New Thought on Theory of the Dark Mark

[Juliet]

No: HPFGUIDX 60626

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Kelly Grosskreutz" 
<ivanova at i...> wrote:
What does surprise me, now that I think of it, is that DD didn't 
check for
it on his followers. As I speculated in an earlier post, I think Snape
showed DD the Mark early on when he changed sides. But yet DD didn't 
check
other people's arms, especially when he was pretty darn sure there 
was a spy
close to the Potters. How hard would it have been to just call Sirius,
Remus, and Peter in and ask them to roll up their left sleeves for a 
minute
and bare their arms?
>>

Perhaps I didn't phrase my post right, because I tried to answer this 
question....  Here's what I think:

If Voldemort doesn't want the mark to show up, it doesn't- or if he 
can't make it show up, it won't.  It didn't show up while he was 
Vapor!Voldemort, because of how weak he was.  When he started gaining 
power, he *wanted* his DEs to know he was coming back, so he started 
concentrating on the Mark to make it show.

During the Dark Years, the Mark didn't show up, either, unless he 
wanted to/was calling his DEs to him.  Way too easy for people to be 
recognized as Death Eaters, especially if the war was mostly waged by 
infiltration.  But, it's also a way of identifying who's a DE and 
who's not(since it is how he calls them to him).  If you don't have 
that tattoo, then you're not getting close to Voldemort, and you're 
not going to get any really good information.  

So, basically, I don't think Pettigrew had a big ugly skull on his 
forearm the whole time.  If you think about it, it'd be kind of hard 
for him, not being able to bare his forearm to anyone.  No t-shirts 
or short-sleeves, what-so-ever.  Makes much more sense for the Mark 
to be a kind of thing that can go away when it needs to...

Aldrea