« Previous Post | Index | Next Post »
In response to Cindy's suggestion the the DEs didn't get around to torturing EyeWitness!Neville until Frank had already lost his mind, at which point they decided there would be no point, Naama wrote:
What I am suggesting, is that if Neville was there, they would have tortured him first - to break down the parents...
Yeah, I'm with Naama here. Especially if they had his wife there as well. See, that way you get two types of pressure in one. You get the tortured toddler pressure, which is pretty harsh in and of itself, and then you also stand a very good chance of getting the wife to do half your job for you by applying a bit of pressure of her own. You know, the "Frank, do something! Stop them!" sort of pressure. I mean, that would be by far the best strategy. Any self-respecting sadist would have realized that.
What? What are you all looking at? We're just talking hypothetically here, okay?
Naama:
(then why didn't they first torture the wife, you ask. Well.. maybe they didn't think very highly of marital love? *g*)
Because she wasn't there either. Not at first.
"The four of you stand accused of capturing an Auror. . . .You are further accused...of using the Cruciatus Curse on Frank Longbottom's wife, when he would not give you information."
The phrasing does make it seem quite likely that they first captured only Frank. When they couldn't get him to talk, then they sent someone out to nab his wife.
If you really want a DEPRECIATION, or a "Cover Your Tracks" style memory charm theory (one which proposes that Neville was given a memory charm by a Death Eater to prevent him from giving damaging testimony), though, then I suppose that you could imagine that once the culprits found that even torturing Frank's wife was still not sufficient to crack him, then that was when they sent someone out to look for his son—but were forced to flee the scene before their colleague returned with Neville in tow. Their colleague, having already abducted Neville, then got wind of the fact that the game was up, panicked, Memory Charmed the kid, dumped him somewhere, and fled.
This scenario adheres to canon's suggestion that the Longbottoms' condition was known to the public for quite some time before an arrest was made ("The Ministry was under great pressure to catch those who had done it," says Dumbledore), as well as sparing Neville from having actually witnessed any parent-torture at all. It does, however, offer a suggestion as to what the plot-relevant information hidden by his memory charm might be: namely, the identity of that unknown fifth conspirator.
Cindy, rather uncharacteristically sweetly, suggested:
Even DEs aren't evil enough to torture a small child.
Naama wasn't biting:
Nope, sorry. People who kill and torture other people for fun would have no scruples to torture a child in order to achieve an important goal.
Oh, but they don't kill and torture wizards for fun! They only kill and torture Muggles for fun. Whenever we've seen or heard about DEs killing or torturing wizards, there has always been some practical motive for it -- even if it's sometimes a rather dubious one. Even Voldemort himself doesn't really spend all of that time torturing Harry in the graveyard just for kicks; he does it to prove to his Death Eaters that he can.
But still. Restoring Voldemort to power was obviously the most important thing in the world to those guys at that particular moment in time, so I very much doubt that they would have allowed even great big pure-blooded toddler eyes to stand in their way.
As for the Imperius quibble, though...
Cindy:
Now as for me, I'm still waiting for an answer to why the DEs didn't use the undisputed quickest and most efficient way to get the information out of Frank -- The Imperius Curse.
The Imperius Curse?
Oh, please. Frank Longbottom was a trained Auror. I'm sure that he knew how to resist the Imperius Curse. It is a skill that can be taught—otherwise, why would Dumbledore have asked Crouch/Moody to cover it in his DADA class?—and while Crouch/Moody does concede that some people can never get the hang of it, other people can, given the proper training.
I'd be willing to bet that you don't become an Auror unless you're one of those people who can.
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on May 19, 2002 9:17 AM
« Previous Post | Index | Next Post »