Why did Barty Crouch Jr join Voldemort? (Really Long)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 189930

Mike:<drastically snipped>
> 
> Barty Jr's other choice is to break out of that prison and to rejoin Voldemort. Well, where else is he going to go? Like Wormtail, he has nowhere else to turn. Unlike Wormtail, he is an escaped prisoner of Azkaban. So Voldemort it is. He takes his chances that things will work out this time. See, that doesn't sound like a person subsumed into Voldemort's personae. That actually sounds like his most logical option. Now, like I said, this is many years later, after he joined up as a young man, a teenager. So he may have been a little more delusional back when he joined up.
> 

Pippin:
First of all, Barty didn't "break out" of Azkaban. His mother and father rescued him. His mother was dying anyway, but she chose to spend her last days in a prison cell, surrounded by dementors, in order to save her son. Was that rational self-interest?

 Barty Jr had been a free man, completely unsuspected, after Voldemort's fall. He could have refused to join Bella in her mad quest to locate the fallen Dark Lord, and slipped back into normal wizarding life like the Malfoys and so many others. He didn't. Whatever his motivation was, it couldn't have been rational self-interest either. 

I'd say that Voldemort, who is  a keen judge of character except where mothers are concerned, was right. Barty Jr  was fanatically loyal to him. Simply put, Voldemort knows how to inspire loyalty in his servants. He's not  good at *keeping* it, and most of them became disillusioned sooner or later. But Barty and Bella did not. Certainly they are depicted as irrational in canon.  

Mike:
> But then I have one question for you: what about Snape? Completely different upbringing, just as bright if not smarter than Barty Jr, and still he joins up. No, sorry, not buying that young Severus was delusional. And not buying that young Barty Crouch Jr was delusional either. I think Barty Jr knew what he wanted and went for it, just like many his age had.

Pippin:
Not delusional, but easily manipulated and tired of being called a nasty liar for saying things he knows but can't prove. Having just re-read OOP, I  think the DE's had the same attractions for Snape that the DA  had for Harry. Shunned by many of his peers, he  found a way to get respect and attention from at least some of them, while the adults in his life were either untrustworthy, distant or overwhelmed by problems of their own.  It was the one area in his life that was consistently rewarding. Between that and a conflicted relationship with a girl he scarcely understood, and who didn't understand him at all, there was no contest.  

Pippin