Moody thoughts

[Steve Bates]

No: HPFGUIDX 2928

<And I'm sure that (the real Moody excepted) most people don't go 
around wondering if their friend/acquaintance is actually someone 
else under Polyjuice, if that friend happens to be acting a bit off. 
Polyjuice probably isn't on the top 10 list of reasons.
--Amanda>

Exactly; Crouch's success at impersonating Moody depended on the same 
principle of misdirection that the Muggle version of magic is based 
on.  People see what they expect to see, and only a very paranoid 
person would even let the thought that Moody was not really Moddy 
cross his or her mind.  I am sure that Dumbledore, for instance, 
noticed many miniscule things over the year that indicated that Moody 
was not quite what he seemed, but none of them were significant 
enough for even him to guess the truth.  When Moody/Crouch took Harry 
off at the end of the book, though, that must have been a significant 
enough deviation from the behavior of the real Moody to set off alarm 
bells in Dumbledore's mind.  And then all those little things he'd 
been noticing all year would suddenly have made sense.
Still, Crouch must have been a tremendous actor to stay enough in 
character that the only differences from the real Moody were 
insignificant enough that nobody noticed them until it was almost too 
late.  He only broke character as much as he did in the end because 
he was desparate enough to take a risk in order to get Harry alone; 
also his success at impersonating Moody for nine months had probably 
made him just a little too sure of himself by that time.