Therapy
Barty Crouch Jr. is far from the first patient Luna has had to visit in prison – it's part of a lot of convicts' reinsertion into society after all, to make sure that prison isn't driving them mad (well, madder than they were getting in at least) and that they wouldn't be a danger to the outside world were they to be released.
Someone about his file sticks with her though. A lot of her patients have suffered through hard lives – they wouldn't need therapy otherwise, or be here in the first place – and Barty's is far from being the worst of those, but it's also far from being the best.
The file is thin, only a few pages held together with a red paperclip. There's a brief summary Barty's life before he got to Azkaban's penitentiary, a list of his crimes, some notes taken by his previous therapist and a picture.
The man on the small piece of glossed paper looks thin, with an almost starved look in his eyes. He'd look like a madman if not for the spark of intelligence Luna can spot in his eyes.
The list of crimes is rather small, and Barty was only ever convicted for one of them – his father's murder. The others, mostly alluding to his involvement in a terrorist group that terrorized London about half a decade ago, he was pardoned for when he agreed to testify against the group's members in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Ironically enough, he needn't have to testify for that. A couple of days after Barty's arrest, the police had discovered that Barty Sr. had killed his wife and had actually been abusing his family for years, which gave Barty's actions extenuating circumstances.
Maybe that's what sticks with her: this story, of a family that sounds even more broken than hers, and the picture of a man who looks half-mad but who, from the few notes she has gathered from her predecessor, is far from that.
Or maybe it's the breathtaking picture of a painting tapped to the back of the file, a note stuck to it with three words scribbled in a handwriting she's starting to know.
He likes art.
Well, Luna can work with that.
.x.
Luna keeps the picture. It is small, and grainy – from the terrible quality of the prison's cameras, no doubt – but even then, Luna can feel emotions radiating off it.
It is a painting of a woman. She's sitting on a window sill, looking through what has to be glass to something the viewer can't see, and there is something almost ethereal about her, like she could vanish at any moment, slipping through your fingers like smoke.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Barty painted his mother.
Of course, Luna hasn't seen the colors of the painting yet – the grainy picture she has is in black and white – but she can imagine them. The dress, a soft lilac to go with the light spinning gold of the woman's hair like a crown or a halo, the window, a shadow darkly inviting, like a portal to another world, and the warm colors of the room the woman is sitting in.
Those might be entirely wrong though. Maybe the woman's dress is green, or red, or yellow. Luna doesn't think it matters though: what matters isn't so much the image as what it says about its painter, and well, Luna truly does like what she learns about Barty from that painting.
The man himself, however, is far from being as easy to read as his art, despite his emotions being written all over his face.
Barty is ushered in her office, the small four by four room she gets to call home whenever she is working in the prison on individual cases – she thankfully has access to a bigger room for group sessions – by two guards, who take her gestures to leave the room with just about as much graciousness as she had expected. That is, not much.
"Hello Barty," she greets the sullen man with. "I'm Luna Lovegood, the new therapist. You may already know that my predecessor, Mrs. Moon, is currently on maternity leave, but if you were not, know that I am not here to replace her, but rather to continue the good work she has been doing here until she feels ready to return."
"Hello," Barty answers, but his eyes remain cast downward and his tone flat. "Are you going to ask me to talk about my life too, or can I just leave now and not waste both of our times?" He continues, scowling, as he moves to leave.
Luna frowns. This isn't going like she expected. "Sit down Barty, please. We still have-" she quickly checks the time on her watch, "-forty-two minutes together. And no," she explains in an even voice as he sits back down, still scowling, "we don't have to talk if you don't want to."
"You mean we'd just sit there for what, forty-two minutes, and do nothing if I wanted to?" He asks, incredulousness slipping in his tone, the first sign of an emotion Luna has seen so far.
"We certainly could do that, but I thought you might enjoy something a bit… different. I understand you like art?" Luna enquires, her eyes twinkling mischievously as she turns her eyes to a brown package she purposefully set within reaching distance of say, a patient.
"So what?" Barty retorts defensively.
"So I figured that you might enjoy drawing something more than simply talking – go ahead, open it."
Barty rips the paper slowly, like he's afraid he might damage whatever's inside, or that it might disappear if he doesn't old it tightly enough.
Finally, the brown paper falls away to reveal what Luna asked the prison's staff to buy: a stack of notebooks and a box of pastels.
"I couldn't get crayons or paintbrushes in here without also inviting the guards in, but I'm told these could be just as good," Luna says almost apologetically.
Already, Barty is holding the art supplies protectively against his chest, though he stops when he sees her watching him.
"Thank you," he finally admits grudgingly. "There is some kind of catch to this though, isn't there?"
"That would depend on what you consider a catch. I do expect you to try to express your emotions about your situation and allow me to keep whatever you make in here in this office, but everything else is up to you."
Barty appears to consider her offer, but Luna knows he'll accept the moment she notices the way his fingers inch toward the pastels.
"Fine," he finally relents, and reaches for the paper and pastels. "I'll do it."
"Very good," Luna congratulates him, and for the next half an hour the room is all but silent.
When the time is up, Barty puts the pastels carefully back in their box and leaves his drawing on her desk.
"I'll see you next week then?" Luna asks his retreating back.
"As if I have a choice," Barty answers just before the guards escort him back to his cell, and just like that Luna is alone in her office.
The drawing Barty left on her desk is simple – it is a rose, a red rose.
The drawing is beautiful, just like she expected, but there is something… Disturbing about it.
It isn't until that night, and her dreams, that she realizes the petals were the exact shade of blood.
.x.
In her dreams, Barty's fingers leave trails of colors on her skin like others would trails of blood.
She forgets when she wakes up, of course, but had she remembered she might have recognized that for the sign it was.
.x.
The sessions pass by quickly after that first one, and before she's realized it, Luna has been spending half her weeks at Azkaban for three months.
The drawings he leaves during his individual sessions are all as beautiful as the first one, and all as disturbing. She hasn't seen a sign of the hopeful and uplifting feeling she got from that first painting she still has a picture of, but she has had more than one example of the pain Barty seems to carry inside him.
She asks him sometimes, if he wants to discuss what he thinks of when he draws.
He almost always says no, and sometimes he doesn't even answer at all.
But sometimes, on very rare occasions, he shares some of what he is with her. Luna thrives on those moments, where she can finally see the result of her work and catch a glimpse of the man behind the façade.
Even if Barty doesn't speak though, his drawings do it for him. They tell Luna everything she needs to know for her job, but it's not enough.
It's never enough.
She wants to know more – no, she needs to know more. She wants to get to know the boy who loved his mother so much he killed his father for her, the man who thought helping burn down the world around him would make him free, and not just the façade he hides behind.
She obsesses over it, and that's how she realizes how deep she's fallen.
The worst is that Barty knows she has – she sees it in the long looks he sends her when he draws, the lighter but deeper tones his art has taken lately.
God, he could ruin her, but whatever she feels he feels too.
And doesn't that make it worth trying?