The Dark Mark, Peter, Sirius and Snape

[Ellimist15 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 5734

It was my understanding that most people didn't know about the dark mark on 
the forearm. When Harry tells Sirius about Karkaroff showing Snape something 
on his forearm, Sirius doesn't know what Harry was talking about. However, 
when Snape "joined" Dumbledore's side, he would have told Dumbledore about 
the mark, so the mark could still be used to identify death eaters. 

I also thought that the mark was always present on a death eater's arm. 
Again, I use the Karkaroff/Snape example. It's unlikely that the mark only 
appears to serve as a dark magic pager. Snape wouldn't have reacted so 
angrily to Karkaroff if there was nothing to see. I'm not sure why the mark 
was so visible at that point because Voldemort had been in control of two of 
his servants (Wormtail and Crouch Jr) since the Quidditch world cup. 

JKR will have to go into greater detail on the dark mark in book 5.

It's understandable that the Death Eaters wouldn't be able to identify each 
other by sight when gathered before Voldemort because of their masks. 
However, Harry immediately recognizes the voice of one of the Death Eaters as 
the voice of Lucius Malfoy, and Voldemort calls Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Avery, 
and Nott by name! It doesn't seem that he was that secret about the 
identities of his servants! 

We were meant to assume that Snape was once in this circle of Death Eaters 
because of Voldemort's comment on the servant that had left him forever, but 
this isn't even the tip of the iceberg regarding the number of death eaters 
in Voldemort's service. At the Quidditch world cup, there's a huge crowd of 
death eaters torturing the Roberts family, and it's still doubtful that all 
of the death eaters were even present! Pettigrew could easily have been a 
death eater without Snape knowing, and the same holds true for Sirius. Snape 
must have realized that if Sirius had truly been Voldemort's right-hand man, 
he would have kept his identity secret, even from his fellow death eaters.

Please excuse my butchery of the English language!

Ellie