Chapter 465: Barty Jr. is in Action (Edited)

Watching the crowd disperse, Barty Crouch Jr. exhaled a secret sigh of relief and then limped back to his office.

For a moment he thought his plan was going to backfire, because who would have thought Fish would skip the age line and let Harry sign up too?!

Luckily, old Barty controlled and forced the opinions of the others and, although he hated his father deeply, he had to admit that his status was a great help to him.

Next...

It was time to help Harry Potter... or Fish McGonagall win.

Barty Crouch Jr. narrowed his eyes slightly.

Although both young wizards were targets of the Dark Lord, Harry's priority was higher, and ideally he would get the Portkey trophy, and the Dark Lord would use it to resurrect him completely, and then he would find a way to get Fish to the Dark Lord.

It's just that it's a lot harder for Harry to win than it is for Fish.... Even if he did nothing, a certain little cat can probably win the championship on his own.

But if Fish got there first, and there was only a weak Dark Lord and that coward Peter Pettigrew....

Although this idea seemed a bit outrageous to Barty Jr. he was really worried that the Dark Lord would be defeated by Fish again.

If only he had stopped Fish and the others that night.

Barty Crouch Jr. thought with some regret, he hadn't expected Fish to cross the age line set by Dumbledore, and he had wanted to gather more information about him.

Well, there was no point in regretting it now, let's take it one step at a time... and try to help Harry Potter win the championship.

Barty Crouch Jr. shook his head, not to give the matter any more thought.

Barty Crouch Jr. limped back to his office, closed the door behind him and walked over to a chest with seven locks, took out the key, unlocked the seventh lock and opened the chest.

Inside the box was a large pit about ten feet deep, like a dank cellar, and inside lay an unconscious man, the real Mad-Eye Moody, only with his prosthetic leg and magic eye removed, and thin as a bone, obviously starving.

Barty Crouch Jr. crawled over to the box and roughly pulled a handful of white hair from Moody's head, who let out a weak groan as he lay on the floor.

Putting the hair in his hand, he pulled out his wand and whispered to Moody, "Imperius."

As soon as Moody woke up, Barty Crouch Jr. immediately controlled him with the Imperius curse. Under Barty Crouch Jr.'s control, he ate two pieces of bread and drank some water, and was stunned again by the stunning curse.

Barty Crouch Jr. got out of the chest and locked it, then inserted the key into the fifth lock, and when the chest opened again, it was filled with a bunch of herbs and a pot of simmering Multijuice Potion.

Pouring about half of the pot into the whiskey bottle, Barty Crouch Jr. counted the contents of the chest....

There wasn't much African tree snake skin left, Snape should have some in his office....

Barty Crouch Jr. carefully remembered that Snape seemed to be on night duty tonight.

He closed the briefcase, tossed the hair he had just plucked into the bottle of whiskey, then took a drink with his head held high and limped out of his office, heading for the basement.

While Barty Crouch Jr. was in action, Fish and Harry had returned to the Gryffindor dormitory.

The two were greeted by a large crowd as they entered the dormitory, and the sudden noise in their ears caused Harry to nearly fall backwards and Fish to cover his cat ears in disgust.

The Gryffindors didn't stop there, however, as everyone shouted, cheered, whistled, and vented.

"Why are you the only one chosen?!" shouted Fred, half annoyed, half excited.

"Did you do something to your note? How dare you not share it with us? That's outrageous." complained George jokingly with his arms around Harry's neck, tousling his hair.

Everyone was more curious about how Harry had been chosen than the nail in the coffin, Fish.

Of course, the girls mostly gathered around Fish and, in the name of comforting the Gryffindor Champion, frantically stuffed the cat's arms with food...and then took the opportunity to pet him.

"I didn't!" Harry denied, waving his hands, "I didn't write that note!"

"We put our names together in the Goblet of Fire!" George looked at Harry in dissatisfaction.

"No, I mean the note that flew out of the Goblet of Fire, I didn't write it! Fish can testify." explained Harry loudly.

The group calmed down a bit and they all looked at each other, realizing something wasn't right.

"You mean someone signed you up and made sure you were chosen for the Goblet of Fire? But, why? what's in it for you?" asked Seamus, confused.

"Well... Professor Moody said that maybe someone was trying to get me killed..."

Harry said this with a sense of uncertainty....

Especially in front of a group of Gryffindors.

Indeed, they all had an evasive expression, and Fred even had an opinion similar to Karkarov's, "Come on, Mad-Eye Moody is the guy who shattered the Occamy eggs someone sent him because he suspected danger in the package."

"Well... then I'm not sure..."

Harry thought Professor Moody was being alarmist, after all, he was a Gryffindor himself.

So he shrugged and guessed, "So maybe someone is trying to make fun of me? You know, I'm three years short of everyone else's magical education... Well, Fish doesn't count."

The others didn't understand what was going on, so they just didn't think about it!

"What the heck, the two Hogwarts Champions are from us Gryffindors!"

With high-pitched cheers from Fred, the Gryffindor common room buzzed with activity again.

Lee Jordan had thrown two Gryffindor house flags out of nowhere, attempting to wrap them around Harry and Fish like a cloak.

The cat was surrounded by girls and couldn't reach them, so he had to aim for Harry, and he tied them so tightly that Harry felt like he couldn't breathe, and it took a couple of tugs for Harry to feel better.

"I'm a bit tired, I want to go to bed..."

After more than ten minutes wrapped up in the celebrations, Harry, who was already confused, felt even more exhausted as he pushed his way through the crowd and made his way to his dormitory.

Luckily, the group's attention was more focused on Fish, so he escaped easily and made his way to his dorm with a weary pace.

The other feline Champion had joined the group for a while and then had dragged Hermione along, not forgetting that, apart from his usual nightly patrol of the territory, Fish had planned to annoy Professor Moody once he had entered the Triwizard Tournament.

Fish had originally planned to go straight to fighting Professor Moody, but the way Professor Moody had behaved the night before and complimented Professor McGonagall had made the cat feel much better about him, so Fish had second thoughts and decided to....

Go to Professor Moody's office, which Minerva had forbidden him to enter.

(=ΦΦ=)?