Barty Crouch. Sr.

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 22429

Frankly, I started seriously disliking Barty Crouch Sr. when we met him when
the DEs were up to their shenanigans, between his treatment of his elf (SB's
comment that "you can tell a lot more about a man by the way he treats his
inferiors" is right on the money---Hermione's quite perceptive) and his
instant accusation of the Trio of having conjured the Dark Mark.

Barty Crouch Sr. basically seemed to think that laws and rules were for
other people, but not for him.  In anybody else, this would be obnoxious,
but in a law-enforcement person this is a recipe for a monster.  Between
authorizing the use of the Unforgivable Curses, giving Aurors a "license to
kill" suspected Dark wizards, and authorizing imprisonment without trial, he
was getting majorly off the rails.  If he'd become MoM, he'd soon have been
really out of control, and they'd have had a Frankenstein monster on their
hands almost as bad as Voldemort himself.

On top of it all, breaking his stupid kid out of Azkaban and keeping him at
home under the Imperius Curse was just begging for something to happen.  He
should've known that the Imperius Curse _could_ be fought and thrown off,
and that Voldemort was very weak, but not accounted for as _dead_, and could
be back lookiing for his little lost Death Eater.  Or, for that matter, that
DEs still on the loose and out for a little payback might not stop by one
fine day and figure out what was going on the way Bertha Jorkins did.

Barty Crouch Sr. was no loss to the good guys' side, and IMNSHO he'd have
been as big a menace as Voldemort himself if he'd survived...he'd be so
eager to get Dark wizards that he'd probably have started going after
anything and anybody he didn't like the look of, and the distinctions
between the two sides would start fuzzing again, as they did when he was in
line to become the next Minister of Magic.  Killing him was the one thing a
DE ever did that did the good guys a favor.  He had slipped his gears a long
time ago (will we ever learn _why_ he was so fanatical?) and he was a loose
cannon on the deck.