Folly, Part Seven

[terri_testing]

Summary: Snape’s life has been a series of spectacular errors of judgment, to put it kindly.

This has to have been his worst.

*

“Good company requires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice.” Jane Austen, Persuasion

Comments

[annoni_no]

Not much to say about the story in general at the moment, but I have to disagree with your reasoning about the quill. Taking the broad, rational view, the best possible policy to adopt would be not revealing to anyone whether their child was registered or not, especially if your primary concern is the safety of the children.

If wizarding families are aware that squibs can sometimes perform small amounts of magic, they must be equally aware that sometimes full-fledged witches and wizards are merely late to bloom. Therefore, in the case of a child lacking in magical outbreaks, the logical thing to do to give your line the best chance of survival is encourage that child to grow in peace until the Hogwarts letter arrives (or not).

This helps ensure the continued survival of the child, even if they are squib, because, no matter how hard a parent may try to dissociate themselves from their (potentially inadequate) child, 11 years is a long time to live with another human being. There are very, very few people who wouldn't form some sort of emotional bond in that time. That bond would make it more likely that any wizarding parent unwilling to raise their squib further would have the child adopted instead of arranging an "accident," even though the latter would be necessary to hide the family's shame and perhaps preserve the marriage prospects of their other children.

Erring on the side of caution and preservation would be even more important in a community suffering from infertility, like the WW, and specifically the Purebloods. Killing off your (only!) heir on the suspicion that they might be a squib and not merely late to bloom is simply insane from any marginally rational perspective.

Unfortunately, the WW prides itself on illogic. And there seem to be some Pureblood families, like the Longbottoms, that would rather have their family name die out than admit that they had ever thrown a squid.

(By the modern day, maintaining the quill would have institutional momentum behind it, and is still arguably useful in preventing infanticide among the saner, relatively moderate factions. So, there's no reason to think the system would change.)

Also, if you have to register your child, how would any muggleborn ever be discovered?

Personally, I like Jodel's idea of a quill that scans for minute outbreaks that occur during the trauma of birth. Any infant with enough power to register at that age should have no problem channeling magic later. I'd supplement that with a scanning function that monitors magical outbreaks among older children who may have grown into their power late, or children who moved to the UK after they were born.

Finally, dumping a magically raised child in a muggle orphanage isn't really a risk to Secrecy when one considers the existence of magical contracts and Unbreakable Vows that 5 year olds can make and be bound by. There's probably a standardized contract or spell an identified squib child is forced into when they're abandoned that would tie their tongue or otherwise paralyze them if they ever did try to reveal the WW to muggles. (Obviously, this wouldn't apply to actual wizards and witches - they're REAL human beings and deserving of respect and autonomy. That's why they get thrown into Azkaban with soul-sucking demons when they threaten Secrecy instead of 'merely' silenced.)

[jana_ch]

I don't think canon (as opposed to fanon and Pottermore/PotterWiki) has anything that can compel anyone to keep a secret. Even an Unbreakable Vow is entirely breakable. It's just that if you break it, you die. That's why the twins' attempt to trap Ron into an Unbreakable Vow is so horrific: a child could not possibly avoid breaking it and losing his life.

As you say, the Potterverse is proudly illogical. Wizarding culture shows no sign of caring about what is beneficial for children. Throw 'em to the wolves, and devil take the hindmost! No wonder they're dying out.

[terri_testing]

Er--I'd point out that if a Squib found itself unable to keep an Unbreakable Vow not to speak of magic, that might be regarded by some parties as a desirable outcome....?

[oryx_leucoryx]

Doesn't an Unbreakable Vow require the one making it to have magic? I thought all three parties had to have magic for the bonding to work. I agree with jodel that it was the victim's own magic that eventually killed them.

[annoni_no]

I don't think we have canon either way. I think the most that you can draw from canon with certainty is the at least one party to the Vow, the bonder, has to have magic.

And (some) squibs have (some) magic. The question then is, if it is the bound party's own magic that kills them, does the squib have enough?

[annoni_no]

Canon doesn't have the exact spell I outlined, but it comes very, very close.

-The Tongue-Tying Curse, which does present you from speaking (certain) things - in DH it doesn't allow the victim say anything unless they can deny killing (specifically murdering?) Dumbledore. Moody must also have included a component that restricted the victim from falsely denying the allegation, meaning that honesty and perhaps intent can determine whether the spell is triggered. Without such a restriction the spell is useless, and it would be completely out of character for Moody to overlook something that obvious given his obsession with rooting out lies and deception - Barty Jr. did not leave a massive pile of Sneakoscopes and lie detectors lying around his office because Moody thought such things were pointless junk and didn't care about what they were designed to reveal. (You can handwave, “all Rowling's characters are terminally stupid,” if you like, but that strikes me as reading against the grain just to get in another cheap dig at Rowling.)

Since the spell works by causing the tongue to physically curl back on itself, it's a very, very small step to extend that physical incapacitation to paralyzing the hands or limbs if someone tried to write or sign the information instead.

-The parchment jinx demonstrates that binding spells can be attached to anyone signing a contract (no known limitations on what can be contained in that contract) that will activate if and only if the signer violates the terms presented when they signed. Since Hermione says that she “put a jinx on that piece of parchment,” rather than, “I used a jinxed parchment,” or, “I used a contract jinx,” it sounds like she deliberately chose the retributive acne but could have used something else. It wouldn't be the first or last time she put punishing her enemies over safer, surer ways of neutralizing them, as we saw when she blackmailed Rita Skeeter without informing any authorities she was an animagus, and led Umbridge to the centaurs instead of, say, Grawp, when she needed to get rid of her.

And of course an Unbreakable Vow is entirely canon and would make it impossible for a squib to even attempt to snitch without dying and taking the secret to their grave.

[jana_ch]

Yes, the Tongue-Tying Curse is one.

The Unbreakable Vow, however, is like Hermione's vicious-but-useless acne curse in that is doesn't prevent you from going against the terms of the promise, it just punishes you afterwards. You won't take the secret to your grave, you'll go to your grave after revealing the secret.

By the way, Hermione's acne curse would not have been useless if she had told all the DA members that the parchment (which she presented as a simple list) was a magically binding contract, and the punishment for breaking it was to have "SNEAK" spelled across your face in pimples. Then those who had wanted to join a private study group instead of swearing themselves into a secret society could have quit right away, and the others could have made the decision to talk or not with full knowledge of the consequences. As it is, the acne curse did nothing to protect the secret.

[annoni_no]

It depends on how the Unbreakable Vow is phrased. If you bind them to "I will not reveal the WW to anyone outside of it," then yeah, that's useless. If you bind them to "I will not ATTEMPT to reveal the WW to anyone outside of it," they'll be dead the first time they try to open their mouth or put pen to paper - the secret's safe.

[terri_testing]

Unfortunately, we have terribly little information to work with here. Harry was in a bizarre situation, and what we saw happen with him--which is the only upbringing we saw directly--need have NO correlation to either how a Muggle-raised magical child, or how a child of a witch and a wizard, are normally raised.

However, there's Tom on the one hand, and Neville on the other. At least in the 1930's, if the Quill resgisters a child at birth Tom was registered, and presumably, monitored, right up until he went to Hogwarts. Nothing that he did before he got his wand and was presumed able to "control" his magic would be illegal, okay....

Except. The point of the Statute of Secrecy is that the WW is TERRIFIED of Muggles' reactions if we knew magic were real. They're bending every effort to make sure we never know. Letting a magical kid rampage through an orphanage does not further that goal.

If they knew from Tom Riddle's birth that he was a wizard destined eventually to attend Hogwarts, they should have been monitoring him at that orphanage, to make sure he didn't blow the gaff before he himself was in on the secret. And it's absolutely clear that Tom was NOT monitored before he got his wand.

Accepting that Albus coveried up (and/or accepted as juvenile pranks) Tom's pre-Hogwarts career of killing animals, stealing, and rendering fellow orphans into insanity is one thing; having the WW bureaucracy independently do the same, for no apparent reason, is another.

And even if the WW DID notihing about Tom's magical actions, they'd be noted on his file before Albus ever got Mrs. Cole drunk to interrogate her.

So. Tom was NOT monitored by the Ministry before his Hogwarts visit.

Nor, really, was anyone. In fact, I'm starting to believe in a raggedy process..... no ONE TRUE REGISTRY OF ALL YE REALM'S WITCHES E WIZARDS at all.

[nx74defiant]

The WW doesn't learn from it's mistakes.

Image during the witch hunts what would have happened to a Muggle born witch or wizard. They would have experience things that made the Dursleys look kind. But we see nothing showing the WW tries to track Muggle borns and protect them if needed.

In one fanfiction we learn Tom's actions at the orphanage were retaliation. One of Tom's victims was an older boy who abused the younger ones, until he made the mistake to go after Tom.

Were Tom and Lily only ones in history to deliberate do magic before getting their wands? Even if most magical children can't control it shouldn't there be a policy to watch for accident outburst that could bring unwanted attention?

Of course DD never tells anyone about Tom, so nothing is done about future rising dark lords.