Getting out of the pensieve

[mz_annethrope]

No: HPFGUIDX 127446


tinglinger <tinglinger at y...> wrote:
> That said, does anyone have any ideas what would
> happen if Snape's memory as stored in the pensieve
> somehow ended and Harry was still inside?
> Would Harry have been able to get out on his own?
> In the two instances where Harry "fell into" the 
> ensieve, he was "pulled out" before the memories
> were complete. Just curious....


mz_annethrope:

Oooooh! Cool question! I can think of a couple of possible clues.

1) When Harry falls into Dumbledore's thoughts in GoF, he goes from 
one thought to another in rapid succession. He would do the same 
thing in Snape's thoughts. So far we don't know if he ever tries to 
will himself out or if there is some way he can magic himself out. 
Otherwise I can think of two possibilities. One is that he falls out 
at the end of all of Snape's or Dumbledore's thoughts. The other is 
that the thoughts present a continuous loop and Harry is stuck 
unless he is able to magic himself out. 

My suspicion is that he is stuck. One reason for this is that in 
OotP, Hermione identifies as "time" the DE head in the bell jar, 
that rapidly turns from grown man's head to baby head and back. If 
Hermione is correct, then JKR has a cyclical NeoPlatonist or 
Origenist notion of time. 

Note that there are also time turners in the Room of Time. Hermione 
is able to get back to the present by using a time turner because 
she goes back to a specified point in the past, and time goes 
forward. Why no loop? Because the turning of the time turner works 
to limit the progress of time. It acts as a control. (Or perhaps it 
acts as a control on perception of time, but that gets nasty.) But 
in the pensieve there may be no way forward and out because there is 
no continuous connection between the thoughts in the pensieve and 
the present, except for the person who puts in the thoughts. There 
may be two Harrys when he falls into the pensieve; one fallen and 
the other unconscious (I'm tempted to say souless), standing on the 
floor. Since the people in the memories cannot see Harry there may 
be a mind-body separation: Harry's body in Snape's room, his mind in 
the pensieve.

2) The other possibility I can think of is to relate the pensieve to 
Riddle's Diary. Harry (and presumably Ginny) is able enter the Diary 
because Diary!Tom lets him. It is not clear how Harry gets out of 
the Diary (it's on p. 247 of the American edition), but his return 
to his bed doesn't seem to be under Harry's volition. Had it been, 
Harry probably would have stayed on and perhaps discovered that 
Hagrid was innocent. Which is exactly why Diary!Tom cuts short the 
memory. Since Snape doesn't expect Harry to snoop in the pensieve he 
doesn't use a spell to force Harry out. But he wills it (by brute 
force). Here the will of the thinker acts as the control on time.

It's possible that Harry's will is constricted or absent by his 
being in the pensieve or the diary. That's not so when he uses the 
time turner, but in that case the control was around his and 
Hermione's necks and instead of being trapped in a memory they were 
creating time.

Can JKR be an Origenist and a Co-Creationist at the same time?

mz_annethrope