"He ne'er is crowned with immortality, who fears to follow where airy voices lead" - John Keats

2 May 1998- The Present

"If you have returned to me…"

"Then it is over." Barty Crouch Jr. finished the sentence his companion seemed unable to as her voice trailed off. Running a bruised hand over his jaw and down his throat, he swallowed down the urge to tell her more. It wasn't needed.

In time, she would ask for more, as she always seemed to do but for now Barty knew instinctively that she was taking time to process the gravity of what had just happened. The battle was over. The war was over. The Dark Lord was dead. A large part of that thanks to the witch in front of him.

She was sitting there, pristine and pure surrounded by a faint, blue light looking evermore the ethereal woman he'd become so devoted to, the trunk of the oak against her back making the perfect throne. She'd been here on her hill the entire time, hidden away from the fighting but able to see the flashes of colour and blasts of magic from her perch. Barty wondered if she had ever doubted if he wouldn't return with the news she was desperate to hear.

He knelt in silence again, the humming in his mind that he was now used to taking his focus as she continued to stare out straight ahead, her forehead puckered as she craned her neck to see the dusty grounds of her old school far below. It was odd to him that so much had taken place in the span of a few hours, odder still that he had managed to survive it.

It was because of her. His witch. Ever since she had called him closer to the bars that held her captive inside of Malfoy's cellar, fate itself had tilted and twisted to bind his completely with hers. From the first moment she ever truly looked at him, even long before the cellar, he had felt that shift inside. Only now, he didn't bother to fight it, giving in fully as she knew he always would for Barty had been lost in the depth of Luna Lovegood's gaze more times than he could count.

Since that first time, she'd slowly taken charge of his mind, body and heart until where he ended and she began became a line so blurred he could no longer see it. Barty suspected she had his soul too, although he was uncertain of how much remained for him to offer up. Luna deserved all he had and much more. It was a devotion that had been building for years and accelerated in recent weeks as she had kept him by her side, preparing for the end of his old Master.

To keep patient, an entirely new concept for him, Barty focused on the feeling of the earth pressing into his knees. Soreness had started to return to his overworked muscles as simply kneeling in her presence suppressed the rise of adrenaline of the earlier battle in his veins, making him more aware of the aches in his body. The smell of burning was less overwhelming here on the hillside and he took several deep breaths to try clear the taste of dust in his throat. Light was beginning to return to the sky as the new day dawned. He delighted in how each minute changed the light around the woman before him.

Luna's magic was humming over his own. Barty could feeling the tingles of power that was undeniably hers running over every inch of his body and mind. His heart's was slowing too, the rhythm settling into a more familiar pattern and he waited much more calmly with eyes lowered for her to call him closer. This was his show of respect, of submission, to a greater power than any he had known.

He knew she liked it even when his Luna would never admit it.

At last, she made a soft sigh and whispered his name. It was the indication he had been waiting for and so the Death Eater rose from where he knelt, his eyes still trained downwards in an act of willing surrender to the witch before him.

As he stood, Barty caught a glance of a rip in the left sleeve of his robes that exposed dried blood and fading blank ink. The blood could be wiped away but he knew the mark would never truly fade completely. He'd chosen it to be branded into his skin, after all, and had never regretted it more than when it was visible to his Luna. It represented a choice- one he had never been able to outrun, not that he had tried very hard before he met her. A part of him wished for the ability to make a different choice now.

Luna did not meet his eye as he approached, gazing out away from him instead from her cross-legged position against the trunk of the craggy oak. There was no need for her to look at him yet, they both knew that when she did it would bring him under her unspoken spell impossibly more. A kiss would do more than that, he thought with an eager grin that he quickly erased. Not now.

Cautiously, Barty stepped forward, resisting the urge to wipe away the long strands of matted dark hair that stuck to his sweat-covered face, a gesture of vanity never needed around the tiny blonde girl that he so openly worshiped now. She never cared about appearances, her own usually a carefully concocted shroud of baubles and beads to hide the powerful being he knew laid coiled underneath. Barty understood now that the distraction wasn't just for the others she spent her time around. It was more for herself, to play pretend that she could be an innocent young woman still despite the arsenal of formidable magic coursing through her.

Time around Luna had shown him how much she struggled with the changes as well. She had yet to accept her inevitable darkness, only, admitting to it to him in rare moments. She had a lifetime of hiding her real self and only a short while of accepting it. They both knew there was more to her that was left untapped but it was hers to discover.

It never mattered how much Barty knew of her secrets, his life was as good as over now. The battle had ended and so had his usefulness. He hadn't want to admit that to himself, the part of him that she had unlocked that yearned for companionship had been in mourning for over a week once they had both realized the end was near.

Life had been a bitter struggle for as long as he could remember and while the months tethered to Luna had been a kind of servitude that extended beyond anything he had known, Barty wanted nothing else in this moment than for her to keep him by her side longer.

Luna beckoned him again, stretching out her arm to welcome him closer, though it was entirely unnecessary. He would always want to come to her. The urge had been growing more and more since she had taken him over completely.

Barty had felt that same need to find her the moment his false master's lifeless body had been destroyed, spilling his truly filthy blood on the stone floor of Hogwarts' Great Hall.

He glanced up to gauge her reaction, watching how Luna's silvery-blue eyes never moved from their focus on the fist-sized white crystal resting in her other hand as seconds turned into minutes. Wanting to gain her attention, like a puppy to its owner, which is what he supposed he was, Barty quickly moved closer to settle into his favourite position with his body laid out beside her and his head resting in her lap.

He peered up at her then in gilded, reverent silence as his heart slowed to an easy pace, the thoughts previously racing in his mind leaving him in peace as the familiar humming surrounded every part of him. Slowly she stroked his fine hair, pulling the longer strands back from his clammy skin as the edges of her nails scraped his scalp lightly and he released a shuddering breath at the comfort of her touch.

He was home in her embrace.

Home. A feeling and a place he had thought lost to him the moment his father's voice had rang through the Wizengamot chambers to denounce him forever and his mother had turned her head to hide her tears from him. Except he had known they were there, the shaking of his mother's shoulders had haunted his murky dreams for years as he floated between reality and magical submission under the silky texture of his father's invisibility cloak.

However warped he understood it to be, even in a mind as rotten as his, Barty knew he was home when he felt Luna's gentle touch. He was home in how she made him feel like an equal even as he laid at her feet and in how she held all of this power, letting him have a direct line to it through her touch. To at least feel the potential churning in her made him nearly dizzy, an addicting feeling that was grounding and uplifting together. For however dark he was, he knew this witch of light better than anyone.

She was everything to him. His Luna. His moon.

"Where is he?" Luna asked after a while. Her voice was soft but he knew the strength behind it. She was not known to him to be one who is light without purpose. Not anymore. Only fools would fall for such an assumption of his witch.

Barty also knew there was only one he she cared to know about, the same one he had referred to as his Lord for too many years.

"He's dead. The boy tried to finish him but he was too strong. I called the others and we tore him apart at the limbs and burned all the pieces left behind as you instructed me to do." Barty tried to interpret the slight twitch in her pale cheek, falling short to understand as she carded her fingers gently through his hair again. Reaching out to lay a hand on her thigh, he repeated, "It's finished."

"Where are they now- the others you called?"

She meant his brothers, the few Death Eaters he had collected at her bidding. Barty had managed to sway them not only to the Order's cause but to Luna's, a rather easy feat once they had a true glimpse at the power she could wield. They were a loyal group, that much was ingrained in them all as pureblood children and tested over years of servitude to the Dark Lord. Barty had used their loyalty to his advantage again tonight, when his blood had sung for Luna's sweet touch, he left them with false promises she would come for them soon.

Pity the third time that bargain had been offered was still not enough to make his fellow Death Eaters learn from their mistakes. No one would be coming to rescue them from whatever hole in the earth the new Ministry would find for them. Luna was a great power, but that wasn't for evil-doers like them. Or him.

Still, he couldn't lie to her. It simply wasn't possible. "I left them behind to come find you. If they can, though I doubt it."

"Good." There was coldness in her voice as she spoke the single word.

Luna was quiet then, slowly running her fingers over his scalp, easing the tension he was holding there. It brought back memories of when she had pulled him close to her only a few weeks ago, seeking his touch late in the night after holding herself away from him under the assumption it was better for his already lost soul if she didn't take further advantage. That night he had proven his soul mattered little to him anymore, her own had taken up a higher reverence to him, along with her body. My moon.

He sometimes felt the faintest jolt of shock that little Luna Lovegood could soothe him so easily, until the humming and the buzzing that was undeniably her encased his senses and he was reminded that she was the only source of comfort left for him in this world. That she could and likely would destroy him with the same ease was never what surprised him. Only her affections, for how could someone so light treat a thing as dark as him with gentleness. Death was always the expectation.

Barty hoped he would welcome it when she tired of him at last.

"What now?" he asked after the sun had risen higher in the sky, the rubble littering Hogwarts' grounds becoming clearer to them even from her secret spot on the hill.

Her ethereal voice replied, "He ne'er is crowned with immortality, who fears to follow where airy voices lead."

It wasn't an answer, more of a clue to where her thoughts were at the moment. She had been quoting lines from the same poem for three days now, the gift of the words left behind by her dead mother. Barty knew she spoke less and less in these passing weeks, a stark difference to his old Lord who seemed to love the sound of his own voice above all things. Where the Dark Lord had arrogance, Luna had a knowing. She didn't need to utter a word to convey her meanings. It was a gift for him to hear it.

There had been a time before her when his life had been filled with pain and madness, when the essence of who he was had been fading more each year into an unknown dark place. An all-consuming blackness that ended the moment she looked into his eyes, truly looked as she hadn't before, even in the years of dreams she had visited him in, right into what was left of his battered soul. He knew then that she was his salvation and laid his life out before her. With a welcome sigh and an honest nervousness, he had surrendered into the warmth she had him feel, relieved to feel a lightness coursing through him that pushed everything back into its proper place inside.

He felt almost right for the first time. With ease he followed where she led, dedicated to her cause as if it had become his own. He no longer cared about blood purity or the schemes his life had previously been dedicated to, he only cared for and about her. What Luna asked him to do, he did with reverence. His body was eager to come curl beside her and receive the reward of her gentle touch, a treat he gladly accepted as he carried out the often bloody and necessary tasks she held herself away from.

Barty felt a tickling in the back of his mind, a reminder that she had taken control of him much like others had before but any hatred he may have felt at such intense manipulation had long left him. What had started as an inability to hurt her had become a need to please her greater than any he'd known. He loved Luna too much to fight against her magic and accepted his place by her side instead. Even if that meant his own destruction.

It was more than the devotion a man felt for a woman; this was the worshiping love a man felt for his Divine or perhaps even the unending love the Divine felt for the world created. This love was the reason he didn't resist the pull of her inside of him, even as he knew just as clearly as he did anything else, that she would be done with him soon enough and he would be left behind discarded. There were no other options.

They stayed there together, an odd couple of lightness and darkness away from the rest of the world. Luna sighed lightly, her eyes now gazing forward toward the partially destroyed castle in the distance, her fingers continuing their calming strokes against his hair.

Barty turned in her lap once more to look closer at her, admiring how her hair was also catching the light, dangling over his face in a way that made him yearn to touch her, but she had not asked for that. Barty couldn't touch her without her permission, just as he couldn't pull away when she wanted him. He was a possession of this witch even when they both denied it. Rather they pretended of late to be lovers but there were barriers that would quickly remind them both of their places as master and servant. He knew she hated it but he had given up any strong emotions about it weeks before. It simply was.

Gazing up at her, he saw how the light blue of the shimmering wards around them were glowing against her pale skin with the hair he was itching to touch swaying slightly as if there was a breeze flowing through it. These details enticed him to want to memorize every little piece of the moment before it was gone.

It was finished after all.

"You are my everything," Barty whispered at last, moving closer still to rest on side of his face against her stomach as he peered up at her, willing her to turned her head down to meet his eyes again and feeling an almost overwhelming sense of relief when she did. Luna looked down at him, the smile on her face and love in her eyes the only thing that existed in the world for him now.

She moved the crystal in her other hand to rest on top of his chest and began to gently stroke his face, the cool touch of her hands moving slowly from his rough jaw to his forehead to run through the top of his tangled hair. Luna repeated the motion again, humming softly to match the vibration he could always hear in his mind now, and he felt his eyes start to close. Barty's mind was clearer than he ever remembered it before, bathed in a bright light that left him feeling boneless in intense relaxation.

"No one person should be your everything, neither you nor them can bear it for too long." Another stroke against his skin relaxed him further before she added, "Rest now. You did wonderfully."

At the realization of her words, his eyes opened again.

"Will I die?"

Barty wanted to hate the childish question as it stumbled out of his mouth, wishing his last moments could be filled with a show of strength and not another weakness, but her gentle humming melted away any true hatred. He was left with a confusion of emotions and questions. What would his moon think that he couldn't accept the fate he had ensured for dozens of others when he had so easily killed without ever a second thought. What would he face in death? What would he have without her magic entwining around his heart?

She sighed, a sound like snow falling that felt different from the heaviness of his own and answered his questions as if he had spoken them out loud. Luna's responses were short and at pace, with the pulsing motion he now felt from the warming crystal on his chest.

"Fate doesn't require acceptance. Death is but a moment. You will be free, Barty. That's what matters the most."

Barty closed his eyes, breathing in the feeling of her warmth and let go.

This story has been expanded since it was originally posted on an old profile. Original Alpha Reader credits to Calebski.