Snape's minor memories (Was: Snape and Dumbledore on the Tower)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165428

Carol earlier:
> > Harry's acidental Protego just deflected the Legilimens spell that
Snape was using onto Snape because Harry didn't want Snape to see
anything related to Cho--which, as you say, was not a humiliating
memory, just one he didn't want Snape to see. That in itself is proof
that Snape wasn't casting a spell to extract humiliating memories. The
same is true for Harry's memory of Petrified!Hermione--not a happy
memory, but not humiliating.
> > 
> 
> Pippin:
> I think you're confusing two episodes here. Harry's memory of
> Cho wasn't shielded by protego, it was shielded by an involuntary
> stinging hex. The protego comes later, when Snape has just
> been extracting memories of Harry's humilations in primary school.
> 
> But surely legilimens is specific, how else could Snape pull out
> just the memory of that book which Harry was so desperate to hide?
> You can't tell me *that* was random. <snip>

Carol:

Mea culpa. But my point is that the Legilimens spell used in the
Occlumency lessons extracts random memories. That's very different
from the wandless Occlumency involving eye contact that you're
referring to here. In HBP, Snape is using wandless Legilimency to
prove to himself (and to Harry?) that Harry is lying about the source
of the Sectumsempar spell. Snape expects to see the image of his own
NEWT Potions book and that's exactly what he sees--because it's at the
forefront of Harry's mind and is what he's trying, futilely, to hide.

The memories extracted by the Legilimency spell in the Occlumency
lessons are very different. Harry has forgotten that he even had some
of those memories. They're anywhere but at the forefront of his mind.
And when the Protego strikes Snape, extracting some of his memories,
the same thing happens. They're random memories from his childhood,
not specific memories that he's thinking about or hiding because
they're humiliating or unhappy. (I don't think Snape has any memories
that *aren't* unhappy, except maybe the results of his OWLs and NEWTs,
which I imagine would have satisfied even his standard of perfection.)

IOW, you can't compare wordless Legilimency, which Snape, Voldemort,
and possibly Dumbledore chiefly use to detect a lie (or possibly the
thought or emotion that's uppermost in someone's mind) with the
Legilimency *spell*, which extracts random memories (not necessarily
humiliating): Dudley's new bicycle, the bulldog chasing Harry up a
tree, the Sorting Hat, Hermione in the hospital wing, the Dementors,
Cho (OoP Am. ed. 534); the dragon, his parents in the Mirror of
Erised, dead Cedric (535); Uncle Vernon hammering the letterbox
closed, the Dementors again, the MoM passageway leading to his
hearing, which he suddenly recognizes as the passageway in his dreams
(536).

All of these memories are from "the back of [Harry's] mind [which] was
no longer the secure place it had once been" (590) thanks to the
Legilimens spell, not from "the forefront of Harry's mind," where
Snape finds his own Potions book in HBP. Harry is finding it more
difficult to "disentangle separate memories from the tangle of images
and sound that snape kept calling forth," but the next group includes
both Dudley forcing Harry to stand in the toilet and the memory of
Harry's dream of LV Crucioing Avery ("How do that man and that room
come to be inside your head, Potter?"). At that point, Snape resorts
to the other kind of Legilimency, the wandless kind, looking for a
specific thought or memory: "Snape's dark eyes bored into Harry's.
Remembering what Snape had said about eye contact being crucial to
Legilimency, Harry looked away" (590).

So when Snape is looking for something specific, he uses standard
Legilimency. When he only wants to let loose a torrent of memories to
force Harry to defend himself using whatever spell comes to mind, or,
preferably, blocking them with his mind as he blocked Fake!Moody's
Imperius Curse, he uses the Legilimens spell.

Carol, thanking Pippin for forcing her to cite canon instead of
relying on the HBP's notes, erm, her own errant memory


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