More Snape /Pettigrew and a bit of Percy (was: Did Snape recruit Pettigrew)

[Edblanning at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 35255

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

Actually, I don't think we have to get too hung up on this as a problem 
regarding Pettigrew's *recruitment*: it's already potentially a problem in 
its own right. If Snape and Pettigrew were DEs at the same time (and they 
were to all intents and purposes, even if Snape's loyalty by the end lay with 
Dumbledore), then either
a) Snape knows this and fails to inform Dumbledore that one of James' best 
friends is a DE, which seems unlikely, particularly if we accept the theory 
that it was Snape who knew of and informed Dumbledore of a plot against the 
Potters. Or,
b) Snape doesn't know Pettigrew is a DE, which shows that the DEs do in fact 
operate in different cells and do not know all the others' identities. In 
which case, as I argued, Snape could have sowed the seeds which led to 
Pettigrew's defection without knowing that he had finally succumbed.

I think there may be further evidence that the DEs do not all know each other 
if I am right that Pettigrew's faking of his own death was necessitated by 
the fact that some of the other DEs knew he was a rat animagus. Otherwise it 
begs the question of why Snape doesn't know. I know he wasn't in the most 
receptive of moods in the Shrieking Shack, but you would think he might have 
done the smallest of double-takes when told to 'look at the rat'. 

Right, Percy

Renewed speculation about his name on the list.
I have several thoughts.
1) It's a rather pompous sort of name, a bit ridiculous (sounds foppish, I 
think) in a young Englishman these days (although it could be working class, 
a couple of generations ago). Percy is certainly pompous.
2) There's the knightly, Sir Percival connection. Well, I certainly hope that 
Percy lives up to Gryffindor's reputation, though I'm a bit worried that he 
is going to be taken in, at least temporarily, by the forces of darkness. 
(Only because he gets lost in red tape and ministry dogma).
3) A third Sir Percy came to me in the bath this morning. (Well, not 
literally, unfortunately, but you can't have everything!)
Remember the Scarlet Pimpernal, Sir Percy Blakeney? There's an unlikely hero, 
someone no-one suspected of heroism, appearing to be hopelessly ineffectual 
and to have no sense of what was going on, but who got on with it quietly and 
secretly. Perhaps this is what our Percy will do. 

Eloise


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