Dumbledore and the Spy in the Order
Jun. 24th, 2014 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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deathtocapslockAn idea sparked by Oryx's "Appendix B" post on the Order of the Phoenix during VoldWar I.
Why didn’t Dumbledore figure out who the spy was, if he’s even a halfway decent Legilimens? Was Peter a fantastic Occlumens? Was Dumbledore actually a total failure at Legilimency?
Or did he think he knew exactly who it was, and so didn’t realize he needed to look again? More to the point, why do we assume there was only one spy in the mix?
A while ago on her Red Hen site, JOdel floated the possibility that Remus started spying on the werewolves for Dumbledore during the first war, and returned to the job in HBP (or had been doing it off and on all along, but started living with them full time in HBP). Fenrir Greyback and co. would hardly have let Remus hang around if he came on openly declaring that he was there to persuade them away from their evil ways. No, that would be slowly introduced, one-on-one, in secrecy. To be accepted, he would have to prove he belonged. Partly this would be some story about his hypocritically lycanthrophobic friends who hang around with each other being rich and not helping him or trusting him, but still thinking they can call him up for an adventure if they're bored, the two-faced jerks. Running with the pack at full moons, quite possibly.
But what else do spies often do to gain trust, again? Right. They pass on legitimate information occasionally.
Fenrir and his band want Voldemort to win so they can gain power. But Voldemort doesn’t help you out of the goodness of his heart — it’s quid pro quo. So one obvious way for Remus to prove his worth and loyalty to the werewolf cause is to provide information on his anti-Death Eater friends. He'll be their mole in the Order to further the bright future of werewolves everywhere!
Maybe Dumbledore totally meant for the Order members he outed via the Remus channel to get rescued just in the nick of time. Maybe he underestimated how many DEs Voldemort would send the first time or two. I’m sure whatever messed up his plans, it was someone else’s fault.
And if a few Order members he hadn’t compromised also got hit, well, Voldemort was targeting lots of people by that point, and their family associations alone might be reason enough. No reason to think one of his followers is passing along names without his say-so. Coincidences do happen.
Oops.
Why didn’t Dumbledore figure out who the spy was, if he’s even a halfway decent Legilimens? Was Peter a fantastic Occlumens? Was Dumbledore actually a total failure at Legilimency?
Or did he think he knew exactly who it was, and so didn’t realize he needed to look again? More to the point, why do we assume there was only one spy in the mix?
A while ago on her Red Hen site, JOdel floated the possibility that Remus started spying on the werewolves for Dumbledore during the first war, and returned to the job in HBP (or had been doing it off and on all along, but started living with them full time in HBP). Fenrir Greyback and co. would hardly have let Remus hang around if he came on openly declaring that he was there to persuade them away from their evil ways. No, that would be slowly introduced, one-on-one, in secrecy. To be accepted, he would have to prove he belonged. Partly this would be some story about his hypocritically lycanthrophobic friends who hang around with each other being rich and not helping him or trusting him, but still thinking they can call him up for an adventure if they're bored, the two-faced jerks. Running with the pack at full moons, quite possibly.
But what else do spies often do to gain trust, again? Right. They pass on legitimate information occasionally.
Fenrir and his band want Voldemort to win so they can gain power. But Voldemort doesn’t help you out of the goodness of his heart — it’s quid pro quo. So one obvious way for Remus to prove his worth and loyalty to the werewolf cause is to provide information on his anti-Death Eater friends. He'll be their mole in the Order to further the bright future of werewolves everywhere!
Maybe Dumbledore totally meant for the Order members he outed via the Remus channel to get rescued just in the nick of time. Maybe he underestimated how many DEs Voldemort would send the first time or two. I’m sure whatever messed up his plans, it was someone else’s fault.
And if a few Order members he hadn’t compromised also got hit, well, Voldemort was targeting lots of people by that point, and their family associations alone might be reason enough. No reason to think one of his followers is passing along names without his say-so. Coincidences do happen.
Oops.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-02 01:37 am (UTC)Alas, you're probably right about him not having dabbled in spying all along and only stepping it up in HBP. (Too bad, since Remus the spy-awaiting-full-reactivation would parallel Snape so nicely. I like patterns.) I wonder if a modified version could work? Say, in VoldWar I Dumbledore asked Remus to make contact with - not move in with, just start chatting up - the werewolves and try to gain their trust so as to eventually, hopefully, be able to get more information out of them. (Or possibly Dumbledore told him to get as close as possible, and he reported back that alas, they don't quite trust me yet, will see what happens after a few more encounters... The wolves don't seem to survive by hunting and foraging alone so far as we know, so presumably they sneak into town for groceries to multiply and maybe a pint every now and then.) He gave up a few incriminating details (not the names themselves) which allowed the werewolves to identify a couple of Order members as part of this process, but hadn't gotten very far before the war ended.
And that was that, he was free of those unpleasant reminders - or so he thought, until fifteen years later Dumbledore told him nope, this time you're going to do it properly. Not only is he dragged back into something he thought he was out of forever, but this time he's stuck with it all day, every day, except for holidays. And after having his one single chance at a real job destroyed just a couple years earlier, this time around it isn't a youthful experiment, it feels like the universe is telling him, "Sorry, no, it won't get better EVER, this is all you'll ever be good for."
Would that work better at least as far as his emotions at Christmas go?