What is with the "Prank" ? - Pensieve Recall

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 99995

> bboy_mn wrote:
I think we need to give the Pensieve more credit that is obvious at
first glance. When we move through life our minds are recording a
great deal more information than we are consciously aware of. 
 
We walk down the street and see ants on the sidewalk, but they are so
insignificant to our current mental focus that we block them from our
conscious mind; in other words, we ignore them. But that doesn't mean
the visual images that entered our eyes were not recorded in our
subconscious. <snip>
 

This has been demonstrated by placing people under hypnosis in a
police investigations for example. People who have no conscious
knowledge of certain details are able to recall them when the barrier
between their conscious and subconscious memory is lowered. The data
is there even though they have no conscious recall. 
<snip>
 
So, given all that, I personally don't think the Pensieve has to
'fudge' much on the details. Even if, for example, Snape did not look
over toward the tree where James and his friends were sitting, he has
still seen that tree and the grounds around it many many times, and
his memory would have been able to fill in the voids of the moment
with general memories it had previously stored. 
 
Expanding this example, let's say Snape was hidden from view by the
bush he was sitting next to. If he faintly heard Sirius or James
voices in the distance, he would have been able to form a mental image
of them from general knowledge of what they looked like and where they
were on the grounds. So, he could have a fairly accurate mental image
without actually looking. Then when he stood up to walk away, his
preconceived mental image would have been spontaniously adjusted when
he glanced in their direction. This is true even if he generally
ignored them as he got up and turned to walk away. 
 
All these examples are trying to point to the fact that our brain
records tremendous volumes of data as we move through life. Volumes of
data of which a substantial portion never registers with our conscious
mind.
 
Based on that, I don't have a problem with the Pensieve showing
unusually rich detail when it plays back a memory.

Carol:
Although I agree with you that the Pensieve is not "fudging" the
details, I think there's a simpler explanation: Magic. 

IMO, it's not a subjective memory, even a subjective memory amplified
by unconsciously recorded details; or rather, the moment a personal,
subjective memory is placed in the Pensieve, it becomes magically
transformed into an objective record of what happened.

As I've said fairly frequently, we are not in Severus's mind as he
takes the exam or tries to fight off the Maruaders any more than we're
in Dumbledore's mind as he witnesses the trials (or hearings) in the
MoM. All the participants in the all of the Pensieve memories,
including the owner of the particular memory, are viewed from the
outside and Harry can move around inside the memories at will, away
from the person who "owns" the memory. He happens to sit next to
Dumbledore and overhear his conversations with Moody in the MoM, but
he could have walked around and overheard conversations that
Dumbledore didn't hear, exactly as he does in the memory of the DADA
exam and the events leading up to "Snape's worst memory." He's an
unseen presence inside the events *as they happened,* an eye witness
years after the fact, unhampered by the limitations of Dumbledore's or
Snape's personal perception or their subjective interpretation. That's
what makes the Pensieve so useful, after all. It removes the memories
from their subjective context so they can be studied (or hidden from a
Legilmens, as the case may be).

Severus almost certainly didn't overhear, even distantly, the werewolf
conversation, which had to have been conducted out of hearing of
anyone except the Marauders. They certainly wouldn't have been so
indiscreet as to let him or any other Slytherin overhear them. We, the
readers, hear the conversation because Harry wanders away from Severus
(who is absorbed in his DADA exam, undoubtedly retaking the test in
his mind) to keep up with the person he was interested in knowing more
about, his father. But because the Pensieve recreates the incident and
the people involved whether or not the owner or the memory was aware
of them, Harry can overhear exactly what they said even though Snape
didn't. (It's just possible that Snape has masochistically engaged in
the same tour through his own memory, but his awareness at the time or
in the present has no effect on the objective presentation of the memory.)

BTW, I wonder if all the senses are stored in the memories. Harry can
sit on a bench, so he's not just hearing and seeing as we do in a
dream. Can he smell the stale air in the classroom or feel the breeze
ruffling his hair? Could he touch a person in the memory even though
they wouldn't feel his touch? 

Carol, who wishes we could see a memory of the so-called Prank, which
I'm sure had nothing to do with uncanonical magical barriers or Peter
Pettigrew