"Well, this is a surprise." Sirius scoffed as he stood over the younger man. "Merlin's balls, Barty Crouch's own son. I always knew you were a brat, but not like this. What would he think if he knew?"
"He wouldn't care. He's never cared about me." The boy spat, standing up with a hurt and angry look on his face. "All he's ever cared about is his job, and his damned reputation."
"And you want to make his reputation suffer by becoming a Death Eater."
"I want to make him suffer. His job, his career, that's all that's ever mattered to him. My mother was the only person who ever cared about me until the Dark Lord found me."
Sirius was suddenly reminded of a similar conversation he'd had with Regulus, and his heart began to break. "That can't really be true, kid, I promise you it's not."
"No?" Barty laughed. "Then tell me, Black, has my father ever talked about me, other than to brag about my twelve O.W.L.s? Has he ever expressed any kind of fatherly appreciation for the only person who can carry on his Pureblood name?"
Sirius didn't have an answer to that. "I mean, I never worked closely with Mr. Crouch, but –"
"You wouldn't have to work closely with Lucius bloody Malfoy to know that bastard has a son. Draco is all he ever talks about. How he and Narcissa are so lucky to have had a beautiful little Pureblood boy who looks so much like his granddad." Barty mocked in a scaringly good impression of the Lord Malfoy. "Honest to Merlin, it annoys the hell out of me. Everybody always talks about how lucky they are to have their sons, their heirs, but my father never gave a damn."
The boy was reminding him so much of Regulus that it was beginning to feel painful in Sirius' soul just to hear him speak. "Barty, there's no way your father never cared. He loved you –"
"How could you know? How could you possibly know that?" Barty sneered.
"Because you're just like Regulus." Sirius replied harshly, before mentally cursing himself for it.
"Regulus? Regulus Black?"
"My brother."
"I went to Hogwarts with him." Barty said in a softer voice. "We were friends."
"I know."
"He's dead."
"I know."
"What do you mean, I'm just like him?" The boy asked, all malice gone from his face. "Regulus didn't even talk to me for six months before he died."
"He didn't talk to me either." Sirius admitted. "I said some horrible things to him when he joined You-Know-Who."
"I don't think he wanted to." Barty replied, and Sirius looked at him in shock. "He was always horrified by the things we had to do. He told me once that he wanted out, and when I told him that was impossible, not to mention disgraceful, he stopped talking to me. Six months later the Dark Lord announced to us that he had been killed for trying to abandon the Death Eaters."
"He… wanted out?" Sirius repeated. "He tried to leave?"
"I guess you were told otherwise." Barty raised an eyebrow, and Sirius' eyes filled with hurt, angry tears.
"Dumbledore said that he'd been killed by an Auror while doing something for You-Know-Who."
"Well, Dumbledore was wrong. The Dark Lord said he'd killed him himself, for trying to defect. A reminder to all of us that we chose our dedication for life."
Sirius said nothing, so Barty continued. "Regulus told me that his last straw had something to do with your family's house elf, Kreacher. But he wouldn't tell me any more than that, just that the Dark Lord had tried to kill him for his own gain."
"Kreacher?" Sirius thought for a moment. "Of all the things Death Eaters had to do, his final line was about the house elf?"
"It wasn't just that. You have no idea the torment it caused Regulus to do the things we were told to do to prove our loyalty. He cried. A lot. He said your name in his sleep sometimes, usually paired with the word sorry."
Sirius' eyes spilled over with tears and he dropped his wand, breaking down into sobs with his hands on his face. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." He repeated to himself.
Barty stood in front of Sirius awkwardly, unsure of how to proceed. Regulus' brother reminded him so much of the boy he once considered his best friend. How could he attack him while he was mourning? He didn't even want to be here in the first place, but Bellatrix said it was time he showed his true worth and did something useful.
"I can't do this." Barty muttered suddenly, and he withdrew his own wand, turning and running away from Sirius.
Sirius looked up, still crying, and watched the boy run, uncertain of whether or not to let him go. Before Barty could get very far, Sirius heard a voice scream, "Petrificus Totalus", and he fell face-first into the ground.
Sirius turned and saw Bellatrix standing nearby with her wand drawn, her face marred from Augusta's hex.
"How dare you?!" She screeched, approaching Barty with an expression of fury and betrayal. "How dare you try to abandon us, abandon the Dark Lord who has given you everything?!"
"The Dark Lord is dead, Bella. Our Marks are already fading!" Barty yelled, his voice muffled from being in the dirt.
"LIES!" Bellatrix roared again. She undid her body-bind on him just to yell, "Crucio!"
Barty's screams were like a knife in Sirius' soul, and he knew he had to intervene. He picked up his wand and shot a spell of fire towards Bellatrix, but she looked round before it hit her and deflected it with a spurt of water.
"Sirius, this has nothing to do with you, stay out of this." Bellatrix sneered. "I'll deal with you after I take care of this little traitor."
"Leave him alone, Bella."
"Why do you care about him?" Bellatrix scoffed. "He's not Regulus, you know. Though, they are both traitors I suppose –"
Before Sirius could hex her for it, a spell hit her back. She cried out in pain and turned back towards Barty, who was standing with his wand drawn. "Don't talk about Regulus like that!" He yelled, before sending another spell at Bellatrix, who easily shielded herself.
Bellatrix smirked at the boy, humouring his outburst for a few moments before apparently growing tired of it.
She conjured a knife out of thin air and threw it directly at Barty's throat, hitting her mark exactly.
"No!" Sirius yelled, and he attempted to send another curse at Bellatrix, which she once again deflected.
Hex after hex, curse after curse, the two of them deflected and cast at each other over and over again, neither of them seeming to grow tired of it; rather, they seemed to only be fueled by their pure hatred for each other.
Finally, he hit Bellatrix square in the chest with the same stinging hex Augusta used on her face, and she fell to the ground again.
"Don't you dare touch my wife!" Rodolphus yelled, sending a body bind at Augusta.
Augusta shielded herself from the curse, and threw the same one back at Rabastan, who collapsed to the dirt, paralyzed.
"Don't touch my brother either!" Rodolphus roared, and he sent several more curses at Augusta, who shielded herself from every one of them. "Don't touch my family, you old hag!"
"Then don't touch mine." She growled in response, as she aimed a hex between his legs.
He shielded himself, and he tried to take a moment to undo the body bind on his brother.
Within his moment of weakness, Augusta sent a swelling hex right at his wand arm, and as he cast the counter-charm his arm swelled to twice its size, and he yelled in pain as he dropped his wand beside his brother.
Rabastan, now unbound, shot up from the ground and cast a hex directly towards Augusta, but aimed very poorly, and missed her entirely.
"You'd think You-Know-Who would have chosen smarter wizards to be his Death Eaters."
Both brothers swore out loud at her, and cast simultaneous curses at her, which she shielded herself from.
"Honestly, if the two of you are beaten by an old hag like myself, I don't think your master would welcome you back even if he was still alive."
"You lie!" Rabastan yelled. "He lives! Our Dark Lord lives!"
"Then where is he?" Augusta countered.
The brothers stood staring at each other for a moment, giving Augusta time to send a stinging hex at Rodolphus, making him shout in pain and fall to his knees.
Rabastan roared in anger, and threw as many hexes as he could muster at Augusta, but completely failing to hit her even once.
"I'd rather be duelling your wife right now, Rodolphus." She said to the man who was still on his knees. "She's a much better fighter than either of you."
At this, Rodolphus turns to look at Bellatrix, who was duelling with Sirius. He looks back at Augusta with a sneer. "I know she is. What a shame that you'll lose young Black tonight because of it."
Augusta narrowed her eyes at Rodolphus, still deflecting and shielding the curses flying at her from the angry Rabastan. "You underestimate Sirius Black."
"And I believe you underestimate my wife."
Augusta took a moment to look back at the duelling pair. "Are you certain?"
Rodolphus and Rabastan both turn to look back at Bellatrix, who had just fallen to the ground with Sirius' hex at her chest.
"Ah, Frank Longbottom. So you and Alice did end up hitched after all." Oakwood said with a raised eyebrow. "Always knew you had the hots for her. You're welcome, by the way, for getting you two together with that little joke of mine."
"You mean when you tried to assault her in an empty classroom? Yeah, great joke Oakwood." Frank countered, his wand raised at Oakwood's face.
"Oh, don't be so boring. She was laughing about it before you burst in and interrupted us."
"That's bloody rubbish." Frank glared at him.
"Whatever you choose to believe." He grinned evilly. "And I choose to believe that she definitely wanted that."
Frank growled at him, and shot a hex at his chest, but Oakwood shielded himself quickly. They exchanged shields and curses for several minutes before Oakwood knocked him back a few steps with a spell he didn't recognize, catching him off guard.
"Longbottom, seriously, interrupting me while I'm talking? That's so impolite."
"You don't deserve politeness."
"And you don't deserve Alice." Oakwood scoffed.
Alarm bells in Frank's head went off, and he knew Oakwood was trying to torment him into losing his temper. But it still hurt. "And you think you do?"
"Oh, I don't care if I do or not." Oakwood chuckled darkly. "And I don't care what she wants or deserves either. As soon as I'm done here with you, I'm going to go inside and find her, and finish what I started back then."
He roared angrily, and before Oakwood could do anything else Frank quickly transformed himself into a very large grizzly bear, towering over the older man.
Oakwood looked up at the face of the bear, standing on his two hind legs, and gulped.
"Bella!" Rodolphus yelled, and as Rabastan shot more curses at Augusta he ran towards his still wife, casting hexes at Sirius, who was shielding every one of them.
He knelt beside his wife and yelled for his brother, who looked over at them. "We need to go!"
"But Rod, we still need to find –"
"Now, Rab!" Rodolphus demanded, and Rabastan sighed in defeat before running towards their forms.
Exposing his retreating back to Augusta was his last mistake, as she cast another full body-bind on him and he collapsed onto his face.
Rodolphus swore out loud before picking Bellatrix up and disapparating, not sparing another glance at his brother, or at either of his other companions.
Not that they could escape with him anyways.
Sirius, without a second thought, ran towards Barty, hoping he could somehow save the last piece of Regulus he could possibly have.
But the boy was already dead.
Meanwhile, Oakwood wasn't faring much better; as it turns out, a wand doesn't help one much when one is being mauled by an angry bear, even if that bear is an Animagus.
"So, Rabastan Lestrange…" Augusta said, placing her foot on the man's back, pressing him further into the dirt. "You've been abandoned by your brother. How does that make you feel?"
Rather than reply, Rabastan wordlessly un-bound himself and threw Augusta off him physically, knocking her to the ground. "Shut up, you old hag!" As she attempted to stand up, he shot a curse at her wildly, but only managed to hit her ankle.
She swore out loud, and managed to hit him with a hex of her own just before he, too, disapparated.
Augusta unsteadily rose on her own two feet, surveying what had just happened.
She saw Frank, coming out of his bear form, standing over the once-whole body of Odin Oakwood, and Sirius clutching the once-alive body of Barty Crouch Jr.
Hold on. What was Bartemius Crouch's son doing here?
She approached Sirius first. "Sirius, are you hurt?"
Sirius shook his head, tears pouring down his face. "No, but Barty…"
"What is he even doing here, Sirius?"
"He was with them, but he didn't want to be, just like Regulus…"
Augusta's confusion must have been all over her face, but she just shook her head. It was no use trying to get him to explain it right now; they were definitely all in shock, and just needed to go to bed.
She decided to check on Frank, who seemed entirely unharmed but very much emotionally rattled. "Frank?"
"He threatened her, Mum. He threatened to hurt Alice again."
"He won't touch her, Frank. She's safe. We're safe."
"We need to get to a safer place." Frank responded. "We can't stay here.
Augusta nodded. "We should go inside and get Alice and the boys."
Frank looked down at Oakwood's body, then over at Sirius with Barty's. Both he and Augusta approached Sirius again, and Frank knelt down beside him. "Is that Mr Crouch's son?"
"Yeah." Sirius replied. "He was with them, but he didn't want to be. He tried to get out, and they killed him, just like they did to Regulus."
"Wait, they killed Regulus?" Frank asked in shock. "Dumbledore said he was killed by an Auror."
"Dumbledore says a lot of things, apparently." Sirius muttered darkly. "I don't know what to believe anymore."
"Well, what we can guess by now is that he's right about You-Know-Who being gone." Augusta said. "If his Death Eaters haven't heard from him, and nobody knows where he went or where to find him, and he didn't manage to kill Harry…"
"But even if You-Know-Who is gone," Frank started. "He will probably return, and we need to protect Neville and Harry when that time comes."
Augusta put a hand on his shoulder, and one on Sirius'. "We can and we will. We will always protect our family, just like we did today."
The men both nodded. Whatever happened, they'd be ready for it.
Dumbledore cursed to himself from the spot he was watching the battle from as he saw Bellatrix and Rodolphus, and even Rabastan, apparate away like cowards. Not only had Frank killed Oakwood, but Barty Crouch Jr was dead too. It was a surprise to even Dumbledore that Barty Crouch Jr was on their side, but no surprise at all when he tried to flee, and still none when Bellatrix murdered him for it. He always was a bit of a coward, and Bellatrix had always been ruthless.
It had been taking them far too long to take down the wards, and Dumbledore had admittedly given them a boost or two on that, but the battle was all theirs, since there was no way he could help with that. And yet they failed horribly.
Well, Dumbledore decided, if the Death Eaters weren't going to get Harry away from the Longbottoms, then something else had to be done. But what?