A question

[alasse_irena]

 I need help with an important Harry Potter-related question, for fanfiction purposes:

When you put a memory in a Pensieve, do you still hold it in your head, or is it only in the Pensieve now? Dumbledore kind of implies the latter when he talked about using it when your head seems too full of stuff, but I'm not sure...

Comments

[st_aurafina]

I assumed that once it was out of your head, it was gone but I can't point to any part of canon that confirms it. I have written fic with that perspective and nobody said anything? Not sure if that's helpful or not!

[alasse_irena]

That is reasonably helpful! I poked around on the wikis and couldn't find anything definitive one way or the other, so "I did it this way and no-one found it implausible" is a pretty useful answer. Thank you!
(Dumbledore is definitely keeping some stuff in his Pensieve about Grindelwald that he is still too emotionally involved in to want to think about.)

[untonuggan]

I kind of assumed that you could choose? Like "pick your spell for the situation" kind of thing, in case you wanted to keep the memory vs store it elsewhere? idk. Again I would go with "the lore is not specific, use at will" (unless it's on pottermore and I just haven't clicked thru). I think you're safe however you go...

[alasse_irena]

If it's on Pottermore, I haven't seen it either... I found Pottermore a really frustrating way of getting information, so I mostly just wait for people to put it on the wiki.

But yes, thank you - sounds like I'm safe whichever way I go, so I shall continue writing with it as is.