Filling some gaps about the first war (part 3) - Escalation
At 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. (If so, I believe said book ended up among the ones in Hermione's 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. This 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 revisited 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).
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 could not have been over 19, then in early 1979 he was no older than 16. 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 the use of the Patronus as a communication device 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 weren'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 as 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?
-------------------
Points raised in the discussion:
condwiramus speculated that Crouch's policies may have originated with Voldemort - they definitely seem to have aided his cause. (A similar point was made by elkins in her long series about the Crouch men.)
hwyla raised the question of whether the Ministry could have verified if any of those arrested were not DEs - was the Ministry capable but unwilling or simply not capable? We had a discussion about the Dark Mark - Albus must have known about it through Severus, but we have little idea if Albus shared the knowledge with anyone at the time (by GOF Severus believed Moody knew about it; of course he seems to believe Fudge knew, but was mistaken about that). Did Albus keep the information to himself (or possibly to a small subset of the Order members) because he feared Tom's moles might relay the fact that the tattoo's existence was known back to their master? In any case, lack of the Mark could potentially clear one of being accused of being a DE (and only during those times that Marks were visible) but not of being an outside collaborator with Voldemort's cause.
(Would it be consistent of the Ministry that exposes even suspects to dementors to avoid strip-searching prisoners? I think the Ministry must have noticed that some prisoners that were captured before Tom vaporized had odd tattoos that resembled the visual displays left at sited of attacks. Presence of such tattoos would be taken as evidence for support of Voldemort, even without understanding their magical nature. But of course without knowing about Voldemort's policy regarding Marking people or knowing more about how the Marks worked, there would be no reason to think absence of such a tattoo meant anything at all.)
ladyzenobia made the excellent observation that one can use magic to torture even without casting Unforgivables. Even a first year spell such as Wingardum Leviosa can be put to such use.
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. (If so, I believe said book ended up among the ones in Hermione's 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. This 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 revisited 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).
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 could not have been over 19, then in early 1979 he was no older than 16. 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 the use of the Patronus as a communication device 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 weren'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 as 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?
-------------------
Points raised in the discussion:
condwiramus speculated that Crouch's policies may have originated with Voldemort - they definitely seem to have aided his cause. (A similar point was made by elkins in her long series about the Crouch men.)
hwyla raised the question of whether the Ministry could have verified if any of those arrested were not DEs - was the Ministry capable but unwilling or simply not capable? We had a discussion about the Dark Mark - Albus must have known about it through Severus, but we have little idea if Albus shared the knowledge with anyone at the time (by GOF Severus believed Moody knew about it; of course he seems to believe Fudge knew, but was mistaken about that). Did Albus keep the information to himself (or possibly to a small subset of the Order members) because he feared Tom's moles might relay the fact that the tattoo's existence was known back to their master? In any case, lack of the Mark could potentially clear one of being accused of being a DE (and only during those times that Marks were visible) but not of being an outside collaborator with Voldemort's cause.
(Would it be consistent of the Ministry that exposes even suspects to dementors to avoid strip-searching prisoners? I think the Ministry must have noticed that some prisoners that were captured before Tom vaporized had odd tattoos that resembled the visual displays left at sited of attacks. Presence of such tattoos would be taken as evidence for support of Voldemort, even without understanding their magical nature. But of course without knowing about Voldemort's policy regarding Marking people or knowing more about how the Marks worked, there would be no reason to think absence of such a tattoo meant anything at all.)
ladyzenobia made the excellent observation that one can use magic to torture even without casting Unforgivables. Even a first year spell such as Wingardum Leviosa can be put to such use.