The Harry Potter series has a strong historical sensibility. Numerous scholars have considered author J.K. Rowling’s references to particular historical events, literature, and people, from ancient Rome,¹ to Renaissance alchemists,² to twentieth-century totalitarian regimes³. Within the story, readers learn early on that the wizarding world has a deep sense of its own history, recent and distant,⁴ recorded not only in social memory (the people Harry encounters, like Hagrid or Mr. Weasley) but also in chocolate frog cards, the book Hogwarts: A History by historian Bathilda Bagshot, and of course in the stultifyingly boring History of Magic class, a required course at Hogwarts. But even Professor Binns’s boring class contains evidence of deep, pervasive historical traumas in the wizarding world’s history: goblin wars and rebellions abound. Harry constantly discovers new information about the past—information that affects him personally, like details about his parents, and that also shapes the magical world he now inhabits. This historical web both provides depth to the series’ world building and directly affects the story’s plot. Events from previous generations significantly influence the wizarding world present and even, like Voldemort himself, rise up from the past to impact the future. Many of these events reflect the trauma of war, mass death, and injustice that has shaped this community in hiding, its segregation itself evidence of suffering. Wizard identity is defined to a significant degree by historical trauma. To be ignorant of this past is to be unprepared in the present and unable to work for a desirable future.

As a result, Harry and other characters often must become historians to uncover important information that will enable just action. For example, Hermione searches for information about Nicolas Flamel in library sources, asks Professor Binns about the Chamber of Secrets, scours Hogwarts for the identity of the Half-Blood Prince, and asks Hogwarts ghosts about long ago events⁵. Harry and Hermione even do some historical tourism in the final book, going to Godric’s Hollow to see where baby Harry first defeated Voldemort and finding an elaborate public memorial to himself and to his parents’ sacrifice. Understanding Headmaster Dumbledore’s actions as a young man greatly informs Harry’s decisions in the last book in the series, as Harry seeks to defeat Voldemort’s evil regime.⁶

But members of the wizarding world have access to more potential sources of historical knowledge than we Muggles do, like the Hogwarts ghosts and the young Tom Riddle horcrux that emerges from his diary. Rowling also offers readers what we might call fantastic technologies for examining the past. These devices become necessary for Harry and his friends in their quest for truth to support right action in the current day.

---

To connect past, present, and future, the series explores the value of historical witnessing. This concept emphasizes personal experience of traumatic events and communication of those experiences through testimonials, which may be documentary, literary, artistic, or performative, and which often take on elements of public history. Historical witnessing allows those who were not present at catastrophic events to empathize with those who were and, in a mediated way, to share in those experiences. The Harry Potter series offers magical means of historical witnessing through enchanted devices that provide distinct interactions between the present and the past: the Pensieve and the Time-Turner. These two objects are in some ways plot devices. Yet they point to the social, pedagogical, and ethical importance of historical witnessing. They model a deeply personal engagement with history that can be used to advance broader social causes. Despite their fantastical nature, these magical technologies provide metaphors discerning readers can use to understand the work of historians—its importance, its limitations, and its perils.

Albus Dumbledore’s Pensieve is essentially a memory device: it allows for the collection of memories, one’s own as well as others’. Dumbledore explains, “One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one’s leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form.”⁷ On WizardingWorld.com, Rowling explains that Pensieves are ancient but rare magical objects whose full range of powers can only be used by exceptionally skilled witches and wizards. She emphasizes that many magical folk would not want to own a Pensieve because it can make personal memories public, thereby revealing secrets or shameful pasts. ⁸

---

Harry first encounters the Hogwarts Pensieve in Dumbledore’s office, when he notices light reflected on a pane of glass and follows it to a basin in an improperly closed cabinet: “The silvery light was coming from the basin’s contents, which were like nothing Harry had ever seen before. . . . It looked like light made liquid—or like wind made solid . . . .”⁹ Harry puts his face into the cabinet and sees not the bottom of the basin, but down into a room in which witches and wizards are gathered around a chair with chains on it. When the “tip of his nose” touches the mist, he pitches “headfirst into the substance inside the basin,” and then he’s seated on a bench next to Dumbledore.¹⁰ No one notices him, not even Dumbledore, and Harry realizes that he has likely tumbled into a memory. Specifically, this is the trial of Durmstrang Headmaster Igor Karkaroff for Death Eater activities, from a dozen or so years before. Harry watches the trial unfold from his vantage point on the bench next to Dumbledore—not from Dumbledore’s eyes, but from a third-person perspective, not as a participant but as a distanced witness.

Through the Pensieve, a would-be observer can draw on a wisp of memory to descend into past events, seeing them from a neutral perspective without influencing them. In response to a question about whether Pensieve memories only portrayed the limited perspective of the rememberer, Rowling commented that they are accurate representations of the past, not typically distorted by the rememberer: “Otherwise it really would be like a diary, wouldn’t it? Confined to what you remember. But the Pensieve recreates a moment for you, so you could go into your own memory and relive things you didn’t notice at the time.”¹¹ This allows for a kind of witnessing that not only conveys personal experience but also allows the distance of neutral observation, both for the person who was there and for others who tumble into the collected memory. Evidence exists of altered Pensieve memories, Slughorn’s reaction to Tom Riddle asking about horcruxes, for example. But these distortions can be detected even by a neophyte like Harry. The level of historical accuracy provided by the Pensieve, with its combination of personal and third-person perspective, would indeed be magical for Muggle historians searching for the truth about past events and people.

---

The Pensieve also serves a valuable pedagogical purpose. Dumbledore uses it to teach Harry about past traumas that still influence the present, from trials of Death Eaters in the previous generation, to the Gaunts’ tussles with wizard authorities, to Voldemort’s entry into wizarding society, to the house-elf Hokey’s encounter with Tom Riddle. When Harry accompanies Dumbledore on these Pensieve journeys into history, he experiences the past beside the person originally living through it—Dumbledore, Morfin Gaunt, Slughorn, or Hokey—and in a way that offers the possibility of an objective, real vision of the past he can personally witness. Such witnessed history cannot stand on its own but must be understood in context.¹² Harry always needs to process what he sees with Dumbledore’s assistance, as someone more familiar with the overarching history. This is not just an exercise in knowing history for its own sake.¹³ Dumbledore uses these memories—his own as well as others’—to uncover history so as to predict the future, particularly in anticipating Voldemort’s plans. Educating Harry in the past through these Pensieve journeys prepares Harry for his quest for horcruxes after Dumbledore’s death. Harry’s historical education is designed to prepare him for future action.

While the Pensieve allows an observer to witness the past alongside a particular rememberer who “was there,” the Time-Turner in contrast allows for literal time travel, making observers into potential participants in past events. Hermione acquires a Time-Turner in her third year in order to be in two places at once; she does not use it to observe “history” but to multiply herself in the present. Using Time-Turners, which existed only in limited supply until they were all destroyed in the battle at the Department of Mysteries in The Order of the Phoenix, may be perilous. Time travel is strictly limited both by wizarding law and by the known dangers to those who journey back in time, some of whom, like the unfortunate Eloise Mintumble, age according to how far back they traveled. Eloise caused so much disturbance to the timeline during her 5 days back in the year 1402 that the people she encountered lost 25 descendants who were “unborn” in the present because of the present-day meddling with the past.¹⁴ As a consequence, most witches and wizards, like Hermione, only travel back one hour at a time.

Harry and Hermione discover the power of the Time-Turner, described as a “tiny, sparkling hourglass” worn on chain around the neck,¹⁵ to alter the past in Prisoner of Azkaban, using Hermione’s device not only to observe but also to rescue both Buckbeak and Sirius Black. The events they witness are very recent, hardly “history,” and provide them additional information about what occurred on the Hogwarts grounds earlier in the same day. Not only is their alteration of events from merely a few hours before, the narrative allows for them to have been participants even in the first cycle of events, before the time travel: this represents a closed-loop idea of time-travel. In the original timeline, Harry thinks he sees his father rescuing them from the Dementors but discovers later it is really his future self. The Time-Turner in this instance is not exactly a historical device. Rowling consciously made the decision to destroy the Time-Turner collection in the Ministry of Magic because she realized “it opened up a vast number of problems for me, because after all, if wizards could go back and undo problems, where were my future plots?”¹⁶ Because of its dangers, the wizarding world does not use Time-Turners for historical investigation—and after the battle in the Ministry of Magic they no longer exist—so this device would seem to have limited usefulness as a tool of historical witnessing.

---

However, the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child resurrects this device to explore more thoroughly the possibility of Time-Turners “undoing problems” in the past, and thus creating problems with future plots. The play imagines that Harry’s son Albus and his friend Scorpius Malfoy use a Time-Turner to alter the events of the original Harry Potter series itself. Asking the question so many Harry Potter readers have—Did Cedric Diggory have to die?—the play employs counter-factual thinking, proposing what might have happened had he lived. Grown-up Harry, in possession of a rogue Time-Turner, wisely refuses Amos Diggory’s request to use it to bring back his son. Overhearing this exchange, Albus and Scorpius try to right a terrible and senseless wrong—Cedric’s death—but in doing so make catastrophic changes to the unfolding events in the last three books in the series. These changes allow Voldemort to successfully rise again, without being defeated by Harry, and cause friends to be “unborn,” including Albus himself.

Through a series of Time-Turner-enabled jumps, Albus and Scorpius involve themselves intimately in historical events, seeing them close up and even participating in them. This is not the distanced, neutral observation of Pensieve memories. The boys are themselves physically present at traumatic or critical moments as they unfold; the boys feel under threat or empowered to action; and they personally feel the consequences of their actions. They experience the past as if they are a part of it. Finally, with Albus “reborn,” they appear in Godric’s Hollow just before Voldemort kills Harry’s parents. At this point, they have realized the importance of witnessing without participating in ways that might have unintended results. When Harry rescues the boys, he must also stand by and witness his parents’ deaths without intervening. The play’s audience only hear the murderous events but nevertheless become powerless witnesses of the tragedy as well.

Thus, the play allows audience members to engage in historical witnessing themselves by reenacting key, traumatic events, particularly the deaths of Harry’s parents. Having opened up the possibility that the past might have unfolded without the tragedy of the death of the innocent Cedric, The Cursed Child ultimately reinforces the original storyline of the books. Yes, Cedric had to die, as did Harry’s parents. The play underlines that message by offering readers and fans, via the Time-Turner, the opportunity to witness traumas of the wizarding world’s past, while asserting that this history cannot and should not be changed, not even to right wrongs. Harry, Albus, and the audience itself must literally confront the deaths of James and Lily Potter without alteration, however much one might want the events to have turned out otherwise.

---

This is quite a different message from that of The Prisoner of Azkaban, not only in following a different paradigm of how time-travel works (an open versus closed loop), but also in suggesting that events in the past should not be changed according to present and future desires.¹⁷ Thinking in historical instead of only literary terms, this point emphasizes the necessity of confronting injustices and tragedies of the past without sanitizing or erasing them to suit current needs or delicacies. Historical witnessing helps the young boys in the next generation appreciate the struggles that came before them by letting the children literally, magically live those struggles. It thereby curbs their hubris in thinking they might have prevented any tragedies from occurring by doing something differently. Similarly, historical witnessing in the Muggle world can bridge the divide between past and present, developing empathy with past people through testimonials, public commemoration, and simulated experiences of the past. But this must be accomplished ethically, in ways that do not alter the past, even at its worst.

By modeling different types of historical witnessing—that which observes at a distance, through a limited perspective, and that which observes in close proximity, allowing influence—the Harry Potter series provides insight into ethical dilemmas in historical methodology, suggesting the importance, limitations, and perils of this practice. Even if completely objective re-envisioning of the past were possible, in the manner of the Pensieve, interpreting historical events requires context, good judgment, and certainty that events are recalled without distortion. More than anything, the Pensieve points to the lack of any such objective source for Muggle historians. Access to an objective past is a fantasy. And where historians find opportunities to place themselves within history and consider tinkering with it to make it more palatable, in the manner of the Time-Turner, they must be careful not to do irreparable harm that prevents positive action in the present and future. When we think through literature, we gain insight into how we, too, interact with traumas of our collective past. Historical witnessing can be powerful in uncovering an accurate view of the past and in promoting empathy across time—but it can also be used to distort or mislead. In our world, which is so rich in historical memory, we must be careful lest, as Dumbledore says after one Pensieve journey, “Time [makes] fools of us again.” ¹⁸

---

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Copyrighted by Author
Attribution must be given
Cannot be used for commercial purposes
No derivatives allowed

---

Endnotes

1. ^{[Return to Article]} Parks, Mitchell H. “Harry, Aeneas, and the Foundational Text.” The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, and Beyond, edited by Lana Whited, University of Missouri Press, 2023, pp. 67-82.
2. ^{[Return to Article]} DuPree, Don Keck. “Nicholas Flamel: The Alchemist Who Lived.” Harry Potter and History, edited by Nancy R. Reagin, Trade Paper Press, 2011, pp. 73-89.
3. ^{[Return to Article]} See McDaniel, Kathryn N. “Dumbledore’s Army and the White Rose Society.” Harry Potter for Nerds II, edited by Kathryn N. McDaniel and Travis Prinzi, Unlocking Press, 2015, pp. 251-269. See also Casto, Adam-Troy. “From Azkaban to Abu Ghraib: Fear and Fascism in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” Mapping the World of Harry Potter, edited by Mercedes Lackey, Benbella Books, 2005, pp. 119-132. Casto points out many 20th-century parallels in this essay, from the Nazis and Stalin, to the Red Scare and McCarthyism, and more.
4. ^{[Return to Article]} For how Rowling’s “ghost plots” revealed in articles on her Wizarding World website construct a wizard history that parallels “Muggle” European history, see McDaniel, Kathryn N. “Secrecy and Segregation in the Wizarding World’s Hidden Histories.” The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, and Beyond, edited by Lana Whited, University of Missouri Press, 2023, pp. 49-64.
5. ^{[Return to Article]} Anne Rubenstein explores characters’ use of historical methodology in “Hermione Raised her Hand Again: Wizards Writing History.” Harry Potter and History, edited by Nancy R. Reagin, Trade Paper Press, 2011, pp. 309-321.
6. ^{[Return to Article]} It was crucial for Harry to uncover the truth about his former headmaster and mentor, which he did based on critical analysis of flawed documentary sources (Elphias Doge’s flattering obituary tribute, Rita Skeeter’s scandal-mongering The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, and Aberforth Dumbledore’s oral history of the tragic events of his brother’s “missing year”). Harry’s decision to follow Dumbledore’s directive to find the horcruxes instead of assembling the hallows rests on an interpretation of the headmaster’s past as revealed through histories and historical documents. McDaniel, Kathryn N. “Dumbledore’s Uncertain Past: A Harry Potter Approach to Evaluating Sources.” Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, vol. 5, no. 1, 2018.
7. ^{[Return to Article]} Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Scholastic Books, 2000, p. 597.
8. ^{[Return to Article]} This concern over privacy is such that people’s Pensieves are usually buried with them. The one in Dumbledore’s office is not because it belongs to the school and—apocryphally—may have been unearthed at the very site of the school’s origin. Rowling, J.K. “Pensieve.” Wizarding World . Accessed 15 March 2024.
9. ^{[Return to Article]} Thompson, Amy L. and Thompson, Antonio S., editors. …But If a Zombie Apocalypse Did Occur: Essays on Medical, Military, Governmental, Ethical, Economic and Other Implications. McFarland & Company Inc., 2015.: 48. Rowling, Goblet of Fire, 583.
10. ^{[Return to Article]} Ibid.
11. ^{[Return to Article]} Kind, Amy. “A Pensieve for Your Thoughts? Harry Potter and the Magic of Memory,” The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles, edited by Gregory Bassham, Blackwell Press, 2010, p. 210.
12. ^{[Return to Article]} Rowling explains that using a Pensieve “to examine and sort thoughts and ideas” is so challenging that most wizards can’t do it. Dumbledore is not most wizards, of course. Rowling, “Pensieve.”
13. ^{[Return to Article]} Only valuing history for its own sake, and not its current relevance, is perhaps Professor Binns’s downfall as a teacher.
14. ^{[Return to Article]} “Finally,” a quote from Department of Mysteries expert Professor Saul Croaker relates, “there were alarming signs, during the days following Madam Mintumble’s recovery, that time itself had been disturbed by such a serious breach of its laws. Tuesday following her reappearance lasted two and a half full days, whereas Thursday shot by in the space of four hours.” Rowling, J.K. “Time-Turner.” Wizarding World . Accessed 15 March 2024,
15. ^{[Return to Article]} Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Scholastic Books, 1999, p. 394.
16. ^{[Return to Article]} Ibid.
17. ^{[Return to Article]} Given that the events Harry and Hermione witness in Prisoner of Azkaban occurred only a few hours earlier, we might ponder whether their interference really tampered with historical events as opposed to almost current ones.
18. ^{[Return to Article]} Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Scholastic Books, 2005, p. 277.