/Just recently I decided to re-watch "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," and when I did I was struck by three separate scenes. The first, Barty Crouch, Jr., kneeling before Voldemort. The second, Barty walking through the decimated campground. The third, Barty rising slowly from his seat to escape the courtroom before he is discovered. I had always been intrigued by his character in the book, but in seeing him played in three different lights by the very able David Tennant I began to wonder... What sort of man is Barty, really? A loyal, loving servant who speaks in a soft voice to his master as he rests his arm familiarly on his chair. A bold killer with an almost teenage swagger who he kicks at junk because he can and 'tags' the Dark Mark above the World Quidditch Cup pitch. A well-groomed, and probably well-spoken, man who already had money and his father's influence. Wondering at the many facets of this mysterious gem of a character I decided to set him apart from the rest, to examine his features more than his flaws and to provide his side of the story, from the time that he re-joins Voldemort after his escape from prison to the time that he is discovered by Harry Potter and the Professors at Hogwarts' School./
Initiation
This day is like any other day, as lived by Mr. David Gray, the straight-laced, clean-cut, white-collared Muggle businessman and owner of the two-story bungalow known as #4 Hickory Drive. The gold tie bar he wears to keep his green silk double-windsor razor-straight invites such hyphenated words as "pleasant-voiced" and "mild-mannered," such words to describe this boring neat freak of a man whose idea of spontaneity is limited to an abrupt- but not wild, no never wild- change of his usual Pizza toppings.
Today is Thursday. Pizza day. The day the straight-laced, mild-mannered, white-collared Muggle businessman comes home to his wife Julie and his son Thomas, co-habitors of the painfully neat #4 Hickory Drive. Weak-chinned and whistling he comes up the drive, balancing the flat box as he waves to his neighbor Mrs. Glick, Hickory Drive's resident cat lady. Mrs. Glick does not smile, but meet his eye with the same feline indifference the mewling masses that populate her back parlor show to new guests- an indifference he mistakes for neighborly affection. Just as well she is indifferent to him- his wife she hates. Julie cannot come outside to water her Begonias without seeing that old woman crouched by the fence, hissing her dislike with her hunched back arched like that of the fat gray tabby she carries in her arms like her own firstborn child. And all because Julie Gray- built of stronger stuff than her husband- would spray Fudge and Caramel whenever they chose to water her Begonias with a liquid not-so-sweet as their names.
But oh! Silly Mr. Gray has forgotten the bread sticks. Half-smiling he returns to the car and takes them from the passenger's seat. Weak. So weak. So weak is he, so self-conscious of his own sound he fails to shut the door and stands there five minutes nudging it with his skinny hip. Weak. So very, very weak. And useless too, Mr. Gray. Mr. David Gray of #4 Hickory Drive whose only accomplishments have been to marry and to raise a boy as bland as he, to live and to work in perfect anonymity alone in his cubicle with none of the office girls having anything to say about him except that he is "cute" and "nice" with his nervous smile and kind-hearted greetings to the any and all who never hear him.
But His name, and my name, will be known.
Mr. Gray hopes -as he slides his key quietly into the lock- that Thomas has grown four inches since this morning, so that the unfortunate, winding rendez-vous of the boy's forehead and Mr. Gray's stomach will be a thing of the past.
Mr. Gray will never find out.
His brow knits as he flips the switch.
Flip-click, flip-click, but the house stays dark.
Strange... He thinks, setting the box down on the coffee table. There must have been a power failure, or they must have blown a fuse. Thomas is always there and excited to see him, and Julie always leans in the kitchen doorway, smiling and toweling her hands like the domestic Goddess she is. Mr. Gray slips on one of the Goddess' sacred tomes- Martha Stewart's Living- and falls to the floor with a force to rattle the china cabinets.
He stays down for so long I think my work is done for me.
Yes, he holds his back as he stumbles up, they must have blown a fuse. Julie went down to the hardware store to get a new one, and took Thomas with her. Why else would the house be empty? Mr. Gray slips outside again to try and catch Mrs. Glick's attention, to verify the so-wrong theory he has. Yet she is too busy herding her unwilling brood inside- perhaps if he had a spangly feather on a stick he might win her.
Is he afraid? Yes, he is. The fear it twists and twists the soft soft rubbery stomach hidden behind a cheap brown pinstripe blouse as pale as the skin now misted with a cold cold sweat the warm warm night cannot reconcile. He watches and he waits, telling himself he is silly and trying to smile he stands with his feet apart, one turned in, watching and waiting with his heart in his ears and his twisted rubbery stomach dangling out between his legs like the tail of a frightened dog, watching and waiting and listening and seeing nothing and expecting nothing and listening to nothing and-
Missing my foot on the stair.
He tosses his keys in the blue china bowl with a jangle that sends a deep shiver down his spine, rattling all the way down the bone. Rattling like the blasted wooden wind chimes father used to keep in the yard, rattling as he faced them and the dark woods with amaretto sour foam stuck to the pencil mustache that, like him, is still waiting to be erased.
"Lumos."
Mr. Gray starts back clutching his throat as the living-room light flickers, casting a warm glow over the family safe-haven one moment and plunging it into black shadow the next. The little light the street lamps throw filters in through the window-sheers, gleaming off the television like the gleam of one long, rectangular eye.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
"Thom-as!" Mr. Gray hisses, staring at the dark patch on the ceiling, at the steady rhythmic drips that drop down the face of that giant black eye. The boy left the tub running again, this time they will have water damage for sure. Reaching for the screen he whirls around again listening for the clearer, louder sound behind him.
Pock.
Pock.
Pock.
Breathless, Mr. Gray dips his finger in the wet on the Pizza box.
"Lumos maxima."
Blood. Red blood, fresh blood, human blood there on his fingers. The room with its great patch of blood on the ceiling and the electronic eye with its blood tears is plunged into darkness once more, Mr. Gray standing like a human lighthouse in the sea of papers and books strewn across the floor, his lenses flashing in the low light as slowly, slowly he rotates, searching in the dark.
Blood. Blood in my face, in my eyes, in my mouth. Clotted and sticky in my hair, running down the back of my neck, smeared on my throat and splattered on my Adam's apple. Wetting my sleeves to the elbow and soaked into my shirt, broad patches of boldest red bleeding into the thick prisoner stripe.
"What's black and white and red all over?"
Mr. Gray trips over the coffee table, pepperoni and cheese and green peppers burning the small of his back.
"Your murderer."
"P-Please, no. Don't-"
"Hickory, Dickory, Dock." I sing, raising my wand. "The Gray mouse has run down the clock. Avada kedavara!"
"It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring!"
Laughing into the driving rain I turn and look back at the soggy footprints that stain the grass, red tinted to purple in the cloudy moonlight. Clapping my hands I holler at the sky, glad, so glad to see it again. Some would say -those that are not so loyal as I- would say that this freedom comes at a price. If it does it is a price I would gladly pay, a price I will pay as soon as I climb the next hill.
A fork of lightning steals from me the first glance of the old Muggle manor, stone stained with the rain of years gone by. Good years, glorious years? Years that will not be half so good as the years to come when He rules again.
"Bris-ka!" I say, chattering my teeth and shaking my hair dry like a dog.
Looking up, I cannot help but smile at the fat, yellow-haired figure on the stairs. He glares down his nose- fixed with a permanent twitch- at me with his beady little rat eyes, one dirty, gnarled hand resting on the cracked banister.
"Hello, hello Wormtail! Is the Govenor in?"
"How dare you talk about the Dark Lord so familiarly, Crouch, He-"
"Bade me not to come unless I brought it, and." I say, tilting my head and pushing a small black velvet bag into his chest. "I have brought it. So!"
Wormtail starts.
"Will the servant be so kind as to fetch the Master?"
"Wait here." Wormtail scowls, zig-zagging up the stairs.
I step aside for the long, glistening snake that slithers up the stairs past Wormtail- a python that makes a point to strike Wormtail with her tail. Yelping at the sharp snap of the scaly point he throws himself against the banister which, with a muffled and dry crack, spills him onto the dusty floor.
"Wormtail!" Rasps a voice. "Bring Bartholomew to me."
Squeaking in pain Wormtail scurries up the stairs; I follow with the bag he dropped.
I bow at the door but there is no one to see me, only Nagini as she coils herself around a torn-up scarlet wingback chair. The voice, wispy but lethal, seems to come from the chair itself and demands that Wormtail grovel.
"It has been some time, Bartholomew, has it not?"
"Too long, my Lord."
"Show me." He hisses, and I toss the bag underhand to Wormtail.
Wormtail scrabbles at the drawstring. Gasping at the contents of the black velvet bag he lets them drop and throws his claws up in snuffling defense of his face. The Dark Lord laughs a thin, rolling laugh at the three fingers rocking on the dust-carpeted floor. One painted pink, one petite and one pale and 'masculine,' all three of them bloody and crooking in rigor.
"Well done, Bartholomew." The Dark Lord chuckles, grasping my right arm so that the Dark Mark begins to burn. "And welcome back."