The muggle aurors wear dark outfits with short coats and little hats that look almost like bowls. Instead of letting parchment and a free-floating quill do the writing, one of them holds a pen in his hand, scratching away on a little pad of paper as Barty spins his story.
It's absolutely crucial to see this the way muggles do. He's an unidentified man, found bleeding in an alley. He lacked identification of any sort, was wearing peculiar clothes for a muggle, and looks…Barty hasn't seen himself in a mirror yet, hasn't looked at his own reflection in years; so he has no clue what he looks like. He'll have to go by the way he feels.
His hair's the same length that he's always preferred it, a bit too short for the more traditional pureblood's tastes, but perfect for playing muggle if the styles muggleborns prefer are any indication. His eyelids weigh too much for his liking, stinging like they do when he's stayed up for nights in a row. His joints feel too loosely connected, like the apparation nearly pulled his body apart. Barty probably looks like a muggle who's been run over by one of their cars, except no, they're not as hardy as wizards. There wouldn't be anything left of a muggle under something as heavy as that.
The gash on his arm…a weapon, yes, and Barty lacks a single piece of muggle paper money on him.
"There were three of them, sir," Barty's voice shakes just right for a fearful man, even if it is helped along by the uncontrollable trembling throughout his body, " I gave them everything I had and they still…" Maybe he should grab at the wound on his arm for emphasis. No, that'd hurt too much, hunching over just enough to look small should do the trick.
The muggle aurors have matching sympathetic frowns and pitying looks, but they're professionals just like any wizard official. So, they carry on with their questions after a murmur of sympathy.
"Do you remember any details? What they were wearing or their faces?"
"No sir," Barty shakes his head, the world tilting a bit at the motion. He clenches his hand, trying to keep from tipping over, "I'm sorry, it's a blur to be honest." Which is believable to the muggles who've only just managed to get a name from the poor bloke suffering a concussion along with everything else. Apparently Barty's ability to watch the healer's little handheld lights leaves much to be desired.
"Alright, Mr. Evans, if you can recall anything else, just let the doctors know and they'll get a hold of us," says the taller of the muggle aurors.
Barty grimaces one of those fake polite smiles as the men leave, his false last name one that he…should've picked something else. He has no clue if the Evans muggle family is a well-known one in the muggle world. The muggle population is so much larger than the wizarding world, so he may have picked a name with a thousand branches.
Or Lily Evans' family may be a famous household name where the lives of every member is picked apart in the gossip articles. They did produce a notably powerful witch, something that seems impossible for a mundane muggle line.
It's just, no other name came to mind when the muggle healers had asked. Out of all the muggleborn students, a solid chunk in his own year and not two above like that woman, her name's the only one he can remember. The space left behind from the awful haze of the imperious curse took something…No, it pushed everything away. The incantations of spells are coming back, like that one healing charm that arrived almost too late. And the faces and names from Barty's school years are emerging from the muck of submerged memories.
If Barty closes his eyes, leans back, and listens, he can even hear a few of them. Like Smith and Jones, muggle enough names that he could have snatched instead of hers when the healers asked him who he was.
At least he didn't call himself Luke or Larry, placing his false name even closer to Lily's. While Bartemius only belongs to the wizarding world, Barty is short enough for a muggle first name, quick to say and lacking that obvious history that's tucked away in the longer pureblood syllables.
Barty Evans.
For however long it takes until the muggle healers release him from this hospital, his name is Barty Evans. A mugged stranger found in a dark alley. His memories a mess in his head from hitting the ground instead of drowning for years under an unforgivable curse.
The pillow's soft. Wasn't he sitting up only moments ago, talking to someone? Not that it matters, the bed's comfortable and the thick blanket warm, as Barty curls under it. His body aching from…frankly, the loose pain signifies that wonderful occurrence of tumbling from a broomstick and right into the stands. The crowd screaming in excitement and fear as they scatter out of the way. That Hufflepuff beater swatted the bludger Barty's way, the bloody ball smashing right into his arm, sending him crashing as the bone snapped from the hit. Cresswell had better have caught the damn snitch if Barty's going to be stuck in the Hospital Wing.
When Barty opens his eyes, the placement of the beds aren't right. Somehow, everything looks…off, out of place, like there should be more beds or the ceiling, was it always this low? Yet…the sight to his side is completely right. Black hair, just long enough to obscure the face of the person checking something along his bedside. The lean figure's quite quiet as he fiddles, but Barty's a very light sleeper. So, Regulus Black should know better than to assume he's sneaky enough to not wake him.
"Did we win? Did Cresswell catch the snitch?" Barty's voice rasps, and when has he ever sounded that terrible? Like the sound of an abandoned attic room personified.
Regulus jolts, glancing at him with dark brown eyes that are wrong because every Black that Barty's seen has grey eyes. Dark like the thunderstorms at sea if one looks close enough. Not dirt brown like a muggle healer, holding an empty bag that had been full of that clear fluid the muggles insisted on pumping into his arm through those little tubes…
Regulus Black has been dead for years, the knowledge bursts up to the surface as Barty closes his eyes.
"Sorry, sir. I didn't catch that–" apologizes a voice that's too deep to be Regulus' soft, feathery tones.
"Go away." That burst of knowledge rots his patience, leaving thick black anger in its wake. A muggle is not going to watch him remember the death of Regulus, of why that even matters after meaning less than nothing when it was just a fact of the world that existed outside of a pleasant haze.
The lights flicker, even through his closed eyelids, Barty sees the dim lights of the room go black. He can feel them smothering around the magic bleeding off of him. The muggle electricity powering those lights sparks in the walls, fighting feebly against his senses, against the pain oozing from everywhere.
"Wilson! Something's wrong with the power!" A shout far enough away not to be the muggle healer draws the man away from Barty's bedside. Footsteps recede into the distance as loud inhuman shrieks blare out from somewhere in the building.
Barty can sense those shrieks too, pulsating noisemaking machines connected to the electricity in the walls. Can sense as a part of him crawls over the copper wires hidden beneath the plaster, the electricity sharp against his magic. He should smother it all, make it all as silent as he was for years and years and years.
Too thin, Barty Crouch is pulled too thinly through those little wires in the walls. The trembling worsens the further he stretches out until all the sparks of electricity through the muggle structure hurt worse than the pain inside pushing his magic out into the rooms and corridors around him.
The magic snaps back all at once, cracking the glass of the muggle box with its spiking green lines and knocking Barty right into the darkness where he doesn't have to remember anything at all.