Pensieve

> 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.
>
> Albus Dumbledore explaining his Pensieve to Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

A **Pensieve** was a very rare and powerful magical item. They were a magical device used to review and store memories. When in use, a silvery light shines from its contents. This light was bright, whitish silver, cloud-like, and moving ceaselessly. Harry Potter thought the content in the basin looked like “*light made liquid — or like wind made solid*”.Template:Object

## Description

> 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.
>
> Dumbledore explaining the purpose of a Pensieve to Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

 File:Pensinive.gif
It had the appearance of a shallow stone or metal basin, into which ***rune***s and strange symbols were carved and precious stones were fitted. It was filled with a silvery substance that appears to be a cloudy liquid/gas. The collected memories of people who had siphoned their recollections into it.

Once memories were siphoned into the Pensieve, they could then be viewed from a non-participant, third-person point of view. Owing to the highly personal nature of extracted memories, and the potential for abuse, most Pensieves were entombed with their owners along with the memories they contain. Some witches and wizards would pass on their Pensive/memories to another person.

Pensieves were intensely personal, since memories often held recollections of things one would wish to hide or forget. The Pensieve of a powerful witch or wizard was typically buried with them when they die. However, the Hogwarts Pensieve did not belong to a particular person, but to the school.

## History

A Pensieve was located in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where it was used by the various Headmaster and Headmistresses of the school over the years.

## Behind the scenes

* In the ***books***, the Pensieve is said to be able to sit on a table, however, in the ***fourth film***, the Hogwarts Pensieve is much larger and is kept in a separate cabinet. This is contradicted by ***the sixth film***, where it can sit on the table and looks as if it is made out of metal instead of stone. This contradiction is resolved in the ***eighth film***, when Harry goes to the headmaster's office and removes the metal dish from the stone basin before watching Severus Snape's memories.
	+ In the film, the Pensieve while in its cabinet bears a strong resemblance to a baptismal font, specifically an aspersion or affusion font, primarily used for the baptism of infants.
* In the film adaptation of *Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire*, when Harry used the pensieve, he was sitting in the court itself and watching the hearing as if he was part of it, while in the film adaptation of *Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince*, Harry is merely watching the memory but is not seen anywhere in it.
* In the film adaptation of *Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2*, Severus Snape's memories take the form of tears. As such, Snape specifically instructs Harry to put them in the Pensieve, something he does not do in the book, since Harry is familiar with the wispy form of thoughts.

## Etymology

*Pensieve* is portmanteau, combining the words ‘pensive’ and ‘sieve.’ The latter is an object in which something may be sorted, drained or separated, and ‘Pensive’ is derived from French, and originally from the Latin ‘pensare,’ meaning ‘to ponder,’ and in common English usage means ‘thoughtful’ or ‘reflective;’ thus a ‘pensieve’ allows for the sorting of thoughts, or memories. Pensive can also refer to a tense mood someone seems to be in, and indeed many of the memories Harry views in it are of tense or awkward moments.

## Appearances

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