The green liquid in the basin

[littleleahstill]

No: HPFGUIDX 165698

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

>> It's possible, then, that the memories in the Pensieve are not 
those
> of the drinker but those of one of Voldemort's victims. I've
> suggested, in a post that almost no one considered worthy of a
> response, that the memory could be that of Tom Riddle Sr. ("It's 
all
> my fault. My fault. Please make it stop. I know I did wrong, oh 
please
> maek it stop, and I'll never, never again . . . " and "Don't hurt
> them, don't hurt them, please, please, it's my fault, hurt me 
instead"
> (572). The impression I get is of someone being tortured (Crucio'd)
> for some fault he has committed, and trying at the same time to
> protect innocent people from being Crucio'd. (snipped)
> 
> The situation fits Tom Riddle Sr., who deserted Tom Jr. before he 
was
> born, leaving him to be raised in a Muggle orphanage (Tom Jr. 
killed
> him for revenge, as he says himself, and the terrified expressions 
on
> the Riddles' faces suggest that all three were also tortured before
> they were killed). He's the only person I can think of from whom
> Voldie could have extracted a memory for later use who would be
> begging Voldie or Tom Jr. to torture him rather than other people 
who
> have not committed the fault. 

Carol

Leah:

I was very taken with this idea.  However, I am wondering what 
purpose is achieved in plot by having DD relive these exact words, 
if they are indeed those of Tom Riddle Snr. Will it be of importance 
that Riddle Snr begged for forgiveness before his death and offered 
to sacrifice himself for others?  Maybe it will- part of Voldemort 
now is the bone of his father.   It seems to me that what DD relives 
is of some importance, otherwise he could have been rolling around, 
simply begging for the agony to stop, which would still have 
required an unwilling Harry to forcefeed him.

It occurs to me that another possible suspect for the original owner 
of the memory is Frank Longbottom. We know that his wife was with 
him, and it perhaps possible that Neville was there too. There have 
of course been suggestions of a memory charm being used on Neville 
to suppress that particular traumatic remembrance.  It is likely 
that Frank would plead in agony for his wife and child to be spared. 
There would of course not have been any way for that memory to have 
been incorporated into the potion by Voldemort, but I agree with the 
idea that the potion extracts the memory from the drinker's mind.  
If DD tried to find out by leglimency what had happened to the 
Longbottoms, then he would have been in possession of that terrible 
memory.  The Frank ownership has some merit for me in that it might 
have some future play in the storyline.

However, it seems to me that both the Frank and the Tom Snr theories 
can be objected to on the grounds of one particular line. In the 
case of Tom Snr, it is "I'll never do it again...".  While I can 
appreciate Tom Snr begging his son's forgiveness for abandoning him 
and his mother, it just doesn't seem to ring true to me that he 
would be desperately promising not to do that to another woman and 
her child.  Perhaps he didn't know what he was doing.  In the case 
of Frank, it is the same line, with the addition of "I know I've 
done wrong...".  That sounds like someone begging the forgiveness of 
an person who has authority over them, and I can not envisage why he 
should be addressing the LeStrange gang in that way, or what wrong 
he has done. (Unless he was in fact ESEFrank)

Leah, feeling sure that the memory belongs to someone who betrayed 
Voldemort, but still puzzling.