Changes: Pensieve

Revision as of 22:33, 7 June 2010

"Point me!"
This article is about the object in general. You may be looking for Albus Dumbledore's Pensieve.

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.

History of known use

Main article: Albus Dumbledore's Pensieve

May 1995

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. He also saw Igor Karkaroff and Ludo Bagman being questioned.

Early 1996

Sometime 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. At the end of the school year, Dumbledore used the Pensieve to show Harry his memory of Sybill Trelawney's Prophecy concerning Harry and Voldemort.

1996-1997

Memories about Riddle — 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 Ministry 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.

1998

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 Lily , the reason for Dumbledore's trust in Snape, and that Voldemort had inadvertently made Harry a Horcrux. Harry finally realizes that Snape was on his side the whole time, starting from the time that Voldemort had threatened Lily. It was only that Snape couldn't stand to be around the child of his enemy, James Potter, whom Harry looks almost exactly like. Apart from having his mother's eyes, Snape only saw James through Harry, even saying that he had his father's "knack for trouble".

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. This contradicts the sixth film, where it can sit on the table. It is also much smaller than in the previous film and looks as it is made out of metal instead of stone, it is possible that the metal part fits into the more stationary stone basin.

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. ‘Pensive’ is derived from French, and originally from the Latin ‘pensare’ (to ponder). The philosopher Blaise Pascal also wrote Pensées (the word is often understood to be thoughts or reflection put into literary or aphoristic form; the book is famous for being published not in the order that Pascal intended until scholars figured out Pascal's intentions in the twentieth century). Pensieve 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.

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