Snape, Snape, Snape--favorite moments (Re: Snape's involvement in the...)

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 169313

Carol:

> *But* he seems to recognize the nicknames on the 
> Marauder's Map, which is where the doubt comes in. 
> If he knew that Wormtail was Peter Pettigrew, and 
> the Death Eaters knew that the spy was Wormtail, 
> how could Snape not know that the spy was Peter Pettigrew?

houyhnhnm:

I think that if Snape figured out who created the 
Marauders' Map, it is fairly easily explained away 
by the fact that he'd had Lupin and Sirius on the 
brain all year.  Someone (and Snape already believed 
it was Lupin) had been helping Black get into the 
castle.  Harry was sneaking into Hogsmeade with a 
magical piece of parchment in his pocket (and Snape 
was already primed to suspect Lupin of having had a 
hand in that, also).  That same magical piece of 
parchment revealed insults from four different 
individuals, insults that must have had a very 
familiar ring.  Even a person less perspicacious 
than Snape would surely have been able to put two 
and two together.

More troubling is how Peter could have been the spy 
who betrayed the Potters without Snape knowing about it.  

On the one hand we have Karkaroff's testimony (which 
was clearly self-serving and may have been less than 
truthful) that Voldemort's followers never knew the 
names of every one of their fellows.  On the other 
hand, Sirius hearing things in Azkaban.  "They all 
think you're dead."  But we don't know for sure who 
"they" were.  "They" could just have been the Lestranges, 
who might have been more closely placed to Voldemort 
than Snape was during VWI.  

One thing is certain, though.  It was Peter Pettigrew 
whose death was reported, not someone named "Wormtail", 
so if there were DEs who believed the spy who delivered 
the Potters to Voldemort (and Voldemort to his destruction) 
was Sirius' victim, then they knew that spy as Peter 
Pettigrew.  They may or may not have known his alias.  

Just because Voldemort in GoF and Snape in HBP called 
Peter Wormtail, I am not convinced that he went by that 
name among the DEs during VWI.  It could have been a name 
that LV learned by Legilimencing Peter and used only to 
taunt him.  Snape could have picked it up after returning to 
Voldemort.  

Of course the name "Wormtail" is used in the Pensieve 
memory, but since Snape was separated from the Marauders 
at the time by a gang of chattering girls, I don't see 
how it could have been in his conscious memory.  (I don't
see how it could have been in his memory at all, but 
that's another matter.  As much fun as the Pensieve is, 
the way it is supposed to work makes no sense to me.)

So, the DEs who knew the identity of the Potters' betrayer 
knew him as Peter Pettigrew.  They may or may not have 
known that Peter Pettigrew was also known as Wormtail.  
Snape may or may not have known the traitor's identity.  
It all goes back to central mystery of what happened in 
the murky period of time between the targetting of the 
Potters and their death, a period of time for which we 
have been given many different characters' recollections 
in a Rashomon like fashion, but about which we have no 
objective information so far.