replies to many, many, many posts

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 170145

Dana wrote:
> Canon never suggests that he did, it would be an assumption to say 
that he did. For Peter on the other hand, just like Karkaroff, it has
been suggested in canon that he gave LV, or the MoM (Karkaroff),
information. 
> 
> For Snape it never had been suggested anything other then him spying
on LV and DD. <snip>
> 
> No one on either side makes this claim about Snape and as we see 
Snape certainly did not tell anyone what he knew about Lucius and 
even treats his son as his most favourite. 

<snip>
>
Carol responds:
While I agree with you that thinking that Snape provided the names of
the DEs who were arrested or killed is an assumption, that information
had to come from somewhere. The Death Eaters and Voldemort are not
going to provide it to Barty Crouch and the MoM, and we're told that
snape turned spy for "our side at great personal risk." Where would
the risk come from if he weren't providing valuable information, and
what would be more valuable than the names of the Death Eaters? (He
would not be doing it, like Karkaroff, to save his own skin and get
out of Azkaban; he would be doing it to atone for his mistake of
informing LV of the Prophecy, and he would be reporting to DD directly
rather than to the MoM.)

Clearly, Snape did risk his life, did provide valuable information,
did persuade Barty Crouch that he had generally reformed and was no
more a DE than Dumbledore was. And clearly, the information that
Wilkes, Rosier, and all those others (including Karkaroff) were DEs
had to come from somewhere--from a reliable source--from a fellow
Death Eater, the only person who would know the names of some (not
all) of his fellow DEs and some (not all) of the crimes they had
committed (as Karkaroff lists some, not all, of his fellow DE's
crimes--interestingly, none of Snape's except being a Death Eater in
and of itself).

Was there another spy for "our side" reporting directly to the MoM
rather than to Dumbledore? If so, who was he? The only other DEs we've
seen so far are either self-serving, like Karkaroff, offering
information (most of which the MoM already has) to get himself out of
Azkaban, or loyal, like the Lestranges and Barty Jr. I see no
indication of any DE besides snape and Regulus black who actually went
over to the other side. And Regulus doesn't seem to have been a spy.
He was concentrating on stealing the Horcrux and substituting a fake one.

Other than Regulus, who seems to be a long shot, I can't think of
anyone besides Snape who could have provided the information that sent
Mulciber, Dolohov, et al. to Azkaban and cost wilkes and Rosier their
lives. (Mad-Eye doesn't seem to know where the information came from;
he just knew they were DEs and went after them.) Admittedly, it was
Aberforth, when Snape was just a child, who provided Dumbledore with
the term "Death Eaters" and the names of the first four DEs, and he
and some of the other "useful spies" could have provided similar
information along the way. But only someone who was actually a DE
could know the names of the people who were arrested following or just
before the Potters's deaths.

Someone (Peter Pettigrew, to all appearances) was providing LV with
information on Order members that led to their deaths. But someone
else (Snape seems to be by far the best candidate) was providing the
information (via Dumbledore, if it was Snape) that led to the arrest,
and in three cases ((the three who died in LV's service) to the deaths
of Death Eaters.

The difference is that Peter Pettigrew was betraying his innocent
friends to their deaths out of fear and Snape was betraying his
criminal friends to well-deserved sentences in Azkaban (or to death if
they chose to fight the Aurors). Some of the DEs, of course, pled the
Imperius Curse, and there was nothing Snape could do except to pretend
that he had done the same thing and was just staying out of Azkaban
because he'd tricked Dumbledore into believing that he felt remorse.

Dana:
> 
> Sirius for instance knew about Rosier and Wilkes being DEs without
ever talking to Snape about it so it does not suggest that this 
information came from Snape and it therefore can be just as well be 
due to their were involved with DE activity, which they were not all 
> as conspicuous about as Snape. 

Carol:
Sirius Black knew that the people he listed became Death Eaters
because he read about Wilkes and Rosier and some of the others in the
Daily Prophet before his own arrest and saw Bellatrix and the
Lestrange brothers (he only mentions Rodolphus as among the "slytherin
gang") brought into Azkaban. His knowledge of them has nothing to do
with who informed the MoM (or Dumbledore) that they were DEs in the
first place. It certainly was not Hogwarts gossip ("Oh, did you know
that Evan Rosier joined the DEs yesterday?"). 

It makes no sense to say that Sirius Black knew that they were Death
Eaters because of their DE activity. That's like saying that Lupin
knew James was an Animagus because of James's "Animagus activity"
except that Black never saw the DEs performing any crimes. He knew
that they were DEs either because he read their names in the paper or
saw them in Azkaban. (Compare Fudge telling Harry that he's only
naming people who were publicly identified as having been acquitted of
being Death Eaters thirteen years before. How would Harry know those
names, according to Fudge? He read them. But they did not become
public information until after the hearings that cleared them.)

Carol, for the first time starting to understand what the "great
personal risk" involved and wondering how Snape felt in betraying his
Slytherin friends