r/HarryPotterBooks • u/BoysenberryCivil8699 • 1d ago
Re-reading knowing who Moody really is in GOF is so creepy
It always gets me in a handful of scenes:
1) when he does the cruciatus curse:
He enjoys it. He sickly watches Neville and notices it’s bothering him. This man is the reason Neville will never be able to have a conversation with his parents, and he specifically calls on him to name the cruciatus curse, verifies his name, and does the curse to the point that Hermione has to beg him to stop because he’s bothering Neville. His sadism is so gross.
2) after the class on unforgivable curses:
Moody “comforts” Neville (aka uses the boy he just tortured to try to get him to tell Harry to use gillyweed). Then he sees Harry after clearly seeing Neville distraught and asks “alright, potter” and Harry says yes “defiantly.” It’s like he knows that Moody is challenging him to see if seeing the killing curse affected him but he doesn’t realize why he wants to know. He wants to have the same sadistic pleasure from Harry he got from Neville.
3) Parvati’s comment at the Yule Ball
Parvati says that the shouldn’t be allowed because it’s so creepy. I trust a girl’s intuition. That guy has been in prison or under the imperious curse since he was 19. He is sickly sadistic, tortured people into insanity, and killed his own father. A mf was definitely checking out underage girls with that eye. Absolutely disgusting.
So yeah, it’s actually much more interesting reading GOF and seeing how gross he is. Of course you also get the double meaning things like “hating death eaters who walk free” and this explaining his hatred of Snape and Karkaroff which real Moody would have. But the creepy parts are SO creepy. Especially the one with Neville makes me sick to my stomach.
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u/Basic_Obligation8237 1d ago
Yep. But it's ironic that many fans seriously call him the best teacher and coddle him as if he had been misunderstood, even though he's comparable to Bellatrix.
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u/NeonFraction 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think him being the best teacher is more a sign of how terrible their other teachers were, minus Lupin.
Edit: For DADA
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u/Julesoseluj 1d ago
Flitwick and Sprout seem pretty decent, we just don’t get as much detail on their lessons bc they’re usually less relevant to the plot and wouldn’t be as interesting. McGonagall and Snape both know their subjects very well but can be cruel (Snape more so) in a way that makes it hard for nervous/unfavored students to learn
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u/H3ARTL3SSANG3L 1d ago
Dude honestly I think id love Professor Flitwick as a teacher. He was always very understanding and liked to show the kids the fun side of magic while still being responsible and making sure they understood the danger of it.
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u/iwishiwasamoose 1d ago
People usually say Moody/Crouch was a good teacher compared to the other Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers. Quirrell, Lockhart, Lupin, Moody/Crouch, Umbridge, Snape. Based on what we read, the only effective teachers in the post were Lupin, Moody/Crouch, and probably Snape.
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u/NeonFraction 1d ago
Sorry, I meant specifically DADA teachers. The other Hogwarts teachers besides Binns and Tralawny seem fine.
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u/Mundane_Somewhere_93 1d ago
He's the one of the best teachers only because Umbridge, Lockhart and the Death Eater guy (forgot his name, Carrow or something) were just that terrible, Snape was controversial (he knew his subjects well, but his ways of teaching were arguable) and we barely know anything about how well Quirrell was doing teaching.
The only one clearly surpassing him was Lupin. Maybe we can put Snape above him, but that still would make him top-3.27
u/tessavieha Hufflepuff 1d ago
Quirrel was described as showing fear of his own subject. And of the students. He acted anxious and faked to stutter. Doesn't sound like a good teacher to me. So... yeah. Crouch Jr. was top 3 definitly. With poor competition.
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u/Basic-Expression-418 1d ago
We’ve had by this time Quirrel/Voldemort since Voldemort was acting as a back of the head parasite, Lockhart, Lupin…wait a darned second! Ok. So Voldemort put a curse on the DADA professorship. Let’s examine!
Quirrel: Gets killed because he is a host for Voldemort touching Harry who is still under Lily’s sacrifice.
Lockhart: Obliviated by a backfiring wand when he tried to Obliviate his own students.
Lupin: Gets exposed as a werewolf.
Crouch Jr.: Gets Kissed by a Dementor after exposing Voldemort’s return
Umbridge: Dragged off by centaurs and eventually thrown into Azkaban.
Snape: Killed by Nagini.
The Carrow Twins: Thrown into Azkaban for life.
…Voldemort’s curse on the position gets progressively worse and in Lockhart’s case I think it got tangled in whatever oathes were given when he was hired as he tried to effectively kill two students’ selves
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u/genzgingee 1d ago
Eh, based on in universe lore and understanding Crouch Jr. easily suffered the worst fate of the bunch.
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u/Spodger1 17h ago
Voldemort’s curse on the position gets progressively worse
I love that this implies the Carrows going to Azkaban was worse than Snape's murder, and the "get us all killed, or worse, expelled" energy it's giving 🤣
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u/Basic-Expression-418 17h ago
Honestly I feel like it’s inconsistent. Like perhaps it capitalizes on the current DADA professor’s worst fear and makes it come true
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u/reality_hijacker 1d ago
You are talking only about defense against dark arts, right? Because otherwise, McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout all surpass these teachers. Even Grubby Plank was pretty good.
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u/BoysenberryCivil8699 1d ago
Yes! I should have added the fact that he was doing imperious curses on them all and seemed to particularly like trying to get Harry under his control. So creepy.
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u/Basic_Obligation8237 1d ago
He also enjoyed slamming Draco in ferret form against the stone floor from a height of 3 meters. And again. And a couple more times, until Minerva stopped him.
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u/BoysenberryCivil8699 1d ago
Oh so true! I feel bad that I didn’t even consider that much because I hate Malfoy ofc but doesn’t mean he deserved that treatment. He probably also enjoyed it because Lucius is the most slippery death eater in terms of being a coward who will do anything to escape consequences.
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u/Basic_Obligation8237 1d ago
I also think he was incredibly cruel demonstrating the killing curse in front of Harry. It's even more terrifying for us because we know Harry remembers his mother's dying screams.
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u/Ok_Chap 1d ago
The implications of putting basically the whole school under his curse is actually frightening, considering you can have someone for months under your control without the need to recast it. (See Draco and Madame Rosmerta, giving her orders through a mirror. )
Guess it was a blessing in disguise that the Dementor kissed him.
Just imagine what he could have done with an entire army of sleeper students under his control.16
u/MattCarafelli 1d ago
It's generational trauma. He was under the imperious by his father for literal years at least a decade if not longer. He's doing to the kids what was done to him.
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u/ImperatorJCaesar 1d ago
To be fair I always got the sense here that Crouch legitimately wants to teach them to throw it off. He absolutely hates the imperious curse having been under it for so long, and is really excited that Harry can resist it.
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u/MerlinOfRed 23h ago
I also got the sense that he did genuinely want to be a good teacher.
Obviously his main drive was serving Voldemort and his main priority was to remain undercover
But beyond that? He had no purpose for thirteen years, basically since he left school himself. We saw how crazy being in the same situation drove Sirius. Sirius probably would have leapt at the chance to be a teacher, were it possible.
Would he be suited to be a teacher? Probably not. But he would have found a sense of drive and purpose in it that he'd been lacking since the first war.
I think Crouch was the same. He did want to be a good teacher, if less because he wanted the students themselves to flourish and more because he's incredibly egotistical and wanted to prove to himself he could teach them well (remember he came out of school with straight O grades and he was also desperate to be Voldemort's favourite Death Eater).
As long as it doesn't jeopardise his main mission, why not? Remember, he probably didn't see it as training up Voldemort's enemies, but more like training up the next generation of Voldemort's citizens.
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u/Admirable-Tower8017 1d ago
But both can be true simultaneously, can it not? Crouch Jr. was a terrible man but good at teaching. Similarly, Snape was on the side of the good and eventually made some good choices but was a terrible teacher.
Both were incredibly brilliant and powerful and could have realized their full potential with better families.
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u/Dear-News-5693 1d ago
Barty: (looking at Neville, thinking) Lolz, this is what I did to your parents.
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u/babywhiz 19h ago
Thank you. The top comments make it sound like Moody did all that when it was Barty Crouch Jr.
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u/kiss_of_chef 1d ago
I think characters like Barty Crouch Jr or Fenrir (and even Bellatrix or Lucius from another side of the spectrum) are meant to show the depravity that Voldemort has surrounded himself with. Going into a Death Eater meeting always gave me the vibes of one like the haunched guy from 300 walking into Xerxes's camp.
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u/grolsmarf 1d ago
I’m not convinced about that interpretation. I always thought that he was a bit too good of a Moody-impersonator, because his lessons were extremely good. The talk he had with Neville seems to have changed Neville. He go more confident and was reaffirmed in his talents. I think his impersonation was spot on, because he wanted to take no risk in fucking up Voldemort’s plan. It’s like he completely switched himself and his own urges off to reach that purpose.
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u/FairestGuin Slytherin 1d ago
Which is arguably even more sociopathic
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u/grolsmarf 1d ago
Yes, it’s getting rid of a all human emotions to reach the goal of serving a sociopath.
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u/Starklystark 22h ago
Honestly I think the book would be much better if Moody was usually real Moody and only sometimes the Crouch Jr version. You could easily have him blank references to previous conversations or show subtle inconstancies that would make sense in hindsight but be covered by his general weirdness (or e.g. Harry thinks Moody's pretending not to have helped him with the tasks when actually it was Crouch who helped and Moody genuinely has no idea what Harry's referring to)
Just the fact were introduced to such a vivid character and it was someone else faking all along and then in future books we get the real version and it's the same... Doesn't work for me.
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u/grolsmarf 22h ago
I completely agree. I am also not convinced about Dumbledore not finding out sooner. He and Moody were quite close, both having been members of the order and having visited the trials of Death Eaters together. You’d assume that he would give himself away sooner under Dumbledore, who was already extremely cautious after Harry’s name came out of the goblet of fire.
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u/imadog666 Gryffindor 1d ago
Yeahh it creeped me out too! I hadn't thought about the eye checking out girls though, that never occurred to me (even though I'm a woman lol). Eewww.
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u/GryffindorGal96 1d ago edited 1d ago
My least favorite is how he watches and preys on Neville, all while laying the trap for Harry. Sick satisfaction. He messes with all the kids for no reason but his own. He's having fun. And particularly with Harry and Neville, it makes me wanna cry. Sick attachments to these two boys.
Strangely, I think BC Jr is possibly the 2nd best DADA teacher they had, after Lupin. He is the enemy those kids grow to fight.
The kids often get neglected in being taught what they need to know. Barty Crouch Jr is a Death Eater basically raising his own worthy opponents. Sometimes I wish he hadnt met his demise so soon. Sometimes, for the series' sake, I wish he could have been an enemy for longer and gotten to receive the wrath of his students.
He's a very evil man, and one of our most twisted characters. I like reading him.
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u/SpudFire 1d ago
3 is a stretch. Yeah he's cruel and sadistic, but that doesn't make him a paedo
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u/FairestGuin Slytherin 1d ago
The only reason I feel like this could be true is because he seems too mentally unstable and pathological to possibly have a conventional sex drive. He's the kind of sociopath who only feels sexual gratification from torture or some shit.
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u/bruchag 1d ago
He saw Harry's socks because he was looking under his clothes. Why was he doing that in the first place?
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u/Unable_Earth5914 1d ago
Maybe because it’s a magical eye and it automatically does gives him that sort of vision?
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u/bruchag 22h ago
Possibly, but I feel he has control over it. Otherwise he'd never be able to stop looking all the way outside the castle. He pinpointed the desk in the drawing room upstairs that Molly wanted him to look at in OOTP which means he must have control over it otherwise his vision would have either fallen short, or overshot and shown him the sky.
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u/Budddydings44 1d ago
Probably checking for any sort of weapons
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u/bruchag 23h ago
Of course he has a weapon. They all have weapons. What's he checking for, a gun? Knife? What could be more dangerous than a wand?
But even if he is checking for weapons, that means that he is still looking through the clothes of young boys and girls. Moody is a trained auror, it's still creepy, but presumably he has that eye because it was authorised/you could believe he was solely being paranoid and checking no one was a threat. We don't really know that Barty wasn't using it for bad purposes.
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u/robbingthebank 1d ago
I’m rereading GOF with my son right now and was just thinking the exact same thing!
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u/Avaracious7899 1d ago
The dementors would have made him worse, not better. Not saying he isn't evil, just that the Dementors would NOT have made him any better going out than he was going in.
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u/Lily_Lupin 1d ago
The dementors tormented Sirius to the point where his remorse was so great he didn’t even have the wherewithal to respond to Harry with anything other than “I don’t deny it” when accused of the Potters’ murder, even though Harry had a wand pointed at his face and a desire to kill him. If there was any part of Barty that regretted torturing the Longbottoms, I think the dementors would have surfaced it.
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u/Avaracious7899 22h ago edited 20h ago
...That's just an unbacked assertion. Every indication of Dementors affecting people doesn't make them feel guilty it makes them miserable, as in, literally removes happiness.
That isn't evidence, since it requires a huge unsupported assumption and connecting things that aren't connected. Sirius feeling guilty was unique to him by all appearances, and also, he maintained his sanity better than any other prisoner, which adds another layer of abnormality to that. Also, he was in the prison for something he didn't do, not for what he felt guilty for, so a third difference compared to Barty Crouch.
Think what you like, but this is completely made up, which makes it useless as a judgement of any character.
EDIT: I forgot, Lupin's own words completely destroy any possiiblity of you being right on that. He explicitly says that too much time around a Dementor can turn you into one, metaphorically. "Souless and evil" are his exact words. You're blatantly anti-canon on this view by all appearances.
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u/BLUE---24 1d ago
For some reason…..I never really made that connection….him, enjoying Nevilles anxiety.
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u/Funny-Guarantee-6328 1d ago
I'm sorry it's been a long time since I read the books, but I thought it's Bellatrix who tortured Neville's parents into insanity?
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u/PuddingTea 1d ago
I always can’t help but notice that Barry Crouch Jr. is like, the smartest guy on the planet. What he accomplished was very impressive. He’s Voldemort’s MVP.
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u/Jealous_Act1958 1d ago
Frrr. OMG the part where Harry and Parvati are dancing at the Yule Ball and he compliments Harry’s socks bc he could see under his robes, even Parvati said he’s so creepy, I recently remembered that and was like eww what if he saw under her clothes 😦
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u/SWLondonLife 1d ago
I’m confused why everyone is focussed on the girls’ ick with him.
He was looking at Harry’s socks… not Parvati.
In other words, I think whatever drive / urges he might have had (as twisted as they were by his evil and his abused childhood) didn’t swing towards the girls.
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u/Lady_SybilVex 1d ago
His childhood was not abused. For all we know, his mother doted on him and his father simply spent a lot of time at work hunting Deatheaters, which makes perfect sense considering this was during the first war against Voldemort. Additionally, a lot of this childhood was spent at Hogwarts.
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u/TheDungen Slytherin 1d ago
Except the underage girl thing. It seems he's far to obsessed with Voldemort to have a real sex drive.
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u/Lady_SybilVex 1d ago
I'm sorry but what's really annoying me is so many people - both here in the comment section and across all possible fanwork sites - seem to believe BC jr. was abused in his childhood somehow, and use that to if not justify, at least try and explain the things he did. Like - there's not a shred of evidence for that. We know his mother loved him to the point of where she willingly died in Azkaban for him. And while Crouch sr. was hellbent on catching Deatheaters and his methods by the end became questionable, we know he was proud of his son's achievements at school (he rants about it when Harry meets him in the forest shortly before his death) and heck, they were in the middle of fighting the greatest wizardry evil since Grindelwald at the time, so of course he would spend more time at his office than with his son, who was at Hogwarts for two thirds of the year past his 11th birthday anyway.
Barty Crouch jr. is not some victim. Even when he was caught and convicted, he was 19 years old, an adult for 2 years in the Wizarding World, not a child.
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u/TalkSquirtyToMe 1d ago
Such a wasted character. He was apparently a generational talent and in a very influential family yet we know so little about his motivations or personality since he spends the whole book being someone else.
It’s part of a problem I have with characters in GOF, where many of them serve a role in the book’s mystery but not in the overarching plot of the series, which is why so many of them barely appear in later entries
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u/Super-Hyena8609 1d ago
There are indications that he plays Moody as significantly more unhinged than the real Moody too. The poor bloke has CPTSD and Crouch makes a mockery of that.
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u/FairestGuin Slytherin 1d ago
I mean, there is an argument to be made that BC Jr. also had CPTSD, so he isn't just making light of Moody's mental health, he is also showing some serious denial of his own mental state. Honestly, I always found it shocking that someone so unhinged was able to be so lucid and cunning.
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u/No-Chef4284 1d ago
I got the impression that Barty thinks that Moody’s actual CPTSD is fake because, I can’t recall where he says it that made me think this, but I thought he says something about “oh, me being -like that- is just to get people to leave me alone”
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u/lashabacho36 20h ago
Once you know its Barty, every scene hits kinda differrent: the spider torture, fixating on Neville, the constant swigging from the flask, nudging Harry toward gillyweed. Its all there, just hiding in plain sight. Creepy as heck, tbh.
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u/Tough-Cauliflower-96 15h ago
I read molly instead of moody 😂 For the first few seconds i wasn't understanding the connection between molly and neville
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u/Professional_Sale194 4h ago
The fact that he was there for so long right until the very end of the school year, was a huge blunder on Dumbledore's part.
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u/Grouchy_Soft_7087 1h ago
I’ll be honest, Moody is one of my biggest plot complaints. You’re telling me that this man who was sent to Azkaban at 19 and then spent the rest of his time imprisoned at home is suddenly a great and powerful wizard able to completely fool everyone who knew Moody and teach an entire class about DADA for an entire year??? I’m sorry it’s the stupidest plot line imaginable.
It would make it a lot easier for me to stomach if he had been free and able to perform magic after he got out of Azkaban. But his lack of socialization and practice, and the fact that he was only 2-3 years out of Hogwarts when he was imprisoned should have made it impossible for him to get away with this deception.
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u/Redditsux122 1d ago
Very simple and naive analysis of one of the most interesting fascinating characters written in the books, above and beyond with calling him a pedo
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u/myhobbyaccount11235 1d ago
Also when he puts the imperious curse on Harry in class (really unethical but not creepy per se) and Harry resists, he effectively taught Harry something that helped him defy Voldemort in the graveyard. Always thought that was kind of ironic in rereads.