Polyjuice Pretenders

An original editorial by Danielle

At the end of Harry’s third year at Hogwarts, one of Voldemort’s Death Eaters returned to him, eventually bringing him back to power one year later. According to the Dark Lord, this was an ultimate sacrifice, and Wormtail should have been rewarded. Why, then, was he nowhere to be seen in OotP?

And now another question that has been invading my mind since I first put down OotP: Why did Fudge’s personality take such a big jolt? We know that JKR wrote it off as trying to keep up appearances, but why would he suddenly lose faith in Dumbledore, the man he has apparently been depending on since he was elected Minister?

When Dumbledore was kicked off of the Wizengamot, and his Order of Merlin First Class was removed, Fudge never seemed to look back. Why would Fudge remove one of the strongest members, if he knew deep, deep down in his mind, that Lord Voldemort was back in action? He seemed to be quite happy to have Dumbledore off his back. He ignored any opinions from anyone about Voldemort’s return to humanity, and surely, if he had still been in his right mind, he would have called upon Dumbledore. After all, why would he want to go through another terrible war when they could stop it before hand? That brings us back to our first question: Where was Wormtail?

We know that after Wormtail made his “ultimate sacrifice” Voldemort put him ahead of a lot of his Death Eaters. So why wouldn’t Voldemort elect him for a special, important job?

The power that Fudge holds is immense. He’s the Minister for Magic. He can boot powerful wizards and witches off of the Wizengamot, control the Dementors, etc.

But why would Fudge want to set Dementors on the boy who could save the magical world? (Yes, Umbridge did that, but then again, Umbridge was pretty close to Fudge's way of thinking.)

My answer to that is because it wasn’t Fudge. JKR showed us from past books (CoS and GoF) that the Polyjuice Potion is an effective way to impersonate someone. Crouch Jr. did it for a whole year, so why wouldn’t Voldemort pick something so simple, yet so brilliant.

If Wormtail took some of Fudge’s hair or toenails and made the potion with them, he would be able to impersonate Fudge and control the British Magical Society. The only problem is: how would he get his hands on Fudge?

Lucius Malfoy freely visits the Ministry of Magic and is close to Fudge. He would have no problem gathering a few hairs and returning them to his Lord.

With this kind of power in his hand, Wormtail/Fudge could tell the security to back off the night that Harry and his friends entered into the Ministry. Did they honestly think there would be no security? The wand-weighing man would have been told to let anyone in.

Now that all of those questions are answered, only one remains: How do we stop him?

11/30/03