Okay, now this one is my usual Friday update. We're running on strictly coffee and sheer determination this morning.

Bookcozy: That was actually my thought process for having Molly go easier on her. For one thing, George caught it before she could get in her stride, but I feel like she would see Nessa as already a part of the family, and Hermione already has her own family. If that makes sense. As far as Cedric…boy. It's hard to hate him when he's dead, but he's nothing if not consistent. But I'll ignore how annoying he is now that he's dead. I also really love Fleur to be honest. I feel like that's a very unpopular HP opinion. I hated her at first, but the older I get, the less I judge her for being so rude. If my fiance's family was as rude to me as Mrs. Weasley and Ginny were (simply for the sake that she's a Veela which is totally beyond her control), I would be rude AF too. She was so slick about it too LOL. Also, I agree about Nessa/Snape. I hate him, but it's hard to hate him overly much in this story.

D.J. Scales: The angst is absolutely incoming. Survivor's guilt is something else.

Chapter Forty Five

Cedric Diggory was dead.

Her entire being had narrowed on that one piece of information, even as her brother had gone deathly silent and still beside her. He had used his entire body to cover Cedric's own as if he were afraid that someone might take it from him, his fingers grasping at the Hufflepuff's shirt. Her entire brain was screaming at her to check on her brother, but her body…

After her initial scream, the air in her lungs had expired completely. She wasn't even sure if she was breathing now. She didn't want to be. She hoped she wasn't. Her body had frozen, staring at eyes that, only hours before, had looked at her with such pain and longing that she'd wanted to rip her heart out for the sake of avoiding how badly it had hurt her to hurt him. There had always been such life in his eyes before. She'd never noticed that.

Not until it had gone.

There was a torrent of sound that deafened and confused her; there were voices everywhere, footsteps, screams that were not her own this time…She remained where she was, kneeling on the ground, staring into the eyes of someone she'd once considered a friend, knowing that he would never stare back.

There was a numbness setting in, muting that voice in her head that was screaming at her to check with Harry. She'd heard him sobbing earlier…he was fine. But Cedric…Cedric would never be fine again. Cedric would never have the opportunity to make things right with Cho or get over the pain she'd caused him. Cedric would never feel pain or sorrow or happiness again. Cedric would never laugh or wave awkwardly at her in the halls.

Everything was…bleak. It was confusing, and empty, and she didn't understand…

She didn't understand how this had happened. She didn't understand why it was happening to someone as good as him. Sure, he'd been a pain in her ass, but he was a good person. A bit persistent, a bit unable to accept boundaries, but ultimately good and kind and brave. He had been a light in a world that was sometimes so dark that she couldn't see through it.

And that light had been snuffed out. In a goddamn maze that was part of some barbaric game that had put his life at risk. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. He was too young to die.

And yet, no matter how hard she begged or pleaded or prayed, his eyes didn't blink. His chest didn't lift with a breath. His mouth didn't curve into a smile.

A part of her could hear her brother talking beside her. Dumbledore had rolled him over when he'd stopped moving, but she could still hear his ragged breathing. If she hadn't been so sucked into the emptiness of Cedric's eyes, she might have felt fear well up in her at the words her brother uttered.

"He's back," Harry whispered. "He's back. Voldemort."

She didn't care. She didn't care at all because why was Cedric not blinking?

She knew why, but she needed it to be a lie. A joke. A nightmare. She needed him to sit up and laugh, saying he thought it would be a good laugh. She'd have been livid, but at least she'd have something — someone — to be livid with.

There was another voice as someone appeared beside her, but she didn't recognize it. It sounded warped in her ears somehow, like her hearing was going in and out.

"My God — Diggory!" it whispered, "Dumbledore — he's dead!"

Dead.

Dead, dead, dead.

He was dead.

Why would they have said that? Why would they say something that was clearly obvious? But the words were repeated by others like some sick, disgusting echo reverberating around a cave. The words were gasped to others around them…and then others shouted it — screeched it — into the night — "He's dead!" "He's dead!" "Cedric Diggory! Dead!"

Or perhaps it wasn't other people. Perhaps it was just her thoughts reverberating around in her head. She couldn't tell anymore, how much of what she was hearing was reality or a distortion of her own mind.

She could hear that voice again, begging Harry to release Cedric, and then someone was prying her brother's hands off. She moved for the first time, jolting forward to grasp the shirt in her hand instead.

She didn't know why. There was no explanation for it. Holding onto him wouldn't change anything, wouldn't keep him here, but she — she wanted it to. She desperately wanted it to jolt him back to life somehow.

Her hand was above his heart, but there was no pounding beat against her fingers. Nothing but cold, empty eyes.

Someone swore.

"Vanessa, let him go…" that voice said. "His parents…they're coming…they need to see him! Let him go now…"

She felt herself shaking her head. She couldn't do it. She couldn't let him go. He'd — he couldn't go. He was too young, too vibrant, too irritating. He had too much potential to leave the world now.

There was more swearing, and she thought the person speaking to her was Fudge, though she really couldn't tell.

"Where's Dumbledore? We need him to talk to her — she isn't listening —"

"They were close," someone else said. She'd have recognized that oily tone from anywhere, but still, she didn't move. She couldn't. "Miss Potter, you can't help him. He's dead."

She wasn't trying to help him. She knew he was dead. She hadn't moved her gaze from his eyes — those cold, lifeless eyes. She just wanted —

She didn't know what she wanted, actually. For this to be a dream, maybe, although it was lasting too long and was far too confusing to be a dream.

"Vanessa," Snape said, reaching forward to peel her fingers away from Cedric's shirt. The use of her first name jolted her. He never did that. He never called her that. Her gaze lifted slowly from Cedric's and she met the dark, black gaze of her Potions master. "He's gone. It's time to let him go."

He didn't sugar coat it. He didn't soften the blow. It was a statement, factual and hard in the way it was intended to be.

But it worked.

She gasped in a breath. And then another. And another.

The world was spinning around her, the sounds of the area coming back to her at once. There was so much screaming, so many whispers…the horrible sobs of Cedric's parents. It sounded like his father was expelling his own soul, his painful scream so powerfully sad that it made her legs shake under her when Snape hauled her up to her feet and moved her away.

She thought she heard Tori calling for her, but she didn't look. She couldn't look. There were tears streaming down her face, and she didn't want — she didn't want to see concern on her best friend's face. She didn't want anyone to touch her or tell her that it was going to be alright because nothing felt alright.

Even now, standing away from the commotion around Cedric's body, she could see the image of his eyes staring out into nothing. She could see it flashing behind her eyes, no matter if she had them opened or closed. That image would haunt her for the rest of her life. Until she was dead, she would see that picture, burned into her retinas until she carved them out.

There was gasping, screaming, shouting around her, but she didn't feel anything. She didn't feel any emotion or the touch of the breeze that was blowing or the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed in and out. She felt nothing. She simply…was.

"She's in shock," Snape was saying to someone.

Her eyesight was coming back a little too, though her thoughts were still muddled, and a moment later, McGonagall's blurry face appeared in her line of sight.

"Vanessa," she said, her voice oddly gentle. "Vanessa, we need you to —"

"Where's Harry?"

It was Dumbledore. He had walked over, looking grim.

"We thought he was with you," McGonagall said, turning toward him in confusion.

"I told him to stay where he was," Dumbledore said sharply. He leaned in front of her and she blinked rapidly. "Vanessa, where is Harry? Did you see where he went?"

She blinked again.

Harry.

Oh God, Harry. She hadn't even thought about Harry.

It was coming back to her in a rush now, her emotions bowling into her so suddenly that she stumbled back. Snape reached out to steady her.

"You told him to stay," she repeated, her thoughts coming back to her slowly. He had told him to stay. She'd not registered that then, but she recalled it now. And then someone had told him to — "Moody. He was with Moody."

She watched a plethora of things flash across Dumbledore's face before he turned on his heel, and pushed his way through the frightened crowd.

"Severus, Minerva," he snapped behind him. "Come with me."

Nessa jolted forward, swaying slightly as she tried to catch her bearings again.

"Miss Potter, perhaps you should wait —"

To hell with that. Whatever had Dumbledore stomping across the lawn was something she needed to be a part of. Without the eyes of Cedric looking back at her, some of her thoughts and convictions were coming back, and she had one and only one concern: her brother.

She let that thought carry her after the headmaster, let it help her find her footing again, let it clear the dizziness in her head and the blurriness of her vision. Dumbledore was moving so quickly that she had to sprint to catch up to him, and she had to jog to maintain pace beside him once she did. She had never seen him this way before, but she'd taken a side glance at him, and she understood fully why people said that the only person Voldemort feared was the aged man beside her. There was no twinkle in his eye, no benign smile, no twitching of his beard. There was cold fury in every ancient line of his face, and he radiated with power.

She was afraid of him, and she was fairly certain that he was on their side here.

She didn't dare ask him a single question as they raced up the staircase to Moody's office, and McGonagall and Snape didn't either. When they reached Moody's office, the door was closed, but Dumbledore didn't even attempt to open it. His wand already out and pointed at the doorway, he shouted "Stupefy!" There was a flash of red light that was so blindingly bright that she had to raise her hand to block it from burning her eyes, and, with great splintering and crashing, the door to the office was blasted apart.

Nessa would have gaped if she had that sort of time, but as it was, she didn't. Moody had been blown backward by the force of the spell, and Dumbledore was stepping into the office the next moment, shoving his foot underneath Moody's unconscious body and flipping him over onto his back. Nessa didn't even care what he was doing.

She shot forward into the room, and ran straight for her brother, who was sitting in a chair in front of Moody's desk. He stood at the same time that she threw her arms around his neck, nearly bowling him over. She sobbed loudly before she could stop it, the scent of him washing over her and making her heart pound fearfully in her chest.

She could have lost him. She'd been so wrapped in her own grief that she hadn't done the one thing she'd sworn she would do for the entirety of her life. He was hers to protect, and she'd nearly failed him. She'd never have forgiven herself.

He was squeezing her so hard that it made her back throb painfully, but she didn't care. He was alive. He was alive, and that was what mattered.

Pulling back from him, still crying and her cheeks wet, she put both hands on either side of his face. He was pale, and there must have been something wrong with his leg because he was keeping his weight off of it, but he was mostly unharmed other than a deep cut across his arm and some smaller cuts across his face. He was shaking though, and she could tell he was in shock.

"You're okay," she whispered, brokenly. "Oh, God, you're okay."

She couldn't tell if she was reassuring him or her or both. Her gaze raked over him, committing every bit of his face to memory.

He was shaking so much now that she was afraid he might fall over, but his grip on her wrists was strong. Normally, he would have pushed her away from him, rolled his eyes at her worry. But he gripped her so tightly that her wrists popped, and it looked like he was almost afraid to let her go. It would bruise later, but she didn't care about that either.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, his gaze locking with hers and never leaving, as if he were afraid she might disappear if he did. "I'm sorry…I tried to help him, but…my scar…Cedric wanted…"

"Shhh," she said as soothingly as she was able when her eyes were watering and her throat burned. Her voice wavered dangerously. She lifted a hand to brush the hair out of his eyes, but he refused to let go of her wrist still, so his hand followed with her. "Shhh, it's okay. Don't worry about that right now —"

McGonagall was next to them then, the thin line of her mouth wavering as if she was trying not to cry.

"Come, both of you," she whispered. "Come along…hospital wing…"

"No," said Dumbledore sharply.

"Dumbledore, he ought to — look at him — he's been through enough tonight —"

"He will stay, Minerva, because he needs to understand," said Dumbledore curtly. "Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery. He needs to know who has put him through the ordeal he has suffered tonight, and why."

Nessa didn't give a good goddamn what Dumbledore thought about it, and she'd have told him so if she thought that Harry wanted her to, but her brother was still holding onto her wrists tightly, his gaze locked on something behind her. He was clearly in a state of disbelief, but she stayed in front of him, and didn't move, letting him speak without interrupting.

"Moody," he said blankly. "How can it have been Moody?"

She wanted to be sick because she'd had a horrible feeling about him from the jump, but she'd ignored it. She ignored every feeling she'd ever had, no matter how many times she told herself to trust her gut.

This was her fault, if no one else's.

"This is not Alastor Moody," said Dumbledore quietly. The words jolted her, and she tried to turn to stare at him, but Harry held tightly to her wrists. "You have never known Alastor Moody. The real Moody would not have removed you from my sight after what happened tonight. The moment he took you, I knew — and I followed."

He had, and Nessa was suddenly understanding the flash of emotions that had crossed his face when she'd first told him. Disbelief, confusion, understanding, and anger in rapid succession.

Dumbledore bent down over Moody's limp form and put a hand inside his robes. He pulled out Moody's hip flask and a set of keys on a ring. He held the flask out to Snape, who opened it and took a sniff. His eyes flashed, but he held the flask out to Nessa. She tried to reach for it, but Harry still wouldn't release her, so Snape took a step closer — surprisingly with no cruel remark or sneer — and handed it to her. She accepted it, lifting it to her nose. There was a strong, unpleasant smell with the undertone of something medicinal.

Her gaze shot back up to Snape's. She recognized it immediately.

"Polyjuice," she said in surprise. Snape nodded.

Dumbledore watched the two of them for a moment before he interrupted.

"Severus, please fetch me the strongest Truth Potion you possess, and then go down to the kitchens and bring up the house-elf called Winky. Minerva, kindly go down to Hagrid's house, where you will find a large black dog sitting in the pumpkin patch. Take the dog up to my office, tell him I will be with him shortly, then come back here."

If either Snape or McGonagall found these instructions peculiar, they hid their confusion. Both turned at once and left the office.

The dog, Nessa understood. That had to be Sirius and it wasn't at all surprising. If he'd heard the screaming on the pitch, he was likely in near hysterics.

But she had no idea what in the hell he needed Winky for.

Nessa had questions she'd have liked to ask, but she didn't. Whatever Dumbledore was realizing would be revealed to her in a moment and his weird instructions were not her biggest concern. As Dumbledore walked over to the suitcase to the side of Moody's desk — a suitcase that had seven locks — and began trying to unlock each of the clasps, she used what she could of her hands to push Harry back down into the seat he'd been occupying when they'd entered.

"Sit," she said quietly, kneeling in front of him. She nearly toppled over without the use of her arms to balance her, but Harry's grip held her up until she could get her footing. She could hear the clicking and opening of the trunk behind her. She tugged on her hands lightly. "Harry, let me go. I just want to look at you."

There was a panic in his gaze that made her heart crack down the center. He'd never been so afraid to let go of her before.

"Okay, you can hold this one," she said, shaking her left hand in his grasp. "But I need the other. I just want to look at your injuries, okay?"

He hesitated a moment before he released her right wrist, and she flexed her hand in an attempt to regain feeling in her fingers. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out her wand, and worked on healing the minor cuts and bruises she could see on his body. With a shaky hand, she pressed on his leg. He hissed loudly and her head shot up to look at him.

"What happened here?" she said gently.

"An Acromantula fell on it," he said, his voice dull. She hid her wince at the sound of it as best as she could.

"Hagrid and those damned spiders," she muttered, lifting his pant leg as best she could with only one hand. There was blood there, but it didn't look broken. Of what she could see, there was a nice slice down his leg and it was a horrible purple and blue color. "Madame Pomfrey will have to look at it. The cut is too deep for me to heal on my own."

"It's okay," Harry said softly, his voice still dull. She hated it. Harry's gaze snagged at whatever Dumbledore was doing, and he let out a cry of amazement.

Nessa whirled, raising her wand before she realized what Harry was looking at.

Whatever compartment of the trunk he'd opened was…

Well, it was just a black pit. Some sort of underground room that was very small, but at least ten feet deep. Nessa stood, trying to look at the bottom, and gasped in surprise. On the floor of the pit, thin and starved in appearance, was the real Mad-Eye Moody. His wooden leg was gone, the socket that should have held the magical eye looked empty beneath its lid, and chunks of his grizzled hair were missing. Harry stared, thunderstruck, between the Moody at the bottom of the trunk and the unconscious Moody lying on the floor behind the desk.

Dumbledore climbed into the trunk, lowered himself, and fell lightly onto the floor beside the sleeping Moody.

"Vanessa, if you would?"

She gaped at him for a moment because it seemed as if he were asking her to join him down there, but she jolted into action a moment later. She was pulled to a stop by her brother's grasp on her wrist. She sent him a pained look, pulling off her cardigan and bunching it in her brother's hands.

"Hold this," she said gently. "I'll be right back, okay? Hold that for me?"

He nodded, releasing her after a moment's hesitation, and holding her sweater to his chest as if he were afraid to let it go. Sitting there, hugging her sweater, he looked like a lost little boy again, and there was a spark of rage in her chest.

Her brother, who was the bravest human being she'd ever met, looked like he'd been trampled over, his spirit having been stripped completely.

She'd kill every last individual that had done this to him, and she'd not rest until she did.

Dumbledore had conjured some sort of ladder to help her climb down into the pit next to him and she landed with a gentle noise beside him. There wasn't a ton of room down here, but he knelt down in front of Moody, peeling his eyelid open.

"The Imperius Curse," she said, watching the way the eye rolled in its socket in the same way that Krum's had.

"I concur," the headmaster agreed. "He appears to only be Stunned otherwise."

She moved forward, kneeling next to Dumbledore to get a good read on the unconscious man in front of her. His pulse was rapid, far too rapid, but not surprising given the state he was in. His skin was ice cold.

"Harry?" She called up to her brother. "Can you give me Moody's — or whoever he is — cloak. This Moody is a bit too cold for my liking."

Dumbledore nodded, catching the cloak that Harry tossed down to them and covering the real Moody in it.

"I think he'll be okay," she said, running a few more spells to be sure. "He isn't in the best of conditions, and he should see Madame Pomfrey as soon as possible, but they needed him alive for the Polyjuice Potion. He's very weak."

"Very well," Dumbledore said, gesturing for her to climb back up to the classroom. "I trust your judgment. We'll get him to Pomfrey once we get down to the bottom of this."

She had suspicions that Dumbledore already knew what was going on, but she didn't argue, instead taking his lead and climbing back up the ladder to the classroom. She was much shorter than Dumbledore was, so it took her nearly twice as long as it did him. He was able to pull himself up far sooner than she had.

Nessa went to her brother instantly, taking her cardigan back and wrapping it back around herself before she let Harry grab onto one of her wrists again. She smiled at him gently.

"You sure you want to sit and wait for this?" she said.

Her brother was not weak by any means, but he looked exhausted and pale, and she wanted nothing more than to tuck him into bed and wait out the storm outside.

Harry nodded weakly, and Dumbledore spoke again, as if Harry's acquiescence was all he'd been waiting for.

"You see the simplicity of it, and the brilliance," the headmaster said, unscrewing the hip flask and letting the thick glutinous potion splatter onto the office floor. "For Moody never does drink except from his hip flask, he's well known for it. The imposter needed, of course, to keep the real Moody close by, so that he could continue making the potion. You see his hair…" he said, looking down to the Moody at the bottom of the trunk. "The imposter has been cutting it off all year, see where it is uneven? But I think, in the excitement of tonight, our fake Moody might have forgotten to take it as frequently as he should have done…on the hour…every hour…We shall see."

She assumed that Dumbledore was speaking so clearly to her brother because she'd already assumed as much herself. Harry was familiar with Polyjuice potion himself, but he looked so shocked that she wasn't sure he was able to make any connections on his own at the moment.

So they waited, watching the Moody on the floor of the office as they waited for McGonagall and Snape to return. Minutes passed in silence. Silence which Nessa had to work very hard not to let herself fall into, for her mind wanted to run over everything that had happened in the last several hours. It wanted to flash Cedric's cold, empty eyes across her memory, and replay the last words she'd ever said to him. It wanted to bring her to her knees with guilt about having let herself grieve while her brother was in danger.

She worked very hard at keeping her mind blank because now was not the time. Now was not about her.

Then, before their eyes, the face of the man on the floor began to change. The scars were disappearing, the skin becoming smooth; the mangled nose became whole and started to shrink. The long mane of grizzled hair was withdrawing into the scalp and turning the color of straw. Suddenly, with a loud clunk, the wooden leg fell away as a normal leg grew in its place; next moment, the magical eyeball had popped out of the man's face as a real one replaced it; it rolled away across the floor and continued to swivel in every direction.

The man lying before her was pale-skinned, slightly freckled, and had a mop of fair hair. He was younger than she'd expected, and very handsome, but she had no idea who he was. Harry was gaping at him though.

"What?" she said, looking between her brother and the man on the floor. "Who is he?"

She was always a step behind somehow, but her brother never got the chance to answer her. There were hurried footsteps outside in the corridor. Snape had returned with Winky at his heels. Professor McGonagall was right behind them.

"Crouch!" said Snape before Harry could explain. He'd stopped dead in the doorway. "Barty Crouch!"

"What?" Nessa said, staring at the man before her.

What the hell was happening? Barty Crouch? Junior? He'd been dead. He was dead. Except he was definitely breathing, and she'd watched the potion fade herself, so there was no way that it was a farce. You couldn't turn into two separate people at once, so this was no hoax or mistake.

But how? Her head hurt. Everything hurt.

"Good heavens," said Professor McGonagall, stopping dead, and staring down at the man on the floor.

Filthy, disheveled, WInky peered around Snape's legs. Her mouth opened wide and she let out a piercing shriek.

"Master Barty, Master Barty, what is you doing here?"

God, she'd known. The elf had known.

Suddenly, she wished Harry wasn't occupying the only chair.

Winky flung herself forward onto the young man's chest.

"You is killed him! You is killed him! You is killed Master's son!"

"He is simply Stunned, Winky," said Dumbledore. "Step aside, please. Severus, you have the potion?"

Snape handed Dumbledore a small glass bottle of completely clear liquid. Nessa blinked in surprise — Veritaserum. It was the strongest truth potion there was. Incredibly hard to brew and expensive to procure. He had threatened Harry with it once, she remembered through the shock of the evening. It had pissed her off. But now, Dumbledore was accepting the potion for himself, and forcing the young man up into a sitting position against the wall. Winky remained on her knees, trembling, her hands over her face. Dumbledore forced the man's mouth open and poured three drops inside it. Then he pointed his wand at the man's chest and revived him.

Crouch's son opened his eyes, but he didn't panic. Either the potion had rendered him confused — it tended to at first — or he'd hit his head so hard on the floor that he had no way of panicking. She didn't know which. His face was slack, his gaze unfocused. Dumbledore knelt before him, so that their faces were level.

"Can you hear me?" Dumbledore asked quietly.

The man's eyelids flickered. He'd definitely hit his head too hard, but she wasn't about to say so. Perhaps she was an evil person herself, but she found no pity within herself for the man before her.

"Yes," Crouch muttered.

"I would like you to tell us," said Dumbledore softly. "How you came to be here. How did you escape Azkaban?"

Okay, they were starting from the beginning, good. Because it felt like she'd lost all ability for independent thinking at this point.

Crouch took a deep, shuddering breath, then began to speak in a flat, expressionless voice.

"My mother saved me. She knew she was dying. She persuaded my father to rescue me as a last favor to her. He loved her as he had never loved me. He agreed. They came to visit me. They gave me a draught of Polyjuice Potion containing one of my mother's hairs. She took a draught of Polyjuice Potion containing one of my hairs. We took on each other's appearance."

Winky was shaking her head, trembling.

"Say no more, Master Barty, say no more, you is getting your father into trouble!"

But Crouch took another deep breath and continued in the same flat voice.

"The dementors are blind. They sensed one healthy, one dying person entering Azkaban. They sensed one healthy, one dying person leaving it. My father smuggled me out, disguised as my mother, in case any prisoners were watching through their doors. My mother died a short while afterward in Azkaban. She was careful to drink Polyjuice Potion until the end. She was buried under my name and bearing my appearance. Everyone believed her to be me."

The man's eyelids flickered.

"And what did your father do with you, when he had got you home?" said Dumbledore quietly.

"Staged my mother's death. A quiet, private funeral. That grave is empty. The house-elf nursed me back to health. Then I had to be concealed. I had to be controlled. My father had to use a number of spells to subdue me. When I had recovered my strength, I thought only of finding my master…of returning to his service."

She wanted to strangle him to death. It was an immediate, violent urge that hit her so suddenly, she had not an ounce of time to feel alarmed by it. This was a man who she had pitied once for being neglected. Had wondered if he'd even deserved to go to Azkaban. She wished he'd died there.

"How did your father subdue you?" said Dumbledore.

"The Imperius Curse," Crouch said. She winced. "I was under my father's control. I was forced to wear an Invisibility Cloak day and night. I was always with the house-elf. She was my keeper and caretaker. She pitied me. She persuaded my father to give me occasional treats. Rewards for my good behavior."

"Master Barty, Master Barty," sobbed Winky through her hands. "You isn't ought to tell them…we is getting in trouble…"

"Did anybody ever discover that you were still alive?" said Dumbledore softly. "Did anyone know except your father and the house-elf?"

"Yes," said Crouch, his eyes flickering again. "A witch in my father's office. Bertha Jorkins. She came to the house with papers for my father's signature. He was not at home. Winky showed her inside and returned to the kitchen, to me. But Bertha Jorkins heard Winky talking to me. She came to investigate. She heard enough to guess who was hiding under the Invisibility Cloak. My father arrived home. She confronted him. He put a very powerful Memory Charm on her to make her forget what she'd found out. Too powerful. He said it damaged her memory permanently."

Jesus, Bertha…She'd had a really rough go of things if she was really dead. Why hadn't she pretended not to hear and taken it up with the Ministry afterward? Why had she tried to take care of things herself? Her boss had been deranged to house a criminal, and confronting him was a dangerous thing.

But it wasn't Bertha's fault. She'd been trying to do the right thing. And Crouch…

God, if Percy knew what his boss had actually done…

"Why is she coming to nose into my master's private business?" sobbed Winky. "Why isn't she leaving us be?"

"Tell me about the Quidditch World Cup," said Dumbledore.

"Winky talked my father into it," said Crouch, still in the same monotonous voice. "She spent months persuading him. I had not left the house for years. I had loved Quidditch. Let him go, she said. He will be in his Invisibility Cloak. He can watch. Let him smell fresh air for once. She said my mother would have wanted it. She told my father that my mother had died to give me freedom. She had not saved me for a life of imprisonment. He agreed in the end. It was carefully planned. My father led me and Winky up to the Top Box early in the day. Winky was to say that she was saving a seat for my father. I was to sit there, invisible. When everyone had left the box, we would emerge. Winky would appear to be alone. Nobody would ever know. But Winky didn't know that I was growing stronger. I was starting to fight my father's Imperius Curse. There were times when I was almost myself again. There were brief periods when I seemed outside his control. It happened, there, in the Top Box. It was like waking from a deep sleep. I found myself out in public, in the middle of the match, and I saw, in front of me, a wand sticking out of a boy's pocket. I had not been allowed a wand since Azkaban. I stole it."

Nessa growled at him before she could stop herself. He'd been the one to cast the Mark then. With her brother's wand. And, though they were lucky he hadn't done anything else to Harry while he'd been sitting there totally unaware, she wanted to slap him. Snape looked at her out of the corner of his eye, but he didn't say anything and Crouch didn't even seem to hear her.

"Winky didn't know. Winky is frightened of heights. She had her face hidden."

"Master Barty, you bad boy!" whispered Winky, tears trickling between her fingers.

"So you took the wand," said Dumbledore. "And what did you do with it?"

"We went back to the tent," said Crouch. "Then we heard them. We heard the Death Eaters. The ones who had never been to Azkaban. The ones who had never suffered for my master," And there was something in his voice now, some of his anger breaking through the effects of the potion now, even though it forced his mouth to keep moving. There was hatred there of the darkest kind. It made her want to flinch back. How had he so easily fooled his mother into believing he deserved to be free? That sort of hatred would have been hard to mask. "They had turned their backs on him. They were not enslaved, as I was. They were free to seek him, but they did not. They were merely making sport of Muggles. The sound of their voices awoke me. My mind was clearer than it had been in years. I was angry. I had the wand. I wanted to attack them for their disloyalty to my master. They were nothing but cowards."

The last word had been spit out of his mouth as if the word disgusted him, and Nessa did not miss the look he sent in Snape's direction. Neither did Snape, based on the sneer he sent back.

"My father had left the tent; he had gone to free the Muggles," Crouch continued, his voice slipping back into monotony. "Winky was afraid to see me so angry. She used her own brand of magic to bind me to her. She pulled me from the tent, pulled me into the forest, away from the Death Eaters. I tried to hold her back. I wanted to return to the campsite. I wanted to show those Death Eaters what loyalty to the Dark Lord meant, and to punish them for their lack of it. I used the stolen wand to cast the Dark Mark into the sky. Ministry wizards arrived. They shot Stunning Spells everywhere. One of the spells came through the trees where Winky and I stood. The bond connecting us was broken. We were both Stunned. When Winky was discovered, my father knew I must be nearby. He searched the bushes where she had been found and felt me lying there. He waited until the other Ministry members had left the forest. He put me back under the Imperius Curse and took me home. He dismissed Winky. She had failed him. She had let me acquire a wand. She had almost let me escape."

Winky let out a wail of despair.

"Now it was just Father and I, alone in the house. And then…and then…." Crouch's head rolled on his neck, and an insane grin spread across his face. One so insane that Nessa ripped her wrist from her brother's and moved in front of him. Because absolutely the fuck not. Harry had been alone with him so many times that her entire heart stopped in her chest. He was clearly insane. "My master came for me," he breathed as if he'd been given a gift that no one else could ever be lucky enough to receive. "He arrived at our house late one night in the arms of his servant Wormtail. My master had found out that I was still alive. He had captured Bertha Jorkins in Albania. He had tortured her. She told him a great deal. She told him about the Triwizard Tournament. She told him the old Auror, Moody, was going to teach at Hogwarts. He tortured her until he broke through the Memory Charm my father had placed upon her. She told him I had escaped Azkaban. She told him my father kept me imprisoned to keep me from finding my master."

Nessa swallowed down the bile that was rising in her throat.

How badly did someone have to be tortured to break through a Memory Charm? They were no easy spell to break, though she was unfamiliar with the specifics of how it worked. Once a memory had been altered, only those with a strong presence of mind could break through the barrier to their lost memory. It was said to be painful to do, which may have been the reason that most avoided doing so — or couldn't break them at all.

More difficult and painful if the charm was powerful. The charm Lockhart had performed on himself likely would never reverse. The pain of fighting against it would either send him into shock, insanity, or worse.

But to torture someone so desperately that they wanted to break through a spell of that power? One that had altered her brain chemistry entirely? Nessa could not fathom that level of pain or desperation. She didn't want to. She hoped she never did.

Would Bertha even have been the same person after something like that?

But Crouch clearly did not find any of this as disturbing as she did because he spoke next sounding almost…prideful.

"And so my master knew that I was still his faithful servant — perhaps the most faithful of all. My master conceived a plan, based upon the information Bertha had given him. He needed me. He arrived at our house near midnight. My father answered the door."

The smile spread wider over Crouch's face, as though recalling the sweetest memory of his life. Nessa's heart was pounding in her chest, that smile sending her adrenaline into overdrive. Winky's petrified brown eyes were visible through her fingers. She seemed too appalled to speak.

"It was very quick. My father was placed under the Imperius Curse by my master. Now my father was the one imprisoned, controlled. My master forced him to go about his business as usual, to act as though nothing was wrong. And I was released. I awoke. I was myself again, as I hadn't been in years."

"And what did Lord Voldemort ask you to do?" said Dumbledore.

"He asked me whether I was ready to risk everything for him. I was ready. It was my dream, my greatest ambition, to serve him, to prove myself to him. He told me he needed a faithful servant at Hogwarts. A servant who would guide Harry Potter through the Triwizard Tournament without appearing to do so. A servant who would watch over Harry Potter. Ensure he reached the Triwizard Cup. Then the Cup into a Portkey, which would take the first person to touch it to my master. But first —"

"You needed Alastor Moody," said Dumbledore. His blue eyes were blazing, though his voice remained calm.

She had no idea how he managed it. Her hands were shaking with rage, her gaze narrowed on the man before them, spilling out his guts without the ability to stop it.

She was going to kill him. If they gave her one opening, she would do it.

"Wormtail and I did it," he continued, unaware of her thoughts. "We had prepared the Polyjuice Potion beforehand. We journeyed to his house. Moody put up a struggle. There was a commotion. We managed to subdue him just in time. Forced him into a compartment of his own magical trunk. Took some of his hair and added it to the potion. I drank it; I became Moody's double. I took his leg and his eye. I was ready to face Arthur Weasley when he arrived to sort out the Muggles who had heard a disturbance. I made the dustbins move around the yard. I told Arthur Weasley I had heard intruders in my yard, who had set off the dustbins. Then I packed up Moody's clothes and Dark Detectors, put them in the trunk with Moody, and set off for Hogwarts. I kept him alive, under the Imperius Curse. I wanted to be able to question him. To find out about his past, learn his habits, so that I could fool even Dumbledore."

Bang up job as far as Nessa was concerned. Dumbledore had suspected nothing.

"I also needed Moody's hair to make the Polyjuice Potion. The other ingredients were easy. I stole boomslang skin from the dungeons. When the Potions master found me in his office, I said I was under orders to search it."

Nessa swayed under the words.

The Map had said Barry Crouch was there. They had the same name. It hadn't distinguished between son or father. They'd assumed it had meant Sr.

And why would they have assumed otherwise anyway? They all had assumed Crouch's son was dead.

"And what became of Wormtail after you attacked Moody?" said Dumbledore.

"Wormtail returned to care for my master, in my father's house, and to keep watch over my father."

"But your father escaped."

"Yes. After a while, he began to fight the Imperius Curse just as I had done. There were periods when he knew what was happening. My master decided it was no longer safe for my father to leave the house. He forced him to send letters to the Ministry instead. He made him write and say he was ill. But Wormtail had neglected his duty. He was not watchful enough. My father escaped. My master guessed that he was heading for Hogwarts. My father was going to tell Dumbledore everything, to confess. He was going to admit that he had smuggled me from Azkaban. My master sent me word of my father's escape. He told me to stop him at all costs. So I waited and watched. I used the map I had taken from Harry Potter. The map that had almost ruined everything."

Shit, she's forgotten about the map. Dumbledore didn't let it slide by either.

"Map?" said Dumbledore quickly. "What map is this?"

"Potter's map of Hogwarts. Potter saw me on it. Potter saw me stealing more ingredients for the Polyjuice Potion from Snape's office one night. He thought I was my father. We have the same first name. I took the map from Potter that night. I told him my father hated Dark Wizards. Potter believed my father was after Snape. For a week I waited for my father to arrive at Hogwarts. At last, one evening, the map showed my father entering the grounds. I pulled on my Invisibility Cloak and went down to meet him. He was walking around the edge of the forest. Then Potter came, and Krum. I waited. I could not hurt Potter; my master needed him. Potter ran to get Dumbledore. It was dark. I waited to be sure Potter would not see the spell. But I waited too long. Vanessa Potter came out to help. I waited until she was focused on my father. I Stunned Krum from behind. She went to help him as I knew she would. I killed my father then. When she wasn't looking."

The words sent a searing pain through her head, and she hissed, grabbing onto both sides of her head as the image came back to her then.

She whirled around, recognizing that bright flash of green…Crouch was on the ground now, eyes unseeing…

She stumbled forward to grab the desk and Harry came with her, looking at her in concern. God, his eyes…

They'd looked so like Cedric's…

Winky's sobbing pulled her from that dive before she could fully begin to plummet.

"Nooo!" the elf wailed. "Master Barty, Master Barty, what is you saying?"

Nessa clung to the memory, despite the burning in her head, willing the rest of it to come back with it, as Dumbledore continued.

"You didn't kill Vanessa?" he said quietly.

"I wanted to," Crouch said dully. "She complicated my plans. She was too perceptive. She hated me from the moment she saw me in the Great Hall on that first day. I saw it in her eyes. Her suspicion. Every time I helped Harry Potter, she argued. She whispered in his ear. But he was stubborn. I hadn't accounted for that. I got lucky. Killing her would cause suspicion, and I had a task to complete for my master. I could not fail. I could not kill a student while Dumbledore was near. He would tear the school apart to find out who had done it. So we dueled."

They had.

She gasped, falling to her knees as the images came back to her in a rush. Moody was still talking but she was already reliving it. Unsure how she'd forgotten it to begin with.

There was a flash of blinding green light and she whirled with a scream. She'd recognize that light from anywhere, her entire body seizing as if it were completely giving over to the fear. She landed on her bottom with a thud that rattled her teeth, but she barely felt it at all.

Not when her eyes had come to rest on Crouch's, which were now staring unseeingly at her, all of the emotion and life having completely left them, taking the madness and all of his answers with him.

Someone had killed him. Someone had killed someone on the grounds of Hogwarts. She hadn't even seen it happen — he'd been there one minute, and completely gone the next. She hadn't even had the time to react.

Her breath left her in a desperate rush and she scrambled backwards when there was a rustle from the trees in front of her.

Shit, shit, shit.

She was going to die too, wasn't she? There was no way to block the Killing Curse, and she was too panicked to run. She couldn't even feel her limbs. She had neither fight nor flight in her arsenal — instead she froze completely as the person stepped out from the cover of the trees.

Her heart stuttered to a stop, her breath catching in her throat in shock.

A fucking teacher. It was a fucking teacher that was out to get Harry. And she should have known it was him. She should have trusted her gut, damn what everyone else had said about him.

Because with that whirring eye and the clunk of his wooden leg, there was absolutely no mistaking who she was looking at.

"Professor Moody," she snarled, some of her fear evaporating, anger replacing it.

She'd kill him.

There was a snap as a tree branch cracked and fell to the ground, and she didn't jump this time. The anger was swelling in her chest, burning away her sanity.

She'd let everyone make excuses for his behavior. She'd let herself make excuses. She'd chosen to look the other way. Her brother would pay the price for that if she did nothing now.

She let that anger bubble up in her chest without a fight, magic shooting sparks out of her wand in warning.

Moody barely blinked and didn't appear at all alarmed by the tree that had broken behind him. He had a look of pure hatred twisting across his face, and his tongue darted out rapidly like the tongue of a snake.

"I knew you would be a nuisance, Miss Potter," he growled. "You really should learn to mind your own business."

She let the burning anger pull her from her moment of frozen horror. She let it fill her up enough that she could begin to fight back, and when his first spell came flying toward her, she rolled across the ground to avoid it. Before he could send another, she'd pointed her wand at him, and shouted, "Confringo!"

A ball of flame went whirring toward him, but he put it out with a blast of water, sending a bright blue light in her direction. She only barely managed to deflect it, sending a stunning spell in his direction. It bounced off a shield she couldn't see, and she made a mental note — if she lived through this — to learn whatever the hell that was. He wasn't fast enough to avoid her next spell though.

"Diffindo!"

She'd aimed for the chest because she wasn't getting out of this alive unless she took him down first, and she was nowhere near as soft as her brother when she was this pissed off. She didn't care if the Severing Charm ripped his heart out. At the moment, she hoped it did. He had answers she likely wanted, but he'd tried to get her brother killed. It was the only explanation for putting his name in the goblet.

And it was a fatal mistake because she held one bitch of a grudge.

But he'd moved at the very last minute, much quicker on that leg of his than she'd really thought possible. And it ended up slicing his arm open instead. She smirked when he hissed. It hadn't done what she'd wanted, but it had done something, and she could live with that. She dodged a spell, feeling a bit smug for having hit an ex-Auror with at all.

It was the smugness that cost her.

The next of his spells did hit her, sending her flying backward, twirling through the air like a tornado. The ground was hard and cold and her head smacked against some sort of tree limb with a CRACK. There was a blinding pain, and she groaned, trying to force her body to move. There was so much adrenaline coursing through her that she managed it, but he was there in the next moment, pushing her back down with a foot to her chest, and kicking her wand away from her with his wooden leg.

Shit, shit, shit. Why had she gotten cocky? One spell meant nothing if he was still standing.

Her head turned to the left and whatever breath was left in her body left her in a rush. Crouch. She opened her mouth to scream because she'd never been so close to a dead body before and for some reason it terrified the hell out of her, but Moody muttered, "Obliviate!" and her mind went foggy.

The next moment everything went black.

She was gasping sharply as everything rushed back to her then, the blinding pain so horrible that it had sent streams of tears down her face. Her throat was dry from her too quick breathing, and her heart was pounding in her chest. Harry was kneeling on one side of her, Snape on the other, but she didn't care at all. She didn't even notice them because —

Her dreams had been real. They'd been real. Not some sort of paranoia or stress-induced nightmare. They'd been real, and she'd merely been fighting against the charm he'd placed on her.

And that meant —

"Oh God," she gasped with a sob she couldn't stop. "They were real."

She could have stopped everything if she'd just told someone about her dreams. She could have stopped it all if she had told anyone that she thought she'd been attacked by Moody in the forest. Harry would never have been taken to Voldemort. Voldemort's plans for return would have failed.

Cedric would be alive.

She was going to be sick.

She shot forward, barely making it to the trashcan next to Moody's desk before she spilled the contents of her dinner. It felt like her insides were trying to escape from her body, like even her organs couldn't stand to be near her after what she'd done.

She was gasping by the time she'd finished, letting her head rest against the desk with closed eyes.

This was her fault. She'd done this.

"Miss Potter?" Dumbledore said. He was asking her if she was okay to continue, and she wasn't sure that she was, but…

But if she was the reason that all of this had happened…she wanted to hear the rest.

"Keep going," she said, her voice coming out raspy. She lifted her gaze to meet Barty Crouch's, her chest filling with rage.

Dumbledore gave her a piercing look before he continued.

"You dueled with Vanessa?" he said, his voice still calm.

"I beat her," Crouch said. There was no pride in his voice, but the words made her snarl at him anyway. "She is powerful. I had noticed in classes how skilled of a duelist she was. But her actions were clouded with anger. She let it overtake her. She got smug. She went down easier than I expected. I didn't know when Harry Potter would be back with Dumbledore. I had to act quickly. I subdued her. I cast a Memory Charm on her. I was careful to make sure it did not impact her mind. I made her forget everything that had happened after she noticed that Krum had been Stunned. I made her forget I had been there. I made her forget my father was dead. I kept an eye on her afterward. She has a strong mind. She fought off the Imperius Curse in class with a skill I had only ever seen in her brother. I was worried that she would fight the spell, that she would remember what had happened. If she did, I would have no choice but to kill her. She grew suspicious of me, but she did not remember." Crouch lifted his gaze to hers then, grinning widely, his insanity clear in the sparkle of his eyes. He met her rage-filled, watery eyes head on, and she refused to lower her gaze. The words he said next nearly sent her into a spiral. "She had failed. She had failed at the one thing she had promised herself. She had failed to save her brother."

The devastation of those words hit her, causing her to sway dangerously. Snape caught her.

"You stupid son of a bitch," she whispered brokenly. McGonagall gasped, but she didn't care. She'd failed him. She'd done that. She'd done this. It was ringing in her ears now, causing everything else to fade around her until it deafened her completely. "You arrogant, selfish prick."

Dumbledore gave her a hard look. She didn't care about it — because she was too far gone in devastation and rage to be afraid of what would happen to her — but he didn't wait for her to come to terms with anything. He continued on as if her world hadn't been shattered.

"You killed your father," Dumbledore said, in the same soft voice. "What did you do with the body?"

"Carried it into the forest. Covered it with the Invisibility Cloak. I had the map with me. I watched Potter bringing Dumbledore out of the castle. I walked back out of the forest, healed my arm to avoid suspicion, doubled around behind them, and went to meet them. I told Dumbledore Snape had told me where to come. Dumbledore told me to go and look for my father. I went back to my father's body. Watched the map. When everyone was gone, I Transfigured my father's body. He became a bone…I buried it, while wearing the Invisibility Cloak, in the freshly dug earth in front of Hagri's cabin."

There was complete silence now, outside of Winky's continued sobs and Nessa's panting breaths. Her body had completely given out, and her head rolled onto Snape's shoulder. If he found this intrusive, he didn't say anything. Then Dumbledore said, "And tonight…"

"I offered to carry the Triwizard Cup into the maze before dinner," whispered Barty Crouch. "Turned it into a Portkey. My master's plan worked. I felt it when he called. He is returned to power and I will be honored by him beyond the dreams of wizards."

The insane smile lit his features once more, and his head dropped onto his shoulder as Winky wailed and sobbed at this side.

I don't think Rowling ever wrote about how to fight off the Memory Charm, so I'm taking liberties here.

I can also officially confirm that there will be 2 chapters after this one and then off to OotP.

Next up: Nessa might lose it…a little bit. She doesn't have chill, what can I say?