Rambling thoughts on the Pensieve.

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 74777

My theory, and I have many, both good and bad, regarding the operation
of the Pensieve are outlined below. 

How does a Pensieve work?

Does you body physically travel into the memory stored in the Pensieve?

Once place in the Pensieve, is that memory gone from your mind?

If it is gone from your mind, then how can you ever retrieve it from
the Pensieve if you don't even remember that it exists?

Stay tuned for answers to all the questions and more.

Where to begin...?

Storing Memories in the Pensieve-
Let say I put a memory in the Pensieve, and it has therefore been
removed from my mind. How can I get it back if I can't remember it? I
mean, if I can't remember it, it would seem that I would have no
knowledge that the memory ever existed. Given that, how could I ever
recall it from the Pensieve? The only way I can think of would be to
rummage though the stored thoughts randomly until you stumble across
something that seemed important. Seems like a good storage method, but
a lousy retrieval method.

Even if a thought is literally removed from your mind and stored in
the Pensieve, that doesn't mean you forget it. A memory is much more
that a single isolated event. There are the memories leading up to the
event, there are the memories related to and following the event,
there are also the times when you pondered the memories; in other
word, memories of remembering the original event. The point is that
even if you hide the details of a memorable event in the pensieve, you
still retain enough secondary information, to organize and recall
thoughts from the pensieve.

You could ask, if you have memories of remembering the event wouldn't
that in essense be the same memory and therefore need to be removed?
These memories of remembering would be much deeper in you mind, they
would also be more fragmented and cluttered with the analysis you were
engaged in at the time. That would cloud and confuse these secondary
memories and make them much harder to access and interpret. 

Also, keep in mind that many of our memories are not the original
memory, but us remembering the last time we thought of the event.
Because of this successive layering of memory upon memory, the events
get a little distorted and frequently indealized. We remember the old
neighborhood as a quiet street lined with stately elm trees, but when
we go back to visit it, the stately elms are really scraggly box elder
trees.

The point...?
These secondary memories are not that uses full to someone trying to
extract information from your mind, but they are sufficient to allow
the owner, to organize and recall events from the Pensieve.


What are the functional dynamics of Pensieve's operation?

Despite what we see when Harry is in a pensieve memory, I do not
believe that a person's body leaves the room and travels to the
memory.  It is a person's sense of self, or self-awareness that
travels into the pensieve and manifests itself to the viewer as his
physical body. 

OoP when Harry is in the OWL test that James, Lily, Sirius, Remus, and
Snape are attending, the scene strongly implies that Harry doesn't
have physical form. When he sees his father, he rushes across the room
and apparently moves through solid objects. That hints that Harry's
perceieved body is really intangible.

When you walk into a room in which someone is using a pensieve in the
same manner as Harry used the pensieve, you will see that person
standing there staring blankly into the pensieve. Staring 'blankly'
because their self-awareness is busy in the pensieve, and their mind
preoccupied with the events they are viewing.

When Dumbledore appears to join Harry in the pensieve, it is really
the physical Dumbledore putting his hand on the physical Harry's
shoulder. When that happens, Dumbledore's self-awareness or sense of
self has joined Harry's, but without leaving Dumbledore's body the way
Harry's has. When Harry turns to face the second Dumbledore in the
Pensieve memory, it is really Harry's physical body turning to face
the physical Dumbledore. When Harry perceives himself to be flying out
of the pensieve, it is really the physical Dumbledore pulling the
physical Harry away from the pensieve. As he does this, Harry sense of
self that is occupied in the pensieve memory comes rushing back into
Harry's body.

Can't prove that but I see a certain logical continuity in an
intangible sense of self joining an intangilble memory, as opposed to
some combination of the joining of tangible and intangible.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

bboy_mn