DISCLAIMER: Not my characters.
"B-Barty," her fingers shook when she ran them along her husband's hand. Her eyes were sunken like her son's, her own dementor lurking just behind her pupils. The lids were stretched into near perfect circles, exposing marbles; clicking together in a fight to capture the marbles of the opponent, they were avoiding, too, the stink gas held in the hollow chambers. The funny thing about the marbles intended for young wizards was that while they focused on the game, their dark monsters became dormant. The worst possible occurrence was people blasted by the stinky gas from inside of the glittering globes. The dark monsters in her eyes her pushing her soul from her body steadily, pushing the light from ocean eyes. Barty felt himself cringe at the thoughts of dementors underwater. Imagine yourself swimming and encountering a dementor, he mused. "I am going to die, I am," she insisted. "Our son, he's barely twenty, Barty," the glands in her neck twitched. She was straining to sit up, tensing her muscles to remain upright. "He has something to live for.
She had convinced him two weeks ago.
That was why.
That was his motivation.
He knew how wrong it was, how illegal, how much it went against his campaign, his life's work. He did not have the ability of the slippery Lucius Malfoy, the ability to blame it on the Imperius Curse. If anyone learned of his actions, he would join his son in the stone building with the monsters he saw in his wife's eyes.
The monsters reflected into Barty's own eyes, equating darkness with darkness. Her breathing restarted when she saw her husband, irregular but ongoing. "Did you get it?" the monsters in her eyes danced.
His smile widened, welcoming the monsters. He regretted his obligations to put his son in Azkaban. He said he had no son. Familial bonds, of course, could not obstruct justice. How wrong his thinking had been. He couldn't possibly regret his decision; it was all his wife wants before she would die. To know her son had gone back to his freedom. Or an extent, anyway, Barty thought. Surely, if given full freedom, Barty would rejoin the failing search for his master. Former master? Perhaps it was both.
His wife's eyes and hands were dancing in front of the muddy fluid in the cauldron before her. Brewed over the course of three weeks, as it had taken time to harvest the lace flywings properly. She looked soothed by its presence; it resembled the way she hungrily absorbed the warmth of a fire after making snowmen with Barty back when they were a family. He'd only see his wife and son make them a small number of times, he knew, in comparison to a vast number of hours they rolled icy globes until they were chilled to the core
Much like they were now, in the midst of the summer.
"You have it, Barty," she stated, clearly knowing from his smile. "Thank you," she whispered. The two words fell away from her lips over and over like her tears had on the night of her son's conviction. His dull brown hair was held in the folds of a piece of parchment; it had been intended for a letter to the Minister, but Barty'd dripped such a huge amount of ink across it due to his nervousness that he scrapped it. She unfolded it like a love letter, grateful for the kindness within the folds but hungry for it, too. With her nails, like vultures' claws, she whisked one hair expertly from the clump without brushing any others away. Her hands couldn't even shake with how determined she was to see that this hair was in fact her son's. She was skilled in potion making, at one point studying to be a mediwitch but soon her belly was steadily growing round, her son ready to burst into the world. When she was born, with Barty out so often, she didn't feel right leaving her small child in the care of Winky. It didn't seem right. She examined the single hair of her sons before tipping the parchment into the mint-green muck.
Twenty stirs before she felt it was balanced enough. Twenty, like the years since she first felt truly content with a wiggly Barty reminding her why she was not enthusiastic about her husband's political power. Her son, Barty, was undignified. Her husband seemed rigid, even in his sleep.
Before the train of her thoughts had reached its destination, Barty had the potion corked in a bottomless flask. "Ready?" The feeling of exhilaration she had was both ecstatic and something else that she knew dementors could not take from her, as she touched the vial of her own essence in her pocket. Travelling by apparation felt like nothing short of torture, compressing her already weak lungs and laying siege upon the Horklumps tickling her insides. But dropping out from oblivion, the two straightened themselves, showing themselves to the guards.
Their hearts did not even beat until the frost melted away when the densely scabbed wraiths. As she thawed, Mrs. Crouch bent her face into her hands, smiling into them as she thought of aiding her son's escape and following his husband's presence with partly obscured eyes. "Darling," Bartemius rested his hand gently on her shoulder.
"Mother!" her son's eyes were her husband's in color and shape, but his eyes were like hers because of the demons just below the surface. His voice was frenzied but dropped low enough that it seemed spending so much time around dementors made him personify them. They could not understand the words he said. Through the bars charmed against magic, Mrs. Crouch linked her hand to her son's. Smiling to himself, Barty worked at the lock. Ministry wizards had certain privileges, one of those he was taking advantage of this day being knowledge of the curses protecting the locks on the door. A larger amount of Mrs. Crouch's arm was pulled through the door as it squealed open. It was no door that was intended to open. Generally speaking, if you did something terrible enough to be on the higher floors of Azkaban, you would not be leaving until your soul was lost and you body could no longer sustain itself.
Mrs. Crouch scarcely removed her hand from her son's when she hobbled around the frosty door, unsteady like a newborn calf. She was about to be reborn into her own offspring, reborn into a boggart. Her fear was her own son. A dying, withered, little nit that was awaiting death, she'd be. She only truly feared her son's misery. His pain. Could it be possible to scare herself to death?
Arms like Devil's Snare, she hugged her son. "My boy," she breathed.
"Mother," frenzied, he spoke. "Thank you, thank you," he didn't seem to want to cease repeating it, but was interrupted by the flask his father had shoved at his mouth. The metal of the flask's neck was as cold as the bars of his cell; he shuddered as he swallowed the fluid. The foul taste had little to do with it. It was, frankly, an improvement upon usual food he was served. It tasted as appetizing and looked a little like his mother's bubbling and gray skin. It was funny that there was no difference between the prisoner and the dying woman. Both wore graying skin and eyes that had been evacuated of good memories, avoiding the destruction of the frozen beasts. Both had the same hair. It had at time been full, but malnourishment had given it a texture resembling straw and caused it to fall out, leaving chalky patches.
Both were bubbling and changing lives.
Barty felt a little awkward as he kissed the mind of his wife on the cheek, not able to conceive that the body was not his son's for the time. No one would recognize he wife as an imposter, remaining in this body only because of the flask without a bottom carried in her robe. It had been charmed to disappear when the carrier's heartbeat failed to hold it in existence. The false Barty Jr. lay back down. She had expended the last of her energy on their travels. She had what she wanted and now all she needed was to wait to die.
The false wife followed his father past the dementors, cringing toward him for protection as if they'd attack at any moment. One quick jerk inside of his abdomen and it was back where he belonged, bubbling back into his own body. Before he could breathe freedom, he felt that the wand against his temple.
"Imperio; renounce your old ways. Behave sedately."
But even that which is unforgivable goes only so far.