What's happening to Harry's memories?

What's happening to Harry's memories?

Unread postby thrawnca » September 22nd, 2016, 11:14 pm

What are the leading theories on why Harry is forgetting things? Is it just the passage of time, or is he actually losing things for a magical reason?

I doubt it's an erosion of the timeline, like he was thinking. Clearly, the first time he made a change, things weren't going to happen exactly as he had experienced them, so if changes were going to make him forget, that would have happened immediately.

I actually think it would be good if, by the time he finally incinerates Voldemort, he has mostly forgotten about his trauma. But that doesn't seem likely if it's natural forgetting. Or maybe at that point he could get Dumbledore to obliviate him of those memories on purpose!
Last edited by thrawnca on April 1st, 2019, 1:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What's happening to Harry's memories?

Unread postby Gawerty » May 16th, 2017, 4:20 pm

I'm more of the opinion that as he continues to make changes, his new memories that would be concurrent with the old ones are starting to over write the old ones, however I also feel that since he will never be "11 year old Harry" that is seen at the start of the story, he will always hold some trauma of Future Harry's Past (Wow that's confusing)

Also, do note that most of the memories thus far that he seems to be forgetting are generally somewhat minor details that even most dedicated readers of the original series won't recall and something he himself as a character isn't likely to recall after so many years.

Harry never had a photographic or eidetic memory so many things he'd be unlikely to forget fully may blur the lines a little bit.

Gawerty~
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Re: What's happening to Harry's memories?

Unread postby Siriuslyblackparade » May 21st, 2017, 3:35 pm

Personally, I think his memories are fading because of his practicing at an animagus transfiguration. The animagus is a true animal form of your soul yes? Well Harry has two. And if it's only drawing from the animal within 13 year old Harry and not 30 year old Harry, Maybe the pain in his chest is from the "sutures" of his souls tearing a bit as he forces his 13 year old chorpus magi to shift into animal form?
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Re: What's happening to Harry's memories?

Unread postby Siriuslyblackparade » May 21st, 2017, 3:38 pm

Also if his souls are breaking at the stitches a little, that would also explain why he had such difficulty casting that shielding charm when they got off the train coming back for the start of their fourth term
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Re: What's happening to Harry's memories?

Unread postby thrawnca » November 8th, 2017, 8:38 pm

On a related note, Harry has noticed that he has shifted toward identifying more with his young self, and treating his 30-year-old self as just a useful resource, "him". I think that this is both to be expected, and probably to be desired.

First, it's to be expected: he has spent several years pretending to be young, in a young body, around people who treat him as young, and he has no expectation or desire to ever return to his old world and old body. There is nothing to stop him from permanently becoming his mask. Even those who have discovered his future past are still content to largely treat him as being a teenager; the Weasleys didn't freak out at the revelation that an adult was sharing a dormitory with their son, for example. His only contacts with the old world are his own memories and nightmares. It's to be expected that he will eventually see his current life as "me, with extra background knowledge".

Secondly, it's to be desired: I think it's much healthier for him to identify with his second life than his first. In his first timeline, he reached a point where he knew he was going to commit suicide, and the best he could do was channel that into a productive, time-altering suicide. It wouldn't do to continually dwell on that and treat his second chance as an illusion. Nor does he really need to keep them in balance, either, because there was nothing left for him there. He didn't leave behind anyone or anything that should occupy his thoughts and affections.

His whole journey has been a forceful rejection of the old timeline, "It won't happen that way this time!" It's only natural that his mind has embraced his new reality.
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Re: What's happening to Harry's memories?

Unread postby WarriorDrgnMage » September 27th, 2018, 12:47 pm

The first possibility I've been thinking that the memories from his 30-ish year old self are fading because he changed things. Specifically because his memories are no longer how things will turn out because of the changes he's made. Like each one of his memories is a kind of vision of the future once the parties (person or group of people) involved are no longer on the path that leads to the specific memory that memory then fades.

The other possibility I've been thinking of is that as the second magical core (from 30ish Harry) is integrated/absorbed into his younger (student Harry) magical core/body the memories associated with each bit fade because the 2nd core (from 30ish Harry) was not in and of itself actually ONLY a Magical Core. It was/is 30ish Harry's being, as in his memories, soul and magic were all bound up in this bundle of energy that is enough like a magical core to show up as one on that MaRI test that the Healers at St. Mungos performed.
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Re: What's happening to Harry's memories?

Unread postby thrawnca » November 22nd, 2018, 9:11 pm

I suppose it's not entirely impossible that once his older soul is fully absorbed, Harry could have forgotten most of what it knew. He wouldn't forget that he's a time traveller, because that's something that his younger soul has experienced, but he might forget the specific memories that he brought with him.

Or it might just be natural. Although, there's a nineteen-year gap between his first and second tries no matter what year he's dealing with, so from a certain point of view, his fourth year memories shouldn't be any fuzzier in fourth year than his first year memories were in first year. They're nineteen-year-old memories in both cases.
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Re: What's happening to Harry's memories?

Unread postby ElfIcarii » December 24th, 2018, 1:46 pm

Realistically, to me it just looks like natural deterioration. Honestly it's surprising so many of the normal, every-day memories lasted so long, to my mind. However, from the 'metagame' perspective, it seems unlikely the author would be making such a frequent point of it if there wasn't more to it.

So...assuming it's not natural deterioration...here's my pet theory. Our memories are a solid chunk of who we are. And various hints in the storyline tell me that it's likely that the soul and one's magical power source are one and the same. Now, in a normal person, memories would be written into the brain as well as the soul - but for Harry's older self, only the 'rehearsed' memories (those that cropped up in nightmares and flashbacks, or were gone over to figure out how to change things, etc) would have gone through the current body's brain and recorded more solidly (inasmuch as you can call the way our brains store memories 'solid'). The rest, it seems to me, would be vulnerable to being destroyed as the old soul deteriorates. If soul=magical power, it's possible that every time Harry superpowers a spell, it's consuming a chunk of the old soul, and the unrehearsed memories with it. I would imagine on the MRI, this might look just like they'd merged more - the missing substance would appear to have sunk into the new soul, since they are midmerge and so size changes would look like the merge continuing.

Just my thoughts.
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