A / N : Again, I don't think this was requested by anyone, (correct me if my memory is faulty, I don't mind) but it demanded to be written all the same. Set, obviously, some time after Barty's imprisonment, and before his escape. It was interesting to write . . . to try and take Barty's intense hatred of his father, and Crouch Sr's callous actions at his son's trial, and build reasons for them was . . . interesting. But having written so many Barty oneshots by now, I thought it might be fun to walk in his father's shoes for a bit. It also helps answer some of the questions about why my Barty is so very, er, strange.

I should probably have put all the Crouches together, really . . . but I can't control which inspirations hit me when, haha. (Oh, and though he deliberately never refers to him by name at any point, it should be obvious Crouch is talking about Barty Jr here. )

Enjoy! :)

Bartemius Crouch Sr

It is February, and the snow on the streets outside has turned to slush, but the enchanted windows of the Ministry of Magic still show fluffy falling flakes. His eye is drawn to them, and he wonders, briefly, at the picture perfect image, at the illusion so removed from reality. So near, and yet so far.

He is sitting at his desk, one hand around a cold cup of coffee. The other is toying with a paperweight, moving it from one stack of memos to the next. Across the desk and back again, a pointless march. It fits nowhere.

Like the boy. There is nowhere he can put his son, in his own head, that will give him peace.

Azkaban is not far enough, and the empty house is so near it scalds them all.

The boy is dying, or so they tell him. Aurors, who come to him and share this news in hushed, guilty tones, shuffling their shoes and avoiding eye contact, as though imparting news of the boy is akin to transferring a plague.

A plague. That is all the boy has ever been. Crouch did not want a child, a boy much less. But it kept his wife happy, and he understands he owed her that, for her part in things. A politician without a wife, after all, is a politician vulnerable to lies and scandal, and a family man is much more easily embraced by the public. He still wonders, sometimes, if she knows that their marriage was little more than an arrangement, a lie. Sometimes, in her eyes, he sees something that gives him pause, that makes him wonder if she knows it now. Because she is dying too, without the boy . . . She has always seemed to thrive on lies, the boy's lies most of all, but now it is as if she can no longer bring herself to pretend. Crouch knows perfectly well that his son's courtroom dramatics were not intended for him, but for his wife. The boy might be the criminal, but in his mother's eyes, he will always be the victim, a guiltless child. Not that her support helps her son now, Crouch thinks with a snort. The boy is rotting away in Azkaban.

The image is not as enjoyable as expected.

They are all getting their just desserts, he realizes. Every illusion coming undone.

His fingers fumble on the paperweight, and it falls to the floor with a dense, heavy sound, like a planet falling to earth. And then his head is in his hands, and he can hide from himself no longer.

The boy the boy the boy . . . . . What has he done?

Crouch does not remember being a child. In flashback, he sees himself merely as a man waiting to happen, and recalls no childish thoughts or naivety. He did not know how to deal with a child, couldn't understand what the boy seemed to want from him. And he always seemed to want something – he always had a question, or an answer. What-is-this and why-do-you-do-that and how-can-we-fix-it and look-at-this-isn't-it-fun . . . . Yes. The boy always seemed to want something. He was always where you least expected him to be, hiding under desks and feeding postal owls and racing Ministry memos and generally throwing any attempt at routine into disarray.

Crouch has always been a creature of habit. Every morning, he shaves with the same strokes, in the same order. He aligns his quills on his desk (in order of use) and eats his meals at the same time, applying the same amount of salt and never any pepper, week in, week out. He had expected, somehow, that his life would follow a similar pattern. That there would be structure, and logic, and that the steps he took towards his goals would result, naturally enough, in those goals. But life, he learnt, follows a set of rules he has never fully comprehended – it is a game he does not know how to play.

He remembers the first time it happened. The first time he lost control, the first time his fingers slipped. He had worked for months for a promotion, only to lose it at the eleventh hour to someone young and handsome and underqualified, someone whose unpredictabilty and charismatic smile were no advantage Crouch could see. He was angry, and embittered, and the boy was . . . there. That was all. He was there, where he wasn't supposed to be, sitting on his father's desk and making a paperweight march like a toy Hippogriff across the polished wood. Playing a game. Crouch knows many things about that day, but most he will not allow himself to remember. He remembers shouting at the boy, remembers his shock when the child did not cry, and his anger when he laughed instead, as though his father's red face was somehow amusing. It was a mark of disrespect at the wrong time, and Crouch did know, later, how wrong his response had been. He tried to fix it. He thought if he could only remove the boy's memory of the event, and all proof it happened, the child would resume his never-ending questions and babbling, irritating, childish laughter. If he could make it so it never happened, Crouch reasoned, then what could possibly be the harm? It was a stressful time, he tells himself. He cannot be entirely at fault for slipping once, twice, thrice . . . they were mistakes. Mistakes he fixed. How could the child possibly be unhappy about events he could not recall?

But he was. Crouch watched, from a distance, as his son began to fight a spell he was much too young to understand. He was trying to remember. But Memory Charms were something Crouch Sr had always felt confident about – they were strong, and so the boy's struggles did not matter. Let him fight. He would not remember. It took him longer than it ought to have to understand that in the absence of anything tangible to fight, the boy was attacking what his young mind saw as the problem - himself. He watched, appalled, as his son attempted to systematically destroy himself, for reasons the boy could not even explain when questioned.

His wife, naturally, looked to him for assistance, begged him to help the child. But what could he do? Even then, Crouch did not believe the truth would set him free. So he lied. Told her he could see nothing wrong with the boy, and hoped the problem would go away. Over the years he tried distance, and discipline, but he was as surprised as anyone when these methods eventually began to have the desired effect.

It is only now of course, years and years later, that he fully understands. The boy did not stop torturing himself because he grew out of it – he simply realized there was more sport to be had in torturing others.

Crouch swallows, physically ill.

The boy the boy the boy . . .

The boy is a demon of his own creation, a thing he loathes with all his being and yearns to forget . . . . but forgetting is impossible, now. They are tied together, until one of them breaks.

Why can't he let the boy die?

The answer is a whisper in the dark. It keeps him awake at night, turns food to ash upon his tongue and gnaws at his insides, pulling his mind away from files and facts. It is guilt.

Murder, it whispers in the night. Murder too?

He can sleep at his desk, to hide from his wife's tears, and he can send the boy far away, but the boy still wins.

There is coffee soaking into his socks, and a dent in the floorboards, and the world is wrong. All wrong. And so he knows, even before he raises his head, what he is going to do.

"Forgive me," he whispers, though whether he is appealing to his absent, dying wife, or to the world, he does not know.

Perhaps he is asking forgiveness of himself. Or perhaps . . . perhaps . . . he is asking forgiveness of the child.