At the end of book 4, Harry takes verasiterum or shows the resurrection in a pensieve.
The wizarding world isn't caught offguard by V's return, and Malfoy's loyalties are revealed. Seeing such an important political figure belongs to V, the ministry does mandatory testing of all its employees. All that's left is the horcrux hunt and the killoff.

 

I do not see any problem with Harry taking Veritaserum immediately after 3rd Task. It is clear that he is no Occlumens, he had no chance to use antidote and as Rowling said: "Veritaserum works best upon the unsuspecting, the vulnerable and those insufficiently skilled (in one way or another) to protect themselves against it" - he certainly is.

And Fudge is essentially committing treason. If Dumbledore, as the most powerful person in Wizarding World, bothered to do something about it...

 

Yeah, but someone could have easily modified his memory. Veritaserum doesn't prove a shit when wizards have the ability to modify and erase memories.

 

Voted "Fuck it, throw out everything but the basics, start anew." because from the perspective of the reader; it's always quite interesting to see what the author came up with and how it all works.

All those times rereading stories with the old canon magic being unchanged might have affected my opinion though.
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And we see exactly this in HBP with Slughorn.

As Sesc pointed out, where's the story in that? Sounds boring as hell. You don't sit down and read something wherein everything works out like that, it's the point of strife and drama and intrigue within a... you know, a plot.

NB: Unless you're a member of ginnypotter.

How is it clear? Everyone thinks he's a close consort with Dumbledore. Is it so far a stretch of the imagination to imagine Dumbledore teaching, or organising the teaching, of Occlumency to Harry?

Owait this happens in book 5.

This is assuming that Fudge even knows about Occlumency. Because what we are led to believe is that it's a rare, underused and mysterious bit of magic. If it wasn't, everyone would use it and it would render Leglimency defunct.

As has been pointed out now multiple times, it's pretty fucking boring if everything works out and there's no human flaws in any of the characters. This is even if the context of 'everything working out' makes a lick of sense.

 

@GL: barely anyone knows about Occlumency/Legilimency, so no - someone as dumb as Fudge wouldn't immediately assume that Dumbledore was teaching Harry.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but can't a skilled wizard tell when another wizard's memories have been modified ? If so, then there's no objective reason that Harry couldn't have been given Veritaserum. The most important reason is, in fact, Fudge's desire to remain blissfully ignorant.

 

Because as far as we know, or at least as far as I can recall, there's no way to directly harness 'magic energy' besides using spells. It's not like someone could invent some kind of magic solar panel. If you wanted to use magic to create perpetual energy, you would have to do it indirectly (creating fire that burns forever without fuel, or enchanting a wheel to spin indefinitely). In fact, I'm not even entirely sure magic is really an 'energy.' I can't recall it ever being termed that in the books. It might just be pervasive fanon.

Doesn't work. Rowling has stated that the reason they don't use veratiserum on all criminals is because it can be bullshat if you know it's coming. You don't even need to know occlumency. If you have time to mentally prepare yourself to fight it, you can fight it to an extent. It only works reliably when it's either sprung on someone by surprise or snuck into them. Fanon would have you believe it's flawless, and that the only reason wizards don't use it all the time in legal matters is because they're idiots. Fanon would have you believe a lot of things.

Except that memories can be bullshat as well. Memory modification can make a memory seem completely different from what actually happened. While it is true that it was rather obvious that Slughorn's memory had been tampered with, it was also rather clearly implied that he did a crap job of modifying it to begin with. Which makes sense. He's a Potion Master, not a mental magic specialist. Considering how Fudge was spinning the event, and seeing how Harry's Headmaster was Albus Dumbledore, any memories he submitted wouldn't be taken seriously.

 

As far as I recall, a wand harnesses magic - and it's stated that a wand is simply the best tool to harness magic, not the sole tool (one notable alternative being a wizard's hands).

Sooo....

 

We make a machine of severed wizard hands?

 

My sig has sudden relevance to me right now.

 

Yeah, mate, thought I'd covered that with

but all the same, he convinces himself Dumbledore's training Harry in taking over the ministry in OotP, so could conceivably believe by that point that he's learning tricks of some sort from the Headmaster. That sort of delusion doesn't spring from convenience, surely.

I'm not Taure, but I can't recall an instance of 'skill' coming into it in detecting bullshit memories outright, or at least not in Pensieve form. Slughorn's, methinks, is a fairly obvious fake what with the roaring and white mist. Insofar as Leglimency goes, what we do know about it is that Snape shows selective or modified memories to Voldemort when the man pries, in order to not let his cover slip. If Voldemort (or Dumbledore) is a top-tier leglimens, in theory he'd be able to detect it, if skill came into it in that way. Unless Snape is simply a better Occlumens than Voldemort is a Leglimens - I suppose that much is down to interpretation.

Anyway, following on from that, I'd think a skilled wizard could realistically fake memories, as opposed to the other way around. Isn't this how Lockhart's career develops? Were Slughorn a decent occlumens, would he have created a more realistic fake memory of Riddle? And even assuming that a skilled wizard can detect fake memories (entirely possible) who in Fudge's inner circle would be skilled enough to make that sort of analysis of a potentially Dumbledore-modified memory?

The only other thing we know is that Veritaserum, for whatever reason, isn't used in wizarding trials. Yes, Fudge's attitude is undoubtedly the real reason. But where someone was ignoring character reasons that are already highlighted by Sesc and was delving into practical, I was simply pointing out there's probably one or two practical reasons as well.

 

I'm pretty sure Occlumency isn't the art of creating fake memories. It's the art of mental judo. Legilimency isn't precise. It's like a search engine. You look for general things, which you may or may not find, along with a bunch of other semirelated shit you have to sort through.

Snape made this clear in the very first lesson of Occlumency. A mind is not an open book to be read. Occlumency is the art of using mental discipline to shunt what you don't want the Legilimens to find away from their search. The idea of 'mental shields' and the like is total nonsense perpetuated by fanon. You don't build shields over your mind with Occlumency. That's not how it works. What you do is bump down the 'results' that you know the Legilimens is searching for so they don't find it in their search.

If you do Occlumency right, the person using Legilimency will never realize you're hiding anything. That's why Snape is such an awesome spy, and why he could keep secrets from Voldemort. Voldemort never realized he was keeping secrets. That's also why the whole shield thing is retarded. If Snape had huge thick obsidian shields of indestructibility over his mind that blocked Legilimency attempts like a psychic bunker, Voldemort would realize right away he was hiding things and wouldn't trust him.

 

IIRC, it is possible to create completely fake, realistic memories; or at least implanting existing memories into another person/creature on such a level that they think it is their own. Isn't that what Tom Riddle did to the house elf to frame it for Hepziba(sp?) Smith's murder so he could get away with Hufflepuff's cup?

 

My interpretation of that is that memory charms create substitute memories to take place of whatever got erased, but those substitute memories probably wouldn't stand up to a close examination, in say a pensieve because they'd be missing details and such.

Though that's just me extrapolating.

 

Voldemort may have pushed it through the Horcrux in Harry's head, but the faked image of Sirius captured in the Department of Mysteries clearly shows that memories can be shaped by a strong enough wizard's will. Dumbledore, then, is a clear candidate.

We have no way of knowing the difficulty of that task, but Lockhart's powerful memory charm -given his lack of skill in other areas, shows that wizards don't need to be inordinately powerful to twist the minds of others how they would like.

 

I'd like to point out that the fact that Lockheart was able to get away with what he was doing so thoroughly and for so long (he was never officially caught) is strong evidence that skill with mental magic is not directly correlated to anything else.

Lockheart himself said that he was 'only good at one thing,' that one thing being the Memory Charm, which he had perfected thoroughly. This makes sense, considering the scam he was running. But this also provides us with some important indirect evidence.

For one, it indicates that the Memory Charm by itself is enough to modify memories in the right hands. It's not 'just' an MIB flashystick of you-didn't-see-that. It can be used to create fine details and modify any and all aspects of the memory in question, including visuals, emotions, details of the surroundings, and input from all senses, such as people talking or the scent of cooking food.

For another, some of the people he was doing this to were powerful witches and wizards. People who might notice if their memories were weird, and realize the implications of that. That would indicate that not only is it possible to thoroughly modify memories with the Memory Charm, but that you can also do a good enough job that a skilled witch or wizard looking over the memory itself would find nothing amiss.

So just from Lockheart, I feel it is safe to conclude that not only is the Memory Charm the only tool you need to distort and rearrange memories, with Occlumency and Legilimency not figuring into the equation at all, but that it is also possible to use it skillfully enough that the memories seem perfectly legitimate (the contents of the memories themselves notwithstanding).

Ergo, the existence of the Memory Charm counterbalances the existence of Pensives and Veritiserum. Memory modifications and sufficient preptime allow you to fool both reliably and consistently, which explains their general absence in the formal legal process.

 

Kind of like a polygraph then.

 

I will have to disagree with this line of reasoning. Lockhart's ability to keep from getting caught is actually related to two skills: 1. His skill in performing Memory Charms 2. Simple cunning.

The second skill has no relation to magic at all, yet is absolutely essential to running a long term scam as Lockhart did. In fact it's the root skill required for any successful scam artist.

Just for starters, you have to know how to pick the right wizards. It wouldn't do to pick a wizard whose skills and anecdotes are known to thousands; there's no way to successfully steal that sort of person's story. On the other hand, you can steal from a more obscure person, and nobody will know or care what Lockhart has done.

As far as the magic goes, I could argue just as easily as you that the key is not making a perfect memory, but merely in blacking out the right spots and covering them over with the right patches. My own evidence is based on what Voldemort did to his uncle Morfin.

In Morfin, Voldemort first blacked out his memory for some time period (we see the direct effects of this blackout in the Pensieve), and then overlaid it with a memory of Morfin killing the Riddles that we do not get to see. But it is specifically mentioned that the prosecutors never bothered to check the quality of the memory: they merely relied on Morfin's testimony.

We also learn that Voldemort's memory charms made it difficult to extract the memory. Dumbledore says that "it took a great deal of skilled Legilimency to coax [the memory] out of him, and why should anybody delve further into Morfin's mind when he had already confessed to the crime?" In short, Voldemort was able to hide his crime with cunning; the skill of his memory charm was just extra bit of security needed to keep out half-hearted investigations, and was no match for a skilled investigator (Dumbledore).

I agree with this. I just don't agree that it means Lockhart was making Pensieve-quality memories. IMO, the trick is actually to ensure that they never have a reason to investigate themselves thoroughly enough to discover memory-tampering.

If you're dealing with a guy who slew a werewolf, you can blank out that memory, plus a few key bits that could lead to the memory. Then you replace it with something boring - something that hardly seems interesting enough to investigate. You do the same for anybody close to the werewolf slayer, so that they won't contradict him enough to make him wonder. And once again, you only attempt this sort of thing on a person isolated enough to not require you to mess with the memories of too many people.