Fair warning, readers, this is going to be a difficult chapter to get through, but I promise, this story DOES have a HEA (Happy Ending)
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CHAPTER 13
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ALICE woke up to a thud and what sounded to her like a yelp. Her eyelids fluttered open with a soft groan. She figured she wouldn't sleep at all tonight if she could help it. She would never admit it to anyone except maybe Remus and Lily and Frank, but caring for their five-week-old son, Neville, was exhausting.
She wondered if she'd sleep well at all anymore. Alice sat up in bed and tiredly rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, stifling a yawn with her palm. A quick glance to the left confirmed that Frank was not in his side of the bed. She strained her ears for more sounds.
Maybe he'd gotten up to check on the baby? Had he…? She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and padded barefoot out of their bedroom and down the hallway towards Neville's nursery.
"Frank? Is it Neville?" she called sleepily. "What's wrong?!" She was answered with nothing but silence and Alice, exhausted, gave her head a curt shake to try to rid her mind from the haze of her slumber. She was about to turn and go back into their bedroom to dress and venture downstairs to see where Frank had gotten off to with Neville when she heard the sound of what sounded like a body hitting the floor.
Oh…
Alice knew that sound. Sirius liked to drink himself under the table and more than once Alice and Remus had both witnessed the bloke passed the hell out on the floor, with the two of them left to carry him up to his bedroom in Number 12, Grimmauld Place. Maybe Black had stopped by for whatever reason? It certainly wasn't out of the realm out of possibility.
"Damn," she swore. Alice blindly groped her way down the stairs, reaching for the light switch, forcing herself to use the wall as a brace to see in the dark, having forgotten to grab her wand, leaving it on top of their nightstand upstairs.
The young brunette witch let out a startled yelp as she felt something sharp press against her hip and Alice, as a part of her flight-or-fight reaction, threw herself to the side, though a laugh bubbled in her throat the moment she realized it was only the fake plants Remus had bought the pair of them when Neville accidentally broke her succulent.
Though Alice Longbottom froze the moment she felt the touch of flesh against her barefoot and she knelt to the ground in a hesitant way. She immediately recognized the object she had placed her hand on as the still and unresponsive form of Frank. Her blood turned to ice in her veins as her heart plummeted to the pit of her churning stomach.
"Frank?" Alice whispered hoarsely, an ache of fear bubbling its way through her chest, settling on her tongue as bitter bile. No response from her husband and father of their child. "Frank? Frank!?" She turned Frank over and shook her husband's body but got no response, though he was still breathing.
Alice tried and failed to contain her mounting panic welling deep within her chest, spiraling as a fiery heat throughout her body. She rose and backed away slowly, turning to bolt up the stairs, take Neville, and Disapparate to the only place she felt safe. Lupin's. He had said multiple times to her and Frank that his door was always welcome to them.
Before she could make a beeline for the stairs that would take her to Neville's nursery, however, her shoulder collided against something hard and firm and warm, and Alice staggered backward.
A scream left her lips as she looked up at their intruder, at Frank's attacker. The moment her bright blue eyes landed on the shrouded figure standing in the middle of her and Frank's living room, at first, Alice was having trouble processing the information.
Her mouth went completely dry and she licked her lips to moisten them, though no moisture came. Only dizziness. She felt as if her heart seized in terror and her entire body had gone limp.
"Barty?" she whispered hoarsely, hardly daring to believe her eyes. When he took a step forward, Alice stumbled backward and collided against the coffee table they had in the living room, stubbing her toe. The back of her knees hit the glass-covered woods, and Alice fell back onto the table, shattering the glass everywhere.
Crouch approached her slowly and calmly, his wand in hand.
"Hello, Al," he greeted her pleasantly as if she were an old long-lost friend who hadn't just tortured her husband. "Long time. You're looking as beautiful as ever, darling. You haven't aged a day..."
Alice felt the beginnings of hot tears sting and blur the edges of her vision as he came closer towards her where she lay, and Alice waited, helpless. Frank was unconscious and unresponsive, and she could faintly hear the cries of the baby upstairs stirring in his crib. She knew her chances of escaping this was little to none now.
He would catch her before she could get two feet, and Neville was up in his crib in the nursery a whole floor above him. Crouch heard the baby's wails and cocked his head to the side, much like a dog would do whenever it found something curious. He let out a sigh and clucked his tongue in disappointment.
"Such a waste…" Barty Crouch Jr. spoke with a coldness that Alice had never heard in the former Slytherin before. "I don't want to just kill you, Alice, no. That's not enough for what you took from me," he growled, whisper hissing his words through gritted teeth as he raised his wand and pointed it squarely at Alice's breast, his wand hand shaking so badly that she thought it a wonder he could still hold it upright and steady. "I want to put you in a pit and add the shovels of dirt until your mouth is full of dirt. It's no less than what you deserve, Prewitt," he growled, using Alice's surname, bluntly ignoring the fact that she had married and had taken Frank's last name when she married Frank. "I want to know the second you don't exist to me anymore so that I can savor it, sweetheart. I don't care if you're sorry anymore. I don't want to hear it anymore, Al."
"Barty, please, just…just calm down," Alice pleaded, her skittish gaze flitting from Barty's towering figure looming over and towards Frank, who lay staring vacantly at the ceiling above them.
Still no response. She didn't know what Crouch had done to Frank, but whatever had happened, it was enough to cause him to go into a comatose, unresponsive state. Worse than death, she knew. "Frank?" she whispered pleadingly through red-rimmed eyes. Silence. She swallowed down hard and looked at Barty.
"I—I'm sorry, Barty," Alice whispered, blinking back tears.
"I don't care," Crouch hissed, kneeling into a crouch, and pointing the tip of his wand at her chest, something unreadable flickering through the man's dark brown eyes, that almost looked like pity. "You should have told me all that crap back when it could have made a difference. I loved you, Al. You took what was beautiful in me and made it into what it is today. I hope you're proud of yourself, it's your handiwork, after all, darling."
Barty grinned, flashing his set of brilliantly white teeth amongst the growing stubble along his jawline, his dark eyes wide and unblinking as he nudged aside Frank Longbottom's unresponsive body with the edge of his boot before spitting at his rival's face. Frank groaned.
He ran a bone-white hand through his luscious tuft of dark brown hair, his thin lips turning upwards into a vicious smirk, watching her eyes for the fear he had so longed to see within her, reunited again after all these years apart, feeling a sickening sense of joy rise within him, now that he'd taken care of Frank forever.
Alice let out a low, muffled whimper as Barty approached in two quick strides, closing off what little gap of space remained between them. She knew the man could snap her like a twig even without his wand if he were of a mind to, but something told the Auror he would rather use his wand. Less messy that way, yes.
His right arm rose to her eye level, and Alice put her hands up, instinctively shielding her face. She supposed some would think it ironic that she was about to be murdered alongside her husband by Barty Crouch Jr., a man who she could have, were circumstances different for him and he wasn't the way that he was, might have been a friend to her, but instead, it felt like a horrible betrayal.
Alice felt ridiculous to feel as though she were being betrayed by Crouch, he owed her nothing, but she had tried too hard in the past to reach the man, to get him to change by forgiving what he had done to her that fateful night in the third-floor corridor. She had tried so hard to understand what made Crouch the way that he was, and now he was going to kill her because she didn't love him.
"Barty, don't'!" she cried when he suddenly jerked his hand down and froze.
Alice squeezed her eyes tightly shut and waited for the inevitable forceful blow of what would surely be the defining spell, perhaps one of the Unforgiveable Curses, that would kill her.
But it didn't come.
Alice cautiously opened one eyelid and looked up at the man who could have been a friend to her, but it was too late for that. The Death Eater stared at her blankly, but Alice remained fixated on the man's glistening dark brown eyes, shimmering with unshed moisture that at first, she believed them to be his tears.
"Barty?" she asked more softly, and to her utter amazement, his wand lowered slightly in his grip, just a fraction of an inch but it was more than enough. Alice blinked owlishly, cautiously up at the intruder inside of her home, the murderer of her husband. She had no idea what to do.
Without her wand, she was pretty much at a disadvantage here, and there was her sweet Neville to think of. Alice drew in a breath that was more of a hiss and held it the moment Barty slowly brought his left hand and hovered the pads of his fingertips over her cheekbone, tracing it almost tenderly, much like a lover would.
Like Frank did. Used to, that is. Just that thought was enough to make her flood of tears cascade down her cheeks, no matter how hard she tried to stop it.
His touch was electrical, which caused goosebumps to prickle all over her skin. As Alice cautiously watched Crouch, she couldn't help but feel the swell of hope that ignited as a small ember flame that flickered in the confines of her chest, spreading to her toes. He wasn't going to kill her! Maybe there was hope for Barty just yet.
Maybe, just maybe, there was a single shred of mercy left, and he had formed some type of attachment to her. She would live!
At that moment, Alice firmly believed that everything she had done thus far in her life, granted it was only twenty-seven years, was worth it. She had done the impossible. She had…helped Barty.
But only if she could know the true extent of his feelings. Though her tiny flicker of hope dissipated in her chest as her surge of triumph quickly began to fade as Alice watched, her face draining of colors, as Bartemius Crouch Jr. leveled his wand to her chest once more, but before she could feel the inevitable flood of terror that would soon flood through her, he opened his mouth.
"Crucio!"
Pain seared through her entire body the moment the incantation left Crouch's thin, wormy lips, better than a branding iron, her mind conceding to the torment, unable to bring a thought, much less a word, a plea for Crouch to stop it, to completion.
Without meaning to, Alice's body curled into something fetal, something primeval, and all the while the pain radiated and burned. The pain is increasing in waves, small lulls giving false hope of an end. Each peak robbed Alice's ability to speak, sending her crashing to the bare boards.
It's as though her blood has become acid, the intent of destroying her from the inside out. All she can do is writhe, the occasional whimper escaping to echo off the walls. Alice's mind screamed out as the pain drove through the young witch's back. Every thought she just had become confused as the burning pain licked up her back like a scorching fire.
The only thoughts she had were 'like a knife through butter.' Alice wept at her own suffering. She swore that she could hear people around her and Frank screaming and shouting, jets of red and blue and green light reverberating off her living room walls. Mentally anger swiped through at this chaos and pain, pain for those around her that she wanted to protect them increasing her own agony in defense of others.
But Alice couldn't. She rolled up in a ball of self-loathing and pain, wishing the world to end rather than this sea of endless currents some strong some weak but the waves always crashed over her, permanently.
Through the misty white veil surrounding her eyes, Alice knew she was going to die. She could feel her heart beating against her rib cage, slowing every second as the pain continued to burn.
She tried to move her chest, to suck in the air, but it really hurt. Her mind gave one final sigh. Then she felt nothing at all, no pain. Nothing at all. Just darkness.
Alice felt the darkness threaten to swallow her whole, deeper into this bleak, endless chasm of night. She had the sense that the vast space of her living room would serve as her and Frank's grave.
But what had she done to Crouch? The image of Barty Crouch Jr. loomed over Alice, smiling at her. There had been nothing, not since she had forgiven him for what she had done, or so she had thought. But she'd had no part in his life. So, what had she done besides reject him to remain so rueful in Crouch's eyes? Was it…?
The darkness pressed further on her subconscious as she felt a sudden sense of coldness envelope her completely, the pain no longer lingering. Her heart no longer thrummed wildly in its cage. Alice desperately glanced towards her husband. Not moving. But was he dead? Gods, if he was, then she would join him soon…
Merlin was good to her, yes. Alice opened her eyes, struggling to catch any glimpse of Frank, though she did not see the face of her husband staring back at her, but of a familiar-looking man with a brilliant tuft of short light brown hair and a scarred, pale visage.
But who was he? She recognized him but didn't know his name. All Alice had left of this man cradling her form in his strong arms was the fading image of him in her hazy, clouded mind. Alice could still see him, sitting in his chair, as always, his nose buried in a book, his light brown hair was messy, complexion always quite peaky.
But no matter how hard, Alice could never fully see her face. Like a ship straining to see the light in a storm that would serve as her beacon, her light that would show her the way home, Alice desperately searched for a picture of the man's face in her mind.
None comes. All she could remember is the brightness of the man's white smile, the warmth he radiated, his kind, gentle smile.
But the details of his face were gone, just like he was becoming. And before blackness completely blinded her and her last conscious thought left her for the last time, Alice saw the only face she longed to see—light brown eyes and light brown hair, and it was then that she remembered this man holding her, his name. Remus. Her Remus.
It was enough that she could focus on his face, to ease the pain. Just him. She knew who he was.
Her best friend.
I really hate Crouch for what he did to Neville's parents! Don't think I'll ever quite forgive him for it. The next chapters since to Remus's POV, because the man was her best friend and, well, given Alice and Frank's mental state of mind, they aren't really in a good condition to do future chapters...