Misjudging Tom: Apologies regarding GoF
Upon reflection, Voldemort’s grandiose and utterly unnecessary kidnapping/murder scheme in GoF wasn’t actually as stupid as we thought. We fans criticized: Why not have Barty/Moody just toss the kid a Portkey in class? (Or, if witnesses mattered, any time Barty might corner Harry alone in the halls?)
We haven’t been thinking about how it would have seemed if Tom’s scheme had worked out the way he’d planned.
Tom didn’t just plot a random kidnapping/resurrection/murder, after all. He’d planned another frame. In his early career, remember, he never left home without one.
To paraphrase Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory, a frame is supposed to come with a picture in it. And we fans have been evaluating Tom’s plan in GoF without ever envisioning the picture Tom had originally intended to present sketched around Harry’s inviting corpse.
No one (except those conversant with the relevant literary convention and expecting it to apply in this case) could possibly have anticipated Potter’s survival, after all.
This post is due entirely to oneandthetruth’s suggestion that I should evaluate the Death Eater’s performance under Voldemort’s leadership in terms of how well they .achieved his stated goals.
Only I started a bit further back, trying to determine Tom’s goals as of the beginning of GoF.
The problem is, Tom had several goals then, and some were damned near mutually exclusive.
His paramount goal was to COME BACK: to create a body in which he could once again act independently in the world, not through seducing or possessing others. For this he needed a competent and obedient wand-wielding and potions-brewing servant, a proto-body, and access to “bone of the father, unknowingly given,… flesh of the servant, willingly given… blood of the enemy, forcibly taken”…
And also the leisure to complete the dark ceremony.
I really doubt that an interruption part-way through would have been to Tom’s advantage.
As Peter pointed out (apparently incessantly), had Tom been willing to use the blood of just any random enemy, they could have completed the ritual within days of the pair’s arrival in Little Hangleton.
However, Tom had another constraint: he was determined to use Harry’s blood. Whether what he told his DE’s was correct, that he anticipated that using Harry’s blood would overcome the blood-based protection that had defeated Quirrel!mort and transfer some such protection to the new body, or whether he accorded Harry the status of “THE enemy,” and believed that using the paramount enemy’s blood would maximize the strength of the ceremony and of Tom’s new body (in which case we might wonder: Harry and not Albus? ), we don’t know.
But that constraint meant that Tom with Peter’s (and later, Barty’s) help, had to kidnap the infinitely-protected Harry.Potter. And in circumstances where Tom could be absolutely confident that the boy wouldn’t be tracked (or preferably, even missed) until Tom was through with him. Tom really did NOT want to be interrupted by Albus or Aurors when he was at his most vulnerable.
Another of Tom’s goals was Harry’s death. But it wasn’t enough that Harry just die: Tom’s followers (and quite possibly Tom himself) urgently needed to see Tom DEFEAT The-Boy-Who-Lived. Tom needed to prove that Harry’s survival had been a fluke, that Harry was NOT “the one who has the power to vanquish the Dark Lord.” Lord Voldemort’s followers needed to see, not that he could still arrange a cunning and untraceable death (again, yawn), but that he could best Potter in a test of strength. Quite possibly Tom needed to establish that for his own psychological comfort. But certainly if any of his followers had lost faith in Voldemort’s power and thrown hir lot in with the boy’s Muggle-loving mentor, or with the boy himself (and we know some of them considered it), s/he needed to be made to understand that the boy’s supposed power was an illusion. That Prophecy was WRONG. Only Riddle’s error in not accounting for the effect of maternal self-sacrifice had allowed Lily’s death to turn Tom’s own strength against himself.
So Tom needed to kill the BWL, himself, with his own wand, preferably in an armed contest to PROVE the BWL wasn’t really his match. And preferably in front of that rabble, the DE’s currently free from Azkaban, who’d ALL abandoned Tom when it appeared the BWL had defeated him.
However, there’s yet another constraint on Tom’s activities. When Tom had set off for Godric’s Hollow all those years ago he was on top of the world. Or, at least, on top of Wizarding Britain. People trembled at his name and refused to take it in vain. He’d infiltrated everywhere (even the Order! Even Hogwarts!). His agents were waiting his word to take over the structures of government. As soon as he eliminated this ridiculous prophecy-threat, he could unleash his takeover of the WW….
At the beginning of GoF? He’d received certain proof that almost none of his followers had ever truly been loyal to him. Even those who still spouted some of the rhetoric he’d used were clearly happier with him gone. Once Tom returned, he’d have to start from scratch-first re-recruiting those who had foresworn him, making it blindingly apparent that denying him again would not be in any definition of their best interests, then rebuilding his entire organization.
If anything, Tom was in a much worse position than he was when he showed up in the “Lord Voldemort” persona the year Albus Dumbledore declined his application to teach DADA. All of Tom’s personae are personae non grata. If he had anyone at all still personally loyal to him, it was a prisoner under Imperius and three Azkaban inmates. His name and his cause have been discredited in the wider WW. He had a few slaves left who’d accepted a link that means they cannot permanently escape him, but he knows most of them would happily destroy him if they saw a clear chance. He has a vast store of esoteric knowledge. If he can return to a body, he’ll have his powers back. And that is it. That’s all his resources.
It would be utterly MAD to let the WW know that Tom had returned and was trying to regroup. And it would be almost as bad to sacrifice any potentially-useful resources, as depleted as those now were. And if would be stupid to let his enemies know that he’d taken Harry Potter’s blood and absorbed any of his strengths and advantages.
So.
What Voldemort needed to do was this: find a way to kidnap the BWLunder circumstances in which he could absolutely guarantee the absence would NOT be tracked for an hour, perhaps more. Use that time to take the boy’s blood and perform the resurrection ritual. Call the (disloyal, needing-to-be-shown-a-lesson) Death Eaters, and kill the boy, showily, in front of them.
However, Tom couldn’t then just transfigure the corpse into a bone, or send it to join the other Inferi in that cave. If the BWL disappeared, he would be searched for. Rigorously.
On the other hand, if his corpse turned up, his murderer would be searched for.
So, give them someone to find. Follow Tom’s normal M.O. when he needs to hide a crime: frame someone else, convincingly.
In fact, give enraged accusers a choice of several sketches to fit the frame and let them argue furiously between them. Just so long as none led either to Tom himself, or to anyone Tom might have further use for.
*
Now, let’s look at what Tom had scheduled to happen during the last task of the Triwizard.
As far as we know, NO ONE except “Mad-eye Moody” knew that anything at all out of the ordinary was going on during the Champions’ Running of the Maze-until the moment Harry showed up clasping Cedric’s corpse.
(And I’ve become really quite suspicious of Crouch/Moody’s “Mad Eye.” Where exactly did Alastor get that thing? Or, perhaps, from whom? And are all its functions strictly Ministry-Authorized? It sees through Death’s Cloak. And through the Triwizard Tournament Maze. As no one and nothing else, apparently not even Albus, can.)
No one knew that anything had gone wrong inside that maze, that Unforgivables had been cast or two contestants kidnapped. There was, apparently, no monitoring whatever of what happened inside those bespelled hedges. Note that if a contestant decided to give up, that a monster or spell were more than s/he could handle, s/he had to signal for a rescue by sending up sparks visible above the maze.
Moreover, we know that sparks were sent up for Viktor shortly before Cedric and Harry were kidnapped; yet if he had been recovered, no one figured out either that he’d cast or been subjected to Unforgivable Curses. And whoever went into the maze to rescue the contestant in trouble either didn’t notice or didn’t notify anyone of the absence of Cedric and Harry.
So. Four youthful champions entered a maze to face monsters and magical traps. And everyone (but one) waited outside patiently for as long as it took for one of them to re-appear. .
(BTW, it’s been suggested that Albus had already fingered “Moody” as an imposter. However, if he did, it was criminally irresponsible of Albus to allow Moody to be one of the monitors and to let him out of sight to act. As well issue Tom an engraved invitation to interfere as he chose in the last task!)
Now, let’s direct our attention to the Triwizard Cup/Portkey. Which, unlike any other Portkey in canon, provided the user with a round trip ticket.
Doylists rejoiced in another of Jo’s “oh maths” moments. I’ve never heard a good Watsonian explanation.
So try this one.
It wasn’t, actually. A round-trip, that is.
We talk about the Cup Portkeying Harry “back” because it took him back to Hogwarts.
But it didn’t take Harry back to his point of origin, to the Cup’s position on a plinth in the center of the Maze.
It took him to the ENTRANCE of the Maze, in front of the grandstands of spectators.
What makes most sense is, that’s what the Cup/Portkey was originally meant to do.
Whoever first touched the Cup would be instantly transported to the Maze’s entrance, the uncontestable winner in front of all witnesses.
However, the contestants were not told this. They were told that touching the Cup would establish that person as the winner of the task, not that it would transport the winner back to the entrance to be acclaimed as such. So, given the level of cheating-excuse me, I mean unauthorized sharing of knowledge-we see going on throughout the Tourney, I don’t think most of the judges knew this fact, either.
What Barty did was NOT to turn the cup into a round-trip Portkey, but to take something that was already a Portkey to one destination, and turn it into a Portkey that made a side trip first. (Mind, he may not have known that it already was a Portkey to the maze entrance when he made it a Portkey to the graveyard. But I bet that Tom, that avid student of powerful historical magical objects, did. And incorporated that into his plans. He certainly understood the Cup well enough to give Barty a way to guarantee that Harry become a champion.)
Then, during the maze-running contest itself, Barty did all he could to arrange for Potter to be the one to touch that Portkey. While setting up the other three contestants in certain interesting scenarios….
Had Harry not intervened to save Cedric from Krum’s Cruciatus, what would have happened?
Or, more accurately, what would have happened, assuming Tom to have been correct in assuming he could eradicate Harry Potter without a glitch?
After a certain period of time, Harry Potter’s corpse would have appeared at the entrance to the Maze. Dead from Avada Kedavra. (With a scratch upon the corpse’s arm that Muggle forensic science might have noted to have been inflicted by a knife, not by a claw or bramble. But we certainly have no cause to imagine hat Wizarding forensic science is up to noticing the one deliberately-inflicted cut among the other bruises, burns, and scratches on the battered corpse. And if they did, so what? No one’s likely to guess the true significance.)
Frantic searchers entering the maze would have discovered an unconscious or dead Fleur, a semi-conscious Cedric… and Viktor Krum, by then at the center of the maze.
And Cedric Diggory would have testified, when revived, that Krum had used the Cruciatus against him.
Want to guess which other Unforgiveable Curse Priori Incantatem would have turned up on Viktor Krum’s wand? Like an AK, in actuality perhaps cast at nothing or at an illusion, but presumed by the investigators to have hit Harry just at the moment that Harry touched the Cup?
And if poor Krum claimed he would never have done such things willingly, who in Britain would believe him at first? Everyone knows that Durmstrang TEACHES the Dark Arts.
But at some point shortly thereafter, everyone would also notice that Durmstrang’s Headmaster had fled. Not even just fled Scotland-seemed to be hiding out (successfully) from the entire magical community.
In shame at his champion’s behavior? Well, maybe. But really it looks more as though he were fearful of being investigated.
As frames go, this is a nice one. Or rather, a nice set. Had Krum voluntarily cursed his opponents to win the cup for himself? Or had his headmaster fallen to the temptation to Imperius Krum to use Unforgivables if nothing less would work to secure the victory for Durmstrang? Or had the two of them been co-conspirators?
Furthermore-Harry Potter had always CLAIMED he didn’t enter himself in the Tournament, didn’t he? We just figured he was lying. But now that he’s dead, what if it was the truth-that someone entered poor Harry’s name to kill him? Ex-Auror Moody always claimed that, didn’t he? And now we know whodunnit. Everyone knows that Karkaroff had once followed You-Know-Who. Perhaps he was sorry for his betrayal of the cause, and thought endangering Potter, or even undetectably engineering Potter’s death, a way to atone?
I think that Krum’s testimony, by the time Barty had finished Confunding him, would have been that the master plan had been his headmaster’s. Whether Krum convinced the Ministry that he was an Imperius victim, or was held as a murderer himself, Karkaroff’s flight would have seemed to confirm the former DE’s involvement in some capacity.
Let’s think through what Karkaroff’s cunning plan must have been, and why it went wrong.
Igor, as a judge, knew that whatever happened inside the maze walls would be entirely invisible and unmonitored. Krum (whether acting on his own or under Imperius) was directed to use any means up to and including Unforgivable Curses to leave his fellow contestants unconscious, at the mercy of the next monster to come across them. Their testimony would be the only evidence for any crime. Had Fleur, say, been killed by an Acromantula, who could afterwards determine that she had fallen prey to it because Krum (or someone) had left her incapacitated?
And if Igor didn’t know about the Cup’s being a Portkey, the criminal(s) would have assumed Krum could clean up the evidence easily enough while making his way back out through the maze. Provided only that he left his victims sufficiently incapacitated not to revive on their own. Should an eyewitness to Krum’s crimes prove to be still unconscious rather than safely dead when Krum passed by again, a quick Incendius would mimic a Skrewt’s effects…. But it might look suspicious even to wizards (not strong on logic) if all three rival contestants fell prey to the same beast, so keep that in reserve and see if the real monsters will solve the problem for one. Moreover, if Krum’s victim wasn’t an actual eyewitness, if, say, Krum was able to stun a rival from behind, he should and could leave the champion alive as putative prey of a sleeping-snare….. In fact, it would look good in such a case if (on the way out, not in! No calling for witnesses to his crimes) Krum sent up sparks to call for a rescue.
And Krum would eventually emerge triumphantly from that maze from what was, perhaps (but only perhaps) a bloodier-than-usual Final Task.
But that whole plan went tits-up because the Cup was a Portkey. As soon as Harry’s corpse disappeared, Portkeyed away, Krum would have known that the jig was up for him. Krum’s using an AK meant that Krum had needed to arrange for Harry’s body to be hidden or partially destroyed (eaten or burned) at least enough to hide the (lack of) cause of death. Now that wasn’t an option. If Krum was acting under the Imperius, he’d probably be dazed by the utter impossibility of fulfilling Karkaroff’s orders; if he was acting in collusion, he’d be in despair, trapped with no way to hide his crime or to escape….
Similarly, as soon as that figure appeared at the entrance to the maze, Karkaroff would know that the jig was up for him. Even before the body was examined, and it was proved that Harry had died from an AK-possibly even before Karkaroff realized that the figure was a) Harry and b) dead-Karkaroff knew that his plan was toast.
The plan, after all, had been for Viktor to dispose of potential witnesses while making his way OUT of the maze- a Portkey from the center to the front of the maze meant automatically that it was possible that other champions were still alive in there, able to testify to Krum’s behavior...
And he in turn, whether Imperius victim or willing co-conspirator would (eventually) testify against his headmaster.
So, the only solution was for Karkaroff to vanish in the confusion when the body appeared.
(And we know that Karkaroff, in reality, had been only waiting for a period of confusion to effect his disappearance. His Mark had burned. His betrayed and unforgiving Master was back.)
And nothing at all in any of this points to Tom, or to any possibility of Tom’s having returned to the WW-much less to Tom’s having been resurrected from the dead! And nothing points to any of the former Death Eaters that Tom might hope to make further use of.
Why should anyone be interested in looking in Yorkshire, or at Malfoy Manor, when Harry Potter’s murderer Karkaroff would obviously have fled to foreign parts?
Of course, Harry totally bollixed up Tom’s plans. Someone should have mentioned to Tom the old adage that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy…..
We haven’t been thinking about how it would have seemed if Tom’s scheme had worked out the way he’d planned.
Tom didn’t just plot a random kidnapping/resurrection/murder, after all. He’d planned another frame. In his early career, remember, he never left home without one.
To paraphrase Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory, a frame is supposed to come with a picture in it. And we fans have been evaluating Tom’s plan in GoF without ever envisioning the picture Tom had originally intended to present sketched around Harry’s inviting corpse.
No one (except those conversant with the relevant literary convention and expecting it to apply in this case) could possibly have anticipated Potter’s survival, after all.
This post is due entirely to oneandthetruth’s suggestion that I should evaluate the Death Eater’s performance under Voldemort’s leadership in terms of how well they .achieved his stated goals.
Only I started a bit further back, trying to determine Tom’s goals as of the beginning of GoF.
The problem is, Tom had several goals then, and some were damned near mutually exclusive.
His paramount goal was to COME BACK: to create a body in which he could once again act independently in the world, not through seducing or possessing others. For this he needed a competent and obedient wand-wielding and potions-brewing servant, a proto-body, and access to “bone of the father, unknowingly given,… flesh of the servant, willingly given… blood of the enemy, forcibly taken”…
And also the leisure to complete the dark ceremony.
I really doubt that an interruption part-way through would have been to Tom’s advantage.
As Peter pointed out (apparently incessantly), had Tom been willing to use the blood of just any random enemy, they could have completed the ritual within days of the pair’s arrival in Little Hangleton.
However, Tom had another constraint: he was determined to use Harry’s blood. Whether what he told his DE’s was correct, that he anticipated that using Harry’s blood would overcome the blood-based protection that had defeated Quirrel!mort and transfer some such protection to the new body, or whether he accorded Harry the status of “THE enemy,” and believed that using the paramount enemy’s blood would maximize the strength of the ceremony and of Tom’s new body (in which case we might wonder: Harry and not Albus? ), we don’t know.
But that constraint meant that Tom with Peter’s (and later, Barty’s) help, had to kidnap the infinitely-protected Harry.Potter. And in circumstances where Tom could be absolutely confident that the boy wouldn’t be tracked (or preferably, even missed) until Tom was through with him. Tom really did NOT want to be interrupted by Albus or Aurors when he was at his most vulnerable.
Another of Tom’s goals was Harry’s death. But it wasn’t enough that Harry just die: Tom’s followers (and quite possibly Tom himself) urgently needed to see Tom DEFEAT The-Boy-Who-Lived. Tom needed to prove that Harry’s survival had been a fluke, that Harry was NOT “the one who has the power to vanquish the Dark Lord.” Lord Voldemort’s followers needed to see, not that he could still arrange a cunning and untraceable death (again, yawn), but that he could best Potter in a test of strength. Quite possibly Tom needed to establish that for his own psychological comfort. But certainly if any of his followers had lost faith in Voldemort’s power and thrown hir lot in with the boy’s Muggle-loving mentor, or with the boy himself (and we know some of them considered it), s/he needed to be made to understand that the boy’s supposed power was an illusion. That Prophecy was WRONG. Only Riddle’s error in not accounting for the effect of maternal self-sacrifice had allowed Lily’s death to turn Tom’s own strength against himself.
So Tom needed to kill the BWL, himself, with his own wand, preferably in an armed contest to PROVE the BWL wasn’t really his match. And preferably in front of that rabble, the DE’s currently free from Azkaban, who’d ALL abandoned Tom when it appeared the BWL had defeated him.
However, there’s yet another constraint on Tom’s activities. When Tom had set off for Godric’s Hollow all those years ago he was on top of the world. Or, at least, on top of Wizarding Britain. People trembled at his name and refused to take it in vain. He’d infiltrated everywhere (even the Order! Even Hogwarts!). His agents were waiting his word to take over the structures of government. As soon as he eliminated this ridiculous prophecy-threat, he could unleash his takeover of the WW….
At the beginning of GoF? He’d received certain proof that almost none of his followers had ever truly been loyal to him. Even those who still spouted some of the rhetoric he’d used were clearly happier with him gone. Once Tom returned, he’d have to start from scratch-first re-recruiting those who had foresworn him, making it blindingly apparent that denying him again would not be in any definition of their best interests, then rebuilding his entire organization.
If anything, Tom was in a much worse position than he was when he showed up in the “Lord Voldemort” persona the year Albus Dumbledore declined his application to teach DADA. All of Tom’s personae are personae non grata. If he had anyone at all still personally loyal to him, it was a prisoner under Imperius and three Azkaban inmates. His name and his cause have been discredited in the wider WW. He had a few slaves left who’d accepted a link that means they cannot permanently escape him, but he knows most of them would happily destroy him if they saw a clear chance. He has a vast store of esoteric knowledge. If he can return to a body, he’ll have his powers back. And that is it. That’s all his resources.
It would be utterly MAD to let the WW know that Tom had returned and was trying to regroup. And it would be almost as bad to sacrifice any potentially-useful resources, as depleted as those now were. And if would be stupid to let his enemies know that he’d taken Harry Potter’s blood and absorbed any of his strengths and advantages.
So.
What Voldemort needed to do was this: find a way to kidnap the BWLunder circumstances in which he could absolutely guarantee the absence would NOT be tracked for an hour, perhaps more. Use that time to take the boy’s blood and perform the resurrection ritual. Call the (disloyal, needing-to-be-shown-a-lesson) Death Eaters, and kill the boy, showily, in front of them.
However, Tom couldn’t then just transfigure the corpse into a bone, or send it to join the other Inferi in that cave. If the BWL disappeared, he would be searched for. Rigorously.
On the other hand, if his corpse turned up, his murderer would be searched for.
So, give them someone to find. Follow Tom’s normal M.O. when he needs to hide a crime: frame someone else, convincingly.
In fact, give enraged accusers a choice of several sketches to fit the frame and let them argue furiously between them. Just so long as none led either to Tom himself, or to anyone Tom might have further use for.
*
Now, let’s look at what Tom had scheduled to happen during the last task of the Triwizard.
As far as we know, NO ONE except “Mad-eye Moody” knew that anything at all out of the ordinary was going on during the Champions’ Running of the Maze-until the moment Harry showed up clasping Cedric’s corpse.
(And I’ve become really quite suspicious of Crouch/Moody’s “Mad Eye.” Where exactly did Alastor get that thing? Or, perhaps, from whom? And are all its functions strictly Ministry-Authorized? It sees through Death’s Cloak. And through the Triwizard Tournament Maze. As no one and nothing else, apparently not even Albus, can.)
No one knew that anything had gone wrong inside that maze, that Unforgivables had been cast or two contestants kidnapped. There was, apparently, no monitoring whatever of what happened inside those bespelled hedges. Note that if a contestant decided to give up, that a monster or spell were more than s/he could handle, s/he had to signal for a rescue by sending up sparks visible above the maze.
Moreover, we know that sparks were sent up for Viktor shortly before Cedric and Harry were kidnapped; yet if he had been recovered, no one figured out either that he’d cast or been subjected to Unforgivable Curses. And whoever went into the maze to rescue the contestant in trouble either didn’t notice or didn’t notify anyone of the absence of Cedric and Harry.
So. Four youthful champions entered a maze to face monsters and magical traps. And everyone (but one) waited outside patiently for as long as it took for one of them to re-appear. .
(BTW, it’s been suggested that Albus had already fingered “Moody” as an imposter. However, if he did, it was criminally irresponsible of Albus to allow Moody to be one of the monitors and to let him out of sight to act. As well issue Tom an engraved invitation to interfere as he chose in the last task!)
Now, let’s direct our attention to the Triwizard Cup/Portkey. Which, unlike any other Portkey in canon, provided the user with a round trip ticket.
Doylists rejoiced in another of Jo’s “oh maths” moments. I’ve never heard a good Watsonian explanation.
So try this one.
It wasn’t, actually. A round-trip, that is.
We talk about the Cup Portkeying Harry “back” because it took him back to Hogwarts.
But it didn’t take Harry back to his point of origin, to the Cup’s position on a plinth in the center of the Maze.
It took him to the ENTRANCE of the Maze, in front of the grandstands of spectators.
What makes most sense is, that’s what the Cup/Portkey was originally meant to do.
Whoever first touched the Cup would be instantly transported to the Maze’s entrance, the uncontestable winner in front of all witnesses.
However, the contestants were not told this. They were told that touching the Cup would establish that person as the winner of the task, not that it would transport the winner back to the entrance to be acclaimed as such. So, given the level of cheating-excuse me, I mean unauthorized sharing of knowledge-we see going on throughout the Tourney, I don’t think most of the judges knew this fact, either.
What Barty did was NOT to turn the cup into a round-trip Portkey, but to take something that was already a Portkey to one destination, and turn it into a Portkey that made a side trip first. (Mind, he may not have known that it already was a Portkey to the maze entrance when he made it a Portkey to the graveyard. But I bet that Tom, that avid student of powerful historical magical objects, did. And incorporated that into his plans. He certainly understood the Cup well enough to give Barty a way to guarantee that Harry become a champion.)
Then, during the maze-running contest itself, Barty did all he could to arrange for Potter to be the one to touch that Portkey. While setting up the other three contestants in certain interesting scenarios….
Had Harry not intervened to save Cedric from Krum’s Cruciatus, what would have happened?
Or, more accurately, what would have happened, assuming Tom to have been correct in assuming he could eradicate Harry Potter without a glitch?
After a certain period of time, Harry Potter’s corpse would have appeared at the entrance to the Maze. Dead from Avada Kedavra. (With a scratch upon the corpse’s arm that Muggle forensic science might have noted to have been inflicted by a knife, not by a claw or bramble. But we certainly have no cause to imagine hat Wizarding forensic science is up to noticing the one deliberately-inflicted cut among the other bruises, burns, and scratches on the battered corpse. And if they did, so what? No one’s likely to guess the true significance.)
Frantic searchers entering the maze would have discovered an unconscious or dead Fleur, a semi-conscious Cedric… and Viktor Krum, by then at the center of the maze.
And Cedric Diggory would have testified, when revived, that Krum had used the Cruciatus against him.
Want to guess which other Unforgiveable Curse Priori Incantatem would have turned up on Viktor Krum’s wand? Like an AK, in actuality perhaps cast at nothing or at an illusion, but presumed by the investigators to have hit Harry just at the moment that Harry touched the Cup?
And if poor Krum claimed he would never have done such things willingly, who in Britain would believe him at first? Everyone knows that Durmstrang TEACHES the Dark Arts.
But at some point shortly thereafter, everyone would also notice that Durmstrang’s Headmaster had fled. Not even just fled Scotland-seemed to be hiding out (successfully) from the entire magical community.
In shame at his champion’s behavior? Well, maybe. But really it looks more as though he were fearful of being investigated.
As frames go, this is a nice one. Or rather, a nice set. Had Krum voluntarily cursed his opponents to win the cup for himself? Or had his headmaster fallen to the temptation to Imperius Krum to use Unforgivables if nothing less would work to secure the victory for Durmstrang? Or had the two of them been co-conspirators?
Furthermore-Harry Potter had always CLAIMED he didn’t enter himself in the Tournament, didn’t he? We just figured he was lying. But now that he’s dead, what if it was the truth-that someone entered poor Harry’s name to kill him? Ex-Auror Moody always claimed that, didn’t he? And now we know whodunnit. Everyone knows that Karkaroff had once followed You-Know-Who. Perhaps he was sorry for his betrayal of the cause, and thought endangering Potter, or even undetectably engineering Potter’s death, a way to atone?
I think that Krum’s testimony, by the time Barty had finished Confunding him, would have been that the master plan had been his headmaster’s. Whether Krum convinced the Ministry that he was an Imperius victim, or was held as a murderer himself, Karkaroff’s flight would have seemed to confirm the former DE’s involvement in some capacity.
Let’s think through what Karkaroff’s cunning plan must have been, and why it went wrong.
Igor, as a judge, knew that whatever happened inside the maze walls would be entirely invisible and unmonitored. Krum (whether acting on his own or under Imperius) was directed to use any means up to and including Unforgivable Curses to leave his fellow contestants unconscious, at the mercy of the next monster to come across them. Their testimony would be the only evidence for any crime. Had Fleur, say, been killed by an Acromantula, who could afterwards determine that she had fallen prey to it because Krum (or someone) had left her incapacitated?
And if Igor didn’t know about the Cup’s being a Portkey, the criminal(s) would have assumed Krum could clean up the evidence easily enough while making his way back out through the maze. Provided only that he left his victims sufficiently incapacitated not to revive on their own. Should an eyewitness to Krum’s crimes prove to be still unconscious rather than safely dead when Krum passed by again, a quick Incendius would mimic a Skrewt’s effects…. But it might look suspicious even to wizards (not strong on logic) if all three rival contestants fell prey to the same beast, so keep that in reserve and see if the real monsters will solve the problem for one. Moreover, if Krum’s victim wasn’t an actual eyewitness, if, say, Krum was able to stun a rival from behind, he should and could leave the champion alive as putative prey of a sleeping-snare….. In fact, it would look good in such a case if (on the way out, not in! No calling for witnesses to his crimes) Krum sent up sparks to call for a rescue.
And Krum would eventually emerge triumphantly from that maze from what was, perhaps (but only perhaps) a bloodier-than-usual Final Task.
But that whole plan went tits-up because the Cup was a Portkey. As soon as Harry’s corpse disappeared, Portkeyed away, Krum would have known that the jig was up for him. Krum’s using an AK meant that Krum had needed to arrange for Harry’s body to be hidden or partially destroyed (eaten or burned) at least enough to hide the (lack of) cause of death. Now that wasn’t an option. If Krum was acting under the Imperius, he’d probably be dazed by the utter impossibility of fulfilling Karkaroff’s orders; if he was acting in collusion, he’d be in despair, trapped with no way to hide his crime or to escape….
Similarly, as soon as that figure appeared at the entrance to the maze, Karkaroff would know that the jig was up for him. Even before the body was examined, and it was proved that Harry had died from an AK-possibly even before Karkaroff realized that the figure was a) Harry and b) dead-Karkaroff knew that his plan was toast.
The plan, after all, had been for Viktor to dispose of potential witnesses while making his way OUT of the maze- a Portkey from the center to the front of the maze meant automatically that it was possible that other champions were still alive in there, able to testify to Krum’s behavior...
And he in turn, whether Imperius victim or willing co-conspirator would (eventually) testify against his headmaster.
So, the only solution was for Karkaroff to vanish in the confusion when the body appeared.
(And we know that Karkaroff, in reality, had been only waiting for a period of confusion to effect his disappearance. His Mark had burned. His betrayed and unforgiving Master was back.)
And nothing at all in any of this points to Tom, or to any possibility of Tom’s having returned to the WW-much less to Tom’s having been resurrected from the dead! And nothing points to any of the former Death Eaters that Tom might hope to make further use of.
Why should anyone be interested in looking in Yorkshire, or at Malfoy Manor, when Harry Potter’s murderer Karkaroff would obviously have fled to foreign parts?
Of course, Harry totally bollixed up Tom’s plans. Someone should have mentioned to Tom the old adage that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy…..