Disclaimer: Let's keep things simple, shall we? I'm not JK Rowling and I don't own Harry Potter.
There was nothing quite like the thrill of solving a mystery.
Harry Potter had, of course, realized that while he was still at Hogwarts, back when he was what one might call an amateur sleuth. But once he became an Auror, once the mysteries became his main concern, and most of all, once the mysteries started to remain unsolved if he failed to find the solution, the thrill of solving them grew all the more intense.
And it wasn't long before he discovered that he was good at it. Unusually good, as a matter of fact. At just twenty-two years old, he was making a bit of a name for himself as the prodigy of the Auror Office. He tried not to dwell on that. Really, he did his best work when he just allowed himself to focus on the cases, to use his intuition and make connections and accurately estimate how other people would behave.
One day he got an itch. He tried to ignore it, but it became that much stronger when he realized that he knew exactly what it was: he was craving that thrill. He actually wanted, dare one say needed, to solve another case, and he knew innately that the itch wouldn't go away until he did. And so, to the consternation of his coworkers, he had started actively searching for more mysteries to solve.
It began with him scanning the files of cases that had already been closed. He never knew exactly what he was looking for until he found it—some unusual detail, some unquestioned line of inquiry, in general just some stone left unturned—and he would pursue it in his free time. Mostly, his concerns were cleared up within a day (providing a very small bit of relief); sometimes, he didn't even have to leave the office. Other times, he would be obsess over something for about a week before reluctantly accepting that it was a true dead end (which just made the itch grow stronger). Once, however, he pulled a single thread and an entire case fell apart, and he spent the better part of a month putting the pieces back together… and then, when was finally done, he felt that thrill.
But after that, the case was closed, and the itch was back, and he began resorting to truly desperate measures. He scanned the Daily Prophet for incidents that never reached the office, and then he did the same with Witch Weekly, and then on one particularly bad occasion, he had actually thumbed through the Quibbler before realizing what he was doing and self-consciously stuffing the magazine into a desk drawer. He realized that there were no more mysteries to be found within the Auror Office, or at least none that he could reasonably lay claim to.
That's when the field trips began. He started visiting other departments in the Ministry, searching for conundrums to occupy himself, emphatically inviting other employees to send him an owl or memo if anything ever came up. But after the fourth case of who-spilled-the-entire-inkwell-on-this-week's-vital-document (it was Perkins; it was always Perkins) he had realized that a case required more, one might say, sophistication to satisfy his craving.
His field trips started becoming dramatically more far-flung. He found himself trawling through Azkaban, looking for inmates who behaved the way Sirius had described himself during his stay with the Dementors. According to the fallen fugitive, "I'm innocent" apparently wasn't a happy enough memory to sate the vile hooded beings; such thoughts kept the wrongly-accused sane, or at least sane enough, and Harry thought that maybe he could help these fortunate few and scratch the itch. And again, he had some success, though nowhere near as much as he would have liked. One or two charity cases; that was all really. And so, again, he moved on.
Diagon Alley.
Knockturn Alley.
Hogsmeade.
King's Cross.
Anywhere he could think of (that was under his jurisdiction, anyway), he spent his spare time visiting in search of more work.
One supposes he shouldn't have been particularly surprised when he finally found something worth finding.
"You're absolutely sure that this is what you're looking for?" A red-robed black woman who seemed to be a couple years older than Harry was squinting at him with something like a matronly concern where they stood in a very particular ward of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.
"I'm sure you'd agree it's only prudent that the Ministry sends someone at least once or twice a year just to glance in on them. You know, in case anything unusual is going on," Harry replied smoothly, implying but not explicitly stating one way or the other that this particular appointment was official Ministry business. "These… erm… patients of yours are very dangerous, isn't that right?"
She frowned at him skeptically. "No. Not at all; not in any way. I mean—they're practically, I dunno, a load of gurdyroots on a shelf or something like that, just lying there and… and… that's it, really. Just lying there."
"In the Muggle World, I hear they call people like that 'vegetables'," Harry said conversationally.
She didn't reply, taking a long moment to scrutinize him. He adopted an expression of utter innocence.
Finally, as the silence stretched out between them and Harry began wondering if he should craft an excuse to bail out of the situation, she tilted her head and slowly said, "Alright…"
"Brilliant! I mean, er…" Harry immediately smothered his enthusiasm. "Thank you for cooperating. I wouldn't mind a moment alone with them, if that's alright."
She sighed and shook her head, though it seemed more befuddled than reproaching. "I'll be nearby in case anything—well, believe me, nothing will happen, but I'll be nearby anyway. Have at it."
And she turned on her heal and marched out of the closed ward. The instant she was out of sight, Harry let out a relieved breath.
"Now, gentlemen... and lady," he added, for there was a single woman lying in a bed near the door. "Erm. Is everything—does everything… seem to be in order…?"
Predictably, there was no reply. Arrayed about him were some of the worst criminals of the last twenty or so years, all staring at him—or more like around him, really—where he stood in the center of the closed ward. Normally, such attention would be quite dangerous, even for an Auror like Harry, who had seen to one or two of the residents finding their way here himself. But such was not the case today, though their blank stares were rather discomforting. These criminals were the ones who the Ministry had sent the Dementors after, and they were the ones who hadn't escaped. Same thing, really. These were the recipients of the Dementor's Kiss.
After befalling such a terrible fate (though no one argued that they weren't asking for it, in the case of this batch) they were taken to the Auror Office to be formally processed and then shipped off to St. Mungo's to spend out the rest of their days. The Healers fed them a potion three times a day which provided them with the nutrients they needed to survive, though the way Harry understood it, nobody was particularly concerned with keeping their strength up beyond that. In what little experience he personally had of the place, it was… rather dull, really. Perfect for Healer students who needed undemanding work so that they could make a decent wage while finishing their studies. Harry's visit was probably the most exciting thing that had happened to the place in many years.
The question was, what was the purpose of it? Even Harry didn't know. One shouldn't be surprised that his search for mysteries to solve led him here, to St. Mungo's and ultimately to these reprobates, but there was no denying that they were hardly up to any funny business.
He strolled up and down their beds, counting each one for lack of a better idea. Fourteen occupants, thirteen men and that one woman. They twitched and drooled occasionally, but mostly they were lifeless.
As the minutes ticked by and Harry grew impatient—for exactly what, he still didn't know—he started resorting to more aggressive tactics, shaking shoulders, snapping fingers in their faces, kicking the beds of one or two particularly vile ones, such as that kidnapper who he had seen to not many years ago.
After a couple minutes of that, he got ahold of himself and calmed down a bit. It was extremely unlikely that any of the residents of this ward were faking it.
Looking up and down at the beds again, this time slightly less wary around them now that he was pretty much used to it, Harry noticed that they were arranged chronologically, in the order that they had arrived, starting near the back, and he figured, again, for lack of a better idea, that he might as well look at the date that each one had arrived.
Way in the back was a grizzled old wizard who had been arrested in the '80s. Harry was able to find information about him such as his name, his crime, and the circumstances under which he had been Kissed in a little booklet lying on a table next to him. Feeling closer to finding a mystery than ever, Harry worked his way through each bed.
To his chagrin, all the cases seemed to be relatively straightforward. The Ministry never deployed Dementors for no reason. The types that they were unleashed against tended to be irredeemable, dangerous, and on the run, their victims well-accounted for. Few questions were left unanswered.
As he finished the '80s, then moved into the '90s and towards the 2000s, Harry paused in interest at one of the occupants from 1996. He recognized this man. A glance at the booklet on the bedside table confirmed it. This was Jugson, one of the Death Eaters who tried to capture him and his friends during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries almost a whole decade ago now. Apparently, after being arrested and sent to Azkaban, Jugson had been broken out of prison by Voldemort and his other followers in a raid on the island just a couple months later. Jugson had proceeded to participate in a myriad of illicit activities, like a good little soldier of the Dark Lord. Though none of his crimes, Harry noted with vague interest, were quite so vile as the ones of those lying in the beds ahead of him. Bad enough, certainly, but nothing particularly damning. Presumably, the bar for deeds worthy of Dementor retaliation was lowered considerably during times of war.
What was of particular interest was the fact that Jugson was the first Death Eater Harry had stumbled across so far. He had, in some foggy part of his mind, expected to run into at least one or two eventually, but he was surprised for some reason that Jugson was the first one. And in 1996? That seemed awfully late, considering that the war ended in 1998.
But then again, Harry reflected, the Ministry hadn't really gotten involved in the war until after the battle where Jugson was arrested. That had been in June of 1996, so it followed that a Death Eater would end up here a few months after. But the more that he thought about it, the more that he felt some gnawing sensation at the back of his head. Surely, the Ministry had had something to do with the war before all that. They had of course, been very adamant about remaining oblivious during his fifth year (and here, he rubbed the scar etched onto the back of his hand absentmindedly).
Then he remembered the end of his fourth year and nodded in satisfaction. There had been Aurors there, at the Third Task. That's why he had that vague sense that the Ministry had been involved at some point. And they had arrested Barty Crouch, Jr. for kidnapping Moody and rigging the Triwizard Tournament and somehow getting Cedric killed in the process, though they hadn't been willing to go any further than that, even though it was quite easy to deduce what had happened behind the scenes. Of course—how could Harry forget?—they hadn't actually arrested Crouch. That would have saved them all a lot of trouble. Instead, he had apparently somehow accidentally gotten a Dementor's Kiss—
Harry's head snapped up from his musings. He stared at Jugson's lifeless face for a moment, processing the realization he had just had. Shouldn't Crouch—Harry whipped his head left and right—shouldn't Crouch be here? He spun in place to look at the beds lining the opposite wall, and as his eyes continually failed to locate the sight he wanted, more than anything in that moment, to simply see, his feet started moving as well. Up and down the rows he quickly strode, and then jogged, and then practically sprinted.
Straw-blonde hair, amber colored eyes, a pale freckled face, probably a bit sallow and bony after years of living off of that insubstantial potion—
Not a single person in the entire room matched that description, but Harry's logical mind simply could not comprehend such a thing at that very instant. He continued to search the ward, which seemed to be feeling progressively smaller as he looked again and again and again, but he still could not locate the subject of his thoughts, and no amount of desperation seemed to be changing that.
Harry ran to the doors and put his back to them, taking one final, long, scanning examination of the occupants.
Fruitless.
"WHERE THE HELL—?!"
Harry was not particularly proud of his initial reaction after he discovered of Crouch's absence from the Dementor's Kiss ward, though he was relatively pleased with how he had handled things in the immediate aftermath. All the appropriate inquiries had been made in order, and they—along with some good old-fashioned guesswork—had led him to his current destination.
The talented young Auror was quite familiar with Ottery St. Catchpole from visiting the Burrow so often, but he had not returned to the area to visit the cheery Weasley household this time. This time, he approached a darkened home with an uncanny trepidation.
It was a small but relatively luxurious place, two stories with the white picket fence up to the chest and rosebushes along the front. The house was quiet in the most straightforward of ways—it was rather late, after all—but it had a different, deeper quiet as well. It felt… untold. Like a place where laughter had once rang out, but now only the smothering silence remained.
Harry shook off his uneasiness. He was the Boy Who Lived, for Merlin's sake, and a bloody Auror to boot! A domestic household had no business deterring him. He had seen far more disconcerting things than this humble abode, regardless of who occupied it.
With that, he strode up to the front door and knocked with a careful firmness that betrayed authority, but a measured rhythm that was meant to imply respect. Of course, the general homeowner was unlikely to be all too pleased at being roused from bed by a knock at the door, regardless of the formalities hidden in its meter.
He waited for some response, perhaps longer than he usually would. On this occasion, he found that he wasn't very keen to hasten the answerer with a second knock.
After several long moments, a twinkle of wandlight came flickering through the curtained windows as its caster made his slow and presumably cranky way to the front door.
Finally, the knob turned and Harry braced himself for what was very likely to be an unpleasant encounter.
"Who in the name of Merlin finds cause, at this hour…" but Amos Diggory cut himself off as he saw Harry standing on his doorstep. "Oh. Harry Potter." He scoffed a little as he said the name and very deliberately injected a cool note into his voice.
The years had not been kind to Mr. Diggory, though Harry was planning on keeping that opinion to himself for the foreseeable future. The man, who had certainly been middle-aged the last time he had seen him, had grown to look practically elderly in just a few intervening years. His eyes were sunken deep and haloed with sharp dark circles, though how much of that was tiredness due to the hour, Harry did not know. His skin had begun to look very wrinkled in some places, but perhaps more noticeable was how it had adopted a certain gloss that caught the light sometimes. The dark beard was still there, but it was longer, more unkempt, and a dark grey now. It would have been likely to match the hair on top of Diggory's head, if the man who was strictly speaking still middle-aged had had any left. All that remained from when they had first met was his ruddy complexion—and formidable build.
It was really quite intimidating when he glowered down at Harry like that, though of course Harry didn't let it show. It helped to focus on how his manner juxtaposed his state of dress: an open bathrobe over blue and white striped pajamas and a pair of moccasin slippers. He even wore a nightcap, which he gruffly yanked off his head and stuffed into the pocket of the robe.
Harry politely inclined his head as a professional Auror of the Ministry for Magic, whatever the baggage he had with this particular acquaintance. "Good evening, Mr. Diggory; I'm sorry to disturb you at such a late hour, but something has come to the Ministry's attention that we believe you deserve to be made aware of. May I come in?"
Diggory squinted at Harry, clearly torn between refusing to let Harry in out of spite and listening to what he had to say out of suspicion. Apparently the latter one out, because eventually, he begrudgingly moved half a step aside and unceremoniously jerked his head towards the interior. "Crack on, then."
Even with the home poorly lit by Diggory's wand, Harry was very quickly met with a very sore sight. Grinning down at him, with all his dashing yet boyish charm, was a portrait of Cedric. A portrait, mind you, not a photograph of the whole family as one might expect to see, but a very neatly done painting of just Cedric from the shoulders up. And Harry reckoned that it was from that year, of course; the Diggories had probably hired a professional to take his likeness from the picture that appeared in the Daily Prophet. He gave the portrait a nod, and Cedric cheerfully nodded back.
Already, Harry was nearly overwhelmed with the sense that he really ought to address that particular elephant in the room before they anything else. "As it happens, sir, I don't suppose I ever, erm, properly said I'm sorry about… about how things played out that night."
Mr. Diggory stared at him with unconcealed animosity, and Harry briefly worried that his temper would flare up—beyond making for an uncomfortable situation, such a reaction would doubtlessly spoil Harry's plans for tonight—but it didn't. Perhaps Amos was remembering how it had been Harry who ultimately destroyed Voldemort, the man who was nominally most responsible for Cedric's death. Or perhaps he had simply decided—as Harry had come to terms with, long ago—that Harry's greatest mistake that night had been offering to share. To share the Triwizard Cup, to share the victory, to share all the glory and the gold that came with it. How was he supposed to have known that Voldemort had other plans?
Either way, Amos simply grumbled, "You'll have to keep it down. My wife is still in bed upstairs." And with that, he gestured Harry from the modest entry hallway into a comfy den on the left, extinguishing his wand and lighting a fire in the fireplace with a flick. The shadows of a kitchen became distinct to the right, separated from den by a staircase at the back of the entry hallway.
Harry settled himself in an armchair opposite Amos and slowly looked back up at the other man. Now the hard part began.
"Today, I was performing an examination of the various recipients of the Dementor's Kiss from the last few years at St. Mungo's," he continued without preamble. "And… it came to my attention that Barty Crouch, Jr. was not among them."
Amos Diggory look confused, but not quite alarmed, as one might expect—though that could just be due to Harry's somewhat vague wording. Interesting. It seemed to occur to him that Harry was waiting for some sort of response, for he suddenly asked in an impatient though still hushed voice, "Well…! Then where the devil is he?!"
"Please, sir, allow me to continue," Harry replied calmly. Diggory furrowed his brow at that, and he was probably about the protest that he hadn't exactly interrupted, but then Harry repeated, "Please," and he bit back the words.
"When I noticed the discrepancy, naturally, I immediately checked with hospital staff. The healer I spoke to had only been working there for about four years, and as you know, Crouch would've been a patient for almost ten now. She couldn't remember ever tending to anyone matching the description that I gave her, so I figured I'd look at some records as well. Maybe he became ill and died before she started working there, right? So I had a look at all the records concerning recipients of the Dementor's Kiss… and 'Barty Crouch, Jr.' never appeared."
Diggory leaned forward anxiously—if he was pretending that he had no idea what had happened to Crouch, he was doing a rather good job—and urgently demanded, "So, he never even went to St. Mungo's?"
"Or someone removed the records of him being there," Harry countered. "At least, that's what I was thinking at the time."
"So which is it?!"
"Please, sir, I'm getting there," Harry insisted. "After I discovered that both Crouch and any record of him was unaccounted for at the hospital, I figured that I ought to check for the same on our end—and I found it."
He paused, and Diggory was beginning to look irritated with his antics. "Found what?"
Harry supposed that he may set Diggory off if he asked him to be patient again, so he quickly replied, "Records: a record of Crouch being received at the Auror Office really, really early the day after the Third Task and an official notice of him receiving the Dementor's Kiss late the previous evening. But it was poorly done—sloppy and incomplete. I didn't know what to make of it. It's possible that it was part of some elaborate coverup, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was mainly due to the Ministry's ignorance campaign the year after Voldemort returned."
Harry's statement was truthful enough, but mainly he was curious to see Amos Diggory's reaction to Harry using the name "Voldemort." For a split second, his face twisted into a grimace (the most common reaction among wizards, even years after he fell), but it was quickly overcome by scowl as he seemed to register the rest of Harry's words. "Ignorance campaign! Is that what they're calling it? Those bastards left the murderer of my son unchecked for nearly a whole year!" he scoffed.
"I beg your pardon, sir, but shouldn't you be keeping you voice down? You said yourself, your wife is still asleep," Harry inquired politely, gesturing towards the stairs. Mentally, he reflected bitterly that he really had learned nothing so far. He was relatively confident that Amos Diggory held at least one or two pieces of this puzzle, hidden away from the rest of the world. Harry had never suspected that one of those pieces might connect him to Voldemort, and after seeing Diggory's reaction to the name, he was relatively certain of it. But that left other unanswered questions; and so, he pushed on.
Once Diggory had properly calmed himself down and appropriately lowered his voice, Harry proceeded. "I did, just to cover all the bases you understand, check with the Department of Mysteries after that, as Crouch was a very unique case. It seemed to me that a body without a soul, and more specifically, a body without a soul belonging to a person that the Ministry wanted very much not to exist, would be just the sort of fodder that they'd toy around with. But I was assured that they had not had a hand in his disappearance, neither through official nor unofficial channels."
"So now, you understand, I'm left quite stumped as to what could've happened to Crouch," Harry pronounced calmly.
There was a moment of silence, followed by: "What—? Wait a moment. Do you mean to say… all that, and you mean to tell me that Crouch is still missing?" Now, Diggory definitely sounded irritated and a little anxious… which did seem the natural reaction, now that Harry thought about it.
"I regret to inform you that that is indeed the case."
"But you mean to say that after you spoke with those Department of Mystery people—what? The trail went cold, so to speak?" Diggory pressed.
"There was never really any trail, was there?" Harry replied calmly. "At this point, we can't really even be sure that he ever arrived at the Ministry."
Amos leaned back in his chair and let out a disbelieving laugh. "Honestly. I should have known. So you just," and here he shook his head as if he could not comprehend it, "just didn't know where to go from there?"
"Well, I wouldn't say that I didn't know where to go. As a matter of fact, I came practically straight here," Harry informed him.
Again, Diggory's brow furrowed, but also his head tilted and his jaw hung open a little. Harry stared innocently at him until he managed to murmur, "You… you don't mean to say… that you think I had something to do with this… do you?!"
"What? No," Harry replied in his nearest approximation to sincerity. "Absolutely not. Whatever would have made you think such a thing? Oh, and I truly don't mean to be a bother, but the last thing I want is for you to wake your wife because of me…"
"Then why would you come here?" Diggory demanded, and Harry had never seen him looking so thrown. "Why tell me about all of this? This can't be any sort of a comfortable experience for you."
"On the contrary, Mr. Diggory, you have been quite hospitable," Harry assured him. "As to why I would tell you about any of this, I thought the reason for that would be obvious. Given your connection to this particular criminal, I naturally assumed that you'd want to be kept in the loop as far as the investigation went."
That one seemed to catch Diggory off-guard, but he was gathering himself, recovering from the shock of being roused from bed with such news (and such circuitous delivery of said news). He managed to reply in a more dignified voice, "Well… of course I would!"
"I should think so!" Harry agreed.
"Yes. Thank you, I suppose," Diggory muttered in a barely audible voice.
Harry waited. Three… two… one…
"Erm. Is that all, then?" Diggory finally asked.
"Well, yes," Harry said. He waited for Diggory to draw breath, probably to ask him to leave, then added, "Unless, of course, you'd like to hear my thoughts and theories about what might have happened to Crouch."
The look Diggory gave Harry… All he could muster in reply was a curt nod. Which, Harry noted inwardly, was an interesting reaction. If Diggory himself had done something to Crouch, then obviously he would want to know if Harry was onto him. But there was none of the stilted nonchalance that one would usually see in such a situation. In fact, Diggory seemed to be acting totally naturally about the whole conversation. Maybe Harry's suspicions were wrong…
"I believe that you'll find it's really an interesting case to think about, sir. My first assumption, as I'm certain was yours as well, was that Barty Crouch, Jr. somehow escaped or was rescued from the Aurors who brought him to the Ministry. If that is the case, the simplest explanation would be that some Death Eater with good standing in the Ministry absconded with him before he was processed by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. But I seriously doubt Voldemort would attempt such a bold move when his primary strategy at that time was to remain in hiding."
"Wouldn't it also be foolish of him to take any risks for a servant who was for all purposes entirely incapacitated?" Diggory asked stiffly. "Losing one's soul is pretty much the same as becoming brain dead."
"Another chief consideration I had. But as an Auror, sir, I'm trained to consider every possibility. So I ask you now, what if he wasn't incapacitated?" Harry suggested mildly.
"Isn't that—?" Diggory frowned. "That must be impossible. Once a Dementor consumes your soul, it's gone for good. After Barty Crouch, Jr. received the Dementor's Kiss, there was no way to reverse the effect."
"As I said, sir: I'm trained to consider every possibility. What if Crouch never received the Dementor's Kiss?" Harry probed.
"That's—that's ridiculous. There's no way. Everyone knows that's what happened; the Ministry announced it and it was in the papers and everything," Diggory said, but Harry could see him turning over the idea in his head. The concept truly did seem quite new to him.
"And the Ministry and the papers have always been completely truthful, haven't they?" Harry asked dryly. "Think about it. Did you see Crouch receive the Dementor's Kiss? I know I didn't. I was lying in the Hospital Wing when Professor McGonagall and Minister Fudge barged in and told Dumbledore about it. Two witnesses—very reputable witnesses, admittedly—saw him receive the Kiss and immediately left him there, unattended. Because what's he going to do? In fact," and here, Harry smirked to himself, "he's practically a gurdyroot lying on a shelf at that point, isn't he? Why would anyone care about him? He's completely worthless to everyone… which would have made it the perfect opportunity for him to escape, assuming I'm right and he was actually fine."
"So you're saying that he never got Kissed. But… how could he have possibility faked it? The Dementors were still completely on the Ministry's side at that point. How was he supposed to get a Dementor to plant one on his mouth without actually sucking out his soul?" Diggory asked skeptically.
"Have you heard the story? In hindsight, it does seem rather convenient. After Dumbledore apprehends Crouch, he leaves McGonagall (his most trustworthy subordinate) to guard him while they summon Fudge to come see him so that they can break the news about Voldemort with Crouch, who was still under the effects of Veritaserum at the time, as their proof. But when Fudge hears there's a crazed murderer inside the castle, he refuses to enter without a Dementor guard. He summons one from Azkaban, and when they finally march up to the office where Crouch is being held, the Dementor swoops down and kisses him before anyone can stop it. Dementors are hard to control, certainly, but for the likes of Professor McGonagall? Defending against one ought to be a breeze. Personally, I believe that someone else intervened. I believe that someone else—perhaps someone lying in wait nearby under a particularly convincing Disillusionment Charm—would have been perfectly positioned to cast two Confundus Charms… on McGonagall and Fudge. If, while they were Confunded, someone told them that they had watched a Dementor go rogue and suck out Crouch's soul, then that same someone would be free to do whatever they wanted with Crouch while McGonagall and Fudge ran off to bicker about it with Dumbledore. After that, none of them—Fudge, McGonagall, or Dumbledore—want to bother themselves with what they assume is a neutralized Crouch, so some Ministry stooge without a brain gets sent in to take care of him, and he's not there. But when that stooge tries to explain that to Fudge, Fudge is so determined to cover up the whole thing that he accidentally ends up hiding the disappearance from himself!"
"So…" and here, Diggory seemed to be doing mental gymnastics in an effort to keep up with Harry's theory, "what you're saying is… you do have a lead. Whoever this bastard that set Crouch free is, he can probably tell where he is now. You just have to put together a list of people who were in the castle that night. Right?"
"That would be correct," Harry said. "And I was rather proud of this theory until I realized the one big flaw in it. If Crouch was fully freed and in possession of all his mental faculties—or at least all the faculties he had at that point; he was a bit crazy, mind you—where's he going to go?"
"Straight to You-Know-Who," Diggory supplied readily, and it was clear by the expression on his face that he saw the problem now.
"Which makes his absence for the rest of the war a much bigger mystery than it seemed at the time," Harry finished.
Diggory was quiet for a moment, looking a little disappointed. "So I see now, you're well and truly stumped," Diggory concluded.
"Well…" Harry replied slowly. "Not quite."
Diggory's attention was back on him immediately. "Yes?"
"I had already started considering who else was in the castle that night before I noticed that hole in my theory. To the best of my knowledge—which, again, with hindsight, is actually pretty thorough—there were only two men besides Crouch with a connection to Voldemort and still on the grounds. The first one was, of course, Severus Snape, and Merlin knows that he was cleared of suspicion ages ago; there's no way he would've helped Crouch escape. The second one was Igor Karkaroff; Igor Karkaroff, who was too frightened to return to Voldemort's side since he helped the Ministry mop up some of the followers who were left free after his first downfall—and I know for a fact that Crouch hated him for it. He was found dead in a barn about a year later. There's no way that he would have willingly taken such a huge risk for Voldemort. If there were anyone else who was loyal to him, surely it would have come out at some point in the next three years."
"So there's no way that another Death Eater helped Crouch escape," Diggory surmised. "What of it?"
"So… what if everything about my theory was right except the part about the unknown party helping Crouch escape?" Harry emphasized. "What if letting Crouch go was the last thing on their mind?"
Diggory nodded slowly and made a small noise of understanding. "You think someone who wanted revenge on him… for his part in resurrecting You-Know-Who or his crimes during the first war… "
"What if the Crouch I'm looking for isn't comatose or on the run?" Harry ventured. "What if the Crouch I'm looking for is a corpse? After manipulating the situation like they did, it would have been a simple matter to snuff Crouch, levitate him out of the castle, and bury his body somewhere on the grounds or in the forest."
"I imagine the list of people who would have liked to see him gone would be much longer than the list of those who would be willing to help him escape," Diggory mused, and there was a slightly vicious edge to it. "I know I'd be on it."
And the opportunity he provided there was just a little too perfect to pass up on.
Taking a deep breath, Harry casually replied, "My thoughts exactly."
Diggory glanced at him in confusion, then apparent anger. "What—so you do think I had something to do with all this!"
"No, no," Harry insisted. "I'm just sharing my theories. Where would you get an idea like that?"
Diggory stared at Harry in incredulity. "Do you still honestly expect me to believe that?"
"Okay, no, I admit that I pretty much came here because I thought it was you," he confessed. "And… are you going to deny it?"
"Merlin's beard, Potter!" Diggory swore. "Of course I'm going to bloody deny it! I hadn't a thing to do with it, like I told you already! I'd like to shake the hand of whoever did do it, but honestly… I had just lost my son. I was grieving. How could I have possibly…?" and here it appeared he could say no more.
Harry frowned. If Diggory was lying, he was one of the best Harry had ever seeing, which was truly saying something in his line of work. He continued his little interrogation uncertainly. "Would you say different if I told you that I wouldn't really hold it against you? It set us back in the war, no doubt, but I honestly don't care about that at this point. It's been years. I just want to see a body to put my concerns to rest. I just want to clear all of this up so that everyone involved come move on with their lives."
"It bloody well changes nothing, seeing as I didn't do it in the first place!" Diggory snarled.
Harry was thinking hard now. He had been about as confident in his theory, and in Diggory as his culprit, as he had been in any theory, and he had structured this conversation very carefully to get a confession out of him. By giving his explanation a little bit at a time, he had had the opportunity to assess whether or not Diggory was starting to sweat as they explored each thread. The idea had been that when they reached this point and Harry finally gave him the chance to fess up, he would be rational enough to see that it was best just to resolve the matter as succinctly as possible, as opposed to fighting, running… or denying it. But Diggory had never started sweating, and he had actively participated in exploring the theory for what was supposed to be his own crime. Did he simply have that much confidence that he could get away with it? Was he simply that capable at acting innocent? There was no question that he had the strongest motive of anyone that night.
Either way, it was probably time to get serious.
"Sir. If we can make no further progress here, I may have to bring you in," Harry pronounced calmly. This one would be tough to explain to the Head of the Aurors Office, but at least he had a suspect in custody and a solid working theory.
"You're welcome to it!" Diggory replied blithely. "I'm certain we'll be able to clear all this up by morning."
That was unexpected. Even innocent men didn't want to be arrested—particularly innocent men who could offer no alternate explanation…
"Mr. Diggory…" Harry began, changing tack. "Is there anyone who can account for your whereabouts that evening?"
"I trust Professor Sprout is considered reliable?" he asked haughtily.
Harry felt like beating himself over the head. Now that Diggory said it, he did recall Dumbledore mentioning that Mr. Diggory and his wife were being consoled by the now-former Herbology professor, who had known Cedric best. Had this entire conversation been a waste of time, easily avoided by checking an alibi? It was certainly beginning to seem that way.
He leaned back in his chair in a defeated way, and Mr. Diggory, while still appearing affronted, seemed a bit nullified.
"In answer to your question, Professor Sprout would indeed most certainly be considered a reliable source," he agreed. "It's quite possible that I wasted your time tonight. I'll have to bring you to the office anyways, on the off chance that you've been bluffing this whole evening, waiting for your opportunity to escape—but we should be able to release you within an hour, while I go check with Professor Sprout. Were you and your wife with her for the entire evening?"
It was times like these that made his itch flare up.
"Yes! I—well no, actually. I didn't leave the office in the Greenhouse until well after midnight, though my wife did say… that she… that she needed a few moments," Mr. Diggory suddenly slowed way down in the middle of his sentence, "… alone…" And then he didn't move a muscle.
Harry also froze, but his mind practically exploded. So… he had been right. Sort of.
Right means.
Right motive.
Right opportunity.
Wrong Diggory…
He remembered thinking to himself when he had faced the Diggorys the morning after that Mrs. Diggory's grief seemed beyond tears. And exactly how far beyond, he had never known until this very moment.
Mr. Diggory had not been the only parent to lose a son that night. He shared this misfortune with his wife, which meant that she presumably possessed the same animosity for Crouch that he had expressed a few moments earlier. And as much as Harry had been confident that Amos Diggory was perfectly capable of casting a pair of respectable Confundus Charms, he now suspected that the same could be said for Mrs. Diggory. Bloody hell, he didn't even know her name… and she had a window of time which was unaccounted for…
But Harry could puzzle out what little there was left to puzzle out later, because the tension in the cozy Diggory den had just increased tenfold.
Harry and Amos remained frozen with mirrored faces of latent shock, eyes wide and mouths slightly open, until Harry's eyes slowly rolled, unbidden, towards the half-visible steps leading to the second floor—and the bedroom.
And Diggory reacted, moving like lightning straight towards the wand which lay on a small table where it had been set after the fireplace was lit. But not only was Harry able to match him; he was able to make the instantaneous judgement call. The Amos Diggory who stood before him now was not the grumpy if reasonable man he had been conversing with for so long this evening. This was a man who had lost his son many years ago and who was now faced the prospect of losing his wife. This was a man, who if disarmed, as Harry was perfectly capable of facilitating before anything else, would not hesitate to wrap his hands around Harry's neck and choke the life out of him, which at this distance he would likely be able to do before Harry could fire off another spell.
So Harry did not even bother plunging his hand into his coat for his wand. Instead, he threw both hands in the air and shouted, "Amos!"
Diggory had his wand in hand, and it was outstretched before him, and the grim fury of a man protecting his wife was writ all across his face… but in that moment, he hesitated, and Harry seized upon his hesitation like a branch on the side of a cliff he had just fallen off of.
"Amos! Amos, listen to me!" Harry asked, thinking wildly. "Listen to me! I speak more honestly now than I have all night! Nobody cares about what happened to Barty Crouch, Jr!"
"Enough of your lies, Potter!" Diggory shot back. "You really think that I'm going to start believing you now?!"
That was a really fair point, but Harry didn't have time to think about it right now. "Amos, please! You want the truth? Here it is: Nobody else knows that I came here tonight! Nobody else even knows that I'm investigating all this! I'm the only person in the Ministry who's looking for Crouch, much less who offed him! I'm the only person who even realized he was missing!"
"Is that supposed to make me believe that you're not going to do your bloody job?" Diggory growled.
"My job is to keep the magical Britain safe, and I identified Crouch as a threat! If he's dead then I can rest easy, but I have to see proof!" Harry insisted. "The minute I see a body, all of this goes away!"
"You'd have us lead you to the evidence that damns us!" Diggory accused.
"Think about this, Amos! Just think about it, if only for a minute! What are you going to do? Kill me? Harry Potter, the man who killed Voldemort? It's not like you can just make me disappear," he argued. "If you try to resist, things will only end badly for you! My way is better for everyone."
"You think I don't want to believe you?" Amos demanded, and there was a note of desperation in his voice. "You think that I don't want to believe that there's an easy, happy ending to this story where we show you a dead Crouch and then the three of us nod knowingly at each other and part ways? I'm much older than you, boy; I've already learned that that's not how the world works!"
Harry was briefly taken aback by the unexpected reply, but then he glanced at the portrait and thought that maybe—just maybe—he understood where this was coming from.
"You're thinking of the old world," he replied boldly. "In this new one, we try to be fair with one another. I try to be fair. But for that to work, it has to go both ways."
Amos was wavering and Harry quickly pressed his point.
"Why do you think we're having this conversation right now? Why do you think I didn't go for my wand and disarm you?" he continued, feeling on a roll now. "You know I could do it. But I don't want to fight you, Amos. I don't think that's the right thing to do. Now, I'm giving you this opportunity to do what you think is right, but that's all that I can do. You have to be the one to reach out and take it."
Now Harry well and truly had him. He could see the defeat in his eyes, and he spoke to drive the final nail in the coffin.
"Don't be old world, Amos. Help me solve this and put that world to rest."
Amos sighed heavily and dropped his wand arm limply to his side, looking down at the floor. "Easy there, Potter. Every Gryffindor I've ever known was rather melodramatic, one way or the other, but I'm quite certain you've got all the rest of them beat."
Harry smiled in relief. "Why don't you go have a pointed conversation with your wife?"
Amos pocketed his wand and sauntered towards the staircase. Harry just barely heard him grumble, "Bloody woman could sleep through a stampede of hipogriffs, honestly."
"We're expected," Harry said quietly. It was the first time any of them had spoken since Harry had calmly given Mrs. Diggory the same reassurances that he gave her husband in their den. They had traveled together from the Diggory household to the gates of Hogwarts where two dark figures silently approached from within, one of them carrying a lantern.
Harry thought he knew who they were.
"Good evening, Mr. Potter," Headmistress McGonagall called politely through the bars once she and Filch had reached the gate.
"Good evening, Headmistress!" Harry called back. "You have my sincerest apologies for visiting so late, but I think that you'll agree that the matter is rather urgent, once I explain. Incidentally, could a trouble you for a biscuit?"
McGonagall and Harry shared a smile as the others looked on in confusion. The non sequitur was his cute way of signaling to his former teacher that he was, in fact, who he said he was. She was right to be suspicious of anyone who came calling so late.
"Not at the moment, I'm afraid," McGonagall said, easing the gate open with a wave of her wand, "but you could join me in my office once our business here has concluded, if your craving is really that strong."
As Harry led the way onto the grounds, McGonagall regarded his companions with surprise. "Why, Mr. and Mrs. Diggory. I hadn't expected to see you under these circumstances."
"Hello," Mrs. Diggory replied quietly.
Harry turned to them. "Just take us to the spot, please," he muttered. Mr. Diggory glanced at his wife, and she nodded vaguely towards the eastern end of the Forbidden Forest. As Harry began to follow them and McGonagall and Filch joined him, he quietly added, "Best probably to let them keep their distance. They're feeling a little jumpy, I believe, so…"
"Perhaps now you can explain what this is about?" McGonagall asked, and it really did feel more like an order than a request.
"Of course," Harry agreed. "I just hope you understand that subtlety would be—"
"Have you finally come to inquire after my missing elf?" Filch interrupted.
"I—what?"
"I wrote your office weeks ago complaining that I had an elf stolen! Or, you know, run off, or lost, or… well anyways, I thought it was your job to sort out these kinds of thing," Filch announced accusingly.
"Why would I—could you just give us a minute alone?" Harry asked in exasperation.
Filch hobbled a short distance away with his lantern, grumbling something about "once a student, always a student."
"Anyways, Professor, you're really going to want to hear this…"
As Harry relayed the day's events to Professor McGonagall, the small group finally reached a spot at the edge of the forest about a hundred paces from the point nearest to the Whomping Willow, at the bottom of a small hill, over which the castle was not visible. It was little wonder that Mrs. Diggory had apparently chosen this spot to dispose of a corpse.
The four wizards conjured shovels and set them to digging about a small area indicated by Mrs. Diggory with a few simple charms while Filch stood off to the side, still grumbling about some presumably inconsequential matter.
"I just can't believe that nobody even realized it," McGonagall was telling Harry quietly. "I always knew that the bureaucracy of the Ministry was far more trouble than it was worth, but for such a thing to go unnoticed for years, and even then, to be discovered only by happenstance…"
"It's the sort of thing that'll never happen again, once we've got the system back under control," Harry replied confidently. "Between Kingsley's general societal reforms and me, Ron, and Hermione tackling the issues from within the institutions, it's only a matter of time before we turn it all around."
"I have faith in you, Harry, believe me," McGonagall assured him, "But this is a task that not even Professor Dumbledore ever attempted—and Merlin knows that the necessary position was offered to him enough times. Perhaps such systems as the one we have now are a nonstarter…"
"That's an overstatement, surely," Harry insisted. "Mad-Eye worked effectively at the Ministry for years!"
"Erm, Potter?" Mr. Diggory had wandered over and he was staring at Harry and McGonagall a touch nervously. Harry noticed with a glance that his wife was loitering nearby as well, the charmed shovels hovering uncertainly in the air.
"Yes, what is it? Did you find him?" Harry asked, and he strode over to the large pit that had materialized beneath the shovels.
"Well, that's the thing," Amos replied tightly. "No. We didn't find him…"
Harry looked between the pit and both Diggorys sternly, knowing intellectually what they were implying yet refusing to believe it. "So? What are you waiting for? Shouldn't you still be searching?"
"Yes, well, that's the thing," Amos continued in a rush. "We were discussing it and… Harry, I don't think he's here."
"Not… here," Harry repeated. Diggory nodded. Harry closed his eyes and asked, "You're saying that he's not here either?"
"That's right, yes."
"Not here."
"I'm telling you, we think—"
"DAMN IT—"
So! I hope you enjoyed reading this! This'll be my first multi-chapter fic, but it's pretty short so I should be able to finish it in a couple of weeks. I will hesitantly declare that I will update this every Saturday. Of course, when I'm posting this, it's technically really early Sunday, but I won't be making a habit of that!
Please follow and favorite and definitely review! I really like receiving feedback.