Pensieve

From Harry Potter Wiki

Pensieve

Object information
Usage	Used to review stored memories
Owners	Albus Dumbledore Severus Snape
First appearance	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Latest appearance	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Dumbledore: "I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form."

Harry: "You mean... that stuff's your thoughts?"

Dumbledore: "Certainly."

— Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter^[src]

The Pensieve is an object used to review memories. It has the appearance of a shallow stone basin, into which are carved runes and strange symbols. It is filled with a silvery substance that appears to be a cloud-like liquid/gas; the collected memories of people who have siphoned their recollections into it. Memories can then be viewed from a third-person point of view.

[edit] History

[edit] 1994

The first time Harry Potter saw a Pensieve was in Albus Dumbledore's office in his fourth year, which he used to view the headmaster's memory of Death Eater trials at the end of the First Wizarding War. It was there that Harry witnessed the trial of Barty Crouch Jr. and the others who tortured the Longbottoms to insanity.

[edit] Early 1996

Some after returning from the Christmas break of his fifth year at Hogwarts, Harry viewed a memory in the Pensieve of Severus Snape and witnessed his worst memory — being bullied by James Potter and Sirius Black and lashing out at Lily Evans when she came to his defence. This summarily ended Harry's Occlumency lessons with the Potions Master, as he was furious with Harry at seeing the memory.

[edit] 1996-1997

Albus Dumbledore stored the memories of Tom Riddle.

In Harry's sixth year, he repeatedly used the Pensieve under Dumbledore's instruction to see how Tom Riddle grew into Voldemort. Memories are viewed from many sources, including Minstry of Magic employee Bob Ogden, a house elf named Hokey, Morfin Gaunt, Horace Slughorn, and several of Albus Dumbledore's own memories. These memories were instrumental to Harry understanding Voldemort's mindset, allowing him to deduce later where he had hidden his life sustaining Horcruxes.

[edit] 1998

The Pensieve in 1994

Harry entered the Pensieve again in 1998 with memories acquired from Severus Snape in his dying moments. Harry learned of Snape's friendship with, and unrequited love for, Harry's mother, the reason for Dumbledore's trust in Snape, and that Voldemort had inadvertently made Harry a Horcrux.

[edit] Behind the scenes

In the books the pensieve is said to be able to sit on a table, however, in the films, the pensieve is much larger and is kept in a separate cabinet.

[edit] Etymology

Pensieve seems to be a pun, combining the words "pensive" and "sieve". The latter is an object in which something may be sorted, thus it allows for the sorting of thoughts, or memories. It is also an anagram of Pevensie, the surname of the characters Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy from The Chronicles of Narnia the author of which(C.S. Lewis) was J.K. Rowling's favourite.

[edit] Appearances