Hermione, or the Ghoul in Pajamas

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Never, never pontificate without re-reading the original scene.

Here's what, precisely, Hermione says to Harry about her preparations to take off with him, specifically about her decision to modify her parents' memories so that "they're convinced they're really called Wendell and Monica Wilkins and that their life's ambition is to move to Australia, which they've now done.


"That's to make it more difficult to track them down and interrogate them about me--or you, because unfortunately, I've told them quite a bit about you."

She says it outright.

Ron's stratagem, the ghoul, is an attempt to protect his family from reprisals; Hermione's, to protect herself and Harry from the Grangers' knowledge of them. Not to protect them, or to protect them from being used as hostages to influence her.

And, y'know, it was a good thought. I mean, just imagine if her parents had blabbed about taking their little girl camping in the Forest of Dean.

Comments

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

What maidofkent says.

Also, moving the Grangers to Australia under a false identity protects them from being found and interrogated, which benefits all parties.

Wiping their minds is intended to help only her and Harry.

If the Wilkins are found by DE's and identified as Hermione's parents, their memory loss will not save them.

In fact, it will assure their doom.

Tom can recover Obliviated memories. But only by destroying the subject. He told us so, about Bertha. "The means I used to break the Memory Charm upon her were powerful, and when I had extracted all useful information from her, her mind and body were both damaged beyond repair."

If the Grangers had been captured, their life expectancy and prospects for continued mental well-being would never have been high in any circumstances. But if Tom could have raped whatever information he deemed useful from their minds and then held them as hostages for Hermione, he might have done so. And we know that Legilimency, of itself, need not damage the subject.

The Wilkins, however.... to get anything from them, Tom would have had to destroy them. (And the fact that Hermione went to such lengths to protect that information indicates they must know things it would be worth Tom's trouble to find out.)

So Obliviating her parents not only was never intended for their protection, it would have both failed at protecting Harry, and absolutely guarantee their deaths by torture, had the Wilkins ever been identified with the Grangers and captured.

Though Hermione, of course, may not know that.

Tom told Harry and most of the Death Eaters in the graveyard; Harry may or may not have relayed his words to Albus and Sirius.. The witnesses to Barty Jr.'s Veritaserum interrogation were Harry, Albus, Severus, and Minerva, and Barty told them that the Dark Lord had "tortured her [Bertha] until he broke through the Memory Charm my father had placed upon her."

So all of the DE's, and some of the Order, and Harry, know that Memory Charms can be broken, but only by such extreme torture as will destroy the subject. But we don't know if this is known by anyone else--specifically, whether the Ministry and the international authorities know this, Is this common knowledge about the Memory Charm, or obvious from examination of how it works upon the victim's memory, or a discovery of that perverted genius Tom known only to the listed witnesses.

So Hermione might not have known that mind-raping her parents would fail even at its stated objective of protecting Harry.

[oryx_leucoryx]

See my latest installment. I think someone in the Ministry or Order does know that and used that method to obtain the testimony of the Longbottoms against their torturers. Because the little we are actually told in canon about that whole affair does not add up.