Barty Crouch Jr.

In the gloomy mansion, no fire burned in the fireplace. Cold seeped from the depths of every dust-covered piece of furniture, as though the warmth of a living body had not touched the house in a long time. The only light came from an oil lamp on the table. Its flame flickered weakly inside the glass shade, stretching the shadows across the room into long, twisted shapes.

A figure sat in a high-backed chair. It could hardly be called a person.

His body was curled up in a heap of gray-black robes, like a malformed, premature baby that had not fully developed. His skin was an unhealthy dark red, smooth as though it had no pores. His fingers rested on the arm of the chair, with no nails or fingerprints, only disproportionately long, slender joints like a spider's legs. Beside the chair, a thick-bodied snake slithered slowly past, its scales rasping dryly against the wooden floor, and there was a short man.

They were watching a man on his knees. Though he had spent months in this house, his body began to tremble involuntarily whenever he approached the chair. Fear, mingled with excitement.

"You need a different plan." The voice came from the chair, a hoarse, breathless whisper, like a dry leaf scraping across the ground in the wind.

"Master," the kneeling man said, lowering his head and swallowing once, "I believe the plan is extremely thorough. Dumbledore won't notice anything unusual about the Goblet of Fire. I used the most discreet dormant trigger charm, and I intend to replace it on the final day. Unless he specifically, before the third task..."

"Dumbledore is investigating you." The voice cut him off, utterly flat. "He sent a letter to Azkaban a couple of days ago, asking about Barty Crouch Jr.'s cause of death. You know better than I do what that means."

His fingers tightened involuntarily against his knees. Azkaban. Cause of death. He quickly ran through every part of the plan that could have gone wrong—the switch of the Goblet of Fire, the Polyjuice Potion recipe, the magical eye of that old madman Moody, and Barty Crouch's death. He had checked each part repeatedly; every one of them should have been foolproof. There was no way Dumbledore could have found out.

Unless someone had told him something.

"But I don't think the problem lies with you." The figure waved a hand, and the great snake stopped slithering. It rested its flat, triangular head beside the arm of the chair, its vertical pupils still fixed on Barty Crouch Jr. Its forked tongue quivered faintly in the air, as though tasting his fear. "There's a girl in Hufflepuff named Clara Albert, isn't there?"

He raised his head, and an image flashed through his mind: a girl in Hufflepuff robes in a corridor, holding several books in her arms. She had said something to Snape, then turned into the dungeons. He had never paid her any attention before. She was an utterly ordinary fifth-year student, with grades neither high nor low, someone who never drew a second glance in a crowd. If there was anything special about her, it was probably that she had been Harry Potter's date at the Christmas ball, and that Rita Skeeter had said she was juggling two Hogwarts Champions.

But now he suddenly realized something: throughout the entire term, she had hardly ever attended his Defence Against the Dark Arts class.

If Dumbledore had intended her to study Defense Against Dark Magic, why hadn't he asked "Moody," an Auror, to teach her?

Unless they had known from the start that he wasn't Moody.

The thought startled him.

"Keep an eye on her." Voldemort's whisper seeped out of the chair, like the touch of a snake's tongue licking the rim of his ear. Nagini's tail dragged slowly across the floor as she slithered in circles around the chair legs.

"I keep feeling that she knows things we don't. So many variables that shouldn't have appeared, Dumbledore's vigilance, the inspection of the cup, and now even the Azkaban records are being retrieved. I think she may be the source. Don't alert her," the red eyes glimmered faintly deep in the shadows, like two cooling embers, "but keep her in your sight. If she really does get in the way, you know what to do."

Clara noticed that Moody was appearing in her life more and more often—or, to be precise, Fake Moody.

At first, they merely ran into each other in the corridors. She had come out of Snape's dungeon and was walking along the stone corridor toward the Hufflepuff Common Room when she nearly collided with someone as she rounded a corner. The magical eye turned toward her first, its pupil shrinking to the size of a pinprick as it scanned her from head to foot. Only then did the normal eye follow, studying her in a way that made her uncomfortable. He didn't move aside, merely tilting his head to one side as he leaned on his cane. His wooden leg struck the stone floor with a dull thud.

"Albert," he said roughly, his mouth pulling into something that could hardly be called a smile. "Wandering about so late. Did Snape's class run over?"

"Yes, Professor, I'm sorry. I'll go straight back," she said.

She slipped sideways past him, able to feel the magical eye fixed on her the whole time. It sent a chill down her back.

Then there was breakfast in the Great Hall. She was sitting at the end of the Hufflepuff table, with Rowle peeling an orange for her, when she looked up and saw Fake Moody at the High Table, looking in her direction. A plate of barely touched fried eggs sat before him, his curved flask beside it. The liquid inside glimmered murkily under the magical lights. He never went anywhere without the flask, lowering his head to take a sip every so often. Clara knew it contained Polyjuice Potion, and that he had to drink some every hour to maintain his appearance.

She had to admit, the man had perseverance. He could keep drinking so much of something that tasted so awful.

Later still, she was waiting outside the dungeon for Snape's Potions Class to end when Fake Moody came down the stairs, dragging his wooden leg. He stood on the stairs, looking down at her for a few seconds, then said in a deliberately lowered voice, "I hear you're undergoing special training, arranged by Dumbledore himself. What kind of special training needs to be kept from the Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

Clara raised her eyes, her expression unchanged.

"Just extra lessons, Professor. My O.W.L.s Charms grade wasn't very good."

Fake Moody's magical eye spun wildly, as though it meant to bore a hole through her face. Then he smiled, twisting his scars into a strange shape.

"Hufflepuffs are too modest," he said, rapping his cane hard against the floor. "I've been an Auror for many years and seen plenty of Hogwarts students, but I've never seen one who needed extra O.W.L.s lessons from Flitwick, McGonagall, and Snape all at once. But-" He leaned forward, his magical eye revolving once in its socket before settling on her face, less than a wand's length away. "Dumbledore always has his reasons for what he arranges."

Fake Moody's magical eye made Clara's skin crawl all over, leaving her with a strange feeling she couldn't quite describe.

"Albert, you're late again."

Snape's voice rang out behind her, like music to her ears. Clara had never been so grateful for his drawn-out way of speaking. She turned and saw Snape standing in the dungeon doorway, one hand braced against the frame, his black robes swaying slightly behind him. His black eyes swept over her face, then past her to Fake Moody, his gaze as cold as two stones freshly pulled from a frozen lake.

Fake Moody's magical eye spun sharply in its socket, looking first at Snape, then at Clara. Then that fierce smile appeared again, and he struck his cane heavily against the floor.

"Oh, Severus. I was just passing by and had a few words with Miss Albert, that's all. After all-" His real eye fixed on Clara, and his mouth twitched. "You won't find another student in all of Hogwarts receiving private lessons from three professors at once. I was merely curious."

Snape said nothing more. He swept his robes aside and returned to the dungeon. Clara said goodbye to Moody, then followed close behind Snape into the dungeon.

"Professor, thank you." Only when the dungeon door closed did she dare relax completely. "I keep feeling that he knows something. I underestimated him."

Snape didn't turn around to hurry her along. He went to the worktable, running his fingers slowly over a row of potion bottles. At last, he stopped at a square bottle in the middle, filled with amber liquid. He picked it up, examined it by candlelight, and put it back.

"He managed to fool the Goblet of Fire's age restriction and put Potter's name in. He's used Polyjuice Potion as a disguise without being discovered all this time. Whoever he is, he's no simple opponent. Did you think he wouldn't see through that story of yours about extra O.W.L.s lessons? Even if he couldn't, the one behind him is no fool either." His tone remained cold. "But you should count yourself lucky. He probably still isn't sure how much you know. Otherwise, it might be more than chance meetings or being followed."

Clara leaned against the door, feeling its chill seep through her school robes into her skin. She took a deep breath and gradually forced down the cold that had shot up her spine under the magical eye's stare.

Snape turned to look at her. He was some distance away, and she couldn't make out his expression.

"Dumbledore needs to know about this. Go and tell him tonight. I'll speak to him."

After class, she came out of the dungeon and went straight to the Headmaster's Office.

When she reached the office entrance, the stone gargoyle sprang aside before she could speak. It had evidently been informed in advance. She climbed the spiral staircase and pushed open the familiar wooden door, only to find the office empty. The fire was still burning in the fireplace, Fawkes was dozing on his perch, and an open book and a half-finished cup of tea sat on Dumbledore's desk. He had evidently only just left.

Clara stood in the doorway for a few seconds, then decided to sit down and wait.

This was the first time she had examined the office closely. Besides the portraits of former headmasters hanging on the walls, she noticed quite a few other ingenious touches in the room.

There was the Sorting Hat on a shelf, for instance, and the glittering ruby-studded sword hanging on the wall. Was that the Sword of Gryffindor? She had only heard of it.

Something in a corner of a cabinet caught her attention because it was glowing silver-white.

She walked over and saw a stone basin. The silver-white substance inside it was swirling faster and faster, as though stirred by some force. This was probably the Pensieve from the books. Clara took a step closer. She had never seen a Pensieve up close, only read in books that it was used to store and view memories. She stood on tiptoe, trying to get a better look at the swirling silver threads in the basin-then they suddenly leaped upward like flames blown by the wind and wound around her arm. Her fingertips touched the cool substance, which was neither liquid nor gas. The next second, an irresistible force pulled her whole body in. The office spun around her, warped, and vanished. Her feet left the ground, and she plunged into a black abyss.

When she regained her footing, she was standing in a gloomy stone chamber. Towering stone walls rose around her, the air was filled with the damp smell of mold and decay, and there were rows of seats and a chair with chains in the middle.

There were many people there, and she had seen quite a few of them before.

Dumbledore, Moody, Barty Crouch. But they were younger than she remembered them.

She turned and saw a young man held down by chains. He had light brown hair and a pale face, but his expression was arrogant, a sneer on his lips and a kind of despair in his eyes, as though he no longer cared about anything. His deep-set eyes, the outline of his chin, the curve of his eyebrows—they were identical.

Identical to that young, nervous, sweat-drenched face after Fake Moody drank the Polyjuice Potion.

Someone tapped her on the back. She turned and saw a second Dumbledore.

This Dumbledore reached out and took hold of her. She felt herself slowly rise into the air, then watched the stone chamber gradually disappear.

When she regained her footing again, she was back in Dumbledore's office.

"It's him."

The shock of seeing that face was so great that she forgot to apologize to Dumbledore first for her presumption.

"Professor, Fake Moody is him. The person in the defendant's chair just now—I'm sure of it."

Dumbledore stood beside the Pensieve, his blue eyes behind his Half-moon Spectacles showing little surprise. He merely nodded slightly, then touched the rim of the Pensieve lightly with his wand. The swirling silver substance gradually settled and stopped giving off that unusual glow.

"That was Barty Crouch Jr.," Dumbledore said, his voice lower than usual. "Barty Crouch's son. Eleven years ago, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban for taking part in the torture of the Longbottoms. He later died in prison. At least, that is what the Ministry of Magic's official records say." He paused, a cold gleam flashing in his blue eyes. "Later, his father, Mr. Crouch, disappeared from the Ministry of Magic's sight, until he appeared in the Forbidden Forest last time."

"So Fake Moody is Barty Crouch Jr. Old Crouch rescued him from Azkaban and hid him at home. Then he escaped, went to join You-Know-Who, and took the opportunity presented by the Goblet of Fire to come back. I don't know what they did, but the result is that You-Know-Who has returned." Clara paused, her fingers unconsciously touching the petal pendant on her wrist. "He was probing me in the corridor today, probably because he discovered something. Did You-Know-Who tell him to keep an eye on me?"

"Yes, you're very clever, Clara. But that means they still don't know the amulet exists. They only feel that you know a little too much," Dumbledore said, with a note of cautious reassurance. "If they already knew, they would be doing more than probing you. In the days ahead, I'll reduce the frequency of your lessons to lessen their suspicions. After all, your task is to remember the truth and do everything you can to bring Mr. Diggory back, not to defeat them. I believe that, with your current abilities, escaping from them won't be a problem. But there is another piece of not-so-good news. Our people have checked many times, and at present there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the Goblet of Fire."