Various Topics, Including Spy Snape and Speculative Sexy Sirius

[Catlady]

No: HPFGUIDX 18223

I have returned from having dim sum in Chinatown with my friends. Odd
way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo...

David Frankis wrote:
> Dumbledore in the Pensieve scene endorses Snape very firmly -
> surely this would have got back to Lucius Malfoy and the other DEs
> still at large.  They might hope he is really a double agent - but V
> would not take anything on trust.

V might take things on trust. He is a fool despite all his power, after
all. Anyway, I wonder how much of what we saw in Dumbledore's Pensieve
is known to the wizarding community and/or the Death Eaters? Sirius said
in GoF that he heard imprisoned Death Eaters crying out against Wormtail
for having led their master to his doom. Those particular Death Eaters
seem to have known that Peter was the traitor, even tho' the general
community and MoM and apparently Snape didn't know. Sirius said in GoF
that he didn't know whether Snape had been a Death Eater; one imagines
that the DEs imprisoned near Sirius would have cried out against Snape
if they'd known he been a spy on them.

> For me the most compelling reasons for thinking Snape is
> not a double agent are 1) Dumbledore isn't fooled that easily;

Dumbledore was fooled by Moody/Crouch for an entire school year.
Dumbledore never found that the Marauders were learning Animagery, nor
that Remus was leaving the Shrieking Shack in wolf form. He is less
omniscient than he gives the impression of being. I wonder about his
sources of information. Maybe the House Elves report to him about
unusual things they find while cleaning the rooms and corridors; maybe
the Ghosts report to him when they see people up to something. And maybe
you are habitually kind to the House Elves and they decide not to
mention to Dumbledore about the Animagery equipment they found in your
closet...  What other sources of information?

Gypsy Dee used the sig:
> The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most
> experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in;
> we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.

LOL

Doreen used the sig:
> who does not consider it necessary, in making her point,
> to make generalizations about all brits to do so, and wonders
> why Dai does... hmmmm

I suspect it has something to do with Doreen being a grown-up and Dai
being 20 years old and in university (possibly see way below).

Suzanne rainy lilac wrote:
> Who would question Dumbledore suddenly acquiring
> a "pet" newfoundland?

Are there people at Hogwarts besides the Trio and Dumbledore who know
that Sirius is a dog Animagus? A person who knows that but not that
Sirius is really innocent might test every new dog on campus with the
spell that forces Animagi to return to human form... Maybe test every
dog heesh encountered in Hogsmeade as well...

Monika wrote::
> > When he talked to Harry via long-distance fire in
> > Gryffindor Tower he was apparently not living on
> > rats at the time, and had even managed to get a haircut.
> I always wondered where he was during that time. He had
> been back to England for a few weeks (since he came
> back in October and he met Harry in the Gryffindor
> common room in November). Where did he stay then?

I like to imagine that he was staying with Remus, in an isolated cottage
or cabin suitable for depressed werewolves to sulk in. Speculation on
whether Remus owned, rented, or borrowed the cottage, from whom he
borrowed it (Dumbledore? or it came with a job as watchman over some
deserted antiquity or beast preserve?) or how he came to own it
(Inheritance? Purchase? With what money?) and when he came to own it.

Suzanne rainy lilac wrote a very fine description of Sirius as a young
man, too good to snip parts of (Suzanne, read my 'Lily' fic), and

Monika replied:
> Maybe I am really too old to think realistically about
> those things, but you can be a happy, laughing guy and
> have fun without being a womanizer who can't think of
> anything else than hunting down every witch between
> Dover and Scotland.

I've NEVER thought of Sirius 'hunting down' witches. I imagine that all
he had to do was go out in public and be his usual charming self, and so
many witches would proposition him that he simply wouldn't have had TIME
to accept all the offers, even if some of his time hadn't been devoted
to higher priorities like fighting the Dark Side and working on the
bike. Everyone knew it was just casual sex and no one's heart was
broken. Contrary to ASA, no one expected to be owled the next day, and
Sirius didn't really have any more experience than his friends in taking
a date to a romantic restaurant and giving her flowers. I can fantasize
that if young Sirius did want to take some special lady on a romantic
date, he might ask JAMES for advice!

A big part of my thinking so is because I am 43 years old now, high
school class of '74 and college class of '78, and I *remember* the late
'70s -- that is, when the Marauders, having finished Hogwarts in '76,
were running around the grown-up world. Disco (which I hated at the
time) was the sound track. No one knew about AIDS yet, cocaine was
generally believed not to be addictive (and the crystal 'rock' form
hadn't been invented yet), and 'cocooning' had not yet become
fashionable. Mainframe computers were as big as refrigerators and had
less computing power than the chip in my friend's current microwave.
Pocket calculators were EXPENSIVE. Microcomputers were just then being
invented: some of my acquaintances were among the IBMers in Boca Raton
inventing the PC (IBM brand name) using the 8086 chip. They accessed
DARPAnet thru teletyper terminals of mainframe boxes. VCRs were
expensive luxuries for rich people.

No-harm-intended promiscuity was one type of sex life common among the
people I knew on both coasts, in the Muggle world. In the wizarding
world, there additionally was a war on, and even tho' people tried to
put it out of their minds, a constant subliminal awareness that they
might be killed by Death Eaters at any moment would encourage hedonism.

I met men who were *that* attractive, and I (already ugly even in my
youth) was one of the women whose offers they just didn't have time to
accept (a kinder turn-down than "Yuck, you're so ugly").

Which leads to my other theory of the busy sex life ascribed to young
Sirius: Sirius is Mary Sue. No, I don't mean Marty Stu. [One of those
attractive men was named Marty, but his middle name was Frank.] I mean
that I, as the person who was turned down so often, am not quite tacky
enough to pub fic about an impossibly beautiful and brilliant witch who
seduced all four Marauders, Snape, AND Lucius Malfoy, was Lily's best
friend, and died on That Night while casting the spell that caused That
Curse to rebound on V and 'kill' him. But nonetheless I have found it
surprisingly pleasant to write from the viewpoint of the person who
*received* all those offers.

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