#I'm not tagging Lionheart spoilers because this is very intentionally not about Her!

[greenerteacups]

I know it's not entirely your decision and you built on what the canon did but I'm curious how you see it so here's my silly question: why IS Moody so useful as a teacher to our protagonists? I mean he's actually competent and useful. WHY?

I was always more or less satisfied with the explanation that he's trying to impersonate a teacher, so he really needs to go full method on the teaching part, or a whole lot of people are going to start asking questions. Also, I don't really see a reason for him to be bad at it, if that makes sense? He needs Harry to do well in the Tournament so he can reach the cup, which gives him an extra incentive to be helpful to Harry's class, even if no one else's. But I don't think Barty is remotely concerned about Harry becoming so competent that he would represent a threat to Voldemort or his servants, since he's still a child. Fourteen year-old Harry Potter does not walk out of that graveyard if it's a fair fight, and Barty doesn't know about the twin cores, so he fully expects Voldemort to just ice the kid and be done with it. Unforgivables are unblockable; there's nothing he can teach Harry in a year that will really matter.

What trips me up about Barty Crouch Jr., in canon, is that he seems so intimately familiar with Moody's mannerisms despite never actually having, like... met the dude? As far as we know? We assume that Moody's a big figure in the war, so he'd know him from afar, but considering the histories here, this is an objectively insane plan: Moody and Dumbledore fought a war together. So did Snape. So like... Barty's plan (afaik) is basically to pray, with every bone in his body, that he can go for a whole year without anyone bringing up any sensitive memories or important shared moments with Moody that might give him away if he can't remember them. In addition to, y'know, completely nailing his posture, mannerisms and speech affect, which maybe the Polyjuice helps with, but IDK. (My point is that the behind-the-scenes staff meetings in Goblet of Fire are some of the funniest exchanges in the whole fucking series, and I would pay to read them.)

Then, of course, you have Snape — and this is the other thing that kinda frustrates me about Book 5, in retrospect — who's a Legilimens. Literally reads minds. Which jeopardizes basically any plot that relies on people having secrets or keeping information from Snape/Dumbledore. It's not by any means an unsolvable plot hole — you can invent a lot of theoretical constraints on Legilimency that explain why Snape couldn't use it on Quirrell, or you could just establish that Barty/Quirrell are really strong Occlumens, which makes plenty of sense to me — or you could just say that Snape is a far better Occlumens than he is a Legilimens, and his attempts at training Harry weren't all that sophisticated. Not hard. That's why it doesn't bother me, either, because I do't think it represents a major inconsistency or fault in plotting; I try to lean into good-faith reading and assume that plot holes are more often indications of insufficient exposition than they are lack of thought. But that's a big YMMV.