Rune stone path

The folly of Dumbledore

"Where is that Pensieve?" Shiva muttered pacing back and forth beside the winner's platform. Fleur was still sobbing into Hermione's shoulder on the corner, all of her avian features in stark relief. Her hand was clutching the vial containing her brief, dim memory of where she'd been brought to before Harry had knocked her back into the cup. Amelia and Proudfoot had gone to the Ministry to retrieve a Pensieve so that they could try and see if anything from the memory could be used to apparate to Harry and save him.

If there was even still a living Harry to save. Shiva kept pacing steadfastly refusing to continue that line of thought.

Tonks was to the side with Shacklebolt and Scrimgeour heatedly interrogating Barty Crouch Jr. – the polyjuice had worn off shortly after Fleur had reappeared and the real Moody had been bundled off to St. Mungo's. The Aurors had agreed to question Crouch here in the hopes that he'd be able to shed some light on where Harry had been taken and time was of the essence. The man's answers could just barely be heard over the continual noise of the murmuring crowd a short ways away.

"I don't know why my name shows differently on that map. It was nothing I did," Crouch's voice was fully monotone, all of his resistance burned away from the veritaserum flowing through his system.

"It's been perfected for months now and takes its input directly from the castle wards! You had to do something at the Yule Ball to affect it!" Tonks snarled. Shiva noticed the Flamels in the crowd behind the small group frown and melt back into the mass. Probably avoiding Dumbledore seeing them.

"All I did at the Yule Ball was swap the Polyjuice flask for a whiskey flask and move Moody to the Shrieking Shack after you questioned me."

Scrimgeour eyed Tonks appreciatively before turning back to Crouch. "That was the only illegal thing you did during the Yule Ball?"

A bit of emotion crept into Crouch's voice. "Used Moody's eye to look through the dresses quite a bit. Lots of fancy lingerie that night. Much better than during the rest of the year with those school robes. Girls went all out at Yule. I didn't even look through the lingerie of a few they were so beautiful."

Tonks looked like she was ready to cut the imposter's bollocks off and Shiva would've helped if she wasn't so worried about Harry. As it was, Scrimgeour's hands clenched into fists and he said in a clipped tone, "Did you contact your master that night?"

"No. I couldn't kill Potter's sex toy so without looking even more suspicious and I didn't want the Master to think me weak or foolish."

"Who is the Master?"

"The Dark Lord. The rightful ruler of us all. The savior of witches and wizards. The conqueror of death," Crouch's tone was practically dripping worship even through the veritaserum.

Tonks' hair flashed to a deep red and stayed that way as she growled. "And where is his current base?"

"He has no current base."

Scrimgeour slammed a palm against his face. "We are running out of ways to rephrase this stupid question! How can you keep avoiding answering it?!"

"I spent months trying to get Moody to answer my questions about his past and his precautions before running out of veritaserum. I learned from him how to give a truthful response while answering your direct question instead of what you want to know."

Shiva tuned them out again. That was going nowhere fast. She wasn't certain what was worse about this whole screwed up thing: that the man had managed to impersonate Alastor Moody for nearly 10 months supposedly without anyone other than Tonks the wiser, or that the Death Eater had actually been a better teacher than anyone in the last decade barring Remus Lupin.