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Chapter Twenty-Three-Chains of Sanity
"It's good to know that your allegiance is the right one."
Severus inclined his head. After they had come back to the school, and Severus had walked the line between lie and truth about his rescue of Harry well enough to fool Albus, "Moody" had revealed himself as Barty Crouch, Junior.
It was still bizarre to Severus that Barty was the one who had survived, and the one who had taken Moody's place. He was not used to thinking of Barty as the one who was most loyal to the Dark Lord. Bellatrix Lestrange, or perhaps Regulus Black, before his disappearance.
Not the still-young man sitting in front of him, who had spent a year in Azkaban and then twelve years under the Imperius Curse, as he had told Severus. Not the man who was giving him a piercing little smile as he sipped the Firewhisky that Severus normally kept for his own use, glittering, hard blue eyes not much less unnerving than the magical and real one he possessed in his disguise.
"I know that you didn't make the right choices from the beginning. But that doesn't matter now. Now, we're comrades."
Severus just nodded and sipped his own Firewhisky. He was still trying to comprehend how much his own world had changed, and there was no way he could do it yet.
"Why did you do it?"
"Which part of it?"
"Why did you betray our Lord in the first place?" Barty leaned forwards, his eyes roaming from Severus's hair down over his severe dark robes, lingering on his left arm where his robes concealed the Mark, and finally coming back to his face. "I know that you love the Dark Arts and you've even kept asking for the post that would let you teach them here. Why become a traitor?"
"Because the Dark Lord targeted Lily Evans." To no one who did not know it did Severus plan to reveal that he was the one who had brought the prophecy to the Dark Lord that had been the reason for that targeting.
Although perhaps he should have told Harry. Then the boy would have admired him less, and would not have become a Death Eater.
Likely.
"I don't understand. You loved her more than you loved the Dark Arts? Our lord?"
Severus was silent for some minutes, searching his soul for an answer he could tell Barty that the man would accept, and that their Lord would also accept. Of course Barty was really asking these questions for the Dark Lord, and Severus's response would make its way back to him. Severus had to be revealing but not too revealing.
He finally looked up and met Barty's eyes.
"I grew up in the Muggle world, raised by the Muggle bastard my mother married," he said, and didn't have to disguise the bitterness that leaked into his voice. Barty blinked. Apparently he hadn't known Severus was a half-blood. Severus held that amusement at bay and continued. "I saw Lily Evans display accidental magic. I was thrilled beyond belief. Here was someone to share the secret with beyond my mother, someone not subject to my father's rages that made my mother hide her magic most of the time. So I bonded strongly to her.
"If I had met her under any other circumstances? If I had been raised in the magical world and known other children of my age who would have accustomed me to not feeling isolated? Then I doubt I would have bonded to Lily that strongly."
Severus sipped the Firewhisky again and ignored Barty's assessing stare. The truth was a good one, woven with glinting threads of deception that Severus was sure Barty would not spot.
Would the Dark Lord? That was the only real question.
"So you chose a life that was comfortable for yourself for the past decade, but you never abandoned your real allegiance, is that what you're telling me?"
"My real allegiance was to what side might give me comfort and freedom."
"And now it's to the kid."
Severus controlled the jolt that wanted to run through him and make him spill the Firewhisky. He lifted the glass in a short, ironic toast to Barty. "If you say so."
"Yeah, I say so." Barty's eyes were wide and fastened on him. "And yet, our Lord accepted you back. Because to have the kid, he has to have you."
"I am not of that opinion. I am, in fact, surprised that our Lord did not kill the child whom some call his nemesis."
Barty laughed, leaning back in his chair. "He figured me out right away. I behaved differently when he came to ask me for private tutoring than I did in class, and he decided it was the result of Polyjuice. Apparently he's been reading a fair amount of your books and decided that a potion was more likely than a glamour."
"As he should have," Severus murmured, watching the Firewhisky ripple in the glass. "A glamour would have been stripped by Hogwarts's wards."
"Why do you think I didn't use one? He didn't know exactly who I was. But he told me that he was pretty sure I was a spy for the Dark Lord, or at least a sympathizer. And—it's the strangest thing."
Severus watched in some concern as Barty's forehead wrinkled. The "strangest thing" when it came to the Dark Lord's most fanatical follower could be bad news for Harry, no matter how valuable Harry might be to the Dark Lord right now.
Severus should know as much. He had been valuable, once.
"I was—well, of course I was mad after Azkaban and the Imperius. Mentally broken. I only managed to take Moody's place and get into the school because my loyalty to my Lord made me listen to him when he planned it out. But when Harry came near me, he steadied me. Broke through some of the mental fog that was covering my thoughts. Made me sharper and quicker."
Severus stared at him. Barty snorted. "I actually thought it might have been something you'd done at first. One of the reasons I gave the kid that necklace that would hurt someone who was opposed to our Lord. But he doesn't have that effect on you, huh?"
"No," Severus said softly. He knew that he had changed his perception of Harry greatly since the boy was first Sorted, but he also knew himself well enough, and had good enough Occlumency, that he would have noticed if Harry were exerting some kind of magical influence on him.
If anything, he would have suspected Albus of placing some such spell on the boy, but Albus was too clever to have chosen something that would benefit a Death Eater, no matter how disguised or how close already to sanity.
Barty leaned back in his chair again and shrugged. "Well, I brought Harry to the Dark Lord for their first meeting, and the Dark Lord benefited from the same effect. He told me Harry brought him part of the way back to sanity."
Something about the boy. Whatever allowed him to survive the Killing Curse? But I thought that was all Lily's doing.
"I am surprised you are telling me this much," Severus said, because that last revelation demanded some response.
Barty's teeth flashed in response. "Well. The boy's good as a chain on you. Believe me, I know that already."