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

[duniazade.livejournal.com]

I did it, here: http://community.livejournal.com/grangersnape100/841574.html#cutid1

And I think I've seen other fics postulating the same. It's one of my pet theories, anyway.

[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.

[lunylucy.livejournal.com]

I assume you're supplying this as an interesting fanfic idea. As far as canon goes, I don't think there's any chance of it being true. Although it's cool, like you can say that since Snape knew Harry had seen his "worst memory" then he could build some stuff around it to make it more believable :P

But then, of course, there's Aunt Petunia saying in book 5 that she knew about dementors from "that awful boy, years ago".