(no subject)
Title: In Time
Type: Gen
Genre: Drama/Angst
Word Count: 4,100
Disclaimer: Regrettably, Barty and all other characters are not mine; they belong to JKR. Also, I own neither Nirvana nor "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
Rating: PG-13/R
Warnings: Angst, anger, language, violence-lust, mild violence, use of an Unforgivable Curse on-screen, and THEMATIC ELEMENTS OUT THE ARSE.
Spoilers: GoF
Summary: Four scenes in the life of Barty Crouch, Junior.
Feedback: Is Love.
Beta: None.
He sits on his bed, still in his robes from school. He’s been home for three days already, and he’s barely slept, or left his room, and, for whatever reason, he couldn’t even bring himself to change out of these damn things. Winky brought food by earlier this morning, and all yesterday and the day before, and dinner on his first night home…but he couldn’t bring himself to eat much. She’s obviously worried, and it hurts to worry her, since she’s his oldest friend, even if she is a House Elf, but it’s really not his fault; he can’t help it. It all comes back to the burning question that’s lodged itself behind his Adam’s Apple ever since coming home for the summer holidays, refusing to leave no matter how much he tries to cough it up: Why? Why is it that nothing he does makes his father happy? Why can’t he just get one moment of recognition as something other than some ignorable inhabitant of the house? Winky gets more of father’s attention than him, and he’s the son here…
A knock comes on the door and, with massive effort, he lifts his head up, waiting for a response.
“Barty? Sweetheart?” It’s mum. “Are you alright?”
“Master Barty!” And Winky; she sounds terrified while mum sounds concerned. He can’t blame them, of course, but it’s really not what he hoped for. “Master Barty, please!”
“…It’s open,” he croaks.
He doesn’t watch as the door opens and closes again, but closes his eyes in shame instead; he only knows they come in by the sounds and the shift in the mattress as mum sits down. Has to be mum. It’s too big to be Winky, though she clambers up between his knees. Mum brushes some hair off his face and behind his ear, and Winky hugs his leg desperately, and he sighs, but tries to not cry. Even if father doesn’t love him, won’t make time for him, hasn’t since he went to Hogwarts for the first time…he’s still the only son of the Crouch family, and sons don’t cry. He’s got enough problems as is, taking after mum’s side more than father’s and being so easy to neglect, even though he’s spent his life trying to please that man…his hair falls out from the ear, and mum pushes it back.
“Barty, sweetheart…Winky says you haven’t been eating what she brings you.”
“Mistress, he no is eating, he no is sleeping…worrying Winky he is!”
“Is there something you need to talk about, love?”
“…Mum,” he chokes out. It’s taking even more effort to not cry. “…I’m his son. Why doesn’t he love me? Or…acknowledge me at least?”
“Oh, baby…”
She sighs warmly and wraps an arm across his shoulders; she uses the free hand to push his head to her chest - warm, maternal, loving, everything father’s not - and stoke his hair. Winky still hasn’t left her place at his leg.
“I know he’s bad at showing it, but your father does love you.”
“But I got top marks again and he didn’t bat an eye…and he wasn’t at the station again, and-”
“You know he has to work. His job-”
“Is really busy with all the Dark activity that’s been going on recently, I know.”
“And he’s-”
“Exhausted when he gets home because everyone and their owl is asking him for everything he can give, and he tries to give more because he’s like that, I know.”
“Exactly. It’s really nothing about you. He knows how hard you try to please him-”
“He just can’t show me because the survival of the Wizarding world may or may not depend on his job, I know, mum, I know.”
Damn it, he’s heard this all before…can’t she at least get some new reassuring speech? Granted, some things have changed with the raise in the amount of Dark activity recently, but still…Winky wraps her arms tighter around his leg and buries her face in his trousers.
“Your father is loving you, Master Barty!”
“Mhm…”
“Honey,” mum sighs, “he really does. Now…get out of those robes and let Winky wash them already; they’re positively filthy.”
“…Okay.”
“Winky, be a dear and make him something to eat, won’t you? And make sure he eats it? And then give him a sleeping potion. You know where they are, right?”
“Yes, Mistress! Bathroom cupboard on the third floor.”
“Lovely. And…Barty, don’t give her any hassle. Just change your clothes, eat what she gives you, take your potion, and get some sleep.”
“Yes, mum.”
“Winky…hop to.”
Winky nods, lets go of his leg, and, in a pop, disappears. Softly, mum sits him up, and brushes that hair out of his face again…and kisses his cheek.
“He really does love you, you know.”
“I know…”
She hugs him again and leaves; once she closes the door, he obliges her request and changes into a t-shirt and pajama pants. Soon enough, Winky comes back with a sandwich - turkey with some random cheese and fresh vegetables, and she stands on his bed, arms crossed defiantly until he eats it. Tough love isn’t fun, but at least she cares about him, and mum too. She hugs him too before giving him the potion, insisting that his father loves him and he shouldn’t worry and he’s a growing boy who needs to take care of himself…and he can’t say it, but he’s grateful for her. Like a good boy, he takes the potion and falls into a dreamless sleep.
***
His skin is paler than death, not even his freckles show up, and cold enough that even Winky’s hands and his childhood bed seem warm by comparison. Three days home from Azkaban…he’s feverish, and mum gave herself up for him, and father only brought him back home for her…but it’s better than being in there. In the haze, he vaguely remembers father saying something about mum being dead, everyone thinking her to be him, and how he’s going to stage a funeral for her soon…but he’s ill, barely breathing sometimes, only alive because of Winky’s constant care. And staring at the ceiling, he keeps revisiting that scene, from a removed, third-person perspective, watching himself and his parents. There he is, curled in a sobbing, sniveling little ball in the corner. He whimpers as the Dementors come closer, open the door, and his parents warily enter; mum might as well be part of father, she needs his support so much. He lunges at them once he’s sure they’re real, screaming and weeping, and mum cries too and breaks off of father, gets on the filthy floor of Azkaban just to hold him and stroke his filthy, matted hair. And only shook up by his wife’s grief, father explains the plan.
Winky cleaned him up when father got him home, and the Dementors still haven’t left him alone yet. She’s dutiful, though, Winky, and his oldest friend. She uses the enchanted cooling cloth on his forehead, and sits him up to feed him soup every few hours. She cares…not as much as mum, but far more than father could ever be, has ever been. She’s whispering something soothing when the door creaks open. It has to be father; he’s the only one in the house.
“Winky,” he says, bland and authoritative as ever, even after the apparent fall from grace he’s going through. “I’m going to work. How’s he doing?”
Barty can’t answer for himself; his throat is congested with illness and doesn’t want to work just yet. If he could answer, though, he’d curse this man for everything he’s done wrong in his life - how he never loved his only son, for one thing. How he loved power more than his family and only made mum truly happy when she was going to die. But it’s probably better that Winky answers. Things are strained and awkward enough already.
“He is still weak, Master, but getting better he is!” she pipes confidently, endearingly so. Sweet Winky who never hurts anything.
“Well…be a good girl and take care of him. See that he gets healthy.”
“Yes, Master, sir!”
He can vaguely make out Winky giving a little salute, and then the door closes, and, shuddering, he slips in to sleep, or perhaps unconsciousness.
***
He comes to his senses in the kitchen, watching Winky as she cooks something, his last memory of his father pointing his wand at his only son and saying, “I still don’t know how you’re shaking this, Barty, so I’ll just have to put more into it. It won’t hurt, but it really is done with your best interests at heart.” Must have been days ago. Before that the same thing - “You have to stop fighting this; it’s for your own protection. We’ve already had a near miss with Bertha Jorkins; do you want it to happen again?” And then nothing…just two weeks of lost time. That’s what all this amounts to…just more than nine years of lost time, punctuated only by brief respites, the treats Winky talks father into giving him for being “a good boy.” Those and when he fights his way into lucidity are the only times he knows himself anymore, and they’re not even that much. Escape from Azkaban just to go mad in another prison of the mind. There are no bars, no Dementors, but it’s just as bad. Betrayal at his own father’s hands, the vengeance-lust comes in so clearly, blasting his ears off and his brain to hell when he has his mind. But he has to bide his time, keep in control, wait for the Dark Lord’s return.
And it will come. It’s inevitable; the Dark Mark is still there on his right arm, so the Dark Lord must still be alive in some form. Although it has faded since that Halloween night ten years ago, it’s still there, and vengeance and freedom can still be his. Just wait…and then he’ll raise from the death of public opinion, he and the Dark Lord, and, as the most faithful servant, he will do all his Master asks. Hopefully, it’ll involve punishing those filthy scum that dare to masquerade and walk free while the Dark Lord waits in agony, while the Lestranges sit in Azkaban, and while he himself is thought dead, and might as well be. Lucius Malfoy deserves the worst, no doubt, or perhaps Igor Karkaroff…and Severus Snape…the Dark Lord will decide about him. Barty got too close to judge without distorted vision. Winky doesn’t know that he stares at his arm during these moments. She knows what’s there - it’s hard not to after the fit father threw when he saw the undeniable confirmation that his son (his only son, whom he renounced) is a Death Eater, not some stupid boy who got misguided - but she’s none the wiser to his dreams.
It will happen…but when? It’s already been so long since the War ended; the Wizarding world could use some shaking up. And him…he’s twenty-nine, but his curse-controlled body feels forty and his brain still thinks it’s twenty. He’s trapped in a house he hates and locked in either false bliss outside himself, or reality too far in. Silently, he draws the Invisibility Cloak closer around himself - hair, skin, and eyes dulled and falling out from this imprisonment, frame thin since he can only eat when father tells him to - and slips away to the study. The curtains are drawn, the décor meticulously arranged and cared for more than the only son of the Crouch line; he turns on a lamp, and then the wireless. What greets him first is that fucking Celestina Warbeck; the Dark Lord should’ve killed her when he had the chance, but oh well. Simply music, after all. It takes some messing with the knobs, but he finally gets it to a Muggle rock station; they won’t play “Smoke on the Water” or Black Sabbath or the rock he had in his youth, but it’s still better than silence and Celestina Warbeck.
He it right just in time for the DJ to shut up and this one song to come on…he doesn’t know its name, but he’s heard it the past two times he’s had his head. To properly enjoy it, he slides the Cloak off and sinks into the chair behind the desk, strumming along on the air guitar he saw Muggles play before Azkaban. The curtains are drawn and no one’s over and it’s late enough that his visibility doesn’t matter. Just the lead in is enough: the guitar work isn’t as impressive as Tony Iommi’s, but they are an American group, and the rapid, violent switches from sedated apathy to rage remind him of himself. And they more than make up for the lack of musical artistry. And the lyrics…brilliance: “With the lights off, it’s less dangerous / Here we are now, entertain us.” It’s almost a pity that, as Muggles, they’re incredibly likely to die when the Dark Lord returns. And then…
“Master Barty! Master Barty!”
Damn…Winky must have noticed his absence, or heard the music, or…something. He turns it down as she runs into the study and over to him, absolutely frantic.
“Master Barty!” She pulls frantically on his trousers. “Master Barty, what is you doing?”
“Just listening to some music,” he sighs. He can’t even listen to music for a few minutes anymore.
“You is needing to put your Invisibility Cloak back on before your father is getting home!”
“No one can see me; no one’s here but us.”
“Still! Your father is getting home soon, and Winky was so worried, and-”
Too late. Father Apparates in with a crack and walks casually into the study. He doesn’t see Barty right away, instead he prattles incomprehensibly about something or other from work, and Barty could throw the cloak on and save himself, but he’s too paralyzed to try. Finally, father looks up, his face calmly dangerous, almost nonchalantly. He shouldn’t have so much control anymore; Barty’s old enough, he should be able to fight…but he can’t.
“What are you doing?” father whispers, glaring.
“L-listening to some music, I-”
“Master, please, don’t be angry with him! It Winky’s fault! I let him slip away! He is not knowing any better! He is just wanting to-”
“Winky, please. Barty, how long have you been clear?”
“O-only about an hour.”
Father sighs and pulls out his wand. “It’s only been three days this time, Barty. Only three. Stop fighting; I’m doing this for your own good.”
“No, Master, please! Give him just a day! He is being a good boy, he is not-”
“Imperio.”
And the haze is back. Twenty words in his own voice and he loses it again.
***
He comes around suddenly; unlike the other times, where the clarity was welcome after beating his way into it, this is so fast it’s suffocating, like having his head shoved in cold water. The last thing he remembers is being awoken on the forest floor at the Quidditch World Cup site, and being questioned for all of three seconds before being put under the curse again. He had to sit in silence, unsuccessfully fighting the haze while father dismissed Winky (his will was stronger then, more passionate and harder to shake). She was their faithful house elf, his oldest and only friend…and then the passive, half-insubstantial rage of Bartemius Crouch Senior turned to his son.
Now, the curse is gone, and the Cloak, and the lights in the anteroom of the ancestral Birmingham home are bright, hearkening back to his days with the Wizengamot. They stand opposite each other, their eyes not meeting, and he has that goddamn mocking wand out. Grimacing, Barty steals it and dims the lights; he can’t deal with this room on its own, but, since he has to, he wants it to not be so bloody bright. Father snatches the wand back, and it looks like it takes him immense amounts of restraint for him to not reach out and hit his son. That’s always been a place he’d never go: he’d ignore and he’d yell and he’d denounce and he’d control…but he’d never, ever smack his good-for-nothing son upside the head. Use an Unforgivable Curse? Without a second thought! One smack on the face for cheek? Even if it was light? Maybe not…
At least he leaves the lights turned down.
“I don’t think you need that,” he says. The dulcet tones of restraint in his voice sound painful, and Barty hopes they are. “And I suppose you think that stunt was clever, don’t you? Because it wasn’t. It’s bad enough that…your crowd were there at all, but-”
“They’re not my crowd,” Barty snarls. “They’re the traitors; they abandoned my Master and left him to-”
“He’s not your Master! He doesn’t even exist anymore!”
Barty yanks his right sleeve back and has his Dark Mark in his father’s face before he can stop himself.
“Then why is it still there?! Huh? No! Of course you don’t have an answer! Too busy with your cauldron bottoms and Triwizard Tournament and-”
“Put that away!”
Just to be petulant, and remind father that he’s not using the Imperius Curse now, he leaves the sleeve rolled up. They exchange a glare, a quick transfer of mutual hatred, and they break their gaze quickly.
“Imper-”
“It’s not worth it, you know. I’ll just throw it off again. It’s taken a while, but I know now. I can resist. …You can’t control me anymore.”
“I can, and I will. I can still let this slip and send you back to Azkaban.”
“No you can’t. You’d get a cell in there with me. Besides, you wouldn’t break a deathbed promise to your wife-”
“Don’t you dare talk about her-”
“She was my mother! I have just as much a right as you!”
“You’re a criminal. You gave up your rights with the first ‘Crucio.’”
“Then you’re still with me! Using the Imperius Curse on your own son-”
“You’re no son of mine; I have no son.”
“Oh, just what you said at that farcical little trial. Still, using the Imperius Curse on anyone? For twelve years? Last I checked…that was a life term in Azkaban!”
“So was torturing the Longbottoms into insanity, or did that slip your mind?”
“I don’t know. Do you want it to?”
They both sigh like dragons - must be one of the only similarities between father and son, how fucking pathetic - and look in separate directions: father to the ceiling and Barty out the window behind that bastard. Outside, shadows pass in the night, on their ways to wherever, to do whatever, blissfully unaware of what some people would do to have just that meager amount of freedom, that much choice. Ignorance…ever the downfall of humanity - Muggle and Wizard alike - and second only to pride, really. One shadow, however, stops just outside the house. It’s small and thin, and appears to be carrying either a baby or a bundle of laundry, probably a baby. That’s most likely why it’s stopped, to calm the child. Good enough reason.
“If you think I want to do this to you, you’re sorely mistaken…but you have to be controlled. You’re dangerous.”
All lies, at least the first part is. He never cared about torturing his son before, why should he start now?
“And dead to the world,” Barty scoffs, still focusing on the window. “I can’t go out without Winky or causing an uproar and you sacked the former.”
“She risked exposing you; we couldn’t keep her. Surely, you understand.”
“I guess so…”
“Why did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Why did you fire the Dark Mark? And with Harry Potter’s wand?”
“It didn’t matter whose wand it was; I just needed a wand.”
“But why?”
“I needed to show them fear and loyalty. They think they know fear, that they can control it, but they don’t know shit. And loyalty…if they had it, they’d be in Azkaban. You’ll remember: they only dispersed after I set it off.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t excuse it. You’re thirty-three years old-”
“You still treat me like a child.”
“Regardless, you’re not a child; you’re thirty-three, and you still insist on remaining steadfast in this ridiculous purpose.”
“It’s not ridiculous!”
“You are single-mindedly devoted to the dead idea named Lord Voldemort!”
“He’s alive somewhere! He’s alive, and he’ll come back! And there’s nothing your Ministry can do about it!”
Back by the window, the shadow pulls out a wand - or a stick that looks enough like one - and inches towards the door.
“Barty! He’s dead! And he’s not coming back-”
“He will come back, and he’ll come get me.”
“He can’t, and the only thing you can do is accept the fact that you’re going to spend the rest of your life here. You’re a criminal. He can’t come back, and you can’t go back, though I suppose that only makes you feel closer to him.”
“I’m close enough to him already; I am his most faithful! He will find me, he will take me, and I alone will be praised above the others!”
Father sighs, but, for the first time, he doesn’t sound heated; he sounds defeated. Weakness…the Dark Lord would never allow weakness.
“What happened to you?”
“It’s not like it’s new. Maybe if you paid attention to something other than work and reputation, you’d know that.”
“You used to be such a bright boy. I know I never said it then, but it’s true. You used to be human…you used to be my son.”
“I’m no son of yours,” Barty sneers. He hopes these words hurt their first speaker as much as they hurt their first recipient. “You have no son.”
“Is that it then? I lost everything on your account, then took you back, even though you’re one of his, I got you out of Azkaban and brought you home. And all you have to say for this is…fanaticisms and denouncing me?”
“I denounced you long before you did me.”
“You have nothing else to say?”
Barty brings his eyes back to his father’s and glares, saying simply, “Duck.”
“What?”
“Duck.”
“I don’t-”
“Stupefy!”
A flash of red light comes from behind, and Barty slides aside just in time for his father to fall, face-first, into the hardwood floor. Sounds like he might’ve broken his nose, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed. Once he’s safely on the floor, Barty prods him and moves his head around with just a foot; he isn’t even worth the effort to bend down for, the vermin. How poetic, really, that the Imperius Curse is finally useless (after all these years, he has a backbone), and now the son won’t bend for his father, even out of his own will. As the shadow closes the door, Barty laughs mirthlessly at the beauty, grinning madly like a distorted harlequin, but absorbing the sight of the person behind the shadow makes him stop.
It’s a man, small and shivering, even though it’s summer outside and the house is hardly cold. Sniveling, he puts the wand in the pocket of his robes. There’s a familiar look about him, like they knew each other once, but he lost some of himself along the way. He then bows his balding head, presenting the bundle. Now that they’re closer, it’s obvious that this is no child, though he doesn’t quite know what it could be; he carefully eases himself forward, around his father’s body - fallen grace, literally now - and then the bundle speaks in a voice he’s wanted to hear for almost thirteen years.
“Barty…is he there, Wormtail?”
“Y-y-yes, Master,” the man - Wormtail, apparently, though that’s hardly a name - whimpers.
“Master…”
It’s an old procedure, one he thought he’d forgotten, but kneeling at Wormtail’s feet, kissing the hems of the robe-bundle, it all comes as though the Dark Lord had never left.
“Master…” he sighs with warm vindication. “I knew you’d come.”
“Yes…now rise, my most faithful servant, and let me look at you.”
Barty obeys; all he can make out from where the head is are a pair of red, glowing eyes. How he’s wanted to see them again…he’s no longer the skittish boy he was, but he knows the eyes haven’t changed. They’re still the same, even if the Dark Lord’s form isn’t.
“Life,” he huffs, hissing, “I see…has not been fair to either of us. Are you ready?”
“I will do whatever you ask of me, my Master.”
His voice is firm, his conviction solid, and both are met with the old, freezing, high-pitched laugh.
“Excellent…”
Type: Gen
Genre: Drama/Angst
Word Count: 4,100
Disclaimer: Regrettably, Barty and all other characters are not mine; they belong to JKR. Also, I own neither Nirvana nor "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
Rating: PG-13/R
Warnings: Angst, anger, language, violence-lust, mild violence, use of an Unforgivable Curse on-screen, and THEMATIC ELEMENTS OUT THE ARSE.
Spoilers: GoF
Summary: Four scenes in the life of Barty Crouch, Junior.
Feedback: Is Love.
Beta: None.
He sits on his bed, still in his robes from school. He’s been home for three days already, and he’s barely slept, or left his room, and, for whatever reason, he couldn’t even bring himself to change out of these damn things. Winky brought food by earlier this morning, and all yesterday and the day before, and dinner on his first night home…but he couldn’t bring himself to eat much. She’s obviously worried, and it hurts to worry her, since she’s his oldest friend, even if she is a House Elf, but it’s really not his fault; he can’t help it. It all comes back to the burning question that’s lodged itself behind his Adam’s Apple ever since coming home for the summer holidays, refusing to leave no matter how much he tries to cough it up: Why? Why is it that nothing he does makes his father happy? Why can’t he just get one moment of recognition as something other than some ignorable inhabitant of the house? Winky gets more of father’s attention than him, and he’s the son here…
A knock comes on the door and, with massive effort, he lifts his head up, waiting for a response.
“Barty? Sweetheart?” It’s mum. “Are you alright?”
“Master Barty!” And Winky; she sounds terrified while mum sounds concerned. He can’t blame them, of course, but it’s really not what he hoped for. “Master Barty, please!”
“…It’s open,” he croaks.
He doesn’t watch as the door opens and closes again, but closes his eyes in shame instead; he only knows they come in by the sounds and the shift in the mattress as mum sits down. Has to be mum. It’s too big to be Winky, though she clambers up between his knees. Mum brushes some hair off his face and behind his ear, and Winky hugs his leg desperately, and he sighs, but tries to not cry. Even if father doesn’t love him, won’t make time for him, hasn’t since he went to Hogwarts for the first time…he’s still the only son of the Crouch family, and sons don’t cry. He’s got enough problems as is, taking after mum’s side more than father’s and being so easy to neglect, even though he’s spent his life trying to please that man…his hair falls out from the ear, and mum pushes it back.
“Barty, sweetheart…Winky says you haven’t been eating what she brings you.”
“Mistress, he no is eating, he no is sleeping…worrying Winky he is!”
“Is there something you need to talk about, love?”
“…Mum,” he chokes out. It’s taking even more effort to not cry. “…I’m his son. Why doesn’t he love me? Or…acknowledge me at least?”
“Oh, baby…”
She sighs warmly and wraps an arm across his shoulders; she uses the free hand to push his head to her chest - warm, maternal, loving, everything father’s not - and stoke his hair. Winky still hasn’t left her place at his leg.
“I know he’s bad at showing it, but your father does love you.”
“But I got top marks again and he didn’t bat an eye…and he wasn’t at the station again, and-”
“You know he has to work. His job-”
“Is really busy with all the Dark activity that’s been going on recently, I know.”
“And he’s-”
“Exhausted when he gets home because everyone and their owl is asking him for everything he can give, and he tries to give more because he’s like that, I know.”
“Exactly. It’s really nothing about you. He knows how hard you try to please him-”
“He just can’t show me because the survival of the Wizarding world may or may not depend on his job, I know, mum, I know.”
Damn it, he’s heard this all before…can’t she at least get some new reassuring speech? Granted, some things have changed with the raise in the amount of Dark activity recently, but still…Winky wraps her arms tighter around his leg and buries her face in his trousers.
“Your father is loving you, Master Barty!”
“Mhm…”
“Honey,” mum sighs, “he really does. Now…get out of those robes and let Winky wash them already; they’re positively filthy.”
“…Okay.”
“Winky, be a dear and make him something to eat, won’t you? And make sure he eats it? And then give him a sleeping potion. You know where they are, right?”
“Yes, Mistress! Bathroom cupboard on the third floor.”
“Lovely. And…Barty, don’t give her any hassle. Just change your clothes, eat what she gives you, take your potion, and get some sleep.”
“Yes, mum.”
“Winky…hop to.”
Winky nods, lets go of his leg, and, in a pop, disappears. Softly, mum sits him up, and brushes that hair out of his face again…and kisses his cheek.
“He really does love you, you know.”
“I know…”
She hugs him again and leaves; once she closes the door, he obliges her request and changes into a t-shirt and pajama pants. Soon enough, Winky comes back with a sandwich - turkey with some random cheese and fresh vegetables, and she stands on his bed, arms crossed defiantly until he eats it. Tough love isn’t fun, but at least she cares about him, and mum too. She hugs him too before giving him the potion, insisting that his father loves him and he shouldn’t worry and he’s a growing boy who needs to take care of himself…and he can’t say it, but he’s grateful for her. Like a good boy, he takes the potion and falls into a dreamless sleep.
***
His skin is paler than death, not even his freckles show up, and cold enough that even Winky’s hands and his childhood bed seem warm by comparison. Three days home from Azkaban…he’s feverish, and mum gave herself up for him, and father only brought him back home for her…but it’s better than being in there. In the haze, he vaguely remembers father saying something about mum being dead, everyone thinking her to be him, and how he’s going to stage a funeral for her soon…but he’s ill, barely breathing sometimes, only alive because of Winky’s constant care. And staring at the ceiling, he keeps revisiting that scene, from a removed, third-person perspective, watching himself and his parents. There he is, curled in a sobbing, sniveling little ball in the corner. He whimpers as the Dementors come closer, open the door, and his parents warily enter; mum might as well be part of father, she needs his support so much. He lunges at them once he’s sure they’re real, screaming and weeping, and mum cries too and breaks off of father, gets on the filthy floor of Azkaban just to hold him and stroke his filthy, matted hair. And only shook up by his wife’s grief, father explains the plan.
Winky cleaned him up when father got him home, and the Dementors still haven’t left him alone yet. She’s dutiful, though, Winky, and his oldest friend. She uses the enchanted cooling cloth on his forehead, and sits him up to feed him soup every few hours. She cares…not as much as mum, but far more than father could ever be, has ever been. She’s whispering something soothing when the door creaks open. It has to be father; he’s the only one in the house.
“Winky,” he says, bland and authoritative as ever, even after the apparent fall from grace he’s going through. “I’m going to work. How’s he doing?”
Barty can’t answer for himself; his throat is congested with illness and doesn’t want to work just yet. If he could answer, though, he’d curse this man for everything he’s done wrong in his life - how he never loved his only son, for one thing. How he loved power more than his family and only made mum truly happy when she was going to die. But it’s probably better that Winky answers. Things are strained and awkward enough already.
“He is still weak, Master, but getting better he is!” she pipes confidently, endearingly so. Sweet Winky who never hurts anything.
“Well…be a good girl and take care of him. See that he gets healthy.”
“Yes, Master, sir!”
He can vaguely make out Winky giving a little salute, and then the door closes, and, shuddering, he slips in to sleep, or perhaps unconsciousness.
***
He comes to his senses in the kitchen, watching Winky as she cooks something, his last memory of his father pointing his wand at his only son and saying, “I still don’t know how you’re shaking this, Barty, so I’ll just have to put more into it. It won’t hurt, but it really is done with your best interests at heart.” Must have been days ago. Before that the same thing - “You have to stop fighting this; it’s for your own protection. We’ve already had a near miss with Bertha Jorkins; do you want it to happen again?” And then nothing…just two weeks of lost time. That’s what all this amounts to…just more than nine years of lost time, punctuated only by brief respites, the treats Winky talks father into giving him for being “a good boy.” Those and when he fights his way into lucidity are the only times he knows himself anymore, and they’re not even that much. Escape from Azkaban just to go mad in another prison of the mind. There are no bars, no Dementors, but it’s just as bad. Betrayal at his own father’s hands, the vengeance-lust comes in so clearly, blasting his ears off and his brain to hell when he has his mind. But he has to bide his time, keep in control, wait for the Dark Lord’s return.
And it will come. It’s inevitable; the Dark Mark is still there on his right arm, so the Dark Lord must still be alive in some form. Although it has faded since that Halloween night ten years ago, it’s still there, and vengeance and freedom can still be his. Just wait…and then he’ll raise from the death of public opinion, he and the Dark Lord, and, as the most faithful servant, he will do all his Master asks. Hopefully, it’ll involve punishing those filthy scum that dare to masquerade and walk free while the Dark Lord waits in agony, while the Lestranges sit in Azkaban, and while he himself is thought dead, and might as well be. Lucius Malfoy deserves the worst, no doubt, or perhaps Igor Karkaroff…and Severus Snape…the Dark Lord will decide about him. Barty got too close to judge without distorted vision. Winky doesn’t know that he stares at his arm during these moments. She knows what’s there - it’s hard not to after the fit father threw when he saw the undeniable confirmation that his son (his only son, whom he renounced) is a Death Eater, not some stupid boy who got misguided - but she’s none the wiser to his dreams.
It will happen…but when? It’s already been so long since the War ended; the Wizarding world could use some shaking up. And him…he’s twenty-nine, but his curse-controlled body feels forty and his brain still thinks it’s twenty. He’s trapped in a house he hates and locked in either false bliss outside himself, or reality too far in. Silently, he draws the Invisibility Cloak closer around himself - hair, skin, and eyes dulled and falling out from this imprisonment, frame thin since he can only eat when father tells him to - and slips away to the study. The curtains are drawn, the décor meticulously arranged and cared for more than the only son of the Crouch line; he turns on a lamp, and then the wireless. What greets him first is that fucking Celestina Warbeck; the Dark Lord should’ve killed her when he had the chance, but oh well. Simply music, after all. It takes some messing with the knobs, but he finally gets it to a Muggle rock station; they won’t play “Smoke on the Water” or Black Sabbath or the rock he had in his youth, but it’s still better than silence and Celestina Warbeck.
He it right just in time for the DJ to shut up and this one song to come on…he doesn’t know its name, but he’s heard it the past two times he’s had his head. To properly enjoy it, he slides the Cloak off and sinks into the chair behind the desk, strumming along on the air guitar he saw Muggles play before Azkaban. The curtains are drawn and no one’s over and it’s late enough that his visibility doesn’t matter. Just the lead in is enough: the guitar work isn’t as impressive as Tony Iommi’s, but they are an American group, and the rapid, violent switches from sedated apathy to rage remind him of himself. And they more than make up for the lack of musical artistry. And the lyrics…brilliance: “With the lights off, it’s less dangerous / Here we are now, entertain us.” It’s almost a pity that, as Muggles, they’re incredibly likely to die when the Dark Lord returns. And then…
“Master Barty! Master Barty!”
Damn…Winky must have noticed his absence, or heard the music, or…something. He turns it down as she runs into the study and over to him, absolutely frantic.
“Master Barty!” She pulls frantically on his trousers. “Master Barty, what is you doing?”
“Just listening to some music,” he sighs. He can’t even listen to music for a few minutes anymore.
“You is needing to put your Invisibility Cloak back on before your father is getting home!”
“No one can see me; no one’s here but us.”
“Still! Your father is getting home soon, and Winky was so worried, and-”
Too late. Father Apparates in with a crack and walks casually into the study. He doesn’t see Barty right away, instead he prattles incomprehensibly about something or other from work, and Barty could throw the cloak on and save himself, but he’s too paralyzed to try. Finally, father looks up, his face calmly dangerous, almost nonchalantly. He shouldn’t have so much control anymore; Barty’s old enough, he should be able to fight…but he can’t.
“What are you doing?” father whispers, glaring.
“L-listening to some music, I-”
“Master, please, don’t be angry with him! It Winky’s fault! I let him slip away! He is not knowing any better! He is just wanting to-”
“Winky, please. Barty, how long have you been clear?”
“O-only about an hour.”
Father sighs and pulls out his wand. “It’s only been three days this time, Barty. Only three. Stop fighting; I’m doing this for your own good.”
“No, Master, please! Give him just a day! He is being a good boy, he is not-”
“Imperio.”
And the haze is back. Twenty words in his own voice and he loses it again.
***
He comes around suddenly; unlike the other times, where the clarity was welcome after beating his way into it, this is so fast it’s suffocating, like having his head shoved in cold water. The last thing he remembers is being awoken on the forest floor at the Quidditch World Cup site, and being questioned for all of three seconds before being put under the curse again. He had to sit in silence, unsuccessfully fighting the haze while father dismissed Winky (his will was stronger then, more passionate and harder to shake). She was their faithful house elf, his oldest and only friend…and then the passive, half-insubstantial rage of Bartemius Crouch Senior turned to his son.
Now, the curse is gone, and the Cloak, and the lights in the anteroom of the ancestral Birmingham home are bright, hearkening back to his days with the Wizengamot. They stand opposite each other, their eyes not meeting, and he has that goddamn mocking wand out. Grimacing, Barty steals it and dims the lights; he can’t deal with this room on its own, but, since he has to, he wants it to not be so bloody bright. Father snatches the wand back, and it looks like it takes him immense amounts of restraint for him to not reach out and hit his son. That’s always been a place he’d never go: he’d ignore and he’d yell and he’d denounce and he’d control…but he’d never, ever smack his good-for-nothing son upside the head. Use an Unforgivable Curse? Without a second thought! One smack on the face for cheek? Even if it was light? Maybe not…
At least he leaves the lights turned down.
“I don’t think you need that,” he says. The dulcet tones of restraint in his voice sound painful, and Barty hopes they are. “And I suppose you think that stunt was clever, don’t you? Because it wasn’t. It’s bad enough that…your crowd were there at all, but-”
“They’re not my crowd,” Barty snarls. “They’re the traitors; they abandoned my Master and left him to-”
“He’s not your Master! He doesn’t even exist anymore!”
Barty yanks his right sleeve back and has his Dark Mark in his father’s face before he can stop himself.
“Then why is it still there?! Huh? No! Of course you don’t have an answer! Too busy with your cauldron bottoms and Triwizard Tournament and-”
“Put that away!”
Just to be petulant, and remind father that he’s not using the Imperius Curse now, he leaves the sleeve rolled up. They exchange a glare, a quick transfer of mutual hatred, and they break their gaze quickly.
“Imper-”
“It’s not worth it, you know. I’ll just throw it off again. It’s taken a while, but I know now. I can resist. …You can’t control me anymore.”
“I can, and I will. I can still let this slip and send you back to Azkaban.”
“No you can’t. You’d get a cell in there with me. Besides, you wouldn’t break a deathbed promise to your wife-”
“Don’t you dare talk about her-”
“She was my mother! I have just as much a right as you!”
“You’re a criminal. You gave up your rights with the first ‘Crucio.’”
“Then you’re still with me! Using the Imperius Curse on your own son-”
“You’re no son of mine; I have no son.”
“Oh, just what you said at that farcical little trial. Still, using the Imperius Curse on anyone? For twelve years? Last I checked…that was a life term in Azkaban!”
“So was torturing the Longbottoms into insanity, or did that slip your mind?”
“I don’t know. Do you want it to?”
They both sigh like dragons - must be one of the only similarities between father and son, how fucking pathetic - and look in separate directions: father to the ceiling and Barty out the window behind that bastard. Outside, shadows pass in the night, on their ways to wherever, to do whatever, blissfully unaware of what some people would do to have just that meager amount of freedom, that much choice. Ignorance…ever the downfall of humanity - Muggle and Wizard alike - and second only to pride, really. One shadow, however, stops just outside the house. It’s small and thin, and appears to be carrying either a baby or a bundle of laundry, probably a baby. That’s most likely why it’s stopped, to calm the child. Good enough reason.
“If you think I want to do this to you, you’re sorely mistaken…but you have to be controlled. You’re dangerous.”
All lies, at least the first part is. He never cared about torturing his son before, why should he start now?
“And dead to the world,” Barty scoffs, still focusing on the window. “I can’t go out without Winky or causing an uproar and you sacked the former.”
“She risked exposing you; we couldn’t keep her. Surely, you understand.”
“I guess so…”
“Why did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Why did you fire the Dark Mark? And with Harry Potter’s wand?”
“It didn’t matter whose wand it was; I just needed a wand.”
“But why?”
“I needed to show them fear and loyalty. They think they know fear, that they can control it, but they don’t know shit. And loyalty…if they had it, they’d be in Azkaban. You’ll remember: they only dispersed after I set it off.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t excuse it. You’re thirty-three years old-”
“You still treat me like a child.”
“Regardless, you’re not a child; you’re thirty-three, and you still insist on remaining steadfast in this ridiculous purpose.”
“It’s not ridiculous!”
“You are single-mindedly devoted to the dead idea named Lord Voldemort!”
“He’s alive somewhere! He’s alive, and he’ll come back! And there’s nothing your Ministry can do about it!”
Back by the window, the shadow pulls out a wand - or a stick that looks enough like one - and inches towards the door.
“Barty! He’s dead! And he’s not coming back-”
“He will come back, and he’ll come get me.”
“He can’t, and the only thing you can do is accept the fact that you’re going to spend the rest of your life here. You’re a criminal. He can’t come back, and you can’t go back, though I suppose that only makes you feel closer to him.”
“I’m close enough to him already; I am his most faithful! He will find me, he will take me, and I alone will be praised above the others!”
Father sighs, but, for the first time, he doesn’t sound heated; he sounds defeated. Weakness…the Dark Lord would never allow weakness.
“What happened to you?”
“It’s not like it’s new. Maybe if you paid attention to something other than work and reputation, you’d know that.”
“You used to be such a bright boy. I know I never said it then, but it’s true. You used to be human…you used to be my son.”
“I’m no son of yours,” Barty sneers. He hopes these words hurt their first speaker as much as they hurt their first recipient. “You have no son.”
“Is that it then? I lost everything on your account, then took you back, even though you’re one of his, I got you out of Azkaban and brought you home. And all you have to say for this is…fanaticisms and denouncing me?”
“I denounced you long before you did me.”
“You have nothing else to say?”
Barty brings his eyes back to his father’s and glares, saying simply, “Duck.”
“What?”
“Duck.”
“I don’t-”
“Stupefy!”
A flash of red light comes from behind, and Barty slides aside just in time for his father to fall, face-first, into the hardwood floor. Sounds like he might’ve broken his nose, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed. Once he’s safely on the floor, Barty prods him and moves his head around with just a foot; he isn’t even worth the effort to bend down for, the vermin. How poetic, really, that the Imperius Curse is finally useless (after all these years, he has a backbone), and now the son won’t bend for his father, even out of his own will. As the shadow closes the door, Barty laughs mirthlessly at the beauty, grinning madly like a distorted harlequin, but absorbing the sight of the person behind the shadow makes him stop.
It’s a man, small and shivering, even though it’s summer outside and the house is hardly cold. Sniveling, he puts the wand in the pocket of his robes. There’s a familiar look about him, like they knew each other once, but he lost some of himself along the way. He then bows his balding head, presenting the bundle. Now that they’re closer, it’s obvious that this is no child, though he doesn’t quite know what it could be; he carefully eases himself forward, around his father’s body - fallen grace, literally now - and then the bundle speaks in a voice he’s wanted to hear for almost thirteen years.
“Barty…is he there, Wormtail?”
“Y-y-yes, Master,” the man - Wormtail, apparently, though that’s hardly a name - whimpers.
“Master…”
It’s an old procedure, one he thought he’d forgotten, but kneeling at Wormtail’s feet, kissing the hems of the robe-bundle, it all comes as though the Dark Lord had never left.
“Master…” he sighs with warm vindication. “I knew you’d come.”
“Yes…now rise, my most faithful servant, and let me look at you.”
Barty obeys; all he can make out from where the head is are a pair of red, glowing eyes. How he’s wanted to see them again…he’s no longer the skittish boy he was, but he knows the eyes haven’t changed. They’re still the same, even if the Dark Lord’s form isn’t.
“Life,” he huffs, hissing, “I see…has not been fair to either of us. Are you ready?”
“I will do whatever you ask of me, my Master.”
His voice is firm, his conviction solid, and both are met with the old, freezing, high-pitched laugh.
“Excellent…”