Wrote this for the "Real Plotholes" thread, but then I realised that Thread was too old. I know it's stupid, but Ive hated this for so long and never gotten to vent it. Move or delete the thread if Its not allowed on this board, plz.

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I dont know if this quite qualifies, but to me, the biggest plothole in the entire Potterverse is Bartemius Crouch Jr. Impersonating Alastor Moody.

There are two parts to this.

One:

It undermines the whole character of Moody and his Constant Vigilance-spouting that he would somehow be bested by an average, if competent Death Eater. This irked me even the first time I read Goblet, when I was like 14.

However, I guess you could explain it by assuming that Crouch had the backing and resources of the entire Death Eater organization, shade the whole yards. What could be more important than getting Voldy a new body, after all? However, this leads us to part two.

Two:

Why would they choose Moody?! In the canon books, he has no real influnce over the design of the tournament as far as I can gather, and whereas Albus maybe consulted him for advice, that is simply conjecture. So any old teacher might do.

Surely there are easier targets than Moody, perhaps the second strongest fighter the light has? And easily the most paranoid.

Any of the other teacher might do, and one has to assume that sprout would be an easier target than Alastor Fucking Moody. One failed attempt, one faint wiff of danger, and he might report to Dumbledore, ruining the whole plan.

There are two counter-arguments to this:
1 While Crouch is a very competent actor, he can only play an over the top character like Moody convincily. In which case I belive the would come up with another plan.
2 Albus knows all the teachers to well, and would see through the disguise. To which I would counter: Albus spent a bloody war fighting alongside this guy.

TL;DR Crouch Jr. could not Logicaly have Bested Moody!

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Why not? Crouch was one of Voldemort's more talented Death Eaters, evidenced by the fact that he did beat Moody. Also, the whole Constant Vigilance! thing gets overblown in fanon a lot. Moody (Crouch) threw the phrase about a lot because he was trying to teach a bunch of schoolkids about how the real Moody fought during the war. In OotP and after he had the experience of being locked in a trunk and used as Polyjuice fuel for near enough an entire year to motivate him.

There's no reason to think that Moody couldn't have been caught off guard when he was his most complacent (i.e. at home), mostly because it happened.

Also, Crouch only had the support of Voldemort himself, Nagini and Wormtail during GoF. Nobody knew that Voldemort was attempting to create a new body for himself except for them, so he didn't have the support of the Death Eaters.

They chose Moody because they knew the Triwizard Tournament was heading to Hogwarts (thanks to Bertha Jorkins) and that Albus would likely go for someone he trusted to take up the Defence Against the Dark Arts post. Adding on to that, Albus had been working day in-day out with all of the Hogwarts professors for years, which would make it ten times harder to impersonate any of them. Plus there's the fact that they didn't know whether Snape was loyal or not, so they chose someone who would be naturally antagonistic towards him (also likely having some knowledge of Occlumency to stop Snape from taking a peek).

All in all, I see no plot hole here.

 

Ninja'd.

1. Even the most paranoid people can be taken by surprise. For instance, they might get ambushed by two people who died several years ago, which is going to make anyone flinch a little. Moody's badass, but all they need is a second's hesitation, and they can take him down.

2. If they had failed, any of Moody's warnings would have been taken as paranoid, delusional ramblings by 95% of the authorities. Dumbledore would probably have believed him, but then, Dumbledore was probably relatively alert to an attack of some sort anyway, so nothing lost, nothing gained.

3. As a new teacher at Hogwarts, Moody - and by extension, Crouch - would have a pass for anything he wasn't aware of at the school. If Sprout suddenly forgets a key part of her day - watering the mandrakes, for instance - then people are going to start taking an interest. Similarly, while Moody might be an old friend of Dumbledore's - and we don't know how regularly they're in contact at the time of the books - there's a difference between 'old friend' and 'I interact with this person on a daily basis for all but about six weeks of the year' (given that most if not all of the staff seem to stick around over Christmas and Easter). On top of that, we don't really know what Crouch's particular area of expertise was. If the standard of Herbology teaching suddenly plummets, then Dumbledore is, once again, going to start poking his nose in. Moody was probably hired more for his ass-kicking capability in the event of shenanigans around the Tournament; being able to teach a class to a decent standard would just have been a bonus.

 

(A little bogged down at the moment, so dont have time for a long reply)

Then why not pick any bloody ministry official that has something to do with the design or, even better, produce the tasks? I get that it has to be the trophy, since they can't have anyone touching it and triggering the portkey early, but surely someone has to make preparations and actually place the throphy in the mace. Why not just wait there with an Invisiblity cloak? (Which Crouch Jr. actually possesses, mind you.)

I guess my main argument is: Path of least resistance.

Plus I think she really undermines the character of Moody, but that is a personal gripe and not a Plot Hole.

 

Yep. And because Dumbledore trusts Moody so much, he got the job himself. Perfect.

As for random official, he needed to impersonate someone who could be on the scene at all times. There's no telling when random official isn't going to be at the Tournament for some reason, even if they did design a task (it's perhaps worth mentioning that other than Crouch Sr, Percy and Fudge, we don't see any officials at the Tournament). Plus, if he impersonates a random official, then he has to do their job at the Ministry, which he's going to be much less familiar with than teaching. He has at least been in a classroom.

 

In addition, Moody was the easiest to impersonate. Dumbledore has been around the other professors for a while now, and knew them well enough that any mistakes trying to pose as them would be more likely to be noticeable. It's unlikely that Crouch's knowledge of Herbology would be enough to allow him to convincingly pull off acting like Sprout. Moody on the other hand had was perfect:

1. He'd been away from Dumbledore long enough that any discrepancies in behavior could be easily explained/brushed away, and his batshit craziness meant not too many people would pry too much into his affairs anyway.
2. Crouch knew enough about the Dark Arts that teaching Defense would not be a tax his ability to keep in character.
3. His reputation and clout with Dumbledore would allow him to keep close to the most crucial proceedings at all times and place him in a strategic enough position to make any last minute adjustments accordingly. He nearly got away with Harry after Voldemort failed, if not for the infamous long-winded villainous speech that felled him at the end.

 

4. It was easy to drink polyjuice regularly since drinking from a personal flask was either something Moody was known for, or easily explained as paranoia.

 

I get where you're coming from. While you can explain the actions of Voldemort/Barty Crouch Jr. in retrospect, it is kind of a dumb plan.
But then you could apply that to the whole book.
The only thing that Voldemort actually needed, was some of Harry's blood, forcibly taken.

To accomplish that, they made up the following genius plan:
- Overwhelm and then impersonate Alastor Moody, a former, very paranoid auror.
- Get him to convince Albus Dumbledore to use him as the DADA teacher for the year. (Ok, maybe he was already chosen to be the teacher.)
- Convincingly play that role for almost a year, without getting found out.
- Get Harry to take part in the Triwizard Tournament, by fooling an ancient artifact and Dumbledore.
- Help Harry cheat, so that he can win the tournament.
- Turn the trophy into a portkey (and don't forget to make sure it's two way, so that he has a convenient way to escape.)

This was seriously the best plan they could come up with?
Obviously you can make up explanations why it actually was, but I think Rowling just became too enamored with her plot twists and didn't really think this through.

(Maybe Crouch Jr. was just procrastinating. He was supposed to have Harry touch a portkey in the first lesson, but he liked it in Hogwarts and just procrastinated until the end of the year. )

 

My personal explanation is that Voldemort was, to put it bluntly, bored. After all, there isn't much fun in spending a decade as a disembodied spirit. So he came up with a convoluted plan that he knew he could pull off because he's fucking Voldemort to basically keep things interesting for himself.

 

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Half a life of being under the Imperius Curse and when you wake up you're ordered to go to Hogwarts? I bet he'd been secretly gunning for Lord Voldemort to fail so that he could think up an equally convoluted strategy for next year.

 

I'm too lazy to look up my old post on this, so I might end up repeating my past self.

If you believe that Voldemort's objective was only to get Harry's blood, it is a silly and over-complicated plan.

I think there are/were more reasons in play.

First, Moody is an information source by himself.
Second, you get another spy in Hogwarts.
Third, you remove a potential opponent with knowledge how to handle dark wizards.

But forget all that, let's look at the plan.

Harry is entered into a tournament.

Here, I believe, Voldemort doesn't care if Harry actually wins the thing.
If Harry dies, that means that the prophesy doesn't matter and Voldemort can use the blood of any other enemy out there, say the very same Alastor Moody he conveniently could have delivered by the very servant that is doing the impersonation.

If Harry survives, he would not only disappear from Hogwarts, he would do so in a spectacular, mysterious way.

Such a disappearance would favor both options of announcing Voldemort's glorious return officially, by returning with a dead Harry Potter or him deciding staying low for a few months, all the same. In first case scenario, he would return as defeater of the 'supposed' saviour, and in the second scenario, he'd have fake Moody on hand to see how Dumbledore is looking for Harry.

In either case, fake Moody remains in a position to offer help to Dumbledore, serving both as a fail-safe to Snape and as an additional spy.

 

The only hint, even upon rereading, that I can recall seeing that it wasn't actually Moody, was that he basically got a kick out of making Neville watch him torture the spider with the same curse that had just been mentioned in relation to his parents.

The movie, IIRC, made it a point to emphasize that.

 

Maybe the reason they picked Moody was because, once they learned he would be at Hogwarts, their only option was to take him out. His eye could have caused endless problems had it not been in Crouch's polyjuiced socket instead.

 

Well, it was a decade since Moody had been out and about, so you don't need a perfect acting performance. Any differences could be put down to a decade of living as a Howard Hughes shut-in. Add that to Moody's already larger-than-life character and convincing people that you're him isn't so impressive, especially when you take into account the polyjuice, peg leg and magic eye. I don't think we should underestimate what a huge aid to acting those are.

I also doubt that Crouch Jr. was an average Death Eater. In my mind he's contending with Lucius, Snape and Bellatrix for "right hand (wo)man" status.

 

Isn't that because he's impersonating a character you know nothing of?

He could go around singing and it would still read as Moody, because as far as we knew, it was Moody.

 

My first impression was that after a decade out of the public eye, almost certainly not seeing anyone, with occasional stories like the attack on the dustbins leaking out... Moody had become such a caricature of himself in the minds of the public that he was easy to impersonate. By the time GoF rolled around, the average person thought Moody was a paranoid maniac who couldn't let go of the war.

Which is exactly what Crouch played.

All Crouch had to do was act paranoid about damn near everything, suspect anyone with connections to dark wizards of being dark themselves and occasionally shout something about always being observant. Of course Crouch!Moody and Crouch are different, any halfway competent actor can do that - especially with magic involved. That's like pointing out that Gollum, Caesar and King Kong all move differently, so Andy Serkiss couldn't possibly have done motion capture for them all.

Crouch!Moody and Crouch isn't the comparison you should be making. You should be comparing Crouch!Moody and Moody. Which is virtually impossible to do with just GoF because we see so little of the real Moody.