OVERANALYZING THE TEXT

Pippin asked (rhetorically, right before pointing the finger at Lupin):

How did Crouch!Moody, who's never taught a lesson in his life, get so good at teaching DADA?

Aldrea responded:

I know someone else already answered this and said that Crouch!Moody would be good at DADA because of his experiences in the Dark Arts. Crouch himself was a very loyal DE to Voldemort, so there's his experience.

Yes, but he wouldn't have had very much time at all to gain that experience. In fact, if we assume that Voldemort did not invite minors or schoolchildren to join his elite circle of Death Eaters, then Crouch Jr. could not have been a DE for very long at all before Voldemort's fall. Not only was he a minor; he would also still have been in school.

Sirius says of Crouch Jr. that at the time of his trial "he couldn't have been more than 19 years old."

As others have pointed out, the fact that Sirius uses the number "nineteen" here is highly suggestive. It's not the age that one would cite if one were making a guess about somebody's age based on their appearance. In that case, one would say, "he couldn't have been more than twenty," or perhaps (given that 17 is the age of majority in the wizarding world) "he couldn't have been much more than seventeen."

That Sirius uses the specific age 19 implies to my mind that what Sirius did know was Crouch's year at Hogwarts (in fact, he almost surely knew this, as their time at school would have overlapped). What Sirius did not know was the specific date of Crouch's birth. He knew that Crouch couldn't have been over the age of 19 because if Crouch had been, then he would have been in the next year up while at Hogwarts. But Sirius does not say that Crouch was 19, because not knowing his birthday, Sirius realizes that it is equally possible that Crouch was still only 18 at the time of his trial.

Just as sixth years like Angelina Johnson and the twins in _GoF_ can be either 16 or 17, depending on when their birthdays fall, so a one-year-out-of-schooler like Crouch could have been either 18 or 19 at the time of his trial.

What this means is that we know approximately how long Crouch had been out of school when Voldemort fell. He had been out of school for less than a year.

I don't believe that a wizard that young, no matter how talented a student he might have been, could possibly have developed the mastery of the Dark Arts that we see him exhibit in _GoF_ by the time he was sent to prison, and after he was sent to prison, he would have had no opportunity to do so at all. I don't really think that anyone gets very much in the way of magical studying done at Azkaban. Certainly sickly Crouch would have been far too busy dying of dementor despair in his cell to be spending much of his time learning (without a wand) how to master the Unforgivables. And after his rescue from prison, he was a slave to his father's Imperius Curse.

Yet Crouch Jr. is exceptionally skilled. He can Confund a powerful magical artifact. He can ambush Krum, murder his father, and transfigure a corpse into a bone. He can cast the Unforgivables not only in a classroom setting, but also under extremely adverse conditions: during the Third Task, he places Viktor Krum under the Imperius Curse while patrolling around the hedge maze, which means that he must have done so in the dark, probably with very poor visibility, and either without invocation or in a low tone of voice, as he was neither seen nor heard by Harry or Cedric.

Even when he had just been brought back from the very brink of death, Crouch Jr was remarkably powerful for his age and experience. In his Veritaserum confession, he explains that once he had been nursed back to health after his rescue from Azkaban:

"I had to be controlled. My father had to use a number of spells to subdue me."

In fact, his father eventually has to resort to the Imperius Curse to subdue him. And his father is no slouch himself in the magic department. Even Sirius, who has every reason to hate Crouch Sr, describes him as "a great wizard... powerfully magical." Yet we are to believe that this powerful and experienced wizard had such trouble subduing his weak and sickly twenty year old son?

Yes, Crouch Jr. was a good student. He got his 13 OWLS. But I don't think that's enough to account for the degree of magical prowess that he exhibits. There is only one explanation that I think satisfactorily accounts for it.

Allegiance to Voldemort had imbued him with special powers.

Grey Wolf wrote:

And now, for a possible explanation which I'm not sure I believe: could Voldemort have GIVEN them powers, like on loan, in exchange for their help? That would explain why people with the constitutions of stones (Crabbe and Goyle) and nearly as intelligent, can cast those difficult spells.

I do believe this to be the case, Grey Wolf, for reasons that I first outlined back in March, in message #36473. To recap:

There is some suggestion in the books that either Voldemort himself or allegiance to Dark forces in general might indeed have the ability to imbue wizards with magical powers previously beyond their capabilities.

In the Shrieking Shack scene of PoA, Pettigrew offers up Sirius' escape from Azkaban as evidence of his Dark allegiance:

"He's got dark powers the rest of us can only dream of! How else did he get out of there? I suppose He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named taught him a few tricks?"

Of course, it is actually not Sirius but Peter who is the traitor, which does make you wonder if Peter might not be speaking from some personal experience here. Might not he himself have been "taught a few tricks" by Voldemort?

He certainly does seem to be extremely magically capable for someone who is constantly accused of being a weak wizard. Sirius Black is not the only person who claims that Pettigrew was never much of a wizard. Voldemort says so as well, and so does Pettigrew's old teacher, McGonagall:

"Hero-worshipped Black and Potter. . . .Never quite in their league, talent-wise. I was often rather sharp with him."

Of course, Sirius and James were extraordinarily talented; even an average student would not have been "in their league." But McGonagall's claim that she was often "sharp" with Pettigrew implies to my mind that he was a lackluster student at best. In canon, the student we most often see McGonagall being "sharp" with is Neville Longbottom, a poor student.

McGonagall also describes Pettigrew as "always hopeless at duelling." This, however, really doesn't describe the Pettigrew that we know at all. The Pettigrew that we know can pull off a perfectly-timed explosive spell that kills a dozen people in a single blast. He can not only cast such a spell; he can also cast it with no invocation, with one hand quite literally behind his back, and timed to coincide perfectly with an animagus transformation. He can take advantage of a split-second opportunity to seize a fallen wand and then—with somebody else's wand!—cast not one but two spells (one on Ron and one on Crookshanks), all before Harry can even manage to snap out an "Expelliarmus!" He can overpower Bertha Jorkins. He can AK Cedric Diggory. And he can conduct what would appear to be a extremely difficult and involved piece of ritual magic through to its successful conclusion, even after severing his own hand.

This is a weak wizard? This is a hopeless duellist?

No. This isn't. This is a competent wizard, and a very very good duellist.

So what accounts for the discrepancy here? Why does everyone, Voldemort included, insist on referring to Pettigrew as a "weak wizard?"

Well, one explanation is that he gained an enormous boost in magical power after he sold his soul to Voldemort and accepted the Dark Mark as a token of this mystical bond.

It seems to me that casting in ones lot with Dark forces really ought to grant one a boost in magical power. It is, after all, traditional. There's an enormous weight of cultural and literary precedent behind the notion that when you sell your soul to the Devil, you do get something for it, even if you pay far too high a price for it in the end.

It also seems to me this would explain Dark magic's siren song appeal to the members of House Slytherin, whose characteristics include a disregard for rules, the desire for power, and the willingness to use any means to achieve their ends.

Cindy is not so convinced:

The idea that DEs get a power loan from Voldemort makes some sense, it really does. But if that were true, Peter really wouldn't need to frame Sirius and then spend 12 years as a rat. Peter could use his enhanced powers to blast Sirius in the street. When the authorities arrive, Peter could just say that he was merely defending himself against the completely and utterly mad Sirius Black.

No, I think Sirius would have won that duel, and Peter knew it.

But Peter wouldn't have engaged him in an honorable duel if he'd just wanted to kill him. Peter would have sneakily blasted him without fair warning, just like he sneakily blasted those muggles and then transformed into a rat without fair warning. And I rather suspect that he would have had a fair chance of pulling it off, too, given how flawlessly he managed to engineer the frame job.

For that matter, given that Peter had clearly planned the entire thing ahead of time, he must have arranged to run into Sirius on that street corner, which means that he probably could have cursed Sirius in the back before he had even been spotted, if killing Sirius had been all that he had really wanted to do. I mean, this is Peter Pettigrew we're talking about. He doesn't have a sense of honor.

But clearing his own name wasn't the most important part of the plan at all. Faking his own death was the most important part of the plan, because at that point in time Peter wasn't nearly as worried about Sirius or the Ministry as he was about the other Death Eaters, whom he feared might hold him responsible for Voldemort's disappearance. Sirius accuses him of as much in the Shrieking Shack, and I think that Sirius was spot-on there. Killing Sirius and getting himself proclaimed a hero by the MoM would only have solved one of Peter's problems -- and the far less pressing of his two problems at that.

Cindy again:

I have rather mixed feelings about the power of the DEs. On the one hand, DEs include characters like Crabbe Sr. and Goyle, Sr., who are supposed to be dim like their sons. The DEs can't hit Harry in the graveyard. And they let themselves in for all manner of abuse at the hands of their sadistic master.

You think those Death Eaters were really trying to hit Harry in the graveyard?

I've always been a bit dubious on that point. True, there is a fine upstanding genre tradition of sending ones Minions off to be trained at the Storm Trooper School of Markmanship, but still....still....

You know, if I'd been one of those DEs in the graveyard...

::nervous glance over to Eloise::

Er, which I was most decidedly not. But, uh, I mean, if, if I had been, then I sure as hell wouldn't have been trying to hit him. I would have been aiming just about a foot to the left of him. Because weird things just sometimes happen when you hit this kid with spells, right? I mean, just look at what happened to Voldemort! How did that happen?

Nobody knows. Nobody has the slightest idea. But one thing's for sure: there's something very peculiar about this boy, and strange bad inexplicable things tend to happen to people who are foolish enough to mess with him.

I mean, once, okay. Once is a fluke. Once could happen to anyone. And indeed, for a while back there, it was beginning to look like a fluke. Here's Voldemort, he's returned, he's smacking Harry Potter with Cruciatus right and left, and the kid is screaming and writhing and shaking helplessly and all of the things that he's supposed to be doing as a result of being in excuciating agony. All to the good. All is right with the universe. So all of the DEs are laughing with pure nervous relief, because as it turns out, they don't really have to be frightened of this boy at all. And then Voldemort tells him to bow, and by God, the kid bows! So now they're laughing even harder. All of those years of being terrified of Harry Potter, and as it turns out, he's just a normal kid after all! What a relief! Whatever happened thirteen years ago? Well, that must have just been one of those once in a lifetime blue moon events, like a rain of frogs, or spontaneous combustion. One for the record books. No need to worry about it any more.

But then things start to go horribly wrong. The kid gets hit with an Imperius, and he's not begging for mercy or worshipping at Voldemort's feet or doing anything that he's probably being commanded to do. Instead, he refuses. He resists. He resists the Dark Lord's Imperius.

Oh. That is just so not good. The DEs stop laughing.

So Voldemort threatens him with another Cruciatus, and they all start giggling again, a bit hysterically, really, because the Cruciatus is good, the Cruciatus works, the Cruciatus doesn't cause any of these...unsettling things to happen, even the kid seems to be afraid of the Cruciatus. Maybe things are really okay after all...

And then there's Priori Incantatem.

Oh. Now, what the hell is this? Both the Potter boy and Voldemort are being lifted right off the ground, and there's this weird bubble, and this strange golden thread connecting their wands, and nobody knows what they're supposed to be doing, and Voldemort looks actually astonished, so it's clear that even he doesn't have the slightest idea what this new thing is or what to do about it, and then there are these bloody ghosts or something up there—it's all just enough to Freak You OUT, is what it is—and then suddenly it's over, and the kid is running like hell while Voldemort himself seems to be caught in some sort of ghost huddle or something, and...

And then you're ordered to Stun him.

Stun Harry Potter.

Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. Right. Like I want anything from my wand touching this kid. God only knows what might happen to you, if you hit the Potter boy with a spell. He's some sort of freak, is what he is, and he does nasty inexplicable things to the people who mess with him.

So I'd aim to miss. Not too obviously, mind you. Voldemort might notice that. But definitely to miss. Just a foot or so to the side. Because really, it's just ever so much safer that way.

No. I don't think that there's anything wrong with the Death Eaters' aim. Their aim is just fine. It's their nerve that could use a little bit of work.

Grey Wolf again, on the DEs:

Lately I've noticed that we have been picking on several of the DEs over their lack of power - Wormtail especially - but there is something that we must take in mind. . . . .They may look pathetic powerless, but they're not. They're powerful, mean and VERY bad.

Yeah, I agree. They've got dark powers the rest of us can only dream of. I'd watch my back around those DEs, all right.

But they're not all bad, Grey Wolf. They're morally grey. Really and truly they are.

—Elkins