CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Barty stood watching as his Alice Disapparated with that very scum of the earth who'd interrogated him the other night. His expression as he stood by the window was of one being forced to endure an unpleasant odor as he scrunched his nose in disgust. His gaze, even after the pair of them had vanished from sight, was unwavering and unabashed. Before she had vanished, his eyes did not travel up to this new and flawless Alice's face or down to her boots, but really, they followed her as if focusing on something a couple of feet further away. But he did not wave, made no gesture of recognition, no raised hand, smile, or stiff nod.
He let out a haggard sigh and turned away the moment his Alice Disapparated with the werewolf. He sneered, his lip curling downward as he thought of him.
Of the wolf. The man was admittedly going to become something of a problem for him, Crouch knew, but he would deal with the werewolf later.
Crouch sighed and turned back around to see her. His Alice. Once his Alice.
Barty waved his wand and conjured a chair next to Alice Prewitt's bedside and sat in it, straddling the chair backward and resting his arms on the chair's headrest and watched Alice in silence for a good long while, feeling a pang of momentary regret for the part he'd had to play in the Longbottom's demise.
Not her husband so much per se, Crouch could watch Frank Longbottom choke on his own tongue and fluids for all he cared, but he had not wanted to hurt Alice. In her life, Alice Prewitt had given more of herself than perhaps was wise.
She had loved without boundaries and given so much of her time when she should have kept it for herself. And after what Bellatrix and Crouch had done to her… The pain would be with his Alice until the end, every day a tough battle. The mornings brought bed baths from strange Healers than she could not recognize, kindly though they were.
There was no dignity in this wretched life for his Alice.
When left alone, when her son and Frank's grandmother did not come to visit, Alice let her face, so deeply etched with the lines of laughter and love, fall with gravity, reserving what little strength was left in her failing body for Neville. Crouch furrowed his brows into a frown as his cold, hardened gaze landed on that of Frank.
Frank Longbottom rested in a chair next to the bedside of his wife, not that he knew who Alice or Crouch was. He sat in that damned chair, rocking, rocking, always in motion. His face is just the same as that fateful night when Crouch was only too happy to use the Cruciatus Curse on Frank Longbottom, buckling under the strain of the pain.
Every few seconds, his hand flickers to his face to swat invisible insects. Probably Wrackspurts, Crouch thought and snorted, rolling his eyes. He scooted his chair closer to Alice and reached for one of her hands. Her hands were frailty and caution, shaking gently as her listless eyes looked towards Barty Crouch.
Crouch drew in an abated breath that was more of a hiss and wasn't even aware he'd held it. He could have sworn that, he was sure, yes, he was sure, that the briefest flickers of anger flickered through his Alice's eyes as she looked at him.
Barty let out a sigh as Alice looked away and let out a tiny moan, to which Frank Longbottom responded in kind with one of his own. Both of them had lost the ability to speak. Crouch glanced down and let his gaze fall on Alice's hand clutched in his own.
They were ashen as the garish light of the sun caught them, not ghostly like a white person, just…subdued and greyish. Crouch stared.
This was perhaps the first time he realized just how vulnerable his Alice Prewitt was and how much of a toll the aftereffects of the Cruciatus Curse had taken. Frank let out another moan and Crouch clenched his teeth in anger, growling. The woman's husband was testing the last vestiges of Crouch's patience.
One more moan and Barty swore he'd find an illegal use for his pillow.
Though even Crouch knew that it wasn't necessarily Longbottom's fault, and for the most part, neither of them were aware of anything they did anymore at all. The Longbottoms did not know the pair of them were in St. Mungo's or what had happened to them.
Their existence had become little more than an extended nightmare until the sweet shrouded figure of Death came to take them away.
But their damned bloody moans were so loud and unpredictable, each one coming just when Barty Crouch Jr. was relaxing into the idea he might have stopped and would be allowed to hold Alice's hand in sweet, blessed silence.
Crouch glowered as the moan from Frank Longbottom came again, and his hand instinctively drifted to the interior pocket of his brown jacket, his fingers twitching as he itched to pull his wand and send the last Unforgiveable Curse spiraling straight square into Frank's chest, though he knew it'd be an act of mercy, and that was not something he was willing to provide for the accursed thief.
The thief of Alice Prewitt's heart, who'd stolen what should have always been his. His fingers twitched again and with great effort, by some miracle, Crouch managed to restrain himself and pulled his hand out of his trench coat.
When he spoke to Frank, though he knew the tortured man could not hear him, it was with a coldness that even he had never heard himself. He doubted that Frank could understand his words, but still, he spoke them to him anyways.
"I don't just want to kill you, Longbottom, I want to put you in a dank, dark pit and add the shovels of dirt slowly until your mouth is full of dirt and you belong with the worms. I want to hear the suffocation of your stupid cries. I want to know the second you don't exist anymore, so that I may savor it," he hissed.
Crouch heard the venom drip from his words in anger as he whisper hissed it through clenched teeth and locked jaw. His fingers raked down the side of his black jeans. "I don't care if you're sorry anymore. I don't want to hear it, Frank."
Frank could only respond in kind with another pitiful moan and wide eyes.
Crouch sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and shook his head in disgust. "You took what should have been mine and this," he growled, gesturing towards Alice's mostly unresponsive form, "is your fault. I hope you're proud, Frank. It's all your handiwork, after all. This would not have happened if you'd simply left Alice alone. Prewitt is mine, Longbottom. Mine."
Barty Crouch Jr. offered his trademark wide, white Cheshire Cat-like grin, his dark eyes wide and unblinking. He ran a hand through his thick tuft of dark hair, his lips turning up even wider as he grinned, and Frank moaned in response.
Crouch turned away from Frank, ignoring the insufferable man's moaning, returning his attention back to Alice, and clasped his hand over the top of Alice's.
So cold, he thought. Sometimes, the regret at what he had done to his precious Alice would come to Barty in quiet moments, such as when he was going to sleep. It would seep to the foreground of his mind and demand to be re-examined again. The regret of what he had done washed over Crouch like the long, slow waves on a shallow beach. Each wave was frigid, icy cold, and sent shivers down his spine as he dared to look into the listless pools of emptiness that were her eyes.
How he longed to go back and take a different path, but now that was impossible. There was no way back from this. There was but only one way to make it right, and that was not to mess things up with this new, perfect Alice.
There was a small part of Crouch that envied the pebbles of that said beach, hard and lifeless, unable to feel the wracking torments, the hardships of this life.
But he was tired of thinking about it, what he had done to his Alice Prewitt. No amount of analysis was going to turn back the clock and reverse time. Crouch knew he had to get on with the here and now, make better choices the next time.
Starting with her, he thought angrily, biting the inside wall of his cheek as he thought of the new Alice, the pretty little thing that had somehow gotten away.
Insanity stole into his mind like a deranged thief, taking what was important to Barty, adding a new dangerous ideas, seeding a new personality, and muddling up the rest. New sparks of ideas that once he would have dismissed as bizarre started to grow roots, deep roots, and they started to make sense in one revolutionary eureka moment after another, cascading purely out of his control.
It lured Crouch further and further from the self that he once knew until he was so deep that Barty no longer recognized the dense, dark forest around him, paths twisted and turned out of his sight, so dense were these tree trunks in his mind. He followed one path wildly after another, making new connections in his new distorted reality, after a while, he had trodden the new paths so much that they formed an inescapable maze, a prison without walls, and he was trapped.
These painful memories of Crouch's, they were just the same as his nightmares. They vanished whenever Barty was awake, when he was really right here, in the present moment, with Alice. But once he really opened his eyes and let in the darkness of the moonlight, they had no choice but to leave once the garish light of day of the sun had set and dipped beyond the horizon, and he could let in the wonderful ideas around him.
Such as a new life with his new Alice. A second chance to make things right. Crouch glanced down at his hands, still clutching onto Alice Prewitt's hands.
The lines on the witch's hand caught Barty's attention, much as they did back when they attended Hogwarts together. They swirled on her hand like an unfinished drawing. Her hand fixed perfectly in his, her long and thin fingers, completing the space left in his. Smooth and pampered, just like the rest of her.
The Healers in this wretched place took care of her. Crouch could be grateful for that much, at least. Pianist's fingers, with cool white skin and a perfect manicure. To the touch, they were soft and cold, though they warmed instantly the moment Crouch lifted Alice Prewitt's knuckles to his lips for a chaste kiss.
As he did so, his eyes closed and he was flooded with the memories of their time together in Hogwarts, and he could not stop the rush of emotions that spiraled and sent a wave of cold and warmth as one in the confines of his chest…
Alice Prewitt was young, pale, and beautiful. Barty had to rip his eyes away from the young woman in her sixth year every time she walked into Potions or Transfiguration. There was a ray of strange sunshine in Prewitt's white smile, and her voice went right to his brain like a single shot of illegal Fire Whiskey, considering he wasn't even yet old enough to drink it, yet the Fawcett's had found a way to smuggle a bottle or two of it into the Slytherin Common Room, courtesy of a few hidden passageways that led into Hogsmeade.
Crouch let out a content sigh as the cool evening breeze of October, the week before Halloween, blew his dark bangs off of his forehead.
Their hands had accidentally brushed against each other's earlier in Potions when he'd calmly asked Prewitt to hand the vial of salamander tails, and the skin of his palm burned and tingled like eternal fire, and his heartbeats were so erratically pounding against his chest he thought it might fly out. There were damned lions in his bloody chest, and he couldn't shake it.
Crouch had needed a moment to clear his head of these infuriating thoughts that pounded against his skull like the back of a stone, and he had decided to try to take a walk to calm himself down, despite it was after curfew.
Barty came to the Forbidden Forest whenever he needed to clear his mind, for it was the one place in the entire bloody grounds of all Hogwarts that he could think without any of his friends or his teachers breathing down his neck, making him want to lash out at anything in anger and strike out at something. "Frank…"
Longbottom, that wretched Gryffindor, also had his sights set on his Alice, and that he could not allow. Barty closed his eyes and allowed the darkness of the Forbidden Forest to completely engulf him. This strange place of death and torment. A little piece of his own safe sanctuary, a bit of Heaven, right here at school. The one place where Crouch felt like he could just truly…let go. Be free.
Except that Barty was not necessarily alone in the Forbidden Forest on this night. He had not anticipated that anyone dared venture out into the depths of these dark woods, where creatures dwelled, and given how bloody cold it was.
So, he was surprised to see his Alice, the more lovely sight that awaited him instead of all of these towering trees with their entangled, gnarly limbs and warped bark. Here she was, his beauty, Merlin's masterpiece. The prettiest girl in their year at Hogwarts.
Alice's emotions weren't easily hidden on her innocent face, her pains of life evident in the creasing of her lovely dark brow and the downward curve of her luscious pink, full lips, that Crouch longed to reach up with one of his fingers and trace the outline of them, to see if they were as soft as they looked. Barty could feel his fingers twitch as he curled them into a fist as he fought back the urge to reach up and tap her on the shoulder as she passed him.
She hadn't seen him as he had taken refuge behind the bough of a particularly thick tree. Crouch tore his gaze away from the divot of Alice's lip and up towards her eyes, those brilliant eyes. They showed the essence of her soul. Crouch swallowed hard down past the lump forming in his throat as it hallowed, effectively cutting off his air supply as he looked at his fellow sixth-year student, and his friend, this beauty with the dark chocolate pixie cut that showed off her elegant, almost swanlike neck and highlighted the glistening moisture in her eyes, the sclerae pristine and untouched by red veins.
Alice was the kind of young girl at age seventeen that the other girls in their class loved to hate, except for one. He had seen her infrequent company around Lily Evans more often.
When he had accidentally touched her hand earlier during Potions, something foreign and unfamiliar stirred not only within his chest, but it completely overtook Crouch's thinking. The only thing that mattered anymore was finding an excuse to keep Alice close by. To touch her more, to kiss her.
Barty Crouch felt his entire body stiffen in anger as Alice Prewitt began to walk back towards the castle, leaving the edge of the Forbidden Forest, talking in low murmurs to herself, and something that he couldn't make out what it was cupped in the palm of her hand. A creature? Intrigued, Crouch leaned forward.
It was then that Crouch began to have wildly inappropriate thoughts of his classmate, his crush. He felt his blood begin to heat up in his veins as an insurmountable anger threatened to consume him at the thought of her dating Frank. Crouch felt his jaw lock and tighten, his dark brown eyes flashing indignantly as they stayed locked on Alice's retreating form, his gaze drifting to her backside. She really did have a petite and slightly curvaceous figure.
She was not a little girl anymore. No. At sixteen, her large almond-shaped eyes held such intelligence and serenity that Crouch felt like it was impossible for him not to be held prisoner by them. Which would explain his lapses of inability to form a cohesive sentence around Prewitt whenever they were in class.
Her cheekbones weren't especially high, and her nose was a tad too long to be perfect, but there was an undeniable symmetry to Alice Prewitt's features.
Like that of a pretty rose, just waiting to bloom, to fully become a woman. Perhaps that was what had Barty so captivated by his classmate. He didn't know.
Alice Prewitt's pale, smoothy dry skin despite the harsh winds of the October breeze that ripped through the air, was dotted with a light smattering of freckles about her nose. Her delicate eyebrows curved in swooping arcs over those bewitching eyes and her small button nose complemented her wide forehead and somewhat blunt chin. These features would not turn any heads.
Nor would they make anyone look twice, they were quite normal. No.
It was Prewitt's eyes and her smile that were the true prize, what held Barty Crouch Jr., son of Bartemius Crouch, so utterly captivated, unable to look away.
What secrets would he uncover, as he looked within them? He couldn't wait to find out. Her eyes were like the stars in the night sky, the way they drew unsuspecting men like Barty in to explore the swirling depths of emotions held in her depths. The black of Alice's pupil was surrounded by a ring of jagged silver fire swallowed by sapphire blue. At one glance, the girl's eyes merely shone, but if you dared to look closer like he had done so earlier, and just like he was doing now, shrouded in the shadow of the bush behind which he had taken refuge, Crouch could see the sadness of heartbreak, the joy of love (at that he scoffed again), the hope of a better future for herself, the pain of sorrow at losing not only her home but her family as well, and the fire of a spirit that even Crouch knew the girl would not give up.
At least…not willingly.
It had been all he could do not to ravage himself at her when he'd first laid eyes upon the fair-skinned beauty with the locks of hair that looked as though they had been kissed by chocolate. Alice Prewitt was a beautiful young girl. And after their wedding night when they graduated Hogwarts, she would be a woman.
It was rumored that the girl was still untouched by man, though he wondered if it were true, or if this was another falsehood encouraged by his father to provoke his son. Barty wouldn't put it past Father to try such a tactic. His father's lack of eye contact should have warned him over the years growing up in his father's shadow. It wasn't natural to avert your gaze from the one you claimed to love. Love.
At that thought, Barty felt his lips curl into a twisted smirk as he scoffed and rolled his eyes. A concept for women, that false emotion that Barty Crouch knew did not exist.
In his father's moments of quiet rage, Barty felt…dehumanized. Maybe it was why he was the way that he wasn't, he didn't know, nor did he care, really.
Barty's methods of torturing their prisoners and his mindless pursuits of the Dark Arts gave Bartemius Crouch Sr. the distance from Barty's heart and soul…if he even had one, to begin with. Sometimes he wondered if he did nor not, with the things that he'd done and derived pleasure from.
Things that would turn the stomach of any normal man. But no matter. He couldn't help how he was. It was far too late for a man like him to change.
Not now. Growing up, Barty had given Father everything a son could possibly give his parent, and only wished he could do more to please.
Now he had to know that the person he idolized never truly existed. That their life of the endless political Ministry of Magic meetings, wars against those who practiced in the Dark Arts, talk of marrying and producing heirs to keep the pureblood family lineage going was never what it appeared to be, that his father lived with festering anger in his heart like a wound.
Conversations were just talking to Barty, competitions to him. Nothing more, and nothing less. Bartemius saw his son suffering, his mental health in decline as a young lad and he had made sure that Barty had fallen into that pit, the only decorations in the pit his own godforsaken claw markings from his nails on the walls he could not scale.
Now Father had the gall—the audacity—to claim that his methods growing up didn't drive his son mad, that it was just 'how he was,' and there could be nothing in all of Great Britain that would cure of him of this so-called horrible affliction, this unquenchable bloodlust.
Bartemius Crouch Sr. liked to think of himself as Barty's savior, but his son knew the truth. How Father cycled from abuse to reconciliation and then back to abuse, to build him up just enough for the next stress-relieving power trip takedown that usually involved the flaying of a man in the dungeons.
But Barty had news for his father. His heart had long since been hardened, and the beating corded muscle within his chest had walls.
He had walls against Father and any other human within the kingdoms and there was no way to break down that wall. Knowledge can indeed be power if you so let it, and Barty Crouch had, in fact, let that be so.
Barty furrowed his brow into a frown at that rumor, wondering if it was in fact, true. He knew she had been approached by Frank Longbottom earlier.
That bastard. I'll kill him. I swear I'll kill him, Crouch thought and released a low growl from the back of his throat at the thought of that creature who was less than half a man taking this woman, this celestial-like being who had for reasons unknown somehow managed to snare him in a net of intrigue like one of those mystical sirens of the sea he had heard as a child growing up in the tales of old, and this had, unfortunately, Alice's ears perked up at the nose and she froze at the sound, though from which direction it had come, she could not quite tell. He would just have to make it quite plain and perfectly clear to any man with a pair of wandering eyes that Alice was no longer available. That she was his.
And anyone who would dare try to take Alice away would find themselves at the mercy of the end of his wand and in the Hospital Wing before they could blink.
"Get a hold of yourself," he whisper-hissed through clenched teeth as he watched the Prewitt girl resume her a rather leisurely pace through the courtyard, seemingly making to head back towards the Gryffindor Common Room tower.
His mind felt as if a stone were coursing through his veins instead of blood. Barty glanced downwards once the Prewitt girl had vanished from his line of sight completely. He was half of a mind to follow the girl, to corner her in some decrepit hallway of the castle the smelled of dank mold and old parchments, and he caught sight of his reflection in a puddle of water from the rain earlier and blanched, looking caught off guard at the man he saw staring back at him.
The shadow of the caged monster within his eyes. He felt his stomach lurch and he thought he might vomit. There was the smallest fraction of Barty's mind that knew what he was and hated it. Disgust. Yes, that's what he felt for himself. Disgust. Total disgust with himself, at who he really was, what he represented. Barty felt his shoulders slump and his dark eyes cast downward in a mournful gaze, his handsome face held a forlorn, worn expression now.
His mouth was set in a semi-pout as he remained alone in the courtyard of Hogwarts, fighting against his urge to follow Alice. It would be easy enough to claim her for himself. A few sweet words whispered into the ear of his little lady wife—well, soon to be, that is, and he would slip her out of her uniform and let it fall to a crumpled heap on the floor and he would take her for himself and she would be his, and that would be that. Frank Longbottom would no longer interfere.
But…and this was the part he was struggling to accept the most, that he had seen something in the Prewitt girl's eyes earlier in Potions that could only be described as hatred. A look that he had not seen in a young woman before.
At least, not directed towards him. Most of the girls in their class were intimidated by Crouch, and it showed in their eyes, their movements, how they averted their gazes whenever they were forced to be in the same room as Barty.
But not this little dove, his conscience offered unhelpfully. There had been that look in the courtyard earlier this afternoon when she arrived.
Alice had been rumored to be quite the beautiful girl but seeing her up close and personal like this only reinforced that truth in Barty's mind.
The girl was of fair complexion, short wisps of her dark chocolate hair that always seem to gleam when they captured the light just right like her hair had been set ablaze.
She had the kindest pair of eyes, trimmed by long gorgeous lashes. Lovely eyes, innocent and pure, yet somehow gentle, that always held a tiny warmth within them, of which Barty knew he wanted it for himself. If it could be made possible to bottle that warmth and hoard it within a glass vial that he could keep in his pocket, then he would do it. Florid cheeks and flawlessly sculpted pink, luscious lips, as if crafted by angels and the gods themselves.
Standing this close to her as he had been only moments ago, he could see Alice's lips clearly, glistening attractively with a light salve coating that added a further sheen to her already healthy lips. Barty imagined biting her mouth until he drew blood and then sucking it from the wound.
All these features sat together on a delicate almost angelic face.
And Alice Prewitt would be all his. Oh, such sweet, sweet bliss…