Dumbledore and the Spy in the Order

[sunnyskywalker]

An 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.

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

I got the impression that Fenrir always had at least a few hangers-on in his camp, who might not have been on call as active agents for Voldemort but who would have pitched in now and then for the cause and to help a friend. Now I'll have to re-read and see what I was basing that on, or if I was mixing up the books with Harry Potter Wiki stuff that wasn't actually confirmed.

Modified scenario: in the first war, he only had orders to "try to make contact and gain trust," which boiled down to an occasional drink in a pub with a werewolf who hung out with Fenrir sometimes, and it didn't get very far before the war ended. So he didn't have the visceral daily experience of living with them or running with them at full moon, and HBP was still a big adjustment.

But back then he had let a few details accidentally-on-purpose slip as something the werewolf drinking buddy might take back to Fenrir to curry favor with the Dark Lord, which Remus and Drinking Buddy would both agree might be advantageous, and here was a way to help without actually signing any contracts. So Dumbledore might figure that Remus, not being a master spy, had let slip a little more than he realized, but it was still a worthwhile avenue to pursue.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

I think the main reason I have trouble with the idea that Remus was asked to make contacts with other werewolves in VW1 is that unlike Snape and the DEs, the werewolves do not go back to 'normal' life when Voldy fell. To me, that means that it would be very suspicious for Remus to drop contact and then pick it back up later.

It isn't as if Snape ever 'drops' his cover in the intervening years either. But I think that Remus either needed to have been in contact all through the years or he needed a really good excuse for why he dropped them and now wants to return.

Of course, I think Remus DOES have a good reason to give them for joining up in bk5/6 - his loss of a job and the complaint that Albus has dropped him like a hot potato. I'm just not sure it would be enough to explain away his period of being away for so long. It might work however if he really was still in contact over all those years and was only away from them during bk3 when he had a chance at a job?

[rattlesnakeroot.livejournal.com]

Hwyla: This is off-topic, but I want to be sure you got my private message about HPN. Please check your messages. The first one I wrote has the wrong email address for Nicc - sorry! - so check the last two. He is the only one who can give you a new password. Also try to make a new account with another email address if he doesn't respond. You can use a similar name such as hwyla2 or hwyla_