[HPforGrownups] Did Snape recruit Pettigrew?/ Pettigrew's wand

[Edblanning at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 35231

In a message dated 07/02/02 19:03:25 GMT Standard Time, cindysphynx at home.com 
writes:


> The timeline also raises the possibility that Snape recruited Peter 
> into the Death Eaters in 1979.  You know, Snape would have told Peter 
> things like Sirius and James never respected you, you are always 
> second fiddle with them, join us, you can be a star on our team, 
> blah, blah, blah.  I can't make it work (yet) because I can't think 
> of any plausible way Snape knows that Peter is a Death Eater, doesn't 
> tell Dumbledore, and lets James, Lily and Sirius switch to Peter.  
> The only thing that comes to mind is that Snape doesn't want to admit 
> to Dumbledore his role in recruiting Peter (much the way Lupin 
> refuses to admit the werewolf adventures to Dumbledore), but I'm not 
> sold

I'm a bit behind with the post!

I speculated the other day on whether Snape recruited Pettigrew, with 
unarticulated misgivings about why this shouldn't be.
But I think there *could* be something in it. It's not at all clear exactly 
how much everyone knew at the time (or knows now) about other people's roles 
in the last Voldy war. After all, Sirius gives no sign of recognition of the 
fact that Snape was working for Dumbledore before James' and Lily's deaths 
and is surprised   when Lupin brings up his name. (Yes, I know that there is 
no reason for him to know that Snape is now a teacher, but to me it feels 
more than that. When Sirius was last free, Hogwarts was presumably the centre 
of the resistance, so if Sirius was aware that Snape was a spy it should not 
seem so strange to him that Snape was there, or at least, still in 
Dumbledore's circle.)

As I have said before, I can only make Snape-as-spy work if Snape functioned 
as a double agent. I think, therefore, that his role was *very, very* secret 
and that Dumbledore was probably the only one who knew about it. I don't 
think, therefore, that he was one of an  'inner group' of Dumbledore 
supporters. There was not *necessarily* any reason for him to know who the 
Potter's secret-keeper was. That said, I think it likely that Dumbledore 
might have told him that it was Sirius, but Dumbledore himself didn't know 
about the swap to Peter, did he? So how would Snape know? He doesn't *allow* 
the switch to Peter to happen: he doesn't know about it and he doesn't 
anticipate it as a problem. Sirius is right, no one would expect it. 

Snape doesn't seem to doubt that Sirius was the one who betrayed Lily and 
James which leads me to think that he might also think that his attempts to 
recruit Peter (if he did!) were in vain, particularly if he ended up in a 
different 'cell' of DEs. If Peter said he wasn't interested, I'm sure Snape 
could have made sufficiently persuasive threats to feel that he was safe from 
his blabbing about the attempted recruitment. He could easily have 
deliberately sown the seeds that led to his defection though, in exactly the 
way you suggest.

I'm not at all convinced by this theory, though I quite like it. It would 
give another reason, other than his pig-headed prejudice against Sirius, for 
Snape's resisting the idea that Peter is still alive. And of course, once he 
can get his head around the fact that he didn't fail to protect Lily and 
James from Sirius, he can have another fit of angst at having recruited their 
real betrayer! 


Going back further,

In a message dated 05/02/02 01:58:47 GMT Standard Time, mrgrrrargh at aol.com 
writes:


> Well, Petigrew and Minerva both transform with their clothes as did 
> MalfoyFerret, I think clothes (and wands) stay with ya when you change 
> forms.
> 
> 


I've been puzzling over this one. Can anyone explain why Pettigrew doesn't 
seem to have his wand with him in the Shrieking Shack?. I know it isn't 
specifically mentioned as not there, but you would have thought that Sirius 
and Lupin might have felt it wise to disarm him, given his track record. It 
wasn't found after his disappearance, either, just a heap of blood-stained 
robes. 

And the dropping of those those robes (which he can't have been wearing, 
otherwise they would have transformed too), along with the severing of his 
finger implies that he intended to disappear in this manner all along, 
implicating someone else for his murder ( I dislike him more every time I 
think about him). Why not just disappear as a rat? Does this imply that the 
DEs know he's an animagus, if it's them he fears rather then the debilitated 
Voldemort? And was he specifically hoping to implicate Sirius, or was it just 
bad luck on his part that he caught up with him as he prepared to stage his 
disappearance?

Eloise, who probably isn't making any sense as her brains have been addled by 
three days with small people at Disneyland in the rain.



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