In OotP she effectively retooled and reused the basic plotline from PS/SS. Tweaked and given some different emphasis, but with most of the same situations reused as well.

But not all of them, it seems. There is a major one that she didn’t revive.

So what is the biggest “situation” that occured in PS/SS that did not get replayed in OotP?

Well, that’s an easy enough one to answer.

The hostage situation.

I contend that much of the background tension of PS/SS is built upon the fact that Dumbledore and the staff were attempting to deal with a hostage situation — in addition to trying to trap Voldemort.

There is nothing remotely like a Hostage situation in OotP. Unless you want to count Sirius Black’s raging case of cabin fever. Which I don’t.

She’d already reused that particular “situation”. Prominently. In GoF.

In fact we got almost a complete reversal of the hostage situation in GoF, reversed from the way we had been given it in PS/SS, anyway. And we certainly got a reversal of the conclusion. In PS/SS they lost the hostage, but managed to keep Voldemort from returning. In GoF it went exactly the opposite direction. Tom returned, but they did manage to rescue Alistor Moody.

And I have come round to the idea that there is a strong possibility, even if not a certainty, that Albus and Snape knew that they needed to do it, too. Rowling is probably never going to either confirm nor deny this readng.

Now that I have finally gotten off the fence concerning the loyalties of former Professor Snape, his role, and even more particularly, his actions, over the course of GoF stand in need of some re-evaluation.

Because, now that I am convinced that he is indeed a White Hat, some of those actions at first glance look a bit dicy.

Of course Rowling meant them to. She wanted to keep us guessing.

But even from my current position of having taken a stand on Snape’s loyalties, I am still half convinced that the summoning of that Dementor may have been Snape’s doing.

****

I came out of my first reading of GoF with the conviction that Fudge was, if not a Death Eater, at least a willing and knowing supporter of Voldemort and his aims. I still suspect that Fudge found Malfoy’s openly stated claims as to the proper hierarchies which should be maintained within the wizarding world attractive. Particularly if he personally was assured a place among the ruling class.

But by the time OotP’s release was imminent, I wasn’t so sure any more, and by the time I finished reading OotP I no longer believed that Fudge was himself numbered among, or had ever knowingly supported, Voldemort or the Death Eaters. And it is clear by the end of the first chapter of HBP that this is almost certainly the case.

My main reason to have considered the possibility in the first place was the summoning of that Dementor.

And from what we now know of Fudge, it is a lot clearer to me that the presence of that Dementor was far more probably due to Fudge having been “played”. It is surprisingly easy to “play” Cornelius Fudge. He is a very predictable little man. And the only person known to have been in a position to have played Fudge at the relevant time, in the proper manner to set him calling for a Dementor, was Severus Snape.

If Snape was indeed the person responsible, there is something quite alarmingly efficient about how Snape managed to spread the damage across both of his principals’ organizations by neutralizing Barty Crouch Jr. Dumbledore lost essential testimony of Voldemort’s return and, incidentally, another opportunity to clear Sirius Black’s name that night. After the fact, he turned out to have lost a not insignificant part of his credibility as well. Voldemort lost his “most loyal servant”.

And what Snape gained by it was his entry back into Voldemort’s good graces.

Voldemort really was not stupid. Or, not until DHs, anyway. By neutralizing Crouch before he could be officially questioned, the news of Voldemort’s return was confined to Harry’s testimony and Dumbledore’s support of it. And Malfoy, in his own behalf, had already taken steps to undermine public confidence in those.

Indeed, once the Potter boy managed to make his escape, all of Voldemort’s plans had been completely derailed; throwing him into a situation for which he was not prepared.

And then, on top of it, his current agent at Hogwarts managed to give himself away.

Snape’s quick intervention had bought him time.

Indeed, by all rights, Lord Voldemort ought to have been feeling very obliged to Severus Snape.

And by all accounts, since that evening, I think he was. Snape’s subsequent position within the organization was evidence enough of that. And I think that much of his enhanced status might stem from the neutralizing of Barty Crouch.

****

And it was Snape who Dumbledore had sent to tell Fudge that there was a captured Death Eater to be taken into custody.

Which is exactly what he did.

And if Fudge then shows up to do it with a Dementor in tow, rather than a team of Aurors, it is most likely to have been due to something that Snape told him, isn’t it?

And it is not all that difficult to guess exactly what.

Consider; This was supposed to be an arrest, not an execution.

Crouch Sr is no longer the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and Amelia Bones has a very good track record for fairness. The wizarding world hasn’t been at war for over a decade. Even a suspected Death Eater should be entitled to a proper trial.

An Azkaban escapee, however, is not.

From the precedent set in Book 3, apparently the only thing an Azkaban escapee is entitled to is the Dementor’s Kiss. All Snape had to do was murmur — with absolute truthfulness — “escaped from Azkaban” to Fudge and the presence of a Dementor was assured. Fudge only knows about one Azkaban escapee. Even if Albus had broached the subject of Black’s possible innocence to him before the current school year commenced, he probably leaped to the conclusion that they had managed to recapture Sirius Black.

Upon the whole, and taking later events into consideration, I think that it was Lord Voldemort who came out very much ahead in that particular trade-off. Which is not a comforting thought.

On the other hand, Albus’s agent managed to settle into place in the middle of Tom’s organization by the end of the evening, and there appears to be no suggestion that Tom regarded Snape, or his loyalties, with any degree of suspicion whatsoever.

But he was not really vulnerable enough for the Ministry to have been able to take him down at that point even if they’d had Crouch’s testimony. As I’ve said elsewhere, I really did believe at that point that Snape knew about the Horcruxes. Rowling, however implies that he did not.

(Although he may have been meant to. The books were left right where he could not fail to have found them. Albus didn’t antcipate that Hermione would summon them through the open window and make off with them.)

****

For that matter; I am also not altogether convinced that Dumbledore and Snape were not already suspicious of “Moody” well before the night of the 3rd task.

Part of this possibility hinges upon how much information an active Auror like Moody might have had regarding the Dark Mark back during VoldWar I. Fudge — who came out of the Dept. of Magical Catastrophies, not Law Enforcement — knew nothing of how Voldemort had “marked” his followers, but the war had been over for nearly a decade before Fudge took office and he may simply never have been on a “need to know” list. Back in the war years, such information is likely to have been highly classified, if it was known at all.

And yet, “Moody” had openly taunted Snape about his Dark Mark all the way back in January during the Christmas break. On the very same night that he had just raided Snape’s stores of boomslang skin. That could have been a piece of carelessness which would have alerted both Snape and Dumbledore to the imposture.

Now that we know rather more about the mental accuteness of Severus Snape (even if Rowling does seem to have been determined to overlay it with a thick layer of terminal cluelessness in DHs. No one’s mental facilities appear to have survived contact with DHs. Apart from Neville, Luna and in some patchy incidences, Hermione), can we really assume that having just come from his office, and the fresh discovery that someone has raided his store of boomslang skin, and then to run slap into Alistor Moody, with whom he then got into a pissing contest over Moody having also searched his office, being taunted about his Dark mark, and whose hip flask was legendary, he might not have connected the dots? Snape was very good at connecting dots.

What is more, Harry was not positioned where he could actually see both of their faces during that little contest when Snape and Moody attempted to stare each other down, after which Snape abruptly broke contact and stated that he was going back to bed.

From the depth of the Dementors’ effect upon young Crouch, I very much doubt that he was an Occlumens. He wouldn’t have learned that skill hiding under a cloak in hs father’s house, either.

Might Snape have taken the chance of briefly attempting to “read” Moody?

If so, it was very brief, and wouldn’t have revealed who the fellow was, but it might have shown him the theft of the boomslang skin, which the fellow had just acomplished, and was probably carrying concealed on his person, at that very moment.

Once the possibility of Polyjuice was in the equation, they might not know who the fellow was, but they would have known he was NOT Moody.

Instead, they knew he had captured Moody.

****

Dumbledore and Snape already knew that Voldemort had managed to insert an agent to mess with the tournament. That was obvious the minute Harry’s name came out of the Goblet. It also tipped them off to the fact that Voldemort was running some kind of a scam of his own under cover of it.

And, really, when you stop to think of it, their list of possible suspects was remarkably short.

This is Voldemort we are talking about. Assisted by Pettigrew. Both of whom have been out of touch for the past 14 years. Can anyone really imagine that their enemy agent was one of the foreign students?

Don’t be ridiculous.

How were they to have even been able to guess which foreign students were going to be selected as candidates to compete?

There were never really more than three people on that suspect list. Igor Karkaroff, whose past associations were already a matter of public record; Madame Maxime who is obviously half Giant. The Giants had supported Voldemort last time round — although Madam M was obviously only included on the suspect list as an outside possibility, in the service of “completness”. And, now, Professor Moody. And with the suggestion of polyjuice in the equation, Moody just jumped to the head of the list. Who on earth would want to impersonate Karkaroff? He was already a suspicious character without adding that complicaton. And Post-DHs we know that Polyjuice doesn’t work on half-Giants. Which raises the probability that you cannot Polyjuice yourself into one, either.

Other outsiders like Barty Crouch Sr and Ludo Bagman had been on the list as well, back when Harry’s name was first called, since they had been at the school during the time that the Goblet had been taking names. But they weren’t on site full time, and while you couldn’t completely dismiss the possibility that someone from the Ministry might be involved, they were essentially also-rans. Even Rita and her photographer didn’t show up until after Harry’s name had come out of the Goblet.

We’ve got a couple of other variables in the equation as well. Crouch Jr had also been out of touch for over a decade, and we don’t know what the relationship was between Snape and the real Moody by the opening of Year 4. But we have been hinted that Albus kept Snape’s function as a spy quite separate from the Order. At the end of the war Moody had not been convinced of Snape’s loyalties, not having ever been in a position to have seen them demonstrated.

But “Moody” may have given himself away in other small ways already.

The real Moody was openly skeptical when Dumbledore vouched for Snape in the Pensieve memory of Karkaroff’s plea bargain hearing. But that took place more than a dozen years earlier, and the story that Dumbledore and Snape have always given out was that Snape had only turned himself in to Dumbledore in remorse, and turned his cloak as well, when he had been hired on as a teacher. That was only a matter of some 7–8 weeks earlier. I’d have been skeptical, too. Moody didn’t know at that time that Snape had probably been working for Albus for at least several months earlier.

But that memory was quite a while ago. Snape has been spying on Malfoy and his associates on Dumbledore’s behalf ever since, and the real Moody may know this. And Snape’s information no doubt proved extremely useful in the mopping up period after Godric’s Hollow, and the period of the Death Eater trials. We don’t know how Snape and Alistor Moody were interacting by Harry’s 4th year. And, more to the point, neither did Crouch Jr, unless he thought to ask. Which, unfortunately, he probably did. But he was still improvising.

And for all that Barty Jr had no doubt known the old Auror very well, through his father, once upon a time, and for all that he still had the real Moody available for questioning, he may concievably have overplayed his role. Taunting Snape aout the Dark Mark could have been a mistake that set Snape on his guard. In fact we saw Snape immediately retreat behind the usual, blank, Occlumency mask that he wears in the presence of fellow DEs as soon as “Moody” brought the subject up.

Or at any rate he wore his mask until he caught sight of the Marauders’ Map and went off on another of his “This all has to do with Potter!” rants. Misdirection, perhaps? Could be.

****

Snape wore that same mask through much of the Spinners’ End chapter as well, and it was evidently familiar enough that neither of his guests appear to have been made suspicious by it. He did not typically wear that mask at Grimmauld Place. That really ought to give us some hint of who he considers to be on “safe” to reveal hs own feelings around.

For another thing, we don’t know how many potions require boomslang skin. If it’s a necessary component of half a dozen fairly commonly used ones, then the conclusion to draw from a raid on it is not as obvious to the characters as it would be to the readers. But the fact that is is not in the students’ supply cupboard argues against it being broadly useful in a wide variety of potions.

One also has to ask whether Snape informed Dumbledore of the raid(s) on his supply of boomslang skin. But once I got off the fence and declared him to be a White Hat, I have to conclude that he probably did.

And for that matter, Snape may have decided to “use” his Dark mark to signal to a possible DE colleague by rubbing his left arm, as he was observed to have been doing in the Egg and the Eye conversation with Moody, possibly to see whether Moody would respond to his gambit.

Which he did, by taunting Snape about “spots that don’t come off”.

The likely presence of polyjuice in the equation combined with the visible presence of Moody’s hip flask and the taunt about the Dark Mark would have offered a difficult conclusion for Dumbledore not to draw. Did he manage to miss it?

I doubt it.

****

What is more, I suspect that by the night of the 3rd task their list of suspects had already been narrowed down to one, and that Albus had a very good idea of just who the imposter really was. He did, after all, send Minerva to fetch Winky, before Crouch’s Polyjuice had worn off.

For that matter, I think we were given a clue as to the direction of Albus’s suspicions when Harry fell into the Pensieve.

We saw there three courtroom dramas. Karkaroff’s plea bargain hearing, Ludo Bagman’s trial, and the trial of the Lestranges and Barty Crouch Jr.

Well it is easy enough to understand why Albus might be reviewing his recollection of Karkaroff’s plea bargain. And it would make sense to take another look at Bagman’s trial as well, so long as he is at it. And Albus had been sitting near the real Alistor Moody at both of those proceedings, too, so he could take stock of his recollection of Moody’s behavior, as well.

But why would he have wanted to review the Crouch trial? Barty Crouch’s son was dead. The Lestranges were still inside. Barty himself had just allegedly been seen on the school grounds, acting very strangely, and then disappeared. Recollections of his son’s trial could have little relevance to the whereabouts of Barty Crouch Sr, now could they?

So why was Albus Dumbledore reviewing the trial of a dead man?

Alistor Moody was nowhere to be seen during the Crouch trial.

Had Dumbledore already figured the whole puzzle out before Moody made his final move? (Which might explain why he oh-so-briefly left Harry alone with Moody after the return from the graveyard, and why he and his deputies went straight to Moody’s office after Harry disapeared the second time.) Dumbledore, does seem to have a thing for catching his enemies in the act, or you would think that they might have simply cornered “Moody” at any point during the year and confiscated his hip flask until the Polyjuice wore off.

On this head, I think that their problem was that once they concluded that polyjuice was in the equation, they knew they had another hostage situation on their hands. They knew the real Alistor Moody had to be imprisoned somewhere in the castle. And that they did not want to risk losing another hostage the way they lost Quirrell.

Of course they also couldn’t be sure that whoever “Moody” was, that he was working alone. They may have had an on-site conspiracy to juggle.

As in the case of Quirrell, however, they could be reasonably certain that the DE, whoever he was, would try very hard to keep Moody alive. But I’ll have to say that Albus certainly made a piss-poor job of any effort to rescue him, if that’s the case. Confiscating the hip flask for an hour or two would have made a lot more sense.

[Side note: I am inclined to believe that a good deal of the reason that Crouch and Pettigrew were able to subdue Moody so readily was the shock effect of Moody’s finding himself under attack by two “dead” men. Ghosts cannot perform spells. They may well have managed to get closer to him on that account than two strangers might. Moody had known Pettigrew reasonably well back in the days of the Order, and he certainly would have known his former boss’s son.]

****

And for that matter, now that we come right down to the nub of it; does it strike anybody else that the whole “Confession of Barty Crouch Jr” is throughly unconvincing? Upon consideration there seems to be an awfully lot less to that confession than meets the eye.

In fact that whole sequence, once closely examined, collapses like an underdone soufflé when you slam the oven door. Try analysing it and you end up suspecting everyone. Of terminal incompetence at the very least.

Although by this point I am mostly inclined to suspect Rowling herself of a stretch of sloppy plotting than any of her characters of anything halfway coherant. The pieces were all there, she could have put them together a lot better. And we also need to remind ourselves that part of this may have come about as a result of the patch job that she found herself having to do 2/3 through the writing of the story, but if so we don’t know what part.

In the first place; can anyone actually tell me what Dumbledore got out of that confession that he could actually use for anything? He already knew that Voldemort was back. He already knew that Pettigrew was alive. And what good are the details of how the late Barty Crouch Sr sprung his wayward and unrepentant son from Azkaban going to do anybody now?

The only thing Dumbledore got from the exercise was a confirmation of his suspicion that the missing Bertha Jorkins was toast, and what Barty had done with his father’s body. Sure it was probably all very satisfying to know just how it all happened — assuming that any of it was true — but what good is any of that going to do us against Voldemort’s future plans — of which we learned absolutely nothing? At the end of that session I really don’t find myself with a lot of respect for Dumbledore’s skills or technique in interrogation.

For that matter, there are also a lot of very peculiar omissions from that confession. Particularly when one considers that the suspect was allegedly drugged to the eyes with truth serum. Can we really be all that sure that we really do know “how it all happened”?

****

And, do you know; back when I was still sitting on the fence over the question of Snape’s loyalties, I just wasn’t at all astonished to learn in passing toward the end of OotP that Professor Snape keeps false Veritiserum in his stores as well as the real stuff.

I also remembered that before Dumbledore sent Snape off to find Fudge, Dumbledore had sent Snape to fetch the Veritiserum — which Snape did, with all haste — once he managed to tear himself away from the sight of his own face in Crouch’s foe glass. (Is that why he arranged for a Dementor? Just in case Crouch had recognized his face in the foe glass and reported it to Voldemort? Snape had a lot to lose if his cover was blown, and the foe glass was evidence of a sort that might be hard to explain away.) But I can’t hang any convincing theorizing on that particular hook from the vantage point of the end of HBP. Nor post-DHs.

Still, either Barty Crouch was even cleverer and more in control of his responses under Veritiserum than we have credited him with being, or there must have been something wrong with that particular batch of the stuff. Because his claims of how it all came about just don’t add up with what we saw over the course of the book.

Or else he was off in his own seperate reality, and, however sincere, we can’t rely on anything he had to say for himself being supported by the facts.

****.

I mean, really. When you look back after finishing Book 4, doesn’t it strike you as just a bit overly fortuitous that Crouch Jr had managed to slip his leash and send up the Dark Mark at the World Cup campgrounds, forcing his father to publicly dismiss his House Elf, in order to save face, right at that particular moment? It’s almost like he knew someone was waiting...

Like, at the very least, he’d been given an inspirational pep talk quite recently, and that his father’s Imperius had “quite suddenly” weakened.

Doesn’t the timing for everything to do with the adventure at World Cup and Barty Jr’s rescue from his father’s house sound just a little bit too convenient to you?

Isn’t it an awfully big coincidence that Barty Jr should have managed to fight his way clear of the effects of the curse right at the point when he just happened to see a kid’s wand that he could lift?

Or that he and Winky should just happen to both be stunned so she couldn’t get him away from the site after he sent up the Dark Mark — and that she should just happen to be found with the suspect wand in her hand, causing her master a public embarrassment resulting in her dismissal?

And yet he says nothing of how Winky came to be found holding the stolen wand.

And on the other end of the equation, does it really seem likely that Voldemort and Wormtail should have placed such confidence in Providence as to leave the whole matter up to chance that it would all just naturally work out to their convenience without any action on their part?

Just how many coincidences are we supposed to swallow here?

Crouch Jr’s version of these events — given while “under Veritiserum” — omits any suggestion of any influence from outside the Crouch household until the night that Voldemort showed up in the arms of his servant Wormtail, put his father under Imperius and rescued him. But the actual timing of all these events immediately starts looking highly suspicious under any closer examination.

I’ll ask you again; is it likely that for such a vital part of their overall plan as springing Barty Crouch from durance vile under his father’s domination — which they must have realized couldn’t be done until the Elf was out of the way — that anything would be left to chance? We’re talking about Lord Voldemort here. You know, the guy with the weakness for absolutely Byzantine plots.

And this plot, moreover, is one that requires absolutely hair-trigger timing.

Crouch clearly states that he and Wormtail had prepared the polyjuice Potion which was used for his imposture of the real Alastor Moody in advance. This only makes common sense.

But, polyjuice — as we know from CoS — needs to brew for close to three weeks before it is ready for the final ingredient. Moody was attacked and captured the evening of August 31; the night before the Trio boarded the Hogwarts Express, which was the very last chance that they had in which to do it. So the Polyjuice must have been started no later than about August 10.

Figuring from the other end of the equation; Harry’s birthday is July 31. At the point of the story’s opening — the night of the murder of Frank Bryce at the Riddle House — Harry has already turned 14, and has had time to finish off two of the four birthday cakes that he was sent by his best friends and his godfather (and which he is rationing out to last as long as he could, before being back on the starvation rations of Dudley’s diet). Being swept off to take part in the World Cup adventure covers the next three days, and then we are blithely led to understand that the uproar at the Ministry that followed covered not much more than a week.

In his earlier “dream” of Frank Bryce’s murder, Voldemort and Wormtail were newly returned to England. Voldemort also said that they would be staying in the Riddle House for perhaps a week. He said that their next move would take place after the Quidditch World Cup was over. (In fact, immediately after it was over.) We don’t know that they actually held to that schedule. A recollection of just how long it takes to brew Polyjuice might well have advanced matters.

In any case, it sounds very much as though Barty Crouch Sr got very little more time than the minimum needed to get his party home from the campground and to send Winky packing before he found himself under attack.

And that timing just doesn’t sound accidental to me. Not at all.

So. No. I’m not sure I buy that confession. Not at face value.

****

Crouch Jr may have been fighting his way out from under Imperius for a while, but I think it is really unlikely that he was still under the curse at all on the day of the World Cup. I rather think that somebody had lifted it from him during the night before and whispered his instructions regarding the Dark Mark. Although I suppose it is possible that he may have been only subliminally aware of it. Or believed that he was merely dreaming of escape.

I also think that Barty Jr stunned Winky during the confusion himself, put the wand in her hand, and left her to try cover the situation while he pretended to be unconscious. Winky lied in her teeth trying to protect her Master’s secret, but she is a very poor liar and I’m not at all sure she even realized that it was her Master’s son who had stunned her.

After all, it is plain to see in retrospect that the whole point of the Dark Mark incident was to create a situation which would force Crouch Sr to dismiss his Elf.

Which raises the thin possibility that Malfoy’s little diversion of Muggle baiting, and setting up his publicity smear campaign with Rita may have also been something less than totally fortuitous. But there seems to be a limit to how far one can carry a good conspiracy theory in Rowling’s Potterverse. Ms Rowling apparantly doesn’t think in terms of conpiracy theories and keeps spoiling everybody’s fun. That one really could be a coincidence.

Besides, we have also stugged our toes on the fact that in both OotP and HBP there is a point in the plotline that you just have to throw up your hands and accept the presence of a totally uncontroled random element in the mix. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to have to do the same for GoF as well, and Malfoy’s Muggle-baiting party is probably it.

The rescue of Barty Crouch could proceed no further if Winky was still in place. I also rather think that Voldemort and Wormtail were already lurking on the Crouch property when the party returned from the campgrounds and were only listening for the *crack* which would have signaled Winky’s departure to effect their rescue of Barty Jr. In fact, as I say, I suspect they’d been lurking there since the night before.

****

So.

Was Barty Crouch Jr’s confession just a superb actor’s last performance?

Considering my conclusions regarding Snape’s loyalties, it is difficult to account for it. But Barty seems to have had far more control over just what and how much he gave away in that soliloquy than he ought to have if he really was under the influence of a truth serum. There are probably all sorts of reasons that Veritiserum testimony is not accepted as evidence by the Wizengamot.

But, that “confession” certainly advanced Crouch Jr’s own agenda more than it advanced Dumbledore’s. Readers are still taking young Barty’s word regarding his father’s character and actions on faith solely because the information was given out while “under Veritiserum”.

Was Barty Jr told to send up the Dark Mark at the World Cup with a view to disgracing his father? And, just incidentally, sending out a public stand-by alert to Voldemort’s remaining supporters in a place where they were probably all gathered to see it?

Did he have help weakening his father’s Imperius in order that he would be free and clear-headed and able do it right at that particular time?

Was the Crouch household actually under attack by subversion before the World Cup?

Just how often did Winky check that house for rats?