Why Cruciatus? (A question about Dear Bella)

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 161694

I was thinking about the whole "The Lestranges, with or without Barty Crouch 
Jr., tortured the Longbottoms into insanity to try to get the current 
location of Voldemort" scenario, and it occurred to me that Things Are Wrong 
with it.

For starters:  I can assume that the Lestranges (and, possibly, Barty) know 
all three of the Unforgivable Curses.  The Unforgivables are Crucio, Avada 
Kedavra..._and Imperius._  Very few people can fight off the Imperius Curse. 
By Barty's own account, he was kept under it for years by his dear father 
after Daddy snaked him out of Azkaban.  It took him _years_ for the curse to 
wear off (or for Daddy to begin to forget to renew it every so often).

So why, if the Lestranges were just after the current location of their Lord 
and Master, would they go to the risk of using Crucio, when they could just 
Imperius the Longbottoms and be a lot surer of getting the truth out of 
them?  I don't know about _you,_ but if I were being tortured, or even 
seriously threatened with torture, for information, I'd start lying like a 
cheap carpet---"Okay, okay, you big meanies, I'll talk!  Voldemort's 
currently in North Korea!"  And then watch as they ran off to P'yongyang.

If someone was to put me under the Imperius, OTOH, I wouldn't have any 
choice but to tell the truth.  That would remove the risk to my 
interrogators of me making something up to make them lay off me for a while, 
as well as leaving me undamaged.  Imperius, combined with a quick Memory 
Charm, would seem to be far more useful than Cruciatus, even without the 
factor of possibly damaging my mind so badly that I _couldn't_ tell them 
what they wanted to know.

So why did Bella, Rudy and Barty do what they did?  About the only thing I 
can think of is that they were mainly after payback---IOW, my old "Frank 
Longbottom was Judge Dredd On Acid!" theory.  We know that by the end of 
Vold War I, the Ministry was just about as ruthless as the DEs, and used a 
lot of the same tactics.

Comments?