What would convince Harry/canned memories

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Amanda Geist" <editor at t...> wrote:
> I had two questions. Why didn't Dumbledore just *tell* Harry why he could
> trust Snape? And how, now, can Harry possibly learn, and *believe in,* the
> reason Dumbledore trusted Snape? I think the only person who knew,
> Dumbledore, made it impossible for himself to tell anyone. I think it is
> only Dumbledore, still, who has a reasonable chance of making Harry
> understand. And I think it will still be Dumbledore who tells him.
> 
> I grant you, death is a bit of an obstacle to communication. But given all
> that we now know of Pensieves, I think I can see an explanation for why
> Dumbledore did not tell him (or anyone else, evidently) and the way for
> Dumbledore to give this last bit of information to Harry.
> 
> Here's my summation of Pensieve knowledge (forgive the caps, please--I
> cannot underline or otherwise set off for ease of reading):
> 
> (1) PUTTING A MEMORY IN THE PENSIEVE TAKES IT OUT OF YOUR HEAD. Canon
> supports this:
>

You're right, but whether Jo will stick strictly to existing canon is
something else again. There are hints that some previously believed to
be fixed canon is not so fixed after all - the Protection Where Lily's Blood Dwells
for one (well spotted that poster) and there could be more that'll reveal
themselves as we become more familiar with the detail in the book.

Yes, some of us have commented already on how useful bottled memories
will be in setting young Potter on the straight and narrow, though I hadn't 
myself got round to the possibility that the way Snape could avoid betraying
himself to Voldy (or DD) is not to have the dangerous memories in his noggin
in the first place (nice bit of deductive thinking there, by the way).  There's
even a danger that this neat wrinkle of banishing inconvenient memories
could be over-used - what a wonderful excuse for characters not telling
Harry stuff when he needs it! Even (and this repeats a thought I posted
some time back) -  there could be a bottled memory *from Harry* showing
what he saw at GH. Yes, he was a toddler and he might not have understood
what he saw, but that wouldn't neccessarily mean that the memory couldn't
be accessed. They must have been doing something interesting in the Missing
24 hours, don't you think?

It could also play to the long-held Memory-Modified Neville theories.
Hells teeth! What has Jo presented us with?

A further question -  if someone dies with memories missing, does that
mean that they are missing from any post-death animated representation
of them? 'Cos I was sort of relying on DD's portrait launching into the
final explication at the end of book 7. But if he's got memory blanks that
exercise might be less than complete.

The implications of these handy thought-sized bottles bear thinking about. 
 
Kneasy