The Spying Game Part II - I want you to DIE, Mr Potter.

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 40050

Oh, brava!  This was even better than the first part.  (And of 
course, I was just thrilled to see that my boy Redeemable!Avery 
remains dishwasher-safe.)

I do have one tiny quibble, though, that perhaps Pip or her, er, 
enforcer Grey Wolf might be able to...um, help me out a bit with 
here.  Preferably without recourse to Cruciatus.

Pip wrote, after an impassioned defense of the notion that many of 
the DEs in that graveyard hadn't really been disloyal to Voldemort at 
all:

> Another, final point on the supposedly disloyal DE's. 

> Voldemort: "... I had given up hope, now, that any of my Death 
> Eaters cared what had become of me."

> 'One or two of the masked wizards in the circle moved 
> uncomfortably, ..'

> Only one or two?


Thus implying that only those "one or two" of the Death Eaters 
had really been disloyal at all.

Erm.  Um.  The problem here is that, well, there are just far
too many indications elsewhere in the scene that the majority of 
these guys really are profoundly uncomfortable in that graveyard.

The behavior of the entire group when they first appear, for example:

"And one by one they moved forward...slowly, cautiously, as though 
they could hardly believe their eyes."

Then they all shudder as one when Voldemort looks around at them.

And then, when Voldemort sniffs at them and declares that he smells 
guilt:

"A second shiver ran around the circle, as though each member of it 
longed, but did not dare, to step back from him."

They surely can't *all* be great actors just doing their bit to help 
feed Harry misinformation, can they?

I am willing to entertain the notion that Lucius Malfoy may be in on 
the Big Plan (if only because imagining his stammering there as 
evidence that he had forgotten his *lines* made me laugh so hard that 
my housemate ran into the room asking "What?  WHAT?"), but I'm afraid 
that I'm just not quite up for a plateful of "all but one or two of 
the DEs were loyal."  There's just far too much canon opposing that 
one.  

But that's okay, right?  Voldemort can have just a couple of 
loyalists, while the rest of them can still be treacherous disloyal 
slime, right?  


-- Elkins