Mr. Roberts and the Memory Charm

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

I decided I needed to review what canon says about the effects of Obliviation. Barty Junior told us that the (only) reason Bertha suffered permanent, apparently irreversible, damage to her mind was because his father’s Memory Charm had been “too powerful.” (GoF 35) What about standard use by authorized Ministry experts? We have Mr. Roberts to examine, before, during, and after.

What follow is quotes from canon, GoF 7.



A man was standing in the doorway, looking out at the tents. Harry knew at a glance that he was the only real Muggle for several acres. When he heard their footsteps, he turned his head to look at them.

“Morning!” said Mr. Weasley brightly.

“Morning,” said the Muggle.

“Would you be Mr. Roberts?”

“Aye, I would,” said Mr. Roberts. “And who’re you?”

“Weasley—two tents, booked a couple of days ago!”

“Aye,” said Mr. Roberts, consulting a list tacked to the door. “You’ve got a space up by the woods there. Just the one night?”

“That’s it,” said Mr. Weasley.

“You’ll be paying now, then?” said Mr. Roberts.

“Ah—right—certainly—” said Mr. Weasley. He retreated a short distance from the cottage and beckoned Harry over. “Help me, Harry,” he murmured, pulling a roll of Muggle money from his pocket and starting to peel the notes apart. “This one’s a—a—a ten? Ah yes, I see the little number on it no… So this is a five?”

“A twenty,” Harry corrected him, uncomfortably aware of Mr. Roberts trying to catch every word.

“Ah yes, so it is… I don’t know, these little bits of paper….”

“You foreign?” said Mr. Roberts as Mr. Weasley returned with the correct notes.

“Foreign?” repeated Mr. Weasley, puzzled.

“You’re not the first one who’s had trouble with money,” said Mr. Roberts, scrutinizing Mr. Weasley closely. “I had two try to pay me with great gold coins the size of hubcaps ten minutes ago.”

“Did you really?” said Mr. Weasley nervously.

Mr. Roberts rummaged around in a tin for some change.

“Never been this crowded,” he said suddenly, looking out over the misty field again. “Hundreds of pre-bookings. People usually just turn up….”

“Is that right?” said Mr. Weasley, his hand held out for his change, but Mr. Roberts didn’t give it to him.

“Aye,” he said thoughtfully. “People from all over. Loads of foreigners. And not just foreigners. Weirdos, you know? There’s a bloke walking around in a kilt and a poncho.”

“Shouldn’t he?” said Mr. Weasley anxiously.

“It’s like some sort of… I dunno… like some sort of rally,” said Mr. Roberts. “They all seem to know each other. Like a big party.”

At that moment a wizard in plus-fours appeared out of thin air next to Mr. Roberts’s front door.

“Obliviate!” he said sharply, pointing his wand at Mr. Roberts.

Instantly Mr. Roberts’s eyes slid out of focus, his brows relaxed, and a look of dreamy unconcern fell over his face. Harry recognized the symptoms of one who had just had his memory modified.

“A map of the campsite for you,” Mr. Roberts said placidly to Mr. Weasley. “And your change.”

“Thanks very much,” said Mr. Weasley.

The wizard in plus-fours accompanied them toward the gate to the campsite. He looked exhausted: His chin was blue with stubble and there were deep purple shadows under his eyes. Once out of earshot of Mr. Roberts he muttered to Mr. Weasley, “Been having a lot of trouble with him. Needs a Memory Charm ten times a day to keep him happy. And Ludo Bagman’s not helping. Trotting around talking about Bludgers and Quaffles at the top of his voice, not a worry about anti-Muggle security. Blimey, I’ll be glad when this is over. See you later, Arthur.”



Love that term: anti-Muggle security. Really puts it on the table, doesn’t it?


Note, first, that it’s not just the memory that Obliviate modifies. Suddenly forgetting what he’d just been talking about would not, in itself, make a sharp, canny, and suspicious observer like Mr. Roberts become “dreamily unconcerned,” or “placid.” Rather the reverse, in fact. If all that that spell modified was the victim’s short-term memory, its immediate emotional aftereffect should be either embarrassment or terror, depending on whether the victim thought s/he had momentarily lost the thread in a trivial conversation, or registered that s/he had lost a serious chunk of the recent past. Even one thought the lapse trivial in itself, having it happen ten times in a day would lead to fears that one was developing mental problems. Nor had Mr. Roberts’s true memories apparently been replaced by a false one of a conversation more to the WW’s taste; he simply seems unconcerned that he can’t remember more than vaguely what’s been going on.

Remind me: what spell do we encounter later in GoF that gently wipes away every thought and worry, leaving nothing but a vague untraceable happiness? Obliviate apparently mimics its effects at least in part.

In fact I’m starting to wonder if the “memory charm” might merely be a special case of the more general spell.

“Forget!”

But the spell is not, apparently, designed to have an effect on future speculations and observations, if Mr. Roberts “needs” (nice verb!) repeated doses ten times a day to “keep him happy” as incompetents like Arthur and criminals like Seamus and Lucius continue to do things that arouse his suspicions.

(And BTW, where in canon had Harry earlier seen a Memory Charm performed, that our Bubble-Boy can instantly and accurately assess Mr. Roberts’s reaction as “the symptoms of one who had just had his memory modified”? Am I forgetting something? Marge was Obliviated, true, but Harry never saw it.)

Now on to our final view of Mr. Roberts, after the Obliviators wiped out his memories, not just of grossly suspiciously behavior and clear evidence of collusion among his weirdo tenants, but of an assault on him and his wife and children in which he’d feared for their lives (Gof 10):

… they left the campsite as quickly as possible, passing Mr. Roberts at the door of his cottage. Mr. Roberts had a strange, dazed look about him, and he waved them off with a vague, “Merry Christmas.”

“He’ll be all right,” said Mr. Weasley quietly as they marched off onto the moor. “Sometimes, when a person’s memory’s modified, it makes him a bit disoriented for a while… and that was a big thing they had to make him forget.”


Yep, like Bertha was all right after the “big thing” Barty Senior had “had” (poor man, beleaguered victim of necessity) to make her forget.

How inclined are we to credit Arthur’s reassurances?

Comments

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Now, there's a thought! It even makes sense from a storytelling perspective--to show someone modifying a person's mind to get him to cooperate, and then later Harry hears about this horrible, dangerous spell that can be used to make someone do anything. It could lead to some serious emotional growth if Harry realized that someone he thought was on his side was using such a horrible spell without recourse--but of course that's way too subtle and complicated to occur to Rowling.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Just so you'd know, this post fits with a conspiracy theory I'm thinking about, for part 8 of my series (part 7 is almost done).

I agree the wording is disturbing. As is the similarity to Imperius (but for some reason memory charms are perfectly legal). AFAIK the only memory charm victim Harry ever encountered 'live' by that point was Gilderoy. Who forgot a whole lot.

(Not sure what you mean by including Seamus with the criminals?)

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised; this one is ripe for conspiracty theorists. Good news on part 7--look forward to seeing it.

Do you know, I had entirely forgotten Gilderoy. How could I (except that I so disliked him, and his supposed appeal to women)?

However, he might have seemed to Harry to have been affected by a botched spell. So Harry wouldn't have known what aftereffect the correctly-executed spell would have had.

But I think Gilderoy did cast the spell perfectly, the broken wand just, er, deflected the aim. He'd planned, after all, to leave this particular set of victims not just stripped of a particular memory, but mindless "from the shock of seeing Ginny's body".

And remember Gilderoy's placid acceptance of his missing mind--not at all my grandmother's reaction to her dementia.

By what we see of him later in the closed ward, "forget everything" has the effect of making you not only lose access to your current memories, but be unable--or is that unwilling?--to form new ones easily. Three years later, he's just managed to master linked-up writing for his signature.

One wonders what effect Barty Senior intended to have on Bertha.

Memory charms have to be legal, or Secrecy cannot possibly be enforced. And they have to be socially acceptable to use on "Muggles" and portrayed as completely harmless, or the WW would have to admit they're harming innocents in the name of protecting themselves. From people the party line claims to be entirely harmless.

But I bet some of the old Pureblood families remember, and I bet Tommy figured out, that the spell is really a modified Unforgiveable. While the Ministry puts out that it is not. (The only people who would really figure it out, after all, are people willing to analyze the Imperius, and what right-thinking person would want to do that/) Adding to Tom's appeal about the hypocrisy of the Ministry's position: "protecting" Muggles by using Unforgivables on them, and lying about it! Whereas if you just start from the premise that Muggles are vermin with no natural rights but which can be dangerous to people, there's no moral problem involved in treating them as they deserve or doing anything necessary to protect one's people....

Seamus--as near as we can tell, the ultimate crime in the WW is deliberately violating the Statute of Secrecy. For that, a student can be expelled from Hogwarts and his wand snapped, same as for suspected manslaughter. Most of the wizards and witches attending the QWC were in fact scofflaws, but they were secure in the knowledge that the Muggles who saw them would bear the consequences, not they themselves. In principle, however, Seamus could have been expelled and his mother sent to Azkaban for those shamrocks. And if Mr. Roberts or Mr. Payne saw the Finnegan's tent, the Finnegans caused the poor Muggle to be mind-raped again. Perhaps, again and again. Not that they'd been taught to take that seriously.

Mind, many people think it's not a crime if everyone does it. Even Mr. Weasley, while trying himself to comply with the Ministry's directives to look and act like "Muggles" in front of the campsite director, looks indulgently on other wizards' displays. Indeed, he seems more interested in complying with the Ministry's directives because he wants an excuse to play with his Muggle toys than because he takes "anti-Muggle security" seriously. Wonder if that's the real reason Molly didn't want to come along.

[oryx_leucoryx]

How inclined are we to credit Arthur’s reassurances?

Does he follow up on his or others' Memory Charm victims? I doubt it. He is just repeating what he heard at the Ministry.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

I doubt the Ministry follows up on Memory Charm victims. And even if the do would they even know if a Muggle isn't behaving normally?

Image an Ministry wizard checking up on Mr. Roberts. The wizard meets Mr. Roberts who is wearing his wife's skirt as a headdress. Would the wizard realize that is not normal? If he did would he care? I think as long as Mr. Roberts doesn't go around talking about people flying on brooms or other magical things the Ministry is happy.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

I'd tend to concur. There's followup--it's known that one of Tilly Toke's many victims subsequently talked about a flying lizard--but it's restricted to whether Secrecy has been breached, not whether anyone's well-being has been impaired. How, indeed, could they have measured a Muggle's mental function?

They couldn't even detect reliably or treat impairment in their own.


And in the two cases where we know a wizard or witch suffered long-term damage from the Memory Charm, the WW could or would do nothing. AS far as we know, Bertha was even properly diagnosed; Gilderoy ought to have been, but three years later there he was in long-term Spell-Damage care, trying to master joined-up writitng.

[ladyzenobia.livejournal.com]

What the hell was Mr. Roberts doing there, anyway? Did he live there? It's in the middle of a forest, so that would be odd. But the only other explanation I can think of is that they hauled him over there to work for them for free.

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

No, it seems to be a normal Muggle campsite which he and his family run - it's just been hired by for the WW cup fans. He does say that he normally only gets a few bookings at a time, so it is a genuine business that he's running there. However, there are so many odd special interest groups about that the Muggle liaison department could have come up with something that would have meant less modifying of Mr Roberts' memory. Why on earth don't they admit this was a mass-booking for e.g a 'fancy dress convention' which would include guests from abroad. That way only obvious acts of magic would have needed removal.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Because wizards are unaware of the existence of subcultures that engage in such activities? Because they have trouble imagining themselves as fancy-dressers?

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Alternatively, because wizards are obtuse and arrogant?

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Both of the above?

Actually, what this shows--indirectly--is how terribly little influence anyone with normal ancestry or connections has in the Ministry, and/or how thoroughly Muggleborns are alienated from their families of birth. Anyone who has a nerdish cousin who goes to sci-fi conventions or a family friend who's into historical re-enactments would have come up with such a cover story in a heartbeat.

Yet the Ministry, which has had 500 wizards (note that they do seem to be all wizards) working on security arrangements for a year, does not..

Either no one at the Ministry knews enough about their Muggle relatives to make such a suggestion, or no one who does maintain enough connection with Muggle culture to come up with the idea, was in a position to be listened to.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

Or, they know enough to make a suggestion, and might be listened to, but don't want to remind anyone with greater authority of their Muggle background.

[mage-989.livejournal.com]

Why on earth don't they admit this was a mass-booking for e.g a 'fancy dress convention' which would include guests from abroad.

Because that would have required forethought and planning. We know from following Harry through seven years in the WW that wizards aren't good at that.

Also I've always wondered about two things with Mr. Roberts. Number one: why did they need to obliviate him just because he was talking to Arthur about the odd people using his campsite? I just spent the weekend at a comic convention. Those of us there talked about how awesome all the costumes were etc. and those people who don't go to those things talked about how weird we all were. It's nothing out of the ordinary it's just idle chit-chat. It Arthur had such a problem with it all he had to do was politely ask for his change and say he was sorry he couldn't talk longer they had a lot to set up at the campsite.

And number two is, if they were so concerned about anti-muggle security why the hell did they book everyone in at a fucking muggle-run campsite!?

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

See above threads . Anyone with connections in the Muggle world could come up with wierd Muggle groups, orthodox to the mainstream, which would not give away the existence of an actual, present, really magical WW.

And of course, if the WW knew that Muggles considered there to be mulitple alternate realities, orthodox to the mainstream, which mainstream Muggles understood dreamers to inhabit--they would have been less concerned, yes?

For your last question, there was no other place to book them.

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

Of course, if 18 year old Hermione could wipe her parents' minds and send them to Australia, one would think the Ministry would be capable of 'suggesting' to Mr Roberts that he took his wiife and children away for a holiday during the duration of the World Cup - using money they would pay in advance to him. There's no reason for him to be there - they just need the campsite. No oblivation necessary - 'just' a Confundus.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Good point.

[dracasadiablo.livejournal.com]

Even if we accept (not that I do) that Bertha suffered damage just because the spell was too powerful but "normal" Obliviate are perfectly safe: there's still cumulative effect to consider.

IIRC, Arthur said that wizards started coming (and camping) two weeks before the game.
And if Mr. Roberts "needs a Memory Charm ten times a day to keep him happy" that's a lot of memory adjusting, done by people with little to no concern for his well-being, in that time.

Even if they hadn't made him forget being attacked I'd expect his memory to look like swiss cheese by the time wizards were done with him.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Actually, your comment is actually evidence for the Memory Charm being LESS malign than I tend to think it. Mr. Roberts was sharp, suspicious, and perfectly able to draw logical inferences from his recent observations, even if he couldn't remember past observations that supported those same conclusions. After two weeks of being Obliviated "ten times a day."

If there was a purely cumulative effect, we should already be seeing it.

So the befuddlement that is part of the charm is not necessarily permanent. Otherwise Mr. Roberts would never have spotted Arthur as yet another of those weirdo foreigners.

(What was Jo thinking, artistically, to base her WW on Secrecy, maintain it with Memory Charms, and then repeatedly show us that Memory Charms are not necessarily as benign as the Ministry claims? If Mr. Roberts had seemed a bit dazed, but hadn't said "Merry Christmas," we'd have thought a lot less about it. But I suppose she thought it was funny.)


I suspect, though, that the more you fight, and the more emotioanlly significant the memories being hidden, the more powerfully the spell "must" be cast to be effective, and the worse the aftereffects. Arthur implies that this is common knowledgee (which, note, does not mean correct knowledge) with his "that was a big thing they had to make him forget".

How much did he care, really, if his campsite was being used by a bunch of foreign weirdos, some of whom tried to pass themselves off as Brits when they couldn't even count money right? Whereas he'd care very strongly indeed about a terrifying attack upon himself, his wife, and their two young children.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

While I agree that the obliviates are problematic, I'm not positive that we can truthfully say we the results on Bertha are evidence. She was apparently forgetful - but functional enough to travel to Albania alone. I've always thought the end result for her was probably more due to Voldy's exceptionally strong (and harsh) legillimency.

[oryx_leucoryx]

From a sharp and nosy gossip, who was fast to realize exactly what was going on in the Crouch home to a useless worker, one considered a liability and constantly shifted from one department to the next. That's some significant damage.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

You have a point - I didn't realize she was shuffled from dept. to dept. or 'useless'.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Moreover, Ludo's two airy explanations for her continued absence were 1) she got lost (like she always does, y'knew), probably mistook Australia for Albania, and 2) she lost track of time, and would show up in October (?paraphrase) thinking it was still July. Ludo is almost certainly exaggerating for humor (and to make light of the situation), but it suggests someone who's known to be not well-oriented in either space and time.

And before the Obliviate, she was competent enough to be, not merely in Crouch's office, but a subordinate who felt justified in coming to Crouch's home--without an appointment, without specific instructions to do so--to get his signature on some vitally important papers. That sounds like a trusted personal assistantt (or at least someone who considers herself to be such), not a random flunky.

[sunnyskywalker]

She was Percy, maybe after a couple of years, basically? He should count himself lucky...

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

I was just looking at that first chapter of HBP with the Prime Minister, and I found this "gem":

"To the Prime Minister of Muggles. Urgent we meet. Kindly respond immediately. Sincerely, Fudge."

The man in the painting looked inquiringly at the Prime Minister.

"Er," said the Prime Minister, "listen... It's not a very good time for me... I'm waiting for a telephone call, you see... from the President of--"

"That can be rearranged," said the portrait at once. The Prime Minister's heart sank. He had been afraid of that.

"But I really was rather hoping to speak--"

"We shall arrange for the President to forget to call. He will telephone tomorrow night instead," said the little man. "Kindly respond immediately to Mr. Fudge."

[sunnyskywalker]

That says something very interesting about wizarding international relations. They just called up their counterparts in another country - described as a powerful one, iirc, so presumably not beholden to wizarding Britain for anything - said, "Hey, we want to talk to our Muggle Prime Minister tonight. Can you arrange for your Muggle President to forget to call until tomorrow?" And hey presto! It's done!

Does this work in reverse? The French Minister for Magic calls and says, "Would you mind terribly making your Muggle Prime Minister change his mind about travel plans a bit and send him to X rather than Y?" and they have Kingsley Shacklebolt get right on it?

And that's not even getting into the "of course we can mess with the minds of heads of government for our convenience" aspect.

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that occurred to me, too. If JKR had said that it was the *ambassador*, then whoever it was would most likely be present in Britain. But a foreign president... not very likely.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

As you say, not even getting into that....

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

I can see Wizards unintentionally causing a disastrous nuclear war by interfering with the Muggle rulers. Because they made the Muggle ruler forget an meeting that was inconvenient for wizards, not bothering to find out why the Muggle ruler had a meeting. After all its just muggles - nothing they do is important.

[sunnyskywalker]

Even if things didn't go quite so badly - though that is a terrifying prospect - there's plenty of terrible but non-nuclear damage that could happen if a Ministry employee slipped up by not realizing that the Muggle ruler's important meeting was something his or her entire country had been expecting to read about in the news two hours later. Or to watch on television.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

Would a wizard take into account all the people involved or all the people that knew the leader's schedule?

There are aides, pages, secretary, security and the media of course.

[oryx_leucoryx]

I can imagine a version of the Potterverse where things like 9/11 conspiracy theories are the result of magical interference.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

The shooter on the grassy knoll was a wizard!

[oryx_leucoryx]

And since he used a wand the evidence was confusing (eg no cartridges).

[sunnyskywalker]

LHO was Imperiused! The second shooter was a wizard ;-)

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that he calls him the ‘Muggle’ Prime Minister. As if all Muggle countries had one leader. And this is supposed to be.... a painting of a diplomat who presumably worked/works for the MOM.