Barty's insanity - Nitpick on spy terminology

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 22417

Gwendolyn Grace wrote:

<In short, Barty ain't sane.>

Jenny wrote:

>I agree with you there, but his insanity is something that really 
>bothered me. Why did he have to be insane?  Someone who received so 
>many O.W.L.s was obviously quite clear-minded at one point.  I'd 
>like 
>to know at what point did Barty Jr. go insane.  Is JKR implying that 
>all DEs are insane?  That confused me.

I don't think she's saying all DEs are insane.  We see how unbalanced 
Barty is--he has so clearly meshed all his father-hatred, desire for 
a father, hopes for glory, bitterness, etc. into his devotion to 
Voldemort.  Was he like that before Azkaban and twelve years of the 
Imperius Curse?  We'll probably never know.

But you raise an interesting question about whether calmer types such 
as Lucius Malfoy are sane.  IMO, neither intelligence (12 O.W.L.s or 
whatnot) nor fascist leanings are an indication one way or another of 
insanity.  It's a good bet that Barty thought nothing of torturing 
the Longbottoms (we still don't know whether he was really in on 
that) when he was a young man, just out of Hogwarts and with 
tremendous potential to serve the good.  That doesn't mean he was 
insane; it means he had given his life over to evil, which IMO is not 
the same thing.  On the other hand, a lack of trappings like a 
mindless smile and ranting doesn't mean one is sane; psychopaths can 
have that Lucius Malfoy calm reason.

Gwendolyn Grace, great post on lots of stuff.  I think you have Snape-
as-Headmaster right on the button.  I laughed out loud about the "old 
broad."  No one would refer to MM that way and survive to tell the 
tale...

Re: moles, double agents, etc.:

>He's really not technically a double-agent. He's a mole.
> The difference is that his loyalty and the information he passes are
> ultimately one-sided. 

Isn't a double agent not necessarily someone who is working for both 
sides, but someone who is actually working against the side he was 
originally hired by?

If that's the case, then Snape might be a double agent, because he 
might have come to Hogwarts in the first place as a mole for 
Voldemort (or someone whom V *thought* was his mole) and has been 
working for Dumbledore ever since, his chief method being to continue 
to participate in DE activities.  We don't know the timing of when he 
switched sides and when he started at Hogwarts, but we do know pretty 
certainly that he was a bona fide DE at one time.  

Am I losing track of my terminology?  I've just been informed on OT-
Chatter that as a Monkey (Chinese zodiac), I'm easily confused.

Amy "couldn't follow a Le Carre novel to save her life" Z