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harry potter - Why was Severus Snape allowed to be a Death Eater?



It's been a while since I read the books, but I thought the Death Eaters were all pure-bloods and only associated with other pure-bloods. How was a half-blood allowed to be almost royalty in Voldemort's court? Was it just because his position at Hogwarts allowed him otherwise unavailable access? Maybe I just assumed the Death Eaters were all pure-bloods. Like I said, it's been a while since I read them, and the movies didn't seem to cover this in that canon.


I know this looks like a lot of questions, but it's all about Snape being so trusted even though he wasn't "pure."


POST EDITED : I did not mean to include Voldemort as a pure-blood. Sloppy editing is my only excuse...



Answer





OP: "I thought the Deatheaters and Lord Voldemort were all Pure-bloods"




Well, to start off, Lord Voldemort was a half-blood. Tom Riddle, Sr. was a Muggle :)



More importantly, who is and isn't invited to DEs wasn't a democratic vote. Lord Voldemort decided. To quote from a related discussion, JKR patterned blood purity ideas on Nazis, and in Nazi Germany, the biggest rule about who was Jewish was "whatever boss says":



These events (half-Jew Erhard Milch being issued a German Blood Certificate) prompted Hermann Göring to say famously "Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich" ("I decide who is a Jew")



And Voldemort (aside from being half-blood) wasn't too picky at the expense of practicality - heck, he employed Fenrir Greyback, a werewolf. As far as Snape, he had a host of reasons to pick him:




  • Devoted to Dark Arts ("up to his eyeballs in dark arts" as Sirius said)





  • Master Potioner




  • Overall talented and powerful wizard




  • Snape was friends with proto-DEs (Mulciber, etc...) and enemies with proto-OOTP (Marauders).




  • Shared with Voldemort not only having a Muggle father, but a bitter resentment of that father (Severus and Tobias had poor relation)





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