Summary: 4th year from Barty's POV: another angle written against the question: Why THE HELL didn't he just kidnap Harry right then and there?
AN: As you know, if you have read my other stories, I'm a very slow writer and an even slower 'updater'. If you didn't know, consider yourself informed. I'm sorry for that – I wish I was better at this, but I'm not. No flaming is gonna help that. Therefore: constructive and/or non-flaming reviews ONLY please.
Disclaimer: Me = not rich. Ergo = not owner of Harry Potter, or anything else really. Except my computer.
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Barty could barely stem the screams of frustration that threatened to escape him. Twice already he had had to reinforce the permanent silencing charms that overlaid his room in the west wing of the Hogwarts Castle. Should the situation not improve, he would certainly need to look into a more permanent, perhaps rune-based solution.
He was angry. He was livid. He had passed 'desperate' days ago.
His master would be furious.
The task had seemed simple: kidnap a fourth-year child with barely average grades and no defensive or other extra training whatsoever, and get him to his Master's place in Little Hangleton. The two weeks since the start of school on September 1st, 1994 he had been given to accomplish this seemed more than enough, excessive even. The child's name, "Harry Potter", shouldn't change that.
That was before he had made his dramatic entrance into the Great Hall at the Welcoming Feast. He had nearly lost his footing when Moody's Mad Eye had first turned into the direction of the Gryffindor Table.
Where he had expected to see a normal table of school children, even if they included the famous Boy-Who-Lived, he saw –
Wards. Wards all over. Without Mad Moody's Magical Eye with the illegal Mage-Sight update, he never would have guessed. And a whole army of invisible people. Okay, five of them. Six, if you counted the one near the teacher's table. All of them heavily armoured.
...
Well… shit.