Lost in the Prescription

Summary: Barty Crouch Jr. wasn't Kissed. His soul wasn't sucked out. Instead, what's left of it was kept safely hidden from Voldemort ... at Order Headquarters? No slash.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. If I did, I wouldn't be spending my time writing imaginary scenarios. Instead, I'd have them published!

A/N: Gah, sorry for such a long wait but between Deathly Hallows coming out and me not liking this chapter one iota, it started to take longer than I expected. Anyway, here it is, finally. Do enjoy. Massive thanks to my betas, Morwen Eruviel and Elear Lindar.

:: Chapter One - He Knew ::

It was unexpected. Their treatment of him. Such fury. One that almost matched the Dark Lord's if they had had a mind to take it further, to act on it. Barty grinned to himself. That was one thing he could guarantee; their cowardice. No matter that he was a murderer, oh no. They still wouldn't follow their impulses. They wouldn't kill him.

They weren't Death Eaters. And that was their weakness.

"Grab his legs!"

"Gerroff!"

"Careful!"

One brief but violent struggle later, Remus, with Tonks' help, managed to get Barty inside one of the unused bedrooms of Grimmauld Place, one that was more out of the way than the others. They tossed him inside, his hands still tied together as a precaution, before shutting the door on a momentarily winded Crouch and laying exhaustedly against it.

"Colloportus," Remus panted, pointing his wand at the door, which responded with a graceless

squelching noise, sealing itself shut. "He should be all right in there for now." As though to purposely contradict him, loud bangs of furniture being kicked around and destroyed could be heard on the other side of the door, accompanied by colourful bouts of swearing. "Maybe we should ..."

"Leave him to it, yeah, Remus?" suggested Tonks tiredly, lifting a hand to tidy her brightly coloured hair. "He's getting more than he deserves as it is. C'mon, let's get ourselves a cuppa." She braced herself against the door as she stood, fully aware of each bruise and pulled muscle, but otherwise unhurt.

Offering a hand to Remus, she helped to lift him off the dirty floor of the hallway and started down the stairs. "Milk and two sugars, please." He could hear the grin in her voice.

Remus glanced back worriedly at the door as he followed, still unconvinced, a niggling sense of guilt nipping at his conscience. He sighed quietly and resigned himself to ignoring it, after all the man was a killer. He didn't deserve his concern.

"Remus."

"Yes, I'm coming."

Barty was fuming. No, more than fuming. He was livid. He gave the dresser one last kick for good measure, allowing the satisfaction of the pain it caused to burn from his toe and up his leg, soothing his seething temper. Instead, he collapsed onto the dilapidated bed, which squealed in surprise, and focused his anger on his wrists and the rope with which they'd tied him.

A stray, that was how they treated him. Like some wretched waif they'd picked up on the street, an animal that needed to be trained. "Bad Barty, don't climb on the furniture! Sit, there's a good boy!" He wouldn't obey, oh no. He'd bark and claw and bite until they snapped...

... There was an idea.

Barty glanced down at the ropes binding his wrists, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth thoughtfully. Hmmm ... the knot was tight but maybe he could ...

He started pulling at it with his teeth, jerking his arms to try and loosen the knot. He tipped backwards to lie on the bed for better leverage, placing a foot awkwardly between his wrists and pushing on it. Nothing happened. The blasted thing wouldn't shift! He growled in frustration and after a full minute of battling with the rope, collapsed onto the bed to stare moodilyat the ceiling.

That was how he was expected to live then? Just tossed aside whenever they'd had enough of him? Chained to the wall, as McGonagall had so adequately put it. He wondered if they'd even remember he was there. That, one day, they'd ask themselves 'whatever happened to that Death Eater the Order imprisoned?'. They'd come back to the house, wherever it was, and go through each room in search of him, until finally they'd come across this one. They'd open the door, and inside would be the remains of his corpse, bleached bone by then, the hands still bound, the wrists mangled and twisted with each attempt to break them.

He'd be damned if he was going to let that happen.

Without the use of his hands his resources were limited, but that was their first mistake. They hadn't bound his legs. He kicked himself into a standing position, using the momentum to get to his feet. He surveyed the room in detail, ignoring the broken bits of furniture that scattered the floor.

... The window. Had they forgotten about it? Surely they hadn't? He glanced to the door, his tongue flickering absently as he began to form a plan in his mind. It didn't sound like anyone would be checking on him anytime soon. Quietly, so as not to alert anyone downstairs of his movements, he went to the window and, with one more glance to the door, opened it.

It lifted an inch, no further. Just to taunt him, he was sure. He tried again, pushing all of his weight against it to try and lift it upwards. It groaned and protested while Barty's arms shook due to the only angle his bound wrists would allow, the unused muscles straining. That's when he saw himself in the window, reflected against the orange seeping into the room from the Muggle lighting outside.

He looked ... ragged. It wasn't him. The stranger in the window was thin, almost skeletal. Bright, feral eyes were sunken, the heavy blackness surrounding them like a marsh of darkness, sucking them under. His cheeks were hollow, the bones beneath jutting out viciously. This man was nothing but sharp angles and fragility. He wasn't the Barty Crouch he remembered. His reflection scowled at him, scorning him like a misbehaved eight year old. It was his father.

"Stop it!"

He threw an elbow at the ghostly twin's chest, shattering the glass into glittering, pointed shards that clattered angrily against the floor. As if through a heated haze, he felt something warm and wet soak the elbow of his robes. The stinging pain in his arm brought him back to lucidity as a friend might drag a man from the edge of a cliff. But there were more pressing matters at hand.

They were coming.

Order members had heard the racket of breaking glass and were coming to investigate. Barty glanced from the door to what remained of the window, the sound of many pairs of feet lumbering up the stairs suddenly louder to his ears. With one more hurried look over his shoulder, tongue flickering anxiously, he reached a hand over the ledge and prepared to lift himself out, intending to use the drainpipe to the left of the house to climb his way down.

He didn't get that far.

His shoulder connected heavily with something invisible. It pulsed a near-white blue at his touch, its bite freezing him in place. The great frosted dome that surrounded the house illuminated the street below for a second like a spark of lightening, before electricity galloped through and into Barty, sending him crashing backwards. It literally boiled his body, searing him from the inside out, thawing the blood that had frozen in his veins and making it bubble angrily. He was too consumed by it and the rotten smell of cooked human flesh - his flesh - to scream but as his head hit the floor with a sickening thud, it didn't matter anyway.

There was only darkness.

The sharp chill of the Dementor's clawing fingers dug deeply beneath his scarred flesh, wrapping themselves around his bones and allowing their despondency to seep into the sinewy, grieving wounds.

He was in Azkaban.

He sat in the farthest corner of the cell. It wasn't his; not the one he'd occupied when he'd first been sent there. There were no bloody messages of madness encrusted on the walls or the heavy bruises of a struggle on the door. Nor was the occupant rocking desperately in the centre of the room, muttering to himself of salvation and forgiveness. Not yet. Instead, Barty stared pensively at the unfamiliarly healthy door and uninjured walls in dreaded anticipation.

He didn't blink. He didn't move. He knew. He could predict what would happen next, as it had what felt like the millionth time. The familiarly unfamiliar door would unlock; it would scream in agony as it was wrenched open on unaccustomed hinges. In would stalk a familiarly unfamiliar figure wearing the traditional robes of a Death Eater, and with him would be the familiarly unfamiliar Dementor. There would be a pause while what little warmth the room had was greedily sucked out before, once again, the Dementor would steal his soul.

Helpless to stop it, Barty could only do what he'd done the last time it had happened, and the time before that, and the time before that. He prayed.

"Discover to me, O' Lord, the nothingness of this world, the greatness of heaven, the brevity of time and the length of eternity." And as before, his pleading words inscribed themselves on the weeping walls, wet with dew and cold and now the trickling blood of the inmates that welled from the cracks. "Grant that I may prepare for death, that I may fear Thy judgments, that I may escape Hell, and in the end, obtain Heaven."

The words came out slow and harsh, the faint wheeze of his breath sounding louder in the otherwise still room. The words grated past chapped lips at a painfully slow pace because Barty knew. He knew that when the prayer was finished, that just as he hoped a miracle would occur and they would not arrive, they would.

Bright, feral eyes closed as he concentrated on tearing the word from his throat and as the prick of the jagged writing continued to skewer itself on the stone. But he didn't finish, he was left to pray for eternity, he knew, and that's when they would arrive.

Not right away, no; they liked to keep him waiting. Keep him guessing. But he knew. They were just outside the door. Listening. Sensing. But he wouldn't give them the satisfaction. Not this time. He wouldn't allow himself the luxury of hope...

"Crouch!"

To Be Continued …