Two-way Mirror and other frustrations! (OotP Spoilers!)

[darrin_burnett]

No: HPFGUIDX 62936

Grey Wolf:

> 
> Harry did not want to remember the mirror - when he received it he was 
> angry at Sirius, so he simply put it in a trunk and forgot about it. 
> Harry has forgotten guifts often enough: the knive (he could've used it 
> in task 2, GoF) and the sneakoscope jump to mind.
> 

Darrin says: 

Not only was Harry angry at Sirius, but he had pretty decent reason to 
question whether Sirius was being cautious enough.  

Of course... Sirius COULD have reminded him about the mirror when Harry 
used the fireplace to talk  about the Pensieve scene, but it was pretty hectic 
once Harry heard footsteps.


> > (#2: in Snape's Pensieve, 
> > Snape's memory containing events of which he had no knowledge, 
> > essentially a POV shift.)
> 
> We have been told that Snape used to trail them constantly (by Sirius, 
> who is in doubt, but nonetheless). Besides, all the extra information 
> can be added by the person's imagination. In fact, most of our memories 
> are invented anyway - everyone unconsciously changes his memories to 
> remember them in the light that suits him or her best. That's at the 
> heart of the expression "100 people watching the same event will have 
> 100 different descriptions of it". Whatever Harry read wasn't 
> necesarily what was really written there - not even in Snape's paper, 
> which he might remember as better filled just because *he* is 
> remembering it. Pensieve scenes are always suspect, because human 
> memory is not as computer memory: it's fallible and has a tendency to 
> distort the facts, and fill the wholes as needed.
> 
> In a word, we remember what we want to remember.
> 


Darrin:

I agree with this concept, and would love canon that mitigated the disturbing 
images of James and Sirius in that scene,  but then how do we factor in Lupin 
and Sirius' ready agreement that what Harry saw was accurate?

Had Snape's memory shaded it to say, make him just innocently minding his 
own business when he might have done more to provoke it, wouldn't Lupin 
and Sirius said, "Hey, didn't you see Snape do such-and-such?" Of course, 
not having a Pensieve themselves, they might not have total recall.

Perhaps Sirius and Lupin knew they had done that kind of thing and it was 
heinous enough to fess up, but  Snape's version made James more evil than 
he really deserved to be made. 

This idea, though, that future imagination could cloud past memories, could 
explain how Snape's memory is full of Lupin being a werewolf, which we're 
not sure Snape KNEW as a fifth-year.

He knows it now, so when he yanks the memory out, he has perhaps 
extrapolated the Marauders bragging about Lupin being a werewolf.

Is this what you mean, Grey Wolf? 

GW:
 
> It would've been easier to simply not put the mirror at all. But 
> forgetting presents is well within Harry's character, as I said above.

Darrin:

Yes, it canonically fits.  Since it does, I feel safe in indulging in a touch of 
meta... it also makes Sirius' death all the more poignant because it could have 
been prevented AND it reinforces the notion that dead is dead. Sirius won't be 
contacting him from beyond through a simple magic tool.

Darrin