Conspiracy Alert! Do you think Cornelius Fudge chose the unorthodox punishment of the dementor's kiss to finish off Barty Crouch Jr. so he couldn't tell everyone Voldemort was back?

"Conspiracy Alert! Do you think Cornelius Fudge chose the unorthodox punishment of the dementor's kiss to finish off Barty Crouch Jr. so he couldn't tell everyone Voldemort was back?"

Oh, absolutely. Fudge was paranoid and desperate to keep himself in power.

That's exactly the reason why he did finish Barty. It was easy to have a Death-Eater escapee (he had been locked up in Azkaban) being Kissed off.

As Fudge could not do the same with Harry and Dumbledore, he tried to make Harry appear as a liar and Dumbledore as someone that had lost his marbles.

As Remus put it in the OotP movie (I know, it's not canon) : Fear can make people do stupid things.

But whatever efforts one may put into hiding the truth, the truth will out one day or the other.

I do belive he did. Fudge did not want to be the minister if Voldemort was back. Fear makes people do stupid things.

I didn't even know that Barty Crouch was kissed by the dementors! Where did it say that (out of curiosity)? But yeah, Fudge was just in denial and he didn't want to be pulled out of his lovely fantasy. I think.

Good point.

That, of course, plus he did not want the mess about Bertha Jorkins and Barty Crouch Snr's murders, and Crouch Jnr's escape from Azkaban to come out in the open.

Rita Skeeter would have had a field day with this. A big title in the Daily Prophet would have been a bit embarassing.

Fudge was always very self-absorbed and power-hungry, he had come to fall in love with his position, and his first priority was always to cover his own ass.