Will Uncle Ted play the role of a Hogwarts ghost? Memory, dementia and mysteries of the past.

    Two things keep me blogging and attending events like the Harry Potter Academic Conference year after year: the scholarship and the friendships I've formed with other scholars. I'm not alone in this:  check out the latest Potterversity episode for commentary from others who feel the same.

    One such friend is David Martin, loyal Hufflepuff and retired computerscientist, who I first met at LeakyCon 2014, where we bonded over the shared experience of being several decades older than the average attendee. Since then, we've met regularly at events such as Misti-Con and on a near-annual basis at the Chestnut Hill Harry Potter Conference. Viewers of the Hogwarts Tournament of Champions will remember him as the standout player of the victorious Badger team, for which I happily cheered him on, despite my place in the Ravenclaw studio audience. 

    David recently surprised and delighted me with a charming relic from my own field of behavior analysis:  a note his mother received in the 1940's from B.F. Skinner himself, along with Skinner's own guidelines for his famous baby tender box, which would eventually be marketed as the Air Crib. 

Note:  please do not confuse this crib with the Skinner boxes developed for use in Skinner's work with rats and pigeons; they are very different things, as the link above explains. 

I will be delighted to display this piece of my disciplinary history in my office and to be able to boast of possessing the autograph of one of the giants in my field, or, at least, that of his secretary.

    Like me, David's fondness for Harry Potter led him to read the Cormoran Strike series, and he, too appreciates the connections between the two series. At the most recent HPAC. David gave me another history-themed gift in the form of his fantastic talk, "About the Hogwarts Ghosts." I had been mulling over Uncle Ted's dementia, and during Davi'd presentation, something clicked with me. The gist of David's thesis was, Hogwarts ghosts are atypical literary ghosts, compared to those seen in Shakespeare and Dickems. Rather than seeking vengance, or bringing warnings about the afterlife, "Hogwarts ghosts represent the pervasive influence of the past on the present." (You can read his full abstract at the conference program here). Once might be tempted to call them living history books, except, of course, they are all dead. But, from the literal History Professor Binns, to Moaning Myrtle, to Nearly Headless Nick to Helena Ravenclaw, the ghosts serve a function of telling Harry and friends things about the past that help them resolve their current predicament. What does this have to do with the still-living Uncle Ted? Find out after the jump. 

Throughout my reading of Strike, I have been on the lookout for a "that awful boy*" moment--- some crucial bit of information that Strike either doesn't know or whose significance he misunderstands. So far, there have been five "moments" in the Strike series where we are told Strike "never knew" something. 

1. Strike had never discovered how Uncle Ted had found out where they were living; all he knew was that he and Lucy had let themselves into the squat one afternoon to find their mother’s enormous brother standing in the middle of the room, threatening Shumba with a bloody nose. Within two days, he and Lucy were back in St. Mawes.  -CC
2. Why Uncle Ted supported the Gunners, when he had lived all his life in Cornwall, was a question Strike had never asked. -SW
3. Precisely what Leda had said in the note she left on the kitchen table, Strike had never known. -TB
4. Why Dave Polworth, pocket don of the class, had decided to befriend the new boy had never been satisfactorily explained, even to Strike...By the end of that first day Polworth had become both friend and champion, making it his business to impress upon their classmates all the reasons that Strike was worthy of their respect: he was a Cornishman born, a nephew to Ted Nancarrow of the local lifeguard, he didn’t know where his mum was and it wasn’t his fault if he spoke funny. -TB
5. Jonny Rokeby: "There's a bunch of stuff you don't know, about your mother and all her f*cking men."-TB

While most of Robin's questions about Strike's background have involved his relationship with Charlotte, and therefore matter much less post-TRG, there was one time where Strike seemed to go out of his way to avoid satisfying her curiosity, namely, when discussing his medal for bravery in CoE. 

6. "There's nothing heroic about being in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"You're a decorated veteran."
"I wasn't decorated for being blown up. That happened before."
"You've never told me that." She turned to face him, but he refused to be sidetracked. 

Who is the one person alive who could potentially hold the answers to all six points?  Uncle Ted certainly knows #1-3 and #6, and could well have at leasr some knowledge about #4 and 5, too. Now that we know how Strike learned Latin, the story of how he got his medal is the last major event in his personal past about which we still wonder, While it's hard to understand what Ted's preferred football team and little Dave's preschool behavior could have to do with the ultimate mystery of the series-- who killed Leda?--#1, 3 and 5 could all be relevant to that question. 

One interesting trait of dementia patients is that they tend to lose memories in reverse order, the more recent ones first, then the older ones. For example, my grandmother, even near the end of her life, could recognize a picture of my father as a young man, but could not recognize the 60-year old man sitting beside her as her son. My father, who also died of dementia, although he had lived in the same house for nearly 40 years, would give the street he lived on as a child when asked his address. 

Ted, therefore, could well find himself, like the Hogwarts ghosts, living in the past. He could well remember events from Strike's childhood, but not remember the reasons that he and Joan chose not to tell him once he was an adult. He might cease to recognize his adult nephew, and say something about his sister to Strike, thinking he is a stranger. He could even reveal something about the Nancarrow family that pre-dates Strike's birth, such as the reason the young Leda was so eager for a new dress and a new name, or why Ted defied his father to escape into the Army. 

Personally, i'd love it if Strike took Robin to the care facility to meet Ted, or, if she showed up to offer moral support during a difficult time, and Ted spilled the beans about the medal to her. Or course, there are other ways secrets could come out, too. The job of cleaning out the St. Mawes home and preparing it for sale will likely fall to Strike and Lucy; maybe the note is still there. 

In any case, it is likely that Ted alone holds some crucial information about Strike's past, and despite his dementia, he could well be positioned to, like the Hogwarts ghosts, impart this knowledge in a way that will illuminate Strike's present.  

*The allusion here is to Order of the Phoenix, where Aunt Petunia reveals that she learned about dementors when she heard "that awful boy" telling Lily about them. Harry responds angrily, telling her to just say his parents' names his that's who she's talking about.  Petunia does not respond, and readers will later learn that she was talking about not Lily and James, but Lily and Snape.