sirius as animagus - why didn't the deatheaters know pre OOP?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 93879

princess laura wrote:
> <snip>In Voldy War 1 we know that Wormtail was passing information
to Voldy for a year before his fall.  Yet it is implied in OOP that
the death eaters did not know this [about Sirius being an animagus]
until after Voldy's resurrection. <snip> Wouldn't Peter have been
passing this kind of info about the members of the Order?
> 
> Berit replied:
> I believe Peter realised it would be smart to not tell everything... 
> Like Lucius, Peter is a very *slippery friend*, and would want to 
> cover his back and have an escape route should something go terribly 
> wrong. An when it did, he could turn into a rat and no one would be 
> any wiser as to his whereabouts (except Sirius who he believed was 
> safely locked up in Azkaban). His rat-disguise was a safety measure. 
> I believe he did not tell either Voldemort or his DE's about Sirius, 
> James and himself being animagi because it was useful to keep that 
> information to himself. He could of course have told Voldemort about 
> Sirius and James and "forgotten" to tell about himself. But if it 
> came out his former friends were animagi, don't you think Voldemort 
> would have suspected Peter might be one too and force him to admit 
> it? No, the safest thing was to keep the whole marauder-animagi a 
> secret. I think Voldemort only learned about Peter's rat-form when
he came to his rescue in the Albanian woods.


Carol:
I agree with Berit that the DEs didn't know that Peter and his former
friends were animagi, but I'm not so sure that LV himself didn't know,
given his supposed skill as a legilmens. However, we know from
Karkaroff's trial that LV kept a lot of useful information from the
DEs, including the identities of some of the members, because he
didn't fully trust them. Quite possibly he considered both Peter's
identity and his animagus ability as that sort of classified
information--useful to him but not something he thought the DEs needed
to know. Sirius's and James's animagus abilities would have been kept
secret, too, if LV didn't want his DEs to know which of James's
friends was the spy. (Please read on before you object that the DEs in
Azkaban knew it was Peter who told LV about the Potters.)

I know that the DEs in Azkaban knew that Peter was the Potter's secret
Keeper (and believe that he had betrayed them), but it's quite
possible, given LV's penchant for secrecy and his distrust even of his
own servants, that only one or two of them knew who the Potter's
Secret Keeper was. My theory is that Bellatrix, LV's star pupil and
favorite, passed on that information to her fellow DEs when she was
sent to Azkaban a year or so later than the rest. (That would explain
how the Azkaban DEs knew that Sirius was innocent of the Potters'
murder but Snape apparently didn't, whether or not he was already at
Hogwarts when they were killed. It would also explain why Snape didn't
know that WPP were animagi and why Sirius's "big disguise" does not
become "useless" until after Peter resurrects LV.)

To reiterate, in case my post is unclear: I think that LV probably
knew that Peter and his friends were animagi but withheld this
information from the Death Eaters and that only Bellatrix knew that
Peter was the Potters' Secret Keeper and betrayer. I suggest that the
imprisoned DEs learned of his being the spy/Secret Keeper from
Bellatrix when she joined them in Azkaban later, but they only learned
that Peter and Sirius were animagi after they escaped from prison.
(Malfoy, Avery, and the other "at large" DEs would have learned it
somewhat sooner, some time after the reunion in the graveyard.)
 
One more point about Peter that I made in another post but no one
responded to: I think his crimes go beyond betraying the Potters and
killing twelve Muggles while framing Sirius for his "murder." I think
he gave the names of the original Order members to LV, who in turn
gave at least some of those names to the DEs, which explains how they
could have been "picked off one by one" as Lupin puts it in OoP.

Carol