How important is the right sluggish memory?

[lucianam73]

No: HPFGUIDX 142002


Dumbledore said in HBP, Chapter 'A Sluggish Memory':

'It is most important that we secure the true memory, Harry... how important, we will only know when we have seen the real thing.'

What if they haven't seen the real thing? What if the memory Slughorn gave Harry was not the one he'd been hiding, but the cover-up?

Since the first time I read HBP, I thought the memory Slughorn was trying to hide was this one:

'_ you'll go wrong, boy, mark my words.'

'I don't know anything about Horcruxes and I wouldn't tell you if I did! Now get out of here at once and don't let me catch you mentioning them again!'

The other scenario, the pretty one with the students sitting around Slughorn, everyone very cozy, with the trademark crystallised pineapples, seemed too perfect to be true.  

Dumbledore remarked the tempering of the memory had been very 'crudely done' and called it a 'transvesty of a recollection'.  

Now, he is talking about the magical work of a wizard that, according to Dumbledore himself, is 'extremely able'.  We already knew that, because when we first met Slughorn, he had performed a lot of complicated magic in a very small period of time (the fake DE attack). So when Dumbledore says Slughorn performed poor magic, it's more than likely it doesn't mean the same thing as he saying Neville performed poor magic. What Dumbledore calls Slughorn's 'crudely done' magic is more likely to be something actually elaborate and difficult if you consider Neville's, or Harry's, POV. 

So, what Harry thought was a genuine memory could  have been, or was, in my opinion, Slughorn's little farse. It looked real enough to Harry (just like the fake DE attack), but to Dumbledore it was very badly done, because the true memory was still there 'beneath the alterations'.

But! But but? There are indeed several buts, and I can think of at least three god ones.

But the big news about the seven Horcruxes? Wasn't that important enough?

If the memory Harry retrieved from Slughorn isn't a complete farse, but a true memory he might have used to mix up with the foggy one (the one he's really trying to hide), the seven Horcruxes thing is solid information allright. But Dumbledore did say, ' how important (the true memory), we will only know when we have seen the real thing. ' So I presume the info in Slughorn's real memory is even more important than the knowledge of how many Horcruxes Voldemort planned to make.

But Harry had taken the Felix Felicis! Nothing could have gone wrong!

Now did he take Felix Felicis? I wrote another post (message # 141962) questioning if the liquid he drunk really was FF. And even if it was, what is luck, really? Does it translate as getting Slughorn's true memory right now? If Harry did take FF maybe it was luckier for him not to get that memory then; I'm not JKR and don't know the ways of the plot, so how can I know what is 'lucky' in terms of her plot and Harry's quest?

But Dumbledore would have known it was not the foggy memory, wouldn't he?

Not necessarily... Please follow me:

Note that amongst all Harry's meetings with Dumbledore to see those memories, the only one that occurs by chance, and not by previous appointment. 

When Harry leaves Hagrid's hut just after the burial, Nearly Headless Nick tells him Dumbledore returned to the school an hour ago _ he says he 'got it from the Bloody Baron, who saw him arrive'. So Harry darts off to Dumbledore's office with the memory.

ALL other encounters Harry and Dumbledore have in HBP are previously arranged by the headmaster. Harry always gets a letter (when he was at the Dursleys') or a scroll of parchment, telling him the time and place of their meeting. 

Please note JKR informs us very clearly of every single arrangement! Those were:

- letter brought by Hedwig
- scrolls of parchment handed to Harry by several students (in order, Jack Sloper, Demelza Robins, Ginny, Hermione and Luna).

On a smaller note, we are also informed that a detention Snape gave Harry had to be re-scheduled because Harry 'already had a meeting with Dumbledore'. Of course a meeting with the headmaster would be more important than a detention with the DADA teacher, but JKR saw fit to inform us the timing of Harry and Dumbledore's meeting was NOT changed anyway.

Another small note: Scrimgeour is dead curious about Dumbledore's whereabouts (nobody has been seeing much of Dumbledore, actually). That should make us curious about what the headmaster's been up to, right?

Connecting those points together, we get the picture of an elusive headmaster, always away from Hogwarts, presumably collecting the memories for his Pensieve sessions with Harry, and always carefully informing Harry of when they are supposed to meet to see those memories. 

Well, when Harry hears (by chance?) Dumbledore's in Hogwarts and runs to his office to show him the memory he's just got, he breaks a pattern. And we have evidence something is indeed different: when Dumbledore pours the contents of the bottle into the Pensieve this time, he uses his left hand. In all previous Pensieve sessions he had used his right hand (the injured one) to handle the bottles. 

I'm not saying it's an impostor pretending to be Dumbledore (could it be, though?). I think something else happened. The breaking of the 'precise time pattern' means, in my opinion, that the Dumbledore in that specific Pensieve session (the one right after the burial) was somehow different than the 'other Dumbledores' in all other Pensieve sessions. He had, or more likely, lacked, information the 'other Dumbledores' had. 

Now, am I talking crazy? How can one person act differently, and/or have different information at different times? Aha. 

Precisely. One person does act differently and has different information, depending on which point in time that person is.

I think Dumbledore has been Time Travelling all through HBP. That would explain why Scrimgeour so desperately sought Harry's aid to tell him where the headmaster was, why Dumbledore always carefully timed his meetings with Harry. And the reason Dumbledore didn't recognise the memory Harry presented him after the burial as the wrong one was because he was a 'different Dumbledore' from the one who had showed Harry the Sluggish memory. Meaning, 'Dumbledore right after burial' and 'Dumbledore showing Harry Sluggish memory' each had different amounts of information, and probably 'Dumbledore showing Harry Sluggish memory' had more info than the 'other' Dumbledore.

Confusing? I think so, too. Think of PoA. When Harry and Hermione o back in time to save Sirius and Buckbeak, we have two sets of Harry-and-Hermione in the past. The difference between the 'from the future' and 'past' H-and-H is clearly shown when Harry-from-the-future is able to conjure the Patronus, and Harry-from-the-past is not. When Harry and Hermione use the Time Traveller again and return to the hospital wing, Harry now knows it was him, not his dad, who conjured the Patronus. He didn't know such before he Time-Travelled. 

So you see, the amount of information a person possesses varies terribly according to if that person is the 'person-from-the-future' or not, if they have returned from the Time Travel already or not. And in PoA the kids travelled only once (or rather twice, to the past and then back to the present). Imagine if Dumbledore has been travelling many times! No wonder he had to keep a schedule.

I suspect he uses that watch of him to Time Travel (the one we see in the first chapter or PS/SS). Now that Ron's got a similar one (from Dumbledore himself??) I suspect the kids will Time Travel again in Book 7.

Lucianam



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