The green liquid in the basin

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 165705

Carol earlier:
>> 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 make 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.

Leah replied:

I was very taken with this idea.

Carol again:
Thanks. I recall only one response to the original post, and that was
offlist. Glad someone besides me likes it!

Leah:
> 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.

Carol responds;
Claerly, Tom Sr.'s "sacrifice," if the memory is indeed his, didn't
have the same effect as Lily's. I'm sure that's because, unlike Lily,
he was the intended victim all along. Unlike her, he wasn't given a
chance to "stand aside" and save himself. So Voldie could kill both
his hated father and the "spares" with no damage to himself beyond a
triply split soul, which would come in handy later when he needed soul
bits for Horcruxes. So the only purpose I can see for that memory is
the mental anguish it would cause the drinker, who perhaps would feel
the Crucios as well as the speaker's guilt and fear.

Leah:
However, it seems to me that [the Tom Sr. theory] can be objected to
on the grounds of one particular line <snip> "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.

Carol:
I had the same thought. "I'll never do it again" might mean "I'll
never hurt you or betray you again." It can't mean "I'll never desert
your mother again." But people experiencing torture and the fear of
death for themselves and their loved ones might not be quite rational
in their promises. Anyway, Tom Sr. is the only person I can think of
who would be protecting others from being tortured by LV for something
he did. It can't be Regulus, whose volte-face (or should I say,
Voldie-face?) hasn't been discovered yet. Nor can it be young Severus
Snape's, for the same reason. We don't know when the Horcrux was
hidden, but it has to be before Godric's Hollow, and, if RAB is
Regulus, before his death the year before GH.

Leah:
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. <snip>

Carol:
It can't be Frank, for the same reason it can't be Regulus. Frank was
tortured some time after Voldie was vaporized, long enough afterward
for unobservant Harry to note a difference in Barty Crouch Sr.'s
appearance at the Karkaroff hearing (itself post-GH), the Bagman
hearing (after Karkaroff's because it relates to Rookwood, whom
Karkaroff betrayed), and the Longbottom Four, by which time Barty was
looking "gaunter and grayer than ever before" (GoF Am. ed. 594). Just
how much time passed between GH and the Crucioing of the Longbottoms
is unclear, but it's clearly more than a few days or weeks. More
important, even if it were only a day later, Voldie would be vaporized
and consequently unable to use that memory in the potion, not to
mention that he wasn't present to extract it or even capable of using
a wand at that point. So unless we credit Bellatrix with ingenious
ideas for cruel potions and all the devices that protect the locket
Horcrux, the memory can't be Frank's.

(I think that Voldie sent her there to hide it before he was
vaporized, possibly at the point when he first heard the Prophecy, and
she poured in a potion that he provided, no doubt adding a refilling
charm in case Voldie came to examine the locket and then replace
it.--Oh, dear. This is complicated, isn't it?)

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

Carol:
Agreed on all counts, but whose can it be if not Tom Sr.'s? It's not
James Potter's because he simply "fought with a straight back" and
died--and also, of course, Voldie was vaporized shortly afterwards.

Carol earlier:
> Voldie himself wouldn't need to drink it. He'd know how to get to
the (fake) Horcrux without doing so. The only point in having the
potion there is to deter anyone from stealing the Horcrux and force
them to drink the water so that the Inferi would attack them. And, of
course, RAB would *want* Voldemort to find his note. It was, after
all, addressed to him. The only explanation that makes sense to me is
for the basin to refill itself magically when an object is placed in it.
>
Pippin replied:
> This makes it even clearer to me that RAB didn't steal the locket
from the basin at all. He stole it beforehand. That eliminates a whole
raft of problems. RAB doesn't have to be a white wizard on a level
with Dumbledore in order to penetrate the cave, or a dark wizard on a
level with Voldemort in order to replace the potion. He only has to be
good enough at transfiguration to make a fake locket that would fool
Bella, something like the swap Harry did with his potions books but
more sophisticated. <snip>

Carol responds:
Why would he need to be good at Transfiguration at all? Just buy a
locket that vaguely resembles the other one and put his note in it.
Even Harry notices that the fake Horcrux bears no resemblance to the
other one: "This was neither as large as the locket he remembered
seeing in the Pensieve, nor were there any markings upon it, no sign
of the ornate S that was supposed to be Slytherin's mark" (HBP Am. ed.
609). No Transfiguration required; he just wants to fool the basin,
not Bellatrix, who would be extremely stupid if she mistook a plain
locket for the Slytherin heirloom that LV had entrusted to her keeping.

And I disagree that Regulus would have needed to be a "white wizard on
a level with Dumbledore" to penetrate the cave." If Bella had Kreacher
with her as her helper, Regulus would only need to order Kreacher to
tell him how to get into the cave, cross the lake, etc. And he'd have
Kreacher with him to drink the potion, which would explain why
Kreacher is no normal house-elf. Kreacher would be bound to obey
Regulus even after he realized that Regulus was betraying Bellatrix
and LV. But I certainly agree that he wasn't "a dark wizard on a level
with Voldemort" and didn't make the potion. That problem is resolved
by an enchantment making the basin fill or refill itself when an
object is placed in it.

Pippin:
> Really, what would the point of the fake locket be if RAB stole the
horcrux from the cave? RAB would have had to have brought it with him,
extracted the real one from the basin and left the fake, but why?
>
> To trick Voldemort into drinking the (possibly altered) potion?
Maybe, but as Carol has just pointed out, there's no guarantee that
Voldemort needs to drink the potion at all in order to get the locket
out. <snip> Only Voldemort is likely to penetrate the cave.

Carol:
Agreed so far. RAB thinks that only Voldie is likely to check on the
Horcrux (he doesn't anticipate someone else trying to steal and
destroy it), and when Voldie does, after RAB is dead, he's in for a
shock. Everything appears to be in order, as Bellatrix left it, but
instead of his Horcrux, he'll find a fake and a note informing him who
stole it.

Pippin:

But he will detect traces of others' magic long before he reaches the
island (as Dumbledore should have done if Regulus had indeed entered
the cave before him) and once his suspicions were roused a fake
wouldn't fool him for long.

Carol:
I don't think so. Voldemort won't suspect that anyone could have found
his Horcrux, certainly not Reggie. He has no idea that any Horcruxes
are destroyed. And the fake locket wouldn't fool him for a second.
There's no Slytherin emblem. He'd know the second he saw it that it
was a fake, but it would be too late. And the traces of magic that
Dumbledore detects are the signs of magical *concealment*, the same
traces that he used to discover the ring Horcrux. Voldemort didn't
know that Regulus stole the real Horcrux years before. Now, if he goes
looking for the Horcrux, he still won't know about RAB. He'll discover
an empty basin and no Horcrux at all. Then, if he goes looking for
traces of magical theft and, erm, cave-breaking, he'll discover
Dumbledore's blood and Harry's. He may figure out at that point why DD
was so weak that *Draco* could disarm him. If so, he'll think that
Harry has the real Horcrux, which will probably be true by that time.
And then, my friends, we're in trouble--unless Severus Snape somehow
staves it off.

Pippin:
> No, the fake locket only makes sense to me if the substitution was
done earlier, while the locket was still in the possession of
Bellatrix. Of course we do have to account for the locket being
disenchanted by the time Harry found it. But the spell may have worn
off over the years, or perhaps Dumbledore disenchanted it. Maybe not
all the spells he was muttering were for lifting the protections on
Hogwarts, or perhaps he did indeed survive the fall and discovered the
substitution then.

Carol:
I don't follow this part of your argument at all. DD only briefly came
in contact with the fake Horcrux. He never, AFAWK, saw the real one.
The fake locket never had an enchantment on it (other than the spell
that refills the basin with potion, and the basin is empty now--no
potion, no locket, real or fake). And the real Horcrux still has
protective enchantments on it; it's unopenable, and quite possibly
cursed. Which locket would DD have disenchanted, and who would think
that?

Pippin:
>
> I suspect that once the intruder(s) had been overcome, the Inferi
had instructions to deliver their catch to Voldemort alive or notify
him in some fashion.

Carol:
If that's the case, they'd have notified Voldie that the original
locket was stolen (unless your substitute locket theory is true, and I
don't think so for reasons already stated). Nor do the Inferi do
anything besides slide back into the lake hiding from the fire after
Harry and DD steal the fake Horcrux. No alarm bells. No Inferi casting
the DE equivalent of Patronus Charms to notify LV. No runaway Inferi
reported heading toward Little Hangleton. And how would they get out
of the cave and down the cliffside, anyway?

Carol, still liking Regulus-steals-the-Horcrux-with-Kreacher's-help
and thinking that Kreacher will 'fess up in DH