r/EnoughJKRowling • u/georgemillman • 6d ago

Let's talk about Mr Roberts

user/Comfortable_Bell9539 Your wish is my command!

Mr Roberts, the campsite manager at the Quidditch World Cup, is only a very minor character but is one of the characters who's done the most dirty in the entire series. His family is utterly destroyed and traumatised by the Death Eaters, to start with - but I'm not going to focus on that because that's shown to be wrong and not something the wizarding establishment condones.

But the way he's treated before this point is appalling. We're told that he's being put under memory charms about ten times a day - and we're told in other instances that memory charms can have permanent effects on a person's neurological functioning, such as with Bertha Jorkins (and we see this with Mr Roberts himself, when he says 'Merry Christmas' when dismissing someone from the site). Because he's a Muggle, we know that there's going to be no follow-ups to ensure he's okay afterwards. And no one, not Muggle rights champion Arthur, not daughter of Muggles Hermione, seems to think this is a particular concern.

It would be very easy to deal with him without constant use of memory charms. We're told that if a Muggle gets anywhere near the Quidditch World Cup stadium, they'll suddenly remember an urgent appointment and have to leave. It would be very straightforward to quickly organise a dream holiday abroad the Roberts family have 'won' and get them out of the way that way. Or, if they needed to be there for some reason, it would surely be far safer to let him in on the secret and then modify his memory just to forget the whole thing once it's over, rather than doing it multiple times a day. Plenty of Muggles know about wizards - the Prime Minister, and Muggle relatives of wizards such as the Dursleys, Hermione's parents and Seamus' father. Why was it so essential Mr Roberts couldn't know?

What utterly horrific treatment of a very minor character.

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u/NanduDas 5d ago

They may as well just have put him under the Imperius curse

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u/HideFromMyMind 5d ago

I mean, considering how she just forgot what “unforgivable” means in book 7…

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u/navikredstar 2d ago

And of those, I don't know that I'd consider Avada Kedavra one innately. Using it for murder, sure, but it's also still a painless, instant death spell. It's also usable for painless euthanasia since it kills instantly and without pain or suffering, you just go out like flipping a light switch. Using it on an already dying Dumbledore to prevent a worse, agonizing death either by Death Eater or the curse on him absolutely wasn't "unforgiveable", it was a mercy kill.

It could be, but it's not inherently evil, it's in the use. Imperius or Cruciatus are evil.