HBP -- Two Questions

[esmith222002]

No: HPFGUIDX 159432


> >kelli t. wrote:
>  Two questions from Half Blood Prince:
> > 
> > When Dumbledore was under the effect of the potion at the lake, 
> and he was making comments about, don't make me, I don't want to 
> hurt them, etc... Who do you think he was seeing?

> 
> 
> Tonks replied:
> 
> Most of us think that the potion in the cave was a pensive and DD 
> was reliving someone's memory. The question is whose?  [SNIP] It 
>could be Snape's. It could be Tom Riddle's. Somehow it could be 
>DD's. He is over 150 years old at his death; he may have a few 
>regrets in his life. I think we will discover more about this in the 
>last book.
>
> Mari also replied:
> 
> I'm so glad you brought this up.  Per DD, that's the cave where Tom
> Riddle brought the two children from the orphanage who, according to
> the matron, were never quite right afterward.  The last time I read
> that part, I was struck by how child-like DD sounds when drinking or
> being force-fed the potion.  It is not at all typical of DD's normal
> dialogue -- even if he is being tortured.  It is very typical,
> however, of a small child being punished and forced to do something
> s/he doesn't want to do.
> 
 I completely agree that this is a pensieve and that DD is reliving 
the memory of what Tom Riddle did to those children. Therefore it 
almost has to be Tom Riddle's memory. He was not even aware he was a 
wizard at this point and did not have a wand, so he could not have 
extracted the memories from them. I think that LV probably altered 
the memory, so that anyone drinking the potion relived the memory in 
the first person i.e. when DD drank the potion he entered a reality 
(in his mind at least) where he was torturing young children. Despite 
every fibre of his being telling him that this was a terrible thing 
to be doing, as long as he kept drinking the potion he kept torturing 
(an assumption on my part) the children. This was the reason for his 
comments during this scene.

Brothergib