New Thought on Theory of the Dark Mark

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 60651

Snape states that the Dark Mark was used by the DEs to identify each other. 
So it is likely that causing it to appear was something which the DEs had some 
voluntary control over. I suspect that it was possible to conceal the mark by 
magic, which one could cancel and restore at will. When they were called by 
their master this concealment was overridden, and it may have either needed some 
sort of "cooling off" period before it could be concealed again or Snape 
simply didn't bother, since he hadn't been intending to roll up his sleeves for 
anyone that evening. 

If this is the case, by the time most DEs were no longer in control of the 
concealment of their Mark they would typically have already been dead or insane, 
or in the hands of the Dementors, who, Sirius tells us are blind. 

In the case of death, Voldemort would be aware of it and have no reason to 
"call" a corpse. Those who were dead in his service may have had nothing visible 
to mark them.

In the case of the captured, Voldemort would have been made aware of this as 
well. It is likely is that no one ever examined those in Azkaban for marks 
which might have appeared since their imprisonment.

In the case of the insane, this might also been a situation where Voldemort 
was eiter alread aware, or was informed and took care not to contact these 
particular followers. 

What is also likely is that -- good as the system was -- there might have 
been a few slip-ups of which the DMLE was, in fact, aware. Either there were too 
few of these cumulative incidents to have struck the investigating Aurors as 
significant yet, or the information was classified. I think that the Fact that 
*any* of the DEs were "marked" was *highly* classified information that Crouch 
Sr. as head of the Dept of Magical Law Enforcement ruthlessly supressed. (The 
real Moody may have known about it, but he may have learned about that from 
Snape directly.)

The Mark probably wasn't particularly visible when not "active", but there 
may well be magical ways to cause it to reveal itself -- so long as Voldemort 
was alive and present somewhere to "complete the circuit". After he was gone, 
there was no longer a connection to be activated, visibly or in any other 
mnanner. How much the significance of the Mark on those few captured DEs who were 
unable to conceal in time was realized is uncertain. 

In any case, Fudge, whose background was in Magical Catastrophes, would not 
have been on the "need to know" list at all. And in fact it is quite possible 
that sealing these particular records was another of Crouch Sr.'s big 
"mistakes" which he made to protect and reserve his own information sources. It is 
possible that this was the sort of thing that he intended to keep to himself as a 
possible tool toward managing to capture that "one last Dark wizard".

-JOdel