The Mark, was Re: Snape:second chance?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 116014


LisaMarie wrote:
> No question about the Mark: it is definitely a creepy, evil device
of LV and I daresay it's purpose isn't solely as a paging device, IMO.
 I doubt LV put it there because he thought it looked cool. <g>  I
think the DE had to do something truly *Dark* to receive it; I shudder
to think what it must have been!
> 
> <snip> They [the DEs] must have had some assurance that LV would,
someday, return to power, as he finally did.
> 
> LisaMarie, still trying *not* to imagine the application process of
the Dark Mark!

Carol presents her own theory regarding the Dark Marks:
Apparently, the DE's Dark Marks faded but did not wholly disappear
when Voldemort was defeated at Godric's Hollow. I think that's how the
Death Eaters knew that he had been defeated but not killed. (It may
even have been how Dumbledore knew, via Snape's Dark Mark.) The more
fanatical DEs (notably Bellatrix and her crew) wanted to find LV and
restore him to power. A few others fought the aurors and were arrested
(and in a few case killed), but most pretended to have been under the
Imperius Curse, protecting their own skins and just possibly hoping
that Voldemort, for all his immortality spells and potions, would not
return in their lifetime. But if the marks had faded altogether,
Bellatrix et al. would not have gone looking for Voldemort to bring
him back. And Snape, I'm guessing, would not have remained with
Dumbledore at Hogwarts. If his mark had faded completely, he would
have thought himself safe and free. But it hadn't disappeared, so
Snape knew Voldemort was not destroyed, and being Snape, he aided
Dumbledore and grudgingly taught potions, and watched and waited.

Probably Snape's mark and all the others remained in that faded state
for the ten years that Voldemort was an evil spirit possessing animals
in Albania, maybe changing almost imperceptibly so that only a few of
the more perceptive DEs (possibly Lucius Malfoy and certainly the
ex-DE Snape) anticipated a comeback. Since the marks aren't mentioned
in the first three books, we don't know whether they began to darken a
bit when Quirrell brought LV back to England and shortly afterwards
was possessed by him, but maybe Snape saw that his mark was darkening
again and was on the watch. He may even have felt it burn when he was
near Quirrell, which would have given him good reason to watch
Quirrell closely. *If* Snape's mark darkened while LV was inhabiting
Quirrell's turban, and I'm only guessing that it did, it would have
faded again when LV was vaporized at the end of SS/PS. Outside
Hogwarts, Lucius Malfoy may have been watching, too, and after hearing
Draco's story of Harry and Quirrell, decided it was time to bring in
Tom Riddle's diary. Surely, if the mark was changing, he, like Snape,
would understand the significance.

Whatever Malfoy's motives, I don't think his Dark Mark or even Snape's
would have been affected by Diary!Tom. Snape's mark seems to have
remained dormant (faded but not gone) throughout CoS and again in PoA
(when Malfoy is temporarily out of the story)--at any rate, neither
JKR nor Snape provides any indication of its existence, much less its
great importance. (True, JKR is biding her time and is not ready to
reveal the existence of DEs and Dark Marks, but I think that the marks
are biding their time, too, almost as if they were sentient beings
like Tolkien's Rings of Power.) In GoF, we learn the both Snape's and
Karkaroff's marks are growing dark and ugly, an unmistakeable sign
that Voldemort is gaining strength. By the end of GoF, when LV has
been resurrected, Snape's is so hideous that Fudge is repelled by it.
If he knows the Mark's significance, and he undoubtedly does, he ought
to be persuaded by this incontrovertible evidence that Voldemort has
returned, but being a perverse, blind, self-important fool (or
worse--but we're not discussing Fudge here), he isn't. The Dark Marks
have also summoned Snape and Karkaroff to the graveyard, but Snape
remains at Hogwarts and Karkaroff has fled. Earlier in GoF, Snape's
Dark Mark burns when the loyal DE Crouch!Moody refers to it. It burns
again in OoP when Harry speaks Voldemort's name, as if it senses his
disloyalty, as if it knows he has violated his oath of loyalty and
will not return.

So, what is the Dark Mark? Much more, as Lisa Marie says, than a
"paging device," without question "evil and creepy." Like the Mark
that Barty Jr. casts into the sky with his Morsmordre, it's a death's
head with a snake coming out of its mouth, symbolizing both Salazar
Slytherin and Voldemort. It's an indicator of Voldemort's life force,
his strength and weakness, his waxing and waning; assurance to those
who are loyal to him that he will be restored to power; a warning to
"the one who has left and will not return" that the fight he has so
long anticipated is about to begin. It's a pledge of lifetime service
to the Dark Lord, "a spot that never comes off." Unless, maybe, the
Dark Lord is finally destroyed and Snape, the ex-DE still branded with
the symbol he has come to loathe, will at last be free.

As for how the Dark Mark is placed on the arms of the DEs, we know
that it's burned there, no doubt cruelly and painfully. My guess is
that it's done through the Morsmordre spell, used by the insanely
deluded Barty Jr. to advertise his loyalty and punish the "Death
Eaters who walked free" and by the DEs in VW1 to mark the scene of
their crimes. But unless Wormtail or another DE witness cast the mark
after Voldemort was vanquished, it did not rise above Godric's Hollow
to mark the Potters' fall.

Carol, who was impressed and moved by Amanda's post at the beginning
of this thread but thinks Snape will survive to fight VW3