Realization: Not only is it suspicious that Harry finally makes the Quirrell=Voldemort connection almost immediately after Snape hits him with an anti-Confundus spell but the fact that Quirrell hasn’t obliviated Harry yet is positive proof that he intends Harry to know that Q=V for the time being. For what purpose?
.. It’s possible Harry can’t be obliviated. Salazar wanted his descendants to have a trust engine. Memory charms are a good way to break such an engine. So he may have taken steps to prevent that. Heck, Occlumency might suffice all on it’s own to put a stop to that trick.
If Parseltongues couldn’t be Obliviated, I would expect that to become something known in legend. Memory Charms get thrown around like candy, after all.
Do we know it isn’t? I mean, you have a very good point, and I didn’t think of that problem—it is really not a secret you could plausibly keep for a thousand years, even with flawless commitment to family loyalty, because sooner or later someone will try to obliviate one of you and get away both alive and with their memory intact.
But on the other hand, Parsel-tongue seems like the kind of thing that’s going to just accumulate rumors about it’s properties like it was coated in velcro. Picking out which of the properties attributed to that ability are actually real from all the baseless rumors might be quite difficult. Especially if there are other defenses against obliviate.
.. And if defenses are possible, they have to exist. About 3 seconds after someone told me about memory charms and obliviate, I’d personally make “Become Safe From That Shit” priority number one, They’re skincrawlingly, mindwarpingly awful spells. The kind of thing where if there isn’t any other counters, I’d move to mars to preclude the possibility.
Hm. Point. It really depends on how rare Parseltongues were—I’m pretty sure the only ones left are Voldemort and, well, Voldemort, but that might well be because Voldy killed them all. If they used to be “uncommons” rather than “rares”, to use the CCG terms, then I’d expect the true legends to stand out much more than if nobody really knew much of anything.
Realization: Not only is it suspicious that Harry finally makes the Quirrell=Voldemort connection almost immediately after Snape hits him with an anti-Confundus spell but the fact that Quirrell hasn’t obliviated Harry yet is positive proof that he intends Harry to know that Q=V for the time being. For what purpose?
Quirrell can’t safely cast spells on Harry.
Oops, he could just have Snape do it though or wake up someone else to do it.
.. It’s possible Harry can’t be obliviated. Salazar wanted his descendants to have a trust engine. Memory charms are a good way to break such an engine. So he may have taken steps to prevent that. Heck, Occlumency might suffice all on it’s own to put a stop to that trick.
If Parseltongues couldn’t be Obliviated, I would expect that to become something known in legend. Memory Charms get thrown around like candy, after all.
Do we know it isn’t? I mean, you have a very good point, and I didn’t think of that problem—it is really not a secret you could plausibly keep for a thousand years, even with flawless commitment to family loyalty, because sooner or later someone will try to obliviate one of you and get away both alive and with their memory intact.
But on the other hand, Parsel-tongue seems like the kind of thing that’s going to just accumulate rumors about it’s properties like it was coated in velcro. Picking out which of the properties attributed to that ability are actually real from all the baseless rumors might be quite difficult. Especially if there are other defenses against obliviate.
.. And if defenses are possible, they have to exist. About 3 seconds after someone told me about memory charms and obliviate, I’d personally make “Become Safe From That Shit” priority number one, They’re skincrawlingly, mindwarpingly awful spells. The kind of thing where if there isn’t any other counters, I’d move to mars to preclude the possibility.
Hm. Point. It really depends on how rare Parseltongues were—I’m pretty sure the only ones left are Voldemort and, well, Voldemort, but that might well be because Voldy killed them all. If they used to be “uncommons” rather than “rares”, to use the CCG terms, then I’d expect the true legends to stand out much more than if nobody really knew much of anything.