Who Will Betray the Order? (Part 2)

[Wendy St John]

No: HPFGUIDX 76280


Hello, Everyone,

I've been thinking rather a lot lately about who the "betrayer" of the
order will be (following the recent thread on this subject). I do think
that someone we trust (and someone Harry trusts) will prove to be Ever So
Evil by the end of Book 7.  We've discussed just about every character in
the books in terms of their potential for becoming evil (or proving to have
been evil all along), and in thinking about this, a questions occurred to
me: is it more likely that the person who betrays Harry will be one of his
peers, or one of the adults that he trusts? 

I've generally thought that it would be one of the adults. This may just be
due to the fact that as an adult myself, I enjoy the adult characters more
than I do the kids, and I spend rather more time thinking about them. I
also tend to be able to "relate" better to their experiences and such
better than I can with the teenagers. (Yes, I was teenager once, but it's
been almost 20 years, and mostly an experience I've tried to block from my
memory <g>). The adults all have more backstory than the children (just by
virtue of having lived longer), so an adult would have more potential
reasons to switch sides at some point. It also seems to me that one of the
adults is far more likely to have been evil all along - can you really
imagine Hermione, for example, coming to Hogwarts already having evil
intentions of joining Voldemort? So I think I've been mostly operating
under the assumption that one of the adults in Harry's life will betray
him, and have considered McGonagall and Lupin, and most recently Molly, as
being the most likely candidates.

But in reading the Colin Creevey thread, I realised that I personally
haven't given much thought to to possibility that the "betrayer" really
could be one of Harry's friends or peers. When we consider the apparent
timing of events in the first Voldemort War, it seems as though some of the
Death Eaters may have been recruited while still students at Hogwarts. My
reasoning for this is that a) based on the Lexicon timeline, Snape - and
all the others in his year - was only 21 at the time of Voldemort's "fall,"
which means he must have become a Death Eater not long after leaving
Hogwarts - or recruited while still a student; and b) we learn from Sirius
that Snape's "gang" at Hogwarts consisted of others who all became Death
Eaters. This comment leads me to suspect that they may have been recruited
at Hogwarts.

So, if we assume that Voldemort approached Hogwarts' students in the past,
he might do it again now. It does appear that most of the Death Eaters came
from Slytherin House, and I think it's very likely that Draco and his lot
may join Voldemort before the series is through. One of them could hardly
be the "betrayer," though. However, depending on when we think Peter
switched sides, it's possible that he was approached originally at Hogwarts
as well. (I'm obviously working under the assumption that MMWP were all
Gryffindors). In any case, the stakes are a bit different now. In the past,
Voldemort was just looking for others to join his crusade (as far as we
know, anyway), but now he has a target who is a student at Hogwarts. When I
think about it this way, it seems very likely that someone close to Harry 
will be approached, and might decide to betray Harry for one reason or
another. I suppose it's possible that one of Harry's peers could go to
Voldemort on his/her own, but this seems much less likely. 

So, I'd like to hear what others have to say about this. Do you think that
it's more likely one of the adults will be the one to betray Harry
(assuming that someone does), or will it be one of his friends/classmates? 

Oh - and one more quick comment. In one of the posts on the first thread of
this title, someone "accused" us of using the accusation of Ever So Evil as
an excuse to bash the characters we don't like. (Not exact words, but
that's what I took the comment to mean). I completely disagree with this -
on the contrary, I think that the strongest ESE argument is for Remus
Lupin, and I LOVE Lupin, I love his character, I love everything about him
except the fact that I fear he may be evil. So I'm not trying to bash a
hated character at all. That would actually be contrary to the whole
discussion of this subject. The point isn't to see which characters are
awful enough in canon to betray Harry, but to try and determine (by
guessing which are JKR's real clues) which character that we *trust* will
turn out to be evil. If I thought it would be someone I dislike, then
Mad-eye Moody would be the betrayer. But that's no fun, as I already
dislike him and would only feel vindicated in my dislike if he turned out
to be the one. So I don't think this is about slamming the characters we
don't like. Exactly the opposite, in fact.

Looking forward to your comments on this,

Wendy 

Wendy St John
hebrideanblack at earthlink.net