Written for Hogwarts' Teacher Week: Barty Crouch Jr, perfidious.

Word count: 327

abyss, abyss

Had anyone told Barty that he'd end up as a teacher one day, he would have laughed in their faces, and then maybe hexed them once their back was turned, for good measure. After all, for most of his childhood, it had been expected of him to carry on his father's political pursuits, and even once Barty had chosen to follow his own dreams and wants rather than his father's-joining the Dark Lord would be the only decision Barty could never regret, even for all the grief it had caused him-he had known that getting a position as high up in the Ministry as his father's would only be beneficial to his Lord's plans.

And then his Lord had fallen and his father had sent him to Azkaban, had sent him to rot in hell without a care in the world, and it shouldn't have hurt but it had.

(how was it, Barty wondered, that whenever he thought he couldn't hate his father more, the old man made just that possible? Because Merlin, if it was a choice between Azkaban and being his father's slave, he'd pick Azkaban any day)

But his Lord hadn't died and he had found Barty, had come for him-had saved him, even, and for that Barty's life was his. For that-for his Lord-Barty would walk right into their enemy's house and lie in wait there, would play at being one of them and wear his enemy's face and teach children how to fight.

And if sometimes, Barty thought that maybe, if he did this right, these children would learn to be free, well, it was nobody's business but his, wasn't it?

(it was treacherous-perfidious, even-to hold such thoughts, but Barty couldn't stop, couldn't not think about the boy he had been, and how that boy would have given anything for someone to see him)

(how that boy had given everything, in the end)