The Necromancer

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

When Barty put Harry Potter’s name in the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort didn’t expect much to come of it. As far as Voldemort was concerned, Potter was dead, burned to a crisp in the house of his muggle kin. All the official reports came to this conclusion and Voldemort didn’t have any reason to think otherwise.

And yet…they’d never found the boy’s body, and that bothered Voldemort. Potter’s three relatives had left behind blackened corpses, according to the reports, so why hadn’t Potter? On top of that, Voldemort heard from several sources that Dumbledore also didn’t seem convinced that Potter had perished and was still keeping an eye out for the boy at the very least.

Then there was the prophecy to consider, even though Voldemort as of yet didn’t know what it said aside from the first line. But Dumbledore certainly had put weight behind it, urging the Potters to hide themselves away to protect the potential prophecy child.

Of course, that hadn’t worked out so very well for them in the end, but neither had it for Voldemort, and all because the killing curse bounced off the boy as though it had suddenly been transfigured into a rubber ball.

No, all things considered, Voldemort couldn’t dismiss the remote possibility that Potter was still alive somewhere in some capacity, no matter how convincing the reports of his death were. And thus he’d come up with a plan, thanks mostly to Barty, to infiltrate Hogwarts and keep a very close eye on Dumbledore to see what the old man was up to when it came to finding Harry Potter.

It was Barty’s idea to impersonate Alastor Moody. A risky gamble, because impersonating anyone for a long stretch of time was exhausting for many reasons, and it also increased the risk of being discovered. The longer one spent time around others, the more chances one had of making mistakes and being found out. But Barty had known Moody since he was a child, had grown up around the man since his father worked with him in a few capacities at the Ministry, and his mother had been Moody’s second cousin once removed. Therefore Moody had been a regular guest in the Crouch household and Barty had spent a lifetime watching the man and learning his behaviours.

If anyone could impersonate Alastor Moody right under Dumbledore’s nose and get away with it, it would be Barty Crouch Jr.

And then one night in September a week after Hogwarts had started, Barty had called him on the communication mirrors they used to keep in touch, and suggested smuggling Potter’s name into the Goblet of Fire. Barty reasoned that if someone was keeping the boy hidden away, as some of the more interesting conspiracy theories surrounding the boy suggested was the case, then the magic of this ancient goblet would force Potter out of hiding, whether he liked it or not. Voldemort had believed this an exceptionally clever plan and given Barty permission to execute it, even if he doubted anything would come of it.

Barty had managed the job thanks to an invisibility cloak and several strong confundus charms, and now was the day that the names of the champions would be selected. Voldemort reasoned if anything out of the ordinary happened, Barty would call him on the mirror, but otherwise he put it out of his mind and focused on more important matters.

Ever since Voldemort had returned he found himself faced with many difficult choices. When he’d stolen the Philosopher’s Stone right out of Hogwarts while riding on the back of Quirrell’s head, he’d still been of a mind to pick up the war where he’d left it off once he got his body back. He had realized at the last moment that perhaps he shouldn’t give the game away so soon that it was Voldemort who had taken the stone instead of just an ambitious, lone teacher in the form of Quirrell, and thus he’d let the three children who’d so valiantly tried to stop him live. He’d knocked them around a little, to make sure they understood that what they’d done was very foolish indeed, but he’d left them to be discovered by whomever eventually realized they were missing, convinced this would throw Dumbledore off his scent. After all, Voldemort was known for killing anyone who stood in his way.