Snape< DD, Fake!Moody, and Legilimency (Was: numerous short replies. . . .)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 139697

Vivian wrote:
>We know that Snape has used Legimency on people before--Fake!Moody on
the stairs, 
>
Catlady responded: 
> This confuses me. How could Snape have used Legilimency on
Fake!Moody without noticing that he was fake? Surely one's
self-identity is present in one's mind all one's waking time, like a
background noise?

Carol adds:
I've been holding on to a post on this topic (sort of) in response to
colebiancardi (message 138375)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/138375
(Sorry I didn't post it sooner--three-post limit and all that) So hehr
it is: Better late than never, I hope:

I noticed that Snape avoids "Moody's" eyes in GoF, probably because
the magical eye unnerves him and makes it impossible to do
Legilimency. It's clear, too, that he doesn't know the real Moody very
well or he would have suspected the identity switch. Also, Fake!Moody
uses the real Moody's suspicion of ex-DE Snape to express his own
antipathy for DEs who didn't go to Azkaban, which provides a good
reason for his hostility to Snape without raising Snape's doubts about
"Moody's" loyalty to Dumbledore. In fact, Snape thinks his own loyalty
is being questioned when "Moody" claims the Auror's privilege to raid
his office. ("Dumbledore trusts me!") Interestingly, Fake!Moody knows
where Snape's loyalties lie, and they're not with LV (as shown again
in the Foe Glass). I do think, though, that Snape reports the incident
with Filch, Fake!Moody, and Harry in his invisibility cloak, along
with the theft of ingredients for polyjuice potion to Dumbledore, and
it becomes one of the memories in the Pensieve that DD is studying, a
piece in the puzzle that DD is trying to put together.

And as you say [in post 138375], DD didn't have much exposure to
"Moody" [in GoF], and believing as he does in "innocent until proven
guilty," I don't think he would have used Legilimency on a man he
thought to be an old friend, even after "Moody" had started doing
suspicious things like Transfiguring students as punishment and
demonstrating the Unforgiveable Curses, actually Imperioing the
students. DD must have thought that Moody had gone around the bend and
was abusing the special dispensation of Aurors to use the
Unforgiveable Curses on DEs by using one of them on his students. (I'm
not sure the poor spiders count, but they demonstrate his indifference
to suffering, as does his Crucioing them in front of the boy whose
parents had been Crucio'd to insanity by DEs. We don't know then, and
neither does DD, that one of those same DEs was "Moody" himself,
already evil at age nineteen.)
 
Of course, if DD or Snape had used Legilimency, the secret would have
been out a lot sooner. The magical eye and the perfect disguise (a
paranoid, half-crazy, DE-hating Auror) prevent that from happening.  
I have a long post somewhere on the clues that Dumbledore used to
deduce Fake!Moody's identity but I don't have time to search for it.
 
Carol, noting that for Snape, loyalty seems to be a personal matter,
DD vs. LV, rather than a matter of devotion to a cause or group (Order
vs. DEs), as indicated early on in his remark to Quirell about "where
your loyalties lie," which predates the revival of the Order