Fenrir's ancestry (was: DDM!Snape & the UV)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 149895

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> wrote:
>
> > Renee:
> > And while it's true that Voldemort would probably use any allies he
> > can get, I don't see his fanatical pureblood supporters accept a
> > Muggle in their ranks without at least scratching their heads. It
> > seems most likely that Greyback is wizard-born. 
> 
> Pippin:
> I think Greyback is Muggleborn. Rowling says that Muggleborns
> are allowed to be Death Eaters in unusual circumstances.
> http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/news_view.cfm?id=80
> 
> It sounds like Fenrir could be the character she was thinking of.


Carol responds:
Muggle*born*, maybe, but surely not a Muggle as PAR originally
suggested. Greyback obviously lives in the WW and associates only with
wizards; he has a Dark Mark that enables him to get through the
barrier on the stairs (even in the unlikely event that Voldie made a
Muggle a DE, the Muggle's Dark Mark would not have magical
properties); and he can keep his werewolf properties (except for the
power to transform others) all month long, suggesting inborn magical
powers. A Muggle of any sort would not be a "family friend" of the
pureblood Malfoys. He would not even be able to see Hogwarts, which is
hidden by spells from Muggle eyes.

We really don't know whether he has a wand or not (he may have one but
use his teeth as the weapon of choice), but Renee provided a
reasonable explanation upthread for the possible absence of a wand: he
never received a Hogwarts letter because he's older than Lupin,
meaning that DD wasn't headmaster yet and werewolves were not admitted
to Hogwarts. However, we don't know how old Greyback was when he was
bitten. Also, since Lupin can hardly be the only child werewolf in the
thirty or so years of DD's tenure as headmaster, I have a rather
different theory about the reason child werewolves generally don't go
to Hogwarts: Werewolves rejected by their families at an early age
would never learn to read and consequently the Hogwarts letter that
all magical children receive would be nothing but a meaningless
scribble to them. But whether Fenrir never received a letter or
received one he couldn't read, he wouldn't have needed a wand because
he wasn't going to Hogwarts. (And yet DD seems to have known him at
some point: "Is that you, Fenrir?" Maybe he was bitten as a teenager
and dropped out of Hogwarts before DD became headmaster.) My point is
simply that not having a wand doesn't prove that he's not a wizard.
Convicted criminals whose wands are broken are still wizards; even
Vapor!mort was still a wizard when he was deprived of his body and
unable to hold a wand. Children who do wandless magic are wizards
whether or not they eventually acquire wands (and go to Hogwarts).

Whether or not Greyback has a wand, he is clearly a DE (his DE robes,
probably left over from VW1, are described as being tight across his
chest), chosen by LV to be part of the mission to kill Dumbledore. His
victims, so far as we know, are all wizards, and he was associated
with Voldie at least as far back as VW1, as Snape mentions to Bella in
"Spinner's End," along with Lucius Malfoy, Avery, Yaxley, and "the
Carrows" (the last three being, I'm pretty sure, the "brutal-faced
Death Eater" and the brother/sister pair, Amycus and Alecto).

It's possible that Greyback is an unusually dangerous Squib who has
learned how to fend for himself among wizards, but his ability to
control his own transformations and the fact that Voldie has given him
a working Dark Mark suggest that he is indeed a wizard. He is also,
unquestionably, a Death Eater himself and not just a werewolf
companion of the other three DEs. Although he generally chooses
victims who are weaker than he is (children and dying old men), other
wizards (Borgin, for example) are afraid of him, and with good reason.
He's purely evil and he has no scruples of any kind. Who needs a wand?
He'll let the other DEs do the killing and he'll eat Dumbledore for
"afters."

Whatever Fenrir Greyback may be, IMO, he's not a Muggle.

Carol, noting Greyback's total absence of remorse and wondering if
Wolfsbane Potion and an education could have prevented him from
becoming so deeply mired in evil