OVERANALYZING THE TEXT

Galadriel wrote:

At the recommendation from another site, I re read CH 14 of GoF to investigate a little more into Neville's role in the series. It does seem to me that Moody/Crouch DID have the opportunity to not only give Neville the book about the gillyweed, but to also place Neville under the Imperius Curse while in his office.

I've seen this speculation before, but I've always found it a little bit difficult to understand, myself, primarily because I just can't imagine what on earth Crouch/Moody's motivation would have been in placing Neville under the Imperius Curse.

Seriously. What would have been his purpose in doing this thing? It would have been taking a very big risk, to be sure. If anyone had found out, it would have compromised his cover and jeapordized his main mission at Hogwarts: to make sure that Harry got transported to that graveyard for Voldemort's rebirthing ritual. For me to believe that Crouch would have risked his cover in this fashion, I feel that I need to see some very compelling reason for him to have wanted or needed to be able to control Neville Longbottom in such a fashion.

And I just can't think of one. The only reason that I can possibly imagine that Crouch would have wanted an Imperio'd Neville would be so that he could have control over someone very close to Harry Potter. But if this were the case, then why Neville, of all people? Wouldn't Ron have made a much better choice?

Also, if Crouch had Neville under the Imperius Curse, then why wouldn't he have used that control to make sure that Harry learned about the gillyweed from Neville, as per the original plan, rather than having to fall back on Dobby's indiscretion? Surely once he realized that Harry did not, in fact, seem likely to ask Neville for help with the Second Task, then he would have used his control over Neville to force the information on Harry? Caused Neville to make some passing comment about the uses of gillyweed in Harry's hearing some day in the common room?

That's certainly what I would have done, at any rate, if I had been in Crouch Jr's position, and if I had been controlling Neville with the Imperius.

I don't think that Neville got Imperio'd during that little tea session with Fake!Moody. I do dearly wish that we knew what did transpire, though. I confess to an unwholesome curiousity about that particular meeting. If I could choose one "off-screen" scene in all of canon to have witnessed as a fly on the wall, that particular scene would almost certainly be the one that I would pick.

If you recall, Neville behaved strangely after that meeting.

Neville was behaving strangely before that meeting. His odd spat of aphasia, so suggestively reminiscent of the Memory Charmed Mr. Roberts from the QWC, takes place before he is ushered off to Fake!Moody's office. It would seem to have been that demonstration of the Cruciatus Curse that set him off, not whatever transpired during Tea With Fake!Moody.

When Harry runs into Neville again in the dormitories, after his Tea With Fake!Moody, on the other hand, Harry thinks that Neville seems to be behaving more normally than he was before. He does, however, also note that Neville's eyes are red: Neville would seem to have been crying. And, of course, he also did not sleep that night.

Personally, all that I think really happened to Neville there in Fake!Moody's office was that he had a nice long chat about his poor mad Auror father, whom Moody would surely have known personally. As, of course, would Barty Crouch Jr. Although in a somewhat different context. ::small but twisted smile::

If you accept the idea that Neville may be operating under some form of memory charm, however, then other possibilities for what might have transpired do start suggesting themselves. If Crouch/Moody had reason either to suspect or to knew that Neville was in possession of some information about the night of the assault on his parents, then he might have taken the opportunity to do any number of things: he might have tried to determine just what Neville knew or remembered; he might have cast a memory charm "reinforcement" on the poor lad; he might have tried to evaluate the nature of any mental magics under which Neville was already laboring.

The Imperius Curse, though? I just can't see that somehow. What would have been its purpose?

Star Opal asked:

BUT as far Imperius goes, well I have a question: Does a curse continue to function after the caster is dead or incapacitated? He's been soul sucked - which is worse than dead, just a shell.

I don't think that the Imperius Curse survives the death—or the soul-death, for that matter—of its caster.

When Voldemort was disincorporated, his Imperius victims are said to have snapped out of it — like coming out of trances. Even if one believes that all of those people were faking it, I still think that this implies that the Imperius Curse is known not to survive the death of its caster. I can't imagine that it would be any more likely to survive the soul-death of its caster.

So if Crouch Jr. really did ever put any Hogwarts students under the Imperius Curse, I'd say that they would have been freed when he got the Kiss.

Alex wrote:

I have often wondered if Neville was tortured too? Why is he so bad with magic? Did he witness his parents being tortured? Is he scarred and that is why he can not do magic well? Did they put some kind of memory curse on him dimming his mind so he would not remember something?

Many people have speculated here in the past about the possibility that Neville might have been tortured along with his parents, or that he might have witnessed his parents' torture that night, or that he might have been placed under a memory charm. Or sometimes, all of the above. ;-)

For this past spring's spate of memory charm speculations, you might try the threads linked to in the HA entry on Memory Charmed Neville:

http://www.hpfgu.org.uk/faq/hypotheticalley.html#memorycharm

—Elkins