Character Versatility Challenge – Barty Crouch Sr. and Jr.
He hadn't believed it at first. It had seemed too fantastical, too surreal, to be even remotely true. His first thought had been that it had to be a ploy. Someone had to have fabricated the whole thing; perhaps they were trying to discredit him or to punish him for his outspoken opposition to his cause. Frankly, he didn't care why they had done it; all he cared about was the fact that the outrageous lie besmirched his son's name.
Clinging to that belief, he had spent the next few hours painstakingly trawling through the witnesses' statements as he tried to find a loophole that would exonerate his son. After having dedicated so much of his life to identifying and apprehending Death Eaters, he had been sure that he would easily find some anomaly that proved the boy's innocence. Perhaps the testimonies would corroborate too totally to not have been discussed beforehand; perhaps the witnesses could be easily identified as people with grudges against the Crouch family; perhaps his son could be placed at the scene of the crime, but perhaps he had been there under duress and so was innocent of any purposeful wrongdoing.
As the examination continued, however, his possibilities grew increasingly absurd. It quickly became clear to him that he was trying to cling to hope where there was none to be found. He simply had to admit that all evidence pointed to his son having willingly and knowingly partaken in the torture of Frank and Alice Longbottom.
He had to admit that all evidence pointed towards his son being a Death Eater.
To his dismay, he had no chance to visit the boy to check for the Dark Mark. The Wizengamot, not wanting to risk letting a conflict of interest interfere with the trial, had whisked Barty away to a holding cell at the Ministry as soon as the accusations came to light. While Bartemius could technically use his position of authority to demand entrance to the cell, he knew it would appear to compromise his impartiality. He had to treat his son like he would any other suspect; that meant forgoing contact with him until the day of the trial. Asking the boy to bear his arm to him before the event would imply that he didn't want to risk that information being revealed in public, and making a social call would only serve to make him appear unable to disregard his personal life while putting him through the torment of seeing his son locked up without being able to ask him if it was justified.
His son. Although he had no choice but to believe that his son had done this treacherous thing, he was having a hard time reconciling himself with that fact. How could a child assume an ideology that was so antithetical to the beliefs and ideals of the household he'd grown up in? How could he, who was raised to be upstanding and righteous, turn out so despicable? What had made him decide that that path seemed like it would be a good road to tread? Why hadn't he raised the issue with one of his parents so that they could shoot down the idea like the lunacy it was?
Maybe, a voice that sounded an awful lot like his wife's whispered from the deep crevasses of his mind, he didn't tell you because he knew you'd forbid him from doing it. He knew that you would never forget that he'd even implied that it might be a worthwhile cause; you would have held it against him forever, Barty, and you know it, and he knows it too.
No! he thought, trying to overpower the dreadful murmur with the force of his denial. That's not it at all.
But the idea was already embedded in his thoughts, and he couldn't shake it off. Was the part of his mind that was so in tune with his wife that it knew what she would say in any given situation true? Was it his fault that his son had been so careful not to let anyone realise how dark his beliefs had become? Had his single-minded crusade against Death Eaters been what had pushed his son into their ranks? Had he created such a dichotomy of right and wrong that Barty had, upon realising that his views were straying from the straight and narrow path, decided that it was better to give his childhood views up entirely? What spiteful irony that would be.
However, Bartemius had undeniably done wizarding Britain a world of good. Without him and his straight-laced approach to stamping out the evil weeds that threatened their society, a platoon of Death Eaters would still freely roam the streets, inspiring terror with their mere presence. His method had proven itself extremely effective in all of the cases he had observed, and there was no reason to believe that that wasn't the case with his son as well. It was much more likely that his son had been set on a path of self-destruction from the get-go, and that nothing anyone did could have stopped him.
Given the evidence available to him, he refused to let the empire he'd created be undermined by one small and inherently flawed counterexample. A sample size of one wasn't a sufficient basis upon which to assess his abilities as a parent, and, when entering the public arena, that one statistic was massively overwhelmed by the number of success stories he'd had. His insides twisted at the knowledge that that number, that statistic, was his own son, but he refused to succumb to it. He had to stand strong and remain true to his values, even if it did turn out that his son had not.
So he separated himself from the son with the speed of a falcon diving for its prey. He remained stoic upon hearing the confirmation of his son's complicity, and he sentenced him like he would any other. Despite his son's pleas and his wife's tears, he stayed his course.
But, after the scandal broke, nobody was interested in backing his campaign for Minister for Magic. The public support he had spent years cultivating waned as quickly as water being sucked out of a bathtub. And, despite his frustration and intense disappointment, he couldn't say he blamed them.
After all, if Caesar's wife must be above suspicion, how much more so must his own child be?