Was Crouch Junior a DE? (was Re: ESE!Fudge)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 114096

Ravenclaw Bookworm wrote:
><snip>
> Canon against Crouch Junior being the third missing DE:
> If Junior was the `most faithful servant' would he have
> shrieked during his trial: "I didn't, I swear it Father,
> don't send me back to the dementors - " and "Mother, stop
> him, Mother, I didn't do it, it wasn't me!" [GoF, Ch30]
> 
> This doesn't sound very faithful.  Bellatrix was standing right
> next to him, so it is probable she reported it to Voldemort.  Fudge, 
> OTOH, was very quick to have him `kissed' so that he
> couldn't tell anything more.  Was it so he couldn't name
> Fudge?  Or so that no one would realize that he [Junior] *wasn't* 
> guilty of earlier crimes?
>  
> "`The Lestranges should stand here,' said Voldemort quietly.
> `But they are entombed in Azkaban.  They were faithful. They went
> to Azkaban rather than denounce me....When Azkaban is broken open, 
> the Lestranges will be honored beyond their dreams.'" [GoF, Ch33]
> 
> The Lestranges were `faithful' and didn't renounce
> Voldemort.  It doesn't make sense that Junior would also be 
> described as `the faithful servant' even though he calls
> himself that. [GoF, Ch35] <snip>

Carol responded:
Other posters have given reasons for Crouch!Moody being the faithful
servant at Hogwarts, so I'll only respond to the part about young
Barty being a DE.

First, Barty in the Pensieve scene is a nineteen-year-old boy being
guarded by Dementors, fiends that he knows can suck his soul away (a
premonition?). He's terrified and hysterical. Second, like most DEs,
he's probably a former Slytherin, and Slytherins, we're told, will use
any means to achieve their ends. Barty's "end," or objective, in this
instance is to be free, to avoid Azkaban and the Dementors at any
cost. So he combines his very real terror with a lie, a desperate
attempt to get his father to believe him. Bellatrix, notice, *wants*
credit for her evil deed. If Barty hadn't helped her to do it, I think
she'd have spoken then and there: "Get this coward boy out of here.
Rodolphus and Rabastan and I Crucio'd the Longbottoms. He had nothing
to do with it." But she says nothing of the kind. In fact, she sets an
example of unwavering fanatical loyalty to her master that he later
follows.

Also, despite having spent a year dying in Azkaban and another twelve
years under the Imperius Curse, conditions under which he could not
have learned any new spells (or developed any new loyalties), Crouch,
when he recovers his own personality, is a fanatically devoted
follower whose first act after stealing Harry's wand is to cast a
Morsmordre (Dark Mark), a spell only a Death Eater would know how to
do. He also has no problem casting any of the Unforgiveable Curses in
GoF, using all three on the spiders, Imperioing his own students and
Krum, and AKing his father, an act of murder that parallels Tom
Riddle's. Yet these curses are not only illegal but immoral
("unforgiveable") in themselves because they take away another's life
or self-determination. As far as we know, only an evil person like
Crouch Jr. or Wormtail or Bellatrix can cast them correctly. (Even
Crouch Sr. is corrupted by them, using evil means to attempt the
destruction of evil and so becoming arguably evil himself.) Crouch Jr.
also passionately hates Death Eaters who walked free (e.g., Snape and
Karkaroff)--by implication because he was a Death Eater who did *not*
walk free.

His being a Death Eater before Azkaban is confirmed by his own account
under veritaserum, where he states that he had to be controlled by his
father after his recovery from his near-fatal illness: "My father had
to use a number of spells to subdue me. When I had recovered my
strength, I thought only of finding my master. . . of *returning to
his service*" (GoF Am. ed. 684-85, my emphasis). So is his hatred of
Death Eaters who walked free: "We heard the Death Eaters [at the QWC].
The ones who had never been to Azkaban. The ones who had never
suffered for my master. They had turned their backs on him. They were
not enslaved, as I was. They were free to seek him, but they did not.
. . . I was angry. I wanted to attack them for their disloyalty to my
master. . . . I wanted to show those Death Eaters what loyalty to my
master meant, and to punish them for their lack of it. I used the
stolen wand to cast the Dark Mark into the sky" (686-87).

Pretty conclusive evidence, I'd say, that Barty Jr. was as loyal a
Death Eater as Bellatrix Lestrange and had been since before his
arrest. Yes, he should have had a trial (minus Dementors) in which he
could plead his innocence if he dared to do so in front of Bellatrix,
but I suspect that a fair trial would have found him just as guilty as
his older companions. In the face of the Dementors, cowardice overcame
fanaticism, but once he's away from the Dementors, fanatical loyalty
to Voldemort is his defining trait. If Luna is the antithesis of
Hermione, the boy in the Pensieve is the antithesis of Regulus Black.

Carol, who wonders if the Dementor who sucked his soul somehow
recognized him and realized that he and his fellow guards had been
deceived