Cold. It was so cold. An empty, bleak light filtered in through the tiny window. She was too short to see out of it, but it wouldn't have mattered even if she could. She was too weak to stand. She thought she heard a bird. Or maybe it was just the wind.

Elsie Crouch was losing her sanity—she could feel it. More and more often she would regain consciousness to find that hours had passed without her realizing it. She would slip in and out of flashbacks, and it had become increasingly difficult to determine what was real and what was only in her mind. She wouldn't have had any sense of time at all if it weren't for the Polyjuice potion. She kept the vials under her grimy mattress, taking the tiniest sip every few minutes. The dementors wouldn't have been able to tell the difference, of course, but there was a man across the hall that could see into her cell, and all this would be for nothing if anyone found out what she and Barty had done.

Azkaban was more horrifying than she could have ever imagined. But, in a way, this realization was comforting—she would gladly withstand this torment if it meant her son didn't have to. Sitting at home with the knowledge that he was all alone in this wicked place had been unbearable—every morning remembering that he was suffering here; waiting out his life sentence in this godforsaken prison.

Yes, as terrible as this place was, she could endure it with the understanding that she was saving her sweet boy.

She tried to think of her sweet boy—happy thoughts, not thoughts of him imprisoned where she was now sitting. It was too cold. Her eyelashes, wet with tears and the endless damp, were frozen together, forming a painful, spiky mass that she had to pull apart every morning. The combination of freezing sea spray and the hair-raising, unholy guards created a bitter chill so unnatural it was unlike anything she had ever experienced. She had long since given up on trying to perform any magic—it seemed the dementors had drained every drop of magical skill from her, even her ability to produce a wandless fire, something she had once been so talented at.

She missed her fireplace. It was beautiful—ornate, carved marble and obsidian. She loved to sit in front of it, in her red chenille armchair and knit. When he wasn't working late at the Ministry, Bartemius would join her in the evenings. They'd sit, side by side on the sofa: he with a brandy and The Daily Prophet, and she with her Witch Weekly magazine. He teased her for reading such "drivel," but he knew the answer to every crossword clue, including the ones about vanity potions and celebrity gossip.

Poor Barty couldn't sit still for ten minutes without falling asleep (no doubt due to the fact that he never got more than five hours on any given night), and Elsie would often wake up, slumped over on his shoulder, to find that it was past midnight. This almost certainly guaranteed that she would have a terrible crick in her neck come morning, but she loved those accidental, unintentional moments with him. Loved seeing his ordinarily worry-lined face so peaceful, reading glasses slipping off the end of his nose.

She would gently shake him awake and they would sit together in silence, listening to the crickets chirping softly outside. After a few minutes, he would take her hand and they would stumble sleepily upstairs, leaving behind the familiar sound of the quietly crackling fire.

A low moan echoed through the dank, ghostly halls. She wasn't sure if it came from her. She tried to recall the memory of her warm fireplace, but it was so cold.

One would think she would be used to the cold—she was always cold. Bartemius was the warm one. Like a werewolf, she used to tell him. He would frown at the comparison and give her a stern look when she put her ice-cold feet on him, but then he would grin and wrap his arms around her. He secretly liked it. It made him feel useful. She made him feel useful.

"Do not put those feet on me," he would tell her, right before she got into bed and put those feet on him, curling into his arms and laying her head on his chest. He would roll his eyes and extinguish the lamp before pulling her close and settling into the comfortable mattress.

A beetle crawled out of the filthy mattress, its pincers clicking. She squished it, cringing at the sickening crunch it made, and used her bare foot to nudge it into the pile of dirt and bugs in the corner. Every few days, when the pile got too big, she would sweep it underneath the cell door, a little at a time. She would dip her hands into the shallow puddle that collected near the window, in an attempt to wash them. The rancid water left them slimy and sour-smelling, but having a routine—keeping order—was important.

Order was important to Bartemius. He was a firm believer that everything had its place and should stay in that place, an ideal he tried very hard to impose upon their son. Barty Jr. had been a tornado from the moment he could walk. Winky, their house elf, would laugh and shake her head at the sight of his room in disarray, saying, "Young master Barty, you is making less of a mess if you is trying to destroy the house!"

In fact, Barty Jr. was the very reason the Crouch's had a house elf in the first place. Bartemius was against having an elf on principle, although his family had owned them for generations. When his grandmother died, he was meant to inherit her elf, Winky, but he maintained that their family did not need an elf, and they were perfectly capable of keeping their own home in order. He finally gave in after he came home from work one afternoon to find Barty Jr. (who had just turned three) in the bathtub—so dirty that the water was completely brown—and Elsie, in the living room trying to scrub the mud out of their brand-new Bicorn hide sofa. Winky had come to live with them the very next day, and had been a huge help, right from the start. She had their sofa looking spotless in minutes, and very sweetly helped Elsie wash out the dirt that was still stubbornly clinging to her hair—Barty's magic was already starting to manifest itself, and he had managed to enchant the mud with some kind of sticking charm. It was no trouble for Winky, though. She had simply run her long, spindly fingers through Elsie's blonde curls and the mud had melted away.

An icy gust of wind blew her hair into her face, twisting and matting it further. She tried to brush through the tangles with her fingers but it broke in her hands. It was brittle; straw-like, just like her son's. Perhaps, somehow, her sacrifice would make him realize how much she and Bartemius loved him. Perhaps it wasn't too late for him to renounce He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named; for him to return to the sweet boy he once was.

Barty had been sweet when he was little, and so bright. He'd adored his father. He used to tell everyone that when he grew up he was going to be the Minister for Magic, "just like father!" Elsie would gently remind him that Bartemius was not the Minister and he would reply, "Yeah, not yet."

Bartemius loved their son very much, though he didn't tell him as often as Elsie thought he should have. When Barty came home with 12 O.W.L.s, her husband positively swelled with pride, clapping him on the back and buying him a new racing broom. He told anyone who would listen how clever their son was; what a promising career he had ahead of him. He still expected him to go into the Ministry, though Barty long abandoned his desire to follow in his father's footsteps.

She remembered Christmas mornings from when he was a boy. He loved bouncing into her and Barty's bed before the sun had risen, and pulling them downstairs to open gifts. She'd kept a photo of him in her bedside table from the Christmas before he turned nine. He was holding a toy wand and grinning in his red and white pajamas, sandy brown hair sticking up in all directions. He'd been trying to turn his chocolate frog into a galleon, and Bartemius had laughed until his face turned red. She had another picture from that day, tucked into one of their family albums, of the two of them on the couch. Barty sat in his father's lap, pretending very earnestly to read The Prophet with him, and Bartemius, knowing fully well that their son couldn't read yet, was reading bits and pieces of the articles out loud for Barty to hear. ("Ah, a new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts," "Hmm, tighter restrictions on dragon breeding, yes, I was wondering when they'd implement that.")

But, as the years went by, they grew apart. When he was little, Barty loved his father, always asking him to play games with him or tell him stories. By his first and second years at Hogwarts, he had stopped asking when he would be home or if they could go to Diagon Alley for the weekend. His disappointment was evident, though, and Elsie was constantly trying to run interference between them: "Can't you take the weekend off?," "He's very busy with work, sweetheart," "You need to spend more time with your son," "He works very hard to provide for us," "Please try to come home early for Barty's birthday," "Don't talk about your father that way, he's doing the best he can."

Their son grew bitter and angry with Bartemius. By the time he was 16, he didn't even attempt to disguise his apathy towards his father. At Elsie's urging, Bartemius made a concerted effort to spend time with Barty Jr. over summers and holidays, even taking a few weekends and evenings off. He offered to take him to the Quidditch World Cup ("Can't, I'm going with my friends.") and Diagon Alley ("Why, so you can buy me an ice cream and a Puddlemere United poster? I'm not ten anymore, father."), but their relationship, much to Elsie's disappointment, seemed to be getting worse.

Bartemius was troubled by their son's behavior. He was mouthier than usual—even aggressive— and his friends from Hogwarts were questionable at best. Elsie was sure it was just a phase; he would bring his grades up and meet a nice girl—settle down and start a family and career. Privately, she thought Barty's behavior most likely had more to do with the fact that he had found a girl. He hadn't mentioned anything to her, but Elsie well remembered a time when she suddenly became very secretive and it'd had everything to do with a very handsome Slytherin Head Boy named Bartemius Crouch.

She wasn't as certain, though, after Bartemius found a book on dark magic in their son's room. He said it was for school—a Defense Against the Dark Arts essay—but he had been so angry when his father confronted him about it. His face had turned a deep red and he'd yelled Bartemius to stay out of his room; that he was never home anyway, so why did he care?

She was on her stomach, lying on the stone floor. It helped with the vertigo and stomach pain and, truthfully, she didn't have the energy to move. She traced her name in the mud: "Elizabeth Niamh Crouch."

They had named Barty Jr. for his father, but the similarities between them ended there. Barty had always been everything his father was not. Bartemius valued order and law, whereas their son was rebellious, careless. Bartemius was staunch and iron in his resolve against the Dark Arts, while their son was drawn to them.

Bartemius hated the Death Eaters.

And their son became one.

"I've still got my innocence!" Roared the man across the hall, his voice gravelly and rough. "You can take everything else away, but not that! I want my trial you bastards! WHEN'S MY TRIAL, CROUCH?"

After her son's trial, Elsie couldn't function. She couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, cried for days on end. She became withdrawn and isolated. Friends she used to meet for tea became distant memories—she rarely left the house anymore. Her health deteriorated quickly. She had always been naturally small, but she became sickly looking—bony and emaciated. When she did sleep, she had nightmares about their son—visions of him torturing that poor couple, or of him locked up with those terrifying people, screaming for her to help him. More often than not, she woke up screaming herself.

After they took her son away, Elsie spent her days in a dreamlike state, alternated with bursts of panic and depression. She sometimes brewed Draught of Peace, on particularly difficult days. It didn't put her to sleep, but it left her immobile on the sofa; disoriented and groggy, in that hazy place between awake and asleep. It was better than the nightmares, but not much. Visions of Barty's trial would play over and over again in her mind, as though living through it once hadn't been traumatic enough.

Her sweet boy chained to a chair in the middle of the court, crying for her and screaming at his father, begging him not to send him to Azkaban.

Seeing him like that, pale and helpless and in between those criminals…it broke her heart.

Then his sentence. Life in Azkaban.

For a split second she couldn't comprehend what it meant, until she had looked over at her husband and seen the look of nausea on his face. With a sickening jolt, she understood with more horror than she had ever felt that her baby was gone forever. It had been the blackest moment of her life and she thought she would die from the pain until finally, blessedly, she had fainted.

Barty had lost both of them that day—his son and his wife—as well as any ambition he had of ever becoming Minister. Everything he had believed in and worked so hard for and devoted his entire life—professional and personal—to, had been destroyed by their son.

He grieved in his own way, very differently from her. If he had been dedicated to the Ministry before their son's trial, he was obsessive about it now. He apparated out before the sun rose and often wasn't home until two in the morning. Gone were their evenings on the couch with his arm around her waist. When he was home, he could barely look at her. She knew he believed that she blamed him for their son. Maybe she did. But she missed him all the same. Missed his smell of cigars and brandy; missed the way he kissed her on the cheek when he got home from work. Missed a time when he didn't look at her like she was fragile and heartsick. It was as if looking at her was painful to him. He knew her heart was broken and that he had been a part of that. The only time he spoke to her as he had before all this was when he thought she couldn't hear him. She almost never slept anymore, but she had taken to pretending; shutting her eyes quickly when she heard the front door open and waiting for him to come to bed, just to hear his voice.

Sometimes she would arrange herself on the couch so he would see her when he first came in. On these nights, she would hear the sound of his briefcase plunking onto the floor; his deep, weary sigh. She would feel the couch cushion give as he sat down beside her; his gentle fingers brushing the wispy hair out of her eyes; his warm lips pressed to her cold forehead. Other times, she would stay in the bed, where she had often lain all day. It was on these nights that he would lay beside her, running the back of his hand over her cheek with a heartbreaking sweetness. He would whisper to her all the things he couldn't say when he thought her to be awake. He would tell her how sorry he was, how much he loved her, that he missed their son so much he felt like he might die.

One night she opened her eyes and looked up at him. Her heart broke when she saw the tears in his eyes—tears for her and their son and their life that had been destroyed.

"Barty…"

She reached for him, but he was already gone, lacing his shoes up and gathering his briefcase, his face an emotionless mask. She didn't see him again for two days, but when he came home on Saturday night, he climbed into bed and kissed her softly on the side of her mouth. Neither of them acknowledged that she was awake, though she knew that he was well aware. They never spoke of it again and she loved him both for it and despite it. It was just his way.

She reached for her husband but she was suddenly in her cell, confused, touching only the slick metal bars. Her cozy bed and warm fire were gone. The blueish light made it seem even lonelier. The man across the hall looked at her with pity.

Heartbroken isn't a strong enough word to describe what Elsie felt when she learned about her son's crimes. At first, she hadn't believed it. Her sweet Barty—the same boy who had spent all of his birthday money to buy her a pair of dress robes in her favorite color? There must have been a mistake, she'd thought. He couldn't have. But it wasn't a mistake. Bartemius had told her what he'd done to those poor Aurors—and they had a son, too. A little boy who would now be parentless because of her son.

Then she'd been angry—so much so that she felt as though she would burst into flame. Angry at her son, for committing these inconceivable crimes. Angry at Bartemius for sending him to that awful place. And, more than anything, angry at herself. How could she have missed this? She was his mother.

The night before his trial she had fallen completely to pieces. She'd collapsed on the floor, sobbing, unable to move or breathe. Bartemius held her as she cried and all she could say, over and over, was "How could we let this happen?" She felt the terrible weight of responsibility for what Barty Jr. had done.

Then, quite suddenly, all the anger was gone and she could only feel sadness. The deepest, most painful sadness she had ever experienced.

When the Healers at St. Mungo's told her that she had two months to live, she knew what they had to do. It wasn't easy convincing Barty, but he came around eventually. He dismissed it out of hand at first. Told her absolutely not, it was out of the question, that even if he wanted to break the law it would be impossible. Then, one night, a week later, he had come home bearing the ingredients to brew Polyjuice Potion and a quiet plan. Elsie knew what it had taken for Bartemius to agree to this. He was abandoning every ideal he had dutifully upheld for more than twenty years. The sadness in his eyes on their last night together had devastated her, and she knew that he was doing this out of love for her—fulfilling her one last request. A going away gift. She had burst into tears—tears of relief, but also of mourning. She was saying goodbye to the only man she had ever loved, and it broke her heart.

Bartemius had begged her to reconsider; promised that he would take a leave of absence, spend every moment with her. It was so sweet, and she loved him for it, but she couldn't leave him knowing he would have no one but Winky to look after him. She would be dead in a matter of weeks, and their son would die in Azkaban, never having the chance to reconcile with his father. And her sweet Bartemius would be all alone.

No, she couldn't bear it. She wouldn't. There may not have been any hope for her, but there was for her boys. Her boys. They had loved each other so much once, and she was willing to sacrifice herself for the chance that they could love each other again.

The rattling cough hurt her chest. Her throat was raw and torn.

In the midst of this agony, Elsie Crouch smiled. She was saving both of her sweet boys.