Barty Crouch, a Ministry of Magic official renowned for his ruthlessness, resisted Voldemort's dark rule with an iron fist.
Fighting violence with violence, he authorized Aurors to use Unforgivable Curses against Death Eaters.
At the time, the ruthless and merciless Barty Crouch had countless supporters. These wizards loudly called for change and campaigned everywhere, believing that the Ministry of Magic needed such a strong leader.
Eda felt that these wizards were not wrong. In that chaotic, dark era filled with torture and murder, the Ministry of Magic really did need a hardliner who could use thunderous measures to purge the scum.
Being tough and uncompromising was the best retaliation against Voldemort and his followers.
Barty Crouch had been just one step away from becoming Minister for Magic, only one step, but his son Barty Crouch Jr. had ruined it for him. The position that had been within his grasp was gone.
"I didn't know much about that boy either," Sirius said after thinking for a while. "When the Dementors brought him in, I caught a glimpse of him through the bars. He looked no more than nineteen."
A nineteen-year-old boy, a boy who had achieved top marks in all twelve subjects, was nevertheless one of Voldemort's minions. And Barty Crouch Jr. had been caught at the scene of the crime. When they captured him, he had been with the Death Eaters.
It was also with the trial of his own son that Barty Crouch's life took a sharp turn downward, falling from the peak to the bottom.
"The Dementors put that kid in the cell next to mine," Sirius continued. "For the first few days, he kept shouting that he was innocent, crying and calling for his father and mother. After a few days, he became completely silent, just like most of the people locked up there."
Azkaban, a place of despair. It was simply no place for a human being. The half-giant Hagrid would tremble all over at the mere mention of Azkaban, while Sirius, who had regained his freedom, still carried a deep fear of that place.
Even Eda, who was often astonishingly irreverent, had never made jokes about Azkaban. That place was practically a living hell.
"Did he die?" Fred asked softly. "He died in Azkaban, right?"
For most people imprisoned in Azkaban, there were only two possible outcomes: being driven insane by the Dementors, or losing the desire to go on living.
Even a tiger would not eat its own cub. What kind of person could a father be to lock his own son in Azkaban and then ignore him completely? Calling Barty Crouch cold and heartless was no longer enough.
"Yes. About a year later, he died. He died without making a sound," Sirius said. "Before his death, Crouch and his wife were allowed to visit their dying son. Not long afterward, his wife died too."
There were three great joys for a middle-aged man: getting promoted, getting rich, and his wife dying. Barty Crouch had not only lost his wife, but his son as well, and yet he had neither been promoted nor gotten rich.
A year earlier, Crouch had still been a hero, full of confidence and determined to become Minister for Magic. In the blink of an eye, his son was dead, his wife was dead, his family's reputation had been tarnished, and Crouch had become completely alone.
After Barty Crouch Jr.'s death, people began to sympathize with the boy and started questioning Crouch.
People believed that such an outstanding boy had gone down the wrong path entirely because of Barty Crouch. After all, he had never cared about his son.
A man who could not take care of his family could hardly be called a man.
If he could not even take care of his own family, if he could not even take care of his own son, then what right did Barty Crouch have to become Minister for Magic?
Silence. The cottage fell into a long silence.
The tragic lives of Barty Crouch and Barty Crouch Jr., this father and son, had a way of leaving people speechless.
If Barty Crouch had paid a little more attention to his family, if Barty Crouch Jr. had never gone down the wrong path, might the Ministry of Magic have had the glorious story of "father and son both becoming Ministers"?
Everyone had to take responsibility for their own lives. And life could not be lived over again.
Eda lightly tapped her forehead with the knuckle of her index finger and slowly asked, "Where is Barty Crouch Jr.'s body? Are you sure he's dead?"
"He's not the only one who died," Sirius replied. "Most people there went insane. Many eventually starved themselves to death. In that place, death was actually a form of release."
He had not answered the question. Sirius understood what Eda meant, but he thought it was impossible. Absolutely impossible.
"Where is Barty Crouch Jr.'s body?" Eda asked again. "Are you sure he's dead?"
"Of course. Crouch never came to collect his son's body. The Dementors buried him outside the fortress," Sirius said. "I watched them do it."
Sirius grabbed the cashews on the table and stuffed them into his mouth one by one, speaking slowly.
"You're not thinking that boy didn't die, are you? People die in Azkaban every day. They're professionals when it comes to burying people."
"But you escaped," Eda said seriously. "You escaped from Azkaban and turned into a dog!"
"That's because I'm an Animagus. The Dementors couldn't distinguish..."
Sirius stopped halfway through his sentence.
The slap in the face had come so quickly.
He had simply taken too much for granted. He could fool the Dementors, so why couldn't Crouch and Barty Jr. do the same?
Azkaban was the most heavily guarded wizarding prison because it was built on an isolated island in the North Sea and because its guards were Dementors. Many prisoners went insane after spending only a few weeks there, then began starving themselves to death.
Escape? Impossible!
At the same time, Azkaban's defenses were also the most lax, because its only guards were Dementors. If there had been even one wizard stationed on the island, Sirius probably would never have been able to escape.
Since Sirius had managed to do it, could someone else have done something similar? Cooperating from inside and outside, escaping from the full-of-holes defenses of Azkaban?
Sirius fell silent again. He desperately tried to recall his days in Azkaban, trying to remember every detail about Barty Crouch Jr.
Although Sirius was unwilling to remember those painful years, he knew he had to.
"Eda, are you talking about switching people?" George asked uncertainly. "Barty Crouch took his own son out of Azkaban and left his dying wife there?"
From the Dementors' perspective, there had been two sentient beings with emotions when they entered Azkaban, and there were still two sentient beings with emotions when they left. The numbers checked out.
There was far too much room for manipulation here. It was just that no one had ever been as audacious as Eda and imagined something like this.
"I don't know. It's just a hypothesis, a baseless guess." Eda frowned. She knew her assumption was too absurd. It sounded like something out of a fairy tale.
Make bold assumptions and verify them carefully. That was exactly what Eda was doing now.
From Bertha Jorkins's disappearance to Barty Crouch becoming seriously ill and then vanishing without a trace, everything that had happened seemed to be controlled by an invisible hand.
Where could you find someone more suitable for the role of mastermind than a dead man?
Suppose Barty Jr. really had not died, and the person who died in Azkaban had actually been his mother, while he himself had been switched out of the prison. Many problems would immediately make sense.
As Barty Crouch's subordinate, Bertha Jorkins had accidentally learned the secret that Barty Jr. was still alive, so she "disappeared."
Because Crouch knew that it was his own son who had cast the Dark Mark, he had been stalling for time, distracting everyone and covering for his son's departure.
It really seemed to make sense. There was only one problem: why would Barty Jr. do this?
After keeping his head down and behaving himself for so many years, why had Barty Jr. suddenly appeared? What had triggered him and driven him to do something so irrational? And how had Barty Jr. managed to influence the Triwizard Tournament?
Another mystery had appeared, but this time it was not as chaotic as before. Eda had managed to piece together a thread, as long as her hypothesis was correct.
What she needed to do next was verify it and prove that her hypothesis was true.
Deep in his memories, Sirius found a detail everyone had overlooked.
"Do you remember who was in the box on the day of the World Cup?" he asked.
"Why do you ask?" Fred said, confused. "Apart from us, there were the Malfoys and the Ministry people."
"Was there anything strange about it?" George was puzzled too. "Let me think... There seemed to be a house-elf there."
Sirius pointed at George.
"Exactly. A house-elf. The house-elf Crouch fired. Winky!"
...
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