OVERANALYZING THE TEXT

"Get up, Eileen," said Elkins softly. "Stand up. You ask for forgiveness? I do not forgive. I do not forget. Three long months....I want three months' repayment before I forgive you. Cindy here has paid some of her debt already, have you not, Cindy?"

Elkins looked over to Cindy, who continued to sob.

"Er, Avery, old man," George whispered, leaning over to the Indeterminate Character sitting in the chair beside his desk. "Remind me again, will you? Just what precisely is it that Cindy is supposed to have done to Elkins?"

Avery did not answer. He was gripping the armrests of his chair tightly enough to sink his fingers to the first knuckle into the overstuffed leather, and his eyes were squeezed shut. George blinked, then winced.

"Oh," he said. "Oh. Right. Er, Eileen? Elkins?" he called. "Look. This little...vignette of yours? Has it occurred to you that it might not really have been the most sensitive choice? Given that Avery's right here in the—"

"You returned to me, Eileen," Elkins continued, loftily ignoring him. "Not out of loyalty, but out of boredom. You deserve this pain, Eileen. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, Elkins," moaned Eileen, "please, Elkins...please... I only... I only wish to serve, to...to..."

"To make a start on repaying your debt?"

"Yes." Eileen nodded gratefully. "Yes. I... I brought canon, Elkins. Canon." She shuffled forward, her arms outstretched. A number of small canons tumbled from her shaking hands. Elkins glanced down at them. She raised an eyebrow. She smiled slightly.

"That will do," she said.

****************

On the infamous "hesitation" as defense for the Peter Doesn't Get the Girl Tew Ewwwww Variant, Eileen wrote:

But then one wonders why Voldemort even bothered to ask her to stand aside. Perhaps he thought it would be sadistically fun to hand her over to Peter, but having that documented disdain for women, he decided he didn't care, and just killed her?

Well, let's see.

If we assume, as so many people have done when speculating about the Voldemort's Wand Mystery, that Peter was actually there at Godric's Hollow at the time, then it could have been just a tease, couldn't it? To make Peter believe that she really was going to be spared, just for a moment, before Voldemort casually offed her?

I mean, what evidence has Peter to be so darn suspicious of Voldemort's promises?

Yes. That's really the question, isn't it? To my mind, that's the strongest defense for a scenario in which Peter thought that he was going to be able to secure at least one of the Potters' lives, and Lily seems the strongest candidate by far.

We all know that the devil is the prince of lies, but other than that?

Heh. Well, yes, but then, we all know that it's a really bad idea to throw your lot in with Evil Overlords too, don't we? I mean, that just never works out happily for anyone. Just ask poor Avery. Or ask Snape, for that matter.

But apparently Peter never got that memo, so I assume that he never got the one about Prince of Lies, either.

And, he keeps jumping to the conclusion that Voldemort's going to kill him. A reasonable conclusion perhaps but what has got Peter's mind into "He's trying to kill me and double cross me" mode? The only way he could already have been doubled-crossed is if we involve Lily.

I agree.

Peter isn't an ideologue, to say the least. He's self-serving. So if he had always believed Voldemort to be the sort of Evil Overlord who reneges on his promises and kills his minions the second that they have outlived their usefulness, then it's rather hard to imagine why he ever would have become involved, isn't it? His service to the DEs before the Secret Keeper fiasco seems to have entailed spying on the Potters' circle. After his betrayal, his cover would have been, er, blown. To say the least. Would he have agreed to the plan—or even engineered it, as it does seem likely to me that he volunteered the information that he had been made the Secret Keeper to Voldemort—if he had believed at the time that Voldemort was such a "kill the spare" type when it came to his own followers? I just don't know. I rather think he might have tried to flee instead, or tried to keep the SK switcheroo a secret.

So what happened to change his mind, between his act of betrayal and Voldemort's return? Something must have happened to alter his expectations. I see only two likely possibilities.

One is Quirrell's death. The other is Lily's death.

--------------

On the reminder of the "promise" in the graveyard:

It isn't even bleeding to death that Peter's primarily afraid of. I didn't notice this very much before but...

He caressed it gently, too; and then he raised it and ponted it at Wormtail who was lifted off the ground, and thrown against the headstone where Harry was tied; he fell to the foot of it and lay there crumpled up and crying.

As far as Peter can see, Voldemort is about to kill him, not just leave him to die. He isn't even pleading for the reward, or even for the bleeding to stop. He's pleading that he not be killed.

Ugh. You're right, of course. That's precisely what he thinks. From his perspective, he has just exhausted his usefulness, and now he is to be killed. And probably in an unpleasantly slow and experimental fashion, too, since Voldemort seems to want to play around a bit with his new body and his wand. And so, naturally, he responds as he always does when he thinks that he's about to die: he collapses into helpless weeping. As, frankly, so would I.

Of course, he hasn't really quite outlived his usefulness yet, since Voldemort still needs his Dark Mark to summon the rest of the DEs, but it's clear enough from his reaction to being asked for his arm that Peter hasn't the slightest clue what that's all about.

The reminder of the "promise" is interesting, though, because Voldemort has actually never promised Peter a damned thing. Not "on-screen," at any rate. He doesn't even give him any real assurance that he won't be killed after the resurrection. His actual words ("Wormtail, Wormtail...why would I kill you?") sound far more like an evasion than an assurance; if anything, they suggest that he really is planning on killing the poor wretch. They certainly do not constitute a "promise." And from his awed response later on to the hand reward, I think it fairly clear that he was never promised anything like that, either.

So what is this promise he's nattering on about, eh?

A perfect time to remind Voldemort. "You promised.." "So, you killed Lily and now you're going to kill me?"

The more I think about this, the more eerily compelling I find it.

Elkins then went into a lot of Freudian stuff. Eileen doesn't really get Freudian stuff, but she did find it interesting that Peter cut off his pointer finger. Kind of inconvenient.

Inconvenient on a number of different levels, really. It's not just that it's his pointer finger. It's that it's also the pointer finger of his good hand. Peter is right-handed. His right hand is the one that he instinctively raises against Harry in the graveyard.

Now, there are perfectly sound symbolic and magical reasons for a right-handed man to offer his right hand as a sacrifice in the rebirthing ritual of his Dark Lord. But just to frame Sirius? What on earth was he thinking?

Not only is the pointer finger of ones good hand quite far down on the list of digits that any normal person would ordinarily choose to sacrifice (it's better than a thumb, but that's about it), it also raises some logistical difficulties. It left him forced to use his off-hand to do the actual cutting or wandwork or whatever it was that he did to lop it off in the first place. This is counter-intuitive.

So it's really hard for me not to view that decision in a psychological light. Leaving Freud out of it, it does seem to me that on some level he must have wanted to be maimed, and not only maimed, but maimed in a way that would be inconvenient for him, a way that would serve as a constant reminder to him of what he had done. Otherwise, he just would have gone for a pinky.

Hey, speaking of Pettigrew's self-mutilating tendencies, has anyone but me ever wondered whatever happened to his left ear? At the beginning of PoA, when the woman in the pet shop is looking him over as Scabbers, he is specified not only as missing a toe, but also as having a "tattered left ear."

What do you think? Did those real rats rough him up in the sewers? Or was it just some Weasley manhandling? One of the Twins' little games, perhaps?

"Harry, James wouldn't have wanted me killed...James would have understood, Harry..."

I could see Peter having convinced himself that he did everything he did to protect Lily. Voldemort would sooner or later have made him crack, or found out some other way, so he made a deal that would save Lily. And surely James would understand that. Wouldn't he?

Well, that's certainly one of the all-time classic rationalizations, isn't it? The triage of the traitor? It's as old as time, that one. Or at the very least, as old as warfare.

Again, I find this eerily compelling.

I'm not sure that his evident liking for Weasleys and Ron is relevant, but if you say so....

It's relevant because it suggests that he might have a weakness for red-heads. You know, just like Hastings? ;-)

Hey. With a theory like this one, you take the canon where you can find it. And besides, there's certainly more evidence in canon for Pettigrew having a thing about red-heads than there is for Snape having one. We've never seen a shred of evidence that Snape gets all Weak and Sentimental—or even unusually Bitter and Resentful—when he sees a red-head, have we? Nope. None. None at all. But Pettigrew?

I'm telling you. The guy's just a soft-touch when it comes to red-heads.

Well. In his own murderous sort of way, that is.

Maybe Florence wasn't the future Lestrange after all. Maybe she was one of those mysterious missing Weasley cousins.

But about Florence...

You're right that the hex story should belong to Peter, not Snape, not Sirius, or anyone else. It just doesn't make sense that Dumbledore would bring it up here. I think Peter did take his revenge on Bertha Jorkins. But what for?

"I'll tell you what for!" cries Cindy.

Cindy:

"Bertha told Peter she had seen him kissing Florence, and it was a flat-out lie.

Er, but doesn't that sort of weaken your original canon, Cindy?

I mean, your original "Peter Gets the Girl" canon was so very compelling in the first place in part because it set up such a lovely parallel. It suggested that what the message from Dumbledore's subconscious was trying to tell him was: "This is a direct parallel. History has repeated itself. Once again, Bertha Jorkins has come by knowledge of a secret that somebody very badly wants hidden, and once again, she has been victimized by Peter Pettigrew."

The other way, the parallel isn't nearly so tidy or so convincing.

Not to mention the fact that Dumbledore does ask her why she had to "follow him in the first place," which does rather suggest that she saw something that, er, really did happen.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I do appreciate the fact that you're trying to grant Peter a bit of nobility here, by making his Love For Lily pure and uncorrupted and all that. In fact, I'm really touched. It's...well, it's downright SYCOPHANTSish of you, Cindy! It just plain makes me want to cry.

But...well, look. I just don't know about this new UnTough Cindy we've been seeing around here lately. First you go to George and start snivelling, and now you're tinkering around with a spec to increase its SYCOPHANTS potential? That's...well, it's just plain Wrong, Cindy. You aren't a SYCOPHANT. You're Tough. You're messing with my mind doing this sort of thing, okay? It's really beginning to Freak Me OUT.

I mean, next thing you know, I'm going to become an Evil Overlord.

Not, of course, that that's so much of a stretch, really. Sycophants and Evil Overlords are really just two sides of the same ugly coin.

*****************

"May your loyalty never waver again, Eileen," said Elkins.

"No, Elkins... never, Elkins."

Eileen stood up and turned to take her place on the chaise lounge, staring at her powerful new canon, her face still shining with tears.

"Oh," said Elkins, just as she had turned her back. "And Eileen? One more thing?"

Eileen hesitated, a glimmer of apprehension crossing her face. She turned slowly.

"I...yes, Elkins?" she asked.

"You didn't really think I would fail to notice that you chose to spare yourself the Cruciatus Curse," said Elkins softly. "Did you?"

"Well, I...I..."

"It does cast this...contrition of yours in a rather dim light, don't you think? All of that humility. All of that grovelling. Yet not a touch of genuine penance. Why, Eileen." Elkins smiled thinly. "If I didn't know better, I might even find myself doubting your sincerity."

"Elkins, my devotion to your—"

"Your devotion is nothing more than cowardice. Atonement without penance? Remorse without restitution? You're almost beginning to sound like him." She jerked her head contemptuously towards Fourth Man Avery With Remorse, who buried his face in his hands.

"But Elkins," Eileen objected, spreading her hands helplessly. "I—"

"I am told that you have not renounced the ways of SYCOPHANTS, though to the world you present your bowls of CRAB CUSTARD. You are still ready to take the lead in a spot of Death Eater Anti-Defamation, I believe? Yet you never really atoned, Eileen. Your little Graveyard pastiche was fun, I daresay...but might not your energies have been better directed toward a somewhat stronger adherence to the original canonical material?"

"Elkins, I am constantly thinking of the sensibilities of our audience," said Eileen rapidly. "Had I had any assurance, any conviction at all that actual depictions of torture were not completely out of bounds for the standards of civility of this list, I would have been writhing at your feet immediately, nothing could have prevented me—"

"And yet you were perfectly willing to acknowledge the possibility of such a plot development back in message number 39000?" said Elkins lazily, and Eileen stopped talking abruptly. "Yes, I noticed that, Eileen...You have disappointed me...But still. Still. You are only a sycophant, aren't you? And not a house elf. So I suppose that it might have been a bit much to expect you to be capable of disciplining yourself."

"Yes, thank you, Elkins," Eileen gasped. "You are merciful, thank you..."

"Fortunately, you chose to dress me in these ridiculous robes," Elkins continued, slipping one of her rather pudgy hands into a deep pocket and drawing out a wand. "So I'm willing to do you the favor of helping you to correct this unfortunate little...oversight of yours."

"Elkins," Cindy objected, half-rising from her seat. "What are you DOING?"

"Oh, nothing any less forgivable than all of that Imperius that Captain Tabouli used to dole out below decks on the LOLLIPOPS," said Elkins casually. "Nothing to worry about."

"Elkins," Eileen stammered, backing slowly away, her eyes fixed on the wand in Elkins' hands. "Elkins, listen, please..."

"You can't do that!" Cindy turned to George. "She can't do that, can she?" she said. "George, is this your idea? Is this some kind of sick twisted THERAPY, or something?"

"Therapy?" George shook his head. "This isn't my therapy," he said. "I'm George. I stand for principle over inclination. Reason over emotion. And restraint," he concluded, pursing his lips in disapproval at Elkins' somewhat fevered expression. "Restraint over indulgence. This certainly isn't my therapy. But what can I do about it?" He shrugged irritably. "I'm just a Snapetheory. This sort of thing is really outside my purview. In fact," he said, frowning. "I'm not even entirely sure what I'm doing in this thread in the first place."

"There has got to be some rule against this," muttered Cindy, fishing out her TBAY Rulebook and flipping through the pages. "I'm sure there has to be SOMETHING against this."

"Oh, come now, Cindy," Elkins said coolly, advancing on Eileen. "Where's your sense of intellectual curiosity? Don't you want to settle for once and for all the question of whether she'll actually sound anything like that Second Task Egg? After all, who knows? She just might prove you right about that one after all. And we all know how much you do love being right, Cindy. Besides," she added, with a nasty snigger. "Cruciatus makes you stronger, right So I'm doing her a favor, really, aren't I?"

"Yeah, look," Cindy muttered. "How about we just forget about Cruciatus Makes You Stronger, okay?"

Eileen collided violently with the water cooler in the corner. She staggered, then fell to her knees. "Please," she whimpered. "Elkins, please...please..."

"It is customary to thank people who offer to correct your blunders for you, Eileen," Elkins told her. "Where are your manners?"

"Elkins, please listen to me. Please. Just listen. You've already been through this crisis once already. Don't you remember? In your argument with Cindy over the Egg? You resisted the twin lures of power and vengeance. Remember? You said that you were a pacifist and that—"

"Oh, but that was to make a rhetorical point about Neville, Eileen," said Elkins. "This is to make a different rhetorical point altogether. Now as for myself," she mused, eyeing Eileen contemplatively. "I've always found myself wondering about those Longbottoms. Could the Cruciatus Curse really have accounted for their condition? Debbie thinks not, but I...well, I'm just not so sure. It's not realistic, no, but it does conform to genre convention. I do find myself wondering, though, just how long that might have taken. Avery's never been willing to discuss it with me. I mean, are we talking hours here? Days? What do you think, Eileen?"

Eileen burst into tears.

"Elkins," Cindy said firmly. "You. Are. A. SYCOPHANT. Not an Evil Overlord."

"Oh, indeed," agreed Elkins pleasantly. "Indeed. But you know, the two are hardly polar opposites. They're not incompatible in the least. In fact, they're essentially the same position. Inside every sycophant, there's an Evil Overlord just waiting to come out. Have you ever read Fromme, on the totalitarian personality? The type of person who toadies to his superiors, yet bullies his subordinates? Whose abject professions of loyalty and fanatic devotion to charismatic leaders and ideological doctrines are matched only by their equally extreme, yet seemingly-incompatible tendency towards self-serving hypocrisy and back-stabbing betrayal? The sort of person whose fundamental capacity for inhumane behavior is masked by a somewhat sloppy sentimentalism? One which often presents as a self-professed love of animals?"

She frowned briefly, one hand reaching up to toy absently with her Bleeding Heart-festooned feather boa, then shook her head and continued on:

"They're the same type of person, really, you know, Evil Overlords and their Sycophants. It's a personality characterized by a...well, a very specific type of personal relationship with power. Power over, that is," she specified, looking down at the huddled and weeping Eileen with a faint and dreamy smile. "Power over others," she murmered.

"Elkins," George said quietly. "Are you aware that your nostrils are dilating?"

Elkins blinked. "Are they really?" She thought about this for a moment, then shrugged. "Oh, well, what else can you expect from me, George? I wear my SYCOPHANTS badge pinned to my FEATHERBOAS, for heaven's sake! Surely you must appreciate the significance of that particular combination? Eileen here did try to explain it to Cindy once, sometime back in March, didn't you, Eileen? But I fear that she may have been a bit too...delicate to really get her point across. You see, Eileen," Elkins said, reaching down to force Eileen's head up to face her. "Cindy's not Bent, like we are. She's Tough. Tough people really don't understand Bent all that well, I'm afraid. You really have to spell it out for them."

"I'm not Bent," sobbed Eileen. "I'm not!"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," snapped Elkins, shoving her away in disgust. "Of course you are. You're a featherboa-wearing SYCOPHANT, aren't you? That's a fundamentally sado-masochistic position. Self-flagellating, even. You did used to torture your dolls, didn't you, Eileen? And I'll bet you identified with them, even while you were doing it. Didn't you."

Eileen shook her head wildly from side to side.

"Liar," said Elkins, with cruel amusement. "I've seen the sort of specs you favor."

"I—"

"Just ask Avery here, if you don't believe me. He knows all about the totalitarian personality. Even Canon!Avery's rather obvious that way, but once you start talking about Fourth Man Avery...well! At times he's been known to go absolutely Over The Top in that direction."

"I've never liked that Over the Top Fourth Man," muttered Cindy darkly, narrowing her eyes at Avery, whose head was now cradled in his arms on George's desk.

"Oh, I think that Avery has quite enough troubles right now without you adding to them," said Elkins. "Especially now that Peter's got that new hand of is. We were talking about sycophants and their Inner Evil Overlords? Just look at Mr. Pettigrew."

"Wormtail?" said George, frowning.

"Mmmmmmm. Back in April sometime, your friend Marina said that she thought that he was likely to get pushed around quite a bit by the other DEs in future canon. I seem to remember her calling him 'eminently bulliable.' I'm not altogether sure of that, though, myself. The thing about sycophants, you know, is that they do have this way of getting nasty, if you're ever fool enough to hand them the good side of the whip. It's that victim-turned-bully phenomenon that Tabouli's always writing about. I found Wormtail's reaction to his silver hand rather suggestive of that possibility, myself. You know the canon I mean, Eileen."

Eileen nodded slowly, sniffling. "The...the twig," she offered, in a trembling voice. "And...and..."

"And 'beautiful.' Yes. He's just been given some freaky magical cyborg appendage, it can crush things into powder, and he's lost in awe, isn't he? He's calling it 'beautiful.' Mm-hmmm. I'd watch my back around that Pettigrew from now on if I were you, Avery," Elkins advised. "If you ask me, he's headed straight for victim-turned-bulliedom. I certainly hope that you weren't in the habit of hexing him in any corridors back in your schooldays. I certainly hope not. For your sake."

Avery let out a sick sort of moan.

"Indeed?" Elkins smiled slightly. "Oh, bad call, Aves. Very bad call. Let's just hope he doesn't remember that, then, shall we? Although I really wouldn't count on that, you know, if I were you. I remember every single person who ever even once hexed me in the corridors at school. Now," she said, levelling her wand at Eileen. "As for you, Eileen. Perhaps one more little reminder why I will not tolerate further disloyalty from you..."

"Elkins," sobbed Eileen. "No...I beg you..."

"Aw, come on, Elkins," Cindy said. "She did call you 'nice,' you know."

"Nice?" Elkins laughed. "Oh, yes. Every bit as nice as the English, I dare say. Every bit as nice as Eileen herself is. Are you feeling a little bit sorry for Eileen right now, Cindy? You needn't be, you know. I assure you, if our positions were reversed, this situation would be playing out in precisely the same way. Don't you remember the relish with which she used to propose bloody ambushes? Or Avery's outing as a DE at the office, with horrified Arthur Weasley slowly backing away from him?"

Elkins shook her head.

"No," she concluded. "Eileen is not really nice. No more than I am, in fact. You had better leave her to me."

************************

—Elkins, who really would rather cut her own right hand off than harm Eileen in any way