Barty Crouch Jr. pulled a roll of even older parchment from beneath a pile of Dark Detectors.
He slowly spread it out.
Drawn on it.
Was a chart-a relationship network and movement map of the entire Hogwarts staff.
Dumbledore, McGonagall, Flitwick, Snape... beside each name, tiny writing listed their teaching schedules, night patrol routes, office locations, weaknesses of character, and... their relationships with one another.
"Cooperation," "suspicion," "loathing," "old ties."
Barty Crouch Jr.'s finger finally settled on two names he had heavily circled in red ink.
Douglas Holmes.
Severus Snape.
His Magical Eye stared fixedly at the line connecting the two names, and the annotation above it-suspicious one-sided trust.
"Holmes..."
Barty Crouch Jr.'s voice was full of wariness and hatred.
Through Harry, he had already confirmed that the magical defenses around the Third Task could not be breached at all.
But that was only the outer shell.
He knew perfectly well that, given Holmes's meticulous approach, the true core information could never be kept somewhere so public.
He needed to find that thing.
Only then could he make up for his mistake and execute his plan perfectly.
Based on his observations over this period, he had narrowed it down to the two most likely locations.
The first was Douglas's office.
But his Magical Eye could not see through that place at all. Any probing magic was silently neutralized, without so much as a ripple.
The second was somewhere in the Forbidden Forest.
Barty Crouch Jr.'s Magical Eye turned toward the window, gazing at the black Forbidden Forest beneath the moonlight.
He had to find a way.
A way that would evade Dumbledore, evade Holmes, and evade everyone's notice.
Then, get that thing.
Barty Crouch Jr.'s gaze returned to the relationship map, searching that tangled network for a gap that might