Filling some gaps about the first war (Appendix A, part 2) - The Unknown Death Eaters
How many unnamed DEs were there?
Harry estimates the number of DEs in the graveyard was over 30. On the day of the 7Potters battle the number of DEs was the number of DEs in the graveyard, plus Severus Snape, minus Gibbon (who died at Hogwarts in June 1997), plus the 10 prisoners (the ones who escaped in OOTP), plus any new recruits (we know of Draco and Stan Shunpike) minus any deaths we weren't told of (such as deaths in Azkaban of any of the DEs that were captured in OOTP or HBP). Considering the importance Tom placed on the mission I believe he wanted as many fighters as possible to be present (especially if he considered the possibility that the Order might try to sneak Harry on foot under the Invisibility Cloak). Lucius had to stay at home since he no longer had a wand. Peter was in charge of guarding Ollivander. There may have been a handful of DEs assisting the mission from the Ministry - maybe watching the Floo network in case the Order decided to use it anyway, watching the recordings of the Trace system in case its recordings would help locate Harry. Everyone else was in Little Whinging, waiting.
The DEs that participated in the battle split spontaneously into 7 teams to chase the 7 pairs of Potter-and-defender. The Hagrid team, which was considered of low probability for including the Real One was followed by 4 DEs, whereas the Kingsley team which was Tom's second guess was followed by 5. From this I conclude that the 6 teams were followed by 4-5 pursuers each. Tom's first guess for Harry's true accompaniment was Alastor, so it is likely this team had more pursuers. How many? After Harry and Hagrid down or scare away all 4 of their pursuers 2 new ones show up. These must have come from among those who had chased Alastor and Fletcher - they were freed after Fletcher Disapparated and Moody was killed. Later, when Harry's identity was revealed Tom himself showed up, having abandoned the chase of Kingsley and Hermione, with three other DEs. Kingsley says he was pursued by 5, of whom he incapacitated 3. At least one of the three that showed up when Tom started chasing Harry must have come from DEs who came with Tom from the chase after Moody, though it is possible all 3 did, and the remaining 2 of the team that originally chased Kingsley remained on task. From these considerations I think the number of DEs that originally chased Moody and Mundungus was anywhere between 6 and 13, and the number that chased the other 6 teams was between 25 and 29, totaling to between 31 and 42. Of these at least 2 were new recruits (from 1996-7), but they compensate for Peter and Lucius who remained at the Manor. Add 4-6 DEs assisting from the Ministry.
Were there any deaths among the DEs since June 1995 other than Barty Crouch, Igor Karkaroff and Gibbon? Of the 11 DEs that were arrested at the Ministry in June 1996, 6 (Rabastan, Mulciber, Jugson, Crabbe, Nott and Avery) are never mentioned again. Maybe some of them did die before the mass break-out of July 1997. However the Azkaban they stayed in was not as harsh as the one in which Sirius had spent 12 years, as most (all?) the dementors left it for the countryside. But it is still possible some DEs died of injuries sustained during the battle. A prime candidate would be Nott, who was injured so badly by the smashing prophecy globes that he did not participate in the chase nor the fighting. Additionally the DE who got trapped in the time-looping bell jar may have suffered permanent brain damage. I doubt there were any deaths of DEs in any clashes between them and the Ministry between June 1996 and the fall of the Ministry in early August 1997, as such deaths would have been paraded on the front page of the Prophet and there wouldn't have been the need for stunts like the arrest of Stan Shunpike.
Based on these numbers I conclude that the maximal number of VWar1 veteran DEs that could have possibly been alive in July 1997 is about 48, and the highest number of DEs that could have been in the circle in June 1995 was 40. In that circle Peter Pettigrew stood between the very large gap and Lucius. Next to Lucius was a gap for 2 people (Bellatrix and Rodolphus), followed by an unnamed DE. There was a section of unknown number of DEs and gaps, followed by a group of 4: Macnair, Crabbe, Goyle and Nott, coming back to the large gap, the spaces of 3 dead, Igor, Severus and Barty. How many gaps were there among the DEs in the large group between Lucius and Macnair? Considering that Harry could tell the difference between a gap intended for one and a gap intended for two, there must have been many places where a DE had a neighbor at least on one side. Assuming most of the gaps were for a single person I'd say well over half of the places in that stretch of the circle were occupied. I'd consider 60% occupancy low but at least not totally ridiculous, so at a total stretch no more than 22 gaps, of which 8 were for Azkaban prisoners, so no more than 14 gaps for dead DEs in the main part of the circle, and with the 3 dead DEs in the big gap (the one that included the 3 absentees) no more than 17 dead DEs represented as gaps. Of course if you think there were fewer than 40 DEs present at the graveyard the number of gaps should also be reduced. So - if the number of DEs at the cemetery was 40 then the maximal number of DEs that were members of the circle at any time in the first war was never more than 40+3+10+17 = 70.
Add to that DEs who died before Voldemort's downfall and whose place in the circle was taken by recruits who joined after their death. One such DE was Regulus, who died in 1979. There may have been a very small number who died before Crouch implemented his policies, sometime in 1980. With the new policies the Aurors were killing more people, but without clear information about who were among the DEs the Aurors were shooting in the dark. This changed after Severus' turning, early in 1981. However Moody says it took him 6 months to capture Igor, in July 1981. And we know the death of Evan Rosier and the capture of Travers, Mulciber and Dolohov came later still. If this was the general trend it is possible that most of the killings based on Severus' info took place in the summer and fall of 1981, after the wave of recruitment of recent Hogwarts alumni that must have come in June.
How many recruits could have reasonably joined the movement in that time? Considering that in 1970 the organization included both the older ones, from Tom's generation, and the older second generation members such as Bella and the Lestrange brothers, even if the circle already reached its largest size in 1980, I estimate an average of 5-6 recruits a year even with the highest reasonable estimate. Let's assume that in the earlier years it averages at 3-4 a year and in the later ones some 7-8. I'd say about 15 would be a high estimate for deaths replaced by new recruits under this scenario. Thus the total number of DEs who participated in the first war would be under 85, with no more than 70 alive at any given time.
If anyone wants to argue for more DEs surviving to the second war they should explain where they were on the night of the 7P battle. If anyone wants to argue for more gaps in the circle they should explain Harry's impression from the circle. And if anyone is arguing for more dead DEs before Tom's downfall they need to explain how enough DEs were recruited to replace them.
Personally I don't think the number was as high. In my head-canon there were some 36 DEs in the graveyard, and the circle had gaps for 10 prisoners and some 10 dead DEs (including the 3 dead DEs in the large gap of 6 positions Tom dwells on) and 3 absentees - for a total circle size of 59. To this we still need to add the number of those who died before Tom's downfall and were replaced by later recruits (a bit lower than the maximum of 15 proposed above. I'll go with 12). Thus in my head-canon some 71 people were DEs in total, though no more than 59 at any given time. We know the names of 29 of them, leaving 42 others. Of the 71, 32 were either dead or imprisoned by the time June 24th 1995 rolled by, 36 participated in the circle in the graveyard, 3 were absent. Of the 32 we have the names of 13, so 19 are unknown. Of the 36 we have the names of 13, 23 are unknown.
I am going to assume that a vast majority of the 19 were Slytherins (they got caught or killed either following Severus' info or the Dumbledores' knowledge of Tom's social contacts back in the day). And a vast majority of the 23 were non-Slytherins (mostly from other Hogwarts Houses, but some may have been from abroad). Who may have been among them?
The first DEs came from among Tom's school-time associates. Some were with him at the time of his interview (and may have spent some time with him on the continent, as I proposed in part 1 of this series), others rejoined him once he re-established his presence in Britain. I am guessing the core of this group were Slytherins, males, close to Tom in age, mostly from old families. In the 1940s such students would have been the ones Horace promoted as future leaders. They were also the ones that could have been useful to Tom in providing him with access to what he was interested in: genealogy and Dark Arts texts (safe from Albus' censorship). The Slug Club in 1942-3 consisted of 6 boys, including outstanding orphan Tom Riddle and purebloods Avery and Lestrange. If we follow the edited dates on the Black Family Tree then Alphard Black would have been within a year from Tom. I have no reason to think he became a DE despite looking at Tom in admiration in Horace's memory, but a couple of years later there came his brother Cygnus, father of Bellatrix, father-in-law of Lucius and probably uncle of Evan Rosier. I find it likely Cygnus was a DE, and it was through his promotion that Bellatrix made it into that boys' club. Maybe he died in 1979 while seeking information about Regulus' death for Walburga? The other Slug Club members may have been Rosier and Nott, 2 of the earliest DEs. (As for Avery and Lestrange - if indeed they became DEs they did not survive to 1995 - Tom did not call them out for claiming Imperius, and we can assume Albus would have known of their ties to Tom, so they wouldn't have been able to avoid suspicion.)
Tom also had associates that didn't match all those criteria. The elder Mulciber apparently does not come from an old (or old-enough) pureblood family. And Travers may have been a non-Slytherin associate. There may have been a few others like them.
Tom may have acquired some admirers in his days as shop assistant. The prime suspects would be members of the Ollivander and Burke families. Rowling tells us Ollivander has a living son (and deceased daughter). Yet not only is this son not working in the milenia-old family business, but once the father is released from captivity (that lasted some 20-21 months!) he does not seek to be reunited with said son. And then there is the mixture of admiration and horror in which Ollivander speaks of Voldemort, both in 1991 and in 1998. I think there is no little chance that a son raised by Ollivander might have developed quite a crush for someone like Tom if he encountered him at a vulnerable time of his life. And if they did not meet at school but later, Ollivander Jr wouldn't have been part of Tom's known social network. His DE status would have remained unknown to Albus or Severus until at least 1995, maybe even 1996 (we do not know when the DEs stopped wearing masks in private company). In which case, he could have been the one to lure the elder Ollivander into the DE's trap, allowing for kidnapping without struggle.
Similarly, not only do we not meet Caractacus Burke in the 1990s, we don't meet anyone else by that name working in the store that he had founded. Well, Caractacus was an old man when Albus interviewed him, probably around 1950. And maybe he had no sons. Heck, maybe his daughter married the elder Borgin's son, and the Borgin we meet in 1992 was the heir of both partners. Maybe. But recall Tom's reaction to Hepzibah's tale of how Burke had underpaid Merope for it - his eyes flashed scarlet. I'm sure Burke's name was on Tom's to-kill list. Probably all the Burkes. Caractacus was likely killed shortly after Tom's return. And what better way to destroy a family than employing its members as his servants (well, slaves) and sending them on suicidal missions? Who said the Malfoys were the first to receive this treatment? If so, I doubt the younger Burkes even knew why they ended up that way.
Dolohov may have joined Tom on the continent, but it doesn't look like anyone else came with Tom in the late 1950s (as I said before, Igor Karkaroff, wherever he was from, must have joined later, when the DEs no longer showed their faces to each other). But once he was back in Britain Tom recollected his following from his school days, and soon enough the oldest from among the second generation. And he got the school friends to keep quiet about his true identity and his blood status, even to their children. We know of a few who likely joined the DEs before even the early stages of the war: Bellatrix left Hogwarts around 1969 or 1970. I'm guessing the brothers Lestrange were not far from her in age. (Does anyone think it is a coincidence that the DEs started worrying Albus and his closest supporters just around the time Bellatrix left school?) Some Slytherin DEs who avoided suspicion were likely to have been in this age group - those whose school days overlapped neither Severus' nor Tom's. Possibly these were not sons of Tom's early followers, but had a less direct link. Maybe their mothers were the ones who overlapped with Tom. Or perhaps their wives were daughters of early associates of Tom. Or perhaps they were the nephews of early DEs. Some shared surnames with known DEs, but not all. It is possible one or two of them had children in Slytherin House in the 1990s.
Once the activities of the DEs gained some notoriety there were young men joining who had no family ties in the movement, young people were being recruited by their friends. A familiar example is Severus, but possibly also Crabbe, Goyle or Wilkes. We can safely assume that among the unnamed DEs, all those from Slytherin House within 2 years from Severus and most of those 3-6 years older are either dead or imprisoned. Some may have been siblings of named DEs. If I am correct about the 4 who awaited at the Hog's Head having spent time with Tom on the continent, then the Mulciber and Rosier who were Severus' friends were the eldest in their respective families (though Mulciber could be up to 2 years older than Severus). I also doubt Avery's Imperius defense would have stood if he had a sibling who was killed in action as a DE. But as Rosier's death did not cast suspicion on Bellatrix, it seems cousins of Imperius pleaders are a possibility.
Those DEs that died or were imprisoned before they had a chance to have children would have names not present among the students of Slytherin House in the 1990s. But perhaps some did leave war-orphans. If Terri is correct that the reason Draco remained an only child was his parents' fear to give Voldemort (if he were to return) yet another potential hostage, and assuming the other DEs arrived at a similar conclusion, perhaps following the way Tom was treating his followers and their families as the war escalated, then children of DEs would be found in Harry's year and those above, maybe the year following Harry's, but no younger. And in any case, the latest possible birth date for a child of a man killed or imprisoned in early 1982 would be early 1983, and such a child would have entered Hogwarts in 1994. Who knows, maybe Pansy Parkinson is just as orphaned, just as deserving of sympathy as Harry? (OTOH chances are the Greengrass sisters were not daughters of a DE.)
The youngest crop of DEs came from among those who left school in 1981, 3 years after Severus. Those would be people he last saw in the open when they were about 15. And shortly after they became full-time DEs Severus started working full-time at Hogwarts. So there is a chance that even the Slytherins among them went unidentified by him.
While many of the Slytherin DEs recruited in the 1970s and very early 1980s entered full-time service directly out of school or shortly afterwards, this needn't have been universal, and was probably an even less common venue for recruitment of non-Slytherins. What motivated non-Slytherins to become DEs? Some (Travers?) may have been networked to Tom in the early days, for similar reasons as his followers from his own House - attraction to his charisma, a shared interest in the Dark Arts (and especially seeking knowledge away from Hogwarts censorship), a shared enjoyment of 'pranks' against shared rivals, hope for protection from other bullies, hope for a fruitful political alliance out of school and so forth. In the 1970s there would be some more who hoped to gain access to forbidden knowledge. Then there were students from families with members in more than one House - some of these shared a social network with the Slytherin future-DEs. Some of these were also recruited at a young age, shortly after school.
But I think something changed when the war escalated, followed by Crouch's harsher policies. On the one hand, some people who just had a general interest in Dark Arts (rather than in violence) may have been deterred. On the other hand, starting from 1980 there was a new type of recruits: People who were incensed by the Ministry's new policies. Some wanted to avenge the imprisonment, torture and killing of loved ones, relatives and friends. Some objected in principle with the policy that was turning their society into a police-state. Many of these came from a completely different social niche than most earlier recruits. Severus didn't know them well, nor did he have that many opportunities to meet them (on which occasions they were masked in any case). Albus had little reason to suspect them. (If Severus reported that there was no new gap in the circle after the latest report of arrest/killing of DEs by the Ministry, Albus could know the victim had been falsely suspected.) Thus, there was a greater chance for DEs from this group to have gone under the radar until after June 1995.
I do not know if we met DEs from this latter group in person. I imagine they were very quick to regret joining, and never got integrated socially with people like Lucius or Avery. Imagine Mr Macmillan, joining the DEs in his quest for fairness and justice, quickly realizing he went about it in a gravely mistaken way. He raises his son to value fairness and loyalty, but also beware of acting hot-headedly in the name of these values. While all the time dreading Voldemort's possible return, and the exposure of his secret if that were to happen. (One can substitute some other name, but no need to resort to fandom cliches.)
Of course most of the DEs were disillusioned by the time the war was reaching its latest stages, however I'm wondering if the massive joining of people with no ideological involvement, people who saw the DEs as enemies of their enemies rather than their friends, didn't further influence the body of the DEs into the lackluster level of activity we see in DH.
A couple of really off-the-wall ideas I wan't to add:
- We are told Blaise Zabini's mother was a serial widow who became rich through inheriting her many husbands. What if some of Blaise's step-fathers were DEs who had killed their respective predecessors?
- What if one of Arthur's brothers was a hidden, unsuspected, DE? That might explain why Arthur did not call his relatives to join the Battle of Hogwarts.
Harry estimates the number of DEs in the graveyard was over 30. On the day of the 7Potters battle the number of DEs was the number of DEs in the graveyard, plus Severus Snape, minus Gibbon (who died at Hogwarts in June 1997), plus the 10 prisoners (the ones who escaped in OOTP), plus any new recruits (we know of Draco and Stan Shunpike) minus any deaths we weren't told of (such as deaths in Azkaban of any of the DEs that were captured in OOTP or HBP). Considering the importance Tom placed on the mission I believe he wanted as many fighters as possible to be present (especially if he considered the possibility that the Order might try to sneak Harry on foot under the Invisibility Cloak). Lucius had to stay at home since he no longer had a wand. Peter was in charge of guarding Ollivander. There may have been a handful of DEs assisting the mission from the Ministry - maybe watching the Floo network in case the Order decided to use it anyway, watching the recordings of the Trace system in case its recordings would help locate Harry. Everyone else was in Little Whinging, waiting.
The DEs that participated in the battle split spontaneously into 7 teams to chase the 7 pairs of Potter-and-defender. The Hagrid team, which was considered of low probability for including the Real One was followed by 4 DEs, whereas the Kingsley team which was Tom's second guess was followed by 5. From this I conclude that the 6 teams were followed by 4-5 pursuers each. Tom's first guess for Harry's true accompaniment was Alastor, so it is likely this team had more pursuers. How many? After Harry and Hagrid down or scare away all 4 of their pursuers 2 new ones show up. These must have come from among those who had chased Alastor and Fletcher - they were freed after Fletcher Disapparated and Moody was killed. Later, when Harry's identity was revealed Tom himself showed up, having abandoned the chase of Kingsley and Hermione, with three other DEs. Kingsley says he was pursued by 5, of whom he incapacitated 3. At least one of the three that showed up when Tom started chasing Harry must have come from DEs who came with Tom from the chase after Moody, though it is possible all 3 did, and the remaining 2 of the team that originally chased Kingsley remained on task. From these considerations I think the number of DEs that originally chased Moody and Mundungus was anywhere between 6 and 13, and the number that chased the other 6 teams was between 25 and 29, totaling to between 31 and 42. Of these at least 2 were new recruits (from 1996-7), but they compensate for Peter and Lucius who remained at the Manor. Add 4-6 DEs assisting from the Ministry.
Were there any deaths among the DEs since June 1995 other than Barty Crouch, Igor Karkaroff and Gibbon? Of the 11 DEs that were arrested at the Ministry in June 1996, 6 (Rabastan, Mulciber, Jugson, Crabbe, Nott and Avery) are never mentioned again. Maybe some of them did die before the mass break-out of July 1997. However the Azkaban they stayed in was not as harsh as the one in which Sirius had spent 12 years, as most (all?) the dementors left it for the countryside. But it is still possible some DEs died of injuries sustained during the battle. A prime candidate would be Nott, who was injured so badly by the smashing prophecy globes that he did not participate in the chase nor the fighting. Additionally the DE who got trapped in the time-looping bell jar may have suffered permanent brain damage. I doubt there were any deaths of DEs in any clashes between them and the Ministry between June 1996 and the fall of the Ministry in early August 1997, as such deaths would have been paraded on the front page of the Prophet and there wouldn't have been the need for stunts like the arrest of Stan Shunpike.
Based on these numbers I conclude that the maximal number of VWar1 veteran DEs that could have possibly been alive in July 1997 is about 48, and the highest number of DEs that could have been in the circle in June 1995 was 40. In that circle Peter Pettigrew stood between the very large gap and Lucius. Next to Lucius was a gap for 2 people (Bellatrix and Rodolphus), followed by an unnamed DE. There was a section of unknown number of DEs and gaps, followed by a group of 4: Macnair, Crabbe, Goyle and Nott, coming back to the large gap, the spaces of 3 dead, Igor, Severus and Barty. How many gaps were there among the DEs in the large group between Lucius and Macnair? Considering that Harry could tell the difference between a gap intended for one and a gap intended for two, there must have been many places where a DE had a neighbor at least on one side. Assuming most of the gaps were for a single person I'd say well over half of the places in that stretch of the circle were occupied. I'd consider 60% occupancy low but at least not totally ridiculous, so at a total stretch no more than 22 gaps, of which 8 were for Azkaban prisoners, so no more than 14 gaps for dead DEs in the main part of the circle, and with the 3 dead DEs in the big gap (the one that included the 3 absentees) no more than 17 dead DEs represented as gaps. Of course if you think there were fewer than 40 DEs present at the graveyard the number of gaps should also be reduced. So - if the number of DEs at the cemetery was 40 then the maximal number of DEs that were members of the circle at any time in the first war was never more than 40+3+10+17 = 70.
Add to that DEs who died before Voldemort's downfall and whose place in the circle was taken by recruits who joined after their death. One such DE was Regulus, who died in 1979. There may have been a very small number who died before Crouch implemented his policies, sometime in 1980. With the new policies the Aurors were killing more people, but without clear information about who were among the DEs the Aurors were shooting in the dark. This changed after Severus' turning, early in 1981. However Moody says it took him 6 months to capture Igor, in July 1981. And we know the death of Evan Rosier and the capture of Travers, Mulciber and Dolohov came later still. If this was the general trend it is possible that most of the killings based on Severus' info took place in the summer and fall of 1981, after the wave of recruitment of recent Hogwarts alumni that must have come in June.
How many recruits could have reasonably joined the movement in that time? Considering that in 1970 the organization included both the older ones, from Tom's generation, and the older second generation members such as Bella and the Lestrange brothers, even if the circle already reached its largest size in 1980, I estimate an average of 5-6 recruits a year even with the highest reasonable estimate. Let's assume that in the earlier years it averages at 3-4 a year and in the later ones some 7-8. I'd say about 15 would be a high estimate for deaths replaced by new recruits under this scenario. Thus the total number of DEs who participated in the first war would be under 85, with no more than 70 alive at any given time.
If anyone wants to argue for more DEs surviving to the second war they should explain where they were on the night of the 7P battle. If anyone wants to argue for more gaps in the circle they should explain Harry's impression from the circle. And if anyone is arguing for more dead DEs before Tom's downfall they need to explain how enough DEs were recruited to replace them.
Personally I don't think the number was as high. In my head-canon there were some 36 DEs in the graveyard, and the circle had gaps for 10 prisoners and some 10 dead DEs (including the 3 dead DEs in the large gap of 6 positions Tom dwells on) and 3 absentees - for a total circle size of 59. To this we still need to add the number of those who died before Tom's downfall and were replaced by later recruits (a bit lower than the maximum of 15 proposed above. I'll go with 12). Thus in my head-canon some 71 people were DEs in total, though no more than 59 at any given time. We know the names of 29 of them, leaving 42 others. Of the 71, 32 were either dead or imprisoned by the time June 24th 1995 rolled by, 36 participated in the circle in the graveyard, 3 were absent. Of the 32 we have the names of 13, so 19 are unknown. Of the 36 we have the names of 13, 23 are unknown.
I am going to assume that a vast majority of the 19 were Slytherins (they got caught or killed either following Severus' info or the Dumbledores' knowledge of Tom's social contacts back in the day). And a vast majority of the 23 were non-Slytherins (mostly from other Hogwarts Houses, but some may have been from abroad). Who may have been among them?
The first DEs came from among Tom's school-time associates. Some were with him at the time of his interview (and may have spent some time with him on the continent, as I proposed in part 1 of this series), others rejoined him once he re-established his presence in Britain. I am guessing the core of this group were Slytherins, males, close to Tom in age, mostly from old families. In the 1940s such students would have been the ones Horace promoted as future leaders. They were also the ones that could have been useful to Tom in providing him with access to what he was interested in: genealogy and Dark Arts texts (safe from Albus' censorship). The Slug Club in 1942-3 consisted of 6 boys, including outstanding orphan Tom Riddle and purebloods Avery and Lestrange. If we follow the edited dates on the Black Family Tree then Alphard Black would have been within a year from Tom. I have no reason to think he became a DE despite looking at Tom in admiration in Horace's memory, but a couple of years later there came his brother Cygnus, father of Bellatrix, father-in-law of Lucius and probably uncle of Evan Rosier. I find it likely Cygnus was a DE, and it was through his promotion that Bellatrix made it into that boys' club. Maybe he died in 1979 while seeking information about Regulus' death for Walburga? The other Slug Club members may have been Rosier and Nott, 2 of the earliest DEs. (As for Avery and Lestrange - if indeed they became DEs they did not survive to 1995 - Tom did not call them out for claiming Imperius, and we can assume Albus would have known of their ties to Tom, so they wouldn't have been able to avoid suspicion.)
Tom also had associates that didn't match all those criteria. The elder Mulciber apparently does not come from an old (or old-enough) pureblood family. And Travers may have been a non-Slytherin associate. There may have been a few others like them.
Tom may have acquired some admirers in his days as shop assistant. The prime suspects would be members of the Ollivander and Burke families. Rowling tells us Ollivander has a living son (and deceased daughter). Yet not only is this son not working in the milenia-old family business, but once the father is released from captivity (that lasted some 20-21 months!) he does not seek to be reunited with said son. And then there is the mixture of admiration and horror in which Ollivander speaks of Voldemort, both in 1991 and in 1998. I think there is no little chance that a son raised by Ollivander might have developed quite a crush for someone like Tom if he encountered him at a vulnerable time of his life. And if they did not meet at school but later, Ollivander Jr wouldn't have been part of Tom's known social network. His DE status would have remained unknown to Albus or Severus until at least 1995, maybe even 1996 (we do not know when the DEs stopped wearing masks in private company). In which case, he could have been the one to lure the elder Ollivander into the DE's trap, allowing for kidnapping without struggle.
Similarly, not only do we not meet Caractacus Burke in the 1990s, we don't meet anyone else by that name working in the store that he had founded. Well, Caractacus was an old man when Albus interviewed him, probably around 1950. And maybe he had no sons. Heck, maybe his daughter married the elder Borgin's son, and the Borgin we meet in 1992 was the heir of both partners. Maybe. But recall Tom's reaction to Hepzibah's tale of how Burke had underpaid Merope for it - his eyes flashed scarlet. I'm sure Burke's name was on Tom's to-kill list. Probably all the Burkes. Caractacus was likely killed shortly after Tom's return. And what better way to destroy a family than employing its members as his servants (well, slaves) and sending them on suicidal missions? Who said the Malfoys were the first to receive this treatment? If so, I doubt the younger Burkes even knew why they ended up that way.
Dolohov may have joined Tom on the continent, but it doesn't look like anyone else came with Tom in the late 1950s (as I said before, Igor Karkaroff, wherever he was from, must have joined later, when the DEs no longer showed their faces to each other). But once he was back in Britain Tom recollected his following from his school days, and soon enough the oldest from among the second generation. And he got the school friends to keep quiet about his true identity and his blood status, even to their children. We know of a few who likely joined the DEs before even the early stages of the war: Bellatrix left Hogwarts around 1969 or 1970. I'm guessing the brothers Lestrange were not far from her in age. (Does anyone think it is a coincidence that the DEs started worrying Albus and his closest supporters just around the time Bellatrix left school?) Some Slytherin DEs who avoided suspicion were likely to have been in this age group - those whose school days overlapped neither Severus' nor Tom's. Possibly these were not sons of Tom's early followers, but had a less direct link. Maybe their mothers were the ones who overlapped with Tom. Or perhaps their wives were daughters of early associates of Tom. Or perhaps they were the nephews of early DEs. Some shared surnames with known DEs, but not all. It is possible one or two of them had children in Slytherin House in the 1990s.
Once the activities of the DEs gained some notoriety there were young men joining who had no family ties in the movement, young people were being recruited by their friends. A familiar example is Severus, but possibly also Crabbe, Goyle or Wilkes. We can safely assume that among the unnamed DEs, all those from Slytherin House within 2 years from Severus and most of those 3-6 years older are either dead or imprisoned. Some may have been siblings of named DEs. If I am correct about the 4 who awaited at the Hog's Head having spent time with Tom on the continent, then the Mulciber and Rosier who were Severus' friends were the eldest in their respective families (though Mulciber could be up to 2 years older than Severus). I also doubt Avery's Imperius defense would have stood if he had a sibling who was killed in action as a DE. But as Rosier's death did not cast suspicion on Bellatrix, it seems cousins of Imperius pleaders are a possibility.
Those DEs that died or were imprisoned before they had a chance to have children would have names not present among the students of Slytherin House in the 1990s. But perhaps some did leave war-orphans. If Terri is correct that the reason Draco remained an only child was his parents' fear to give Voldemort (if he were to return) yet another potential hostage, and assuming the other DEs arrived at a similar conclusion, perhaps following the way Tom was treating his followers and their families as the war escalated, then children of DEs would be found in Harry's year and those above, maybe the year following Harry's, but no younger. And in any case, the latest possible birth date for a child of a man killed or imprisoned in early 1982 would be early 1983, and such a child would have entered Hogwarts in 1994. Who knows, maybe Pansy Parkinson is just as orphaned, just as deserving of sympathy as Harry? (OTOH chances are the Greengrass sisters were not daughters of a DE.)
The youngest crop of DEs came from among those who left school in 1981, 3 years after Severus. Those would be people he last saw in the open when they were about 15. And shortly after they became full-time DEs Severus started working full-time at Hogwarts. So there is a chance that even the Slytherins among them went unidentified by him.
While many of the Slytherin DEs recruited in the 1970s and very early 1980s entered full-time service directly out of school or shortly afterwards, this needn't have been universal, and was probably an even less common venue for recruitment of non-Slytherins. What motivated non-Slytherins to become DEs? Some (Travers?) may have been networked to Tom in the early days, for similar reasons as his followers from his own House - attraction to his charisma, a shared interest in the Dark Arts (and especially seeking knowledge away from Hogwarts censorship), a shared enjoyment of 'pranks' against shared rivals, hope for protection from other bullies, hope for a fruitful political alliance out of school and so forth. In the 1970s there would be some more who hoped to gain access to forbidden knowledge. Then there were students from families with members in more than one House - some of these shared a social network with the Slytherin future-DEs. Some of these were also recruited at a young age, shortly after school.
But I think something changed when the war escalated, followed by Crouch's harsher policies. On the one hand, some people who just had a general interest in Dark Arts (rather than in violence) may have been deterred. On the other hand, starting from 1980 there was a new type of recruits: People who were incensed by the Ministry's new policies. Some wanted to avenge the imprisonment, torture and killing of loved ones, relatives and friends. Some objected in principle with the policy that was turning their society into a police-state. Many of these came from a completely different social niche than most earlier recruits. Severus didn't know them well, nor did he have that many opportunities to meet them (on which occasions they were masked in any case). Albus had little reason to suspect them. (If Severus reported that there was no new gap in the circle after the latest report of arrest/killing of DEs by the Ministry, Albus could know the victim had been falsely suspected.) Thus, there was a greater chance for DEs from this group to have gone under the radar until after June 1995.
I do not know if we met DEs from this latter group in person. I imagine they were very quick to regret joining, and never got integrated socially with people like Lucius or Avery. Imagine Mr Macmillan, joining the DEs in his quest for fairness and justice, quickly realizing he went about it in a gravely mistaken way. He raises his son to value fairness and loyalty, but also beware of acting hot-headedly in the name of these values. While all the time dreading Voldemort's possible return, and the exposure of his secret if that were to happen. (One can substitute some other name, but no need to resort to fandom cliches.)
Of course most of the DEs were disillusioned by the time the war was reaching its latest stages, however I'm wondering if the massive joining of people with no ideological involvement, people who saw the DEs as enemies of their enemies rather than their friends, didn't further influence the body of the DEs into the lackluster level of activity we see in DH.
A couple of really off-the-wall ideas I wan't to add:
- We are told Blaise Zabini's mother was a serial widow who became rich through inheriting her many husbands. What if some of Blaise's step-fathers were DEs who had killed their respective predecessors?
- What if one of Arthur's brothers was a hidden, unsuspected, DE? That might explain why Arthur did not call his relatives to join the Battle of Hogwarts.