Why did Sirius trust Pettigrew? WAS: Snape investigating Potters' Betrayal

[jkoney65]

No: HPFGUIDX 186560

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
> Carol responds:
> Lupin says in DH, when he thinks there's a new traitor in the Order who's tipped off Voldemort to the time and date that Harry will be leaving, that Harry (who doesn't want to mistrust anyone in the group, even Mundungus) that James would have considered it the epitome of dishonor (or something like that) to distrust his friends. If Lupin is right, that would explain why James never questioned the fawning and seemingly incompetent Wormtail's devotion to him. After all, he and sirius had taught Peter how to become an Animagus, including him in their midnight wanderings with a werewolf. How could he not be grateful?
> 
> Sirius, however, seems to have suspected that the traitor was Remus, at least that's what they say in PoA. In contrast to James, who apparently refused to suspect any of them, Lupin and Black suspected each other. (I can find the relevant quotation if you want it.)
> 
> As for Lily, she's not mentioned, but I'm sure that she was consulted. After all, she was part of the Secret. I've always suspected that she performed the Fidelius Charm since Dumbledore clearly didn't. Ollivander refers to her first wand as "a nice wand for Charm work" just as James's is specifically suited to Transfiguration, which suggests that she could have performed a complex charm like Fidelius. Anyway, I can't see her standing aside and letting the men make all the decisions. That would be completely out of character.
> 
snip
> 
> Shelley:
> > But I agree, surely Peter would have shown some sort of weaknesses before this point that his friends would have noticed, but maybe they were blind to such faults. They were too busy using Peter, and Peter followed. <snip>
> 
> Carol:
> I agree. Granted, Sirius found Peter's fawning admiration of James annoying (who wouldn't, except arrogant James?), but it never seems to have occurred to them that Peter might resent being treated as a tagalong who wasn't as brilliant as his friends. (I know that many people disagree with me, but I think that Lupin, who was sometimes excluded from Padfoot and Prongs's escapades along with Wormtail, suffered similar treatment in some respects. After all, *he* had to study for the Transfiguration OWL and Sirius, who must have studied Transfiguration after hours with an entirely different motivation to become an Animagus, disdainfully dismisses his request to test him over it. Lupin is "cool" because he's a werewolf, but his personality is so different from there's that he's not the best buddy of either James or Sirius.) Anyway, Lupin would have been busy wanting to be liked, and James and Sirius would have been busy acting arrogant and superior and getting into trouble, and no one would have noticed that Wormtail had any undesirable traits other than a tendency to drool over James's Quidditch skills or get questions about werewolves wrong on the DADA OWL.

jkoney:
I actually think JKR got the whole "boys" interactions very well. Boys/teenage boys hang out in groups where there is usually one or sometimes two who are the "alpha" males. They are the leaders. If there are two of them (and they get along) there is constant one upmanship going on. The other boys rarely upstage them, although they can come up with suggestions.

Obviously, James and Sirius were the leaders of this group. Remus was the quiet guy who hung out with them and Peter was the guy who hung around hoping some of the prestige rubbed off. I can say with some experience that this is quite common among boys. There may be teasing among the group, but no one else on the outside can do it without having to face the entire group. 

There is loyalty in the group so no suspects that the other would turn on them. Hence we get James never believing that one of his friends would be the traitor and Sirius saying we would have died for you. 


 
> Shelley:
> > I think Peter couldn't have been a Death Eater for very long at all when that incident happened, and he was pleased as punch to be a very valuable service to Voldemort. <snip>
> 
> Carol:
> I don't know that he was "pleased as punch." The letter in DH seems to indicate that he was uncomfortable choosing between himself and his friends though, of course, the choice was inevitable given who he was. And I'm not sure that he was a Death Eater then. A Dark Mark would have been a bit of a giveaway if Dumbledore decided to examine Order members' arms looking for a traitor. But Sirius says in the Shrieking Shack that Wormtail had been passing information on the Order to Voldemort for nearly a year before the Potters were killed (which makes it odd that he didn't reveal that information before Dumbledore suggested the Fidelius Charm) and Wormtail doesn't deny the charge. At any rate, we first see him as an actual Death Eater in GoF. It's possible that his Dark Mark is still new at that point. (The narrator says that he goes to his place in the circle of DEs after receiving his new hand, but maybe he just takes the nearest empty spot. After all, the scene is from Harry's point of view and he can't possibly know whether Wormtail has attended any previous DE meetings or not.)

jkoney:
I don't believe he was a DE at the time, because like you said the dark mark would have given him away.

Sirius said that he was giving away information, but that was because they suspected there was a spy, not that Peter was the spy. Only afterwards could Sirius determine that it was Peter giving away the information. If he had any misgivings about Peter he wouldn't have suggested him for the secret keeper.