Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition
Montrose Magpies, Keeper
Keeper: The Rains of Castamere - "a song which immortalises the destruction of House Reyne of Castamere by Tywin Lannister."
Someone seizing power, a shift in power, toppling of an authority (?)
CONTENT WARNINGS: patricide, mind control (Imperius Curse), mentions of/implied torture and murder
escape (the moon wanes)
Something yanks at Barty's bones, his strings, pulling him left and right, but he is so dizzy he cannot seem to make heads or tails of his surroundings -
"Father," he chokes out. "Stop."
"Listen to me," Crouch Sr says, his voice heavy with authority and dripping venomously. "You are to do as I tell you, do you understand?"
"Yes," Barty gasps. The Imperius Curse is a strange feeling—when it is done pushing and spinning you around it seems to sink to the very depths of your bones and encompass you. Bliss.
But Barty knows this bliss is artificial, and his true happiness when he returns to the Dark Lord will be far more potent than it.
"You've already showered so much shame upon my name," his father snarls, twisting his wand. Barty registers the words but cannot seem to decipher them. "A Death Eater for a son…I would honestly have preferred you rot in Azkaban."
"I—I know you would," Barty whimpers in a sad attempt at defiance.
"Pity your mother was so soft for you," snaps the older man. "I would have never agreed otherwise."
Barty's body and mind settle down as his father gives no commands. He tries to remember through the murky fog. Remember how not being under the Curse had been, remember how - what? What is he supposed to remember? Has he forgotten? No, the thought lingers behind the dust, but he simply cannot reach out his fingers and grab it.
Barty cannot hold out forever, and using this little bit of defiance left in him to backtalk his father is no use.
He succumbs.
Barty's perception of time is different when he is not in control of his own body. Sometimes the days are slow and sluggish and everything seems to be happening with him looking at a badly animated photo. Other times he feels his consciousness beginning to creep out of the fog and twenty-four hours go like the Hogwarts Express, but there is no time that he is fully in control.
His father looks at him - or rather, the wall behind him - with indifference as Barty continues to obey his orders.
Until -
Until.
Bertha Jorkins comes and she finds out. Barty feels his heart leap past the ceiling, desperately hoping that she will release him from his prison - but she does not. HIs father traps her in one of her own.
The days pass in a blur.
Winky comes to fetch him one morning. She speaks to his bed, though he is hidden in the leftmost corner of his room under an Invisibility Cloak. It's not like he can talk much anyway, without his father's sanction.
The next month, the 1994 Quidditch World Cup is held.
The air is cool around his ankles, where the Invisibility Cloak keeps insisting on flying away at. Barty worries that someone may see him but decides to ignore it - he doesn't know if he would be able to act on it anyway. Next to him, Winky's short stature is accented by her keeled-over position, her head between her legs as she trembles like a leaf in the wind.
His father is not here, he registers. That isn't really rare - even with his prospects of being Minister dashed by Barty's conviction, he is still busy and spends more time in his office or at home. Barty closes his eyes.
Tendrils of something seem to drift in his mind, pushing past the previously relentless Imperius that has blocked his free will for the past years of his life. Barty closes his eyes and attempts to push them through, recognising this as what it is.
An opportunity.
An escape.
A return.
His father's voice echoes in his head.
"You are a disappointment."
"You have soiled the family name."
"I would have preferred you, not your mother, dead at Azkaban."
He clenched his hand and thinks hard. I want to escape.
Something roars out of him, a dam breaking as his will breaks free. For a moment, he does not feel his father's constant, lingering presence, lording over him with a glare and a few meaningless words.
He opens his eyes again.
Winky, to the corner of his line of sight, is still hunched over and sobbing silently. His eyesight sharpens.
A stick of wood - a wand - peers out from the seat in front of him.
His mind races with uses for it. Torture. Escape. Summoning the Dark Lord.
Or summoning the Dark Lord's followers.
Quietly, he reaches forward, careful to still make it seem like the seat is empty. His fingers brush against the silken fabric of the Invisibility Cloak. He glances around for a moment before letting his hand peek out and his fingers close around the harsh material of the wand.
"Morsmordre," a hoarse voice utters in an empty forest.
When the Dark Lord begins his return, to Barty's disappointment, his father does not die. It is the better option, Lord Voldemort explains to him. He understands but does not quite accept it until his master, frustrated with his lack of enthusiastic compliance, tells him the plans.
Barty does not get to cast the Imperius Curse, but it is satisfying all the same.
Crouch Sr's eyes turn glassy and his head rolls, leaving Barty wondering if he is experiencing the same feelings the younger vaguely remembers.
His father may not be under his control now, but he is under Barty's master's and that will have to do.
The relish of control overcomes Barty as Voldemort hands his father over to him on a dirty platter—his own little plaything, now. He finds commanding his father isn't quite as satisfying as he thought, but watching the previously proud man kneel and obey is amusing all the same.
The year goes by and Barty can feel the Dark Lord's return approaching as the date of the Third Task nears. He nearly vibrates in excitement in his sleep, looking forward to the day he will no longer have to hide in this ugly disguise, pretending to have Light sympathies and experience as an Auror. Being Moody is rather exhausting sometimes.
It will all be worth it in the end, he knows. In the end. The end that is approaching with increasing speed, so fast that sometimes he feels he isn't quite prepared for it.
Every day, Barty opens his eyes and imagines a world in which the Dark Lord has revolutionised Britain and he is in control and he stands up to get ready for the lessons ahead. It is his hope, his escape, his everything, at this point.
He clings on to that dream as tightly as possible.
Burying his father is easy.
Barty has never really cared for him and Crouch Sr only viewed him as a project, later, a disappointment. He Transfigured the limp body—it's easy to stomach after his years of murder and torture.
He looks at the bone and touches it, the texture rough against his skin. He does not have time to ponder before he smacks it harshly into the hole that he has dug.
The moon wanes in the sky as the soil covers the body.
WC: 1200 (wordcounter . net)
very rushed as I procrastinated a lot, and even with an extension I'm still late by a day - oops.