![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oryx_leucoryx posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
deathtocapslockAt some point according to Sirius, Tom Riddle showed his true face and as a result he lost the support of mainstream pureblood wizards such as the Blacks. At this stage the war escalated to the situation Sirius described in GOF - weekly attacks (which were now being openly claimed by the DEs by lighting the Dark mark over attack sites) that brought the Ministry into a state of disarray - thus creating the backdrop to Crouch's 'War on Terror' policies. We do not know the exact time of the change, but we can be certain it happened after Regulus became a DE, from comparing Sirius' description of ideas his parents agreed with and Kreacher's description of what Regulus sought to do as a DE:
Sirius in OOTP says the views his parents supported were "the purification of the Wizarding race, getting rid of Muggle-borns and having purebloods in charge."
In DH Kreacher states Regulus believed Voldemort's goals were "to bring the wizards out of hiding to rule the Muggles and the Muggle-borns"
Since Regulus had his collection of articles we know he was as well-informed as an outsider could have been at the time about what the DEs were thought to have been doing, and multiple killings don't appear to have been among the charges.
Some readers proposed that perhaps it was Crouch who spurred on the escalation with his policies, but I think we can trust Sirius' account that the new policies were a response to an existing escalation, as Sirius' bias is against Crouch. If the harsher policies had come first we would have heard that from Sirius.
Can we figure out when the escalation took place? According to Kreacher Regulus was 16 when he joined the DEs. He came to bring Kreacher to Voldemort for the cave trip a year later. Then some time passed between that day and Regulus' suicide by inferi. Of course 16 could mean 'just turned 16' or 'almost 17' and anything in between. A year later doesn't have to be exactly 365 days and it isn't clear how much time passed between Kreacher's two visits to the cave. From OOTP we know Regulus was younger than Sirius, and we know his death was 'some fifteen years' before 1995, when Harry saw the Black Family Tree. The version of the family tree that Rowling published his dates are given as '1961-1979'. 1979 is 16 years before 1995. Some readers simply dismiss the published family tree and have 1980 as the time of Regulus' death. OTOH 15 is a semi-round number, and 'some fifteen years' could be the result of approximation rather than exact subtraction (If in 1995 Harry saw '1980' would he have thought 'some fifteen years previously' or just 'fifteen years previously'? Why the weasel-word 'some'?). While the difference between 1979 and 1961 is 18, we know neither Regulus' birthday nor the exact date of his death - he could have died in 1979 before he had the chance to turn 18, or he may have turned 18 during the weeks between Kreacher's two visits to the cave.
It was during the interval between cave visits that Regulus realized that the locket Voldemort had placed in the basin may have been a Horcrux. He did not learn about Horcruxes at Hogwarts, This was long after Albus removed all books about the subject from where they could be accessed (even by those willing to dig among the rubbish in the ROHT). It is more likely he learned about them from a book in the Black family collection. Or perhaps from a book he found in a private library of a friend. Which means he had the time to be away from school and look through such book collections. I am inclined to think that the interval leading to Regulus' death overlapped at least in part with a school break. (As the dutiful son of a family descended from a headmaster I don't see him leaving school early. Of course if he had a summer birthday he may have died the summer immediately after leaving school.)
What can we learn from Regulus' choice to commit suicide by inferi rather than say, live in hiding (maybe in his parents' well-protected home) and actually make sure the Dark Lord's Horcrux was destroyed and he was brought down? For one, that Regulus believed Kreacher could destroy the Horcrux. And probably, that with the power of the Dark Mark tattoo, he had no hope of escape. In her essay here Terri proposed that Regulus believed the Dark Mark had the power to undermine his family's magical protections. which made his death necessary to protect his parents from Voldemort.
What about the misinformation we get about Regulus' death from Sirius and Remus? How did Sirius decide his brother was killed by Voldemort (or on his orders)? Maybe he knew from Moody that there were no records of Aurors killing Regulus so arrived at his conclusion by elimination. Alternatively, when Tom realized (by means of the Dark Mark) that Regulus was dead and the Ministry did not claim this death, Tom used this as a lesson ('that useless Regulus Black tried to betray me; he is now dead') - and let them use their imaginations to fill in the details. Bellatrix would have then related the story to Walburga (and Kreacher - who could repeat it to Sirius without breaking his promise to Regulus). Or perhaps this was what Sirius understood from what little Kreacher told him when asked. ('Regulus is dead because of the Dark Lord'). Whichever happened, I'm not sure how Remus arrived at the conclusion that Regulus managed to survive a few days after leaving Voldemort's service. Unless he heard some version of Kreacher's and the 'a few days' refers to the time between the two trips to the cave?
In GOF Sirius tells us that disappearances continued as the violence escalated. And it seems Tom never visited the cave between placing the locket there and coming to check on it in the spring of 1998, so he stopped making inferi by the time he hid the locket. It appears the escalation started somewhat before the locket was placed in the cave (though Tom was likely expecting to complete the cave project shortly). My favorite scenario has the escalation taking place around the end of 1978, very beginning of 1979 - around the time the oldest kids in Harry's year were conceived - a sudden surge of violence may have caused some young wizards to decide to delay having their (next) child to more quiet times, resulting in Harry's year being smaller than typical and allowing for a bigger wizarding population. We already know from canon that Harry's year was smaller than Severus' year from there being visibly over 100 student taking exams with Severus (even if some of those were 7th year students sitting NEWTs).
So why would Voldemort want to escalate the war, and why did he choose that time to do so? Well, if his cave project was almost over he was going to need something else to use the DEs for. But perhaps there was more to it. Because I like to imagine he was a more competent villain back then, I'm thinking he thought that by putting extra pressure he was going to be able to bring the Ministry to its knees not so long after. While Rookwood was the only named DE we know for certain to have had a Ministry position during the first war (we know names of some DEs who held Ministry positions in the '90s, but we don't know when they got those jobs), there may have been other moles in other departments. And eventually there was one DE with access to a highly ranked Ministry member: Barty Crouch. It is possible young Barty was recruited specifically because of his father. The intent may have been to instruct him to kill the elder Crouch. Or alternatively, the plan was for Barty to get caught, in order to discredit his father. There are only two problems with such scenarios: for one, Barty was very young. If by the time he arrived in Azkaban (sometime in 1982) he was not a day over 19, then in early 1979 he was still 15. Also, Crouch Sr may not have been DMLE head by then. Whitehound, who analyzed Sirius' report of Crouch's career in detail thinks Crouch was appointed DMLE head in response to the increased violence. Of course he probably already had a reputation of a hard-liner. Maybe he was worth discrediting even before becoming DMLE head. Alternatively, while the escalation was indeed intended as an attack on the Ministry, the idea to use Barty Jr against his father may have come after the latter became DMLE head.
We do not know when Voldemort originally intended to bring Crouch Sr down. The plan must have been revamped when Tom received Severus' report of the Prophecy. If indeed Severus was supposed to interview for the DADA position that very year then perhaps there was a plan for a dual attack on both the Ministry and Hogwarts - intended for the school year of 1980-1. In the past I objected to this idea on the grounds that it would require appointing Severus as a teacher merely 2 years out of school, but the Pottermore information gives exactly such a scenario for Minerva.
We know how the Ministry responded to the escalating open violence: Within months Crouch was appointed DMLE head and he gave the Aurors permission to use Unforgivables. At first glance this makes sense: why send Aurors into battle against an enemy wielding deadly force without access to maximal force themselves?
So let's consider under what scenarios the Aurors actually encountered DEs.
How likely was it for Aurors to actually face DEs that were attacking someone? In our world, a person whose home is invaded by a criminal might call emergency services on the phone. What would a wizard do? The closest thing is the use of a Patronus. But we are told this use was invented by Albus and taught to Order members. Most wizards don't know how to cast a Patronus at all, and it seems only Order members (and perhaps some of their friends and relatives) knew how to use a Patronus to call for help in the days of VoldieWar I. Using the floo to get help doesn't make sense - if you can get to a fireplace you use it to get away from the attackers, not to stick your head inside while leaving the rest of your body vulnerable. Maybe in some cases one family member escaped by floo and contacted Aurors in order to get help for the rest of the family. The higher class could send a house-elf to get help. People with the right family ties could send a portrait to get help through another copy of same. Some people could use charmed mirrors and the like, assuming the other side was in the hands of someone helpful (who didn't forget their mirror in a trunk). Possibly the best thing the Ministry could have done is equip people with charmed coins (or similar) to function as emergency buttons that showed the name and location of anyone who pressed them on some board in the Aurors' Office. Though we don't see anything like that in the second war so it looks like nobody thought of that. (The Ministry pamphlet urges people to contact Aurors if a Dark Mark is sighted but mentions no particular method). Without a mass application of special arrangement like that, only a select few had any chance of getting Aurors to help them survive an ongoing attack by DEs. Most of the time, Aurors must have arrived when the Dark Mark was up, the DEs were gone and the attacked were dead. All they could do was look for clues for the identity of the attackers.
So what other opportunities were there for encounters between Aurors and DE? There may have still been public demonstrations. Or there may have been attempts to arrest suspects based on clues gathered at crime scenes. And then there were interrogations of suspects already captured.
Was the use of Unforgivables in the various situations justified, and was it helpful?
Probably the most likely to be justifiable was their use while battling DEs who were in the course of wielding an attack intended to kill. Even then there would be the danger of a missed AK hitting an unintended person. Therefore in most times non-lethal force was preferable. If one were to use an Unforgivable, maybe the best would have been to use an Imperius to make the attackers stop rather than outright attempting to kill them. Certainly in other situations, even when facing masked-and-black-robed persons, if they aren't using lethal force the priority should be using the minimal force needed to capture them rather than killing them. Should the Ministry have AKed the marchers at the QWC? Many of them were non-DEs who were just marching along. The sentiment they were displaying was detestable but that isn't a capital crime (neither are Aurors in position to judge and execute). And what Sirius tells us is that Crouch not only permitted the use of Unforgivables, but that he allowed them to kill when they could have captured. Which means deaths of bystanders, deaths of DE-sympathizers who never themselves were involved in any lethal attacks and deaths of suspects misidentified as DEs. As well as deaths of DEs who might have otherwise been captured and provided useful information.
As for those who were captured, there must have been the use of torture in investigation. Which we know, and wizards should too, with their history of witch trials, produces confessions, whether true or false, rather than trustworthy information. So anyone falsely accused would be tortured to confession, would confess to whatever deeds were scandalous enough to satisfy the interrogators and provide them with names of supposed accomplices. And the cycle would continue. We know 10 DEs survived in Azkaban until 1996, we know some may have died there in intervening years, but we have no way of knowing how many non-DEs lived and died in the wizarding prison and what became of them.
We do know one thing: All those deaths, captures and confessions promoted Crouch's political standing, while doing little to bring peace to wizarding Britain. The false confessions must have had a big part in increasing the distrust and diminishing social cohesion (What - you mean so-and-so was a DE too? Unbelievable! You can't trust anyone anymore!). How much of the belief that *He* was taking over everywhere was based on false knowledge?
Sirius in OOTP says the views his parents supported were "the purification of the Wizarding race, getting rid of Muggle-borns and having purebloods in charge."
In DH Kreacher states Regulus believed Voldemort's goals were "to bring the wizards out of hiding to rule the Muggles and the Muggle-borns"
Since Regulus had his collection of articles we know he was as well-informed as an outsider could have been at the time about what the DEs were thought to have been doing, and multiple killings don't appear to have been among the charges.
Some readers proposed that perhaps it was Crouch who spurred on the escalation with his policies, but I think we can trust Sirius' account that the new policies were a response to an existing escalation, as Sirius' bias is against Crouch. If the harsher policies had come first we would have heard that from Sirius.
Can we figure out when the escalation took place? According to Kreacher Regulus was 16 when he joined the DEs. He came to bring Kreacher to Voldemort for the cave trip a year later. Then some time passed between that day and Regulus' suicide by inferi. Of course 16 could mean 'just turned 16' or 'almost 17' and anything in between. A year later doesn't have to be exactly 365 days and it isn't clear how much time passed between Kreacher's two visits to the cave. From OOTP we know Regulus was younger than Sirius, and we know his death was 'some fifteen years' before 1995, when Harry saw the Black Family Tree. The version of the family tree that Rowling published his dates are given as '1961-1979'. 1979 is 16 years before 1995. Some readers simply dismiss the published family tree and have 1980 as the time of Regulus' death. OTOH 15 is a semi-round number, and 'some fifteen years' could be the result of approximation rather than exact subtraction (If in 1995 Harry saw '1980' would he have thought 'some fifteen years previously' or just 'fifteen years previously'? Why the weasel-word 'some'?). While the difference between 1979 and 1961 is 18, we know neither Regulus' birthday nor the exact date of his death - he could have died in 1979 before he had the chance to turn 18, or he may have turned 18 during the weeks between Kreacher's two visits to the cave.
It was during the interval between cave visits that Regulus realized that the locket Voldemort had placed in the basin may have been a Horcrux. He did not learn about Horcruxes at Hogwarts, This was long after Albus removed all books about the subject from where they could be accessed (even by those willing to dig among the rubbish in the ROHT). It is more likely he learned about them from a book in the Black family collection. Or perhaps from a book he found in a private library of a friend. Which means he had the time to be away from school and look through such book collections. I am inclined to think that the interval leading to Regulus' death overlapped at least in part with a school break. (As the dutiful son of a family descended from a headmaster I don't see him leaving school early. Of course if he had a summer birthday he may have died the summer immediately after leaving school.)
What can we learn from Regulus' choice to commit suicide by inferi rather than say, live in hiding (maybe in his parents' well-protected home) and actually make sure the Dark Lord's Horcrux was destroyed and he was brought down? For one, that Regulus believed Kreacher could destroy the Horcrux. And probably, that with the power of the Dark Mark tattoo, he had no hope of escape. In her essay here Terri proposed that Regulus believed the Dark Mark had the power to undermine his family's magical protections. which made his death necessary to protect his parents from Voldemort.
What about the misinformation we get about Regulus' death from Sirius and Remus? How did Sirius decide his brother was killed by Voldemort (or on his orders)? Maybe he knew from Moody that there were no records of Aurors killing Regulus so arrived at his conclusion by elimination. Alternatively, when Tom realized (by means of the Dark Mark) that Regulus was dead and the Ministry did not claim this death, Tom used this as a lesson ('that useless Regulus Black tried to betray me; he is now dead') - and let them use their imaginations to fill in the details. Bellatrix would have then related the story to Walburga (and Kreacher - who could repeat it to Sirius without breaking his promise to Regulus). Or perhaps this was what Sirius understood from what little Kreacher told him when asked. ('Regulus is dead because of the Dark Lord'). Whichever happened, I'm not sure how Remus arrived at the conclusion that Regulus managed to survive a few days after leaving Voldemort's service. Unless he heard some version of Kreacher's and the 'a few days' refers to the time between the two trips to the cave?
In GOF Sirius tells us that disappearances continued as the violence escalated. And it seems Tom never visited the cave between placing the locket there and coming to check on it in the spring of 1998, so he stopped making inferi by the time he hid the locket. It appears the escalation started somewhat before the locket was placed in the cave (though Tom was likely expecting to complete the cave project shortly). My favorite scenario has the escalation taking place around the end of 1978, very beginning of 1979 - around the time the oldest kids in Harry's year were conceived - a sudden surge of violence may have caused some young wizards to decide to delay having their (next) child to more quiet times, resulting in Harry's year being smaller than typical and allowing for a bigger wizarding population. We already know from canon that Harry's year was smaller than Severus' year from there being visibly over 100 student taking exams with Severus (even if some of those were 7th year students sitting NEWTs).
So why would Voldemort want to escalate the war, and why did he choose that time to do so? Well, if his cave project was almost over he was going to need something else to use the DEs for. But perhaps there was more to it. Because I like to imagine he was a more competent villain back then, I'm thinking he thought that by putting extra pressure he was going to be able to bring the Ministry to its knees not so long after. While Rookwood was the only named DE we know for certain to have had a Ministry position during the first war (we know names of some DEs who held Ministry positions in the '90s, but we don't know when they got those jobs), there may have been other moles in other departments. And eventually there was one DE with access to a highly ranked Ministry member: Barty Crouch. It is possible young Barty was recruited specifically because of his father. The intent may have been to instruct him to kill the elder Crouch. Or alternatively, the plan was for Barty to get caught, in order to discredit his father. There are only two problems with such scenarios: for one, Barty was very young. If by the time he arrived in Azkaban (sometime in 1982) he was not a day over 19, then in early 1979 he was still 15. Also, Crouch Sr may not have been DMLE head by then. Whitehound, who analyzed Sirius' report of Crouch's career in detail thinks Crouch was appointed DMLE head in response to the increased violence. Of course he probably already had a reputation of a hard-liner. Maybe he was worth discrediting even before becoming DMLE head. Alternatively, while the escalation was indeed intended as an attack on the Ministry, the idea to use Barty Jr against his father may have come after the latter became DMLE head.
We do not know when Voldemort originally intended to bring Crouch Sr down. The plan must have been revamped when Tom received Severus' report of the Prophecy. If indeed Severus was supposed to interview for the DADA position that very year then perhaps there was a plan for a dual attack on both the Ministry and Hogwarts - intended for the school year of 1980-1. In the past I objected to this idea on the grounds that it would require appointing Severus as a teacher merely 2 years out of school, but the Pottermore information gives exactly such a scenario for Minerva.
We know how the Ministry responded to the escalating open violence: Within months Crouch was appointed DMLE head and he gave the Aurors permission to use Unforgivables. At first glance this makes sense: why send Aurors into battle against an enemy wielding deadly force without access to maximal force themselves?
So let's consider under what scenarios the Aurors actually encountered DEs.
How likely was it for Aurors to actually face DEs that were attacking someone? In our world, a person whose home is invaded by a criminal might call emergency services on the phone. What would a wizard do? The closest thing is the use of a Patronus. But we are told this use was invented by Albus and taught to Order members. Most wizards don't know how to cast a Patronus at all, and it seems only Order members (and perhaps some of their friends and relatives) knew how to use a Patronus to call for help in the days of VoldieWar I. Using the floo to get help doesn't make sense - if you can get to a fireplace you use it to get away from the attackers, not to stick your head inside while leaving the rest of your body vulnerable. Maybe in some cases one family member escaped by floo and contacted Aurors in order to get help for the rest of the family. The higher class could send a house-elf to get help. People with the right family ties could send a portrait to get help through another copy of same. Some people could use charmed mirrors and the like, assuming the other side was in the hands of someone helpful (who didn't forget their mirror in a trunk). Possibly the best thing the Ministry could have done is equip people with charmed coins (or similar) to function as emergency buttons that showed the name and location of anyone who pressed them on some board in the Aurors' Office. Though we don't see anything like that in the second war so it looks like nobody thought of that. (The Ministry pamphlet urges people to contact Aurors if a Dark Mark is sighted but mentions no particular method). Without a mass application of special arrangement like that, only a select few had any chance of getting Aurors to help them survive an ongoing attack by DEs. Most of the time, Aurors must have arrived when the Dark Mark was up, the DEs were gone and the attacked were dead. All they could do was look for clues for the identity of the attackers.
So what other opportunities were there for encounters between Aurors and DE? There may have still been public demonstrations. Or there may have been attempts to arrest suspects based on clues gathered at crime scenes. And then there were interrogations of suspects already captured.
Was the use of Unforgivables in the various situations justified, and was it helpful?
Probably the most likely to be justifiable was their use while battling DEs who were in the course of wielding an attack intended to kill. Even then there would be the danger of a missed AK hitting an unintended person. Therefore in most times non-lethal force was preferable. If one were to use an Unforgivable, maybe the best would have been to use an Imperius to make the attackers stop rather than outright attempting to kill them. Certainly in other situations, even when facing masked-and-black-robed persons, if they aren't using lethal force the priority should be using the minimal force needed to capture them rather than killing them. Should the Ministry have AKed the marchers at the QWC? Many of them were non-DEs who were just marching along. The sentiment they were displaying was detestable but that isn't a capital crime (neither are Aurors in position to judge and execute). And what Sirius tells us is that Crouch not only permitted the use of Unforgivables, but that he allowed them to kill when they could have captured. Which means deaths of bystanders, deaths of DE-sympathizers who never themselves were involved in any lethal attacks and deaths of suspects misidentified as DEs. As well as deaths of DEs who might have otherwise been captured and provided useful information.
As for those who were captured, there must have been the use of torture in investigation. Which we know, and wizards should too, with their history of witch trials, produces confessions, whether true or false, rather than trustworthy information. So anyone falsely accused would be tortured to confession, would confess to whatever deeds were scandalous enough to satisfy the interrogators and provide them with names of supposed accomplices. And the cycle would continue. We know 10 DEs survived in Azkaban until 1996, we know some may have died there in intervening years, but we have no way of knowing how many non-DEs lived and died in the wizarding prison and what became of them.
We do know one thing: All those deaths, captures and confessions promoted Crouch's political standing, while doing little to bring peace to wizarding Britain. The false confessions must have had a big part in increasing the distrust and diminishing social cohesion (What - you mean so-and-so was a DE too? Unbelievable! You can't trust anyone anymore!). How much of the belief that *He* was taking over everywhere was based on false knowledge?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-09-23 07:08 pm (UTC)Regardless, I'm sure Tommy took full advantage of the situation Crouch created, whether or not it was his own idea in the first place.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-23 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-25 10:45 pm (UTC)But if many of the supposed DEs of the time were not actual DEs but were sent to Azkaban anyway based on 'false confessions' then it makes more sense that Voldy didn't actually have as many DEs as the Ministry or the Order believed he did. After all, it wasn't as if Snape could tell Albus that 'so-and-so' may have confessed, but he's never been seen among the DEs. Back in the first war, Snape would not have known ALL of the DEs and Voldy at that point still kept them separated.
And we see 'supposed' evidence of the Ministry not caring too much whether someone was a 'real' DE or not before throwing them in jail in Sirius and Stan Shunpike. Altho' I don't feel too sure about Stan NOT being one - that is Harry's opinion based on Albus' belief. He certainly was among those chasing the 7 Potters. Whether he was imperiused or not at the time is truly unknown. Just because Harry thought so doesn't mean he was. No mention of any similar symptoms to Rosemerta.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-27 04:59 am (UTC)Well, there was the Dark Mark tattoo (at least until Voldemort vaporised), though it isn't clear with whom Albus shared that information (Sirius had no idea). But absence of the Mark does not mean one wasn't guilty of something. There were dupes, collaborators and Imperius victims (I wouldn't be surprised if they were programmed to confess).
no subject
Date: 2012-09-27 02:48 pm (UTC)We know that both Snape and Karkaroff speak of it as growing stronger which could mean it had merely faded considerably. But it is also possible that both of them had commented previously (unheard by Harry) on it's return and were talking now of it's strengthening from then.
I tend to think it was actually invisible to the eye while Voldy was gone, simply because we KNOW Sirius didn't have one and yet he was accused and jailed for being a DE. This period of invisibility of the dark mark however doesn't excuse the Ministry in the case of Stan Shunpike. After all, that happens after Snape has shown the mark to Fudge (which MAY have been the first the Ministry knew of the 'mark').
This suggests that even during VW2 either 1) the Ministry didn't think ALL DEs were marked, 2) Stan actually WAS marked or 3) the 'mark' isn't visible at all times, but instead only when Voldy wants it to be.
I don't recall any mention during Bella's & Barty's trial of the fact that they were marked. It would have been a pretty obvious way for Crouch Sr to attempt to insist his son was not a DE - unless he already knew Jr. was marked. Or, of course, IF the mark had faded to invisibility
Lastly, you are also correct that not everyone who works with Voldy is necessarily marked. But in relation to this topic and the question of possible false confessions - IF there were false confessions under torture then the Ministry was either 1) ignoring a lack of marking, 2) the mark wasn't visible at all times, or 3) was unaware of the mark in the first place.
I don't think we have enough to know.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-27 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-27 08:29 pm (UTC)It is therefore just as likely that Crouch Sr. didn't even know Jr was a DE until he was caught in regards to the torture of the Longbottoms. Unless he was marked before finishing Hogwarts (which was apparently the case for Regulus), then he wasn't a DE for long before Voldy vaporized (since he was approx 19 at his trial). Admittedly, both Regulus and Draco were marked at 16 - so it is possible that Barty Jr was as well - we just don't have any canon references to it.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-27 08:39 pm (UTC)Sirius knew of the earlier incarceration and release. He says he only saw her once, when she was brought to Azkaban, so the first incarceration must have been before his own arrest. Was she released while Tom was still around?
no subject
Date: 2012-09-27 08:40 pm (UTC)Since we are not around Snape until at Hogwarts we have no hints about this. Personally, I do not think so - but that is based mainly on the fact that none of the muggle-baiters were the ones to cast the Dark Mark in the sky. I think IF they were doing this to strike fear that Voldy was returning, then they would have been the ones to cast Mosmordre.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-27 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-27 09:28 pm (UTC)Regarding Bella - Sirius ends up in Azkaban without a trial but that doesn't mean Bella was ever there BEFORE him. I'm not sure that we have any indication that people go to Azkaban to AWAIT trials. Therefore, IF Bella 'got off' whether from claiming Imperio, bribery or blackmail she may not have ever been to Azkaban until she arrived there after Sirius.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-28 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-29 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-29 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-29 02:34 am (UTC)That's because we didn't see the trial but the sentencing. Crouch Sr says "we have heard the evidence against you" - all that happened already. But for Barty to claim innocence at all I think the matter of the Mark never came up. But then, this all happens weeks, maybe months after Voldemort was gone, so chances are it was invisible by then.
I'm wondering if Severus' reaction to 'Moody''s hints about the Dark Mark (in The Egg and the Eye) is a clue that he believed the real Moody knew of the Mark.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-30 01:59 am (UTC)I'm really not 'strongly' stating that I think the Ministry didn't know about it. It is one possibility out of others. However, the vibe I got when Snape showed his mark to Fudge was that Fudge didn't know. That could just be my misguided feeling. I truly think it more likely that the Ministry DID know, but that they wanted to arrest Voldy followers who might not be marked (or at least that's what they wanted to think in the case of 'false confessions') and/or after Voldy's vaporizing the 'mark' faded to actual invisibility and so could not be used to prove guilt.
IF the marks were no longer visible until bk4 then there is a question as to what Snape thought of Moody's comment. My take would be that Snape had already told Albus that it was returning and assumed that Albus had discussed it with Moody recently. Whether that means he thought Moody new back in the first war or not is unclear to me. Moody was in the Order back then, so even IF the Ministry was not told, Moody might have known. We have examples of that in the later war with Kingsley and Tonks.
Exactly what might be accomplished by not telling the Ministry? I don't know. I just wouldn't put it past Albus to not tell them.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-30 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-27 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-30 03:17 pm (UTC)