Marauder's map question, prior to PoA

[Geoff]

No: HPFGUIDX 191956



--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "nikkalmati" <puduhepa98 at ...> wrote:
 
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Robyn" <ratalman@> wrote:

Robyn:
> > Why didn't Fred and George ever notice Peter Pettigrew on the Marauder's map prior to PoA?  Why would they not have noticed that someone named Pettigrew was very often in the same place as their brother Ron, or at least, that someone they didn't know was hanging out in the Gryffindor common room and dormitories? I have looked at the FAQs on this topic, and feel like there must be more to this ... is this a hole in the plot?

Nikkalmati:
 > I don't know.  It puzzels me too.  I guess you could speculate that they just thought it was a Gryffindor they didn't know.  Maybe a younger student.  There is no reason they would know the name.

Geoff:
i must admit that hadn't crossed my mind until you raised it. But I 
think that Nikkalmati has put a finger on it. Harry's story was well 
known - the fact that his parents had been killed by Voldemort and 
he was "The Boy That Lived" was very much in the public domain of 
students at Hogwarts but the events involving Sirius seem to have 
dropped out of public notice by the time Harry started at Hogwarts,
which was only a year after the twins.

There is a little clue about this in POA in a conversation about Sirius:

'Then Madam Rosmerta said with some satisfaction, "But he didn't 
manage to disappear, did he? The Ministry of Magic caught up with 
him next day!"

"Alas, if only we had," said Fudge bitterly. "It was not we who found 
him. It was little Peter Pettigrew - another of the Potters' friends. 
Maddened by grief, no doubt, and knowing that Black had been the 
Potters' Secret Keeper, he went after Black himself."

"Pettigrew - that fat little boy who was always tagging around after 
them at Hogwarts?" said Madam Rosmerta."'
(POA "The Marauders' Map p,154 UK edition)

It is obvious that details of that event were now rather sketchy and 
parents would probably not think to pass that part of the story on to 
their children. Even Madam Rosmerta only remembers him vaguely. 

The twins would not know his name because they did not know the 
identities of the Marauders other than by their nicknames and I doubt 
whether they would keep close tabs on Ron's friends since, from their 
superior viewpoint being a year above Ron, they were more interested 
in ragging him than anything else so I suspect that they rarely looked 
for him on the Map.