Leglimancy and Voldemort

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 170377

limerent:

> In book 5 Snape tells Harry that eye contact is 
> necessary for leglimancy except in Harry's case because 
> of the bond they seem to have. But in Book 4 Voldemort 
> is able to tell that Frank is lying even though the chair 
> is still turned away from Frank at that point. And a bit 
> earlier Voldemort could tell Wormtail was lying though 
> it seems they didn't have eye contact either as it made 
> a big deal of the fear/disgust/reluctance each time 
> Wormtail had to look at Voldemort. So is Voldemort that 
> good at leglimancy, even better than Snape thinks, that 
> he doesn't need eye contact? And what would this slip of 
> judgement mean for Snape if it is true?

houyhnhnm:

I'm not sure that Voldemort would have needed to use 
Legilimency in either case.

Surely Voldemort and Wormtail would have done a minimum 
of  reconnaissance before taking up residence in the 
Riddle House.  Simple observation would have told them 
that Frank Bryce lived alone.

In the second case, Voldemort called Wormtail a liar 
after Wormtail took credit for realizing the usefulness of 
Bertha Jorkins when he brought her to Voldemort.  So in 
the scene in the Riddle House, Voldemort isn't so much 
detecting a current falsehood as he is accusing Wormtail 
of misrepresenting his own motives about something that 
has already happened between the two of them.

When Wormtail brought Bertha to Voldemort, it may be that 
he had simply screwed up and allowed himself to be 
identified, didn't know what to do about, and brought 
the problem to Voldemort to sort out.  Voldemort could 
have used Legilimency at that time to learn that this 
was so.  On the other hand, Voldemort may only have 
determined through Legilimency that Wormtail sees 
himself as a rat, a traitor, and an incompetent wizard 
and he uses that information to keep Wormtail down.  
At any rate, I don't see Voldemort's use of the word 
"liar" as signifying a literal detection of a falsehood 
so much as a determination to put Wormtail in his place.

I've never been certain whether the possession of a 
magical art like Occlumency or Legilimency is supposed 
to imply the absence of an ordinary Muggle ability like simple 
human logic.  Dumbledore possessed both (He *deduced* 
that Crouch!Moody was an imposter because of the 
inconsistancy of his actions rather than discovering 
it through Legilimency), but Dumbledore was the greatest 
wizard of his age.  It may be that most wizards could 
not have done that("A lot of the greatest wizards haven't 
got an ounce of logic.")

Nevertheless, we know from the puzzle he devised to protect 
the Stone, that Snape does possess logic.  That may be his 
greatest strength against Voldemort.  It may enable him to 
see Voldemort's greatest weakness--his megalomania--and use 
it against him in a way that other wizards, even those adept 
at the arts of Legilimency and Occlumency like Bellatrix, cannot.