Question -- Pensieve

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 159846

fawn_2_u wrote:
> <snip> I think Dumbledore's pensieve will play a very
> improtant part in Harry's road to discovery. The pensieve is an
> excellent way for Harry to see things Dumbledore has seen, and
> without his professor's physical guidance what better tool to use?
> I also think Dumbledore was too smart to leave Harry without some
> help...without some way to tap into secrets others may not be
> privileged to. My meaning?  Dobby. House elves keep their master's
> secrets, and Harry will turn to Dobby for help (just my opinion).
>

Carol responds:
I'm not sure, but it appears to me that the function of the Pensieve
is rather widely misunderstood. Except in GoF, when Dumbledore is
constantly adding new memories to the Pensieve and *sifting* them
("sieve" = "sift" or "sifter") to find a new perspective and a new
understanding of how the events fit together, the Pensieve is not used
for longterm storage. Snape uses it for temporary storage of memories
he doesn't want Harry to see during the Occlumency lessons, but after
the lessons, he places them back inside his head (presumably DD put
all his own memories back in after GoF as well and the Pensieve
returned to its normal, empty state).

In HBP, Dumbledore takes his own memories and those he has taken from
others (with their consent), presumably through the same process (wand
to the head to remove a silvery substance) from vials, which I take to
be the usual form of long-term storage, rather like the Prophecy orbs
in the DoM. There's no indication that the memories that Harry sees in
his first lesson with Dumbledore remain there. They must have been
rebottled afterwards, or, if they're DD's own memories, replaced in
his head.

So Harry is not going to find a Pensieve overflowing with memories
ready to explore. At best, he'll find labeled (or unlabeled) vials of
Dumbledore's memories. Possibly, the most important of these memories
are in Aberforth's keeping. (That would be a good way to find out why
Dumbledore trusts Snape, for example.)

However, even if Dumbledore wills Harry the Pensieve, Harry won't be
able to place his own memories in the Pensieve to enter them or study
them because he doesn't know how to remove memories from his own head.
Only two people that we've seen know how to do that. One of them,
Dumbledore, is dead. The other is Snape, whom Harry thinks (wrongly,
IMO) is his enemy. It seems to me that removing memories from your own
head, or the head of someone else, requires Legilimency (to cause the
right memory to rise to the forefront of the mind) combined with some
nonverbal spell that Harry does not yet know. For a variety of reasons
(by no means all of them Snape's fault), Harry failed to master
*Occlumency,* but it may be that the "powers" he acquired from
Voldemort include *Legilimency,* in which case he can learn to explore
his own memories in the Pensieve. I would love to have Snape teach
him, but I doubt that's going to happen. Or how about Snape removing
the memory of GH from Harry's head, placing it in the Pensieve, and
entering it with him? Never happen, unfortunately. I just realized
that Slughorn can also remove memories from his own head--and badly
alter them. Maybe he's the one who'll help Harry here.)

On a sidenote, the consequences of the Twins stuffing Montague in the
Vanishing Cabinet (which led to Draco's discovery of a way to get DEs
into the school) also include the end of the Occlumency lessons. Snape
left his office to rescue Montague, who was stuck in a toilet, leaving
Harry alone with the Pensieve. Wouldn't have happened if the Twins
hadn't taken "justice" into their own hands.

Carol, hoping that Harry will use the Pensieve to explore his own past
(and Snape's) in Book 7 but noting that it's no simple matter