The Polyjuice Potion and Mrs Crouch in Azkaban

[Cindy C.]

No: HPFGUIDX 29696

Sharon wrote:

> 
> When Mrs Crouch takes her son's place in Azkaban, she uses 
Polyjuice potion 
> to disguise herself as young Barty, and Crouch tells us that she 
continues to 
> take the potion until the end. We know from Dumbledore that she 
would need to 
> take it on the hour, every hour, for the potion to remain 
effective. However, 
> we also know from Crouch Jr that she was buried with his appearance.
> 
<snip list of excellent observations>

I think that this issue is curious and is somewhat unclear based on 
GoF, but it probably still holds up reasonably well.

Perhaps Mrs. Crouch took the potion hourly until she died.  
Fortunately, she died before she ran out of potion.  Fortunately, she 
didn't lapse into a two-hour period of unconsciousness before dying 
that would have prevented her from drinking the potion hourly.  

It seems that once a person dies, they remain in their "polyjuiced" 
state, meaning that Mrs. Crouch went to the grave looking like her 
son.  We could think of polyjuice potion as something that gets 
metabolized, and once she has died, the polyjuice potion stops 
wearing off.  We know Mrs. Crouch still looked like her son when she 
died because Sirius says he saw them take Crouch Jr.'s body away.

Cindy (hoping we've seen the last of polyjuice potion)