The Pensieve (again) (Was: Unfortunate!Peter)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 118314


Azriona wrote:
> <snip>
> 
> I can't trust that Pensieve.  We forget that we are seeing Peter 
> through *Snape's* eyes, and I think most would agree that as far as 
> the Marauders are concerned, Snape is hardly an impartial judge.  We 
> see James and Co. not as the boys they were, but as the boys they 
> were *to Snape*. <snip>

Carol responds:
A few quick points: 1) If the Pensieve distorted memories subjectively
in favor of the person whose memories they are, Snape would have had
no reason to hide this memory from Harry. Clearly, he found it
humiliating, in no way favorable to himself even though to us (and to
Harry), he appears to be an innocent victim. 2) The primary purpose of
a Pensieve is apparently not to conceal them from others but to *sift*
them ("sieve" = "sifter") for objective study outside the subjective
context of one's own mind, as Dumbledore does. 3) As I've already
noted, Harry does not see through Severus's eyes in this memory. He
walks around inside the memory, overhearing conversations and seeing
things (such as Lily's initials on James's DADA exam) that Seversu
could not possibly have seen. (He was intent on his own exam, his nose
almost touching the parchment. Moreover, James and his friends were
behind Severus, IIRC.)

I really think that the whole point of the Pensieve scene was to
reveal MWPP to Harry and to the reader as they really were. What is
the point of the scene otherwise? Any unreliability in this scene
would come, IMO, from Harry's interpretation of it via the limited
omniscient narrator and not from the memory itself. We do not know
Severus's thoughts or what he wrote on his paper or what he saw or
heard. We do know what was going on around him from an outsider's
perspective, more clearly than he, wrapped in his subjective thoughts
of the exam and the attack by James and Sirius, could possibly have
perceived them at the time or in later recollections.

Note that Dumbledore's memories are similarly treated in GoF. No one
suggests that *they* are anything other than an objective record of
what really happened that DD has chosen to study to interpret the
strange happenings at Hogwarts regarding the TWT, Mr. Crouch, and the
supposed Alastor Moody.

Carol, who agrees that DD has more spies than Severus Snape but does
not think that Peter Pettigrew is one of them