What Dumbledore (doesn't) knows

[Scott]

No: HPFGUIDX 18341

Naama wrote:
It's the "the butler did it!" 
kind of solution - pick the least likely character and make him the 
murderer. With no build up. That's what I call a mechanical 
solution, and since JKR is not given to that kind of plotting, I can 
only assume that she made this major plot change at a late stage, 
after a lot of (real) Moody stuff was already written." 

Amy responded:
"This is where we will all just have to speculate until the 
publication  of the Rowling Notebooks(TM), but I'd bet Galleons to 
gherkins that Moody=Crouch was worked out long before book 4 was 
written.  It is a far-fetched solution because of the Dumbledore 
problem, but it's no more un-built-up-to than Quirrell's the bad guy, 
or Riddle's bad and  Ginny's opening the Chamber, or Sirius is good-
Scabbers is Pettigrew-Lupin's a werewolf, IMO."

--I'm sorry Naama but I've got to agree with Amy. The best argument I 
can come up with for this is that if Polyjuice wasn't important in 
future books why did she bother to introduce it in CoS at all? It 
didn't do much for the plot except prove it wasn't Draco opening the 
chamber and providing comic relief with Hermione and the cat. (If 
anyone actually found that funny, I didn't.)

This is why GoF is probably my least favourite book. There are more 
nagging plot inconsistencies in it, than any other. It's still very 
good, don't get me wrong, it's just well I can't really explain.

Scott