Notes: Written for the brilliant Liza (Forever Siriusly Sirius) for the Gift-Giving Extravaganza.

Liza: First of all, happy belated birthday! Now, I must thank you for making it so easy and fun to write for you. I was wavering between all the amazing choices you gave me, then you added Regulus/Barty and the plot bunny appeared and basically wrote itself. I ship them so hard now, it's not even funny. This is the proudest I've been of a story in ages, so I honestly hope you enjoy it as much as I loved writing it!

A million thanks to Jess (autumn midnights) for her seal of beta-approval!

A Kiss Denied

Regulus is the first thing they take away from you. He is, after all, your happiest memory.

Gone are the days in which you would admire him from afar in the Slytherin common room, the Great Hall, and just about everywhere you could.

Gone are the days in which you were finally oh-so-elated to share Quidditch practice with him when you were chosen for the team.

Gone are the night-time whispers about people you pretended to care about, and a cause you pretended to believe in.

(For you, being a Death Eater was never about the cause – it was always about two men: the man behind the cause, and the man that got you interested in it in the first place.)

He's been dead for over a year, but just now you feel him slip away and abandon your consciousness the same way smoke rises away from a burnt candle.

Regulus is taken away from you, and the only memories you get to keep of him are mixed in a blur of confusion and unfulfilled wishes.

You only know that there was a shameful beginning, an uneven friendship and a kiss denied. You know they can't fully take him away from you, but they can keep you from remembering.

In fact, within mere days, the only memories you're allowed to access are your absolute worst: those of your father's hatred.

You think about the time your father forgot you were playing outside and locked you out on a chilly winter afternoon. Your mother found her six-year-old son shivering on the doorstep several hours later. Your father still punished you for being out after it got dark.

(Your mother made you some soup and tucked you into bed in between sobs.)

You think about the utter shame you felt at age eleven when you realized you were the only pure-blood kid whose father didn't teach him how to ride a broom.

(Your mother was the only one to congratulate you when you made it into the Quidditch team nonetheless.)

You think about the only time he ever hit you, when he found the magazines under your bed. At fourteen, you were clever enough to understand that he didn't care about the raunchy images, but about the fact that there wasn't a single girl depicted in them.

(Your mother never found out.)

And then there comes the worst memory of all – "You're no son of mine."

You think about your father, and you cry for your mother. Back then, she was the only one who could save you.

Right now, the only one who could save you is Lord Voldemort – but at the same time, he can't. Because you know he's not dead, but you don't know if he's alive.

He could save you, but you don't cry for him, and you don't stop to wonder why they took Regulus away from you but you got to keep him.

Maybe it's because he's the indirect cause of your imprisonment.

Maybe it's because the day of his defeat was the most heart-breaking day of your adult life.

Maybe it's because he's the father you never had, in contrast with the father you once did have but no longer do.

"SLYTHERIN!"

Being the first name called for that house, the applause you got was overly warm.

You walked to the source of such demonstrations, sitting in the closest corner right next to an older girl. She looked your way, but only gave you a quick smirk.

During the remainder of the Sorting, you looked around, scanning the faces of the people around you and wishing to find a friendly one. You didn't have any friends, so you were more than willing to make any. Then again, you didn't have friends because you never quite understood how to interact with other kids - you hadn't tried it enough to learn.

After careful examination, one face caught your attention. Funnily enough, it was the face of the kid sitting right in front of you. Ironically enough, his face was the least friendly of them all.

Years later, you would discover that such a first impression was erroneous, but right then, there was no denying the cold state of relaxation he seemed to portray. He was like an aged picture with his white skin, black hair and eyes a shade of grey so vibrant that there was no confusing it with pale blue. His lips were the only hint of colour to his expression.

You swallowed to appease your dry throat, but your eyes were still on his unsuspecting figure. He was a second- or third-year for sure, judging by his thin frame, but even with his bony cheekbones and elongated hands, there was a quality of perfect symmetry to him that made him look almost beautiful.

He caught your eyes and you blushed, forgetting the fact that he couldn't have known he was subject to your scrutiny. You smiled, trying to pretend your stare was no more than a passing glance.

You never knew if he bought it or not, but he didn't seem the least bothered by it.

"Welcome to Slytherin," he said, and you almost jumped in surprise. His voice was strangely low for a twelve-year-old kid. "I'm Regulus Black."

"Nice to meet you," you whisper.

"You're Crouch, aren't you?"

"I am," you answered coyly.

Conversation stalled there, and no matter how strongly you wanted to make a friend, you couldn't think of a single thing to ask or say. There was an aura of greatness around him that you wanted to penetrate, but he seemed frankly uninterested in pursuing any thread of conversation.

(Then why did he introduce himself to you and no one else?)

During the evening, you found your thoughts and eyes going back to Regulus Black. You couldn't help it. You couldn't help wondering about him and wishing he gave you even just an extra second of your attention.

As observant as you were, it wasn't hard to notice the girls staring at him and the boys addressing him constantly. You carefully assessed how he would respond to the attention he was being given, and you realized that he would respond to every comment addressed at him with a curt monosyllable.

(You felt oddly relieved to know he wasn't distant only with you.)

You observed him, Barty, and you reached your conclusions.

You still didn't know that you would fall in love with him – that was many years in the future. But you knew that you would always notice him around. You knew you were looking at someone special.

You knew that Regulus Black was going to be important to you and that somehow, he would manage to change your life.

It happens so fast that there's not even time for a kiss on the cheek, and your mother's pity pays off as you walk off in her body.

(It has to be pity – had she loved you, you wouldn't have been there in the first place.)

The man you go home with is a stranger – he doesn't call you son. You don't call him father.

I already have a father, you think. His name is Lord Voldemort.

You want to find him, more than anything. But you spend mornings, evenings, weeks and months in a hazy state that doesn't allow you to regroup your disjoined thoughts.

You lay low. You obey.

And in the midst of those soulless moments, there's the faint memory of a shameful beginning, an uneven friendship and a kiss denied, and the knowledge that once upon a time there was someone you loved…

You want to escape. You want to go to a place, to a person that won't hurt you like this. In a brief moment of consciousness, you even wish you were back in Azkaban.

Back then, you were free to think about anything that made you miserable.

Right now, you're not able to think at all.

When you came out of the changing rooms, Regulus had already sat down in the soft grass and made himself comfortable. His hair was wet from the shower, and his broom was haphazardly thrown a few meters away from him. He stared up at the sunset, until he was brought down from his reverie by the sound of the door closing behind you.

(You'd never seen him look so striking, so sublime.)

"What were you doing there?" he asked with slight exasperation. "Were you staring at Fawley's arse again?"

You shook your head with a broad grin. You never thought you'd be glad that you told him about the magazines. You had to tell him, since he was also the only one you could come to when your father hit you for owning them. And he never judged you for it – if anything, he would make offhanded jokes that both amused and disoriented you.

(You didn't know why you were so disappointed when he didn't have the same secret you did.)

"I was looking for my broom polish," you answered truthfully as he stood up. "But I think I left it in my dorm."

"I'll give you some – I have tons. Father sent a new maintenance kit when we lost against Gryffindor. It's like he's trying to tell me something."

The bitterness in his voice wasn't on you, and you couldn't stop yourself from saying, "Well, Father barely even knows I fly."

"I still can't believe you'd never flown before Hogwarts," he said carelessly, almost unaware of how it still stung. "You're such a skilled flier."

"Thanks," you answered, feeling giddy.

You didn't know why receiving praise was affecting you so – you'd become quite used to it, after all. You knew you were smart, powerful and talented. You were also aware that you weren't quite as accomplished as Regulus, but you couldn't bring yourself to be jealous. However, you were happy with your own abilities and knew – just knew - that you were destined for greatness.

As you walked alongside Regulus, you allowed yourself to quickly glance at him. He was exactly how you imagine the rising Dark Lord to be like when he was younger – just perfect in every single aspect.

"Do you think the Dark Lord played Quidditch?" you asked suddenly.

"What kind of a question is that?" He raised his eyebrows, and an amused half-smirk appeared on his face.

"He must be a good flier, don't you think?"

"I'm sure he is, but I suspect someone as great as the Dark Lord wouldn't have been interested in something as banal as Quidditch. He must be an intellectual."

"That's not necessarily true. I mean, we play Quidditch, and we will be great. We have intellectual pursuits too."

"Yet in the end, we'll end up joining him, because he stands for the noblest of causes and because we're running out of things to learn at this place."

"What's your point?"

"My point is that we can't aspire to that level of greatness. We can only follow."

(You felt like you couldn't answer to that because you thought Regulus was great already.)

"You could be great on your own," you said slowly. He offered one of his elusive smiles at your admiring comment. That was the closest thing to gratefulness he ever showed.

"No, I think not. See, Barty, my cousin Bellatrix – I see what she's capable of now. I don't know if what she says is all true, but from what I've gathered, she knows kinds of magic we could only dream of. Kinds of magic long forgotten and until now undiscovered. If what she hints at is right… well, everything I've learned seems so dull now!"

Regulus was the kind to teach himself forbidden spells, so such a declaration puzzled you. You were no stranger to the sight of him with a heavy book on his lap and a ready wand on his hand, words escaping his lips to utter spells you didn't even know existed.

(It was a glorious sight.)

"You know more kinds of magic than even the seventh years," you argued, though you didn't even know what you were arguing about. "You can't possibly think you can't become great on your own."

"There's not much we can do here by ourselves, Barty! We need a mentor more talented than those we have here. If there's anything I've learned from my father, is that if I'm the smartest person in the room, then maybe I'm in the wrong room. And he's right. I mean, people here just bore me and I can't escape from the feeling that I'm wasting myself. To be honest…" He stopped himself abruptly.

"Go on," you urged him. It took him a few eternal seconds to comply.

"Only with you I feel like I'm being challenged, Barty. Only you push me to be better."

Such an open demonstration of approval and affection wasn't lost on you, and meant more than he'd ever know. In your eyes, his arrogance was composure, and his tactlessness became interest. His praise was sincere, and the air of elegant nonchalance he produced seemed to define him perfectly.

Before that moment, you thought there was only admiration. But when your heart was beating so strongly that you thought it was going to fly away, you realized that you felt much more than that.

Somewhere along the way, you'd fallen hard for Regulus Black, and there was no way back.

You're crying in front of Lord Voldemort – crying in awe, joy and relief. His form is horrendous, but you don't care, as long as it's him. You don't care, because it means he needs you to prove yourself before him.

"I've come to free you," he says.

"I'm here to serve you, my Lord," you respond, staring at him with such adoration that you don't even care how vulnerable you've become.

He signals to the man carrying him, and he walks closer. You should be revolted by his diminished form, you know – there's something very inhuman about it. But you just can't be revolted by the one person who can serve you.

"I've got a task for you, Barty. A very difficult task no other can accomplish. If you succeed, you will be greatly rewarded."

"Whatever it takes, my Lord."

You listen to his plan, and you revel in the fact that he thinks you worthy enough to put it in action. You are to put yourself in danger, impersonate a powerful person and make use of the kind of power only he knows you possess.

"Your father won't trouble us," he says in the end. "I'll make sure of that."

Tears flow to your eyes again as Lord Voldemort smiles disdainfully. But you don't care, and neither does he.

Part of you thinks that this is the happiest moment of your entire life.

A smaller but more prominent part of you feels as if you've forgotten something incredibly important.

Regulus had never shown up at your house unannounced, uninvited, so you grasped that something was horribly wrong, and went to meet him with a questioning stare from your mother. She left the two of you alone, and only then you allowed yourself to truly look at him.

Your dread was justified. In his appearance there was no trace of the dashing, composed man you'd learned to love. He looked as if he'd lost a fight.

"What are you doing here?" you asked softly.

"I came to say goodbye, Barty." His voice, however, was even and strong.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going on a mission. I'm not supposed to tell you."

"Then why are you even announcing yourself in the first place?" you scolded him. "He wouldn't like that."

He gave you a hard stare. You knew trying to look into his mind was useless, so you were left to guess.

"He'll never know I was here, Barty," he said. "And even if he did, it wouldn't matter."

You opened your mouth to ask 'why,' but the puzzle pieces fit together before you could try to figure them out.

You finally understood why he looked sickly and scared for the first time in his life. Why he was so thin, so disarrayed, so unlike him.

There was a chance you would never see him again.

Regulus suspected that he was going to die.

"What is it?" you asked. Your throat felt dry, and your voice sounded hoarse and broken.

"You'll never know," he confidently declared. Only his eyes betrayed his terror.

"Don't go," you blurted out.

He looked at you in a way that almost seemed imploring – and it would have, if you hadn't known Regulus to be the proudest man alive.

"That is not an option," he said firmly.

You wanted to ask him to run away, to not die.

"Why you?" you whispered instead.

"For Merlin's sake, Barty. Don't make this any more difficult than it is already!"

Emotion flowed in his words for the first time ever, and it woke something inside of you that seemed to walk hand-in-hand with the sense of urgency that was already present.

All you knew is that you loved him. You wanted to hold him tight and never let him go. You wanted to kiss his pale, tempting lips. You wanted to believe there were traces of love in his grey eyes, mirroring yours with frightening, thrilling accuracy.

"Well, then," you said, trying to sound more light-hearted than you felt. "Aren't you going to kiss me goodbye?" It was a joke, or at least, you thought it was.

He didn't react to your words, so you quickly decided that yes, it was a joke.

Truth was that you could try to fool him, even if he had become quite the skilled Legilimens with the help of Lord Voldemort.

But you couldn't fool yourself.

"Goodbye, Barty," he muttered. He looked pale, as eerie as a ghost. "Have a good life."

His words were ominous, final, wrong. And, as if you didn't feel the pang of rejection strongly enough already, Regulus turned his back to you for seemingly no good reason before Disapparating.

You could almost touch the hesitation in his demeanour before he vanished from your sight forever.

Without knowing how or why, you had lost him. And the part of you that left with him would never return.

"What did you ever love, Barty Crouch?"

The feminine whisper brings you back to consciousness. You blink slowly, trying to understand why you're back to your own body and just why you feel so defeated.

You vaguely recall that the last hour was of questions and answers – questions you feared and answers you offered unwillingly. With a pang of guilt, you realize that you've given Lord Voldemort's plan away.

But, you realize with a dash of pride, you wholeheartedly believe that he won't punish you – not after you proved to be his most loyal servant. Not after you single-handedly helped him regain his body and rise again, as powerful as ever.

He, unlike your father, knows when to show leniency.

He, unlike your father, will come to your help now that you need him. You have faith.

You're restrained, and you don't have much strength. You have just enough freedom to raise your gaze at a wand pointed toward you. You meet the cold stare of the woman wielding it.

What did you ever love, Barty Crouch?

By the sound of it, you know you weren't meant to hear the question, but something within you – the same power that forced answers out of you - compels you to say nothing but the truth.

"Regulus Black," you say, surprising yourself. And just saying the name reveals all those forgotten moments that had been locked away, and they wash over you like a wave at breaking point, too strong to handle and too overwhelming to process.

There was a shameful beginning, in which he barely acknowledged your existence but still became one of the highlights of your life. A shameful beginning in which you longed for him to reach to you, to save you, and in the meantime just looking at him seemed to make life become meaningful.

(Just then, the door to your temporary prison opens. There's a man, but more importantly, there's one of them - one of those who took your memories away. And as it glides swiftly toward you, you latch onto the recollections that you're finally allowed back.)

There was an uneven friendship, in which he was the best friend anyone could ever wish for, but you secretly wished for more. He noted those things you felt insecure about but never judged you for them. He didn't judge you for your father, your lacklustre childhood, your lanky looks and the magazines under your bed. He gave you a flawless friendship, while you could give nothing but tainted, secret, forbidden love.

(The creature stops in front of you. The woman standing guard against you screams in protest. You know what's about to happen, and you know that you have no escape.)

There was a kiss denied as he went to meet his end, and you don't know if he refused to kiss you because he didn't want you, or because he wanted to protect you. Either way, from that point on, you knew you regretted not acting on your feelings. If you had said or done anything about the way you felt, then maybe, you wouldn't be helpless in front of a terrifying fate.

(The creature lowers its hood and leans in, its sullen face millimetres from yours.)

Your mother can't save you this time, Barty. And – you dreadfully realize - neither can Lord Voldemort.

When tears threaten to burst out, you close your eyes to choose your last thought. You close your eyes to pretend.

The last thing you think you know, when cold skin touches your own, is that you're finally receiving the kiss that was denied.