TBAY: Crouch - "My mother saved me." (5 of 9)

[lucky_kari <lucky_kari@yahoo.ca>]

No: HPFGUIDX 48100

[Note: In Which I Prove I Have More of a Heart Concerning a Certain
Bartemius Crouch Jr. Than Elkins Credits Me With]

"Well, that was weird." says Cindy. "Very strange. I could have sworn
I had a dream about a window through a waterfall, and a cave, and a
forbidden pool. And I had to go to this mountain with you, Eileen and
Avery. And Avery wasn't co-operating, and Elkins almost had him
killed, but I saved him."

"Cindy, we often meet our friends in strange places when we dream,"
says Elkins. "But unless all dream alike, do not expect us to remember
the meeting."

"Well, I'm glad I'm out of it," says Cindy with a shudder. "Back on
the piers of Theory Bay and it's sunny and warm for once. You'd almost
think the hurricane wasn't coming. I'm going to go over and sell
Rookwood thongs for a bit."

"Why do people buy those Rookwood thongs and avoid
C.R.A.B.C.U.S.T.A.R.D like the plague?" asks Eileen, watching the long
line which has now formed at Cindy's Rookwood thong booth. "It can't
be that they think Crouch is evil. Rookwood's evil. It can't be the
H-word. Rookwood defines the H-word. Sometimes it's enough to make me
cry."

"You told me that you *wanted* me to attack Crouch Sr." Elkins reminds
her. "You said that you liked nothing better. You claimed that you 
found it exciting. You explained that you were suckled on 
controversy. And you insisted that you really *did* want to hear me 
out on this subject."

"Well, it's true, but I was rather hoping that you wouldn't demolish
me that badly. I mean, I knew you'd demolish me. But not to this
extent. I've had to rethink my entire vision of Crouch, and I'm not
liking what I see."

"That would be because Barty Crouch Sr. is despicable."

"Probably, Elkins, but I think I always knew that. It's never stopped
you from liking someone or finding them tragic. But I did assume he
was a hard-liner, and you demolished that quite nicely. Still, I'm
sticking to my guns that his motives weren't entirely self-serving, as
I said before. Can we call it quits?"

"No. But if you like, we can take a short breather from Crouch's 
iniquities. A little break, perhaps, Eileen?  A little pause?"  
Elkins grins wolfishly.  "How about we talk about Mrs. Crouch for a
while instead?"

Eileen didn't answer. She was going to be defeated, those pitiless
eyes were telling her so... she was going to be defeated, and there
was nothing she could do about it... but she wasn't going to play
along. She noticed something that Elkins was hiding in the shadows and
pounced. 

"You said Crouch was a man of honour," says Eileen firmly.

"Yes. I'm recanting that now," says Elkins with a nasty smile. 

"Why?"

"Because he most definitely isn't. I think we went into that already?"

"In many aspects, yes, but he gave his word to Karkaroff and Karkaroff
walked free, even when Moody was against it, even when he could have
tortured those names out of Karkaroff. Maybe not a hard-liner, maybe a
manipulator, maybe a hypocrite, but he was a man of honour there, and
I can't see how you can recant that judgement."

"Let's get back to the topic, if you will," says Elkins. "Mrs. Crouch,
whom you detest."

"Yes I do! She put unbearable pressure on her husband to do something
that was totally wrong. Don't snicker, Elkins. Crouch Sr. made all his
other horrible mistakes of his own volition, but she forced him into
that one."

"Did she?" 

"Yes, she slammed him with a Last Request. Like a Life Bond. Sacred in
the wizarding world, and he couldn't refuse."

"That might very well be," says Elkins. "It has precedent. Cedric's
Last Request to Harry. But you don't really *believe* that story, do you?"

"But it's there, Elkins. In the text! Barty Jr. says so hims... Oh."

"Exactly, Eileen. What's the first rule of Potterverse speculation."

"Never get involved in a prank-war between Sirius and Snape
supporters?" says Eileen chipperly.

"No, the other one, only slightly less well known" says Elkins. 

"Never trust a character when a subjective intrepretation is on the
line?" 

"Very good.
> "'My mother saved me.  She knew she was dying.  She persuaded my 
> father to rescue me as a last favor to her.  He loved her as he had 
> never loved me.  He agreed.'"

Elkins slams the book shut.
 
"That," she says.  "Is our *only* evidence for this notion that Crouch
saved his son's life only because his wife put unbearable 
psychological pressure on him to convince him to do so.  That's it.  
All of it. How could young Crouch possibly have known anything about
the precise nature of his parents' deliberations over whether or not
to save him from Azkaban?"

"I think I assumed his father had told him," says Eileen timidly.

"Do you really? Can you imagine Crouch saying, 'Just so you know, boy,
I would have happily left you to rot in Azkaban, if only your sainted
mother hadn't forced my hand with that blasted dying request of hers.'
 I really can't see that. Can you?"

"Well. Not exactly that." 
 
"And I certainly can't imagine *Winky* telling him such a thing. So
unless we're willing to propose an Ever So Evil Winky, one who But
unless we want to accept either ESE Winky or a rather stunningly
brutal elder Crouch, I think that we're left with extrapolation.
Extrapolation, speculation, deduction.  None of which is precisely
immune from bias."

"Yes, we've noticed that," says Eileen, with a pointed look at 
Elkins' hobby horse, "Why can't *you* accept a stunningly brutal elder
Crouch, btw? Why do you feel that would be out of character for that
incarnation of all things infamous? It doesn't feel right to me
somehow, but you? I'm really very curious."

"Are you saying that Crouch Jr. was deluded?" demands Cindy.
 
"I think," she says slowly, "that it has got to be very easy to play
Good Parent/Bad Parent when one of your parents isn't even around to
piss you off anymore, while the other one is holding you prisoner by
means of an Unforgivable Curse.  I think,"  she says, "that it has got
to be even easier to play that game when one of your parents died in
your place in Azkaban, while the other one first publicly denounced
you and then, while you were screaming and struggling and pleading for
mercy while being dragged off by the dementors, exhorted you at the
top of his lungs to go and rot there. Have you ever wondered how they
broke the news to him, by the way?"

"Yes."

"Oh, of course you would," says Elkins with a grim smile. "You're just
as bad with that Palantir. What did you see?"

"I didn't think Barty at all knew what was happening to him when he
was taken out of Azkaban," begins Eileen slowly. "His description of
the scene is so passive, as if he couldn't remember it. No, I think
his first real memories would be of lying in bed at the Crouch manor,
suddenly released from all the pain and anguish of Azkaban, warm in a
real bed with real blankets, and Winky there nursing him back to
health. Have you ever thought of what that would be like? Like coming
to life again after one had been dead. And then they told him his
mother was dead."

"You thought that?" asks Cindy. "You feel sorry for Barty Crouch Jr.?"

"Yes," says Eileen. "I know exactly where I was too. I had read Goblet
of Fire two day before, on the drive down to Seattle. And I was
standing on the bridge over Deception Pass, watching the fog come in
over the ocean, and I found myself crying over the whole affair.

"They're only characters in books!" 

"Sorrow's springs are still the same," says Eileen elusively. "And I
thought how upset he seemed to be over the way his father had treated
her body."

"Oh you did, did you?" says Elkins. 

"I also remember climbing down to the ocean, and fiddling with the
idea of crushing on Snape, mostly on the grounds of hurt-comfort, I
think, but don't tell anyone about that," says Eileen, suddenly going
very red. "It was just a moment's idle fancy. I'd forgotten about it
till now." 

Cindy snickers.

"Haven't you ever wondered," Elkins asks, "why Crouch Jr. went to all 
the trouble to turn his father's body into a bone and then bury it in 
Hagrid's garden, rather than just, say, transfiguring it to dust?"

"Yes, it struck me as recreating his mother's burial," says Eileen
promptly. "Really, I was in a complete daze that day. I couldn't get
my hands on GoF, because my brother was reading it, and my mother kept
asking my father and I not to discuss the Crouch family in front of
everyone else who hadn't read the book, or to go off by ourselves to
discuss the Crouches."

"So you see," says Elkins "*Somebody* had to tell young Crouch about
his mother's death.  Either Winky did it, or his father did."

"I've thought for a long time it was his father," says Eileen. "Crouch
Sr. was obviously a very controlling person," Elkins rolls her eyes,
"And he wanted to be entirely in charge of that dynamic. He would have
been the one to tell his son. I'm pretty sure of it."

"Whoever it was," says Elkins. "These are the points that would have
been emphasized: "Your mother really wanted to do this for you," she
says.  "She did it willingly. It was her idea. She absolutely insisted
upon it. It was the very last thing that she wanted to do on this
earth..."

Eileen nods."I agree. And I'm sure that Crouch Sr. would emphasized
another point, "You can show your gratitude to her by mending your
ways ie. obeying me." But I guess Barty Jr. wouldn't have been too
much impressed by that point."

"Now," says Elkins. "that doesn't quite add up to the story Crouch Jr.
implies, but you can see how if I had been Crouch Jr. then I might
have come up with just that as my final answer when I sat down to the
math. Do you think?"

"Don't ask me," says Eileen. "You're the one who identifies with the
little psycho."

"Have you ever taken a really close look at Crouch Jr's own 
account of his rescue from Azkaban?" asks Elkins, ignoring her. "It's
actually quite interesting.  Look."  

> "'They came to visit me.  They gave me a draft of Polyjuice Potion 
> containing one of my mother's hairs.  She took a draft of Polyjuice 
> Potion containing one of my hairs.  We took on each other's 
> appearance....The dementors are blind.  They sensed one healthy, one 
> dying person entering Azkaban.  They sensed one healthy, one dying 
> person leaving it.  My father smuggled me out, disguised as my 
> mother, in case any prisoners were watching through their doors.... 
> My mother died a short while afterward in Azkaban.  She was careful 
> to drink Polyjuice Potion until the end.  She was buried under my 
> name and bearing my appearance.  Everyone believed her to be me.'"

"That's Crouch Jr's own account of how he was rescued from Azkaban," 
she says.  "Do you notice anything unusual about it?"

"His father," Eileen whispers.  "Where's his poor father?  His father 
is barely even *there.*" 

"Rationalization," says Elkins. 

"You know what struck me about this passage when I read it first,"
says Eileen. "Its relation to Sirius Black's account. Even, reading
for the first time, thinking that Barty Crouch Jr. would turn out to
be innocent, I was touched by the image of Crouch Sr. "half-carrying"
his wife out of Azkaban. There's something about the way Sirius says
it. The physicality. It's a powerful image. And Crouch Jr. just strips
the scene of all that. He was "smuggled." "Smuggled" vs. "half-carrying." 
 
"It's as if he wants to taint his father's involvement as much as
possible, to imbue it with criminal associations," says Elkins. "His
mother is the one who 'saved' him.  His father just 'smuggled' him.

"And you like this guy," says Eileen. "You're almost talking me out
that sympathy I've been slowly developing for him, did you know that?"

"Dumbledore asks him," she says through gritted teeth.  "How he came
to be there.  How he escaped from Azkaban.  And the very first thing
that he says, his very first sentence in response is: 'My mother saved
me.'  Don't you find that telling?"

"YES!" screams Eileen. "I DID! I HATE HIM! I HATE HIM! I HATE HIM!"

"Calm down," says Cindy.

"I just couldn't resist it," says Eileen, "my inner eye telling me
what's coming up in the next post."

Elkins looks at her cooly. "You do see where this is leading to?" she
says. "It's a coherent emotional argument: my mother saved me, so 'I
didn't owe my father a damned thing.'"By the time that he is 
speaking under the veritaserum, Crouch Jr. has become a 
*parricide.*  And while we're only guessing that wizards might have a 
strong belief in last requests, and while we're only guessing that 
they might have strong feelings about proper burial, there is 
something that we *know* that they believe in."

She waits.
 
"We know that they believe in life debts," says Eileen.

"Yes.  We know that they believe in life debts.  Awkward things, life 
debts." 
 
"Don't children owe their parents a life debt as a matter of simple 
default?" asks Cindy.
 
"Awkward things," Elkins says again.  "Life debts."  

"I've always wondered," says Eileen. "That Barty Jr. didn't try the
Alexander the Great method of dealing with that."

"Alexander the Great?" asks Cindy.

"He absolutely detested his father, and he convinced himself that he
really was the son of a god. It must have been tempting. I mean, the
text even draws our attention to the fact that Barty Jr. doesn't look
at all like his father. If it weren't for the bulging eye at the end,
I'm sure we'd be seeing lots of speculation on the list as to who
Barty's real father was. But I suppose that would have involved Barty
having to blacken the reputation of his saintly mother, so he went for
the next best thing. Adoption by Voldemort. And that's how he got
around the life debt. Of course, that father never came to rescue him
from the dementors." Eileen's face is hard and unpitying.
 
"So you see," says Elkins. "I don't think that saving his son from 
Azkaban was only Crouch's wife's error.  I think that it was also his 
own. I think that in the end, Crouch saved his son because he wanted 
to."

"Eileen, are those tears?" asks Cindy. 

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins
 
> REFERENCES
> 
> This post is continued from part four.  It is mainly a response
> to messages 45402 (Crouch Sr as Tragic Hero) and 45693 (Crouch and
> Winky), but also cites or references messages 43326, 43447, 44636, 
> 46923, and 46935.
> 
> "This time, with narrative feeling" -- in some branches of reader 
> response criticism, 'narrative feeling' is the term used to describe 
> those emotional reactions to the text which derive from the reader's 
> engagement with the text's narrative, or story-telling, elements.  
> The most common example is a reader's sense of personal 
> identification with a fictional character.
> 
> Link to "The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons:"
> http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/david/brutus.jpg 
> 
> For further explanation of the acronyms and theories in this post, 
> visit Hypothetic Alley at
> http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon/faq/ 
> and Inish Alley at
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/database?
> method=reportRows&tbl=13