Chapter 11: Some Interesting Revelations
Harry smiled at Moody on the way into breakfast in the expectation that the Defense against Dark Arts teacher would speak to him and ask him how he was getting on solving the puzzle of the second task; which indeed he did. Harry did not have to simulate embarrassed confusion, since the cacophony of noise from the egg had bewildered him and terrified Neville into thinking someone was being tortured with the cruciatus curse. Hermione made the switch without difficulty and gave Krait a 'thumb's up'. Krait nodded to Snape, whose eyes gleamed with anticipation; he sat down beside Moody at the staff table.
Moody gave him a suspicious look.
"Professor Dumbledore does like a united front before the pupils" said Snape blandly. "Pumpkin juice?"
"I prefer my own, thank you" growled Moody suspiciously. "I know what's in it."
"As you wish" said Snape coldly. "I'm sure we all appreciate your imputations." Inside of course he was quite gleeful. Moody swigged at his flask; this was the moment of danger. Severus Snape held his breath. Had he got the mix right? Would it fool Moody?
It certainly seemed to do so. No consternation or suspicion flickered on the scarred face. Severus made himself look away, not peer hopefully into the ravaged visage for signs of change.
Krait too schooled herself not to peer; but with the Gryffindors she could not resist the odd peek. From their school tables glancing at the high staff table would be less noticeable anyway.
It took most of breakfast; some of the pupils had finished and hustled away to finish preparation for classes. But Moody's face at last was changing, and changing fast. The scars were disappearing, the skin smooth, the nose shrinking but becoming whole again. The long hair shortened, and there was a loud clunk! As the wooden leg fell away. Snape reached out a hand and deftly caught the magical eye as it fell from the socket, to be replaced by a whole eye. The man at the table was pale skinned and freckled with a mop of sandy blonde hair. The other teachers were staring, open mouthed.
"Barty Crouch" said Severus in a soft, dangerous voice. "Supposed to have died in Azkaban. Now, Barty, suppose you tell me all about it?"
Harry and the others had risen; and Krait joined them in approaching the staff table.
"Good Heavens!" Said Professor McGonagall.
"Veritaserum, Severus?" said Dumbledore
"Should be working just nicely by now" said Snape in a satisfied tone. "How DID you escape, Barty?"
Crouch explained in a flat sing song voice.
"Dementors are blind. My mother was dying; and my parents came to visit. She used polyjuice potion to replace me…" he explained how his mother had continued to take the potion, until she died in Azkaban and his father had kept him under the Imperius curse, staging his 'mother's' funeral. Bertha Jorkins from the ministry had heard him talking; and when by chance she was seized and tortured by Voldemort, it overcame the Memory Charm Barty Crouch senior had set on her. Meanwhile, the house elf Winky had persuaded the elder Crouch to let his son go to the Quidditch World cup in his invisibility cloak; it had been he who had stolen Harry's wand to send up the Dark Mark. When Voldemort had arrived in his servant Wormtail's arms he had placed the senior Barty Crouch under the Imperius curse and freed Barty junior – to do the task of helping Harry Potter through the Triwizard Competition.
"Potter was to win it" he said dreamily "And the cup was to be made into a Portkey, since the winner was required to grasp it to claim it. That would take him directly to my Master where he could use the boy's blood to restore himself. Wormtail helped me subdue the real Moody, he'd prepared Polyjuice Potion in advance. Moody put up a struggle, but we subdued him and forced him into his own magical trunk before Arthur Weasley got there."
The young conspirators looked at each other; and with one accord belted off towards the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.
-/-
Hermione stared at the trunk with its seven locks.
"If it's magical, I doubt alohamora will work" she said doubtfully.
"I snitched his keys" said Krait, practically. "No point having larcenous instincts if you don't use them."
Each time they opened a different lock, the trunk appeared to contain something different; but it was the seventh that revealed what they sought. This opened not a trunk, but a compartment of wizarding space, a kind of pit, where lay an emaciated Moody, bereft of eye or leg, unconscious or asleep and with great chunks of his grey hair missing.
"They needed him alive for the hair of course" said Hermione clinically. "What are you boys waiting for? Climb in and get him out, we need to get him to Madam Pomfrey right away."
Harry, Ron and Neville obediently started to do her bidding; Krait mimed a Nazi salute behind Hermione's back. Harry developed a sudden cough.
-/-
Dumbledore strode in as they lifted him out, and as Krait was chafing his cold hands and muttering
"Caldio" to herself to warm him. The headmaster nodded approval.
"Good improvisation, Miss Day. I see he is stunned, and presumably under the Imperius curse" he said. "But I think in no immediate danger. Minerva, take him to Madam Pomfrey."
Madam McGonagall, who had followed him in, nodded and lifted Moody's unconscious body with a spell, walking with it almost as though he were on a muggle gurney. Dumbledore looked at the youngsters.
"Well?" he asked.
"We suspected him" said Krait. "He enjoyed using the Unforgivable curses. We devised a scheme to show him up if he was the impostor we thought him to be, and if he wasn't we could always apologise and mutter things about constant vigilance."
Dumbledore's mouth twitched.
"And you involved Professor Snape in your scheme? You surprise, but delight, me."
"We needed a top flight potioneer, sir" said Harry. "And Professor Snape believed our suspicions so…" he tailed off. Dumbledore looked at Krait.
"He trusts me" she said simply. "I – I know what he did last time. There won't be a next time, because the Ministry has to do something about Fishface now, but I had intended to help."
"Very commendable. I certainly HOPE the Ministry will take notice" said Professor Dumbledore. "I have sent for Mr Fudge the Prime Minister. He should be here soon." He looked around them. "The five of you had better get along to your classes."
They nodded obediently and went, the boys reluctantly to Divination, Hermione and Krait eagerly to Arithmancy. They lost House points for tardiness; for few enough people even realised totally what had been happening. Hermione and Krait explained they had been helping when Professor Moody took ill and lost fewer points because of it; and that was the official story that went round. The young conspirators had shielded Crouch's transformation from such of the school that had not left the dining tables and Dumbledore was in no wise willing to draw attention to the event as yet.
-/-/-
Snape summoned them all to his office after school. Krait was the only one to go cheerfully; and Neville at least quailed to see Snape's eyes glittering with bitter malice.
"The Ministry in its infinite lack of wisdom" he said in a hard biting voice "Has decided that Barty Crouch Junior was insane; and acting under his own volition, believing in a fantasy of Lord Voldemort being still alive. Fudge brought a dementor with him; its kiss has nullified Crouch's testimony, even if that blithering idiot was willing to listen or rather to hear properly what was said anyway."
"But…there's other evidence!" cried Harry. "My scar!"
"Mine too" said Snape, bitterly. "I told him, but he didn't want to listen. He is a fool and we are all in deadly danger because of it. We have no choice. We have to fight in the best way we can." His eyes were cold as obsidian shards.
"He has returned before" said Krait "That means he has some way of preserving his essence or soul or whatever regardless of what happens to his body. Killing the form he is in, that needed to be 'carried' becomes, therefore, meaningless. Am I correct, Domine?"
"Yes" said Snape. "And he has boasted to his Deatheaters that he has the secret of immortality."
Krait clenched her fists and swallowed dry.
"Then" she said reluctantly "We need to find out his secret; and use that to destroy him. And the only way to do that is to take him what he wants; and to re-establish yourself in his service and introduce me. As an extra gift."
"NO!" yelled Ron. "You CAN'T take him Harry!"
"Listen to what she says not what you think she says!" Snape snapped. "He wanted Potter's BLOOD to restore himself. Your plan is better than my initial idea, which was merely to seek him out and offer him my services; Professor Dumbledore approved that. I – I get the impression that he would not be displeased for Potter's blood to be used. I am not sure why; but if there is anyone who understands all the precise implications of the old magics it is Professor Dumbledore."
"Old Magic?" Harry queried.
"Those involving blood, which are very powerful. Especially a willing sacrifice. I suspect" Snape's eyes gleamed "If you gave willingly of your blood, Potter for OUR cause it would ultimately cause more harm to Fishface."
"Amen to that" growled Krait. "Let's agree to that – but we need to know where the creep is."
"Crouch told us that" said Snape. "In Little Hangleton, his father's decaying mansion. Harry was to be transported to the graveyard there. I suspect ancestral bone would play a large part in such a ritual; the blood of his foe and blood or flesh sacrificed willingly." He paused. "He may ask for a sacrifice from you, Krait as flesh of his flesh."
Krait pulled a face
"The part I'm to play as a mercenary bitch would baulk. It would not be unreasonable so to do. That we'll have to play by ear. I'd better read up about old magic."
"I have some books in my house. There are none in the school Library" said Snape. "If there ever were, the Headmaster has removed them. The knowledge taught to NEWT level is but a fraction of the knowledge there is; though few bother to progress further. Some of the knowledge is hard-gained and dangerous; and those who seek knowledge for power usually doom themselves to destroy themselves by the very power that, in their hubris, they desire to harness. I – I love knowledge for its own sake; and I have an eclectic library in my house."
"Then we must visit…it is reasonable to suppose you could not come to seek him before the holidays anyway. And he was not expecting the ceremony until next summer at the end of the competition. If Crouch's death is hushed up he will just be waiting" said Krait prosaically. "I want Jade and Lydia out of the orphanage before we do this, Domine; at least then they'll be safe no matter what happens to us."
"Who are Jade and Lydia?" Hermione demanded. Krait explained succinctly and graphically; tears springing to her eyes at the thought of the children she had protected being without her. They gazed in horror as she described the harsh punishments; and at a nod from her guardian showed the others her back.
They gasped in horror.
"Used to it" said Krait laconically. "Kiddies didn't ought to get used to it…..you lot will rally round and help me take care of them, won't you?" she swiped the back of her hand angrily across her eyes. Krait scorned to cry for herself; but her fears for Jade and Lydia broke through her self control.
The others nodded, appalled.
"Dobby will help see to their physical needs, I'm sure, if I ask" said Harry. "That'd help, wouldn't it?"
Krait nodded.
"Tremendously" she said. "Meantime, we've a lot of preparation to do."