"Dad! I got twelve owls!" Barty Crouch Jr. shouted waving his report card in the air for his father to see.
"Master Barty is a smart boy!" Winky squeaked.
"That's nice," his father said indifferently as he looked over some important papers that had something to do with work. What they were, Barty Crouch Jr. didn't know or care. All they meant was that his father was too busy to be bothered with something as trivial as getting twelve owls.
Barty simply sighed. "Well, anyway, I'm going to write my friends and tell them. I wonder what they got." He said it as though it was of no consequence to him despite the fact that it was the most important thing in the world to him-his father's approval.
Rather than actually writing to his friends (he didn't really have any, he was too busy studying for a social life) he just sat down on his bed and ran his hand through his sandy hair. He still wasn't good enough….
His entire life was spent trying to make his father consider and commend. When he was young, he used to try to do magic so that he would be ahead and his father would be proud of him. It never worked. When he started Hogwarts, he became the top in all of his classes and hardly spoke to anyone else. As long as his father liked him, he didn't need any one else…That never worked either. He started playing quidditch in his third year. He'd tried out for the team in his second year and almost made it, but one of the older beaters was only slightly better. Whenever he played, the majority of the other teams were knocked off their brooms. No one stood a chance against him. He even got Potter once! Lily Evans, a Gryffindor prefect, came up to him to thank him after that. He didn't know why, nor did he care. He'd played his best and his father still didn't pay him any mind! In his fifth year, not only did he become quidditch captain, he also became a prefect. His father had merely said, "Good job," and flooed to work. Something "important" had come up and he needed to be there early. Now, he'd made twelve owls and he still wasn't good enough! Nothing he tried worked.
No matter how hard he tried, his father still only cared about catching dark witches and wizards and he just wasn't as important as they were. Even though he was one. The Dark Lord understood him. He knew how Barty only wanted to be accepted and he noticed. The Dark Lord was hard to please, yes, but not impossible. All you had to do was his difficult tasks correctly, without messing up and he was satisfied with you. If Barty jumped through the right hoops, the Dark Lord was pleased. It wasn't a never ending struggle for approval. It was simply a command and a job well done. Barty was even able to get back at his father. He could get back at the man who never took notice of his own son. Barty had it all. That was, until he was caught.