*Comparatively coarse bones wrap around his core like an ill-fitting Halloween costume. There’s a disconcerting thickness to it. Something substantial and earthy in the way Davey Gudgeon’s skin passes over his joints, the way his muscles contract and stretch, the way the balls of his feet connect to the ground. Davey isn’t heavy by any means, but wearing his ropey layers fills Barty with unnatural sturdiness and resilience. Lily's veins had been musical, Barty remembers them. They had flowed and undulated and crashed, constantly pressing new sounds into his ears. But Davey's veins drum like hooves on a dirt road, unrelenting and consistent. It's a perfect body to go to war in. Thick skin and a thick heart and thick, heavy breaths.
Davey breathes too much. Far too much. Lungs expelling and taking so long and so desperately that Barty has to concentrate to keep the process going and going quietly. It isn't panic, of course. He would never panic. He’s shoulder-to-shoulder with bystanders, after all. Reporters and laymen and high-ups and
( ... )
*The crowd is a single entity, both before and after the curse is thrown, just a massive sounding board exhaling carbon dioxide in his general direction and letting him see from his podium how well his words are working. He's grown so used to watching them like an amoeba for their response that Crouch Sr. sees their unease and then panic before he even sees the rush of green that is the cause of it. It all occurs within the same blink of the eye these things usually do, moving from a completely organised and successful address to someone else's show.
The stage is swarmed with blue-robed officials after the fact, but Crouch Sr. is already crouched low on one knee, wand drawn and near to the ground as someone his height can be. His suit is wrinkled and the knee of one trouser leg is torn, but he is far better off than the wall behind him.*
*It belches up steam, frayed plaster edges blackened and twisted inward like moulded wax, throwing off the shape of his failure in vague swathes and billows. He'd gone down too fast, and now he's back up, large eyes still sharp and alert and inhabited. It's Auror reflexes, undimmed by years of paperboxes and tongue waving.
For a moment they see each other plainly, Barty uncomfortably aware of his father and his father uncomfortably aware of Davey Gudgeon. Movement signals the premature end of epiphany and the whole world seems suddenly seized and mobilized. As the amoeba realizes the presence of a foreign invader, it cloisters around, humming and droning, to eliminate it. Something pops even as cell-shapes draw their wands, a dozen green flashes aimed at the part of the floor where Barty's shoes had been not even a second ago. It's crater of it's own now, the tendrils of half-realized heat wafting upwards to join its twin.
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Davey breathes too much. Far too much. Lungs expelling and taking so long and so desperately that Barty has to concentrate to keep the process going and going quietly. It isn't panic, of course. He would never panic. He’s shoulder-to-shoulder with bystanders, after all. Reporters and laymen and high-ups and ( ... )
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The stage is swarmed with blue-robed officials after the fact, but Crouch Sr. is already crouched low on one knee, wand drawn and near to the ground as someone his height can be. His suit is wrinkled and the knee of one trouser leg is torn, but he is far better off than the wall behind him.*
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For a moment they see each other plainly, Barty uncomfortably aware of his father and his father uncomfortably aware of Davey Gudgeon. Movement signals the premature end of epiphany and the whole world seems suddenly seized and mobilized. As the amoeba realizes the presence of a foreign invader, it cloisters around, humming and droning, to eliminate it. Something pops even as cell-shapes draw their wands, a dozen green flashes aimed at the part of the floor where Barty's shoes had been not even a second ago. It's crater of it's own now, the tendrils of half-realized heat wafting upwards to join its twin.
Reflexes are hereditary, after all. *
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