#i also have a theory on barty but thats a different post

[regheart]

regulus becoming a death eater at sixteen is something that i have a hard time wrapping my mind around, mostly because i can't imagine him doing a lot between joining and dying

the only other case that we know for sure of this happening is draco malfoy, but under very different circumstances. draco was marked after nine death eaters, including his father, were arrested, and tasked with the seemingly impossible task of killing dumbledore. the main purpose of this was to torment his family and, later on, ensure his collaboration

i think something similar to this secondary goal might be involved in recruiting soldiers so young

at sixteen, your brain is not fully formed and it's hard to see nuance, hard to structure arguments, you don't know enough of the world and it's easier to get attached into worldviews or political parties or philosophies or cults

i think that, to voldemort, ensuring the collaboration of these boys when they were at their most eager would guarantee their loyalty later on

because, realistically, there's not much he could have done with teenagers inside hogwarts. spy on dumbledore? he would know. have them sneaking out at night to hogsmead and side apparating to go kill some muggles and then be like oh sorry gotta comeback i have charms in the morning

so young death eaters — in 'padfoot returns' sirius lists some names he knew who were friends in hogwarts and later were arrested or killed — would have little use in the killing and torturing, but they still could be potential recruiters, feeding discourse into their colleagues, radicalizing other children, creating the illusion for other people that they are already winning and there's no point in fighting against it

so for the specific case of regulus, i can see him growing up with parents who believe in pureblood supremacy, his brother gets chastised for acting out and he doesn't want to be like sirius, does he? everybody in slytherin is talking about the dark lord and his oldest cousin who is so smart says he is the greatest wizard to ever exist — and he falls into the trap

he's obsessed, he's only sixteen, he's got his parents approval for his politics (what does a sixteen years old knows of politics?), sirius left and he feels lonely, he fills up a wall with paper cuts of everything that's it's being talked about the dark lord, because the dark lord is all people talk about these days

finally, he's attractive to voldemort because of his name. he must be reasonably smart. and bellatrix recommends him. that's it

i can lay it all in a way that makes sense to me, not only from what we know of regulus, but also from what voldemort might do as a military leader. ultimately, i believe sirius was right in assuming regulus was unimportant to voldemort, that's something i've always assumed from 'kreacher's tale,' volunteering a house elf was his first chance of being properly useful and that was why he was so eager to do it

(he died in '79, either still on school or in the first semester after graduating, not older than eighteen)

note 1: barty crouch jr was described as a teenager at the time of trial, later in 1981, meaning he was also recruited very young. he would have been attractive to voldemort for the possibility of spying on crouch sr, and he was one of the most fanatical followers

note 2: it's safe to assume regulus became a death eater not long after sirius ran away and while i think the aftermath played a role in his mental state leading up to that point, putting the blame on sirius doesn't make any sense because there were many other factors, sirius was right in leaving a place where felt unsafe and he had no responsibility to calculate all of the possible repercussions of his actions in influencing his already blood supremacist brother of joining a cult

#hp meta #i'm trying to fill the gaps between canon information without diverging from it #what voldemort was actually thinking during the first war it's something i can't be so sure #most of the younger death eaters joined by the last few years of the war #i also have a theory on barty but thats a different post #regulus black #death eaters #first wizarding war #lord voldemort #sirius black