Using the Piensive by eye Witnesses

justcarol67 justcarol67 at yahoo.com
Tue Feb 24 05:02:10 UTC 2004


No: HPFGUIDX 91520

"sawsan_issa" wrote:
>>This has probably been brought up, but in PoA, the eye 
witnesses to Peter Pettigrew being scabbers were HRH, 
Werewolf Lupin, and Convict Black, who were all considered 
weak witnesses. Well, we know from later books that the 
Piensive can withdraw thoughts, memories, etc as they are for 
further analysis. So why couldn't Dumbledore use the piensive of 
all of the eye witnesses before Fudge to prove Sirius's 
innocence and Pettigrew's treason? In fact, why couldn't DD use 
it on Harry in GoF to prove as an eye witness account that Moldy 
Voldy was back?<<
> 
Pippin:
Snape had already told Fudge that Harry, Hermione and Ron 
were  bewitched by the Confundus Curse.  Without 
Scabbers/Pettigrew, there was no way to prove that their 
memories hadn't been altered--the Pensieve viewer might 
behold an  objective third party view of  events that never took 
place.  By the time Lupin was available to give testimony, Black 
would have been kissed, anyway.   And the Pensieve would also 
have shown Harry, Ron and Hermione attacking Snape--if they 
were allowed to be in their right minds, they'd have been 
expelled.
> 
In GoF, Fudge believed that Harry was deranged--so his 
memories of events would also have been dismissed as 
delusory. 

It is also very probable that the Pensieve is a "one of a kind" 
object and not acceptable as evidence.


Carol:
Pippin brings up some good points about why the Pensieve wasn't used
at the time to prove Sirius's innocence, and now that he's dead, it
may seem to be a moot point, but I think many readers (and Harry)
still want to see Sirius's name cleared, so why not use the Pensieve
for that purpose? Setting aside Pippin's point about HRH attacking
Snape, which might well be a good reason not to use the Pensieve even
now, but IMO there's an even better reason not to use it as evidence
in this instance: It wouldn't work.

I don't think just any wizard can remove a particular thought from his
own head. It takes a skilled occlumens like Snape or Dumbledore to do
it, and neither Snape nor Dumbledore was present to see Scabbers turn
into PP so their memories aren't available for the purpose. Taking a
thought from another person's head would no doubt be even more
difficult and dangerous if not impossible. So unless Lupin knows
enough about occlumency to remove his own memory of the incident (and
I don't think he does or he'd have taught Harry occlumency himself), I
don't think it would be possible to retrieve a usable memory for Fudge
or anyone else to look at, even if they would regard such a memory as
convincing evidence.

Carol





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