The Purity of Memories
Remembering and misremembering
There are a lot of memories in Harry Potter.
In the fourth book we are introduced to the Pensieve, a wooden bowl that can hold memories so that they can be explored at leisure. Dumbledore has one and he uses it often so that he can find patterns in events that he remembers, and also because his brain just gets too full. Harry and I share one thing in common when Dumbledore admits that he just doesn’t have room for all of his memories — we cannot relate to that at all.
I have ADHD and it makes my short term memory not great. The pandemic, plus currently changing careers, is not helping the matter. I will tell my husband that I’m going to wash the dishes and go into the kitchen, and then suddenly I’ve eaten a pouch of fruit snacks and I’m upstairs doing something else, the dishes unwashed. It’s not that I don’t want to do the dishes, it’s that I’ve already forgotten that I need to do them. It is very frustrating for both of us, particularly my husband.
Harry Potter is full of long-term memories, which I hang onto fairly easily. Harry journeys through the Pensieve many times, sometimes with permission and sometimes without, to see long-term memories that Dumbledore has procured from other people or memories that he has himself. In the fourth book we witness Death Eater trials at the height of Voldemort’s first reign. And in the sixth book we are privy to memories concerning Voldemort, his upbringing, and what he got up to after school so that Harry is better prepared to find his Horcruxes.
The way in which these memories are written is very visceral — although Harry cannot change anything or make any impressions in the memory that he is in, he is fully immersed in it, taken away from Dumbledore’s office and plunged into the entire world of the memory. The first memory in the sixth book that Harry ventures into is one of Bob Ogden, and Harry walks next to him for a good solid mile down a road and enters a house with him. It’s as if Harry has stepped into another dimension, rather than just watching a film. This is a great effect while reading the series, but it makes me wonder, how do all of the characters in Harry Potter remember everything so vividly?
The memory of Bob Ogden, where he visits Voldemort’s grandfather, his uncle, and his mother is so vivid that it takes up an entire chapter. Ogden remembers what he’s wearing, what the Gaunts are wearing, and everything that they say to one another, even in Parseltongue (although he can’t understand it). He remembers Voldemort’s father riding past the house, even the name of his girlfriend as they make fun of the hovel that the Gaunts live in. The memory that Hokey the house elf gives us of Voldemort visiting Hepzibah Smith to get Slytherin’s locket and Hufflepuff’s cup is also equally vivid; she remembers the entire conversation, including all of the many looks that pass across Voldemort’s face as Hepzibah shows him her treasures. Dumbledore’s memory of meeting Voldemort for the first time involves a long and detailed conversation with Mrs. Cole, and all of it is recalled perfectly, even though by the time that Harry is witnessing this memory, it happened almost 60 years ago. There is only one memory that is not pure and undiluted, and that is the memory that Horace Slughorn gives Dumbledore about Voldemort approaching him to ask about Horcruxes.
In this memory, everything is also crystal clear; all of the boys surrounding Slughorn, the type of sweet that he was eating, their conversation. But when Voldemort asks about Horcruxes, everything goes dark and Slughorn’s voice becomes amplified, telling Voldemort that he doesn’t know anything. This is Slughorn “tampering” with his own memory to make himself feel better, to disassociate himself from giving Voldemort important and horrible information. This memory is between 50 and 60 years old, and for someone like Slughorn, it is entirely possible that he could begin to believe that this is how the memory actually went. If that is true, wouldn’t the memory then look normal? But although it’s possible it’s not true, because Slughorn has the “real” memory, which he eventually gives to Harry.
There are many things that we misremember. For instance, I have a very clear memory of joining my brother on a Boy Scout camping trip when I was eleven at Chain O’ Lakes State Park in northern Indiana, and I can even tell you what swim suit I wore when we went swimming in one of the lakes. I also vividly remember the ride home in which a gallon of milk fell on my toe and it hurt very badly. My family has told me that the only camping trip I went on with the rest of my family and my brother’s Boy Scout troop was not at Chain O’ Lakes. My brother doesn’t remember swimming with me and giving me a horrific wedgie in front of his Boy Scout troop mates, but I remember. My dad doesn’t remember my mother and I accompanying the troop on a camping trip at all. All of our memories surrounding this day are different; I remember what my brother does not while he remembers the campfire that I have no recollection of, and my mother remembers my swim suit in the same way that I do but can’t tell me how I old I was when we went. (My mother has a fascinating knack for remembering outfits going all the way back to when she was in elementary school, so I’m not surprised she can’t remember my age but she can remember my outfit.) We all have memories of this camping trip, but they are all different. Whose memories are right? And whose are wrong?
If someone were to dive into my memory of this trip in a Pensieve, there would only be snatches of things — swimming in the lake in my specific swim suit and my brother hauling me out of the water by my suit bottom and showing my ass to everyone, the gallon of milk falling out of the cooler on the ride home in my dad’s minivan, a yellow tent. But that would be it, and that memory is only 19 years old. If we were to dive into my brother’s memory of it, there would be no lake incident (thank god for small favors) and there would be a campfire. My mother’s memory would afford us my swim suit and not much else. My father’s memory of it? He was there and he doesn’t even remember this trip happening. And by god, what lake were we even at? Not a single one of us can agree.
The memories that Harry frequents are between 30 and 60 years old. How are they so vivid? Why do wizards have memories that are so detailed they take up entire chapters? There is a difference between Slughorn’s tampered memory and misremembering. But in Harry Potter there is no misremembering. Every memory is perfect. If something is misremembered, what would that look like in a Pensieve? Memory is subjective, even if we don’t want it to be. As humans we are capable of retraining our memories to put us in a better light, as Slughorn tried to do. We are capable of lying to ourselves in that way, and we do it in history books. But, much more commonly, we just misremember, and we do this because we’re human. I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had with my parents about something from my childhood that I adamantly remember that they remember differently. Again, who is right, and who is wrong? We don’t have a Pensieve to go back and look. My family and I are not able to go back and look at the camping trip when I was eleven. It is remarkable that the wizarding world is able to achieve this, and even more remarkable that there is no misremembering when entering memories.
We know that wizards misremember just like Muggles do. Harry learns that one of Jupiter’s moons is inhabited by ice, and yet he remembers that it is instead inhabited by mice, causing him to get a bad score on an essay. Ron is constantly forgetting that you can’t Apparate or Disapparate inside Hogwarts. Harry listens in on private conversations all the time because he’s way more nosy than any kid has a right to be and he forgets the exact conversation. There’s an object called a Remembrall and its sole purpose is to let you know when you’ve forgotten something. It is only in Pensieves that memories are complete and pure. That makes me wonder if the longer a memory stays inside of your brain, the more it warps over time, like all memories eventually do. And if you decide to remove and store the memory in a bottle or in a Pensieve, that it remains exactly the way it was when it was removed. It also brings to question the idea of dual memories about one particular instance.
Dumbledore removes and stores memories because he has too many in his brain, telling us that once they are removed, those memories are no longer in his brain. He can only recall those memories if he brings them up in the Pensieve. (But if he can’t remember those memories, how does he know he wants to peruse the in the Pensieve?!) However, Slughorn has two memories about Voldemort approaching him about Horcruxes, and they are both exactly the same except for the tampering. Even after giving Dumbledore the tampered memory, he still has the exact same memory in his brain, just without the tampering. Everything about the memory is the same except that one is missing a conversation and the other one isn’t. When Slughorn tampered with the memory because he knew he would be giving it to Dumbledore, did he know that he would keep the rest of the memory? If they were the same memory, why didn’t Slughorn lose the part that wasn’t tampered with that he gave to Dumbledore? Are these the same memory then, or are they separate? When you purposefully tamper with a memory, does it create a second one?
These are questions I don’t know the answers to and I would like them to be answered at some point. I would also like to know why wizards have seemingly perfect memories but only in Pensieves. I’d also like to just have a good memory like wizards apparently do, because by the time that I’ve finished writing this, I’ll have forgotten something important. (And no, a Remembrall will not help me.)
