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Something is wrong with Harry Potter. No one else seems to notice, or perhaps they just ignore it. Barty can't tell, and doesn't know which would be worse. Perhaps this is how teenagers are now, all lethargic and glassy-eyed facing war or simply on some new drug. Barty still feels eighteen and fresh out of Hogwarts, but he doesn't remember anything like Potter.
It starts like this--
Slowly, because Barty hasn't been around people in far too long. Before that, his companions had mostly been his fellow Death Eaters in Azkaban. The fact that he isn't caught immediately says far more about the pitiful standards of the Defense position than it does of Barty's health. He suspects that Moody's own erratic reputation helps. He shows his classes the Unforgivable Curses (all of his classes, and hears from McGonagall exactly how poorly it affects most of the lower years) and hopes that it distracts everyone from the way he sometimes slips with the date or talks to people who haven't been students in over a decade.
Potter is no less distracted than his peers, but not by Barty's illegal repertoire. The boy's in his own head most lessons, flushed and sweating too much in a drafty old classroom. He's not twitchy, not like Barty who hops from one subject to the next in some effort to relieve the manic energy that clings to him. Barty revels in his newfound ability to move on his own, to speak and be spoken to and acknowledged. Potter slouches and watches imperio'd spiders dance across his desk with half-lidded eyes and looks as if he's trying his best to be interested.
Barty almost suspects alcohol. It had been no big feat to get smuggled firewhiskey when he'd been in school, and he can't imagine that would have changed too much, even with rising political tensions. Especially for Harry Potter. The boy is neat, though. He never smells even slightly of liquor, a scent Barty is confident he'd recognize even now. More damningly, the intoxicated cannot fight the imperius curse.
Potter shouldn't be able to either. Even fresh from incarceration and using an auror's wand in ways it really didn't like, the dark arts are Barty's forte. He's prodigious; the darker the curse the easier it comes to him. It had seen him isolated in his family long before he'd been on trial. It was also what had gotten a teenager into Voldemort's Inner Circle, and kept him alive amongst their vicious political maneuvering. No light-magicked child should have been able to throw a curse Barty had cast.
No one survives getting hit with the killing curse, either. Perhaps there's always been something wrong with Harry Potter.
Barty is fascinated in the obsessive, single-minded way of someone who's been sitting stagnant for thirteen years without anything to hold his interest. Following Potter, tracking the fourth-year around the castle when Barty's own schedule allows, fills him with glee that he hadn't felt since he walked these halls as a student. It's almost enough to make him forget that he's no longer a boy, fresh from school and with an entire world ahead of him. His itching Dark Mark is usually enough to remind him of his duty and the pound of flesh his Lord will take if he doesn't succeed.
It's not a hard job, really, once he learns to cope with the nauseating deja vu and the faces of his old allies superimposing themselves over those of their children. He almost calls the Malfoy scion ‘Lucius’, and wonders if he could blame that too on Moody’s instability.
Barty still feels eighteen, and most mornings he’s still surprised when he doesn’t wake up to verdant bed curtains. Beyond shockingly vivid memories of such routines however, his memories of his time at Hogwarts have been dulled by Azkaban and years spent under the imperius. He doesn’t remember fourth years behaving like Potter, but perhaps he doesn’t remember correctly. He didn’t pay much attention to fourth years once he passed his OWLS.
He watches Potter during meals. The boy hardly eats, but he hovers over his food carefully, like he expects it to be taken away. That, Barty recalls seeing from the kids who didn’t always get enough food at home. Weird for Dumbledore’s shining icon, but not inexplicable. He is absolutely certain, though, that he’d never seen those same kids stuffing their faces in the owlery after curfew, eating so quickly he was certain they couldn’t be chewing.
It’s meat in Potter’s bony hands, Barty is sure. Dark and wet under the dim moonlight, it looks almost exactly like a thick jelly. Something more fit for thestrals than children. It’s the first thing he’s seen Potter eat more of than a few halfhearted bites. He wonders blithely if it will add any more weight to the boy’s thin frame.
He stands there for too long, cold under his disillusionment charm and just watching. Potter is tucked into the corner on the far side of the room, where the air and the floor are cleanest, and where he’s caught in the light from the large open windows. The moonlight illuminates Potter more than enough for Barty to see a long, thin protrusion from the boy’s mouth, but it’s easier to be distracted by the owls than it is to wonder about the peculiar shape. The birds have all flocked to the opposite side of the room, as if to escape the horror happening in their pen. They sit in petrified stillness, though it’s clear they aren’t sleeping.
Barty’s body is telling him to be afraid too, he thinks, but the flush of adrenaline feels too close to the high of dark magic rushing through him. He takes his leave, somewhat reluctantly, and doesn’t realize until he’s almost back in his chambers what hung from Potter’s teeth. A rat’s tail.
After that night, Potter’s constant drowsiness seems to abate. He no longer merely tolerates Barty’s enthusiastic spellwork, and Barty watches a newfound interest light the boy’s eyes with every spell cast. The Triwizard Tournament has already been announced and there’s enough distraction amongst the class that Barty hardly has to censor himself. He weaves dark spells with esoteric light ones, a riotous explosion of magic that doesn’t play so much into Barty’s natural talents as to bother the school’s wards. He barks out whatever occurs to him about duelling, an easy cover for his self-indulgence, and enjoys his audience.
He mourns and aches for his own wand, long-since snapped, and wonders what it’d be like to have another one choose him. Moody’s own wand is as clumsy as a troll’s club for the quick, meticulous spellwork Barty prefers. Despite the hindrance, Potter watches with more attention than he’s shown anything in weeks, and Barty wonders helplessly what the boy thinks of the vibrant magic that fills the classroom full-to-bursting.
What a shame that that same magic traps the boy into a tournament that will end in his death. The thought sours both the success of fooling the Goblet and the surprising joy of catching Potter’s interest.
Despite Barty’s newfound melancholy, it isn’t a particularly bad day that finds him stumbling upon Malfoy’s spawn antagonizing Potter. On bad days, Barty forgets that he’s thirty-one, now. He forgets the cotton-y feeling that the imperius leaves on your tongue after a few weeks and what it feels like to be afraid of the future. Malfoy is lucky he wasn’t so brazen on a bad day; a younger Barty Crouch had far less understanding of consequences.
It might not be one of his, but Barty knows it’s one of Potter’s bad days. Despite his off-footedness in this new era, he even knows why. It fills him with an unfamiliar and quite unwelcome guilt, knowing that his meddling caused this. No, it’s the Dark Lord’s careful planning, he reminds himself.
He still remembers Potter’s vibrancy after the night in the owlery, and abruptly misses it. He imagines, briefly, offering the boy as much vermin as he could eat, despite the absurdity of the idea. He wonders if the not-so-loyal Weasley or the mudblood even knew about Potter’s scavenging, and doubts it. Doubts that anyone else has seen what he has. It rises a protectiveness in him that he didn’t think himself capable of. He watches the gaunt teen respond to Malfoy on autopilot, voice as dead as his swamp-green eyes, and when the little rat goes to curse Potter’s unprotected back, Barty deals with that protectiveness in a satisfyingly productive way.
In the end, ferret is close enough to rat. Barty is a dark arts virtuoso, not a transfiguration master. If he had free reign of his own element, he could have made the boy regret his cowardly decision in a decidedly more accurate manner. He’s well enough at the moment to know what he can and cannot get away with, though, conveniently for Lucius’ heir. As it is, he relishes in humiliating and terrifying the brat. Potter’s eyes are suddenly bright and hungry again as he watches the ferret bounce up and down, contemplating him like one might a fine treat. Teacher and student meet eyes, and Barty winks. It’s the most fun he’s had since his trial. Perhaps he can offer the boy some vermin, at least.
He isn’t the only one with ideas. There’s a dead rat nailed above his door the next morning, fat and plump and bleeding down over the portrait entrance. It’s the kind of symbolism that would’ve gotten someone sent to Azkaban during the war. Old, black magic. The kind of magic that the Dark Lord had promised to protect as a young Barty pledged his devotion. In it, Barty sees benediction.
His growing fondness for the kid, which feels less like fondness and more like the fervor he owes the Dark Lord, is going to get him killed. The darkness in him, the banned magic that curls around his jagged edges and protects him from a world that’d rather he rot, it decides it likes the death in Potter’s eyes and the audacity of the boy’s illegal gestures. It sniffs around the teen and treacherously wonders if the boy might be the Dark Lord’s equal after all.
Barty looks at the lesson plan he’d been absently writing out as he basked in the afterglow of the morning’s discovery. He crosses out the ‘1980’ carefully, and marks down the correct year. Times are changing.
He almost forgets about the First Task when it arrives. He piles into the stands with the rest of the staff and tries to pretend he has eyes for any champion but Potter. Dragons, he’s well aware. He knows Potter is too, and only regrets for a moment that he can’t see what the boy would do if he were truly unprepared. Regardless of the teen’s shocking inclination towards banned magic, he is still a child and will need help to reach his potential. Barty is motivated enough by the hope blossoming in his chest.
He’s giddy with anticipation, wondering which of the beasts his champion will be facing. Krum gets the Welsh Green. Delacour, the Chinese Fireball. That almosts disappoints Barty, who would be delighted to see Potter face the tempernmental Eastern dragon. Diggory winds up with the Swedish Short-snout, however, and the task is all the more exciting for it. Potter is left with the Hungarian Horntail. Nesting dragons are all particularly vicious, but the Horntail is worse than most.
Moody’s magical eye rolls rapidly in response to Barty’s mood, and doesn’t stop till Potter shouts “Accio!”
The choice of spell surprises him, and that surprise staves off disappointment long enough for him to see the broom flying into the stadium and realize the boy’s plan. He grins wildly. He’d been foolish to expect clever wand work. Just like the old-fashioned magic above Barty’s door, the strategy Potter is using depends on sheer power and ability rather than clever thinking. It’s a very Gryffindor trait, and admittedly as impressive as the complexities favored by Barty’s old crowd.
Especially given how flawlessly Potter curls around aggressive bursts of flame, looking for all the world like he was doing Quidditch tricks. It ought to go smoother, really, but even Barty can tell that the dragon isn’t doing what she’s supposed to. Potter circles around her lazily, seemingly unconcerned for the vicious strikes of her claws and tail, but as he pulls away to entice her further from the nest she curls back and hisses. Her flame is the only thing that travels from the nest, and when he draws nearer still she almost seems to be avoiding him.
Barty gapes openly, but no one is paying enough attention to him to notice him wearing an expression so foreign on Moody’s face. He watches Potter give up his game and drop into a dive towards the nest. The Horntail screeches then, and Barty jerks back in shock at the dreadful sound. A fear that isn’t his own fills him in response to the sound, and he carefully occludes his mind. He has no particular talent for it, but enough to block the dragon’s projected terror. Very few others seem able to do the same, and he hears more than a few screams.
A light froth builds over the dragons lips, and in the chaos she tramples her real eggs even as Potter nabs the imposter and flies out between her flailing legs. Even after he leaves the arena, she pants and screams until the dragon handlers flood the field. Barty has already lost interest. He has no clue what about Potter could send a dragon into hysterics, and he wonders what it says about the cleverness of Slytherins that he doesn’t feel a tenth of the fear he knows he should. More pressing is a burning curiosity.
The judges take off points for the damage to the nest. He wonders how no one else sees what he does.
He almost doesn’t give the Longbottom boy the hint for Potter, just to see what his champion would come up with on his own. He dawdles over the decision as he writes out his class plans, tucking in particularly nasty spells for his favorite classes. He thinks that he’s getting the hang of being a professor, even donned in Moody’s skin and sometimes forgetting that the little Slytherins aren’t their parents. (Crabbe and Goyle? Mirror images of their equally dim fathers.) It’s a problem he’s solved so far using last names, but it reminds him of his purpose. If Potter doesn’t win, Barty will die. Barty will probably die anyway, once the Dark Lord delves into his mind once more. It used to be that he was exempt from that particular unpleasantness, but no longer. The Dark Lord’s paranoia was high these days. Given that Barty has been feeling particularly treacherous lately, it’s not unreasonable paranoia.
Despite the threat, Barty can’t help but notice Potter. It’s not hard to keep track of the teen. The other students still avoid him, even Granger and Weasley, despite their squabble seeming to be resolved. To be fair, Potter dodges them with equal fervor. More than once Barty catches him melting into crevices in the castle wall or ducking into an unused classroom to avoid the other students. He’s relatively certain the boy has an invisibility cloak too, but Moody’s enchanted eye can’t see anything so he ignores the nagging suspicion for now.
In his own classroom, Potter has gone back to the listless boy he’d been at the beginning of the year. Before the night in the owlery. He wonders if Potter is still tackling the castle’s vermin problem. He doubts it, and would have even if he hadn’t been watching the Fat Lady’s portrait most nights. It’s frustrating. The boy’s flyaway hair lies lank against his feverish skin, and he lounges at his desk like he’s in the tail end of a case of Dragon Pox, worn down from the sickness just like his paternal grandfather had been at the end of his life. Barty almost wants to force him to the medical wing, but he can’t bring himself to take steps to save the boy. If Potter can’t save himself, Barty’s intervention will just kill them both in uglier ways. It’s selfish, and irresponsible both as a professor and as the Dark Lord’s inside man, but Barty was never made to be either.
He still remembers the freedom of his seventh year at Hogwarts, a whole future ahead of him. One that didn’t make his sleep uneasy at night. He’d imagined it all: esoteric ruins and texts, wealth accumulated in his travels, and above all freedom from the endless networking and pandering of the politics he was raised into. The very ones that stymied his growing curiosity and fascination with magic.
It’s a little-known fact that the hat wanted Barty Crouch Jr. in Ravenclaw. But Slytherin? Slytherin could help him on his way to greatness. It could bring him independence and freedom and any knowledge he could ever want. His greatest desire at his hands. Or so it would have been if wizarding Britain hadn’t cracked down on almost all of the magic that Barty loved and practiced so faithfully. Another thing to blame his father for. Now he’s trapped in the very politics he wanted to escape, and liable to die before that changes.
For the moment, he wanders the grounds of Hogwarts under the light of a carefully watched waxing gibbous, because he’s well aware of the dangers of a full moon. He misses the years he spent here as a student and the freedom he hadn’t been able to appreciate then. Despite his penchant for spell theory and fascination with learning, he’d never been a star pupil. He was no slouch; he excelled in Ancient Runes and Defense Against the Dark Arts, if only because you couldn’t be good at dark arts without being able to defend against them well. Shy of those classes, he’d been middling at best. His OWL and NEWT scores had spoken well for him, but it was his affinity for dark magic that had propelled him in life. And to pursue that is all he’s ever wanted.
Harry Potter casting dark magic had filled him with hope, weeks ago. As much as Barty hates the politics that get in the way of his magical education, he knows that power is the only way to protect from a rigidly anti-dark government. That power should be the Dark Lord, it’s that cause which Barty pledged himself to so ardently, and the one that he’s too tangled in now to escape. He’s never had time to be reflective between his youth and his captivity, and it leaves him unsettled to think about his decisions now, especially when there’s so little to be done about them.
The next time he teaches the fourth-year Gryffindors, he recalls his hope, and he has to fight down a surge of vulnerability. Moody is always moving, and Barty takes advantage of it, fiddling with jars of unfortunate specimen and pacing the stone floor with a thumping, uneven gait. He babbles about informal dueling, because formalities are going to get these children killed, and the thought shouldn’t disturb him, yet every time his attention slips he sees his own youthful face staring up at him from the desks. He wonders what he could have avoided with what he knows now. He looks at Potter, ill as ever, and wonders if the Hungarian Horntail felt as much dread as he does in this moment.
“A good repertoire of spells is as important as a strong vocabulary. One will protect you under fire, the other socially--” his voice doesn’t betray his emotions, and he tries to focus on how the Slytherins in the class perk up at what is doubtlessly a familiar lesson. In his turmoil, he’s spouting off like one of his old tutors. It’s out of character for Moody, but he struggles to care enough to fix it. He tacks on a half-assed “Constant vigilance!” and tries to enjoy Draco Malfoy’s flinch. Well-bred as the boy is, he’s about as dark as the Smiths. Lucius himself, who clearly had too much influence on his heir, is hardly skilled with black magic. He’s competent enough, but his real talent lies with politics and a fat bank account. Narcissa is the proficient one of the family, and therefore the only one of them he’s ever liked. He wonders if she feels as he does sometimes, though they’d never been close enough for him to ask.
The memory of his old associates is bittersweet. He holds no fondness for most of them, though there was a time when he’d been relatively close to the Lestrange brothers, but he never had the patience for the political games the Death Eaters prefered. And now, once his doubt and lack of blind loyalty to their Lord are discovered, none of the old crowd will hesitate to string him up at their Lord’s behest. Especially the Lestranges, who are more true fanatics than Barty could ever hope to be. And the Dark Lord himself will give no consideration to the thirteen years Barty spent locked up because of his work. The glory days are over.
This class is over. They’re waiting for him to call it, shifting anxiously in their seats. The Slytherins are more composed than their red and gold classmates, but he halfbloods still lack their more well-bred classmates’ poise. The Gryffindors outright chat amongst themselves, except for Longbottom, who sits as rigidly in his seat as Parkinson. Barty scowls, more at his own inattentiveness than at his students. “What are you waiting for? Class dismissed, get out,” he huffs, slouching against his desk and staring pointedly as they all hurry to gather their things and leave.
Potter doesn’t move. Barty’s eyes seek the boy out of their own accord, habit at this point, but he’s seated comfortably. His bag is packed, but he makes no move to leave the room. For a moment Barty thinks that he hadn’t heard. It wouldn’t be the first time Potter’s missed an announcement or instruction. It wouldn’t even be the most improbable time he’d done it. But the boy’s eyes are surprisingly clear and they’re fixated on Barty. It’s alarming for a moment. The boy hasn’t had such focus since the first task.
When Granger and Weasley, already halfway to the door, make to stop, Potter waves them on with an excuse about homework. They look relieved that he doesn’t expect them to wait, but Barty’s already moved on from them. Nervously, he casts a quick, powerful detection charm. Nothing is caught, but he doesn’t lower his guard. He doesn’t believe Potter’s excuses for a moment and his paranoia, probably on par with the real Alastor Moody’s, if only because of his tenuous situation at the moment, flares to life. The boy put about as much effort into homework as a troll. He’s indifferent to spell theory and miserable at the history behind the creation of modern spells. Furthermore, he’s never seemed to care about even practical work when he’s as sick as he looks at the moment. There’s no way this conversation will be about the homework. Despite his nerves, he can’t help but snort at the ridiculousness of it all.
When the classroom is empty, Potter stands up and sits on top of his desk, perching delicately. This puts him a few inches below Moody’s slouching height. Barty himself is shorter than the auror, but he enjoys the distance the extra bit of height gives him in this instance. He does spare a moment to wish that Potter sat further back, so he didn’t have to face the source of his confusion and confliction so closely.
Potter opens his mouth to speak, closes it. Rolls his shoulders and grimaces. Beads of sweat dot his forehead. He looks bad. As close as they are now, Barty can see the dark circles the boy’s eyes and the concaves of his cheeks. He looks half-starved, which isn’t surprising given what Barty suspects of his appetites.
Barty moves behind his desk, trying to make it look natural but too eager to quit looking at Potter to care overly. His previous hope makes him feel foolish. If Barty can’t get himself out of this situation, how could he expect a fourteen-year-old to? Ancient magic or not.
Suddenly eager to have this conversation over so he can go back to following his Lord’s bidding and hope that it’s not too late to survive this madness, he speaks, “Yes? What can I help you with, Mr. Potter?”
“Call me Harry,” the boy says quickly. He pauses, then continues, “I wanted to thank you for the help, professor.”
“What help?” Barty asks gruffly. He’s helped the teen out quite a bit, but Potter shouldn’t know the half of it. He runs the past few weeks over in his head, trying to figure out what the boy could be referring to. Not for the first time, his spotty memory frustrates him. Perhaps Potter’s referring to the Malfoy incident, though it doesn’t sound like it.
“I could smell you on Hagrid, you know. When he showed me the dragons that night in the forest,” Potter grows more confident as he speaks. He sits up straighter on his perch, his mossy eyes beginning to brighten. It’s in sharp contrast to his sickly appearance.
Barty froze. “Excuse me?”
“I could smell you on his coat. You have a very distinct smell, you know. Did anyone ever tell you that Hermione brewed polyjuice for Ron and I, in our second year?”
“What are you implying?” The fake Moody licks his lips, trying to fight down the rising panic. If he’s called out, he’ll be lucky to face the Dark Lord’s punishment. The Kiss is far more likely. As tired as he is of how his life is going at the moment, that’s a fate worse than anything he can imagine. And he has a fantastic imagination.
“I’m not implying anything, Bartemius.”
Barty has his wand out in a second, acting purely on instinct. The auror’s wand is reluctant in his palm, but he knows he can force it to do what he needs to. Something, anything to make this go away. Potter hasn’t flinched, and they’re both frozen in the standoff. Barty licks his lip, a quick repetition of his tick. He tries to quell the rising panic as he realizes that he doesn’t want to do anything to the boy. He can’t even start to cast obliviate, the least harmful among his options, and it brings a frustrated scowl to his face. His wand shakes in his white-knuckled grip. It had been steady when he’d helped the Lestranges torture the Longbottoms in their own manor, and he can’t curse one nosy teenager now.
The Dark Lord is going to kill him, if his father doesn’t get to him first.
Potter cocks his head, making Barty flinch at the sudden movement. He sneers, compensating for his off-footedness with anger, “What do you want? Are you here to ask me to to turn myself in?” His voice is scathing.
Potter snorts, but looks to regret it a moment later as he clutches his head and shuts his eyes for a quick moment. Even then, Barty can’t take advantage of the weakness. He merely watches as what looks like a dark feather falls from the boy’s hair to the classroom floor. When Potter looks up, slowly and carefully, there’s a firm expression on his face that Barty can’t quite name, “No, actually I’d prefer you didn’t. I need you. There’s something wrong with me.”
Barty can’t help it, he cackles. A mixture of gallows humor and hesitant hope that maybe he’ll make it through the day without kissing a dementor buoys his spirits. He slumps against his desk, resting his weight on his palms. “No shit, was it before or after you began eating raw rat that you figured it out?”
Potter frowned, “I knew someone was there. My sense of smell wasn’t as good, then. So you knew the gift was from me? After what you did to Malfoy?”
“Of course I did! It was...good work. You’re lucky it didn’t trigger the wards, though. Look, I’m glad you aren’t handing me over to Dumbledore, Potter, but why are we talking about this? You clearly know who I am, who I serve.” He tries not to react to the reminder of the black magic outside his door. It’s still a tender subject. A reminder that he’d forgotten who Potter is. It’s a mistake he can’t afford to make, thinking he can place any thoughts of freedom on the back of a child. The boy probably isn’t even aware of exactly how illegal the ritual he set up is. Barty is a fool.
The boy scrunches his nose. He doesn’t address Barty’s comment about the wards, rather, he reiterates, “There’s something wrong with me. You saw what I did to those rats. You saw how that dragon reacted to me. That’s not right. I don’t know what it means but I do know that no one else will care. When they found out I could speak parseltongue, I could barely sleep in my own dorm. What’s worse than the heir of Slytherin? What will they call me when this gets out? I know your secret, you won’t tell mine.”
Barty doesn’t react to finding out Potter’s a parselmouth. It makes him ache, a little, at that much more missed opportunity. “I could tell the Dark Lord,” Barty counters.
“You haven’t yet, clearly. Besides, it doesn’t matter; he’s already trying to kill me. I don’t need my classmates to start. Will you help me? I promise I’ll guard your secret, if you do.”
Barty’s uneasiness grows. He’s going to say yes, he knows it with the kind of helpless certainty he felt when he started following Potter around. This is the culmination of his treacherous thoughts, every moment he’s shorted his Lord. And the crux of it is, he can’t even bring himself to demand that Harry guard more than his secret. The boy has no more hope of protecting Barty than Barty has of protecting himself. Furthermore, if he helps Potter and the Dark Lord falls, what happens to Barty then?
He’s going to say yes. He doesn’t know if he wants to, but what choice does he have? His very magic is drawn to Harry Potter, as much as it scares him. Following the boy is a compulsion, a tick as innate as his twitching and pointless fidgeting. He lines up his quills on the edge of his desk, then knocks them off onto the floor. He scatters a pile of essays. The discord soothes him.
The last time Barty had followed his instincts when they latched onto something, he’d ended up arrested. He doesn’t know if he can do that again.
“I follow the Dark Lord.” It’s a hollow statement.
“Why?”
“I don’t fancy getting a kiss from a dementor. And I’m no traitor. Those of us who dabble in dark magic stick together, Potter. You of all people should understand loyalty.” The problem is, he’s fairly confident Potter is as dark as he is, and it calls to him. He doesn’t have to tell the boy that, though.
“I can cast a patronus, I’m powerful,” Potter says slowly, thoughtfully. Barty knows the boy too well to think it’s bragging. He snorts, but he’s too conflicted himself to interrupt. “And Voldemort won’t care about sticking together, when he realizes you care about me. He’ll kill you. You’ll at least have a chance with me. I don’t know how, but I promise that I’ll do whatever I can to protect you, if you help me.”
“What makes you think I care about you? You don’t know anything.”
“You always cast the spells I like most in class, even though I’m too sick to pay attention half the time. You defended me against Malfoy. Just now, you didn’t curse me when you had the chance. You couldn’t curse me. How much do you think Voldemort will like that, when he finds out? Whether you care about me or not,” Potter says.
It’s not the logic that gets Barty. It’s sound enough. Barty will be in hot water when his Lord looks through his mind again, it’s just a fact. That doesn’t obligate him to Potter, though. He can run away now just as easily as he can when this inevitably goes tits up. But that sound in Potter’s voice, all but begging, it tugs at him. He does care. It should bother him more. It’s obvious that Potter’s a weakness, all sallow and dull with sickness, but Barty has always known his passions to flair as bright as the magic he wields. He’s resigned. And more than that, something is stirring in his gut.
No, he can’t expect Potter to protect him. That had been a stupid fancy. The fire in Potter now, though, draws out the lingering shards of hope that maybe there’s something left to the boy besides illness and defeat after all. He is a powerful wizard, that hadn’t been a lie. And a parselmouth, to boot. And Barty can’t forget the dragon screaming, the sound rattles around his brain like an omen. It’s not quite hope, but it’s something.
“I’ll help you.”
Potter sags, relief evident. “Alright, good. Thank you, professor.”
“Call me Barty, Potter,” he replies, exasperation in his tone.
“Only if you call me Harry,” the boy repeats his earlier request.
Barty swears he sees shark-sharp teeth behind the boy’s lips, good humored despite his poor condition. Despite the hairs on the back of Barty’s neck suddenly standing on end, his body picking up on some threat that doesn’t really register with the rest of him, his magic sits lazy and content in his gut. Despite his dread, and the threat of Voldemort eviscerating him for this, he can’t bring himself to regret it.
“Meet me in my rooms after curfew, Harry,” and on impulse, he tacks on, “Feel free to use your cloak.”
The boy doesn’t seem bothered, and he doesn’t catch Barty’s bluff. “I thought you knew about that. Moody’s eye?”
It’s Barty’s turn to grin. “No, just a guess. Thank you for confirming it.”
Harry huffs, but he seems tickled by the small deceit and hops to his feet with a lightness Barty hasn’t seen in him for weeks. It doesn’t quite make up for the boy’s clammy skin and exhausted eyes, but it fills Barty with a smug sort of satisfaction nonetheless. He doesn’t please people. He unsettles them, scares them, hurts them--is used by them--he doesn’t remember the last person who bloomed under his attention. Even his mother, who loved him more unconditionally than anyone ever had, was burdened by his presence. Harry seems almost peaceful.
“I’ll see you tonight, Barty. Thank you.” An earnest, caring Gryffindor’s statement. Barty supposes he should scorn it, as a Slytherin, but he’s never been overly invested in house rivalries. He basks in the sweetness of the moment, and allows its simplicity to soothe him.
Harry is more jarring at night than he is the daylight that streams through Barty’s classroom windows. The shadows spring from the hollows of his cheeks and throat, threatening to choke him. Haggard is too a kind word for it. Cadaverous might be more appropriate. He hunkers down next to the fire and lies limp against the cushions of the plush couch and looks as if he might die soon. He seems flushed, face red despite the way he’s layered himself against the cold.
Barty claps his hands together, focused and more manic than gleeful. He’s not happy to see the boy in such a state, but with the quaffle in his hands now he can actually do something about it. Harry throws a halfhearted glare his way at the exuberance, but doesn’t seem genuinely annoyed.
“Alright, Harry, we’re doing dinner together tonight.”
“I’ve already eaten,” the boy says, but the hesitance in his voice tells Barty all he needs to know about how pitiful the meal was. He imagines it was like most meals Harry takes in the Great Hall, and can almost see the boy shoving food around his plate.
“You’ve not been hunting anything, I’ve been watching you. What’s the matter? Rat disagree with you?”
Harry’s brow furrows in a show of disgruntlement. “You want me to eat rats?”
“If it helps you, yes. You looked better after that night in the owlery. I think it’s worth repeating. You don’t have to eat it raw, if that makes it more appealing.”
“No!” Harry flushes, his tawny skin glowing red with apparent embarrassment, “No. I mean, I’m just so hungry. All the time. D’you have it now?”
In response, Barty waves his wand and summons the squirming rat from the kitchenette all professors have in their rooms, and has little time to appreciate the way Harry’s glassy eyes fixate on him before the boy springs. Snapping like a viper, he darts forward and snatches the rat out of the air. Barty doesn’t even consider averting his eyes. While the torture he had participated in and witnessed as a Death Eater prepared him for the gore, it’s his own grotesque sense of pleasure that makes it an ejoyable thing to watch.
The squealing creature never had a chance against this small, plain-looking monster. Harry’s blunt teeth rip into its neck and it dies more peacefully than Barty would have expected. The crunch of bone beneath the boy’s molars sound echo loudly as Barty summons another rat, as fat as the first and not hard to find in this castle.
The tails are discarded and everything else, from crackling vertebrae and skulls to fatty organs, are all but inhaled. By the time three tails are accumulated and disposed of by Barty, Harry is lounging on the sofa bloody and seemingly content. Barty wonders if it’s his imagination or if the boy isn’t already more vibrant, verdant eyes following the professor lazily. Barty feels a wave of pride in the success of his experiment.
He waves his wand again and the boy’s uniform is as pristine as ever. Harry sends a careless smile his way, the vicious hunger sated and a child left again in its wake. Barty is unbearably fond. In Azkaban and in his father’s basement alike, nothing had been soft and nothing was his. At the mercy of the cold and the unrelenting passage of time, he had nothing to cling to but escape and revenge. Now he is surrounded by niceties, as well as the sweet manipulations and intrigue of Harry Potter. Whatever sort of creature the boy is.
He is Barty’s, if nothing else.
Barty lets him lay there for a while longer before sending him back to his dorm. The boy is sluggishly overfed, but he’d needed it and Barty has known hunger well enough not to begrudge Potter the feeling of stuffing himself. The boy wraps himself in a silvery cloak and disappears into the hallway.
Barty takes in his space anew. It seems fresher, happier. It’s as if Harry’s good health has bled into the boy’s surroundings. Dementors, Barty thinks with a shudder, could feast here. Barty himself feels like he can grow stronger off the traces of bliss Harry has left behind. He curls up on the chair that faces the couch Harry laid on, and pictures the boy smiling there. His leg is stiff and he has to unfasten the wooden prosthetic to manage the pose, but once he’s comfortable he falls asleep easily, still wearing Moody’s skin.
He regrets it when he wakes up to a pain in his skull as his own eye grows in behind the fake. He’s thankful he already unhooked the leg and rapidly moves to get the eye off of him as well. He cackles at the absurdity of it all, tossing the expensive magical eye onto the coffee table and laying in his own body for a few minutes as he contemplates spells to entertain the boy with now that he’s coherent enough to appreciate it.
The next week passes similarly. In classes, Harry is bright-eyed and his dark skin is sun-kissed and healthy. His cheeks have lost their hollowness and his bones are no longer so prominent. Barty is basking in his success in the way good caretakers everywhere do, not so much smug as proud and delighted. He’s never had anyone who needed him and actually came away better for it, like Harry has.
He peacocks around his charge and feeds him rats for the first few days before presenting him a bounty of small prey. It’s not unlike a spread he’d lay out of a cherished family bird, and the boy gorges himself until his eyes shine like the killing curse. Then he wraps himself in Barty’s throw blanket and sleeps for an hour on the couch as Barty cracks open a book on industrial cleaning spells. The household charms have quit working as effectively as he would like. Barty is nothing short of charmed himself.
More wondrous than Harry’s physical health is the way that the darkness inside of him unfurls and grows with Barty’s tending. Rather than steady hand-feeding dulling his edges and letting him drift back into what Barty imagined a normal fourth-year would be, he has more energy than ever with which to meet Barty’s own magic. He volunteers answers in Barty’s class and seems eager to participate, ignoring the sharp eyes of his mudblood. Even the other teachers have noticed it, where they had failed to notice the boy’s previous hebetude.
McGonagall radiates pride at Harry’s sudden improvement in mood and classes, and Barty has to bite his tongue to hide his bristling attitude. None of this has been her doing! Without him, Harry would still be wasting away or dead, a shadow of the malevolent creature he has revealed to Barty. If Minerva ever saw the reflection of dark magic in the boy’s eyes, the way he seemed to magnify the noxious magic around him with a wide-eyed wonder, she’d be sick.
It’s a weakness amongst the light-minded Hogwarts staff that Barty and Harry have taken advantage of. None of them want to see such things, and their magic recoils from it. He doubts anyone truly suspects the depths of Harry’s changes. Barty feels the changes almost to his core and it lights him like fiendfyre. It’s as if he can see the face of magic itself. He tries to remember the Death Eater meetings at their peak, rows of noble lords and ladies lending their magic to Voldemort’s considerable power. Esoteric dark magic and blatant shows of strength in the form of torture and warfare were impressive at the time. Harry makes him feel as if he can be headed for something that isn’t a bloody death, however, and that difference is more heady than Barty could’ve imagined when he still followed the Dark Lord.
Gossipy Beauxbaton boys are even less aware of Harry’s newfound vigor. Barty usually feels no more than resigned annoyance at the antics of the teenagers he’s surrounded by, barring Malfoy, who somehow manages to be every bit as infuriating as his poncy father. This, however, takes the snitch. The blue-robed boys huddle in the corridor by his classroom and mutter in snide-sounding French. Foolish, given that any properly raised pureblood knows the language. It’s downright idiotic to be insulting strangers in the language.
“He’s so scrawny,” one says with an airy laugh.
“Right? I expected their savior to be taller than my little brother.” This makes all of them break into mean spirited laughter.
Barty stiffens in affront to Harry, who’s standing practically a yard away. If the boy had been more popular, he imagines the Hogwarts students milling about would have already stepped in. As it is, Barty has to restrain himself from cursing them. He’d show them how it felt to be starved half the year, if not longer. McGonagall had been decidedly clear about transfiguring students as a punishment, but he’s willing to make the argument that she never said anything about curses.
Harry approaches them before Barty can get himself into trouble. “You know,” he says, and the hallway freezes because he’s said it in perfect French, “That was shockingly rude. Maybe you should worry about your own problems. Like your champion scoring less than a scrawny fourth-year.”
“Well said, Mr. Potter!” Barty says, sweeping up from behind with a cheerful expression. He imagines to anyone but Harry, it would be an entirely believable facade. Clasping a hand on the boy’s shoulder, he fixes a cold stare at the Beauxbaton boys and they crumple immediately.
“Sorry, Potter,” the first one who’d spoken says meekly in English, “We didn’t realize you could speak French.”
Harry’s angry confidence flickers into confusion for just a moment before Barty intercedes with a pointed cough.
The French boy, only half-correct in assuming the noise was in response to his pitiful excuse, hurries to add, “Not that it makes what we said okay! We shouldn’t have been rude at all. Sorry, again!” They tuck tail and run to the relative safety of a large group of Beauxbaton students, who look only slightly less derisive than the English students.
Barty tightens his grip on Harry’s shoulder, careful that it not be too tight, and spares a moment to be glad that the young Weasley and mudblood aren’t around to ask questions. He pulls the boy along with him to the now empty classroom. Harry looks like he’s wavering between pride and confusion, and pride is winning. It’s almost shocking how bold the boy has become with the strength of regular meals and the attention of an ex-Death Eater. He no longer cowers from his peers’ scorn, and it’s a treat to witness.
Barty sits heavily on his own desk, Moody’s thick, stiff form not allowing for Barty’s normal perching. Harry sits on the back of his normal chair in a way that ought to tip him over backwards. The boy is made of foolish luck and too many teeth.
“So, you speak French,” Barty says. It’s not a question.
Harry hesitates a moment before replying, “I never have before.” The debate was clear on his face and Barty is warmed when the boy doesn’t bullshit him. Sure, Barty knows him well enough to call any bluff the boy could attempt, but the honesty reassures him that Harry isn’t cutting him out. It’s a relief, given that Harry grows more independent by the day.
“You do now,” Barty says in German, his own curiosity unfurling as his nerves are soothed.
“I do now,” Harry repeats back in the same language, seemingly oblivious to the switch. It’s clear to both of them that whatever is wrong with Harry isn’t getting better, it’s getting stronger. Barty, who’s never doubted this, hopes the boy is as pleased as he is about it.
The professor mulls it over as he finishes up plans for the second task. He can’t flat out tell Harry what the task is; anyone who knows is sworn into a basic secrecy spell. Neville has the book, though, so he’ll procure the gillyweed. Harry’s blossoming power is a more pressing issue. Barty wouldn’t personally consider it a problem did it not threaten the balance they’ve found.
After the French incident, Harry refuses to eat as much as he as prior. Barty can’t say it’s a bad idea. The last thing they need is for the boy to sprout antennae and wings in front of three major political powers. (Barty thinks of the black feathers he sometimes finds tucked in the cushions of Harry’s favorite couch, and doubts antennae are ever going to be a problem for them.) However, Barty also wants Harry to have the strength of consistent feeding.
At once, a nonsensical image flashes in Barty’s mind. A snake, ashy black as Harry’s hair, curls around a lavish tank in Barty’s chambers. Green eyes, human eyes, sit in the creature’s triangular head as it basks in the light of the fireplace. Barty feeds him rats.
He imagines, briefly, keeping Harry safe in his quarters in such a way. The temptation to hoard what is dearest to him is hard to overcome ever since he had his wand snapped. The idea is too close to the real Moody, though, stuck in the bottom of the cursed trunk. He can’t even think of keeping Harry in such a way. Not only would the boy hate him for it, but he doubts he could. Harry’s never lashed out at him, but untapped power rolls off the boy in waves.
That acknowledged, it reassures Barty greatly that the teen is strong enough to enforce his will. As much as it stings that he’s no longer necessary to protect his ally all the time, he rests more comfortably knowing that the monster in Harry is flourishing.
There’s very little that should scare a dragon, and Barty hopes it’ll frighten mermen as well.
Too quickly, it’s time for the second task. He’d forced Harry to eat the night before the task, and rests confidently in the plump, healthy shine the boy’d taken on lately. Even in the frigid weather Harry seemed relatively comfortable, without the feverish heat he’d had before he began eating with Barty. He stood calmly on the dock with the other champions, and when their hour begins he shoves a fistful of gillyweed in his mouth and leaps. If Harry had still been the small, sickly thing he’d been months ago, Barty might’ve been worried. The gasp of the crowd as the boy dives in without so much as a bubblehead charm tells him how little faith they have.
They scream and clap as Harry breaches the surface in a breathtaking flip, silhouetted by the dim february sun. Barty cackles, heart jumping in time with the superfluous trick. He knows it was meant for him.
He was what Harry would miss most, after all. He thinks he’s lucky that the Goblet couldn’t offer up sacrifices for this task like it had the names of the champions, or Dumbledore would know that too. It wouldn’t be too suspicious, given the public nature of his mentorship, but Polyjuice needs to be readministered frequently. He wouldn’t have an hour to spare, and more than that it would allow too many chances for someone to happen upon the right diagnostic spell to realize that he’s not actually Alastor Moody. It had been something that worried Harry before Barty reassured him that they’d never actually use a teacher for the task.
Which leaves Barty in the stands, watching the smooth surface of the lake and wishing he could see his champion’s progress. He doesn’t have to wait as long as he feared; Harry returns with his captive first. There isn’t a scratch on the boy, and he’s made almost impossible time. Just shy of thirty minutes, the stands are loud with the sound of speculation. He pictures fields of grindylows speeding away from the boy, mermen fleeing Harry’s wake. It’s not much of a struggle when nothing in the lake will stand up to you. The thought makes Barty cackle.
The downside to the champion’s quick return is that Harry must sit in the lake for the rest of the hour while his gillyweed wears off. Pomfrey takes the Weasley to the medical tent while Harry clings to the dock and recounts his story to the judges. Barty can guarantee that Karkaroff will be taking points off for the excess of gillyweed, petty as it is. Luckily, Harry has plenty to spare. His journey through the lake must sound devilishly lucky to those who hadn’t fed the boy wriggling vermin and felt the true weight of the predator in the room.
Moody shoves his way dockside eventually, unable to wait to praise his champion. When he finds out that there’s going to be a party in Gryffindor tower that night to celebrate, he tries to fight down his disappointment. He’d hoped to be able to congratulate Harry privately that night.
Far worse than disappointment, it reminds him of his own school years. Images of a watery green common room draped in silver, his classmates howling around him every bit as uproarious as Gryffindors, clog his senses as he lays in bed that night. He doesn’t remember if it was a quidditch victory or one for the dueling club, given that Slytherin had been quite successful in those years. The elusiveness of the memory frustrates him in light of how vivid it is. He can’t sleep through it and stares at the mirror in his rooms. Running a hand over his craggy face, he tries to remember if he’d really been in Slytherin so many years ago or if he’d been born this ugly old auror, birthed from his father’s basement in a haze of mind magic and dirt.
He is twenty this year. Or is he sixty? He thinks perhaps thirty, but he’d have to check the date before he bet money on it. How many years had he been imperio’d again? What color are his eyes?
Does he still look like his mother?
That evening behind his locked door he lets the potion lapse and pries the eye from his skull as his body shrinks. The leg hurts most of all, as usual. Bone extends from ruined thigh with a wet, tearing sound. Lumpy, scarred muscle draws back into a lanky body. Barty loses about three or four inches in height. Then it’s all over and he’s just a scrappy man in a too-big coat.
His mother had been blonde and blue-eyed. When he looks back into the mirror, he’s relieved to see that he doesn’t look as different as he’d feared. His hair is more brown now than when he was a boy, but his eyes are still light, unlike Moody’s. It’s a reassuring difference. He’s so tired of being Alastor Moody. He hasn’t been able to be anyone in thirteen years, and it’s hard now knowing he can’t be himself. Even Harry has never seen him in his own skin.
Except, Harry is in his room. It shocks him out of his lamenting. “The door was locked, Potter,” he snaps, turning around to hide his face.
“You’ve invited me here,” the boy says, voice unfazed by Barty’s panicked anger, “If you want me out now, rescind it.”
Just like obliviate, Barty can’t make himself do it. It’s still a frustrating weakness. Eager to change the subject, Barty asks, “Why aren’t you celebrating? Won’t they miss you?”
“Fred and George smuggled in firewhisky. At least half of them will swear I was there the entire night.”
“Why?”
“No alcohol tolerance.”
At the glare he receives for the flippant joke, Harry says more seriously, “I wanted to eat him. Ron, I mean. He wouldn’t leave my side and it was all I could think about.”
Barty can’t help the way his face crinkles in disgust. He’s done worse things to people. (“Crueler things,” Neville Longbottom whispers in his head, voice lacking the nervous inflection in has in class.) But if he were going to eat anyone, Ron Weasley is the last one he’d choose. Other than perhaps Snape.
“I know! But it was cold and I was wet and hungry and I--I don’t feel the right things for them any more.”
“Your friends?” Barty isn’t surprised, considering the distance that’s grown between Harry and his classmates this year.
“People,” Harry corrects, and that is a whole different problem.
“Do you want to eat me?” Barty asks, genuinely unsure what the answer would be. He takes a closer look at Harry, and realizes that the boy is no longer the underfed little thing he’d been when this whole thing began. Sure, Barty had noticed the appetite growing and the fact that Harry no longer resembled the living dead, but paying attention now the changes are so dramatic he doesn’t know how he hadn't noticed until now.
The boy has shot up to a respectable height, and would probably be only a few inches shorter than Moody. He’s about as tall as Barty now, without the polyjuice, and Barty wonders how he could have missed it. He spends more time with Harry than anyone, and maybe that’s it. Perhaps this was one thing that the rest of the school had seen more than Barty had. He wonders if they saw the sun setting behind Potter’s gangly frame and felt their heart skip and the not-quite-proportional silhouette he creates. He can picture it vividly.
The boy no longer resembles his father, either. Lily Potter’s eyes in his skull have become the color of dying greenery and the face that surrounds them is more broad and plump than it had been months ago. Barty wonders if small animals will still be enough to keep it that way.
“No! You’re like me,” the creature says, and Barty wants to believe that he's as truly against the idea as he seems, “Not exactly, I mean. But you smell like magic, not food. And you feed me. And if I ate you, I don’t know who I’d have left.”
He spares a moment to wonder what he’s taken in. It feels kind of like bringing home a kneazle and only realizing later that it was a baby nundu the whole time. And you’ve fed the nundu and cared for it and listened to its problems and the nundu probably cares about you. At the very least, it knows no one would take care of it like you do. But at the end of the day, it’s a nundu.
Maybe Barty deserves a nundu. He wonders if anything else would survive him. His mother’s blue eyes stare at him from the mirror, somehow both a damnation and a beatitude.
He draws a breath, and decides that for better or worse, he cannot turn the nundu out now. “Harry? I don’t think you should eat Ron, but maybe there’s someone you could eat. Someone no one would miss.”
Barty has to explain the trap sooner or later. He’s put it off too long already, buying time for a purpose he hadn’t even known. It’s time to throw his lot in with Harry whole-heartedly, however, as vulnerable as it feels to have all his eggs in one basket. He wants Harry to win this. He needs it.
So he explains as Harry settles in to what has become his spot on Barty’s couch, head cocked like a bird as he fixes his eyes on Barty’s real face. The trap within a maze is hard to describe around the Tournament’s secrecy spell, but once he gets around that, describing the planned ritual is easy enough. By the time he’s through, it all sits like a wound exposed. He almost wishes he still wore Moody’s skin, if only so he could hide behind it.
When they’re done, there’s a hungry spark in Harry’s eyes not quite like the look he gets when he’s about to eat with Barty, and he grins. “Did you know,” the creature says conversationally, “that Voldemort gave me his name, once? Tom Marvolo Riddle.”
There’s a pause, and Harry continues, “You never gave me your name, but you might need it given back, anyway. You’re Bartemius Crouch Jr. You’re not a Death Eater, and you aren’t in your father’s basement.”
And Barty isn’t sure how a fourteen-year-old can make that sound like a revelation. He honestly doesn’t think he’s ever told those things to Harry in the first place, isn’t sure if he could tell anyone about it, it still sits so raw in his chest. He thinks it might have something to do with names, and the essence of people, but that kind of magic is old and it might be best if he’s just happy no one has stolen anything from him. If Harry hasn’t, whatever kind of creature he is, then Voldemort and his father, just wizards, couldn’t have damaged him beyond repair either.
Despite the sudden warmth of the student body towards Harry for thoroughly trouncing the competition, he remains more fastidiously attached to Barty than ever. Barty begins to wear his own face at night, and his acting is falling apart. He forgets to shout as much. He doesn’t hobble quite right and his magical eye stays still more often than not. Despite it all, or because of it, he’s starting to feel more at home in his skin. He no longer expects Moody’s face to melt into that of a teenager’s. The shadow of stubble and the lines of his face no longer belong to a stranger. He still plots how to kill his father for keeping him from growing with his body, but he can’t bear to risk his freedom now that he has Harry with him.
Not that Harry can’t hunt for himself, leaving Barty alone in this new world teaching himself the spells he missed while he was imperio’d. Neither of them need each other, but Barty knows that he’s better when he focuses on Harry. He devotes hours to studying spell work to distract the boy in class and in their afternoons together, only paying half a mind to his other responsibilities. It makes him feel--not quite young again--but like he might actually belong in this time.
He doesn’t know what Harry thinks. He hasn’t ever known, but it’s more obvious now that the boy is less of a boy and more of a thing. Barty watches the other students subconsciously avoid touching him, watches the shadows dance around him jerkily like they aren’t quite sure what they should be doing. Harry is the only thing that makes sense to Barty, though. He never comments about Barty’s true face when they spend their evenings eating, or with Barty entertaining them with whatever petty magic he can call to his fingertips. The only thing that changes is the gentle way he begins to look. The rigidity of the creature’s posture and eyes easing in response to Barty’s newfound vulnerability.
They still run laps around the other professors, who are just now realizing what Barty has known since the beginning of the year.
“There’s something wrong with Harry,” Minerva says during one of the last meetings before the third task. Her face is pinched, and her hands are pressed flat against the table, in the same pose Barty uses when he’s trying not to fidget. It’s the first time he has really liked her, even if he no longer thinks “wrong” is the right word to use.
All the professors have something to add, as if she’s opened the floodgates.
No one has seen Harry casting spells since the second task. Apparently, if he even bothers with the assignment it’s unsuccessful. “He might as well be waving around a tree branch,” Flitwick says in a voice that’s gone squeaky with alarm, “Like a muggle with a wand.”
It’s unsurprising that that’d be the first thing they mentioned. It’s probably the most alarming change, other than the rats, though it’s for the best that none of them know about that. It says a lot about the number of things going on with Harry in the past month that Barty had hardly even registered the shift in magic when it happened.
Barty doesn’t tell them that Harry had spent days in his chambers after his magic quit working normally, trying to figure out why he couldn’t cast a simple lumos. It took the want catching fire to end that experiment (which Barty blamed on the phoenix feather) and when Harry tried creating light afterwards, he hadn’t been able to stop for days. Barty still sees flashes around his sitting room when the teenager is especially happy. They’ve been more cautious since then, and it makes it particularly entertaining to hear the professors throwing around speculation of magical exhaustion from the tournament.
Eventually, Sprout changes the subject, though not by much. She’s impressed by Harry’s new ability in her herbology class, but she’s worried that it’s not the result of hard work. No one is quite sure how anyone could cheat herbology, but she assures them that the boy’s plants are slightly off. Always a little too big for their age, and prone to suffocating the ones around them, as if they’d been harvested straight from the Forbidden Forest. “And I’d never get my seedlings from there,” she insists, “it doesn’t like the theft.”
That unsettles them all.
Even Barty isn’t sure what that could mean. He suspects Harry himself hadn’t noticed anything different in his gardening, or Barty would know about it by now. He’s grateful when Snape cuts in with his own complaint, “I took twenty points from him for playing with ingredients last week.”
“Is that what that was for?” McGonagall cuts in incredulously, “Twenty points, really Severus? That’s extreme, even for you.”
“He was eating the pickled rat brains that he should have been putting in his potion.”
Barty coughed, trying to stifle the cackle that rose up his throat. He’d assumed the boy had been snacking, and can’t believe he’d been served up pickles. With delicacies like that, and the fact that Barty has him on a regular eating schedule again in preparation for the third task, it’s no wonder the boy has shot up as he has. He’s rather surprised that none of the other professors had mentioned the growth spurt, honestly. Harry now stood a couple inches taller than Barty. Not that fourteen-year-old boys don’t grow, or that Barty is particularly tall, but the boy has grown five inches in the time it’s taken his peers to grow one or two. He’s taller than Weasley, who’d previously been the tallest Gryffindor. He’s well taller than both his parents had been at his age.
No one knows what to do about Harry Potter.
They haven’t listened to Harry asking the spiders that live in Barty’s rooms to kindly leave, unless they want to be eaten.
They weren’t there the first time Barty woke up in the middle of the night to a pair of grey-green eyes shining down from the top of his four-poster bed. Harry had been draped across the wooden beam as if he wasn’t six feet tall and too heavy for the pose to be anything but magical. Barty shouldn’t be comfortable under those too-big eyes, but he sleeps better than he has since before Azkaban. How scary can the dark be when the biggest monster you know is perched above you like a guardian angel?
Harry Potter is molting away to reveal the real thing underneath.
It’s almost too easy that they send him into the maze first. Barty watches him sniff the air like a dog--it’s not an unfamiliar move, he’s taken to doing it to Barty at least once a day--and bolt in. Krum follows, then Delacour. Krum sends up red sparks, and Barty probably isn’t alone for once when he wonders if it’s Harry’s doing.
Thirty minutes later, the boy shows up with Voldemort’s wand and a snivelling Pettigrew. He towers over the simpering Death Eater like his father never did, and Barty can feel how the now-familiar strangeness of Harry’s magic has spiked. It washes over the stands, older and richer in sensation than it had been before the task had started. Barty has to fight down a sudden panic. How long had the task lasted? He needed to see his own hands, to check if perhaps he’d aged along with the boy’s magic, but he still had a little over half an hour before the polyjuice would wear off. His heart beat hummingbird-fast in his chest.
Ministry officials seemed to flood the field to the tempo of Barty’s hysteria, taking Pettigrew. There’s no way he’ll get anything but the Kiss. Or perhaps he’ll sit in Azkaban until his mother can come to take his place. Is his mother still alive? Barty tries to remember the year, and can’t. It’s more frustrating because he knows he’d known it that morning, and it’s been ages since he’s forgotten the date so utterly. He needs to escape the aberrant magic. He can’t get a grasp on the time, and he has too little of it to waste in agitation.
As Harry is hurried away to the medical tent to answer questions and avoid medical attention, Barty slinks off to Moody’s chambers and begins to pack his necessities. He might not have actually handed Harry over to Voldemort, but the spectators wouldn’t know that. And it wasn’t like they could know that it was much more along the lines of handing Voldemort over to Harry.
He isn’t sure where he’s going to go. He’ll lay low for a while, definitely. Come summer, not too far off he knows now that he can think clearly, he might head to Surrey and find out if the blood wards will let him on the property. He doesn’t know if Harry will be so happy to see him outside of school, but he hopes. Assuming Harry will even be there. Worse case scenario, this time the family Barty tortures to insanity will deserve it.
He decides to leave Moody in the trunk. He leaves it unwarded in a moment of fleeting camaraderie. He’s thankful for the opportunities he’s gleaned from the man. It takes fifteen minutes to strip everything of importance from the room (and if that includes a few photos Creevey managed to get of Barty-as-Moody and Harry, he figures that’s his right).
Harry shows up before he can slip away. Barty, on edge even more than he realized earlier, snaps, “Leading them to me, Potter?”
The teen rolls his eyes, “I thought we were over last names? And over you thinking that I’m going to turn you in to the aurors.”
Barty sneers, and then finds himself freezing as Harry grabs the front of his robes and pulls him into a firm, chaste kiss. His polyjuice hasn’t faded, and he has the feeling he’s more disgusted by it than Harry. He doesn’t have to lean down at all. It’s such a far cry from how little the boy had been at the beginning of the year.
The thought reminds him that a fourteen-year-old is kissing him, and he goes from confused to repulsed.
Grimacing, Barty pulls away and puts space between them. As delighted as he is whenever Harry is near, and as powerful as his entrancement is, he has absolutely no interest in kissing anyone who hasn’t even graduated Hogwarts. Barty abruptly recalls that he isn’t even eighteen anymore, and “has graduated Hogwarts” is less than an acceptable requirement.
“Harry”, he begins, voice rough even to his own ears. He’s cut off as voices echoed down the hall.
Harry doesn’t look worried, but Barty doesn’t think the boy understands what’s at stake here. He wonders if there’s any way he’ll be able to make it to the edge of the wards with his portkey before the aurors make it. Wonders if they’ll have the dementors with them now or if he’ll have to wait. He never even got to visit his mom’s grave since he escaped. Never got to see another country. Hasn’t even grown into his own body.
Maybe they’ll believe he’s the real Moody after all?
No. He’s going to get Kissed, and he thinks that maybe it’s a good thing Harry got to him first. He has no interest in a child, no matter what kind of monster he is, but if Barty is going to die (or worse) then he’s glad Harry could have his take first. Barty’s magic curls around the boy reverently, with care that used to be reserved for only the most finicky of dark magic. He knows now what true obsession feels like, understands unselfish burning desire to be around someone. Even dark magic, his first love, doesn’t hold a candle to Harry.
And he’s going to lose both.
But Harry’s talking, and Barty is compelled to listen.
“...tell Sirius I sent you. Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place,” Harry says quickly as the voices draw nearer. He puts a hand on Moody’s chest and shoves him backwards, the surroundings melting together, and the last thing Barty hears is a quiet, “Dobby!”
He lands roughly on a cold floor and lays there a moment, stunned. He’s always been graceful with magical travel, never thrown up aparating or using the floo. He debates it now, rolling onto his side in hopes that the room will stop spinning and his nausea will subside. Perhaps breaking through Hogwarts’ extensive wards is just hard on the body, he thinks with a panicky kind of amusement.
After a few agonizing moments, he hears a pop and sees the go-bag he’d prepped appear next to him, accompanied by a young house elf. It starts to say something, but Barty just laughs. Perhaps they’d Kissed him after all. This is too strange to be real.
Harry appears before Sirius Black can start yelling too loudly over Barty’s own hysterical cackling. He and Dumbledore are there, and before Barty can freak out about that, Dumbledore takes Sirius and disappears. Harry settles next to Barty on the floor, lays down and watches him and waits for him to quiet.
“The aurors can’t get in here,” the boy says, voice soft, “Sirius is my godfather. He’s not really up to date on everything, but I’m pretty sure he’ll let us stay once I explain. If not, it won’t be too hard to find somewhere else. We have money.”
What’s mine is yours, he doesn’t say. He doesn’t have to.
“As if he’d let his godson live on the streets,” Barty tries to make a joke, not voicing that the man has no reason to extend the same courtesy to him.
“He might when his real godson comes back.”
“His real godson?”
“The real Harry Potter,” Harry says, as if that clarifies everything, rather than just making it harder for Barty to understand where this conversation is going.
Swampy eyes stare at him, and it occurs to Barty very suddenly that this does not look like Harry Potter. He’d known the boy was changing over the course of the year, but he’d never realized just how much.
There was very little trace of James Potter there now. The teen’s face is too round, and his eyes too big. They aren’t the right color to belong to his mother, who Barty had thought was rather striking for a mudblood when they were in school together. At first glance, the boy’s hair looks as wild and black as ever, but laying this close Barty can see the woven layers of dark feathers. Sharp teeth peek out from behind the creature’s lips.
“What d’you know about changelings?” It asks.
“Oh.” And it makes sense. The inability to eat human food, the hunger, the strange magic the boy possesses. The way languages had begun to untangle for him. The luminescent sheen to his eyes as he watches Barty now. “Harry Potter is still alive?”
“And in the process of being Returned, as per Lily Potter’s bargain.”
“Why didn’t you know?”
Harry, or not-Harry as it was, frowns. “They took my name. I don’t remember why. I shouldn’t remember what I do, I think. I don’t think they counted on me surviving. Eating Riddle jolted me enough to remember that.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Barty says, though it bothers him that his Harry was supposed to die. “Who will you be, when Harry Potter is here?”
“Harrison, maybe,” the boy replies with a laugh, “Since I was born from him, in a way. Who knows, really? We have five pieces left of Tom Riddle to destroy before they’ll give Harry back. That’s plenty of time to figure it out.”
“Five pieces? No, actually. I don’t care. Just tell me you’re older than Harry.”
“Much older. As old as the trees.”
Barty isn’t even sure he can love someone in that way anymore. The kind of sweet romances of spring and of young couples who steal kisses. But he remembers the way Harry had filled Moody’s rooms with a robust contentedness, the peace of a well-fed predator. Remembers when sleeping no longer meant waking up in the middle of the night unsure of what year it was and started to mean mossy green eyes and the warmth of another living being hovering inside of Barty’s space. He never would have thought of kissing the boy, hadn’t even thought of him as a creature that could be kissed. Barty doesn’t think that he was the same creature then.
Barty kisses him now. Sunlight streams in from a window high up on the wall, and it has to be enchanted because the day is a gloomy one, and Barty kisses Harry--Harrison--and knows with certainty that they’re both different creatures now.
He’s grateful when the polyjuice wears off, not more than fifteen minutes later. He gets to kiss Harry without Moody between them, and it’s not any more heated, but there is something more intimate about doing it in his own skin. He suspects Harry has very little opinion on what shape Barty is in, and wonders if changelings see polyjuice quite right. It’s not an experiment for today. Harry’s dark fingers laced with his own paler ones distract him thoroughly, and he doubts he’ll be able to focus on exploring potions for a while yet.
And shockingly, Sirius does let them stay. It doesn’t make sense, really. Perhaps for Harry--Harrison, he insists, in deference to the real Harry--it does, but Barty should have been kicked to the curb. Harrison just introduces them, and it’s clear from the way Black’s eyes narrow that he sees the careful way they stick to each other. But he doesn’t say anything. Barty thinks maybe Sirius is too tired to be mad about him. Not when he saved Harrison, and supports him in getting the real Harry back.
It ends like this--
Surprisingly happy, because Barty has never been under the delusion that he deserves a happy ending. He’s done awful things, and he has awful thoughts, and he doesn’t regret enough of it to be redeemable. Alice Longbottom doesn’t haunt his dreams, and he still thinks that being able to cast crucio on that spider in front of her son was a spectacular opportunity.
Harrison explores his fey magic and hunts down the rest of Tom Riddle with the man who insists he’s still Harrison’s godfather. He tracks the pieces like a hunting hound, his magic unfurling and growing with every part he consumes. Barty lingers around Grimmauld Place, cleaning the traces of old, vicious magic with carefully applied black magic of his own. And he’s having more fun than he would be allowed if the world was fair.
He finds closure. He had figured his father would be more careful, given what he’s done to Barty. Yet here they stand, facing each other at Elaine Crouch’s grave. He has fanciful ideas of keeping the man under the imperius, as had been done to him. He’s willing to bet Sirius would let him use the basement of Grimmauld Place, for nostalgia’s sake. Barty doesn’t do any of that.
He casts a quick curse, the kindest one he can make himself use. It’ll be painless. Painless for Barty, most importantly. And the most he can give his mother, who loved him more than anyone. He has Harrison to love him now, and he doesn’t need to torture his father to be happy. Nowadays, he doubts it would make him happy anyway.
He’s too busy picking out colors for the real Harry’s new room, like they’re preparing for a newborn. Sirius is playing music a few rooms away. None of them are really sure what to expect from a wizard raised by fey, especially with Harrison’s weird habits as indication, but for now a peaceful contentment lays over the household.
At the end, Barty and his nundu splay in the sun beneath enchanted windows behind Black family wards. They lock fingers, and discuss the countries they can visit whenever the house gets too small. India, to visit where James Potter’s family comes from. Egypt, because Harrison remembers the Weasleys saying good things about it. Greece, just because they can. They have nothing but time.
Maybe it’s Harrison who deserves this happy ending, and he’s simply taking Barty along with him. Barty doesn’t know, and it might be the one thing he’s content to never know. He doesn’t think it matters, if it ends like this.