Crouch and "Weatherby"

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 57039

You know, I wonder if Mr. Crouch wasn't beginning to come unglued even
before his visit from Lord Voldemort.  When he's raving, he is addressing
someone called "Weatherby" and talking about how his son (apparently the
same one we know) got twelve OWLs.

By the time he meets Percy Weasley, his son's long, long past the
getting-OWLs stage...he's been his father's prisoner for years and years.
So whoever he thinks he's talking to in his flashback, it can't be Percy.

But addressing someone by the name of someone else, someone you _used to_
work with, is Not A Good Sign in us Muggles, and I doubt it's a good sign
for wizards.  I think that the long strain of keeping his son imprisoned
told on him in a lot of ways, and he was already a few cards short of a
Tarot deck from the stress.

Think about it.  It would be an incredibly creepy situation, with your
son-the-criminal always around, wearing an Invisibility Cloak and under a
spell that was _supposed to_ keep him under control...a spell that _you_
knew perfectly well could be resisted.  (If Fake-Moody said that Imperius
could be resisted in his classes, one can assume that Real-Moody would have
as well, and that the knowledge that Imperius _can_ sometimes be resisted is
known to at least some wizards)  You'd have to watch all the time, wondering
all the time if _this_ would be the day when your-son-the-criminal finally
managed to figure a way to break free, or if someone would twig to his
presence.  Every day, you'd know that you had done something that would
probably get you tossed so far into Azkaban that even the Dementors couldn't
find you.

Add in the fact that, other than Winky, he had nobody to turn to...his wife
was dead and buried in Azkaban.

Frankly, the atmosphere _chez_ Crouch during those years would probably make
the Radley house in _To Kill A Mockingbird_ look like Fun Central.  And he
put up with this for well over a decade.

I think that even without his son getting loose and Lord Voldemort
returning, Mr. Crouch was well on his way to a padded cell at St. Mungo's.