Dumbledore's Pensieve

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 170020

Sridhar wrote: 
> I am a bit of a lurker in this group and I confess that I have not 
> read all messages, so if this has been discussed, kindly point me to 
> the relevant thread and I'll happily stay away.
> 
> DD's pensieve has all his thoughts hidden away. Does his death cause 
> those to disappear? If not, then it could prove the greatest ally to 
> Harry as he embarks on his journey [what that journey is another 
> thread, though]. <snip>

Carol responds:

I don't think that the Pensieve "has all [DD's] thoughts hidden away."
For one thing, "all his thoughts" wouldn't fit in the Pensieve! He
only takes out specific memories to examine them, often in relation to
each other, and though we don't see him do it, he presumably puts them
back into his head when he's through with them, just as Snape does in
the Occlumency lessons. The Pensieve is not already full of DD's
thoughts when Snape places his own three memories in it. Otherwise,
he'd be in danger of putting DD's memories into his head instead of
his own.

Once Snape has returned the empty Pensieve to DD, DD can use it again
for the various excursions that he and Harry take in HBP. It makes
sense for the Pensieve to be empty when he places the new memories in
it so that he and Harry won't accidentally stray into the wrong
memory. And the memories that DD uses in HBP, whether they're his own
or someone else's, have not been stored in the Pensieve itself but in
bottles. (The ones that aren't his own are presumably restored to
their respective bottles; those that are his own would probably be put
back in his head since Harry has already seen them and has no need to
revisit them.)

I would not be surprised if Harry inherits the Pensieve and various
bottled, labeled memories in DH, but not a Pensieve full of every
memory DD ever had. And those memories, especially the ones relating
to snape and/or godric's Hollow, could be very important to the plot
of DH.

Carol, noting that bottled memories don't disappear when their owner
dies, as Bob Ogden's, Hokey's, Morfin Gaunt's, and Caractacus Burke's
memories all demonstrate