Thank you again for all the reviews! This will now have four chapters.
Part Three
There's another man in Professor Moody's place.
But Harry recognizes the effects of Polyjuice—why shouldn't he?—and that means there must always have been another man in Professor Moody's place. One who flinches a little at the name "Alastor" and laughs like bloody revenge and talks about Harry as if he's special.
(Harry thinks, now, that he should have known better. Professor Moody would never encourage him to be so cavalier with the Dark Arts. Not when the man has the reputation as an Auror who hates them).
Harry wants to know who he is. Who dresses up as an Auror and walks around the school wrapped in Polyjuice all the time and says he believes in Harry and talks to him.
"My name is Barty Crouch," the man says softly. "Junior, I'm afraid. Yes, the son of the Tournament judge. And the one who disappointed his father and went to prison, only to be broken out because it was my dying mother's wish. I've lived the last decade in my father's house under the Imperius."
"Why did you go to prison?" Harry asks.
Slowly, Crouch reaches out and eases the sleeve back from his left forearm. Harry sees the Dark Mark and jumps to his feet.
"Harry!"
Harry has already hurled the Freezing Eye Curse. Crouch ducks his head and dodges it, and rolls away from the chair, a lot more smoothly than he would have as Moody, seizing Moody's wand on the way and aiming it at Harry.
Harry breaks his kneecap with another curse.
Crouch bends over with the pain, but never cries out. Instead, he snarls a Body-Bind, and Harry finds himself frozen in place, furious, about to die, but still defiant, snarling at Crouch in his head as he limps over and takes Harry's wand from his frozen hand.
"Merlin, you're strong," Crouch says, shaking his head, and then enchants himself a splint that curls around the kneecap. "Should have known teaching you Dark Arts would make you stronger than you were before." He shoots a mad grin in Harry's direction. "And that was strong enough to defeat my Lord at fifteen months old."
Harry struggles madly against the Body-Bind. He has things to say. And foremost of them is that Moody—Crouch—betrayed him, and Harry's sacrificed his friendships for no reason at all, and Dumbledore was always right about—
A flick of Crouch's wand frees Harry's jaws, if not the rest of his body. "I hate you," he snaps, letting his magic stream out of him. It rattles a shelf and makes a spinning copper device explode, and Crouch has to shelter himself from the pieces. "It was all a lie, wasn't it? You want to kill me, you don't care about me, you just taught me curses so that other people would give up on me and I would give up on them—"
"That's not true at all.'
Something calms Harry down. Maybe it's the casual way Crouch says it, pushing the idea aside with an idle flick of his wand. Maybe something else. The recollection that Crouch could have killed him at any time.
When he—
"You put my name in the Goblet."
"Yes. It was necessary, for my Lord's plans."
"And you had to make sure I survived," Harry says bitterly. "So it wasn't your plan to push me away from my friends. You just saw that you could do it, a bit of fun, and so you decided that you might as well—"
"Merlin, Harry, no." Crouch shakes his head. He has sandy blond hair with a slight streak of red running through it. No, wait, that's a line of blood from where a piece of the exploding copper instrument must have hit him after all. Harry feels a vicious streak of satisfaction. "I needed to make sure you survived the Tasks, but teaching you Dark Arts was never part of the plan. My Lord probably wouldn't like it. It makes you a more formidable fighter, after all."
Harry pauses. "Then why did you do it?"
"Because you're a good student, and because I decided that I didn't have to kill you if I could turn you."
Crouch is smiling at him, a crazy smile that fits the man Harry sometimes thought he glimpsed much better than Moody. Harry takes a deep breath, finding that his chest is expanding further. Crouch must have loosened the Body-Bind a little.
Harry gathers some of his magic more closely to him, to fling if Crouch does something else nasty, and asks, "But how is that going to work with what your Lord wants of you? He wants to kill me. It sounds like you want me alive."
"My Lord depends on me," Crouch says, and casts a number of healing spells at his knee. At least one sounds like it slides the kneecap back into place. "If I tell him that it's worthwhile having you on our side, then he will listen."
"And have you decided?"
"I have, depending on how you react to this conversation. If you come around, then we can make a bargain. If you don't, then I'll Obliviate you and ask the Dark Lord to kill you without pain."
Harry stares at Crouch. He stares back. Harry has no idea how much of that is sincere and how much is more manipulation.
But he does know that Crouch told him at least a few true things. Legilimency, for instance, exists, which Harry has been able to learn in the library and from the few times Crouch has used it on him in their Occlumency training. And the things he told Harry about the first war were true, too.
"Talk," Harry suggests.
Barty has to fight back his hilarity at the sight of Harry, caught in a first-year spell, ordering him around as if he's a master and Barty is the house-elf.
But he has made his decision and there's not much point in pretending he hasn't, so Barty sits down across from Harry (frozen mostly, frozen-eyed), and says, "I think you're worth bargaining with. You have potential in the Dark Arts. You have potential to join us, if only because Dumbledore was the one who left you with your relatives and hasn't told you anything and didn't even try to get you out of the Tournament."
"That you put me in."
Barty shrugs. "Yes.:
"That—that messed up my life."
"You think your life was the greatest before this?" Barty asks. "When you had to live with Muggles who treated you the way they did? When you had friends so fickle they would care more about a spell you used than about the fact that you were alive after the First Task?"
Harry tenses, and Barty knows he has him. Yes, the people around him are traitors on a bluer level than Barty can ever reach. Barty has only known Harry for a few months; they've known Harry for years and still chose to yell at him first.
"Do you see?" Barty murmurs. "I might have made your life more difficult, but I wasn't the one who made it difficult before that. And if your friends were true friends, it wouldn't have mattered what I did. They would have stood by you and shouted down anyone who tried to suggest you were responsible for putting your name in the Goblet." He pauses. "What do you think their motivation is for not doing that?"
Harry closes his eyes. "Ron's always been insecure," he breathes. "He told me that first thing. He has five older brothers and he hates being in their shadow. And Hermione was afraid of not fitting in and not having friends."
Barty nods. It happens that his assessment of those two perfectly matches what Harry is saying, although he didn't know the precise number of Weasley's older brothers. "You see?" he murmurs. "They thought first and foremost of what you could do for them."
Harry twitches a little, and turns his head away. "And you didn't, of course."
"No, I did." Barty frees Harry from the Body-Bind and settles back into his chair. Even if this ends up with a Memory Charm, even though he has to watch Harry's hands every instant for a wand or the beginning of a curse, an alligator smile stretches his face at the fact that he's in front of Harry in his own skin. "But I've wanted to be honest with you for months now. And now I am." He spreads his hands. "What do you think?"
Harry thinks his gut is churning and he wishes he was somewhere else.
But does he wish that he hadn't found out the truth? No, he doesn't wish that.
"I think that you can't persuade your Dark Lord to make nice with me," he says hoarsely, since he does think that.
"It's not about making nice," Crouch says, and smiles at Harry, ducking his head. His eyes are like two holes into some other universe, some place where Harry is stronger. He clenches his hands and fights down his instinctive need to grab his wand. Crouch still has it.
"What is it about, then?"
"It's about how useful you can be to him," Crouch says. "And how strong you can be in the future. And about survival."
Two of those goals are the same as the ones that Crouch has been preaching to him all along in Moody's body. Harry feels himself calm down. Far harder to bear than he'd realized was the idea of losing Dark Arts and Alastor and the mindset Alastor was teaching him about how best to live for himself and make himself stronger.
If he can keep growing stronger, if he can survive…
"Do you think he would really let me live?" Harry asks, and winces at how plaintive his voice sounds. Well, it's not his fault. Voldemort has been haunting him since he was a little kid, after all.
Crouch nods at once. "My Lord's not used to having allies anymore. And he told me that he once offered to let you join him. We need to make sure that he sees the advantages of having you alive more than the advantages of killing you, but there are some."
"Um, because I'm strong in Dark Arts?"
"And because my lord gets to go on without a mortal nemesis."
"I didn't know he would value that enough. I mean, he's so much stronger than I am."
"And yet, you're still here." Crouch shrugs and runs his tongue over his lips as though to catch salt bleeding from a wound on it. "He might as well make sure that you're on his side instead of Dumbledore's."
Harry frowns down at his hands. It sounds too good to be true, given all the things Voldemort has done to him in the past. Or like the offer he made to Harry's dead parents back. These things don't really happen.
"If you want to," Crouch adds, "you can think of this as a balance because of what you paid in the past. Why shouldn't you have something this good? And now the person who does things like order me to put your name in the Goblet will be on your side." He smiles at Harry. "Why should you have to fight a basilisk at twelve? Or go after the Philosopher's Stone to protect it at eleven, when all the professors working together couldn't do it? Now, you won't have to."
Harry shivers. That's true, he thinks. That's totally true. The one causing these things to happen to him is Voldemort. If Voldemort no longer has a reason to make these things happen to Harry, Harry can have something like a normal life.
He squints up at Crouch. "I'm not saying I trust you," he says.
"Of course not." Crouch smiles wildly at him.
"I'm saying that I'm willing to give it a chance. And have you write to him and see what he really says about leaving me alone."
"It wouldn't be leaving you alone, exactly. He would make you swear some sort of oath to stand aside and not get in his way. In return, he would provide training and protection."
Harry closes his eyes. That sounds even better than just having Voldemort leave him alone. He could go on studying the Dark Arts. He could have someone who would protect him against people like Dumbledore and the Dursleys and his false friends.
Maybe. A lot will depend on what Voldemort says when Crouch writes to him.
"Okay," Harry whispers, looking up.
Barty waits until Harry is gone and the door is firmly shut and locked to dance and jump all over Moody's office.
It's working. Barty has come up with a better plan than his original one, which was simply to enchant the Tri-Wizard Cup into a Portkey and make sure Harry reached the center of the maze first. This one is also subtler and more likely to make sure that he can get away and continue serving his Lord.
People will probably notice Harry withdrawing from them, but so what? That just continues the pattern of withdrawal that they've established so far this year, with Harry getting upset and turning away from his friends and coming to good old Professor Moody for comfort.
(Moody, self-righteous and locked in his mental box, locked in his mind, locked in his trunk!)
Barty dances until he steps on one of the pieces of the copper dark detector that Harry's magic broke. Cursing, he bends down to heal his bleeding foot and clean up the last shards of the instrument, while continuing to cackle so loudly his throat hurts.
His Lord will have everything. Assurance that the one person Dumbledore and others think can defeat him won't stand against him. An interesting young disciple to train in the Dark Arts. Willing cooperation with the ritual to resurrect him, which means Barty can help, too, and not leave everything up to Pettigrew's dubious brewing skills.
Do they even need to wait for the end of the year for Harry to vanish?
Well, perhaps it might be best, Barty thinks, and stops his wild dance to laugh like a jackal. Yes, perhaps it would be best if everyone does think that Harry Potter went through the maze and disappeared to die in some distant, lonely corner of the world, the way Barty and his Lord planned on.
They won't search for him, then. They can be taken by surprise by the disciple of the Dark Lord at his right hand, then, while Barty stands at his left.
Barty hopes he's there to see the moment.
Harry pops out of the water with a gasp, feeling the spells that he cast to warm his swimming clothes and skin flag. The spells pull heat from the hearts and blood of his opponents and send it circulating around his body. Unfortunately, right now, there aren't any enemies he can use that on, and the last swim to the shore will be cold.
Ron groans in his arms. Harry bites his lip furiously and ends the spell that gives him gills the way gillyweed would if he ate it. The spell comes from the sacrifice of a living fish and lasts as long as the fish would live, unless the caster ends it first.
Honestly, Dark Arts are so useful.
"What—what the hell, mate?" Ron whispers, looking back and forth.
"You don't remember being put to sleep in Professor Dumbledore's office?" Harry keeps swimming towards the shore. Another sacrificed fish gave him the ability to swim through the water like it, although unfortunately the effect of that particular spell will end as soon as he leaves the lake.
"I do. I didn't think you would come get me."
Harry simply looks back at Ron with his eyebrows raised, and says nothing, for a long moment before he keeps swimming towards the shore.
Barty thinks that Dumbledore probably intended this as some kind of reconciliation for Harry and his friends, which is why he picked Ron and not someone else. Maybe he hoped Harry would rescue Hermione, too, for all that she was clearly Krum's hostage. Harry ignores the way Ron grumbles and heaves him up onto the land next to the waiting spectators, then climbs up after him.
"No injuries this time, Mr. Potter?" Madam Pomfrey asks dryly as she starts casting Warming Charms on Ron and forcing a Pepper-Up Potion down his throat.
"Don't think so, Madam Pomfrey," Harry says, all calmness and smiles as he sits down next to Ron. Madam Pomfrey tosses him a vial of Pepper-Up and Harry takes it, looking under his eyelashes at the figure of Moody standing over next to a wailing Fleur Delacour.
Barty inclines his head, real, wild self flashing for an instant from behind the mask. Harry wishes he could walk openly in his own skin, but even those flashes are dangerous, so he just nods back (they have a secret), and drinks his Pepper-Up.
It turns out that the little girl tied to the statue underwater was Delacour's sister, and the merfolk have to bring her back. Diggory arrived with Chang a few minutes before Harry and Ron got there. Harry doesn't mind. He took the opportunity to test how his spells worked under the lake more than he cared about rescuing a fickle, false friend.
The judges announce the points. Harry keeps his head turned so that he can meet "Moody's" magic eye, and Barty smiles at him from beneath it.
Barty goes looking for Harry one afternoon when Harry was supposed to show up at his office and didn't. He lets his feet lead him towards the dungeons, since he knows Harry had Potions right before this.
He surprises, or half-surprises, voices in the corridor outside the Potions classroom. When he makes out Harry's, and realizes that the other voice is Snape's, he limps faster.
He comes around the corner and sees Harry standing before the open door of the classroom, (his eyes vividly brilliant), his hand gripped around his wand. Barty doesn't think Snape realizes that Harry is on the verge of casting a Dark curse. He probably thinks that no student would dare hex him, let alone be on the verge of covering him with senselessness the way Harry clearly is.
"I insist that you look at me, Potter," Snape spits.
"I don't need to. I'll take whatever points or detentions you want to hand out, sir." The title is laden with hatred the way that biscuits are laden with sugar. "But I'm not going to look you in the eye."
Barty gives a low snarl to himself. Snape is going to find that more suspicious than if Harry just looked up at his face but at the bridge of his nose or something like that.
But Harry might not be skillful enough, and Snape might catch his eye…
Barty can't fault Harry for choosing the more obvious route out of this, which is still less obvious than the path they are walking together.
"What are you doing with this boy, Severus?" Barty asks, and makes Moody's voice creak like old mountains.
Snape starts and spins around to stare at him. Barty stares back, his mouth a little parted, and makes sure that his eyes dart hatred the way they always have for months, Moody's borrowed hatred of Dark wizards, rather than the laughter he wants. The laughter would give away the game at once.
"Mr. Potter is being disciplined," Snape says, his eyes dark and heavy. Barty holds Occlumency ready in his mind like unborn lightning, but Snape doesn't try to read him. "You need not concern yourself, Alastor."
Barty shakes his head. "Mr. Potter was supposed to be in my office ten minutes ago for detention. Come, come, Severus." He lets one wrist rotate in a loose gesture that the real Moody uses for limbering up his wand hand. "Take your points or assign your detention and let the boy go."
"Not until he does what he is told!" Snape snarls.
"And what's that? Cleaning up flobberworms? Again, you can assign it and then let him go." Barty looks with impatience as false as frogs (as false as the skin he wears) at Harry. "Well, Mr. Potter?"
"I wanted to come, sir," Harry says quickly, and shuffles his feet in a much better fit of acting than the simple refusal to look into Snape's eyes. "But Professor Snape said I had to look at him."
"You're looking at him now, from what I can see," Barty says, and casts Snape a glance of loathing that is not feigned. (Traitors, all of them, who walked free and chose some other allegiance). "Come on, then, Severus. The boy's looking at you. What do you want?"
Of course, Snape can't say that he wants to read the boy's mind, or even maintain full eye contact, which would be a definite clue to anyone who has the least idea what Legilimency is. All he can do is cast Harry a glare of distaste, snap, "Fifteen points from Gryffindor," and turn away.
Harry laughs as he looks up at Barty. "Are we going to practice some more?" he asks, meaning, Barty knows, Occlumency.
(Harry is not a natural at Occlumency, but he's as willing to put effort towards that as he was to put it towards Dark Arts, and that means that he can protect his own mind in a fragile casing that will at least warn him when someone is looking into his eyes with the intent to use Legilimency).
"Yes, we are," Barty says, and prods Harry gently with Moody's wand. "Come on, off you go."
Harry steps out of Barty's office and pauses. Professor McGonagall is waiting for him, and her lips are pursed and her face pale. "Professor?" he asks uncertainly. She hasn't said anything to him about his performance in Transfiguration, which has improved, or really anything at all since she reassured Ron and Hermione that his spell in the First Task wasn't illegal.
"Mr. Potter." Professor McGonagall closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "Your friends are intensely worried about you."
"And they know what I told them," Harry says, his voice getting clipped despite himself. He tries to slow down, tries to remember what Barty would say, but what he mostly remembers are blue eyes shining with glacier intensity.
(Glaciers crush and change and kill).
"What was that, Mr. Potter?"
"They're not worried about me so much as they're upset about me changing." Harry runs his hand through his hair and ignores the mental Barty-voice that tells him he isn't doing himself any favors. "They tore into me for the spell I used to save my life in the First Task. Ron never did apologize for thinking that I put my name in the Goblet. Both of them got upset that I didn't go to the Yule Ball, and I have no idea why. It's not like I would have taken either one of them as my date."
"So you think that their worries are simply because they wish you were reacting in a different way than they expected?" Professor McGonagall is frowning, but at least she doesn't look like she's about to dismiss all his concerns.
Harry shrugs. "I can sort of understand why they were worried about the spell," he lies. "I mean, that's not one they expected to see me use. But they didn't offer to help me study for the First Task, either." His resentment bubbles up like hot water. He did think Hermione believed him and she would help him study. Instead, she just left Harry to it with Moody, as Harry thought he was then. "But I really don't know why they just expect me to forgive Ron without an apology or why they wanted me to go to the Yule Ball. I don't think either of those things are sensible."
"Perhaps not," Professor McGonagall allows. She turns away with a sigh, then turns back. "I have been worried about you as well, Mr. Potter."
"But you're not allowed to help me with the Tasks, Professor. I know. It's okay."
It isn't okay, Harry thinks, even as he sends Professor McGonagall on her way with pretty words and soothing lies. Everyone else is getting help. For all that the Hogwarts professors act as though they're being very fair and honest, Professor Sprout is helping Diggory.
And do none of them care that he's in a Tournament with three people older than he is? The only one who does is Barty, who put his name in the bloody Goblet in the first place!
Harry closes his eyes and exhales slowly, then shakes his head. He can't get caught up in the unfairness, he thinks, any more than he can get caught up in the people laughing at him or wearing those badges. (A lot of the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins and some of the Gryffindors are still wearing them). What matters is survival.
"Harry."
Harry starts and turns around. He just left Barty, so it's a little unusual for him to open the door and speak like this. Maybe he heard Professor McGonagall's voice and wanted to make sure Harry didn't betray anything to her. "Yes?" Harry asks, cautiously.
Barty is smiling, although he's "Moody" so the guise somewhat ruins the effect of the smile Harry wishes he could see. Barty holds out a piece of parchment that's scribbled with thick black lines, and underneath, a new black line.
Harry knows the look of that letter well. He watched Barty write it, after all. But that last line is new.
His breath catches like a rabbit dying, and he stares at Barty. "He said—"
"He said yes," Barty whispers.
Harry closes his eyes and slumps back against the wall. Voldemort said yes. He'll allow Harry to step out of the conflict and shelter under his power in exchange for Harry's help with the resurrection and a promise to be loyal to him.
Barty's hand clutches his shoulder, and Harry turns his head and rests his cheek against it.
He's safe. He'll survive.
It's cause for werewolf-like rejoicing.