Part Two, Chapter Ten

The sun was just beginning to set as Barty stood alone in the street outside the East London townhouse. He walked up towards the door and knocked twice, before stepping back a couple of paces to stand beside the trunk he'd brought with him. As he waited for the door to be answered, it gave him time to think back on everything that had happened that day.

He'd left Gwen earlier that morning long before she'd woken up, so as to avoid her seeing the Dark Mark on his arm, but he'd left a note explaining that he was sorry to go but had to work early. Although she'd probably be disappointed that he'd left without saying goodbye, he really hoped she wouldn't be too upset. Part of him worried that, being Gwen, she'd probably think it was her fault and think she'd done something to cause him to leave early, but despite feeling bad about it he knew he wasn't in any position to be worrying about that now.

It hadn't been a lie about needing to work early, and he'd had to go home to change into his work clothes. When he'd left Gwen's house he'd tried to immediately apparate back to his own bedroom, but when he'd tried nothing had happened. He'd tried again with the same result. Realising it wasn't going to work, he'd instead decided to apparate to just outside his back door and hope he could sneak inside the house without anybody noticing. The door was locked, of course, but he could quickly take care of that with 'alohomora'. Or at least that was what he'd thought. As it turned out, the spell had no effect on the lock despite him trying it five times, and he was just considering using a hover charm to get up to his bedroom window when the door was opened from the inside. Barty looked back to the door to see his father staring out at him. Crouch Sr. didn't seem angry. Instead, he seemed strangely triumphant, which worried Barty somewhat. When he spoke, his tone was completely calm, but frosty. "I don't suppose I need to ask where you've been."

Barty glared at him, realising the man had just assumed he'd been with Gwen. He didn't know Barty well enough to come to any other conclusion. "Not that it's any of your business anyway."

"Maybe not," Crouch replied, in the same cool tone, "Although I do think it's my business when you enter and leave my house."

Realisation suddenly dawned on Barty. "Did you put an anti-apparition charm on the house?" he asked, both angry and incredulous. He didn't think his father would ever actually have gone so far as to prevent him apparating inside his own home.

Crouch nodded. "Yes. I don't want my house to be used just as a convenient place for you to stay anymore. From now on you can tell me when and where it is you're coming and going, or you won't be going out at all."

Barty was livid. "Or what?" he said, his tone challenging.

"Or you can find somewhere else to live. Is that clear?"

"I'm almost twenty, father. You can't possibly expect me to…"

"I said is that clear?"

Barty just glared furiously at his father for a few more seconds, before realising that wasn't even a difficult ultimatum. "Yes, father. Perfectly clear," he'd replied.

And now here he was. Waiting to be let in to a house he hoped he'd be permitted to stay at.

His father had ignored him all day at work, not that they saw much of each other anyway, and Crouch Sr. had been quite surprised when he'd arrived home that evening to find Barty levitating a trunk down the stairs. Despite his initial surprise, in the end he had seemed not to care. Barty's mother, on the other hand, was significantly more bothered by it all. She'd been immensely upset at first when she realised what he was doing – she'd tried to get him to tell her what was wrong, wanted to know what had happened between him and his father, asked if he wanted to talk about it, suggested maybe they could sort something out. In the end she'd even cried a little, but it didn't make any difference. If that bastard didn't want Barty living in his house anymore, then there was no way Barty was going to stay where he wasn't wanted.

It was getting more difficult for him to keep his involvement with the Death Eaters secret anyway. It had probably worked out for the better like this.

A couple of minutes passed during which Barty considered knocking again, but then realised that if the occupants were in it was probably best not to piss them off with insistent knocking. He was beginning to worry that maybe nobody was home at all, and that they'd be forced to move out for whatever reason – after all, Barty knew them to be high on the Ministry's list of Death Eater suspects – but then the door opened a crack and Barty saw the face of Rodolphus Lestrange peering out at him.

The man's angry and cautious expression turned to one of surprise when he recognised Barty. "Crouch? What are you doing here?"

Barty shrugged. "I've been kicked out."

"What do you mean you've…he's not onto you, is he?"

"Not yet, although if I don't move out now he soon will be."

Rodolphus looked exasperated. "And what? Now you're here to ask to stay with us?"

Barty nodded. "Pretty much."

Rodolphus just glared at him for a few more seconds, as if considering whether or not to turn him away, and then opened the door wider and gestured for Barty to come inside. "Get in," he said irritably, before quickly glancing up and down the street and whipping out his wand to levitate Barty's trunk inside before Barty had chance to do so himself.

Inside the townhouse was rather dark and dingy, and the plaster on the walls of the narrow hallway Barty now found himself in was yellow and cracked. Barty had never actually been inside the house before and was rather shocked by its semi-dilapidated state. It wasn't the sort of place he would have imagined Bellatrix and Rodolphus living in, even if it was never intended to be their permanent address.

"You wait here," Rodolphus instructed Barty. "This isn't a 'yes'. It's just that I'd rather not discuss this out in the street."

He was about to head upstairs when Barty shot another question at him. "Where's Bellatrix?"

Rodolphus seemed to be about to answer, but was interrupted by a loud banging sound coming from upstairs, followed quickly by the sound of glass shattering and two things crashing into each other.

Barty glanced up at the ceiling to where he could see the light fixtures shaking slightly, and then looked back at Rodolphus with a quizzical expression.

"That would be Bella," the Death Eater replied.

A/N: I wanted to include more of the other Death Eaters in this story, and now I think I'm going to. From now on I'm going to try and update on either Thursday or Friday each week, or at least until July, when I'm hoping I'll be able to update two or three times a week.