Summer had become worse than usual - not that Barty had ever typically enjoyed warmer weather. He was not enthused by how people tried to loosen up in the season. It seemed this summer was particularly freeing for some: so to speak, for those that walked free after the trials. As Head of the DMLE he was, technically, the grand overseer for departments like the Aurors and such. It seemed old Barty had finally lost his edge, because the security measures he'd helped design for the World Cup were woefully lacking. So a grand parade of Death Eater ecstasy managed to ruin one of the most famous events in the world. The Quidditch World Cup hadn't been held in Britain since 1978, where a similar attack occurred albeit far more casualties and far more targeted. They had gone after diplomats and ICW families.

This time it was a mockery, a bit of sport. They all fled under the true Mark of their master.

Ah, yes. The Dark Mark.

Barty was nursing another fine scotch, dribbling in what was likely closer to a triple than a double into his third glass.

Down a house-elf, he realised he'd only made his life a tad harder. Finding the terrified, frozen face of his son in the woods was electrifying. Barty felt as though it was he waking from a curse, not the boy. His fear, his anger... for a moment he no longer felt dead. The awareness in Junior's eyes as they darted frantically back and forth, having been body-bound instead of stunned. The pure terror. It gave Senior some cruel satisfaction. He knew the boy thought of the dementors with horror, sure he was to be sent back, and yet he had still cast that conjuration. He must have. His idiot child.

Though not as stupid as his colleagues, of course. A house elf cast the Dark Mark? Honestly, it was a miracle the Ministry was even running. He fired Winky, enraged with that electric feeling, the fear-anger mischung. It seemed appropriate. He'd never been forgiving before, and she had failed him in ways no one there understood.

There was near to zero follow up from the actual Auror sub-department, which was a strange case he was too tired to even wonder about.

Yes, Barty was fucking exhausted by the time he got home. Portkeying his resentful son back was an experience. He'd spat at him, Bartemius slapped him, and then the boy wouldn't stop laughing. He also wouldn't stop kicking. This meant a return of the Body-Bind jinx.

For some unidentifiable reason, he held off on returning the haze of the Imperius Curse to Junior's eyes just yet. He'd set up a dinner, something quick, and then pondered again (for what must be the millionth time in the last twelve years) murdering his only child. There was something so alluring about the prospect, wasn't there? Winky was gone. Truly, he was alone, if not for the wriggling Death Eater up the stairs.

It was so mocking that they shared a name. This had been his wife's idea - sweet thing, she had doted on him and wished her son to be as wonderful as her spouse. She cooed after both Bartemiuses, but as it was with all wives and children eventually the child becomes the primary. She loved Barty Junior more than anything in the world. What a fucking awful mistake having that child was, Senior knew now. He'd known it earlier - somehow sensed - that his son's attention-seeking and general attitude would lead to strife in his life. He'd not realised how deep the poison ran. He and his wife never had another child. Junior was far too loved for that. The idea of sharing his mother with another was an insurmountable concept. This was a dislike that he shared with his father, who resented him for this very reason.

Then again, Junior gave him better reasons in the end, didn't he? Better reasons to resent his existence that only lingered on now in the barest of forms because his wife had died for the boy. She fell apart. If Bartemius had thought she was doting as a mother, after his imprisonment she became like a sailor's widow. She wept, howled, and fell to pieces. She couldn't cast a spell to save her life... and indeed, it was killing her.

Junior killed her. And she begged him, Barty please help him, please save my baby

She was going to die.

She did.

Barty finishes his third glass of scotch and stands. Another thump upstairs from the restrained boy. Though he wasn't really a boy anymore. Mind made up again, tired and resigned, he doesn't kill the boy. Like every time he'd dreamt of it before, he couldn't muster up the fire. She was gone. There was nothing left. Nothing but their son, the thing she'd loved above even him. What else could he do but carry on as he had for all this time?

He climbed the steps.

Removed the silencing charm.

"You," Junior croaked, sounding somewhere between parched and drowning. "I hate - "

"Imperio," he cast, and it didn't quite hold. It took another three tries before the boy's tendons relaxed and his eyes glazed over with a strange milky dullness to his typical brown.

The vestiges of his pride were all that held him from marching himself into courtroom ten, 'dead' son in tow. Or something like that.

This Tournament was getting more ridiculous by the second, and Fudge was humiliating Britain with his concepts of 'cooperation'. Ludo Bagman was an absolute nightmare, and Barty was the only one capable of reading, apparently. Did they not understand how long it would take to complete new enchantments to refuse anyone under the age of 17? The Goblet was an ancient artefact, they would be lucky if they could find someone to do that at all. The simple plan of an Age Line was his idea, much like Horisaunt Alley imbued on its entry ways. Dumbledore managed to convince Fudge of it, miraculously, because the idiot still somehow thought that they could rework the fucking Opponent's Goblet. The man was nearing verifiably insane via stupidity.

The month before the Hogwarts school season but after the World Cup passed in this manner - rage inducing to the point of tears, arguing in circles, and watching his old pals pretend not to speak fucking English to the Minister. It helped, of course, that Barty was a natural linguist. This garnered respect from most parties they spoke with. At the last minute the Mahoutokoro school removed themselves from the Tournament, citing civil unrest. The damn Cambodians. The Tigadissi Institute of the Arcane didn't even answer their summons so they were left with either Durmstrang or one of those accursed American schools as a third. New age pop-ups, those were. Thankfully, the Durmstrang contingent were glad to step in, but this meant they would have to move the start of the Tournament itself - Durmstrang didn't start school until October. Barty sighed, as he tended to.

It was a mere few days before the start of Hogwarts, and he was fearful of his own role in the Tournament. He was meant to judge and oversee the nightmare, and yet he had forgone replacing Winky and his son was without a keeper. After the break in the Imperius at the World Cup, Senior was unsure of himself. That didn't happen often. He was unsure if his proficiency with the Imperius Curse had wavered, or if his son had bid his time under the Curse that was long since weakened. He thought it was working well now, else surely the boy would murder him and escape in the night - but doubt was becoming stronger. He chalked up the World Cup event to the excitabilities of the Death Eater attack, surely. But that Junior would have enough clarity to steal a wand and immediately go to cast the Dark Mark didn't speak well.

It did unease him, and despite everything... he had never feared his son. Reviled him, hated him, been jealous even - but fear of his son was new. Among the long term effects of any imprisonment was sure a fostering of desperation. Perhaps now, without Winky to care for him, the situation was risky.

But Barty was an old dog, and he knew his tricks. He couldn't skip work.

It was the evening of August twenty-eighth that Barty came home, alone, well after hours, to a dark house. This was nothing out of the usual, because Barty did this every day.

The only difference - and quite an important one - was that he had come home alone, but had guests all the same.

He shrugged off his robe in the foyer, and let his case fall to the ground with a resounding thump. He had to feed the boy and then he would sleep before he collapsed. Maybe age was getting to him. Barty Crouch Senior was sixty-seven years old, and while it wasn't very old in wizarding terms he did like to work himself to the bone.

He had gone to school with the man who stole his son, and he was none the wiser - the man that was positioned in the sitting room right then, in a light orange armchair. It was Senior's favourite chair. He passed this sitting room with the intent of making it to the kitchen, but the unexpected spellfire had him roped up, silenced, and with a nose that broken on contact with the floor.

Head swimming, he felt somewhat at peace with all that. No longer would the haunting thoughts of killing his son circle his days - now he was free, dead at Junior's hands, and free.

But this was not at all the case. It was a short, plump man with patchy blond hair that had bound him and was now levitating him into the sitting room that he'd not even given a glance. He hadn't made note of the lit hearth. He'd forgotten - he no longer had a house elf that could've lit it while he was at work.

It was there, in the light of the hearth, he saw his son. He couldn't turn his head to try and decipher who it was that had come to bind him and free Junior - it was perhaps foolish of him to think that at the World Cup he'd not gotten out word to some friend or other that he was trapped here.

He looked at his son, and the slight view of the woolen-trouser legs sat in his light orange armchair.

It was sickening the way that Barty clung to the edge of the armchair, eyes enraptured by the man sat there. All the devotion that Senior never received. He didn't even look at his father, which was slightly upsetting. And besides, why wasn't he dead yet? This was the last thought of his own that he had - as Senior was prodded in front of the chair none too gently, and was met with the blue light of the Imperius Curse.

"Thank you, my Lord," came the reverent voice of young Barty. "I can wait," he continued softly, his eyes glinting in the light of the hearth. He fingered his own wand, which had been locked away in his father's bedroom. A mild sentiment to have kept it all this time, but Barty was glad his father had. His body was weak, but his magic desired nothing more than to be free. And he still had the perfect tool to do it with.

"He must live - for now - but not long, Barty," Lord Voldemort soothed. "Not too long - as we do move quickly, indeed - the night after next - "

"Of course," he said, feeling a dedication to the Dark Lord that he'd not quite mustered in his youth. "Thank you, Lord," he repeated. "Thank you."