the fine art of changing one's mind

[arcanetrivia]

An unmined plotbunny (how's that for mixing one's metaphors), at least I haven't seen any fic using this idea; and/or, if you are a Lily-hater, a way to edit her out of Severus's motivations:

We know from HBP that the silvery liquid stuff of memories can be altered to show scenes that never took place. The only example we are actually shown is when it is done badly. What if it were done well? What if the memories Snape gives Harry were anywhere from partly to completely false, a story crafted to get him to do what he's supposed to do, and Harry (ever attuned to subtlety and never jumping to conclusions, bless his heart) couldn't tell the difference?

Obviously it requires advance preparation on Snape's part, but if anyone could pull it off in terms of the skill level required, I'd think it would be him.

(Mutaremency, anyone?)

Comments

[fenm.livejournal.com]

Well, to start with, are we sure Slughorn did it badly, and it's not just a case of, even well-done memory faking just looks bad?

However, assuming they can be down well enough to pass... I like it! I can even see it: Snape is a good guy, but he figured Harry is too thick to just believe that Snape could just reform for goodness' sake (heh), so he came up with the Lily thing to give Harry a tangible reason to believe him.

[elethian.livejournal.com]

Dumbledore says: "It is, as you will have noticed, very crudely done", which implies that it would have been possible to have done it much better.

Not long before this, they had looked at a memory of Morfin Gaunt, and we find out that Voldemort had implanted a false memory and Dumbledore had to go to some trouble to get the real one: "...performed the complex but of magic that would implant a false memory in his uncle's mind [...] a great deal of skilled Legilimency to coax [the real memory] out of him."

That false memory was only described/confessed to by Morfin, though, as far as I can tell, and not pulled out and looked at in a Pensieve. Certainly its appearance isn't described for us, if it was.

Perhaps it's a difference in voluntary self-modification vs. involuntary modification by someone else. Slughorn seems to be perfectly aware of his real memory, whereas Morfin's real memory was repressed.

But in any case, it would seem that memory-tampering is not always obvious by nature.

[elethian.livejournal.com]

Also, I recall that there are apparently whole groups of people employed by the Ministry to do memory modification on Muggles, but then maybe that's easier than doing it on wizards.

[elethian.livejournal.com]

Oh, and hey, I replied to your wishlist meme post -- did you get that?

[fenm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got it. I'll reply there. ^_^