The Pensieve and Occlumency (Was:Snape's Cruelty Has Purpose

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 150614

Deb wrote:
> <snip>
>
> Snape <snip> can not remove too many memories or LV would surely
spot the gaps and dig even deeper into Snape's memories - and probably
in  ways that would be similar to what he did to poor Bertha. Snape is
an excellent actor/Occulmens/master of several magical specialties ...
but he also is as human as anyone else in the Wizarding World and his
memory/brain works in the same way everyone elses does. <snip>
>  One of the memories I suspect Snape puts into the Pensieve when he
goes to see LV after HBP is the one where Harry actually thwarts his
Legilmens attempt by using the Shield Charm. He actually breaks down
and says "Well done, Potter"... very OOC for the Snape we know and
love or love to hate. <snip>

Carol responds:
Setting aside Snape and his motives for once, we seem to have some
differences here regarding Occlumency, Legilimency, and the Pensieve.
You seem to be viewing Legilimency as something akin to mind-reading,
with Voldemort's mind roaming freely through Snape's thoughts every
time he sees him and Snape forced to put the (many) memories he
doesn't want LV to see into a Pensieve every time he goes to see 
Voldemort because Occlumency itself isn't an adequate shield.

Forgiveme if I'm misreading you and arguing against a straw man here,
but I don't see it this way at all. To begin with, Snape doesn't have
a Pensieve of his own, he uses Dumbledore's during the Occlumency
lessons. He certainly cannot have rushed up to DD's office, Draco in
tow, removed the memory of his grudging but IMO genuine praise of
Harry during the Occlumency lesson (IIRC, it wasn't "well done,
Potter" but "For a first attempt, that wasn't as bad as it might have
been") or any other memory. He just prevents a DE from Crucioing Harry
(a much more dangerous memory, IMO), makes sure that Draco and the DEs
are off the grounds, and shows Harry exactly *why* he, Snape, thinks
that Harry had really better start learning, quickly, how to shut his
mouth and his mind when he's duelling with DEs. 

In the single other instance when we know that Snape went directly to
Voldemort himself rather than "finding out what Voldemort is telling
his Death Eaters" via the DEs, Snape again leaves Hogwarts in a hurry
with no time to deposit his thoughts in a Pensieve. He has been with
Dumbledore at the TWT and then fetching Winky and the Veritaserum to
help expose the imposter pretending to be Moody. When Dumbledore says
 "If you are ready, if you are prepared" and Snape says "I am," I
don't think DD means, "If you've I placed your incriminating memories
in a Pensieve." He means "If you've come up with your cover stories
for the various instances of disloyalty Voldemort is about to confront
you with." Snape says that he's ready and prepared--he has his cover
stories--and we see some if not all of them in "Spinner's End."

Just as Legilimency is not mind reading ("The mind, Potter, is not a
book to be perused at will," quoted from memory), Occlumency is not
the removal of memories for temporary storage in a Pensieve (though I
think that only a person skilled at both Legilimency and Occlumency
can acquire this particular skill). It's more a matter of shutting
your mind magically so that it can't be magically penetrated. An
amateur Occlumens like Draco can close his mind, but he can't do so
without detection. Snape immediately knows that someone, probably Aunt
Bellatrix, has been teaching Draco Occlumency. But to practice such
crude Occlumency against Voldemort would dangerous, perhaps even
fatal. a "superb Occlumens" like Snape can practice Occlumency
undetected, hiding his emotions and his lies by masking them with some
other memory, real or false, that conceals the lie. In Snape's own
words, "The Dark Lord, for instance, almost always knows when somebody
is lying to him. Only those skilled at Occlumency are able to shut
down those feelings and memories that contradict the lie, and to utter
falsehoods in his presence without detection" (OoP 24). Clearly, what
LV sees when he looks into Snape's eyes is not a blank wall or a
tunnel or any other obvious sign of Occlumency but some sort of
(rigged) evidence that he's telling the truth. This tactic would be
most easily accomplished, IMO, using partial truths--showing the part
of the memory that supports the lie and concealing the rest--which is
perhaps why partial truths seem to be one of Snape's (and DD's)
favorite tactics. One more thought--what the Legilimens normally sees
is probably the thought floating nearest the surface, the one of most
immediate concern to the victim (Legilimensee?) such as the HBP's
Potions book when Snape Legilimenses Harry in HBP. (If he used
Legilimency on Narcissa in "Spinner's End," he would probably have
seen Draco's imagined death at the hands of Death Eaters. Clearly that
fear was uppermost in her mind.)

On a side note, I don't think that Snape has directly confronted (or
been directly confronted by him) all that frequently since LV's return
at the end of GoF. He's usually at Hogwarts and can attend DE
meetings, etc., only during the summer and perhaps during Christmas
break. At a guess, he receives most of his information through DE
contacts, mostly Lucius Malfoy until Malfoy's arrest at the end of
HBP. We know of only one definite instance (at the end of GoF) and one
probable instance (at the end of HBP). But in those and any other
instances, his protections would be his superb skills at Occlumency
and at lying (more accurately, perhaps, telling half-truths)--not
placing his memories in a Pensieve before the encounter.

With regard to Pensieves, I've seen posts on this list in which the
poster seems to regard the Pensieve as a permanent memory holder. As I
understand it, DD uses his Pensieve to mix together related thoughts,
e.g., those connected with the TWT and any person who might have put
Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire, to sift them (Pen SIEVE) and sort
them to make new connections. (That's how he eventually made the
connection between Barty Jr. and the Fake Moody.) He also uses it as a
teaching tool for Harry, using his own and other people's memories
temporarily placed in it before returning them to his own mind or
their respective bottles. Snape merely borrowed the empty Pensieve and
temporarily placed three memories in it (an like everyone else, I hope
we learn what the other two were!) to protect them in case Harry
actually managed a Shield Charm. What we would have seen in place of
the crying child, the boy on the broom, and the teenager swatting
flies is Snape had not protected those memories is anybody's guess.
But at any rate, when he's finished with the Occlumency lessons, he
puts them back into his head. IMO, he can protect those and any other
memories from Voldemort's Legilimency, but not against a Legilimency
*spell* had Harry thought to cast one or against a Protego (Shield
Charm) that bounces his own Legilimency spell back onto him. That
required him to pull himself together and shout "Enough!"--hardly a
tactic he could use on Voldemort--or would ordinarily need to use in
Legilimency via eye contact.

At any rate, the Pensieve is not a long-term storage container. It has
specific uses, primarily as a means of studying objective memories in
relation to one another or visiting the past via an objective memory,
but also, secondarily, storing memories that an Occlumency teacher
doesn't want his pupil to see should the pupil accidentally or
deliberately use a spell that might reveal them. It is not a permanent
storage container, and it's extremely unlikely that Harry will find
any interesting memories stored in the Pensieve. What he may find is
bottled memories, perhaps Dumbledore's own or even one or two of
Snape's. I would be delighted it the other two memories that Snape
placed in the Pensieve were there in labeled, dated bottles on a shelf
above the Pensieve in Dumbledore's, or rather McGonagall's office. Too
bad the argument in the forest won't also be there, or at least, I
doubt that it will.

Carol, noting that she's not so much arguing with Deb as using Deb's
thoughts as a take-off point for her own views on Occlumency,
Legilimency, and Pensieves