Chapter 560: Chapter 560: Dumbledore's Memory Retrieval Technique (Edited)
Tom's idea is also quite simple. Although the owner of this body is an orphan, isn't it likely that the child saw their parents after birth? Unless they were abandoned without ever opening their eyes, there's a high probability that they saw their parents. Currently, Tom can't remember what happened right after his birth, but it's possible that his brain holds a memory file. He just needs to use magic to access this "memory file" about his parents and investigate his origin.
Tom also wishes to know what kind of family he comes from, whether his parents are wizards, and what happened in the past that resulted in his abandonment.
After hearing Tom's request, Dumbledore gave him a glance and sighed before nodding. He understood Tom's needs.
People always wish to discover their "roots," and children from adoptive families often have a particular interest in their origins.
Dumbledore believed that no one at Hogwarts understood students like Tom better than he did, so he decided to help Tom fulfill his wish.
"Indeed, there is magic like that, but extracting memories can be quite unstable... If you permit me, I might achieve a better result, but I understand that you may not want to accept that option," Dumbledore said gently, offering Tom two choices: do it himself to preserve his privacy but without guaranteeing the "clarity" of the memories, or let Dumbledore intervene and obtain the memories in "high definition," with the consequence that Dumbledore would know even Tom's most intimate secrets.
Both options were left to Tom's choice.
Tom believed that if Dumbledore promised not to invade his privacy, then based on the old man's integrity, Dumbledore wouldn't intentionally seek to discover everything. However, it wasn't a matter of what Dumbledore wanted or didn't want, but rather that the secrets would reveal themselves to him. Tom had no other choice. If there were secrets he didn't want to reveal, he couldn't choose the second option and would have to rely on himself.
"I can see that you've already made a decision," Tom didn't say anything, but Dumbledore understood his expression.
"I'm sorry for prying into something like this..."
"You don't need to apologize. If I were in your place, I wouldn't allow a stranger to poke around in my memories either," Dumbledore interrupted Tom's apology with a smile. "There's no need to demand from others what one cannot do themselves."
"Well, let's start the lesson then... Tom, I assume you're familiar with the Pensieve, right?"
Tom nodded.
"That's good. In fact, it's quite simple to extract memories from the mind and transfer them to the Pensieve. You just need to recall the memory in question and then..." Dumbledore touched his temple with the tip of his wand, and a silvery wisp rose up.
"This is how it's done," Dumbledore said as he dispersed the extracted memory.
"However, the problem now is that you're looking for memories you can't remember. This requires you to clear your mind and repeat the same process without thinking. This way, what you extract from the tip of the wand will be memories you've hidden deep in your mind," Dumbledore explained the magic's principle to Tom.
"But..." Tom hesitated. He realized the limitation of this spell: he didn't know how many things he had forgotten, could he find them one by one? Wouldn't it be like looking for a needle in a haystack?
Dumbledore was also aware of the limitations of his method, but he had no other choice.
"You can form a suggestion in your mind; that way, you can roughly delimit the range," Dumbledore said, raising his hands, indicating that magic also had its limits, unless Tom fully opened up and allowed Dumbledore to delve into his mind to search.
"Let me show you a demonstration. Please, do not interrupt me," Dumbledore said after explaining the theory and began demonstrating the practice.
Dumbledore closed his eyes, and his facial muscles quickly relaxed. In less than two minutes, Dumbledore's expression became extremely peaceful, as if he were asleep. This condition lasted for several minutes, and just when Tom thought Dumbledore had actually fallen asleep, Dumbledore moved.
He slowly raised his wand to his temple and rested it there, slowly extracting a small memory fragment. The moment that memory detached from Dumbledore's skin, he opened his eyes again.
This time, Tom noticed that Dumbledore's eyes behind his half-moon glasses weren't as deep as before. If they had been like bottomless lakes before, they were now like clear streams with a visible bottom.
Dumbledore blinked, and the stream vanished, leaving the lake behind his glasses again.
"Not bad," Dumbledore said as he got up and deposited that memory into the Pensieve, gently stirring the "surface" of the liquid. Then, a scene unfolded.
Consciously or unconsciously, Dumbledore blocked Tom's view until he himself had seen the content of the memory. After viewing it, Dumbledore smiled.
"Oh, yes! It turns out that in the meat stew that Hagrid invited me to eat that day, there was a large claw. I've always wanted to ask someone what kind of claw it was, but I've been too busy and haven't had the time," Dumbledore invited Tom to come closer and see the image in the Pensieve.
Tom took two steps forward and saw a stew pot in which Dumbledore's fork was digging around until he finally pulled out a large claw.
"First, I can rule out chicken legs and duck wings." Tom also found that strange claw quite puzzling.
"I hope it's not something like a rat," Dumbledore said with a concerned expression on his face.
After Dumbledore finished showing, it was Tom's turn to attempt to retrieve the memory.
He sat in the chair and followed Dumbledore's advice to clear his mind of distracting thoughts. But his brain was like a leaky boat, it would expel one thing, and instantly, one or several new things would enter.
It took him a long time to barely clear his thoughts, but it was evident that it didn't work as well as it did for Dumbledore. The memory fragments he extracted with his wand looked like crumpled papers, cut and then glued back together, with irregular blotches and colors, as if they were about to break at any moment.
Dumbledore quickly placed the Pensieve in front of Tom and watched as he threw in the memory.
An image surfaced.
"Who ate the apple?" A lady in an apron picked up an apple that had only been bitten once from a trash bin, displaying a fierce expression.
"Waste is shameful! Eat it!" The aforementioned lady changed positions and moved closer to Tom and Dumbledore, as if she were standing right in front of them.
Tom suddenly understood, recalling the causes and consequences at that time. With indignation, he said, "At that moment, I didn't know who the miserable person was who bit the apple and threw it away, and I had to bear the blame!"
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