DD and the rat (was:Re: Minerva McGonagall-/Dumbledore)

[Barry Arrowsmith]

No: HPFGUIDX 115526

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "ohnooboe" <hautbois1 at c...> wrote:
 > > Finwitch:
 >
 > > 2) She's obviously in awe of Dumbledore's *powers*, and finds  
Dumbledore to be such a great wizard. Particularly when Dumbledore 
recognizes her in cat-form! She's registered, fine, but no one's done 
that before!
 > >

 > Patrick here:
 > I don't think it's necessarily safe to say "no-one" has recognized 
her in cat form.
 >

Now  this little exchange set me furiously to thinking.

We know  of two instances where animagi are recognised as such when in 
animal form: MM by DD in PS/SS and Sirius by Lucius in OoP.
The latter is explicable in that although there is no evidence that 
Lucius has ever seen Sirius as a dog, he'll know all about him. Down at 
the DE social evenings Pettigrew would have whined about Sirius trying 
to kill him, about how Sirius says he escaped from Azkaban, about an 
affinity between Harry and his Godfather; he'd have spilled the beans 
for sure.

Now DD may well be familiar with Minerva's particular animal form, but 
that's not the way it reads:_
"How did you know it was me?"
"...I've never seen a cat sit so stiffly"
Not only that, but the recognition was immediate, at a distance, at 
night, under street lighting. Just how far away he was is admittedly 
not certain, but after putting out the lights DD "...set off down the 
street" -  not a phrase you'd expect if he was only going a few paces.

"Ooh, Grandma! What big eyes you've got!"
"All the better to see you with, my dear."

We've seen(!) DD's ocular omniscience in action in CoS - he saw through 
the Invisibility Cloak in Hagrid's hut - what else can he see through 
that's magical? An animagus disguise perhaps? Certainly his Legilimancy 
skills would be a great help, but does it go further? Can he actually 
*see* who's
in there?

It's a logical surmise that if animagi exist then the WW would develop 
a way to identify them - though as animagi are rare it would not be a 
magic that many would bother to master. Some would of course; the 
greatest wizard in the world would, plus one or two others - oddball 
specialists who need to track down and identify exactly who and what 
they are dealing with - Moody for instance. That occult optic sees a 
hell of a lot.

Unfortunately we have no textual encounters between Moody and animagi 
that're not already known to him, nor between Crouch!Moody and Bug!Rita 
when Moody's eye was on forced loan. Pity that.
There's just one scene where DD and Bug!Rita apparently appear in close 
proximity, that's in the hospital - and later Hermione says she caught 
Rita on the window sill, one of Rita's favourite spots for bugging. And 
there is no indication as to whether the window was open or closed. 
Would DD have noticed her if she was hiding on the *outside* window 
sill?
As is often the case in the HP saga, we wish we were told just a 
*little* bit more.

But there's a much more important animagus that DD must  have seen 
wandering about Hogwarts over the years - Pettigrew. He's such a 
stand-out. "Students may bring an owl or a cat or a toad" yet a 
succession of Weasleys blithely turn up with a rat - a very long-lived 
rat - with no questions asked. Then there's the question of why the 
hell El Ratto would for years deliberately put himself in the position 
of being right under DD's nose, the committed opponent of everything 
Peter's supposed to support. But that's just our point of view - to  
the wider WW Peter is a fallen hero. Is he hero to DD before old Albus 
finds out he's still alive? Possibly - DD never admits to doubting that 
Sirius was guilty of the offences he wasn't tried for.

Mind you, he never seems to condemn Peter either. Interesting.
And then there's all that delicious ambiguity at the end of CoS - 
Sybill and the second Prophecy that could apply to Peter or to Sirius; 
DD saying that Harry has saved an innocent man from a terrible fate 
while failing to point out that Harry saved *two* men from horrible 
fates - Peter at the end of a pair of wands and Sirius at the sucking 
end of a Dementor.
So which was he referring to?

You  see, given all we're told about DD I've never been able to swallow 
certain suppositions, namely that he didn't know about the Marauders in 
the first place and that he wouldn't identify one of them when he 
turned up at Hogwarts as a pet. It just stretches credulity too far, I 
don't care if DD does drone on about "A extraordinary achievement - not 
least, keeping it from me." I just don't believe it. It's DD flim-flam 
- again; all of a piece with his comment later in the same passage 
where he lays the syrup on with a trowel "So you did see your father 
last night Harry....you found him inside yourself." Urk. Pass the 
bucket somebody.

All  this sort of stuff seems to tie in with suspicions that some of us 
have that on occasion DD seems to be aware of future developments in 
the plot. He's totally unconcerned when Peter escapes, he jokes about 
Sybill's second Prophecy, it's almost as if the episode was played out 
to get someone owing Harry next to Voldy. What makes him think that a 
mass-murdering traitor would honour such a debt at some unknown future 
date?

He might if he already knew who Scabbers was. He might if he had 
already 'turned' Peter; wouldn't be the first time. He did exactly the 
same with Snape. No matter what Snape had done as a DE all was forgiven 
when DD stood up and said "He's on our side now." Was the same promise 
made to Peter - "Work for us and I'll do what I can."?

In which  case why did he leave Sirius to rot in durance vile for all 
those years? Good question. Perhaps he doesn't think that  Sirius is 
all that innocent a character after all. DD never even attempted to get 
his name cleared, did he? I wonder why?

Kneasy