The Huge overreactions from a five minute time span.

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 150147

kchuplis:
> 
> I keep coming back to this too. How much of this is because it is 
how  
> SNAPE saw it. In the other pensieve memories we have seen, the  
> subjects have not had necessarily any kind of bias or at least not  
> anything like what we know of Snape. We have no idea how much bias  
> colors a pensieve memory.  

Ceridwen:
According to Rowling, a Pensieve memory is an objective recording of 
an event.  From the Leaky Cauldron/Mugglenet interview:

***MA: One of our Leaky "Ask Jo" poll winners is theotherhermit, 
she's 50 and lives in a small town in the eastern US. I think this 
was addressed in the sixth book, but, "Do the memories stored in a 
Pensieve reflect reality or the views of the person they belong to?"

JKR: It's reality. It's important that I have got that across, 
because Slughorn gave Dumbledore this pathetic cut-and-paste memory. 
He didn't want to give the real thing, and he very obviously patched 
it up and cobbled it together. So, what you remember is accurate in 
the Pensieve.***
http://www.mugglenet.com/jkrinterview3.shtml

kchuplis:
> And seeing anything in isolation can be  
> deceiving. I really can't see everyone calling James a great guy 
(and  
> everyone HAS except Snape) if he was really as big of a git all 
the  
> time as the pensieve scene showed. 

Ceridwen:
How would people you haven't seen since high school see you now?  
Will they think you have chanaged?  Would you think they have changed?

James probably changed as he matured.  Everyone changes as they gain 
more experiences and as they grow.  People who knew James as an adult 
speak highly of him.  Snape apparently didn't hang out with James&Co 
after they left Hogwarts, so his memories of James will be of the 
younger, more foolish, James in school.  This is the way MWPP were at 
fifteen to sixteen years old.  This is the way James was.  This was 
James the 'toerag', who was less desirable a date than the Giant 
Squid.  This was not the James spoken of with admiration.  This was 
not the James who died to save his family.  This was the 'before', 
while people who knew him at the end speak of the 'after'.

Ceridwen.