DEs DID Know - Fat Lady

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 15953

Paul wrote:

>If they believe that Peter is dead, they probably 
>think that Serius killed him.  They may be looking
>for Peter for a different rotten thing that he did.
>Peter may have staged his death in order to hide 
>from the Death Eaters, with the lucky side effect of 
>getting Serius locked away.
>
>What that "different rotten thing" might be I can't
>even imagine. 

Sirius says that they think Peter double-crossed Voldemort, since V 
never came back from that little errand.  I think I said recently (or 
maybe I just thought it) that that seems like jumping to conclusions 
on the DEs' part--how was Peter to know that Voldemort would be unable 
to kill a baby, of all things?  But I can see that the DEs would at 
least be suspicious and want to grill him.  And of course, he's a 
suspicious character to them from the start, having been friends with 
James for years; spies are hard to trust.

To return to the how many DEs know how many other DEs question:  
rumors travel around prison, wouldn't you think?  So even if only a 
couple of other DEs knew or suspected Peter's identity back when they 
were in power, they've had 12 years to pass around information about 
who was in and who was out and who was doing what for V.

Catherine wrote:

>Doing 
>this and attacking Ron's bed curtains (even here JKR is dropping 
>clues: why Ron's and not Harry's)

Harry wonders about this at the time:  if he got the wrong bed, why 
didn't he just kill Ron and move on to each bed in turn?  I just 
figured at that point in the story that he'd panicked because Ron woke 
up and screamed.  But you're right, JKR drops a hint for those less 
clueless than me.
 
> is not the act of an innocent man, 
>but it is also not the act of someone who is currently thinking 
>clearly, and Sirius was eaten up with anger and veangance.

I agree, and I think it's the explanation for his slashing the Fat 
Lady, which he couldn't have imagined was going to help him get 
in--i.e., we don't have to find a rational explanation; there isn't 
one.

Now, given his state of mind, he probably stormed up to her, demanded 
that she let him in, and when she (unsurprisingly) refused, he lost 
it.  However, I do like to imagine a slightly different scene, in 
which an initially calm Sirius tries to sweet-talk the Fat Lady--if 
teenage Sirius was at all the way 90% of fanfic imagines him, he 
probably used to flirt with her*--and gets increasingly angry as she 
won't give in to cajoling or threats, and as his precious window of 
the feast shrinks.  THEN he loses it. 

I have a lot of sympathy for Sirius in this incident, either way (hi, 
Andrea--welcome to "Bad Tempers Anonymous"!).  And I don't take 
Dumbledore's "Sirius has not acted like an innocent man" as in any way 
meaning that D himself doubts his innocence, but simply as a "this 
really wouldn't look good to a jury."

Amy Z

*this assumes he was in Gryffindor, an unsettled question I am not 
intending to re-open!

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