Two Wormtails was Re: Plot in OotP (wand confusion)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 118388


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 
wrote:

> Pippin:
> 
> Erm,  of course there's a mystery about who Wormtail really is.
> ----
> "You don't think it more likely he got it *directly from the 
> manufacturers*?" [emphasis JKR's].
> 
> Harry didn't understand what Snape was talking about. Nor, 
> apparently, did Lupin.

Then why his comments about the Map afterwards that clearly reveal 
that Lupin knows exactly what the Map is?

> "You mean, by Mr. Wormtail or one of these people?" he said.
> --PoA ch 14
> 
> Wormtail is identified  later in the book when Lupin tells about 
> the Animagi. But the mystery which is not solved, and has been 
> asked many times on this list, is "What did Snape know about 
> the 'manufacturers' that made him question Lupin?"
> 
> If the names and their meanings were common knowledge, then 
> there's no reason for Snape to be so oblique -- he can just say, 
> "It seems Harry has come by one of your old school things. I'd 
> like an explanation, Lupin, if you'd be so kind."

Funny, I always read that scene the other way.  Lupin knows 
*exactly* what Snape is referring to--and his indications in 
confiscating the Map, his statements about how the makers would have 
thought it funny to lure Harry out of school--he knows what the Map 
is, because he helped make it.  However, Snape and Lupin have one 
thing in common here--no one wants to talk about the schooldays. 

Snape has absolutely zero interest in bringing up his schooldays in 
front of Harry (a point reinforced in OotP).  So he brings up his 
suspicions in an oblique way (there was a lovely explication of what 
might have been the 'actual' conversation going on posted here ages 
ago, but I've lost track of it) to avoid being asked or having to 
ask a direct question.  He's obliquely accusing Lupin of providing 
the contraband item, which, after all, is directly insulting Snape 
himself, and Lupin is responding in a way that removes the item from 
Harry, gets it back in his own possession, and also avoids answering 
questions.

Nobody wants to be forthcoming about the past, both from character 
reasons and the overarching Deity of Plot.  But it's fairly clear 
that both Snape and Lupin have *some* idea of what's going on there.

> The pensieve scene in OOP is no help, by the way, since we 
> can't tell how much of the Marauder conversation was actually 
> audible to Snape.  Harry has to move away from Snape to hear it.

That Pensieve scene bothers me so much, just because it causes all 
kinds of problems that Harry can hear things that Snape couldn't 
have possibly.  I guess we have to go with 'It's magic!', or else I 
suspect it would be more common for people to pull out memories and 
go back to listen to things they couldn't have heard.  This is a 
purely practical objection--the mechanics of the thing are cursedly 
unclear.

-Nora notes that she does not have books with her, and would 
appreciate some filled-in (as in, non-selectively excerpted :) canon 
for Lupin's reactions to the Map