Barty Crouch Jr. had been executed, and his father, Barty Crouch Sr., had become the Director of the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Photos of father and son had appeared on the same page.
Pomona put down the Daily Prophet. It was not only children who could ruin their parents; parents could ruin their children too.
She looked up at the Ravenclaw table. Barnaby Lee sat alone, far away from everyone else, eating without speaking to anyone.
He looked burly, more like a rugby player than a wizard, and his grades were not particularly good either. He was by no means outstanding among Ravenclaws.
But Pomona picked up an investigation report and circled two points in red ink. One was that he had used Dark magic items as toys since childhood; the other was that Voldemort had met him "in person."
Mr. and Mrs. Lee could only be considered middle-ranking among the Death Eaters, nowhere near as prominent as the Malfoys. Yet Voldemort had gone "in person" to visit that manor, which had been far too small for someone of his status at the time, rather than summoning Barnaby and his grandmother. That was very strange.
Pomona took a sip of coffee. During her brief career as an Auror, she had encountered some gifted people. Alice Longbottom had been highly sensitive to the properties of potions, while some, like the Weasley family, possessed a certain resistance to Dark magic. But someone like Barnaby was truly rare.
Dark magic items were like handing a loaded gun to a child of a few years old and letting him play with it as a toy. Yet Barnaby had never once had it go off, harming neither himself nor anyone else. Was that merely luck?
Just then, she sensed someone passing nearby. Pomona looked