A / N : I know, I know – another Barty oneshot. But it literally would not leave me alone until I wrote it, so . . . Read and review? I'd love your opinions. By the way, the line about Barty being good at Occlumency was guesswork on my part, I just supposed he must have been, to fool Dumbledore for a whole year.
Moment of Clarity
"Imperio!"
The curse hit him for the fourth time, and once again, Barty felt as though he had been plunged underwater. There seemed to be a cushion of air around his brain, numbing him and slowing his thoughts – drowning out, in fact, his ability to think at all. He stood slack-jawed and obedient, waiting for the order to come.
Pick up the knife and cut your hand with it.
The voice was the voice of an angel, a command uttered in shining crystal clarity. It cut through the fog like a bell, and once again, Barty obeyed. Looking down, he realized there was a knife in his hand. How convenient. All the better to obey the angel's order. He raised the dagger and dragged it across his opposite palm without hesitation, watching in fascinated delight as a cut unfurled. Shining scarlet, the blood gleamed as bright as the silver blade. The angel, he decided, would surely be pleased with his handiwork.
She was not.
"Barty!"
Bellatrix lifted the curse with an exasperated groan, and suddenly his mind was his own again, and he could feel the sting of the wound on his hand. He blinked.
"You failed. Again."
Barty winced. He hated failure. And at this, somehow, he kept failing. Over and over again. Bellatrix, his mentor, was trying to teach him to resist the effects of the Imperius Curse. But he just couldn't seem to do it.
"Sorry," he muttered.
She scowled. "I don't understand. Your shield charms are perfect. And you don't have any problems with Occlumency – you mastered it faster than I did! You should be able to do this!"
Barty sighed. "I did try and tell you," he said patiently. "It's just my brain. It's the way I am, I don't know why. It's wired wrong, I think. It's not your fault."
Bella scowled again, clenching her fists - a sure sign of irritation. "No," she snapped. "There must be a way . . ." She frowned at him for a moment. "How does it feel, when you're under the Imperius?"
He shrugged. "I want to obey, obviously."
"Show me." It took him a moment to realize that this was an order. She stared at him, her eyes boring into his with a fierce, determined intensity, and he saw what she was trying to do. Hesistantly, he dropped his Occlumency shields and allowed her to relive the past few minutes, from his perspective.
Suddenly, she pulled out of his mind and laughed. "An angel?" she repeated, with an odd, twisted smile. "Oh dear. You haven't had much experience with angels, have you?"
Barty shrugged.
"A what?" These last few words were growled at him by Rodolphus, Bellatrix's husband. He looked none too pleased. A spark fizzed into brief existence at the end of his wand, and then flickered into nothingness again. "I'd watch your thoughts, if I were you," the man spat. "If you can't keep your crush under control, I'll control it for you. Got that?"
Bellatrix frowned. "Rodolphus," she said coldly, "if youcan't keep your jealousy under control, I'llcontrol it for you, got that?"
They glared at each other for a beat, and then Rodolphus broke the eye contact, to instead stare mutinously at the floor.
"Actually, I don't have a crush on Bellatrix," Barty said placidly. Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and the third Lestrange, Rabastan, all stared at him in surprise.
"You don't?" If anyone but Bella had asked him that, Barty would have responded with contempt. But it was Bella who asked it, so he didn't. She seemed surprised.
He shook his head. "No. I can show you, if you like."
Bella regarded him as though weighing up her options, and then she gave into temptation and plunged into his mind again.
The truth, Barty thought, was that he didn't have anything so mundane as a "crush" on Bellatrix. That wasn't it at all. He knew, of course, that most of the Death Eaters wanted to sleep with Bella. That was no secret, and it was obvious why. She was beautiful, after all. But that was so . . . boring. Barty didn't want to be like everyone else. They were stupid, when they looked at her and saw only looks, only sex, only appearances. Most of them only wanted to sleep with her anyway as an extension of their own vanity. They pictured her hanging on their arm, and the fantasy made them feel smug. Egotistical morons. They were completely missing the point. The most beautiful thing about Bella, and the reason why Barty was so intruiged by her, had nothing to do with the coal-coloured silk of her hair, or the bewitching gleam in her stormy grey eyes. It was all to do with her mind. She was original. He had never met anyone remotely like her. Barty tended to see himself as being surrounded by dull, inferior minds. They were almost all variations on the same theme, none of them truly original. It was like walking through a room filled with candles - their tiny flames inconsequential and beneath notice - and then coming face to face with a bonfire. That was what Bella was - a bright, burning flame in a world of mediocrity. The only flame that burned brighter than hers was the Dark Lord's. His was Barty's favourite mind. There was no-onein the world like the Dark Lord, and there was no-one like Bella either. Barty would have gone to the ends of the earth for either of them. So Rodolphus' accusation was simplistic to the point of obscene, in Barty's opinion. If he had a "crush" on Bella, did that mean he was "in love" with the Dark Lord? He gave a snort of derision and rolled his eyes.
Bellatrix blinked, and he realized that rolling his eyes had broken their mental connection. Not that it mattered. He had made his point anyway. She stared at him for another long moment, and then she laughed.
"You," she said slowly, "are endlessly fascinating." She appeared to mull things over for a minute, and then she announced, "He doesn't have a crush on me. So you have no reason to be jealous, Rodolphus."
Rodolphus scowled. He didn't seem inclined to take her word for it. Then again, Rodolphus, in Barty's opinion, was just another boring, obnoxious person with a tendency to become aggresively jealous over trivial things. Barty could only suppose this had something to do with the rumour that his wife was the Dark Lord's personal whore. I wonder if it's true, he thought. I wonder if it would make a difference.
"Right!" Bella clapped her hands, and all three men jumped to attention immdiately . Barty was the only one to smile at this response – the Lestrange brothers looked annoyed with themselves and, in the case of Rodolphus, resentful. Bella ignored them. "Change of tactics," she declared. "Rodolphus, come here. I want you to try."
His mouth fell open. "Me?" he repeated. She nodded.
"Hurry up, we haven't got all year," she continued. Rodolphus gave a rather evil looking smirk behind her back. He looked as if Christmas had come early. Barty opened his mouth, about to point out the downside to giving Rodolphus absolute power over him, but he never got the chance.
"Imperio!"
The numb feeling enveloped him once more, and suddenly he couldn't remember what he had been concerned about. His mind had gone blank, although this time, it wasn't quite the same. There was a strange feeling like an itch at the back of his skull, a feeling that wouldn't go away, that refused to be swallowed by the blankness. After a moment, he realized it was the dull, hazy notion that he ought to be fighting . . . something. And then the order came.
Pick up the knife, and slit your throat.
The voice this time was not the voice of an angel. It was rough and cruel, and Barty didn't really want to obey. This time he was not complying willingly, he was being overwhelmed by superior force. But still he didn't hesitate. He raised his hand immediately, bringing the knife up to his throat, and with one swift movement -
He was never sure, later, if Rodolphus lifted the curse, if Bella intervened on his behalf, or if it was simply the intensity of the pain that did it. But for a split second, as he ripped a ragged gash in his own throat, Barty felt freed from the fog. He could think again, but by that stage it was too late. He had obeyed too promptly, and his life was now pouring from his neck, thumpthumpthump surging out with every heartbeat, and as he panicked his heart beat faster, thumpthump thumpthump thumpthumpthump . . .
The last thing he heard, before the world lurched out of focus, was Bella's scream of "Heal him!"
There was a blinding flash, and a crack, but the world had already gone black.
Barty gasped.
"Welcome back."
He blinked, and the world came back into a hazy sort of focus. He was lying on the ground, and Bella was watching him, looking a little whiter than usual, and a lot angrier. He felt cold all over, save for a hot sort of noose around his neck. A healing charm, he realized.
"Still alive?" Bella seized his hand and pulled him up. Rabastan removed his wand from the boy's throat. Barty felt momentarily dizzy, and briefly saw stars, but he nodded in response to Bella's question.
"Good."
Rodolphus was on his knees a few feet away, coughing up blood. Bellatrix did not so much as glance at him.
"You failed. Again. Why?"
Barty shrugged. He didn't really trust himself to talk, to move his neck at all. But Bella was asking . . .
"I don't know," he rasped. Just as he had feared, it hurt to talk. Rusty razor blades, dragged across his vocal chords with every syllable. But it still didn't hurt as much as the word "failed", in Bellatrix's voice.
She sighed. "You can't do it, can you?"
He didn't need to shake his head. They both knew the answer already.
"Alright." She ran a hand through her hair, unhappily planning their next move. "I'll suppose we'll have to let it go, for now. I'm still not convinced you can't learn to resist it . . . Try not to get yourself Imperiused in the meantime," she added witheringly.
Barty nodded, but he was scarcely listening. There was another question on his mind.
"Why is it so important?" he demanded. "Not many people can resist the Imperius Curse anyway. I'm fairly sure Rodolphus and Rabastan can't" - Rabastan gave a grudging, affirmative nod - "I just don't understand why you-"
Bellatrix interrupted him, swiftly holding up a hand. "You," she snapped, "are not Rodolphus. Or Rabstan. You're my protégé, and you've got more potential than either of them. I didn't teach Rabastan, and if he passed on his defects to his little brother, that's not my fault. But you . . . you could be special. Which means you can't afford to have weaknesses. Do you understand that? You've got brains and talent, and you're loyal for reasons that are rare, though you don't know it yet. Selfless reasons." She swallowed, and for a moment she looked unhappy again. Then she lowered her voice and leaned in closer to him, so that the Lestrange brothers were excluded from the conversation. "Our master says he hates love," she murmured. "But he doesn't understand. I love him, Barty. You love him. Everyone should love him. But they don't. Most of the Death Eaters . . . they only follow him for selfish reasons – for pride, for glory, for an excuse to break the law." She gave a contemptuous snort. "They aren't really loyal. But I am, and you are. And if it's just the two of us, if we're the only ones he can really depend on – then we have to be perfect. The best. Our master deserves that much, we owe it to him. So we'll come back to this, yes? We'll keep trying until you get it right, until you can throw off any Imperius, and then nothing will be able to stop you doing our master's bidding. You agree?"
Her eyes gleamed with a familiar, fanatical fervour, the one that Barty had always found oddly hypnotic. And the blood loss didn't help. His head was spinning. But her words made sense. So he nodded.
Two weeks later, the infant Harry Potter became The Boy Who Lived, and Barty, Bella and the Lestranges found themselves facing far more pressing tests of their loyalty.
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Thirteen years later, Barty woke up again.
He didn't remember leaving the Top Box. That was a gap in his memory, another one. But he did remember stealing the boy's wand. It was clenched in his fist now, and he was wide awake. So awake. He had done it! However imperfectly, he had managed to shake off his father's Imperius Curse, and he was himself again. He could remember everything, could see and hear and appreciate everything. He smiled. There were screams, sounding faint in the distance. Traitors, making sport of Muggles. He felt a brief, blinding flare of anger, a furious desire to frighten them, to make them regret their blasphemy. But there was time enough for that. There was smoke on the air, the scent of fire. Barty had always been fascinated by fire, by its ability to both cleanse and destroy. And the sky above his head was black, a black so deep he wondered how he could have stayed blind to it all these years. He had missed that black, and he hadn't even known it, until now. He gazed upwards at the cold, distant stars, each one picked out in sharp relief against the black, black sky. They shone with a fierce sad intensity, like Bella's eyes when she talked about love. Perhaps she had been right. Perhaps he had loved the Dark Lord, and perhaps he had loved her. He didn't really know, any more. All he knew was that he missed them, now. He laughed.
And then he raised the stolen wand, and shouted the words to the sky - one last desperate prayer.
"MORSMORDRE!"