Pettigrew/Wormtail (was Transitions, etc Will the Real...)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 167839

houyhnhnm:
> > It just stikes me as odd that Peter would volunteer the 
> > information.  How did Voldemort learn the nickname?  
> > Perhaps by the use of Legilimency?
> > 

> >
> 
> AmanitaMuscaria now - I think that's _exactly_ why Voldemort 
> addresses Peter as Wormtail - to make it clear that he considers 
> Peter a traitor. <snip> I would also assume that Voldemort 
Legilimences each person who comes 
> to him,

Pippin:
If Voldemort had such a great interest in Peter, wouldn't he have
found out that Sirius was an Animagus some time during VW I?
Yet he doesn't seem to have known.

It all hangs together well with the idea that the original spy was
not Peter but someone more gifted at occlumency who borrowed
Peter's nickname for an alias. JKR seems to be dropping hints along
that line by having Harry name himself first Neville Longbottom and
then Ronil Wazlib. And then there's that notorious nobody, Mark
Evans, another hint that names can be shared by people who have
nothing else in common.

Consider: Peter is only brave when he has protection. Sirius thinks 
Voldemort's protection made him brave. But a spy operates far 
from the protection of his master, that's what makes it so dangerous. 
Voldemort would not have appeared at Order HQ to rescue Peter 
if Peter gave himself away. He'd be on his own, at the mercy of
people like Sirius and Lupin who might have killed him on the
spot, even if Dumbledore and James would not.

Peter would have every reason to be terrified, and he's not
a clever liar when he's scared.   How could he possibly have 
gotten away with it? My conclusion is that he couldn't have,
not for the entire year that Sirius says the spy was active. 

Peter was never the spy, IMO. I agree with Amanita -- he
only gave up the secret because he was captured and threatened.
Naturally he would suppose that Black was the real spy since 
Black should have been the only one who knew that Peter was the 
SK  and the only one who knew where he was hiding. But since 
Black wasn't really the secret keeper, that knowledge would be 
vulnerable to legilimency. And Lupin, whom Sirius suspected,
does seem to have an uncanny power to read minds. 

Maybe Lupin isn't evil. Perhaps JKR would say that evil is too 
strong a word -- but Harry has gone in the mere space of a year
from thinking that it would be murder to kill Voldemort to 
accepting it as an honor and a duty, without even realizing that
his opinion has changed. Could Lupin's thinking have 
undergone that kind of shift?


Pippin