i was reading half-blood prince and it struck me that what if snape pencesive is still at hogwarts i mean he didn't know what draco was up to so it was unexpected so he didn't have any time to hide or take his things with him..........hermione and luna went to get him and he left is office in hurry............. he had is wand with him only...........i think about it ........

Hello Idiot (I feel terrible for saying that... what a name )

Well it seems that the Pensieve that Snape uses in the 5th book is in fact Dumbledore's Pensieve, and snape was merely borrowing it. Dumbledore would have lent it to him to hide his own personal memories, as well as those of Snape being Dumbledore's informant... because Harry was thought to have a connection with LV.... and they were right...

~Albus

You know, interesting point, though it does in fact say that the pensieve that Snape uses is Dumbledore's... but I think that just brings us back round to the loop we so often get into over Dumbledore's pensieve. Does it indeed contain memories of Snape and Dumbledore planning that horrible night atop the Astronomy Tower? Would Dumbledore hide the memories elsewhere? Does Snape have them hidden away himself?

I believe the pensieve will play a pivotal role in Snape's redemption at some point in book 7. Nice topic.

right the pensieve was dumbledore's i don't think snape has a pensieve but i could be wrong but i don't think i am because harry potter is my uncle

yes but it was dumbledoer pensieve why would snape put his own thoughts in it and what about dd thoughts .........................................................snape would be able to look in alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll dd thought and hear the prophey

I personally think that the pensive was Snape's own. We don't know very much of pensives, but I belive that they are normal wizard product you can buy anywhere. So why would Snape then lend one from DD?

I don't belive that Snape's pensive plays any big role in book 7. It can revel something from his childhood, but I don't think he would have put there any secrets.

yeah. Snapes pensieve was DD. but still it would have had Snapes memories in it. But i guess snape wouldn't have put any memories in their that he wanted hidden.

i always assumed that snapes pensieve was dumbledores, but he was just borrowing it for occlumency so harry couldnt penetrate snapes thoughts

my ideas on how pensieves work are that a pensieve can be used by different people than the person who gave the memory, like with harry

however i think that dumbledore may have removed his thoughts or locked them from snape so he couldnt know all of dumbledores thoughts and memories-maybe there is a charm which does this and you cant access your own thoughts at this point until you lift the charm so anyone can access them again

Actually Snape did know what Draco was up to. That is why Snape made the unbrakable with Dracos' mother in the begining of book seven. He was to protect Draco.

Hello???? that pensieve was from Dd's

Actually, I think Harry recognises it as DD's pensieve. I don't think it's so common an object. At the beginning of each occlumency lesson, Snape takes one thought out of his mind that he doesn't want Harry to see: when James humiliates him. There is just one piece of hair that he removes from his head, that's all. That's no big deal. However, JKR intended us and Harry to see this memory, why? What did we learn apart from the fact that Snape and Harry hated each other, which we knew. I think there is an element in this memory that we have to focus on, sth really important.

Ok if the pensieve was DD's why would DD let Snape borrow it? Would he have wanted Snape to leave the pensieve out for Harry to peer into as he has in the past in GoF. That just seems odd to me. I think that it wqs prob Snapes own pensieve and because Harry was only able to see the one memory in it it was that way becaue Snape chose it to be like that. He is much more secretive than DD and at the begginning of of each occulumency lesson he does remove a memory from his head so that Harry would not be able to read his mind

[color=#000000] You know, that's true b/c then harry would just be able to look in there and see the rest of Snape's ghastly past!

It is, or was Dumbledore's pensieve I think... I can't imagine that there would be two of them hanging around at Hogwarts. I believe that Dumbledore and Snape between themselves pieced together some important informationfor Harry. They both know he can't resist looking into it, and it would be a perfect way of giving Harry an extra helping hand

Harry recognised the Pensive in Snape's office as Dumbledore's. I don't believe it is a common wizard posession as not many wizards/witches would need to use it. Only those who are very cleaver and/or very powerful would regularly muse over past memories.

As for being able to see Snape or Dumbledore's memories through it - I don't believe the pensive stores memories.

Take Snape for example: he put a memory into the pensive at the start of each occlumancy lesson because it was humiliating and he didn't want Harry to see it. As he did this at the start of every lesson presumably he took it back out at the end of each lesson. Therefore it was only used to temporarily store the memories or to look at them objectively as Harry and Dumbledore do in HBP.

This, I think, is further backed up by the fact that Dumbledore puts Bob Ogdon's, Hokey's and Morfin's memories into the pensive. As Lord V was at school 50 years before the story and his uncle was a grown man before he was even born it is safe to assume Morfin Gaunt has been dead many years. Yet Dumbledore does not store his memory in the pensive but in a bottle.

To me, these events show that memories are not stored in the pensive so even though it is still at Hogwarts it probably doesn't contain anything of interest.

As a side note, if you can swirl around the memories, surely if they were stored in the pensive it would eventually get full and maybe the memories could get mixed up?

I view the Pensive as a JR form of a wizards vcr or dvr and the memories in vials like tapes. Muggles want to record their memories so I would assume that wizards would want to be the same. The pensive allows to view memories, at leisure, for bussiness or pleasure. I do not think it is made to store memories just view them, but as with everything it is possible to forget and leave something behind, like a tape in the VCR.

Unlike the VCR the pensive(s) are rare and Snape was borrowing DDs. DD loaned it to Snape for security of the order and of Snape. Not matter what side Snapes ends up on, there will always be thing which he we hide from LV for his own survival. My guess is that as we saw with Harry reversing the spell and getting a glimps of Snapes memories is a common problem with learning Occlumency and the last thing Snape or DD would have wanted was to give LV information.

i dont think snape has his own pensive and even if he did adoubt he would be thick enough to leave his most presious memories lieing around. snape obviously has something hes hiding and hes relativley intellagnet so i think he would leave it somewhere less obvious tehn in a pensive in his office.

I think it's Dumbledore's pensieve, not Snape's. I think that you can store and take memories out of it. I think that Dubledore lent it to Snape for the Occlumency lessons because Dumbledore understood that some people (Snape) like to keep some memories hidden. I also think that it wasn't on purpose to give Harry information, the only reason Harry saw it (if I remember correctly) is because Snape was called away and Harry became curious.

AUROR EDIT: Hello! Would you please check your owls? there's a message for you!

Yeah I have to agree with albus dumbledore that it is dumbledore's pensieve.Snape just borrowed it.

Idiot, well thought of.

Where does it say that the pensieve is DD's and not Snapes? If I'm remembering right, it says Harry recognizes it as a pensieve, like DD's not that he recognizes it AS Dumbledore's; though I admit I might be wrong. If so, let us know where it says for fact that it's DD's.

Either way, it might be useful to Harry. If it is Snapes, and Snape is good, then he'll have taken out all the memories of the plans he made with DD; Harry would then be able to view them. If it's DD's then he'll be able to examine it for any clues that he may have missed.
Just my 2 Cents

I'm not sure if it was Dumbledore's or Snape's, but I wonder why Snape needed it in the first place. If Snape is so good at Occlumency and can fool Voldermort and/or Dumbledore, then why did he need to hide his memories when teaching Harry. If it was because it might weaken him or sort of open the door for Harry when he is trying to perform Legilemancy on Harry (it seems that way in the book), then why couldn't Voldermort or Dumbledore do the same thing on Snape to get past his Occlumency? The whole thing seems a little vague to me. What do you think?

Ok we all have a very interesting topic here-and I also agree with you all.If Snape left his pensieve at Hogwarts then there could still be a chance of the secrets being in there and even more of a cance of people finding it.
But Snape must have known not to put anything important in to his pensieve incase people would find it and then he would obviously be sent to Azkaban.
Anyway,that's probably one of the most common theories.Aroosa ~*~h

Just thought I would let you know, I looked up where Harry sees the pensieve in OotP. On page 529, American version, it says ..."Harry's attention was drawn toward the desk, however, where a shaloow stone basin engraved with runes and symbols lay in a pool of candelight. Harry recognized it at once- Dumbledore's Pensieve. Wondering what on earth it was doing here, he jumped when Snape's cold voice came out of the corner..."

So, this does indeed seem to be Dumbledore's Pensieve. Which leads to the same question Harry had. Why did Snape have it? Why would DD let him use it? Did DD leave some of his most important thoughts in it because he trusted Snape completely? Did he leave the memory of the Prophecy in it? If he cleared out those thoughts and memories out before he lent it to Snape, where did he put them- back into his mind? Into something else? Did he empty anything from the Pensieve at all? How many more memories did Snape put in the Pensieve? Just the one with James? Or what about his thoughts about Lily, if any? What about the night he told LV what he heard from the Prophecy? Surely he would'nt wnat Harry to know of these thoughts either if he were to accidentally break Snapes thoughts during the Occlumnecy lessons?

Ok, now I'm going to have to go and think about all of this myself, because now this is bothering me...

I've got the page open infront of me as i type and it says it is dumbledore's pensive

i think snape may have asked for it to use for harrys occlumency lessons as he didn't want harry seeing what was in it

any other ideas?

I do agree too that the pensive was infact Dumbledore's, and Snape was merely borrowing it, seeing as you all have given us direct proof. He was probably using it to put thoughts into it that he would never want another person to see, especially Harry, so I agree there too. To bad for Snape, Harry can get a bit noisy. We can only wonder what other thoughts were hidden inside of it that Snape was hiding. Perhaps, as PhoenixTatoo1 said, he may have had the thought of himself telling LV about the prophecy in there. You also raised another good question, did Dumbledore take out some of his own thoughts before lending it to Snape? If so, where did they go?

As has been established already, the pensive was dumbledores, though I think he will leave it to harry in his will and harry will have further insite into dumbledore and snapes life, find out how dumbledore defeated grindelwald and why snape was loyal to dumbledore and why he could be trusted.

PhoenixCycle aka Drist Mason

yea bro the peniseive thing is a possibility but the book said he came out a lil while later and maybe he had already got rid of the memorys

i think that snape was just borrowing the pensieve from dumbedore, and i also think that snape would take care to empty the pensieve of all his important memories before he left them alone.