Hello. So, some warnings about this story: firstly, it has an OC. They're most definitely not a self-insert; they're named Maude and they die. That's another warning, I suppose, for character death. For the last warning, yes, this story is quite, quite dark. I promise the next thing I write will be lighter.

Also, a note on how this story is arranged: I wrote it as a one-shot, before realizing it was more than nine thousand words long. Thus, I divided it into chapters, but the chapter ends and beginnings may seem odd, because as I originally wrote it there were no chapters. I won't be putting author's notes at the beginning and end of each chapter either.

Temporal explanation: This takes place a long time before the series, during the first war with Voldemort. The Marauders are in their sixth year.

Rating: T for angst, mild language, and dark/depressing content.

Disclaimer: As always, I don't own anything HP-specific.


Barty picked up his homework and departed the Ravenclaw common room. He found it difficult to concentrate surrounded by the loud chattering and cheerful conversations of his fellow students. He headed off in the direction of the dungeons; while deserted classrooms in other areas of the castle were all too often inhabited by groups of students illicitly sharing Zonko's products, or professors anxiously discussing the war against Voldemort, or couples engaged in… whatever couples did, the dungeons were generally considered too cold and damp for comfort.

He gently pushed open a door and glanced around the classroom within. Cobwebs trailed from the ceiling, and all the chairs were overturned and placed on the desks, but apart from that it appeared perfectly habitable. He entered the room, carefully counted rows and columns of desks until he located the one in the exact center, and then removed the chair resting upon it. He set this down before the desk, ensuring it was completely symmetrical with the desk's edges, then sorted his homework into little piles and assembled them on the desk's surface.

A number of hours later, he gathered up the completed homework and stacked it carefully, replacing the chair in its position upon the desk. Approaching the door to depart the classroom, he was surprised to encounter another person entering it. He dropped the meticulously arranged homework, and it scattered disorderedly all over the cold stone floor. He gazed at it in dismay; there had been at least forty rolls of parchment, all sorted by subject and due date, and now they were hopelessly mixed up with one another.

"I'm so sorry," said a voice, and he looked up to see the person with whom he had collided also looking unhappily at the homework. He observed from her robes that she was a Hufflepuff; she looked vaguely familiar, and he concluded that she was probably in his year, and thus was in some of the same classes he was.

"Don't worry about it," he muttered, bending down and beginning to pick up the various rolls of parchment. To his surprise, she helped, observing his system of arranging the work and placing the parchments in the appropriate order.

"Your name's Crouch, right?" she asked. He nodded. "I'm Maude Peterson. What were you doing down here?"

"My homework."

"Ah. Right, of course. Silly of me."

"Why are you down here?"

"Same reason. Common room's too loud, dormitory's too dark, and all the girls want to gossip and things. Oh well."

They placed the last of the parchment rolls in a neat pile, and Barty picked all of them up with some difficulty. Maude shifted one roll which had been poking him in the eye.

"Hey," she said, a little hesitantly, "do you want to study together sometime, or something? I have trouble in Transfiguration, and I noticed you're really good at it in class. I can help you out with another subject, if you'd like."

He thought about this. Other students, even other Ravenclaws, often asked for his help with homework; although he was not very popular socially, mainly due to his bizarre and often obsessive personality and his tendency to lose the ability of speech when in large crowds, he was well known as one of the brightest students in the fourth year. Perhaps in Hogwarts in general, actually, as it was not uncommon for fifth and even sixth years to request his assistance on particularly difficult assignments. Initially, he'd been glad to help anyone who asked; it was one of the only ways he could talk to other people without worrying about accidentally offending them or causing them to become bored. Lately, however, his schedule had become packed (he had to use a Time Turner to make it to all of his classes) and he was usually too exhausted to work on any homework but his own.

Maude, though, had offered to help him in return, which had never happened before. It wouldn't take as much time, either, if they helped one another out.

Barty nodded at Maude, dislodging some of the rolls of parchment, which she set back in place, and gave her a small smile.

"I'll see you here after classes tomorrow, then," she said, grinning back at him and then walking past him into the classroom. He returned to the Ravenclaw common room, set down his homework, then went upstairs to the dormitory and collapsed on his bed. Checking his pocket watch, he discovered it was nearly midnight. He wondered vaguely why Maude had begun her homework so late, but before he could come up with any theories he fell asleep.

The next day, while in class, he made an effort to notice what was going on around him and observed that Maude was in most of the same classes he was. She seemed to be well liked in Hufflepuff. Many of her housemates approached her after the classes, presumably to ask her to chat or go do something with them, but Barty noticed that she politely turned down every one of these offers. Although she acted in a perfectly friendly manner towards her fellow students, she did not seem inclined to pursue any extracurricular activities with any of them. Barty found this behavior mystifying, as he personally would welcome any chance to spend time with people who were interested in him for reasons other than his academic proficiency.

After all the classes of the day were done, Barty took his homework down to the dungeon classroom he'd visited the previous day. Maude was already there, setting up her homework at one of the desks. He joined her, and they worked in near silence for the better part of five hours. They only spoke to comment on one another's work, or to ask for the other's opinion on their own. Once all of the homework was complete, they said a perfunctory farewell and departed to their respective dormitories.

This arrangement continued without variation for several weeks, until the Christmas holidays arrived – the Headmaster had decided to start them a few days early this year, due to the war going on outside Hogwarts. Most of the students' parents wanted as much time as possible with their children, considering the dangerous nature of the times.

Barty decided to stay at Hogwarts for the duration of the break; although he was the only Ravenclaw staying, and the castle would be close to deserted, near isolation was preferable to returning home to his cold, distant father and frail mother who was possibly going senile. He figured it was better to be alone by himself than alone in a crowd, particularly if the crowd was his family.

On the first day of the break, he stood at a window and watched as most of Hogwarts's students departed. He spent a few hours in his dormitory, completing any work he had remaining, and then a few more alternately reading a book of fiction and watching the snow fall outside. Eventually he wandered down to the Great Hall, where a single long table was set up. The staff, and the few students who were remaining at the school for Christmas, were seated there.

As Barty came over to the table, he was very surprised to notice Maude sitting next to Professor Slughorn. She looked a little pale, and he wondered if she had been up late doing homework, just as he had. He slid onto the empty seat next to her and gave her a small smile.

"Hey, Barty," she said cheerfully, "I didn't know you were staying here for Christmas."

He shrugged, wanting very much to ask Maude why she was staying, but worrying that it might be a sensitive subject. Before he could make up his mind whether to ask or not, Slughorn engaged Maude in a conversation about her apparently exemplary recent work in Potions, and the opportunity was gone. Mentally cursing himself for not being more decisive, Barty gazed down at his plate for a while, and straightened the utensils until they were precisely parallel with one another. When this became boring, he looked around the table to see which students apart from him and Maude were staying at the castle over the holidays.

Two seventh year Gryffindors he didn't know by name, and one equally unknown second year from the same house, sat across the table from him. A third-year Hufflepuff, who Barty thought was named Dirk Cresswater or Cresswell, was at one end of the table. At the other was a greasy-haired, taciturn Slytherin sixth-year whose name, according to the tag sticking out of the back of his robe collar, was S. Snape. Apart from that the table was occupied only by professors and other staff members.

Although Slughorn talked with Maude throughout most of the meal, on the few occasions he ceased doing so (either to eat or to talk with the boy whose name was possibly Cresswell), Barty attempted to start up a conversation with the girl. Unfortunately, the various conversation starters he came up with never managed to make it as far as becoming actual speech.

Eventually, everyone left the great hall and returned to their respective common rooms and staff rooms. Barty went upstairs to the empty Ravenclaw dormitory and started reading a book, but he couldn't focus on it and eventually just lay down on his bed, feeling stressed. He was in his fourth year at Hogwarts and still did not know anyone well enough to call them a friend rather than an acquaintance. There had to be a reason for this, presumably, but he couldn't think what it was; he was shy, yes, but so were a lot of the other students, and they all had at least a few friends.

And now he'd probably messed things up with Maude, sitting next to her throughout a whole meal and not saying a single word. Barty hugged the heavy book he'd been attempting to read close to his chest and tried to imagine it was a person. This didn't work very well, particularly when a corner of its cover dug painfully into his arm. Regardless of the discomfort, he squeezed the book tighter as a few tears trickled down from his eyes and fell silently onto the bed.

After a half hour or so, Barty got up and put away his book. He shut the dormitory curtains and then went back to bed. Before he fell asleep, he promised himself that no matter how nervous the concept might make him, he would definitely talk to Maude sometime during the next day.