son and heir to serve such a role. Even leaving aside the emotional issues involved, couldn't he have found some more secure place to hide away the secret knowledge than in his own son's mind? If the DEs knew that such a spell was possible, then surely that would be one of the very first places they would think to look once they realized that Frank himself no longer possessed the information they sought, wouldn't it?
I also find myself wondering why, if the Longbottoms had indeed received advance warning that they might become DE targets, they couldn't have protected themselves a bit better. There's something almost embarrassing about the notion of Frank Longbottom, the Ruthless Auror Who Sees Which Way the Wind Is Blowing, still managing to get himself brought down by that pathetic group of losers that we saw in the Pensieve scene.
Unless, that is, we're proposing that the Longbottoms had some sort of martyr complex?
My biggest problem with this theory, though, is that I'm finding it very hard to imagine how Frank Longbottom could have managed not to give the game away himself, seeing as both he and his wife were apparently tortured half to death with the express purpose of persuading him to talk.
Naama suggested, as a way around this problem:
Maybe they also put themselves under a Lunatic charm, i.e., a charm that turns them insane the minute they are about to divulge the secret?
Wow. That would certainly have been sporting of them. Very heroic indeed.
True, that certainly would fix the hole. And it would also clean up the whole "Oh, please! People don't really go insane like that!" objection to the entire Longbottom plotline. But I just don't know about that Lunatic Charm idea. We've never heard of anything like a Lunatic Charm in canon, have we? I'm very much afraid that we might be looking at a yellow flag violation if we start venturing down that path.
Tabouli wrote:
Hmmm... now that raises another possibility... were the Lestranges and co torturing the Longbottoms to try to break a Memory Charm on them? Perhaps they knew where Voldemort had fled, and Dumbledore or someone obliviated their memory of this so they couldn't give it away.
I dunno. I'm just not convinced that many people really get tortured to death without spilling the beans.
No, neither am I, and I don't think that JKR is either. The HP books are written in a fairly heroic idiom, but they're not written in that heroic an idiom. And besides, we already know that memory charms can be broken. In fact, it has been very strongly implied that they are specifically broken by means of torture. The Ministry must be aware of this, so I very much doubt that they would Obliviate their Aurors as a means of granting them immunity to interrogation: they would surely be aware that that it just wouldn't work.
Nor do I find it believable that there is any more effective or more permanent means of removing information from the human mind known to the wizarding world than the Memory Charm. If there were such a method, then the Ministry would likely be using it, rather than Obliviate, on the muggle population. Even if it were so dangerous that even the Ministry would balk at its use, I doubt that Gilderoy Lockhart would have been so fastidious. And even if it were too tricky for Lockhart to have managed, Crouch Sr. surely could have handled it, and I don't believe for a second that ends-over-means-prone Crouch, who was willing to cast an Unforgiveable Curse on his illegally-sprung-from-Azkaban son, wouldn't have used it on Bertha Jorkins. So I feel fairly well-convinced that the Memory Charm is in fact the closest thing that the wizarding world has yet found to a permanent knowledge removal spell -- and a memory charm wouldn't have sufficed to keep the Longbottoms' information hidden from their assailants.
So all in all, I feel fairly well convinced that poor Frank Longbottom really didn't know a thing.
I do rather like the idea that the Lestranges et al might have thought that Frank was under a memory charm, though. It offers a far more convincing explanation than pure sadism for the fact that they hung around Crucioing the couple (and thus increasing their risk of getting caught) long past the point at which it must have become clear to anyone with the slightest modicum of sense that neither of the Longbottoms knew anything useful. It also has some canonical support in that Voldemort's description of the post-memory-charm-cracked Bertha Jorkins ("mind and body both damaged beyond repair") would seem an equally apt description of two people who have been hospitalized for thirteen years to date with apparently no noticeable improvement in their condition.
Ah. But speaking of those yellow flag violations, we now come at last to...
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The Reverse Memory Charm Theory
(Otherwise known as: M.A.T.C.H.I.N.G.A.R.M.C.H.A.I.R. ["Marooned At The Court Hearing, Ill-fated Neville Got A Reverse Memory Charm, Hatching Amnesia-Inducing Results"])
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Neville is indeed the victim of a memory spell, but it is not one designed to suppress his memories at all. Rather, he was exposed to some form of magical memory-enhancement, probably by ministry officials hoping to get some leads on the identities of the Longbottoms' attackers. The end result of this has been that Neville now helplessly relives the memory of having witnessed his parents' torture, particularly whenever he is under stress, thus rendering him incapable of concentrating on other matters.
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Gulplum, apparently unaware of the fact that he was about to be offered a seat in the Comfy Chair, made a case for this one:
Neville suffers not from a memory charm, but a memory curse. . . .What I mean by that, is that the trauma of his parents' torture hasn't been wiped from his mind, but on the contrary, has been deliberately embedded in such detail and so inextricably, that every waking moment, he relives the experience over and over and over again. Thus his short-term memory has been shot, his self-confidence is shot, and his whole self-image is damaged.
<Elkins nods grimly. She drags out from behind her lectern a rather large recliner, upholstered in fabric that presumably matches something, although Elkins herself has never been altogether certain what that something might be, and waves Gulplum towards it.>
There you go, Gulplum. Have a seat.
MATCHINGARMCHAIR, the "Reverse Memory Charm" Theory, is definitely appealing in that it caters to all of our worst suspicions about the MOM. By suggesting that Neville is tormented on a near-constant basis by the sound of his parents screaming in agony, it also pleases the anti-sap brigade. There is not a single ewwwwy bit of sappiness to be found in the Reverse Memory Charm theory. It is not in the least bit sappy. It isn't even nice. It is a nasty brutal cynical little speculation, capable of corrupting even the ordinarily peaceable Tabouli into coming up with things like this gruesome marriage of MATCHING ARMCHAIR and DEPRECIATION, in which poor Neville's problems actually derive from someone in Law Enforcement having broken a Memory Charm which had been placed on him by one of the perps:
Tabouli:
A Memory Charm to conceal the identity of the perpetrators would make more sense, because then the fact that Neville sees the aftermath isn't a problem...he can't remember the actual event, and hence can't point the finger. This is where Cindy's Reverse Memory Charm comes in. At the trial, they had to use "the Longbottoms" (in a bad condition, says Dumbledore) to identify the culprits. Was Neville included? Perhaps when no sense could be gotten from his parents, they had to break the Memory Charm on Neville. This can be done, because Voldemort did it to Bertha (using torture). Hence he now remembers the incident, and hence his memory is bad because it's, well, occupied with horrible things most of the time.
(To her alarm, Tabouli finds herself looking at a nice, comfy MATCHING ARMCHAIR...)
An armchair?
Oh, you're looking at far worse than that, hon. I mean, Tortured Toddler Neville? Tortured by the Ministry Toddler Neville, no less?
<Elkins lazily pulls the pink feather boa that she's been saving for months now, just 'specially for Tabouli, out of her pocket. She reflects upon what Snape once said about vengeance. She smiles a slightly twisted smile.>
Mmmmmm. Actually? Maybe later.
When you least expect it, Tabouli. When you least expect it.
Reverse Memory Charm also offers a strong possibility that one or two—or even all—of the Pensieve defendents might actually have been innocent. After all, as Nuria wrote quite recently:
However, given that he was indeed a toddler when his parents were crucio'd, it is more likely a Reverse Memory Charm had been used on him (this is what we Muggles call Regressive Hypnosis!)
Eeeee-yup. Indeed it is. And we all know how very reliable testimony based on Regressive Hypnosis is, right?
Yeah. Small wonder that Dumbledore had his doubts.
Perhaps the most appealing thing of all about the Reverse Memory Charm, though, is its success in avoiding all of those pesky motivational difficulties that plague so many other memory charm theories. We may have some problems figuring out why Neville might have been given a Memory Charm, but it's fairly obvious why someone might have given him a Reverse Memory Charm. To help the Ministry identify the Longbottoms' attackers, of course!
But would the Department of Law Enforcement really stoop that low? Even knowing what it might do to the poor boy's mind?
Are you kidding me? Under Crouch's reign? Of course it would!
Gulplum even offered up a perfectly beautiful suggestion as to what the thematic relevance of a Reverse Memory Charm scenario to the series as a whole might be:
The ability to forget is as important to the health of the human psyche as the ability to remember. What if Neville is, quite simply, incapable of forgetting? This, of course, also juxtaposes his parents' situation, in that they can't remember...
Well, yes. Yes, that will do.
That works. It works quite well, although as you know, I tend to prefer the converse interpretation: that Neville's current state represents the problems inherent in the inability to remember, while the later problems that I fear he may be headed for in the canon would represent the problems inherent in the inability to forget. But Gulplum's gloss works every bit as well. No, there's just no denying that Reverse Memory Charm does offer the possibility of strong thematic consistency.
And there's even a sadistic sort of Just Deserts pleasure to be found in the Reverse Memory Charm, especially for those of us who do not care very much at all for Crouch and his ends-over-means judicial approach. "You did want to know, right?" such readers can find themselves snickering maliciously as they contemplate the ramifications of this speculation. "You really, really wanted to know. You wanted to know the truth soooooooo badly. So badly that you were willing to mess up some poor toddler's mind, just to get at it. Well! Congratulations! Got your answer, didn't you? Hope that you really enjoyed it."
I mean, there's just so much to like here that I really find myself wanting to believe in the Reverse Memory Charm. But I can't. I just can't. There are far too many holes, most of which I've already covered in my comments on the "No Memory Charm At All" Theory.
See, I just can't believe that Neville has been walking around reliving the horrible image of his parents being tortured into insanity for the past four books. I just can't buy that. There's far too much evidence to the contrary. There's his overall demeanor, and his reaction to the Second Task's mermaid song, and his reaction to the Dementor on the train -- and then there's also the problem that Porphyria raised here:
He was too little to give testimony (the testimony of thirteen year old wizards doesn't even count).
Yeah, that's a problem too, although I think that it's a very minor one. After all, we already know that legal precedents and due process were being abandoned left and right at the time of the Longbottom Incident. What would one more violation of standard policy matter? But all the same, taken in combination with all of the other problems with the Reverse Memory Charm theory, it does start to add up.
And then there's also the, er...
::nervous look at Cindy::
Well, the yellow flag violation. I mean, what in blazes is a Reverse Memory Charm, anyway? I hate to hurl such monstrous accusations in a public forum, but I have to admit that there are times, terrible times, Long Dark Nights of my Soul, when I almost find myself suspecting that Cindy...
<Elkins winces, then lowers her voice>
Well, that Cindy might have just made the Reverse Memory Charm up.
::bites lip, then continues more quickly::
Not, you understand, that I'm saying that she did or anything. I mean, I'm hardly going to go throwing any yellow flags around here, ha ha ha. Not, at any rate, while I'm posing such a very tempting target standing right up here in front of everyone. But you know, I can't deny that I sometimes do think it.
And then finally, there's this problem of the foreshadowing. See, the main support for the entire memory charm speculation in the first place is all of that emphasis that the books have already placed on the existence of memory charms, right? In every single volume, we've had some mention of memory charms, or of some other form of magic (Riddle's Diary, the Fidelius Charm) that has the effect of rendering someone amnesiac, or of hiding information from their conscious mind. References to that sort of thing are just scattered throughout canon. There are spells that erase specific memories, and then there's magic that causes amnesia, and then there are botched memory charms that effectively lobotomize their recipients, and then there are...
Well. You see my point, I trust? There's been all of that, and yet we've not had one mention anywhere of a memory retrieval spell. We've had memory storage, with the Pensieve, and we've had coerced remembrance, with the Dementors, and we've had veritaserum—all of which are admittedly getting pretty close—but we've yet to see anything like a Reverse Memory Charm.
Wobbly. The Matching Armchair is indeed Ever So Comfy. But it is also just so very wobbly.
All the same, though, I'd very much like for it to be true. Because you know what? I think that I've finally figured out just exactly what it is that the Reverse Memory Charm armchair actually matches.
It matches my feather boas.
And it also matches my politics.
><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><(("> ><((">
Okay. Time for another break, I think. Let's just check the—
<Elkins glances down at her watch, then stops, staring.>
Um. Uh, yeah. Ooooo-kay. So, er, does anyone have any idea why my watch might seem to be, um, melting?
Well, whatever. Tabouli's Tortured Toddler notwithstanding, MATCHING ARMCHAIR was the last on my list of Memory Charm theories that can really be described as "Grey." From here on out, I'm afraid that we're into the Dark and Nasty ones: "Cover-Up at the Ministry," DEPRECIATION, and "Memory Charm Most Foul." So fortify yourselves well with your beverage of choice during this break, because when we get back, we're headed straight down to the depths.
—Elkins
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