Ex-Death Eaters

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 170496

One thing I think a lot of people are forgetting (in re. Snape having been a 
DE at one time) is that he's a long way from being the only "Death Eater who 
walked free."  Mr. Malfoy, Mr. Crabbe, Mr. Goyle, Walden MacNair...all of 
them had been DEs before Lord V's little mishap.  Oh, yes, they _said_ they 
were under the Imperius...but we know a lot of people were very skeptical 
about that story.

My own guess is that ex-Death Eaters, unless there was some pretty clear 
evidence that they'd been acting of their own free will, were often let slip 
back into society.  Many families probably had ex-DEs among them, and the WW 
might well have had an unspoken but real consensus that letting sleeping 
dogs lie, and letting the dead bury the dead, was the best way to go. 
They'd come down on real hard on people like the Lestranges partly _because_ 
they're trying to start things up again.  Even a lot of DE-friendly people 
or families might well have figured that letting the whole thing die down 
was a good idea.

There just aren't enough witches and wizards for them to have a civil war 
without it destroying their hidden society, or at least damaging it very 
badly.  Particularly after Voldemort's rampages, the WW was already hurting, 
and going on a purge against ex-DEs, even ones who acted repentant and 
claimed to have been under the Imperius, wouldn't bring back the dead.  Not 
to mention, the Imperius Curse _does_ exist, and someone under it honestly 
can't help himself.  (Otherwise Viktor Krum would be in Azkaban; he cast an 
Unforgivable Curse during the Third Task, didn't he?)

Societies that have had really wrenching internecine conflict often come to 
this sort of unspoken-but-real arrangement.  After the US Civil War, most 
ex-Confederates were eventually rehabilitated, and many went on to prominent 
careers, even serving as high officers in the US Army.  (Anecdote:  During 
the Spanish Civil War, General Joseph Wheeler, who had been a Confederate 
general during the Civil War, was heard to exhort his troops: "Come on, 
boys!  We've got the d*mn Yankees on the run!")  After Pinochet stepped down 
in Chile, I'm told that both sides in the prior conflict tried to do 
something of the same sort, which was why a lot of Chilenos were very angry 
when foreign courts tried bringing charges against Pinochet.  Spain _didn't_ 
do anything of the sort after its Civil War, which contributed to its slow 
recovery.