[HPforGrownups] Re: Snape's Task and Crouch-Moody as Teacher

[Amanda Lewanski]

No: HPFGUIDX 15789

foxmoth at qnet.com wrote:

> > --- In HPforGrownups at y..., Amanda Lewanski <editor at t...> wrote:
> > > Although this is an excellent idea, I have a problem with it.
> Nobody knows that Moody is a polyjuiced Crouch Jr. until that whole
> confession scene, right after Dumbledore, Snape, & McGonagall come
> bustin' in and rescue Harry. After Crouch Jr. finishes talking,
> Dumbledore sends Snape and McGonagall away on errands; Snape goes to
> get Fudge, while McGonagall guards Crouch. < <

> Not quite: Dumbledore tells Snape to get Madame Pomfrey first. We
> don't know how long that took. It's possible that Dumbledore had a
> chance to talk to Snape again after he left the hospital wing and
> before Snape went to get Fudge.

Okay, I looked at the whole sequence again. I'm operating on the theory
that Snape *and* Dumbledore have to be out of the readers' "view," with
their whereabouts unaccounted for, at the same time. They have to have
time to talk together to alter whatever plan they had made, to now
include the knowledge that Crouch Jr. was alive and the idea to use
polyjuice as a long-term disguise.

Snape is out of our eyes the longest--he is sent by Dumbledore to send
Madam Pomfrey down for the real Moody, and then to go out to the
grounds, find Fudge, and bring him to the office where Crouch is, in
case he [Fudge] wants to question Crouch himself. Snape leaves.

But Dumbledore stays in our "vision," taking Harry up to his office and
going over the events of the night with him. Then he & Sirius take Harry
down to the hospital wing. Dumbledore says he'll be back as soon as he
meets with Fudge, but I'm not sure where he went at this point, because
he does not, apparently, head down to the office where Crouch
is---Fudge, McGonagall, and Snape come looking for him in the hospital
wing after the Kiss. Maybe he went to his office for some pensieve time,
but this, to me, is the only unaccounted-for Dumbledore time, and the
only possible candidate for any plan-changing time.

But, after Fudge, McGonagall, and Snape storm up to the wing, in the
argument about the Kiss, it surely sounds like Snape was with Fudge all
the time. Snape is the one who relates Fudge's reaction: "When we told
Mr. Fudge that we had caught the Death Eater responsible for tonight's
events," said Snape in a low voice," he seemed to feel his personal
safety ws in question. He insisted on summoning a dementor to accompany
him into the castle. He brought it up to the office where Barty Crouch
---"

This sounds to me like the summation of someone who heard it firsthand.
So in my interpretation, Snape went to Pomfrey, sent her down to Moody,
went and found Fudge, and went with him and the dementor to see Crouch
Jr. I don't think he'd have taken any time to meet Dumbledore before
he'd carried out Dumbledore's errands.

Fudge's comments also indicate that Snape was with him--"From what
Minerva and Severus have told me, he seems to have thought he was doing
it all on You-Know-Who's instructions!"

Since McGonagall was standing guard over Crouch Jr., and as soon as the
dementor came in the room it Kissed him, and as soon as that happened
she flew into her rage, I doubt she was doing much of the detailing on
this. I think this is another indicator that Snape was with Fudge, and
filled him in before taking him to the office.

So to me, it reads that while Dumbledore was out of our view and
unaccounted for (since he didn't go to meet Fudge), Snape, while not
under our eyes, *was* accounted for--he was with Fudge. So I still don't
think there was any time that Dumbledore and Snape were absent *and*
unaccounted for in the narrative, that would have given them the time to
take the new information--that Crouch Jr. was alive--into account and
change their plan.

> I think that polyjuice will show up again; it's far too useful a plot
> device to be ignored.

Yes, I think it'll show up again. I just don't think it'll be a major
device any time soon; we have to have time to forget about it again.
Right now, it's at the forefront of everyone's mind--the characters,
inside the book, and the readers, outside the book. All of us need to be
distracted from it, before it can be an effective plot device again. So
using it so soon would not be a good move.

--Amanda


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