I don't like this choice for the movie. "Obliviate" wipes out memories; they are not recoverable. In the book, Hermione plants a false memory in her parents which she eventually reverses, but if you are watching the movie, you are essentially watching Hermione remove herself from her parent's lives forever. She can never go back to them. Anybody else have a problem with this?
share[deleted]
As I have never read the books I didn't know of the alteration.
I never had a problem with her using the Obliviate-spell on her parents though. In fact, for me it made the whole opening of this film absolutely deadly serious. I can vividly remember welling up when seeing this in the cinema, because it was just so heart wrenchingly real! From the first movie - that was like this colourful feel good movie with all these kids learning magic spells and how to fly a broom stick - to this pitch black movie about a world on the brink of war...and then we see Hermione erase herself from her own parents memories, to protect them.
It is infinately sad!
It's one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the whole franchise.
Hermione loves her parents, she's proud to have a muggle family despite so many people telling her she's a "mud blood" for her to obliviate herself, to erase herself from her loving family was the bravest thing she could have done. She protected them, by sacrificing herself.
The spells were completely different which was jarring, I agree.
Obliviate completely wipes memories and it's unknown if the wiped memories can ever be returned, in fact, it is an official job within the Ministry of Magic to be an Obliviator, showing that it is a difficult spell to get right and any poorly performed version of the spell can go badly wrong. The only attempt to reverse a powerful memory charm is seen in the books with Voldemort and Bertha Jorkins and he has to torture her to break it.
What Hermione did was implant a false memory which she used out of love for her parents. Ironically, the only other times we see this spell is when Tom Riddle uses it to frame his uncle for the murders of his father and paternal grandparents and where he frames a house-elf for the murder of an elderly witch he wishes to steal artefacts from.
Yeah, to be fair, that's rather disturbing. I mean, what have Hermione's parents done to her that upset her? - not that I was asking you personally.
It's just that I know Hermione's parents are muggles, but surely that doesn't make them bad.
in a later scene we see a death eater enter Hermione's home. it is empty. her parents are not there. they have moved. that is what Hermione intended. she used obliviate not to harm them but to protect them. to get them out of the way. to keep them safe. had she not done so that deatheater would have taken them prisoner for questioning about Hermione and they would later have been killed.
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain (Isaac Asimov)
You know what I gathered from this scene? Her parents would have discovered that whoever takes their family pictures seems to have horrible composition of photos; leaving jarring empty spaces and taking pictures of plain backdrops. (Look back into the scene, with those in mind it's pretty funny)
But seriously, the movies never really established the strict rules on spells as were done in the books, a lot of liberties were taken and it's fine. I'm surprised some of the responses here have interpreted it as Hermione harming her parents, rather than protecting them.
Obliviate is used in COS by Prof Lockhart & he ends up not having a recollection about anything. Is that because of a rebounded spell from Ron's broken wand? Or is it a creative misstep they ignored for Hermione's parents?
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Recently re-watched DH1. I think it's a nice scene.
However, & this is picking nits, so be it after many re-watches, wouldn't Hermione's parents run into their neighours &/or family members who were not put under the same spell 'Where's your daughter?' 'What daughter??' 'The daughter who babysat my kids for years', etc...
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I think hermionw erased her parents nemory to protect them
shareIt's not a problem - it's in her nature to be self-sacrificing
In the second film, she offers to go with Harry into the woods, to die alongside him in other words just so he won't die alone
It's tragic, but internally consistent and deliberately "heavy"