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All Men are Mortal, All Death Eaters are Slytherin: Logic, Observer Effects, and Snape's Spying
“There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin.” Hagrid, PS
We are explicitly told that all witches and wizards who go bad are Slytherin, and rather strongly invited to infer the converse, that all Slytherins are bad. Certainly Harry seems to have little problem believing the worst of his rival house.
But let’s look at what we know of the most extreme of those who “went bad”—those who became such ardent supporters of The Most Evil Dark Wizard of All Time™ that they took his Mark onto their own flesh and bound themselves to him permanently.
Harry (and the reader) assumes that Death Eaters were almost all Slytherins. Hagrid asserts, absolutely falsely, that they were Slytherins without a single exception. But does canon actually support the contention that they were even mostly Slytherins?
We must agree that many of them were. Riddle was in Slytherin, after all; his original supporters date from his Hogwarts days, and many of the younger ones are descendents or younger family members of previous Death Eaters. (Indeed, it’s hard to see how a Death Eater could avoid raising his child to be a supporter—whether he wanted to or not. What would either Lucius or Draco’s life expectancy have been, had Riddle returned to find Draco not primed to accept him as his Master?)
If we assume that the House situation was as bad under Dippet as it is under Dumbledore—that is, that House rivalry is so severe that cross-House friendships are strongly discouraged—and that many if not most children sort themselves by family affiliations (all Weasleys are Gryffindor, all Blacks are Slytherin), then (almost) all of Voldemort’s original supporters, and the majority of those recruited by their families, will be Slytherin. Plus Voldemort’s overt agenda pays lip service to Pureblood supremacism (though many Pureblood supremacists, like Sirius’s parents, did not support him), and Pureblood supremacists are somewhat more likely to sort Slytherin.
But do we have any canon evidence that those recruited through any other inducement are more likely to be Slytherin than not?
In fact, Snape’s becoming Dumbledore’s double agent might, of itself, have produced an optical illusion that Death Eaters were predominantly Slytherins.
If Snape was, as seems likely, the only double agent among the branded DE’s, then he was the primary means of identifying DE’s aside from capturing or killing them mid-raid. Yet Snape was a twenty-year-old Half-blood from an impoverished background. He was not welcome socially in Pureblood-supremacist circles, except insofar as the (Slytherin) ones tolerated their scions occasionally associating with a former housemate, and he was not likely to be rubbing shoulders with his elders in power at the Ministry. Which means, as I suggested in my fiction “Too Long a Sacrifice,” that those whom he could identify at full DE meetings through a mask and cloak would be his previous close associates: his contemporaries and housemates.
Some assumptions I made: one, that in the graveyard gathering Voldemort was careful to name only those who had already been “outed” as a DE—i.e. who’d been previously accused but got off on, say, the Imperius defense. That explains why the list of names Harry gave Fudge matches the old trial records. I’m further assuming that if Riddle didn’t name someone, their identity as a DE had not been compromised (that he knew of). Two, that Jodel was right, the reason all but one of Karkaroff’s names was useless is because he and Snape were in the same cell, and Snape had already turned them all in (except Severus apparently had been unable to identify Rookwood—an Unmentionable by profession, a generation or more his senior). Three, that if we definitely know a child or sibling was in Slytherin, we’ll accept that the parent/sibling probably was. What does that give us?
Using these assumptions, I put together a table (which I don’t know how to reproduce on lj) listing the 31 named DE’s as of VWI, house if known/suspected, probable DE relatives, if Severus was known/suspected/likely to have known them, and if they were accused of being DE’s as of the end of VWI.
Of the six people named (in HBP) as Riddle’s early associates/followers, Dolohov is probably a no-house foreigner (picked up while Riddle was associating with “the worst”—Dolohov is a specialist in torture), the other five (Lestrange, Avery, Mulciber, Rosier, and Nott) are probably Slytherins. Two of them are alive as of OotP; the other four we don’t know.
Of Severus’s “gang of Slytherins” named by Sirius, four of the five are closely related to other DE’s (Avery, Rodolphus Lestrange, Bellatrix Black Lestrange, and Evan Rosier; Wilkes is the possible exception).
Of the other known Slytherin DE’s we have: Rabastan Lestrange, Lucius Malfoy, Regulus Black, Sev’s “creepy” friend Mulciber, and the senior Crabbe & Goyle.
Of named non-Slytherin DE’s we have Karkaroff & Dolohov (no house) and Peter Pettigrew (Gryffindor).
Of the eleven other named DE’s, we have no house information (I’m sure Harry believes the Carrows to be Slytherin, and perhaps Jo wants us to, but this is nowhere stated). And there are at least twenty or so DE’s as of Voldie’s first fall (per Jodel’s count of the graveyard scene), possibly more, on whom we have no information, not even names.
But that gives us seventeen presumed Slytherins out of at least fifty branded DE’s. Which is about a third—higher than random chance, but nowhere near Hagrid’s “not a one but was in Slytherin.” Of the seventeen, five were original recruits, eight known relatives of other DE’s, and only Snape, Wilkes, Crabbe & Goyle were possibly recruited without benefit of family ties (and the Crabbes are intermarried with Blacks—so Crabbe, like Lucius, may have been recruited through his in-laws).
But now let’s look at named DE’s who were killed, captured, or accused (but incorrectly acquitted) before or at the end of VWI. There are 17 of them, including Snape. Eight were Slytherins whom we are explicitly told were associates of Severus Snape, three more may have been (Rabastan is the brother of a named associate, and Crabbe and Goyle, if they followed the marrying-young-in-wartime pattern, may have been Severus’s near-contemporaries), and three are not-known-to-be-Slytherins who were probably in the same “cell” as Severus (Karkaroff himself, Dolohov and Travers).
(And note that Dolohov, Rosier, Travers, Avery, and Mulciber were all caught after Karkaroff—and near or after Voldie’s downfall [Rosier was killed, and therefore Karkaroff & Dolohov apprehended, before Halloween, but Travers was free and killing the Mackinnons in July]—which would make sense if Dumbledore protected Severus’s identity by not unleashing the Aurors on all of Severus’s cellmates until after Voldie’s defeat.)
In fact, there are only two DE’s named that’d been exposed by the end of VWI with no known or apparent connection to Snape: house-unknown Macnair and (elderly) Slytherin Nott.
So of named DE’s exposed as of the end of VWI, fifteen of the seventeen may have been caught on the basis of Snape’s information. Of whom we have Severus, eleven people probably known to Severus because they were his housemates, and three turned in on the basis of cell affiliation, of whom two were no-house and the third of unknown house.
Of the thirty or so DE’s who apparently escaped the end of the first war without being suspected (the anonymous ones in the graveyard), NONE is actually subsequently revealed in canon to be Slytherin.
Jo may have wanted us to believe that All Death Eaters are Slytherins, but she actually wrote nothing except a demonstrated lie from a biased and inaccurate source to support that contention.
Sirius, in fact, may have gotten it exactly backwards; it may be, not that Snape was “part of a gang of Slytherins who nearly all turned out to be Death Eaters,” but that those who were part of Snape’s “gang” were nearly all turned IN as Death Eaters. In fact, for anything we know Severus may have managed to finger every Slytherin of his generation who joined.
In which case we’d have twelve Slytherin Death Eaters in Severus’s generation, at least eight of whom were recruited by their families—and about thirty others, so an average of ten a house (if all are British and of his generation).
Slytherin as the House of Evil, indeed.
“There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin.” Hagrid, PS
We are explicitly told that all witches and wizards who go bad are Slytherin, and rather strongly invited to infer the converse, that all Slytherins are bad. Certainly Harry seems to have little problem believing the worst of his rival house.
But let’s look at what we know of the most extreme of those who “went bad”—those who became such ardent supporters of The Most Evil Dark Wizard of All Time™ that they took his Mark onto their own flesh and bound themselves to him permanently.
Harry (and the reader) assumes that Death Eaters were almost all Slytherins. Hagrid asserts, absolutely falsely, that they were Slytherins without a single exception. But does canon actually support the contention that they were even mostly Slytherins?
We must agree that many of them were. Riddle was in Slytherin, after all; his original supporters date from his Hogwarts days, and many of the younger ones are descendents or younger family members of previous Death Eaters. (Indeed, it’s hard to see how a Death Eater could avoid raising his child to be a supporter—whether he wanted to or not. What would either Lucius or Draco’s life expectancy have been, had Riddle returned to find Draco not primed to accept him as his Master?)
If we assume that the House situation was as bad under Dippet as it is under Dumbledore—that is, that House rivalry is so severe that cross-House friendships are strongly discouraged—and that many if not most children sort themselves by family affiliations (all Weasleys are Gryffindor, all Blacks are Slytherin), then (almost) all of Voldemort’s original supporters, and the majority of those recruited by their families, will be Slytherin. Plus Voldemort’s overt agenda pays lip service to Pureblood supremacism (though many Pureblood supremacists, like Sirius’s parents, did not support him), and Pureblood supremacists are somewhat more likely to sort Slytherin.
But do we have any canon evidence that those recruited through any other inducement are more likely to be Slytherin than not?
In fact, Snape’s becoming Dumbledore’s double agent might, of itself, have produced an optical illusion that Death Eaters were predominantly Slytherins.
If Snape was, as seems likely, the only double agent among the branded DE’s, then he was the primary means of identifying DE’s aside from capturing or killing them mid-raid. Yet Snape was a twenty-year-old Half-blood from an impoverished background. He was not welcome socially in Pureblood-supremacist circles, except insofar as the (Slytherin) ones tolerated their scions occasionally associating with a former housemate, and he was not likely to be rubbing shoulders with his elders in power at the Ministry. Which means, as I suggested in my fiction “Too Long a Sacrifice,” that those whom he could identify at full DE meetings through a mask and cloak would be his previous close associates: his contemporaries and housemates.
Some assumptions I made: one, that in the graveyard gathering Voldemort was careful to name only those who had already been “outed” as a DE—i.e. who’d been previously accused but got off on, say, the Imperius defense. That explains why the list of names Harry gave Fudge matches the old trial records. I’m further assuming that if Riddle didn’t name someone, their identity as a DE had not been compromised (that he knew of). Two, that Jodel was right, the reason all but one of Karkaroff’s names was useless is because he and Snape were in the same cell, and Snape had already turned them all in (except Severus apparently had been unable to identify Rookwood—an Unmentionable by profession, a generation or more his senior). Three, that if we definitely know a child or sibling was in Slytherin, we’ll accept that the parent/sibling probably was. What does that give us?
Using these assumptions, I put together a table (which I don’t know how to reproduce on lj) listing the 31 named DE’s as of VWI, house if known/suspected, probable DE relatives, if Severus was known/suspected/likely to have known them, and if they were accused of being DE’s as of the end of VWI.
Of the six people named (in HBP) as Riddle’s early associates/followers, Dolohov is probably a no-house foreigner (picked up while Riddle was associating with “the worst”—Dolohov is a specialist in torture), the other five (Lestrange, Avery, Mulciber, Rosier, and Nott) are probably Slytherins. Two of them are alive as of OotP; the other four we don’t know.
Of Severus’s “gang of Slytherins” named by Sirius, four of the five are closely related to other DE’s (Avery, Rodolphus Lestrange, Bellatrix Black Lestrange, and Evan Rosier; Wilkes is the possible exception).
Of the other known Slytherin DE’s we have: Rabastan Lestrange, Lucius Malfoy, Regulus Black, Sev’s “creepy” friend Mulciber, and the senior Crabbe & Goyle.
Of named non-Slytherin DE’s we have Karkaroff & Dolohov (no house) and Peter Pettigrew (Gryffindor).
Of the eleven other named DE’s, we have no house information (I’m sure Harry believes the Carrows to be Slytherin, and perhaps Jo wants us to, but this is nowhere stated). And there are at least twenty or so DE’s as of Voldie’s first fall (per Jodel’s count of the graveyard scene), possibly more, on whom we have no information, not even names.
But that gives us seventeen presumed Slytherins out of at least fifty branded DE’s. Which is about a third—higher than random chance, but nowhere near Hagrid’s “not a one but was in Slytherin.” Of the seventeen, five were original recruits, eight known relatives of other DE’s, and only Snape, Wilkes, Crabbe & Goyle were possibly recruited without benefit of family ties (and the Crabbes are intermarried with Blacks—so Crabbe, like Lucius, may have been recruited through his in-laws).
But now let’s look at named DE’s who were killed, captured, or accused (but incorrectly acquitted) before or at the end of VWI. There are 17 of them, including Snape. Eight were Slytherins whom we are explicitly told were associates of Severus Snape, three more may have been (Rabastan is the brother of a named associate, and Crabbe and Goyle, if they followed the marrying-young-in-wartime pattern, may have been Severus’s near-contemporaries), and three are not-known-to-be-Slytherins who were probably in the same “cell” as Severus (Karkaroff himself, Dolohov and Travers).
(And note that Dolohov, Rosier, Travers, Avery, and Mulciber were all caught after Karkaroff—and near or after Voldie’s downfall [Rosier was killed, and therefore Karkaroff & Dolohov apprehended, before Halloween, but Travers was free and killing the Mackinnons in July]—which would make sense if Dumbledore protected Severus’s identity by not unleashing the Aurors on all of Severus’s cellmates until after Voldie’s defeat.)
In fact, there are only two DE’s named that’d been exposed by the end of VWI with no known or apparent connection to Snape: house-unknown Macnair and (elderly) Slytherin Nott.
So of named DE’s exposed as of the end of VWI, fifteen of the seventeen may have been caught on the basis of Snape’s information. Of whom we have Severus, eleven people probably known to Severus because they were his housemates, and three turned in on the basis of cell affiliation, of whom two were no-house and the third of unknown house.
Of the thirty or so DE’s who apparently escaped the end of the first war without being suspected (the anonymous ones in the graveyard), NONE is actually subsequently revealed in canon to be Slytherin.
Jo may have wanted us to believe that All Death Eaters are Slytherins, but she actually wrote nothing except a demonstrated lie from a biased and inaccurate source to support that contention.
Sirius, in fact, may have gotten it exactly backwards; it may be, not that Snape was “part of a gang of Slytherins who nearly all turned out to be Death Eaters,” but that those who were part of Snape’s “gang” were nearly all turned IN as Death Eaters. In fact, for anything we know Severus may have managed to finger every Slytherin of his generation who joined.
In which case we’d have twelve Slytherin Death Eaters in Severus’s generation, at least eight of whom were recruited by their families—and about thirty others, so an average of ten a house (if all are British and of his generation).
Slytherin as the House of Evil, indeed.
I think that a significant number of DEs were probably Slytherins, but that there were a mix of people from different Houses, and as you pointed out, some foreigners who didn't come from the Hogwarts House system.
thanks for comments
As to the Gryff's-yes, those recruited just out of Hogwarts are unlikely to join an organization that's got a Slytherin-only reputation just because of that reputation. (Just as Slytherins were unlikely to be strongly attracted to the Gryff-heavy Order of the Phoenix.)
But--at what point did the DE's and Slytherin House BECOME popularly associated? It's not widely known that Lord Voldemort is former Slytherin prefect-who-gained-power Tom Riddle, and the identities of his followers are generally secret until they're captured or killed--and the ones Sirius and Moody tell us about, were the ones fingered by Severus circa 1981.
On the other hand, many DE's are recruited by friends and family--and it's unlikely many Gryffindors have Slytherin friends to do the recruiting. (In my story "Cuckoo's Egg", Severus comes up with the theory--incorrect, but interesting--that Sirius and Remus, the Black scion and the Dark creature, were essentilly recruited by the Dark Lord before Hogwarts, with orders to request to be Sorted into Gryffindor to give Voldemort an entree into that House.)
But in Whitehound's fic "Lost and Found," Severus is detected as a spy, horribly tortured, and smuggled back into Hogwarts with spells that prevent him either being magically healed or dying.... and the DE-sympathizing student who do it are Daphne Greenglass (for family reasons), Padma Patil (to distinguish herself from her twin), and Cormac McLaggen (because it's fun to kick the Potions master when he's down).
I do agree that my argument that there might be NO Slytherin DEs except those outed by Severus was a piece of logic unequalled since Julia's happy summation in Sarah Caudwell's Thus Was Adonis Murdered,
"(7) It is therefore logically impossible for my pursuit of Ned to cause Kenneth distress.
I had taken up my pen to report to you this example of the usefulness of logic--without which I might have come to an altogether different conclusion--"
Good point. Very good point indeed.
thanks for comment
Ravenclaws could certainly be drawn by the lure of Dark Arts knowledge (I'm - slowly - working on a piece in which Severus himself is sorted Ravenclaw and still nearly joins the DEs for precisely that reason). They, being individualists, also are unlikely to be swayed by community views on the organization.
'Puffs could, as geri suggests, be drawn by family affiliations and so on.
But I think that Gryffs are still susceptible to being drawn in, despite the House rivalry. They're (for better or worse) often highly moralistic, believing that they know best and can do no wrong (the DEs thought they were *in the right* after all). They are willing to use force to get their way if necessary. Gryff has a tendency toward bullying at least as strong as that displayed by any other House, if not more so.
And, as the interactions between James and Severus show, Gryffs are as prone to prejudice as anyone else. (I can't help but find strong elements of outwardly-suppressed class- and possibly blood-prejudice in his remarks that Snape should be tortured for "existing." By that time he certainly knew that 'Snape' did not appear in Nature's Nobility, and while he was willing to chase after the pretty Muggleborn who refused him and so was interesting, that doesn't mean it's impossible for him to have made as big an exception for her as Snape is accused of having made. It doesn't have to be *conscious* prejudice to be in play.)
So, hypothetically: take a pureblood Gryff who thinks the Ministry is a bunch of fools. Add a pinch of outrage over the use of Dementors in Azkaban (who's to say that this was NOT part of the recruitment of certain angry and idealistic young DEs? The Dementors only joined LV in the second war.), and a splash of repressed anger at all the newcomers mucking about with your time-honored traditions and making the WW less safe - despite all the PC pro-Muggleborn rants he/she feels compelled to make to deny this anger. Gently stir with a few careful manipulations and lies, and Voldie has one more righteous recruit. Why let Peter give us the illusion that the only Gryff who'd join must be a coward - i.e. not a proper Gryff at all? We've all got our particular weaknesses.
As for Peter, personally I find him a more true Gryffindor than Remus. Just think of all the risks he took in his Marauder days as a rat, both inside the castle (Filch's cat?) and on the grounds (owls, forest animals).
blood prejudice and Peter
Ooh! That sounds interesting.
Gryffindor weaknesses
Slytherins break rules/laws to gain something; Gryffindors (not Harry so much, but the Marauders and the twins, definitely) break rules/laws because it's "fun" and shows how brave they are.
And we don't know the extent to which Gryffindor House as a whole paid even lip service to tolerance of Muggleborns prior to VW1. Overt blood prejudice might have been much more acceptable before it came to be associated with the losing side. Indeed, we see that among older witches and wizards, it's still broadly acceptable: Fudge, after all, is MoM despite (or because of?) his putting more emphasis on blood than Dumbledore likes. And Fudge was NOT given the position because he was personally magically talented enough to make the WW overlook his eccentricities.
So although Voldemort's alleged pureblood-supremacist agenda might be presumed to put off Harry's housemates, that doesn't mean it would have repelled many of James's.
...
For that matter, why has Hermione no friends except Harry and the blood-traitor Weasleys? If she'd been a Pureblood, or even a Half-blood, rather than a pushy little Muggleborn, would her tendency to outperform the rest of her house have been better tolerated?
Though we're told that Lily was popular.... Well, she was pretty, liked pranks, cheeked teachers, and as Prefect didn't dock points from Housemates engaged even in the most egregious possible misbehavior, which would go over much better than studying hard and telling others to obey the rules.
But then again, how popular was Lily really? We saw her in a group of girls in SWM, she mentioned Mary MacDonald twice, and she told Sev that her "friends" had been advising her to ditch him. So she was, at least, not so socially isolated as Hermione. And being pursued by popular, Pureblood Quidditch star James Potter would give her automatic status. But the political statement of making a Muggleborn girl Prefect and then Head Girl right as VW1 heated up might not have been well-received.
And Lily obviously dared no more than Remus to exercise her duty as Prefect against Potter and Black; she challenged Potter as a girl he fancied, not as a Prefect punishing misbehavior. And Potter predicted she'd react that way; he made sure she was watching before he started in on Sev. Would even the twins have hexed someone right under Percy's nose?
And none of her "friends" came to back her up, even when Potter threatened to hex her.
Remus didn't dare do his duty because he'd have risked losing the Marauders' friendship; Lily must have felt she risked losing HER friends if she did hers. Or if she continued to hang out with that loser Slytherin geek. So she felt her "popularity" to be precarious.
And never once does Harry meet anyone who says, "I was a friend of your mother's." The only two people who we know for sure really cared for her (besides Severus and, presumably, James) are Hogwarts staff: Hagrid (who has no judgment) and Slughorn (who likes anyone who combines talent and attractiveness).
One final speculation--is it possible that Lily first showed up on James's radar because of SEV's interest in her? That "he fancies you" may have gone both ways. James may have spotted Sev's interest in his Potions lab partner, decided to snatch the (pretty enough, and talented) Muggleborn out from under Snivellus's overlarge nose, and then been piqued that his parading didn't instantly impress her.
Digression about Fudge
I think that Fudge probably got to be MoM because he's very good at politicking, even though he's a bad leader. I'm not sure what eccentricities you're referring to.
Fudge, after all, is MoM despite (or because of?) his putting more emphasis on blood than Dumbledore likes.
Can we be sure of that? It's certainly possible, and I doubt he was any more tolerant than average, but there isn't a lot of evidence that he was particularly biased. There are three things:
1) Dumbledore says so. "You place too much importance, and you always have done, on the so-called purity of blood!"
2) Molly says so. "We know what Fudge is. It's Arthur's fondness for Muggles that has held him back at the Ministry all these years. Fudge thinks he lacks proper wizarding pride."
3) He doesn't shun Lucius when Lucius gives him (or St. Mungo's) money, even though Lucius is known to be biased.
In reverse order: Fudge is too much of a politician to openly shun Lucius, regardless. Molly is not very realistic about her husband's career. And Dumbledore... is bringing up an irrelevant point, in a rant apparently designed to tick Fudge off rather than actually convince him. I don't know what was up with that, but it does make me wonder about how accurate the accusation is. If Dumbledore *was* trying to make Fudge angry, accusing him of being biased would anger him more if it wasn't true.
Severus had to have been wondering what Dumbledore was up to in this conversation. Knowing that Fudge doesn't believe there's a problem, Dumbledore tells Fudge to take measures guaranteed to be unpopular, insults him unnecessarily, and never, *never* addresses Fudge's actual reason for disbelief. Maybe there's no evidence that Dumbledore could give him other than Harry's word, but if he really wanted the Ministry to act, he could have seen that this wouldn't accomplish anything.
Severus would certainly have seen that. The Gryffindors in the room might've seen this as a fiery, powerful speech, but Severus would have seen it as the unpersuasive rant it is -- suggesting that Dumbledore's strategy wasn't what it seemed.
Which makes me wonder about his showing Fudge his Mark. If Dumbledore's deliberately alienating the Ministry, then Severus' trying to give Fudge concrete proof looks somewhat different.
I don't have a good reason for why Dumbledore would go out of his way to alienate the Ministry, but he certainly avoids including them in his plans later, too.
Lynn
(BTW, L is someone else. :) )
Re: Digression about Fudge
For that matter, Luciius Malfoy spends books 2-4 trying to unseat DD and increase his own political power--and he feels no need to disguise either his Pureblood supremacist views or his interest in the Dark Arts while doing so. Let's put it this way--Lucius takes his heir on an open visiit to B&B in Knockturn Alley (the object of the visit is secret--getting rid of PARTICULAR incriminating objects--but the Malfoys' interest in the Dark Arts is not), and allows Draco to use the term 'Mudblood' without public punishment. For comparison--an American Southern politician in the forties would have raised his heir to use the n-word--one today would not. If he was raising his heir to be racist, it would be codedly so; any politician with aspirations beyond appealing to the neo-fascists would come down like a ton of bricks if his twelve-year-old used the n-word. (Even if it were only because "It's an act crucial to success, Draco!")
So DD's apparent diaapproval of the Dark Arts in themselves and of "blood" prejudice is an idiosyncracy, probably shared only/primarily by DD's personal supporters--and perhaps bemusedly tolerated by the rest of the WW.
As to your comments about DD's deliberately alienating Fudge--that's a fascinating interpretation. I had just seen it as sometimes-socially inept DD (you've seen the theories that DD suffered from Asperger's or Narcisstic Personality Disorder) refusing to believe that Fudge--who Harry's first year was DD's nervous little lapdog demanding that DD hold his hand every few minutes--would NOT beliieve Harry just on DD's say-so and drop all his own agenda to follow DD's. DD does seem to expect his followers to do whatever he tells them to without information or argument.... I just figured he hadn't realized that Fudge was no longer DD's follower.
I'll have to reread the scene with your interpretation in mind. Thanks for the thought-provocation.
Re: Digression about Fudge
The idea that Dumbledore just doesn't realize that Fudge isn't his pet Minister (anymore) is tempting, but there's this, at the beginning of the conversation:
"But he cannot now give testimony, Cornelius," said Dumbledore. He was staring hard at Fudge, as though seeing him plainly for the first time. "He cannot give evidence about why he killed those people." (my emphasis)
This isn't definite, since it comes before Fudge even hears the claim that Voldemort's back, but it does suggest that Dumbledore is already revising his view of Fudge.
He could still be being socially inept, but this would be more *strategic* ineptness than social ineptness. And he's such a master manipulator elsewhere that I'm not sure if strategic ineptness here fits with that. I mean, he isn't just being unnecessarily confrontational while he addresses Fudge's concerns, or just failing to address Fudge's reasons for disbelief because he's overlooked them. He's both unnecessarily confrontational *and* fails to address Fudge's concerns.
I do think that Dumbledore is at least somewhat socially inept, but I think he makes it work *for* him, at least some of the time. By his age, he's had time to work with it.
Oh, I don't know. Honestly, the Doylist explanation works best here: JKR needed the Ministry to be uncooperative, and she wanted the end of the book to have an impassioned speech. An impassioned speech goes well here, too; it's just that *this* one doesn't quite fit. JKR either didn't worry about the fact that the speech doesn't really fit the context, or her own perspective is so Gryffindorish that she didn't notice, because she found the speech so moving.
Lynn
Re: Digression about Fudge
How much of a pet was Fudge before this? The idea he constantly needed Dumbledore to metaphorically hold his hand in his first year or two in office comes from Hagrid after all. Yes, the two of them exchanged owls frequently but do we know the contents of the messages? For all we know they were arguing about politics all along. The most we really have is Fudge's reaction to the school governors' decision to suspend Dumbledore in COS - Fudge certainly believed Dumbledore' was more likely than anyone else to stop the attacks - even as he comes to arrest Hagrid for supposedly causing them (revealing that he did not really believe in Hagrid's guilt, or at least not completely). And in POA in the Three Broomsticks conversation Fudge appeared to be in admiration of Dumbledore's ability to gain information from within Voldemort's circle in 1981, but was irritated with Dumbledore's refusal to let dementors into the castle at the time of the conversation.
(And whose idea was the latter anyway? I doubt Lucius would want dementors to have access to his son - this looks like something Umbridge may have recommended.)
Re: Digression about Fudge
OTOH it took Hermione an entire year in the Wizarding World until she heard the M word for the first time. Also, Draco didn't actually use the M word in front of his father. The two did refer to Muggles and wizards who loved them, Draco mentioned Hermione by name and Lucius mentioned her lack of wizarding ancestry, but the first use of'Mudblood' in the series was on the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch, away from adult supervision.
Re: Digression about Fudge
Re: Digression about Fudge
Lynn
Re: Digression about Fudge
Re: Digression about Fudge
Dumbledore never did seek out the Ministry's help after the battle at the DoM. In HBP, he outright refused to tell Scrimgeour anything, and stunned an Auror who had been told to follow him. And while he made this speech to Fudge in GoF, and made some pointed comments to him in OotP, he never seems all that worried that they were trying to hinder him.
So... although Dumbledore's words in GoF and OotP suggest that he cares about what the Ministry believes and wants its help, his actions don't support it. I probably sound inconsistent, so let me be clear: as I said in my last post, *I* wouldn't think that way, and I don't think most of the readers *or* most of the characters think that way. But Dumbledore apparently does.
So, yeah. He might as well go ahead and rally the Gryffindors.
And like you said, Dumbledore actively dislikes Ministry interference, so alienating them makes that less likely, and gives Harry one fewer source of alternate authority figures that he could turn to.
It really could make Severus' showing Fudge his Mark interesting, depending on how much of this Severus was aware of. It's looking easier to read this like something from Terri's Unlikely Allies: Severus is trying to help Harry by keeping the Ministry on his side, going against Dumbledore's plans while pretending to support him. And Dumbledore can't call him on it. (grin)
Although... as bad as this sounds, Dumbledore may deserve credit for having just worked out how to destroy the horcrux in Harry's scar without killing Harry, and may be deliberately acting to keep that outcome a possibility. OTOH, if Dumbledore really did only just think of the possibility of multiple horcruxes, then he can't have worked it out quite that fast. (In short: he looks better in this scene if he's been planning Harry's death for 13 years, but if he hasn't, then he looks worse in this scene. He can't win.)
Lynn
Re: Digression about Fudge
By then Dumbledore was hunting Horcruxes. He did not want the Ministry to know about that lest the rumor got back to Voldemort. So obviously he was even more secretive than usual. In any case HBP is after Dumbledore had to revise his plan at least twice - once for the revelations from the graveyard and once for the curse of the ring (and soon afterwards the fact that Ollivander was captured by Voldemort).
Although... as bad as this sounds, Dumbledore may deserve credit for having just worked out how to destroy the horcrux in Harry's scar without killing Harry, and may be deliberately acting to keep that outcome a possibility. OTOH, if Dumbledore really did only just think of the possibility of multiple horcruxes, then he can't have worked it out quite that fast.
His conviction that Voldemort would be back as early as 1981, his evasiveness when Minerva mentions Harry's scar and what he tells Harry about death in the hospital wing in PS support the view that he knew Harry was a Horcrux early on. Not searching for other Horcruxes when the diary suggested at least one other Horcrux (to be used as a back up if the diary is deployed and destroyed), and that he did not seek out Slughorn before the end of GOF lend additional support. Dumbledore told Harry he realized there were others based on Harry's report of Voldemort's words "I who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality". That he realized there was some kind of silver lining to Voldemort's ability to touch Harry comes from the infamous 'gleam of something like triumph' when Harry told about this part. I'm not sure Dumbledore worked the whole thing out but at the very least he needed time to rework his plan and maybe he didn't want the Ministry getting in the way until he knew what he was going to do.
Re: Digression about Fudge
Re: Digression about Fudge
Lynn
PS... Isn't it weird... If we read a story about, say, a tribe in the Amazon Rainforest, who walked about half naked and ate maniok and beer made by old women chewing plants and spitting them in a bowl (you get the picture), and then from the outside Westeners would come and they would chop down a chunk of rainforest, and build a McDonalds and a church, and they would tell the Amazon tribe that they should cover themselves because showing your breasts is sinful, and drink coca cola... If we would then read how the tribe fought back and burned the Golden Arches and shot poisoned arrows at the priest, if we would read such a story, or see such a movie, we would cheer and root for the tribesmen. Small idyllic tribe against the might of Western capitalism? Go tribe! Very PC.
But if its about a small hidden tribe who have to incorporate several muggleborn children into their society, and those muggleborn children take with them (since Dumbledore took over Hogwarts) a lot of muggle things like jeans to cover naked wizard legs (under the robes) and attitudes, then it's a different story altogether. Then suddenly the desire to keep your own culture in is considered backwards thinking, due to inbreeding.
Weird, that...
We've been led to believe that the break between the WW and the muggle world took place somewhere in the seventeenth century. Smack dab in the middle of the Enlightenment. This makes sense. The way muggles were starting to think was radically different from the way wizards were thinking. But still, the muggle world did not change very much from the outside. The thirty, forty years between World War II and the 1980's meant a *huge* difference in attitudes and expectations of the muggle-in-the-street. The new muggleborn children would take those attitudes and expectations into the WW. No wonder the older generation wizards, and especially the wizards who were raised in the WW, would consider these children to be offensive. I'm a *muggle* of an older generation and *I* find Harry Potter and co hugely offensive (rude, smug, self-important little *brats*!). I can imagine that a lot, and I mean a *LOT* of older wizards and witches, pureblood, halfblood or muggleborn, all going about on their insular wizard business, would feel exactly like those Amazon indians: under attack from an alien culture, threatining to take over. You don't have to be Slytherin to feel that way.
Voldemort didn't give a damn about Wizarding Culture, of course. He just used whatever he could to gain slaves. Um. Followers.
Of course, it isn't really that simple, either way, because societies aren't monolithic.
I feel for the conservatives in the WW who feel like their culture is under siege. Although if they addressed the issue in cultural terms, rather than in terms of ancestry, they might have more luck.
I mean, fans talk about a "Wizarding Studies" class. Arsinoe de Blassenville addresses that idea in her latest story. But why isn't there one already, for the magic-born students? Kids don't just absorb all of these things without being taught, even if they grow up in a culture. If the WW was interested in bolstering its culture, a class like that would be the way to start.
Bringing this back to the houses: maybe the conservatives who grow up in a Slytherin culture tend to believe ancestry is the key to this, but conservatives in other houses would see things differently. Ravenclaws might believe the key to absorbing Muggle-borns is to have a class; Gryffindors might believe it's about inculcating values; Hufflepuffs might believe that it's fine as long as Muggle-borns *try* to fit in. But no house is necessarily more conservative than any other.
Still, like you said, Voldemort was really only concerned with getting followers, not cultural preservation or blood purity. We don't even know how large a part the blood-purity stuff played in his recruitment campaign.
BTW, I second the "Want to read that Snape-in-Ravenclaw fic! Want! Want!" (grin)
Lynn
How do we connect the clash between the founders, the growing isolation over the centuries - the playing of Quidditch has been hidden to various degrees from around 1400, long before the Statute of Secrecy, and Hogwarts was hidden since its founding - through formal separation in 1689, on to the days of Phineas Black, Armando Dippet and Albus Dumbledore?
If Muggle-borns had been around since before the founding of Hogwarts - what was the wizarding mainstream attitude to them all along? If they were supposedly welcome in 3 of Hogwarts' Houses for ever why is it obvious to Slughorn and Tom that a Muggle background would be a hindrance in politics, why would Kendra pretend to be wizarding born (or perhaps why would it be plausible that she would have done so), why is the first thing that Aunt Muriel and Gran Augusta note about Hermione is her blood-status, why did it take Slughorn to see Lily to rethink his prejudices and why don't we hear of any professionally successful Muggle-born aside from Dirk Cresswell? Either prejudiced Slytherins had been controlling everything in the wizarding world or some degree of prejudice is present in other Houses as well, perhaps in a less obvious form. Also note the marriage patterns in the Black family tree: several families of traditional Dumbledore supporters were acceptable matches for Blacks. Does this mean the differences weren't that significant even as recently as the 1940s?
Moody had been following Karkaroff for 6 months before capturing him, somewhere after the deaths of the McKinnons in July 1981 and before the deaths of the Prewetts and Rosier and before the capture of Travers, Mulciber and Dolohov. I think what happened was that Dumbledore gave the names he got from Severus to Order Aurors so they could try to get evidence against them that did not depend on Severus' word and for which they could be arrested. Other Order members may have been warned whom to look out for but they did not have authority to perform arrests, only to gather information or to fight in defense of themselves or others. Perhaps Severus tipped Dumbledore that he suspected the 3 Lestranges and Order members did find corroborative evidence, but as the Lestranges were not caught in the act they managed to explain things away - until the Longbottom affair. And someone knew the Prewetts were attacked by 5 DEs. Perhaps the Prewetts managed to send a Patronus for help - which arrived too late. Or perhaps Severus knew Dolohov and 4 others were the attackers.
I wonder when the policy about revealing their identities - to one another and to outsiders - changed. The DEs are masked in the circle. They arrive masked at the Department of Mysteries but Lucius calls them by name in front of the kids. In HBP they arrive to the attack with cloaks but no masks - Dumbledore addresses the Carrows (but not Yaxley) by name and I think Remus identifies the fallen Gibbon. And in the full gathering at Malfoy manor at the beginning of DH there are no masks. I'm asking because at Spinner's End Severus mentions to Narcissa the Carrows and Yaxley as others who could have searched for Voldemort but did not. Was this after the policy change or were those three also DEs known to have been accused and officially cleared?
Rowle
As to Rowle-
Was Rowle is Azkaban? He's described (while fighting slender Tonks) as enormous, but we don't ever see him side-by-side with Crabbe and Goyle to know if he's LARGER than they are, or even necessarily taller (he's one of the few DE's not described as deformed, so even if taller he might be less massive). We don't know that there weren't other large men among the DE's in the graveyard, just that Crabbe and Goyle seemed to Harry to be the largest. So I left him as blank on that question. (But Rowle's having been in Azkaban would fit with my theory that the truly vicious DE's were those who'd suffered Dementor Dementia.)
If Rowle had been caught, though, he may have been one of the few NOT caught by Sev. By his Viking-like name and description, I tag him as another possible foreigner.
Two things are necessary to identify a DE--that you can distinguish them clearly and that you know their daytime identity. Rowle's physique makes him distinctive--but what's his day job, that Severus would have had reason to know him? Mind, he might have run into him having ice cream at Florean's and asked someone "who's the big blond guy, acts like he owns everything?"
Your suggestion about giving names to Order aurors makes sense; but Dumbledore's going to be cautious about giving names out to anybody, even as a warning. I mean, if I can figure out that most of the DE's getting caught are Sev's acquaintances, so can Voldemort (though, fortunately, wizards aren't trained to organize data in a chart). And if a DE had questioned Marlene before killing her, and found out that the Order knew A, B, and C to be DE's... well.
(Whereas once Voldie had fallen, he'd expect his triple agent Snape to pretend he'd been a double agent--so the fact that Severus's cell had all been betrayed to the Ministry wouldn't unduly surprise him. Indeed, one assumes that some of the names Severus turned in were done at Voldie's explicit direction--Dumbledore may be a sentimental fool who needs to believe the best of people, but even he's going to wonder if his "repentant DE" can't cough up any valid information on his former colleagues. I imagine that both Dumbledore and Riddle used Severus as a culling device, as it were. Severus and Albus could, of course, have made Dumbledore look more a fool to Riddle by having DD openly release the "official" names to the Order with warnings--which would of course have betrayed to Riddle that he had a spy in his ranks, if he didn't already know it)
Lucius is obviously not an experienced raid-leader, so I'm not sure we can take his lapse as indicative of a change in the policy of secrecy.
By the time of the raid in HBP, Voldemort has infiltrated the Ministry; he's probably got someone in place at the Prophet (when was it first reported that Harry had been running away from Dumbledore's death scene?--and when did Skeeter start her biogaphy of Dumbledore, that it's almost ready for publication when the Ministry falls?). Dumbledore's death is to start the process of toppling dominoes by which Riddle will take over the WW. Moreover, at that point the MoM and Order have failed to capture Voldemort himself or his Azkaban escapees for over a year, so what's the worry in being unmasked? (The fact that they meet at Malfoy Manor--before the fall of the Ministry--says how [deservedly] confident they were.)
The question of how Severus knew the identity of the Carrows and Yaxley at Spinner's End.... hmm. They're not mentioned in the graveyard or by Sirius as "cleared of suspicion" DE's. But since Severus, Narcissa, and Bellatrix all know them as DE's who didn't go looking for Riddle.... either they were in the "outed" list, or they've been revealed since then. (Someone suggested once that the Carrows may have already been introduced to Severus as his prospective staff....) Not sure!
Re: Rowle
Yes, Dumbledore already mentions them the day he was cursed by the ring, which was some days before Spinner's End.
Re: Rita
Rita was unemployed for at least a year because of Hermione's blackmail. Perhaps at some point she started preparing materils about Dumbledore. Especially if she heard from a contact that Dumbledore wasn't in the best of health.
In any case Scrimgeour already figured out Harry was present on the tower. He was seen running through the battle scene by both attackers, defenders and third parties (Ernie and the Hufflepuffs coming out of their common room). I'd say it was at the level of general rumor within a day.
Sirius never says they called this double-crosser by the name of Peter. And just WHY would all of them KNOW of Peter - it clashes with what Karkaroff said about how Voldy limited who knew who and Karkaroff was highly motivated to name as many names as he could and still came up with so few. No, I think they meant Snape as the 'double-crosser'. We can certainly see just how little Bella trusted him just a few months later in SpinnersEnd. Why should she so distrust him then if she hasdn't before her escape? Just because of the DoM raid?
And she specifically wanted to know where Snape was on Halloween'81. I think Voldy said something about how he would ensure his victory that night - thanks to his 'spy' - and Bella assumes he means his spy Snape.
She seems to have no 'particular' dislike of Peter at SpinnersEnd. It seems quite unlikely to me that if HE's the one she and the others were complaining about, that she would be quite so calm about his presence. She had no qualms about letting Snape know her dislike, despite his supposed acceptance by Voldy. Yet she doesn't express the same qualms about Peter who she would have seen as leading Voldy into some trap? I don't believe she ever knew anything about Peter. -- Hwyla
Spinner's End
Regarding Azkaban, I think the DE's muttering about "the double-crosser" were talking to and about Sirius--but that Sirius knew that Peter would expect ths same threats if it were known that he had been the Secret-Keeper.
The DE's OUT of Azkaban didn't seem especially to have distrusted Snape--certainly they didn't raise their children to distrust him.
Re: Spinner's End
See http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_tabl