Barty Crouch Jr. knew a thing or two about the mind and tricks it played when there was danger lurking. It could fracture easily, break into a hundred uneven pieces that might never come back together again. It could shift and twist, changing memories quicker than the tides.
He knew these things because the breaking of minds was his expertise.
He watched it happen when his wand pointed without respite at the Longbottoms that night nearly two decades ago. He lived it with a father who played the role of cruel master and vengeful god to his already dismantled son. He relished in it at the secret revenge he enacted on a brother in arms after the first hint of the sniveling man's betrayal only months ago.
The Muggles had more words for the broken mind, entire areas of study dedicated to fixing and preventing such incurable traumas. His world did not- often pushing people into simplified categories of black or white. Or maybe green and silver. Labels slapped on chests of school children just as his own had been long before he felt the pull to turn against all that he was supposed to cherish.
Others told him what he would become a long time ago. Batty Barty could never have been anything less than a madman.
He used to care more, fighting the label even though his wand practically dripped blood as he pledged his life to the darkest of causes. Years of isolation and pain acted out in each curse left trembling bodies in his wake, and a pleased Lord to come back to. He was hailed as one of the favourites but when the new war ended before it ever really began, a wizard of his select talents was not often needed. Politics was the game now in place of brute violence and emotional reactions.
Barty was once again pushed to the back, the old stigmas of his broken mind coming back to haunt him in his humiliation. Thankfully, he was wise enough by now to hide the weakness of his bruised ego, recommitting himself into the new roles assigned to him. Revealing a soft spot was simply never an option in his way of life.
Apathy became his newest shroud, covering him more than his Death Eater robes as his Occlumency shields grew stronger. It calmed the whirling in his mind and made the seemingly endless meetings of the new world order easier to get through. The trouble was it calmed everything to a nearly screeching halt. Not feeling meant not thinking and that's what got wizards killed.
Even with his newfound demeanor, the cruel words society had placed on him before he had the chance to prove them true, followed Barty in every room he walked into. Words like mad, insane, manic had followed him since his first accidental magic… more added by still jealous brethren to call him evil, deranged…loony.
That was the one word that turned his eye to the little blonde witch long before he took her. Loony Lovegood- a nickname too similar to the one he had back in his Hogwarts years. He remembered from his days of hiding in plain sight, standing in front of a classroom as he watched the label constrain her greatness. Even as a child, it was clear she had potential far better than anything magical law would let out.
Barty hadn't cared enough to intervene then.
He did now.
Barty should not have touched her, shouldn't have reached out to take her hand. She was supposed to be a target. Nothing more. He knew that and yet- he reached out regardless of the warning bells inside his head.
Touching her changed things. Changed him.
It had begun as somewhat of a normal moment. As normal as his life could be now.
The Lovegood family was proclaimed as an enemy, the anachronistic punishment from his Lord was to take away its youngest member. All other heads of Pureblood family's had come at the new Ministry's calling, offering their reluctant pledges of loyalty to the Dark Lord. Even Arthur Weasley had slinked in, the deaths of his twin sons a useful tool to manipulate him.
Only Xenophilius Lovegood had refused. It angered the Dark Lord to have one of the sacred twenty-eight still defy him, even years after his control over the wizarding world secured. The seemingly impenetrable wards around the Lovegood home were too easy of a sign the odd man had something to hide.
Or someone.
Two of them to be exact. A fair-haired Pureblood daughter and her Mudblood friend discovered living a hidden life behind the wards once Barty broke through them. A few well-placed spells directed at Xeno's head before he left the distraught father behind, physically unharmed as per his orders, revealed the truth. They had been there in secret since the night the Potter boy's body had been thrown off the Astronomy Tower, his precious Headmaster's following closely after.
Bringing the witches back to Malfoy's should have been a simple task. Only seeing the Lovegood girl again, this time with proof of the years in her figure, cracked the emotionless facade just enough to let one powerful feeling seep through.
Want.
True madness would have been to not want her- Luna. To not want to see those large eyes that gleamed like silver widen in fear of him. To not want to see those pink lips part in lust back for him. He wanted to provoke her, to see how she would react. Would she be as strong as imagined? Or would she break?
When he had pulled the little witch closer to Apparate away with his prizes, his hand closing over hers for the briefest of moments, the action had muddled his thoughts even further. As if the brief touch had broken through the shields set so high to protect him. Barty couldn't be sure at the time why he wanted her- only that he did.
She was filled with an impossible brightness that felt like the sun itself had set fire to his heart and yet, her eyes reflected only soothing moonlight that calmed the flames. It was instantaneous as if the two of them had met in past lives and yet still just beginning as if it was the first time.
His need to be near her battled against his need to survive, long after his original assignment pertaining the Lovegood girl had ended. Barty continued to come back to the Manor, volunteering with an eagerness he hadn't felt since his teenage years if only to be sure she was still there. He attended twice as many meetings, pacing on the floor above where the young witches were kept as if his footsteps could beat out a message his tongue couldn't deliver.
At the first opportunity to snatch her away- again- Barty broke through the spells around the Manor and whisked Luna away to his own home. He watched her as she pretended to sleep, the flutter of her eyelids whenever he got too close the only sign of how aware she was of him.
Barty wanted Luna for himself and so he took her-again. This time to his own home, to keep her sheltered away from the world.
He had been prepared for the knowledge of his transgression to reach the Dark Lord's ear within minutes, staying up that first night with his blade and wand drawn against any who would arrive to take her back, but nothing ever happened. To Barty's dismay, though he hid it relatively well, he was celebrated instead for his assumed cruelly, those in the inner circle spreading rumors of how Batty Barty had killed again. Taking the witch only made him more of a monster in the eyes of his twisted brethren. To Luna too, he supposed, as days turned into weeks with her still silent and shaking whenever he entered the room he'd given her.
For the first time, his bloody reputation made him feel a shame almost foreign.
It was foolish to think taking the girl would solve anything but Barty hadn't given much thought on what would happen afterward.
He should have walked away forever and continued living his years in the shadows, without too much trouble.
He should have accepted the scar that would form over his heart as part of his collection of torn skin covering fractured bones.
He should have left her in the cellar to rot as punishment for how she made him feel.
Anything would have been better than what he did. Barty could see that now, his rash and selfish actions doing nothing to help his cause but that is what he had always been. Quick to react to his emotions, giving into them no matter the pain it brought to himself or others. That was his madness- hers was her love. It wasn't long before he pieced together that this witch loved fully and completely. Just not him.
When he brought her to his home, offering shelter and protection, Barty didn't expect her to suddenly run into his arms. Though he dreamed of it. He did assume as the weeks continued on that her silence would have ended. That her silvery-blue eyes would look at him with less fear and that the quiet sobs she tried to hide when she thought he couldn't hear would taper off.
The only sounds she made came in screams when nightmares let her mind act out the emotions hidden from her during the day. He recognized the sound, the cries too similar to ones that had echoed from his childhood bedroom.
Barty woke her one night, whispering what comforts he could, however forced in his inexperience. He was sure not to touch her then. It would have been too much.
Luna never answered his sweet mumblings, never offered any of her own, but she would shift slightly closer, her hands folded over her heart as if she was trying to force it to stay together through her flesh and bone.
It bothered him to know she was in pain and yet, he was at a loss as to what to do. For all that he knew of broken minds, he knew nearly nothing about broken hearts.
He asked her once if there was anything he could do to make her happy. Luna's reply was the first time she spoke directly to him. She said one name, Hermione, with a low voice and eyes still avoiding him. Hearing another's name on her lips set him into a jealous rage, one that made Barty leave his home for several days for fear of old anger acting against the witch he wanted to protect.
The night he returned, he found Luna standing by the door wrapped in blankets in a way that would have made any other woman look foolish but she had never looked more beautiful to him. She asked again for the Mudblood calling her a sister, and he nodded in return. He would find a way. For her.
The war had taken everything away from the little witch… he had taken everything. What reminded was a shell of the witch she could have been but Barty thought that perhaps somehow the damage could be reversed.
A new want took over the old one. He didn't just want to possess Luna, he wanted to prove something- something he wasn't able to name yet- to her.
He began to spend more time at Malfoy Manor, bringing back to his witch what little things he found out. The day he returned to say he had caught a glimpse of the Mudblood as she was being brought outside, Luna squeezed his hand. When he told her he'd snuck nutrient potions into the food prepared for her, he was rewarded with a smile.
Months into their new arrangement, Barty surprised her with a letter from her father, a favour owed to him by those guarding Azkaban made it easy to get access to Xeno's cell. She surprised him in turn by rushing over to him, arms wrapping around him as her lips offered a short, sweet kiss to his cheek.
Pleasing Luna through finding ways to help the ones she loved became his new mission, giving Barty a spring to his step he hadn't felt since his early days as a Death Eater. This was different than inflicting the torture he was used to and he could almost say he would trade her joyous reactions for any of the old pleasures of his life before.
It began a new rhythm into his days, made even sweeter as Luna started to talk to him, sharing of old adventures and things she wanted to discover. He would talk too, avoiding subjects neither wanted to dwell on. As her smiles became more frequent, her nightmares less so, Barty wondered if maybe for once his skill of breaking fragile things like minds, hearts, and people could become something more.
He wanted to break the fears that clouded her mind in between the moments of calm they shared.
He needed to break the barriers still holding her back from feeling safe again.
He would break his own allegiances, ready to turn his back on everything he had known for the chance of mending all that he had broken within his Luna. Every time her own warmth and kindness extended in his direction, it served to strengthen his determination to get her what she had asked of him months before. Hermione Granger would come under his own protection, anyone she wanted would, no matter the cost.
The night he stunned the guards in front of the cellar door at Malfoy Manor, Barty was grinning like the deranged madman he was rumoured to be. Only it wasn't in anticipation of something dark and dangerous, but for the smile, daresay even the kiss, he knew would be waiting for him at home. He wanted to see Luna that happy more than he had wanted to take her away.
Sure, the Mudblood rejected his offer to escape, looking back at him with the most defiant look he'd likely ever seen, but Barty Crouch Jr. was one who got what he wanted.
He would be back and soon.