Fred & George - Evil?

[John Kearns]

No: HPFGUIDX 132672

> brossiter:
> That may very well be true, and they may well not be evil.  And 
> they may not have had loads of time to rummage through the drawer, 
> picking and choosing among the various tidbits that had been
> collected by Filch and his predecessors through the years. 

John K now:
I don't think they had time to even look at what they were 
grabbing.  Remember, Filch was standing there.  They caused a 
diversion by dropping a dungbomb - surely that wouldn't occupy 
Filch's attention for more than a couple of seconds?  They wouldn't 
have had time to do more than open the drawer a crack, grab whatever 
was there, stuff it in their robes, and slam the drawer shut.  Even 
THAT would be taking a risk.

> brossiter:
> But that still doesn't explain why, even in such a short amount of 
> time, why they picked out what must have appeared as a blank 
> parchment.  

John K:
In my opinion, it does.

> brossiter:
> Even if they thought it odd that bare parchment would 
> be considered "dangerous," there's no explanation as to how they 
> worked out how to use it ("I solemnly swear...")  Scabbers!Peter 
> is the most likely source for both bits of information, and 
> there's simply no way the twins could have gotten information out 
> of the rat unless they were (or became) aware of the rat's true 
> nature.

John K again:
Someone has already said in this thread (sorry, don't know who) that 
they probably just experimented with it until they found something 
that worked.  We've had lots of discussions about the important 
thing in magic being intent - that if they were intending to use it 
for mischief, then the exact wording wouldn't matter.  Who's to say 
that these exact words - or any exact words - were the ones the 
Marauders designed the map to respond to?  It's only in the movie 
that Lupin himself repeats any of them.

> brossiter:
> Maybe it wasn't out of evil-ness; maybe Peter knew the twins were
> hellians who'd get a kick out of the map.  But even THAT means 
> that the twins would have known who & what Scabbers really was 
> long before the events of PoA, and never once breathed a word of 
> it.  

John K:
Even this, to me, seems farfetched.  Rowling is a quite adept at 
dropping canon hints at things that aren't what they seem - for 
example, in hindsight we can easily explain things like Crouch 
appearing on the marauder's map, or at least see the ambiguity in 
his actions against Draco and Death Eaters.  I just can't imagine 
her planning something like this without giving us any clues in 
canon.

If Fred and George were truly against Harry, they've had SO many 
opportunities to do him harm (think of them promising to cause a 
diversion so he could use Umbridge's fire!) where they have instead 
proven to be on his side.  If they knew Peter's identity and weren't 
evil, it would have come out once they learned who Sirius Black 
was.  Their actions just don't make any sense when viewed from this 
perspective, and I can't see the canon to justify it.

Just my opinion,
John K