[HPforGrownups] Snape, Harry and the Pensieve WAS Re: Pensieves objectivity

[Pen Robinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 79898


On Thursday, Sep 4, 2003, at 19:30 Europe/London, msbeadsley wrote:

<quite a lot of snippages, hope nothing crucial has been cut>

>   Harry's one previous experience of the Pensieve made it
> appear almost like a file cabinet for historical documents.  Do we
> have canon that Snape used the Pensieve as a journal?  (I thought it
> was more like a therapeutic tool here, a thing Harry could not have
> known.)

It's an interesting image, a filing cabinet.  But... well, Harry was 
somewhat embarrassed, wasn't he, when present-day Dumbledore appeared 
beside him within the memory in GOF.  He was, plainly, perfectly aware 
that he was doing something he ought not to have been doing.  Even 
rifling through someone else's filing cabinet without permission is 
errant behaviour.   Dumbledore is, as usual, lenient with his 
transgression - possibly, it just occurs to me, this is a precursor of 
Dumbledore's downright stupidity throughout most of OOtP!  But 
Dumbledore did, as far as I recall, make it plain enough that these 
were his own thoughts in the Pensieve.
>
> Pen Robinson:  Particularly if the diary was a truly *personal*
> document detailing the writer's feelings.  I don't think it matters
> if the diary was left on a desk in the living room while the host
> went to answer the door, or whatever - the guest has *no right* to
> open it.
>
> msbeadsley: That's a big IF.

Is it?  A person's *thoughts* are going to be personal, aren't they?   
Even though Pensieve memories are presented as something more like 3D 
cinema than a view from a single camera*, there must, surely, be an 
element of the thinker inherent in the selection of those thoughts, if 
nothing else.

[* I think this is a pity!  What JKR has done makes it easier to tell 
the story, but I think it's somewhat illogical to present a memory from 
outside the perception of the rememberer.  Besides, wouldn't it have 
been interesting if Harry had been inhabiting Dumbledore's body during 
the GOF scenes, and Snape's during this one!  How much more intense the 
humiliation would have been!  Ah well.]

> Another one:  if my host was someone I couldn't
> escape who seemed to delight in tormenting me, you bet I'd be on ANY
> clues about that, the split-second opportunity presented itself.  I'd
> consider it a matter of self-preservation.

Ah.

We don't have a meeting of minds here.
>
> I don't see how we got from "(p)articularly if the diary was a truly
> *personal* document detailing the writer's feelings" to "a violation
> even worse than reading someone's diary."

It seems to me that the diary analogy is as close as I can get to the 
idea of prying into someone else's thoughts.   There is, however, a 
difference between something written-down-and-read, and something 
experienced-and-seen.   I'm not sure how to quantify it - perhaps 
someone else can do so?  At any rate, what I mean by "a violation even 
worse than reading someone's diary" was that sneaking into the Pensieve 
to see directly what was in Snape's mind was considerably more 
intrusive than reading his written notes could possibly have been.

> Anyway, it *is* closer to
> merely bad manners; "well-nigh unforgiveable" according to canon
> would amount to barely short of Imperius, Cruciatus, or AK. <bg>

Pushing it a bit there!  <g>  Not, incidentally, that I think of bad 
manners as 'merely' anything - manners are important - but I've never 
forgiven the persons who collaborated to read my diary...
>
> OT but germane:  People do read other people's diaries.  (It's
> happened at least once to everyone I know who keeps a journal.)

People do all sorts of things.  Don't make it right.  Doesn't even make 
it acceptable.

> many years ago when it happened to me
> with a boyfriend I had specifically warned off this behavior I
> was "mightily peeved" for months; BUT, having said that, I also have
> to say that I had expressed a willingness to that boyfriend to tell
> him whatever it was he thought he might be able to find out behind my
> back.  And he was much, much older than fifteen (but not much
> additionally older when I dumped him).

Did his reading your diary not put an instant end to your relationship? 
  If not, you are more tolerant than I am!
>
> BTW, to anyone who might say that Snape's reaction was based on what
> he projected Harry doing with what he'd found, I applaud your
> perspicuity:  that is entirely valid.  Since Harry showed up Snape
> has been reacting to who he thinks Harry is and what he thinks Harry
> would do; Snape has never bothered to check his assumptions.

Yes, this is an interesting point.  As I read it, at first, the memory 
in question was so deeply humiliating to Snape that he could not bear 
to think of someone else - particularly Harry - witnessing his 
humiliation.  Especially as he assumes Harry is so like James that 
Harry would be as amused as his father was by James' behaviour.

[I spose that's why Snape is so insistent on being addressed formally - 
he needs the reassurance that he's a person of consequence now.]

However, the idea of Snape expecting the whole of Gryffindor House to 
be sniggering at him... just amplifies the horror of the situation from 
his point of view, doesn't it?  It still isn't an excuse for his 
physical maltreatment of Harry, but emotionally it's easy to understand 
why he reacts so extremely.
>
> Harry was starved for information at the time; I understand what he
> did.

Hmm... yes, he went into the Pensieve looking for something specific, 
but that wasn't what he found.  Which to my mind makes the 'personal 
journal' analogy more valid than the 'filing cabinet' one.  Snape was 
not (at least, not in this instance) hiding information, he was hiding 
self-revelation.  Perhaps he knew that this was such a very tender spot 
that if Harry touched it during the lesson, Snape would find it very 
hard to maintain the necessary control - and hence put it somewhere 
'safely' out of the way.

> (As a matter of fact, the appropriateness of the behavior aside
> for a moment, if Snape hadn't caught him and gone so very out of
> control, what Harry found in the Pensieve might have gone a ways
> toward enlightening him and making him more understanding of Snape.)
>
I think it will yet do so.  I think - I certainly hope! - Harry will 
come to a more mature understanding of both James and Snape, following 
the things he saw in the Pensieve and the things he learned during his 
Occlumency lessons.  I think, and hope, Snape has also begun to learn 
the same kind of lesson about Harry - though this invasion of privacy 
has undoubtedly set it back a long way.  It's a pity Snape didn't 
realise how horrified Harry was by his father's behaviour...  ah well, 
more luvverly angst to come.  <g>

Pen