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Eloise, Porphyria, and Amanda were having a really fascinating conversation last week about Dark Marks, DEs, scars, and a whole lot of great Snapestuff. I was particularly sorry to miss out on it because I would very much have liked to direct people to an old message of Porphyria's, #35386, on the subject of scars: Harry's, Snape's, and how the two might relate to one another thematically as well as plot-wise. A lot of that material did get revised in the course of the discussion, but I still wanted to weigh in to recommend that people go back and read the second half of message #35386 (the subject heading is "Serpensortia — Scars"), because I thought that it was terrific, and it did sort of get lost in the shuffle back when it was originally posted.
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At one point in the course of the discussion, Eloise wrote:
This 'How visible is the Dark Mark?' thing is a bit puzzling.
I'm sorry to jump into this conversation so late—I've been very busy this week, and am now desperately playing catch-up—but as I see that this has been revised lately, I'm figured it's okay. A lot of ground has already been covered here, but it seems to me that there's still some discomfort over the fact of the visibility of the Dark Marks during GoF. As I see it, the dilemma as it stands goes something like this:
The marks have been invisible since Voldemort's fall. They have been gradually reappearing, growing more and more clearly visible, as Voldemort himself approaches full reincorporation. When he finally gets around to actually summoning his DEs, which he does somehow by using Wormtail's mark, they not only burn, but also show up very clearly indeed—Snape not only shows Fudge his mark, but also tells him that it was even more clear earlier that evening, when it "burned." Right?
So the temptation, certainly, is to view the marks' appearance as intrinsically and visibly tied to Voldemort's state of being, and thus to assume that before his fall, they were always visible. This, however, raises questions about DE secrecy: wouldn't it be awfully easy for Aurors to identify Death Eaters, if they all bore visible brands of their allegiance? Wouldn't the Ministry know about them by now, given that Dumbledore had all those spies in Voldemort's camp, and given that people like Karkaroff spilled their guts to get themselves released from prison? Wouldn't it have become common knowledge by now that the Death Eaters had been marked in such a fashion? Wouldn't Sirius have known what to make of it, when Harry told him about Karkaroff showing Snape something "on his left arm," rather than being simply bewildered?
So perhaps they weren't always visible after all. Perhaps their means of serving as a form of "identification" among Death Eaters was some more subtle form of magical sympathy: they burn, perhaps, or tingle when you are in the presence of a fellow DE, or perhaps somehow you just know. Or possibly there is a magical trigger which can be activated by the mark's bearer to make it visible, thus enabling it to serve as a means of identification to other DEs, but only when its bearer wants to use it for that purpose.
But of course, that leads right back into the question of why the marks should all have started to reappear during the year in which GoF takes place, and why Karkaroff's frantic attempts to talk to Snape about the Mark should focus so heavily on its visual appearance (Karkaroff does not, for example, say anything about suddenly being able to feel the thing again; instead, he tries to show it to Snape and speaks exclusively about how it appears visually).
Is this an accurate representation of the dilemma as it stands? I've been trying to keep up, but I could have missed something, so apologies in advance if I've left out anyone's ideas.
Okay. Now my own theory about the visibility of the Dark Marks over the course of GoF is that the reason that they begin reappearing in visible form is because Voldemort himself has been willing them to do so.
I don't think that they're always visible. As others have pointed out, this would have been an idiotic way to mark the members of ones organization, especially as we know that some of them (Rookwood, for example) were working deeply undercover. I also don't believe for a moment that it wouldn't have become common knowledge that DEs were marked in this way at some point after Voldemort's fall, if not before.
But I do think that Voldemort can make them appear in visible form, if he so chooses, much as he can use them to summon the DEs to his side. The marks themselves, like the people bearing them, are intrinsically bound to him. The status of the marks is subject to his will. I also suspect that they have always manifested visibly when they "burn" — in other words, when they are used to summon one or more of their bearers to apparate instantly to Voldemort's side. This is never explicitly stated, but it seems suggested to me both by Snape's comment about his own mark showing up less clearly now than it did when it burned and by Karkaroff's utter panic at the thing's growing visibility.
My feeling about this is that in GoF, Voldemort is willing the Dark Marks to reappear in visible form because he wants the DEs to know that he's coming. With the exception of a very few loyalists, they all betrayed and abandoned him; while he was languishing in his strange neither-dead-nor-alive nether-state for thirteen years, weak and helpless, they all just went back to their nice cushy lives. Most of them were probably secretly relieved to be free of him in the first place, very few of them are going to be truly happy to see him back, and he knows it. And that infuriates him. He is going to forgive most of them for it—because really, what other choice does he have? He needs followers, and disloyal though the DEs may be, they're still the only one's he's got—but he wants to make them suffer agonies of trepidation first.
I think that the instant that Voldemort had gobbled down enough of that snake venom and unicorn blood and whatever other nasty concoctions he was using to build up his strength throughout most of GoF, he started focusing his will on making the Dark Marks reappear. He wanted his DEs to know that he was on the mend. He wanted them to know that he was coming back. And he wanted them to have a good long time to think about just what that might mean for them. He wanted them to be really sweating it.
And it works — although I suspect not quite as well as Voldemort had hoped. He still has to twist the knife around a bit in the graveyard before he manages to get someone to react with the kind of abject grovelling terror that I suspect he'd been hoping to inspire. But when he finally does get there, he's just tickled. I mean, look at his reaction to Avery's crisis of nerves in the graveyard. He's absolutely delighted!
So that's my suggestion as to why the Dark Marks are reappearing in visible form throughout GoF. It also explains why they start to fade away after the graveyard convocation. Voldemort stops paying attention to them after graveyard. The DEs all know for sure that he's back now, so he can stop concentrating on that. I suspect that by the end of the school term, they'd vanished from normal sight completely.
Eloise wrote:
But I find it curious that Voldy examines Wormtail's arm for his ('It has come back') in the graveyard, when Snape's and Karkaroff's have been visible for some time.
My interpretation here is that by "It has come back" Voldemort meant: "It has now come back completely." In other words, now that he is fully reincorporated, his will has become strong enough to bring the dark mark back to full visibility, which means that it will also be strong enough to summon the DEs to his side. I don't think that he could have summoned them in his slimy baby form even if he had wanted to. In that body, he was just far too weak.
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As to the question of how the dark marks normally served as a means of identification among DEs, though, I find the notion that it wasn't necessarily visual at all, but instead tactile or some form of more mystical recognition believable. I also find it perfectly likely that it was visual, but normally under the conscious control of those bearing the mark, thus allowing one to "show" the mark to others when this seemed called for, while ordinarily keeping it safely hidden. This of course would do little to ameliorate the friendly fire problem that Eloise suggested, but it would at least help in preventing infiltration. Tingling would indeed work better, but I don't know that I believe that Voldemort and the DEs were necessarily all that canny.
Porphyria wrote:
If the Mark didn't tingle then there'd be a lot of potential for a Good Guy to club a DE over the head and change into his clothes, just as you've seen in every action/adventure movie that ever was.
If this ever really does happen in canon, then I will be extremely annoyed, and I will probably come right over here immediately, just to tell everyone, in excruciating detail, all about just how extremely annoyed I am.
Just so you're warned.
Boy, I hope JKR is thinking this through as well as we are. ;-)
I hope that she isn't. Without the inconsistencies, what on earth would we have to talk about?
Besides, if she's thinking through this stuff nearly as neurotically as we are, then we really never will see Book Five.
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As to the question of whether or not Snape's clutch at his arm during the staircase encounter in "The Egg and the Eye" was due to some Mark Tingling action caused by the presence of fellow mark-bearer Crouch...
Oh, ugh! No! That's unspeakable! I totally reject that notion. I reject it because...um...er...
<Elkins racks her brains to come up with some canon to back up her instinctive emotional reaction>
Because if that had been the case, then surely Snape would have recognized the particular nature of the tingle or the burn or whatever. He would have told Dumbledore about it immediately, just as he'd been keeping Dumbledore informed throughout GoF on the status of his own dark mark and of Karkaroff's. Dumbledore therefore would have suspected Moody much sooner, he would have taken some form of action, and the entire tragedy would have been averted.
Okay. So that's not really canon at all, but merely extrapolation. But all the same, I really do think it unlikely that it would have played out any other way.
Also, I don't believe for a moment that Crouch would have taken that risk. Whether or not all of the DEs know that Snape's in with Dumbledore these days, I think it quite clear that Crouch himself did — or at least that he strongly suspected it. I can't imagine that he would have sent Snape a little "Hi! I'm a Death Eater too! R U Available?" tingle, just for the sake of some casual sadism. I mean, the man may have been slightly off his rocker, but he wasn't a total moron.
Mainly, though...
Porphyria:
I really like the idea of Snape's having properly hysterical pain there, especially since he acts ashamed of reacting to the pain, as if it shows up a weakness.
Yes. That's my primary reason as well. For heaven's sake, that scene is one of the few places in all canon where poor Severus stakes a claim on some pure and undiluted reader sympathy! If you guys want to water down his one unequivocal demonstration of overwhelming and deeply-felt shame about his past, then you can go ahead, I guess, but I'm not helping. I'll just stand here in the corner and sulk.
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Amanda suggested that the mystic link that the DEs share with Voldemort might in fact bind their very lives to his.
She wrote:
It seems his style, to demand such a commitment, and it would guarantee their support of him (you'd think), and it would be a very good reason for Snape to look pale or Dumbledore to look anxious at the end of book 4—even when you have known for years what you will do, and come to terms with what will happen, still, walking out the door to begin steps that will lead, if successful, to your own death, cannot be a thing one does lightly.
She also suggested that this would contribute to Voldemort's fury with his Death Eaters: as they themselves were still alive, they must have known that he hadn't really died either, so they can hardly beg off on the "But, my Lord, I thought you were dead!" excuse for not having tried to find him after his disappearance.
I find this an extremely compelling theory, particularly as I notice that not one of the Death Eaters in the graveyard scene so much as tries to excuse himself by means of the "But I thought you were dead" defense. Lucius Malfoy whines a bit about not having the slightest idea how to go about finding him, but that's not at all the same thing, and he does insist that he was "always on the alert."
I also found Eloise's defense of the notion that "And then I ask myself, but how could they have believed I would not rise again?" really means, "They knew I couldn't be dead, how could they think I wouldn't regain my powers?" to be perfectly convincing.
Porphyria objected that if this were indeed the case, then it would seem highly unlikely for the DEs to grant their allegiance to Dumbledore, which is what Voldemort accuses them of in the graveyard, as Dumbledore could bring about their own deaths.
I'm not quite sure that I agree. Dumbledore is widely believed to be the most powerful wizard alive, right? And he worked with Flamel on the alchemical work which led to the discovery of the Philosopher's Stone. I think that if I were Voldemort, Dumbledore would be the very first on my list of people I'd suspect my disloyal, selfish, lusting-after-the-secrets-of-eternal-life Death Eaters to turn to, after I myself had vanished. It's not merely the fact that Dumbledore's the arch-enemy that leads to that accusation, in my opinion, but also the fact that from Voldemort's point of view, Dumbledore is a potential rival in the Promising To Grant Eternal Life To Followers game. This is Voldemort, remember. He probably comprehends the notion of rejecting eternal life about as well as he understands that whole Protective Power of Self-Sacrificing Love thing. Those sorts of concepts really do seem to be somewhat beyond his mental grasp.
So I don't have that problem. I do have one cause for hesitation before wholeheartedly embracing Amanda's theory, though, which is that to my mind, if the relationship between Voldemort and the Death Eaters binds them in life and death, then it would also seem likely to me that it would bind their magical power as well. I would expect for the Death Eaters to have lost a good deal of their magical abilities when Voldemort was discorporated, and to have remained relatively weak for all of those years while he lingered on in his impotent state. And while I can certainly accept Eloise's suggestion that the reason that none but the looniest of the DEs ever tried to find Voldemort because from their point of view, Voldemort alive—but also powerless, safely hidden away, and out of their hair—was a win-win situation, I find that notion a bit harder to swallow if alive-but-powerless Voldemort also means alive-but-powerless Death Eaters. If that were the case, then I think more of them would have tried harder to restore him to power.
But it's a minor quibble, and one that I am happy to quash by simply telling myself that the only powers they lost due to Voldemort's fall were all of those special ones that he had imbued them with in the first place — a sacrifice that they were willing to make if it meant that they were also free from Voldemort himself and his bwah-hah-hah comic-book villain nuttiness.
So okay. Amanda's convinced me.
Eloise wrote:
Ooh, Amanda....you've made me go all quivery. I might have to go and lie down for a bit. I wonder if Elkins still has that brandy?
Help yourself, but I'm warning you: Cindy put something in it. You drink this stuff, and the next thing you know, first you'll be telling perfect strangers all about your most embarrassing childhood experiences, and then you'll find yourself jumping up and down on the couch, screaming things about bloody ambushes.
But if you're willing to take that risk... ::hands Eloise the brandy:: Here you go, kiddo. Knock yourself out.
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On a somewhat related topic, I've been wondering for some time now: what do people make of Voldemort's cheerful naming of names in the graveyard? I mean, Lucius Malfoy is one thing—everybody knows that Malfoy is a Death Eater—but people like Avery? Nott? MacNair? I don't get the impression that those guys were necessarily so high-ranking that the entire DE circle would have known their identities. I particularly don't believe this about Avery, who since he was one of Snape's contemporaries had to have been quite young the first time around, whose position within the circle would seem to imply a fairly low rank (he's not standing next to anyone important, and he doesn't even seem to have made it to the grouping where the Lestranges and possibly Rosier and Wilkes once stood), and whose demeanor...um...does not give the impression of someone with very much on the ball, shall we just say. (Of course, if one accepts Fourth Man, then it doesn't really matter if Voldemort names Avery, as everyone present would already know his identity — but let's just leave Fourth Man out of this one, shall we?)
So what have people made of all that name naming? Have others read this as proof that Karkaroff's claim that the DEs worked in secrecy was in truth a bit of a fib? Or have they preferred to assume that all of the DEs whose Names get Named in the graveyard really were people of some importance—or people whose covers had already been blown—and so secrecy for them was not an issue anyway?
I tended to read it as a bit of stakes-raising on Voldemort's part, myself, combined with a bit of punishment. I don't think it at all likely that people like Avery and Nott had ever previously been Named to the DE circle as a whole. I think that by naming them—to my ear, he does so rather deliberately that first time with Avery, almost as if he's making a point—Voldemort is both expressing his disapproval of their past performance and making it clear to them that their loyalty to him this time around really is their best chance of personal safety.
I find it telling, for example, that while Voldemort does name the Lestranges (whose cover has already been blown sky-high), he never once speaks Crouch Jr.'s name, nor those of the "coward" and the "traitor." Now, this is obviously primarily an authorial matter—JKR wants to keep us guessing—but I also think that it makes a certain degree of in-character sense: Voldemort isn't yet certain about what's going on with the suspected coward and traitor, and before he knows for sure that they really aren't both loyal and potentially useful to him, he's not going to put them at risk by revealing their names. Similarly, he obscures Pettigrew's identity by referring to him only as "Wormtail." This may be simply because that's just what Voldemort calls him, but it strikes me that it might also be a precaution: Wormtail may have been disloyal enough to merit some punishment, but he's also been loyal enough to merit a rather large reward, and for the time being, Voldemort's clearly planning on keeping him around as some kind of lieutenant — or at the very least, as his personal valet. It seems quite possible to me that he really didn't want to reveal the man's real name to the entire DE circle.
Of course, I do realize that my reading here is more a little bit weasel-like ("See, the reason that he names Avery and Nott is to punish them, and to make them all the more dependent on him, but the reason that he names Malfoy, see, is because Malfoy's an important Death Eater, so everyone knows his identity already, and..."). Nonetheless, I find myself believing in it.
Any thoughts?
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Oh, and I'm definitely in with SUCCESS. But I'll take my juice glass with Dumbledore's fingerprints all over it, if you don't mind. I don't think that Snape would have allowed Quirrell anywhere near his pumpkin juice.
And besides, I like imagining Dumbledore spiking the juice. Twinkling as he did so, no doubt. (Does anyone but me ever kind of want to hit Albus Dumbledore?)
—Elkins, who doesn't know about Diana, but who certainly doesn't think that George has any problems with the idea that the DEs are an elite group. Certainly her SWEETGEORGIAN version of Snape was no wimpy, wishy-washy fellow-traveller. "Eyes Open" is, after all, part of the SWEETGEORGIANISM acronym.
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on March 21, 2002 5:05 PM
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