Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, last round before the Finals.
Prompt: Go Wild! This is an idea I've had in mind for years.
(word) repeat
(occasion) Hug-a-Ginger Day
(word) echo
It starts with a family dinner, with his father's slicked-back hair and his mother's cautiously pinned-up smile, with Winky levitating a pitcher of lemonade over his glass, and with his father's voice cutting through his mother's favorite song.
"Eat," he snaps, eyes moving to the half-eaten pork with a side of potatoes that sits in front of Barty. "Don't waste food."
Barty swallows and glances at his mother. "I'm full," he says.
"When I was your age I would eat twice the amount you do." His father stabs another piece of meat with the same sort of planned viciousness that makes him a successful Ministry official. "No wonder you're so ghastly thin."
"I'm not hungry anymore."
His father raises his head and meets his son's eyes with a dangerous look, and Barty realizes that this is the first time they've looked at each other in a year.
…
He stuffs himself with potatoes at the Hogwarts start-of-year banquet until his stomach feels as if it might burst, and when he looks down at his thin arms all he can think about is the way they're so different from the way his father used to look when he was in Seventh Year—and there is already pressure building in Barty's lungs as he thinks of the N.E.W.T.s he's expected to earn, the N.E.W.T.s he must achieve so he can work in the Ministry so his father will stop calling him a disgrace—
He'd known, that morning, that his father wouldn't come to see him off on his son's last ride from King's Cross, and he'd done his best not to glance enviously at the other students' families around him.
His father is a bastard.
"You seem hungry," says boy beside Barty. Arben Vlacic. Barty's never really spoken to him, not really—Arben has always been closer with the older students.
But they are the older students now, Barty realizes. "How were your holidays?" he deflects.
"I spent time with some friends." Arben shrugs casually. but Barty sees the glint in his eyes. "You?"
And Barty thinks about the weeks he spent at the Ministry, staring at the closed door of his father's office, trying to care about the paperwork his father's assistant handed him—These are the things he'll have to know when he comes to work here, his father had ordered, without looking at Barty—and of the endless tasks his mother had asked him to help her with when he was at home: painting and shopping and cleaning and your father will be happy when he comes home and finds things like this…
"Nothing much," Barty answers.
Two weeks later, Arben tells him about the Death Eaters.
…
At Christmas holidays he writes back to his mother, I've been invited to the Vlacics' house. I'm friends with their son. In his mind he can almost see his mother's disappointment, can almost hear his father's mutter of Perhaps the boy will teach him something.
He drags his trunk into the Vlacics' house and tries to pretend his spindly arms are stronger, and then tries not to turn red when he sees the small assembly gathered in the parlor.
"C'mon, Arben." It's Arben's cousin, Antonin. He's leaning back in a couch, feet propped up on the coffee table, a glass of firewhiskey between his fingers. "Come say hi to everyone."
Arben grins and turns to Barty, and then jerks his head towards the parlor. Barty has no choice but to step in, heart pounding, because he knows now—he knows.
His voice seems to echo around the room, and the eyes of the Lestranges and Avery and the eldest Black sister seem to spin around him. "My name's Barty."
He leaves out his last name.
…
"Are you listening?" his father snaps.
He jolts, and stops trying to hide his gravy under a large leaf of lettuce. His mind has drifted back to Arben's house, and the Lestrange's drinking games, and the attractive curve of Bellatrix's breasts, and more than anything else—Antonin's invitation. Barty, you should come to one of our Meetings, he'd said, lip curling.
I'm here now, Barty had replied.
You know what I mean, Antonin had said, rolling his eyes. Across the room Bellatrix was laughing, and Rabastan handed Barty a glass of firewhiskey. I mean it. You've got potential.
Barty had laughed it off and tried to blame his hesitance on the alcohol. There was an excitement to Arben's expression that didn't seem entirely healthy—and somehow Barty knows this is not what his father means when he speaks of being a man with power.
"I'm listening," he says to his father now, and his hands turn to fists under the table.
"You must be careful—the Death Eaters are targeting Pureblood children, trying to convert them to their cause. The easiest way to stifle this epidemic is to stop it from spreading to others."
"I'm not a child."
His father is silent for a moment, but Barty does not look up. His mother has not come down for dinner; she is sick, says Winky.
"Not a child?" repeats his father. "You act like one, you look like one—it seems that I must treat you like one. No grown son of mine would have done so poorly at Hogwarts, or carried himself with such little grace."
And Barty grits his teeth until his jaw hurts, because he has been making an effort, has always been making an effort, and maybe he got an Acceptable in Arithmancy and History of Magic, since he's rubbish at memorizing things, but he got Outstandings in Charms and Potions, and his father—his father never even looked…
Barty's hands are shaking under the table, and he looks up at last with hatred burning in his skull, but his father isn't looking.
Maybe he hasn't looked at Barty at all.
That night, he writes a letter to Antonin Dolohov and accepts the invitation.
…
He graduates Hogwarts with four N.E.W.T.s and a headache, and for once his father says nothing, only sighs and returns to his books. The Prophet's headlines have been of the Dark Lord for twelve days straight, now—Barty's been counting ever since the raid he, Arben, and the Lestranges had conducted on the Bones' summer home.
He wonders if his father would look at him if he knew.
"It's not that easy to meet the Dark Lord," Arben says seriously one night as Barty sleeps on a mattress in the other boy's room. Barty has never gone to a sleepover before. The conspiratorial feeling in the place is both exciting and relieving—a reprieve from his own home. "You've got to earn it."
"D'you think we'll manage it?"
Arben's grin seems to glow in the dark. "I'm sure of it."
…
Barty's father is much too busy to be home on his son's birthday dinner—it's Hug-a-Ginger Day or something equally ridiculous at the Prewetts', which provides a networking opportunity with the prominent family. So Barty ducks out early from the small feast his mother has organized and goes over to the Lestranges' house.
Rabastan puts an arm around Barty's shoulders and says nothing when Barty finds himself unable to speak, choking over his own words. Instead, he pulls him out into the yard and hands him a large rock, and shows Barty spells he had never learned at Hogwarts.
When his father wakes up in the dead of the night with fiery rock crashing through his bedroom window, Barty laughs along with his friends and disappears into the darkness.
He uses the same spell on the Aurors, the first time they break into Rabastan's house and disrupt a Meeting. They Apparate away soon after, and Arben is shaking uncontrollably, but Barty laughs into the cold night air and feels like something is coming alive.
…
He's shaking slightly, but he hides it and pockets his wand as someone conjures the Dark Mark over the cluster of houses. The Muggle's glazed eyes stare up at him from the grass. A young woman—she would have been beautiful, if she had been a witch. He can feel his heart pounding, and allows his mouth to spread into a small grin because he knows that he's supposed to—knows that he's the one who will be celebrated when they get back to Antonin's.
Someone shouts, then, and they turn and run over the lawns and driveways. Arben clutches Barty's elbow—Arben's wrist is broken, and it must be hurting too much for him to Apparate alone—and they are back at Antonin's, winded and laughing.
"Well done." Antonin grins, ruffling Barty's hair.
Bellatrix shrugs off Rodolphus' arm and smiles at Barty, and his heart speeds up just a little more.
…
Barty doesn't read the Prophet anymore, and makes sure to wash his hands, arms, and face thoroughly before coming home, even though he knows his father is hardly ever around to notice the blood staining his robes. His mother is concerned that he's drinking too much, but Barty laughs it off and lets her think what she wants. He knows she's too frightened of his father to do anything about it.
Just over one year after his first Meeting, Antonin brings him an invitation from the Dark Lord himself.
…
One month after the Mark is branded into Barty's arm, the Dark Lord is defeated.
…
Everything changes.
Arben starts avoiding him, and Barty's not quite sure if he's escaped the country or if the Ministry got him. The Lestranges don't leave their house for weeks. Barty goes mad in his mother's company, forced to dress in elegant robes and accompany her to his father's lavish galas, to be congratulated for being a Crouch, for leading the onslaught on a War that his father had no hand in ending.
He tears his necktie off his neck in a rage when he gets home and wonders how things went back to the way they were so quickly—wonders how he's meant to amount to anything other than Bartemius Crouch The Second, when his last name is all he's known for—misses, desperately, the sound of his own name pronounced for his own sake, for his own merit—
There's a tap on his window, and he sees Rabastan's owl bearing a tightly rolled-up message.
…
Maybe they do have a chance, Barty thinks, and hope blooms in him once more as he tries not to feel guilty for being glad Arben isn't invited. (He's too weak, Bellatrix had snapped, and that had been the end of it.) Barty holds his wand tightly in his hand as they approach the Longbottoms' house. He meets Antonin's eyes. He knows what to do.
Maybe the Dark Lord isn't gone after all—maybe Barty hasn't disappeared. Not yet.
…
And when the echoes of the screams pouring from the Longbottoms' lips cease to ring about the walls, and half the roof has crumbled, and somewhere a baby is crying—when Bellatrix still hasn't gotten her answer and continues to blast the woman's body, again, and again, and again, an endless repetition of Cruciatus Curses, even when the body won't move anymore—that's when Barty realizes, much too late, that he can't hear any of the others.
He looks around, and Antonin and the Lestranges are gone, and suddenly everything is too loud—the sparks of Bella's wand are too bright, the dust too stifling. And he's in the act of covering his ears, suddenly overwhelmed at the confusion of it all, when the other three come running inside.
They're yelling something Barty can't quite understand, but Bellatrix stops slashing at Longbottom and turns to look at an enemy beyond the doorway.
And he hears Bella's voice, quite clearly:
"Kill the Crouch boy before he talks.'
Barty falls to the ground as the walls explode, and an army seems to fall upon them, and the others are fighting but Barty is choking on the dust and the anger and the sudden betrayal—because even among his friends he is still the Crouch boy, he is still nothing.
And as the Aurors draw in and surround him, and Barty watches his friends fall one by one into the hands of the Ministry, no one looks at him.