Snape & the DEs, Reprise (With Bits of Where's The Canon?)

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 35196

Much Snapestuff here.  Snape and Reader Expectation.  Snape and 
Subversion.  Snape and his Old Gang.  Snape and House Slytherin.  
Snape and the Malfoys.  Snape's Sudden Movement.  Snape Snape Snape 
Snape Snape.

No George here, though.  George is getting a post of his very own.

And also, a mention of Avery.  But only a very brief one, and at the 
very end.

-------------

Porphyria wrote:

> Moving on once again, to the discussion of Snape as standing in 
> possible opposition to the series' problematic stances of 'all 
> Slyth are evil' and the limits of individual choice. . . .Well, for 
> one thing I think you're setting up a false opposition between 
> Snape and the rest of the text. 

Well, obviously Snape is a *part* of the text, and a very important 
part at that.  And I agree with you that that an important aspect of 
his literary function in the novels *is* to serve a "subversive" 
function: not subversive in the sense of undermining authorial 
intent, but subversive in the sense of undermining genre conventions 
and the reader's own expectations of the text.  In other words, Snape 
may be a spy, but he is *Rowling's* spy. 

I also agree with you that the series is becoming increasingly 
morally complex as it progresses, and that Rowling does enjoy playing 
some rather sophisticated games with reader expectation and 
misdirection.  

But as I've said on many other occasions, I still don't altogether 
trust Rowling as an author, and I'm not altogether certain that I 
will like where she's really going with the text.  This causes 
anxiety -- but that is inevitable in any serialized work.  As Eileen 
wrote, in a post some days ago: "Trust no author until she is 
finished."


One thing that I do feel compelled to point out here, though, is that 
my original reading of Snape's relationship with his old gang was in 
no way *intentionally* subversive.  It was not something that I 
thought about at all, honestly.  It was simply how I quite naturally 
and instinctively read GoF.  It was only once I discovered this 
community that I came to realize that my instinctive reading had 
apparently also been a highly idiosyncratic one -- and then to begin 
to wonder *why.*

I think that a good part of the reason that my reading *was* so 
instinctive was because Snape *is* Rowling's spy: as you point out, 
she uses him quite often as a tool of reader misdirection.

> I also think she leaves a lot of hints that might seriously tempt 
> the reader to imagine him as being different than what he seems, 
> and as I said this is a series where heavy reader speculation is 
> consciously encouraged by the structure of the narrative. 

Indeed.  And because of that, my response to, say, Sirius mentioning 
Snape's old Slytherin gang was initial shock ("Snape had 
*friends?*"), followed immediately by acceptance ("Well...okay. And 
really, why on earth *shouldn't* he have had people he hung out with 
while at school?").  The fact that Rowling does so often use the 
character to shatter misconceptions made it a quite natural reading 
for me.  And the successive series of revelations about the fates of 
the members of that little group, each of them worse (from Snape's 
perspective, anyway) than the last -- Rosier wasn't just killed
by "Aurors," he was killed by *Moody*. . .Snape was acting as 
Dumbledore's spy, so probably his information was what *got* Rosier 
killed by Moody. . .the Lestranges are in Azkaban for attacking 
*Neville's* parents. . . .Avery's still alive and well and almost 
certain to be filling in some secondary henchman villain duty in the 
next volume. . . .and the scary Lestranges are likely to get busted 
out of Azkaban as well. . .

<shrug>  It was just my automatic response to read this as emotionally
relevant material.  And when I discovered that others had not done so,
I was puzzled -- and frankly startled -- and very interested to find
out *why.*

Musings over why I might have read the text so differently than others
did, and what this might say about the philosophical underpinnings of 
our readings, and all of that sort of thing came later.

But it interests me in part because it *does* touch on the extent to 
which I feel that I can "trust" the Author.  Obviously my own reading 
has emotional resonance for me: if it didn't, then I doubt that I 
would have read the story in the way that I did.  My sense of 
disappointment at the notion that because my interpretation was so 
unusual, it was therefore likely to be running contrary to Authorial 
Intent -- to be, in fact, fairly subversive -- was a disappointment 
with the author.  My sense of disappointment that even though fan 
readings are so very often subversive, my interpretation was 
apparently nonetheless *still* a very unpopular reading of the text --
that was a disappointment with...well, I'm not quite sure with whom, 
honestly.  With the author again?  Or with the fans?  With the world 
as a whole?  Or perhaps simply with myself, for being so goddamned 
*weird?*

I honestly don't know.  It's hard to say.  But the discussion here 
has made me feel a good deal better about it -- it may have been a 
minority reading, but it was not, at least, an utterly *unique* 
reading -- and I'm very much appreciating the opportunity to begin to 
understand why the more popular reading might also be one that people 
would consciously choose to favor.


> Well, he seems to be a character fraught with internal and external 
> contradictions. He has this 'neither fish nor fowl' quality which 
> IMHO is a little subversive in itself. So in some cases the impulse 
> to imagine his peers as being securely black is an effort to 
> highlight this perverse, 'neither' quality of his...

So in other words, we don't want to blacken the black to make Snape 
seem white in comparison, but merely to highlight his grey?

That does make sense to me, on an intellectual level.  It doesn't 
happen to work for me emotionally or viscerally -- JKR's Whites are 
themselves quite grey, so for the blacks to be blacker than black 
just feels...oh, unbalanced somehow, in a way that is perhaps far 
more aesthetic than philosophical, and in a way which does absolutely 
nothing for me *personally* in terms of appreciating Snape's Greyness 
or his Indeterminacy -- but I can understand how that could work 
differently for other people.

> ...and the temptation to imagine him as never *quite* fitting in 
> with them can be read as an extension of his uncategorizable 
> quality. . . . But I'm saying his function as a character in the 
> text is one which is profoundly indeterminate, and what we see of 
> his personality mimics this motif. Hence the impulse to preserve 
> this theme in speculating his backstory.

Which I certainly agree with.  I think that here, though, we're 
touching on some serious differences in precisely *how,* as readers, 
we interpreted that indeterminate quality in the first place.

> So what we could imagine instead is a character whose 'nature' was 
> always inconsistent and prone to conflicting impulses, someone who 
> was never quite sure where he stood, and it took a lot of angst to 
> finally make a decision.

Which works as a reading, no doubt about it.  It just somehow doesn't 
quite work for me.

A while back, Eloise wrote, on one of the many George threads: 

> Of course, I also happen to believe he comes from a family of dark 
> wizards, explaining all those curses he knew, and that though he's 
> intellectually a *good* guy, many of his instincts lead him toward 
> the dark side leading to a lot of tension.

And I think that that tension, that contrast between Snape's 
instincts and his intellect, has always been central to how I've read 
the character.  I do not, for example, tend to see Snape as a person 
struggling with conflicting impulses, precisely.  Rather, I tend to 
see him as someone whose *impulses* all lead him in one unerring 
direction -- but in a direction that he has chosen to reject on 
abstract and purely philosophical grounds.  In other words, I see him 
as a Dark Wizard.  In instinct.  In impulse.  In inclination.  To 
some extent, perhaps even in essence.  But by choosing not to act on 
those instincts and inclinations and tastes and desires, he manages 
to be something slightly different.  Grey.  Neither fish nor fowl, as 
you wrote, but neither fish nor fowl in a slightly different *way,* I 
think, than many others have read him.

The suggestion that Snape left the DEs because when it came right 
down to it, he lacked a taste for torture or murder, for example, has 
always left me a bit cold because in my reading of Snape, of *course* 
he has a taste for it.  A taste for it is *exactly* what he's got.  
His taste for it...well, that's sort of his problem, isn't it?

It comes to the same thing, in many ways.  But it leads to a lot of 
different assumptions.  I, for example, assume that of *course* Snape 
would enjoy the company of the sort of people who become Death Eaters 
(at least, to whatever extent he enjoys company at all).  They would 
share his tastes, and his inclinations, and his aesthetics, and his 
interests, and probably his sense of humor as well.  They wouldn't 
share his *principles,* of course, which is the sticking point, but 
on grounds of pure compatability, they would be far better
companionship for him than the vast majority of the people who *do* 
share his principles.

> I can only counter to say that I think the text highlights Snape's 
> conflict and indeterminacy in a particular way and wants the reader 
> to sympathize with it 

Well, I would agree...except that I'm beginning to suspect that 
the 'particular way' in which the text seems to highlight Snape's 
conflict and indeterminacy to *me* is perhaps not the "particular 
way" it does to others -- or even, perhaps, the "particular way" that
the author intended.

However, as we've managed to make it through four novels so far 
without the author doing anything that has opposed my reading in the 
slightest -- thus enabling me to maintain it both cheerfully and 
obliviously throughout -- I suppose that I shouldn't let that 
suspicion worry me too much.  Either something will eventually happen 
that will disappoint me terribly and then force me to revise my 
reading...or it won't.  Either way, there's not much I can do about
it.

> (yes, I really feel he's written as sympathetic). 

Well, of course he is!  Part of it, admittedly, *is* that Clever 
Villain/Sympathy For the Devil appeal.  You know, there's a Type 
here: the snarling drama queen in the black cape who gets all of the 
really funny cruel dry lines.  Everyone *always* likes that guy, and 
Snape shares a lot of his qualities.  And as a special bonus, he's 
not even really a villain, you don't have to feel the slightest bit
guilty for liking him so much.

I mean, really.  What sort of heartless monster *wouldn't* sympathize 
with Snape at the end of PoA, when he disintegrates utterly into his 
raving "Curses, Foiled Again, and Damn You, You Meddling Kids" 
hysteria?  You'd just have to be made of *stone,* wouldn't you?
 
And of course there's the angst factor.  Loads of angst.

> And Mrs. Lestrange *is* sexy, so you can creep out from behind that 
> coffee cup. ;-)

For a woman with no name -- not even a maiden name, for heaven's 
sakes! -- and only one line of dialogue, she certainly is Dead Sexy.  
I kind of want to *be* her, when I grow up.

Oh.  Right.  I'm already middle-aged, according to Cindy.  
Well...never mind, then.  I guess it's too late.


Re: Snape's Favoritism of the Slytherins

I wrote:

> I think he favors them primarily because Slytherin is his House, and
> because Snape is loyal to House Slytherin in spite of the fact that
> an appalling number of its Old Boys went bad during the last big
> wizarding war.

Porphyria wrote:

> It just seems to me that his loyalty to Dumbledore probably 
> outweighs his loyalty to his house, and this is significant when 
> the two are at odds. 

Loyalty to Dumbledore in no way precludes loyalty to House 
Slytherin.  In fact, it demands it.  Snape is the Head of House 
Slytherin; that is a very important part of his job at Hogwarts.  And 
Snape's devotion to his job, to its duties and its responsibilities, 
is an enormous aspect of his loyalty to Dumbledore.  Were he not 
loyal to his House, then that really *would* be a violation of trust, 
and a fairly serious one at that.  

I think we may have some very serious disagreement here, though, over 
the issue of to what extent House Slytherin is separable from 
Voldemort and his agenda, or for that matter, from Dark Wizardry in 
general.  

I see a clear distinction between House Slytherin, one of the four 
Houses of all Wizarding Britain, with a thousand-year-old tradition 
whose values include ambition, cunning, shrewdness, ends-over-means, 
resourcefulness, and a willingness to break rules (as well as purity 
of blood and a deep suspicion and fear of the Muggle world); and 
House Slytherin in its current political state, which would seem to 
have granted purity of blood primacy over many of its other values 
and chosen to express its hostility towards the Muggle world 
through active and violent means.

I have no difficulty at all in imagining someone feeling a loyalty to 
the House -- its traditions, its historical importance, its 
contributions to the magical world, the vast majority of its values 
(I think that Snape most certainly *does* value ambition, cunning, 
shrewdness and resourcefulness; and as someone who has worked as a 
spy, he surely cannot harbor too many objections to the idea of 
privileging the ends over the means!), and even the memory of
its founder (Salazar presumably contributed *something* of value to 
the British Wizarding tradition), while simultaneously rejecting one 
or two of its tenets (I agree with you that Snape doesn't seem to be 
much of a purebloodist these days, anyway) and working to fight 
against a charismatic Dark Wizard who favors recruitment from within 
its ranks.

Going back to a few of the things you were saying earlier about JKR's 
taste for misdirection, I really do believe that Slytherin=Evil is a 
bit of a red herring in the books.  When Dumbledore speaks to Harry 
about his Sorting at the end of CoS, I read a good deal of respect in 
his tone when he speaks of House Slytherin -- and Dumbledore is a 
Gryffindor, someone who has taken an unusually vocal stance against 
Salazar Slytherin's pureblood beliefs, *and* someone who spent many 
years fighting against a Slytherin Dark Wizard and his (for the most 
part) Slytherin followers.  Hell, if Dumbledore can manage to find 
something to respect in the House as an institution, then I'm willing
to accept that there's something there worthy of respect.

I would also point out that even Hagrid, as prone as he is to 
generalizations and hasty judgements, and as valid a personal reason 
as he has to dislike House Slytherin, does not tell Harry "Slytherin 
is the House of Dark Wizards."  What he says (incorrectly, as it 
turns out) is: "Never a wizard went bad who wasn't in Slytherin."  As 
biased as Hagrid is, and as biased as he has reason to be, that is 
how he phrases it -- and to my mind, that's significant.  Wizards
from House Slytherin *go* bad.  They *turn* to Darkness.  Slytherin 
isn't the House of Darkness; Darkness corrupts those of House 
Slytherin.

That's canon.  It's also canon, though, that all of the Slyths we 
ever see are deeply unpleasant individuals, and that Snape is the 
only one of them we know of who has fought against Dark Wizardry.  If 
there are Slyth grads who are Aurors, or who played important roles 
in the last war against Voldemort, then we've never heard of them.  
(Although I remain convinced, on the basis of no actual canonical 
evidence, that the Crouches, both Sr and Jr, were Slyths.  Given 
Sirius' denunciation of Crouch Sr's performance in his role as a 
battler of Darkness, however, this supposition is still hardly a 
rousing defense of the House as a whole...)

I don't know quite what to make of this, honestly.  My hope is that 
it's a case of reader misdirection and will be dealt with in later 
books.  My fear is that it's Just Something That The Author Didn't 
Think Through Very Carefully.  I'm willing to wait to find out which 
it might be, but in the meantime, I'm reading to give the author the 
benefit of the doubt.

I wrote:

> As for Draco, I do think that Snape genuinely likes him -- or at the
> very least strongly identifies with him.  

Porphyria wrote:

> Given that Draco is a whiny, privileged kid, I think Snape's habit 
> of letting him get away with everything is really a little fishy. 

It's very difficult for us to have any idea what Snape lets Draco get
away with, really.  He lets him get away with just about anything that
might annoy or discomfit Harry or the Gryffindors, certainly.  But 
other than that, it's really impossible to say.  Has he cracked down 
on Draco's bullying within House Slytherin (assuming, that is, that 
Draco does bully the younger Slyth kids, which I'm sure that he does,
if he's allowed to get away with it)?  Is he as unjust in his 
administration of discipline on his own students when House 
Gryffindor *isn't* involved?  There's just no way to know.  That 
issue's a black box.

> Snape seems like the kind of guy who takes pride in his talent and 
> works hard at it; it's hard for me to see how he'd approve of 
> someone who slides along by malingering, falling back on family 
> prestige and generally squirming out from under responsibility. 

Snape has been known to play a few very slimy games with 
responsibility and power himself.  He is talented, and he is proud, 
and he is obviously more than capable of hard work.  But he is also a 
Slytherin.

Draco's malingering was to the benefit of the House in their efforts 
to win the Quiddich cup, and I suspect that Snape approved 
wholeheartedly of it.  And while Draco does try to coast on his 
family name whenever he thinks he can get away with it, we've never 
seen evidence that he slacks off in Snape's Potions class.  

I quite agree with you that Snape would not take kindly to anyone 
slacking off in his Potions class.

> Snape appears to be giving Hermione better marks. If he really 
> liked Draco as much as he seems to, why wouldn't he find some slimy 
> reason to deduct points from Hermione's exam and add a few special 
> bonus points to Draco's? 

Snape does favor the Slyths, but I mean, *really,* Porphyria!  There 
are *limits!*

He doesn't mess with the marks for exactly the same reason that he 
wouldn't take kindly to anyone slacking off in his Potions class.


> Or better yet, if he really really cares about Draco, why aren't 
> there signs that he's mentoring him in some really useful way? Does 
> he even teach him better techniques for chopping ginger root? 

Well, for starters, I think that the man that you're tilting at here 
gets more bursting with straw with each new paragraph.  ;-)

If you'll look above, what I actually said was *not* that I thought 
that Snape "really liked Draco as much as he seems to," and most 
*certainly* not that he "really really cares about Draco."  (And just 
for the record, I don't think that Snape gives Draco big loving hugs 
or tucks him into bed at night, either.)

I said that I thought that he does "genuinely like him -- or at the 
very least identify with him."  That's not at all the same thing.  

But really, if Snape *had* been, say, teaching Draco better techniques
for chopping ginger root, then what sort of signs would you really 
expect to see of that in the text?  Harry certainly wouldn't know 
about it.  It wouldn't be likely to come up anywhere in the narration.

I don't really think that Snape *is* giving Draco private ginger-
slicing lessons, mind.  But if he were, we'd never hear about it.

And Snape's prompting of Draco's Serpensortia spell in the duelling 
club scene of CoS can be read as evidence that he *has* given the boy 
a bit of tutoring on the side -- although in curses, rather than in
Potions.  There would seem to be far more to learning a spell then 
just happening to know the proper incantation: you also have
to know the proper wand movements, and in almost all cases, do at
least a bit of practice.  We've never seen even Hermione cast a charm 
on the basis of merely being told the appropriate incantation.  
Snape's whisper in Draco's ear there was a *prompt:* unless we are to 
believe that Draco is preternaturally talented with spellwork (which 
I don't for an instant believe), then he must have already learned 
that particular spell.  And Snape must have known that he knew it.  

So how did he know?  Could have been an inspired guess, I suppose, 
based on what he knows about Draco's inclinations and the Malfoy 
family as a whole.  Could have been because he'd seen Draco cast
it before -- in the Slytherin common room, say, on a fellow student.  
Or it could be because he had taught it to him himself.  I don't 
consider the last possibility all that unlikely, myself.


> It seems more to me that what Snape does is curry Draco's favor in 
> a way that, if Draco were smarter, he'd hold with some suspicion.

Heh.  Well, if Draco were smarter, he wouldn't be Draco.  Yes, of 
course Snape smarms shamelessly up to Lucius Malfoy's son.  It's in 
his best interests to do so, on a number of different levels.  But 
that doesn't mean that he doesn't genuinely like the kid, or that he 
doesn't favor his own students primarily out of...well, out of good 
old-fashioned favoritism.

> As for Snape's Sudden Movement (which is beginning to remind me far
> too much of That Goddamned Gleam In Dumbledore's Eye)...

Um, does this mean you're already tired of discussing it? Uh oh...

Nah.  I'm happy to talk about it.  I don't know quite where that up
there came from -- some weird fit of irritability, I guess.  Mainly
it reminds me of the infamous Gleam because it is a one sentence line 
that prompts so many people to say: "Hey, did anyone else notice that 
sudden movement that Snape made when..."

<I suggested that Snape's Sudden Movement might have been a 
reflection of his desire to stop Harry from uttering Malfoy's name in 
front of Fudge, because he knew that the instant Fudge heard Malfoy 
implicated, he would refuse to believe a word of it>

> I think your theory is plausible, but I can't help but imagine that 
> the Movement foreshadows something further in the future than 
> Fudge's reaction. 

It might do, and I certainly hope you're right, because it's far more
interesting that way.  But I think it equally possible that it 
was...well, just a moment of characterization, rather than a Great 
Big Foreshadow.

> I mean, given that his gesture is a little mysterious and all 
> (the wording "sudden movement" is deliberately vague)..., 

It is vague, which was the reason that I didn't even try to defend
my objection to the idea that it was a gesture of fury, rather than 
one of alarm or dismay or warning.  There's really not much there to 
go on.  

> ...shouldn't it indicate more than what is depicted a few minutes 
> later in this very scene?

You think?  Well...maybe.  I think that sometimes a Sudden Movement 
is just a Sudden Movement, but as I said, I hope that you're right, 
because I too am getting very antsy to find out what the deal is 
between Snape and Lucius Malfoy.

> My take on this: I think Snape and Lucius are headed for a day of 
> reckoning. The text keeps hinting at something along these lines. 

You know, this is the thing that I'm *most* curious about?  I am, as 
a general rule, not at all an impatient or a curious person.  In 
fact, I drive my friends absolutely crazy sometimes with my lack of 
those particular character traits.  I happily leave gifts all wrapped 
up until it's time to open them and have never once seen the point in 
shaking boxes or squinting too hard at their shapes; I receive 
mysterious parcels and then forget to look inside them until my 
housemates are overcome with curiosity and start nagging me to do so; 
I endure cliff-hangers with an aplomb that absolutely *infuriates* 
many of my aquaintances.  The fact that Rowling's taking a long
time with Book Five really just doesn't bother me.  She'll get it done
eventually, and I'm not planning on dying anytime soon, so all is 
good, as far as I'm concerned.

But I really *am* getting very itchy to find out what the deal is with
Snape and the Malfoys, and whether Snape's behavior towards Draco is 
going to visibly change in Book Five, and whether we're ever going to 
see Snape and Lucius interacting face to face, and whether...

Well, yes.  I'm...eager.  Impatient, even.  It's a bizarre sensation 
for me.  I'm not used to it.

> There's gotta be plot potential here...so if we agree that Snape's 
> sudden movement is directly in response to the mention of Lucius' 
> name, and that it communicates some sort of strong emotion other 
> than naive surprise that Lucius, shocker of shockers, is still a 
> loyal DE, well...to me this points to some sort of interesting 
> fireworks between the two in a future setting. 

I agree.  And I'm...

Well, damn this emotion!  This is just no fun at all.  I finally 
begin to understand what the rest of you people are always *whining*
about. 

> Well, OK, here's a theory: In CoS, Lucius shows up at Borgin and 
> Burkes to unload some incriminating items that he really doesn't 
> want the MOM to find in his house. Presumably he's got a wide 
> variety of dark arts items stuffed under the drawing room floor, 
> but he specifically mentions *poisons* to Mr. Borgin. So they must 
> be pretty suspicious poisons, you know? Not just garden gnome 
> poison or magical spot remover. 

Sure.  I somehow doubt that there's any wizarding law against having, 
say, arsenic in your possession.

> So that set me to wondering where they originally came from. Hmmm. 
> Do we know anyone who was a DE back in the day who might have had a 
> talent for brewing particularly nasty, illegal, specialized-
> function poisons? 

I like it.  So do you think that "poison" might be a kind of Dark 
Wizard euphemism for forbidden potions?  It does seem to me that the 
nastiest and most illegal of specialized-potions would likely be ones 
that...well, that wouldn't necessarily be designed to *kill.*  Or at 
least not *only* to kill.

> Well, there you go, that's my theory for what Snape's particular DE 
> function used to be. 

Seems reasonable to me.

> Plus that drawing-room chamber is just too intriguing to not come 
> up again. I think these things will tie together: Snape and Lucius 
> have a history which will come back into play in a big hairy way.

Oooooh, I hope so!

Say, do you think it make me a little...bent that I want to know more 
about Dark magic?  We've had the Unforgivables, but they're really 
pretty run-of-the-mill Bad Things To Do To People, aren't they?  I 
mean, what do Seriously Bad Wizards *do?*  Magically, I mean.  What 
constitutes the "Dark Arts?"  

I've always liked to imagine that Divination is *not,* in fact, an 
impractical field of magic at all, but that the only really reliable 
forms of Divination qualify as Dark Arts -- which is the reason that 
Dumbledore gets stuck with poor Trelawney and her once-a-decade 
prophecies.  I like to think that at Durmstrang, say, Divination is a 
highly challenging and intellectual -- and *effective!* -- part of 
the curriculum.

Why do I like to imagine this?  I'm not sure.  Maybe just because
it would make Hermione so very *annoyed* if she knew. ;-)


Regarding Evil-yet-Hyper Avery:

> Well, erm, I think my original reasoning was maybe he's evil and 
> thus perfectly loyal to LV and then his histrionic fit would just 
> be a strange but effective attention-getting device. 

Like an abused child, you mean, who desperately wants Daddy's 
attention, but doesn't particularly care whether that attention 
manifests itself as praise or as punishment?  

Yes.  That works too.

> But you must grant me the merest shred of slack here, because I did 
> post this before your touching defense of him. 

Hey.  Someone needs to obsess about the totally minor characters, 
right?  Otherwise they'd feel left out.

I'm getting a tad bored with Avery, though.  I'm thinking of moving 
on to Justin Finch-Fletchley.  For one thing, I'm pretty sure that 
he's had more than seven words of dialogue.  Also, he's not a bad guy 
(yet), and I seem to be developing a reputation around here as some 
sort of sick pervert who is only capable of sympathizing with Very 
Bad Men.

> Now I see the error of my ways. 

I'm gratified.  Although you know, if you liked Avery better Evil, 
then you could always go for my new "Fourth Man" theory. 

> However, I'm still trying to grok the distinction between a 'toady' 
> and a 'nerveless hysteric.' 

A true toady would have thought to thank Voldemort for the Cruciatus.

(Of course, it's possible that Avery really really wanted to, but 
that by the time he'd managed to catch his breath, Voldie had already 
lost interest in him, and there just wasn't any opportunity.  It 
wouldn't have done, after all, to *interrupt.*  Dark Lords just 
*hate* that.)


-- Elkins