Chapter Text
Is today a good day to die?
This is one of the many thoughts that circulate around Barty's head constantly. They push through everything else and swim lazily around his head, taunting him, tempting him. They're one of the reasons he runs. Running helps clear his head. If he can't run, he just lies awake at night because there is so much to think about. So much to do in so little time.
Is today the day?
And if not today- when?
He is asking himself this right now while standing on a thin strip of ledge. He climbed over the rail that stands between the roof of the bell tower and the seemingly deadly drop that he is considering falling into. He knows this isn't healthy. McGonagall has gone over the possible implications of his actions several times in their mandatory weekly "therapy" sessions- sessions mainly consisting of McGonagall asking him horribly personal and upsetting questions and Barty brushing them off with a bad joke or sarcastic comment. Normal people don't think about dying at least once a day.
Barty stares out at the long drop in front of him, gripping the rail behind him to stop himself falling accidentally. If he is going to fall, it will be of his own accord, not because he tripped on an undone shoelace and landed on a crumpled heap on the pavement below. Okay, that's dark. But that's to be expected when he is literally debating on whether or not he feels like dying.
He doesn't really know how he got here. The bell tower, that is. Lately, things have been... blank. Not blank as in boring, blank as in nothing. Blank as in the days blurred together and time became a confusing whirlwind of school, home, eat, sleep, wake up, repeat. Nothing affected him much for about two months. There was just a huge blank stretch of time where nothing seemed real. Or maybe everything got too real and he shut off again.
Either way, it doesn't matter. He is Awake now.
Six days ago, he woke up and felt more alive. Like his brain had switched back on and could form cohesive thoughts again. Like he could breathe fresh air after months of breathing smoke. Like a glass of clean, cold water first thing in the morning. Like he was awake after being asleep for what feels like years.
He doesn't want to think about what it all might mean. Normal people don't shut off for days, weeks, sometimes even months at a time. McGonagall wanted to try and get him tested for something. Get him proper therapy. Slap a label on him and prescribe him some weird obscure medication and move on. Leave him to figure it out. As if giving whatever this is a name makes it better, more manageable.
Because it doesn't.
And now Barty is standing on a ledge.
No-one has noticed. It's kind of nice not to be stared at for once. He watches all the people milling about below him, six stories down on the nice, safe ground. He sees them talking and laughing and something stings in his heart when he sees them. Even the people who act like he committed some unforgivable crime have friends. Barty has no-one.
Barty lets go of the railing and stands, untethered, on the narrow ledge of the school bell tower. He spreads his arms wide and debates on taking a bow, but that would probably topple him off the edge and he wants this to be his choice. Not the fault of his terrible balance.
"I, Barty Crouch Junior, being of unsound mind, do hereby bequeath all of my earthly possessions to Regulus Arcturus Black, Dorcas Elizabeth Meadowes, and my dead mother. Everyone else can go fuck themselves." Barty declares loudly. Being six storeys up means that he isn't heard by anyone below. If they did hear him, though, they probably wouldn't care.
"You're fucked in the head, Crouch." Mulciber has a wicked grin on his face, and his mates are all behind him. They form a small army as their leader advances on Barty.
"What?" Barty mutters. Showing that this bothers him will make it all worse; he knows that. But it's so hard not to let it get under his skin when Mulciber always knows what'll sting the most.
"You know, people think this whole freak thing is an act. I know it's real." Mulcuber's smile is a hot knife, sinking into Barty's skin, slowly burning through the layers of defense that he's spent so long building against people like the guy standing in front of him now.
"Shut up." Barty tries to keep his voice neutral. Don't let it hurt. Don't care. If it hurts, then he's won.
"You know I'm right. Even your dad thinks so. He probably complains about you to all his mates in the government, trying to get you sent to a fucking loony bin. Because you're a freak, Crouch." Mulciber spits, his eyes glinting. Avery and the rest of his lot hang back, hyena-faced, nasty smiles made up of too many teeth.
"Shut the fuck up." Barty hisses heatedly, clenching his fists. Don't let it get to you. Don't give him the satisfaction. Don't let him win.
"No need for that. I'm only telling you what you already know." Mulciber strides closer, and Barty has to fight the urge to step back. Avery's smile has twisted into something ugly and venomous.
"If you don't shut your mouth, I'll shut it for you." Barty clenches his jaw and his eyes flick between Mulciber's stupid punchable face and Avery's stupid punchable grin.
"I'd like to see you try." Mulciber raises his eyebrows, stepping even closer.
And that's it. He's asking for it, isn't he? Barty can't deny him what he wants, right? He just said he would like to see him try. So Barty tries. He doesn't hesitate to swing his clenched fist right into Mulciber's stupid smirking face.
He gets suspended for three days for fighting in school, but Mulciber stops smiling that sharp, wicked knife grin, so Barty counts it as a win.
Mulciber was and still is a world-class arsehole, but Barty doesn't want his last thoughts to be tainted by the worst person in the world.
No, actually, that prize would have to go to his father. Although, if we're being realistic in this imaginary prize-giving world, Barty wouldn't give him an award if his life depended on it.
Using phrases like "his life depended on it" reminds him of the fact that his life may or may not be cut short, because it currently depends on how he feels about death by suicide this early in the week.
Is today a good day to die?
Barty sighs. This really is a, for want of better words, unusual situation to be in at 11:27am on a Tuesday morning. Barty has never liked Tuesdays, though. He'd rather die on a Saturday, which is arguably the best day, but part of him doesn't want to wait that long. The other part is hesitating. Stupid self-preservation.
Barty is still there, on the stupid ledge. Hesitating. Part of him wishes Mulciber would come and mock him and say he wouldn't have the balls do it. Because then he'd actually have to do it, to prove Mulciber wrong. To prove that he wasn't what they wanted him to be. Or maybe he would be proving them right. Anyway, he's six stories up with access to the longest drop in school. That's a start.
That's when he notices that he isn't alone on this ledge. He hears a shuffling behind him and turns his head slightly, regaining his grip on the cold metal rail behind him. He sees the boy, who stands a few feet away on the other side of the tower, also out on the ledge, his blonde locs waving slightly in the cool breeze, his shoes in his hand. He is standing shoeless on a ledge, six stories up, in January, in England. He is staring either at his feet or at the ground below- its hard to tell. He seems almost frozen in place.
Barty almost finds it funny. They're both here for the same reason, after all. He didn't expect anyone else to be this fucked up. In a weird, twisted way, it's nice to know that he isn't the only person with major issues. He isn't the only freak. Although this boy looks like the exact opposite of him. He looks like he fits in. So it seems extra odd that he would be here for... this reason.
"Trust me, the worst thing you can do is look down." Barty keeps his tone calm and comversational, because being a debonair delinquent with a heart of gold is looking really appealing right now. And also maybe partly because he doesn't want to think about the fact that he was really about to jump.
Very slowly, the boy turns his head to face him, and Barty has never seen him before. Which is surprising, because he knows most of the people in this school, save for the first-years who don't matter enough to count yet. This boy is new, then. Interesting.
Barty grins slightly. "Come here often? Because this is kind of my spot and I don't remember seeing you here before."
The boy raises an eyebrow and says nothing, just stares at Barty blankly. He glances down at the drop, then at the railing. He seems just as conflicted as Barty.
Is today a good day to die?
Barty continues, unperturbed by his silence. "I don't know what brings you up here, but for me it's that the town looks prettier and the people look like people instead of the hellish demons they actually are." The boy still says nothing, just staring at Barty with an unreadable expression.
He is good-looking, with thin light blonde locs that hang around his face, caramel skin and honey brown eyes. He looks like someone who would date girls like Mafalda Hopkirk and Emmeline Vance. He looks like someone who would be part of the popular crowd. The kind of person who wouldn't dream of standing on a ledge with the school Freak. He looks like he belongs, presumably being posh and pretentious, but not in the same way as the other students. He's different to them, somehow. His hands have a ring or two on them where they're clutching the rail, and his top button is undone, his tie loosened. He looks nice. The rich kid kind of nice.
Barty is suddenly very aware of his own messy dark hair and crumpled uniform. He is wearing his blue Converse with the orange laces and he has left his tie who-knows-where. He isn't wearing his blazer, only his dark green jumper with the school emblem on it. He makes a point to leave the house looking like the disgrace of a son that he is, merely to spite his father. He has the sleeves rolled up, exposing the tattoo of a finch he has on his left forearm. The boy is still staring at him, and he feels the sudden need to fix his hair, which is weird because he never wants to fix his hair.
Barty decides to fill the awkward silence again. Something about this boy interests him. "But let's face it. You didn't come up here for the view. What's your name?"
The boy blinks, and his eyes narrow slightly. He doesn't answer. Git.
"I'm Barty Crouch. Junior. I haven't seen you around here before. Are you new?" Barty fidgets with the sleeve of his jumper.
The boy still doesn't answer. He seems to be scanning Barty's face in a weirdly calculating way. Like he's figuring out if this is someone he wants to be associated with. Barty hopes he hasn't heard about him yet, specifically the altercation with Mulciber last year. It would be nice to have someone who doesn't think he's a freak. Yet.
"I'm here because double maths is like swimming in radioactive waste, only worse. I hate maths. That's not why I'm here, though. If you are, then I support the cause. But you're probably alright at it. Maths, I mean. I'm shit at maths, mainly because I can't think about the numbers too much or they float away from me, so I don't bother. Maths is the bane of my existence and I refuse to partake in it. I'm better at more important stuff- art, getting girls, though that makes me sound like a frat boy from a nineties teen movie, and consistently, purposefully and persistently disappointing my father dearest. Skipping maths is one of my favourite ways to do that. I'll never use it in the real world, anyway, so what's the point?" Barty keeps talking, only half sure about what he is saying. He needs to piss. And get something to eat, he's bloody starving.
Is today a good day to die?
And then it starts to rain. The kind of rain in romcoms where the two main characters reunite and hug and kiss and laugh and have a jolly good time and the credits roll and everyone gets up from where they were watching the movie and goes to get something to eat before bed because they knew it would be a happy ending and yet they are somehow relieved that everything worked out.
"It's raining." Barty comments helpfully, as if the downpour is only visible to him. "I guess there's an argument to be made that the rain will wash away all the messy bits. I don't think it's raining hard enough to do that, but you never know until you try. Although I don't fancy turning up looking like a bloodstained pretzel at my funeral. I'm much too good-looking for my stellar visage to be fucked up by the concrete."
The boy shivers slightly, though he is wearing his blazer as well as his own green jumper. He glances down at the ground again and Barty feels the need to distract him from what he came up here to do, inching along the ledge towards him slowly, gripping the rail tightly, because for some reason he doesn't feel like jumping off the edge as much as he did five minutes ago.
"I want cremation. I don't exactly fancy waking up six feet under and having to die all over again due to the lack of fresh air in the average coffin." Barty says conversationally, reaching a spot that is around a foot away from the blonde boy who is staring silently at him with that same unreadable look in eyes.
From down below, so far down, someone yells, "Oh my god, is that a student? On the bell tower?"
This seems to startle the boy, because he grips onto the railing and stares down at the people below in trepidation. For the first time, he speaks, muttering under his breath, "Shit. Shit. Shit."
Barty takes in his expression and then says, louder than necessary so the kids down below can hear, "Don't try to save me! You'll only kill yourself!" Then he turns back to the blonde boy, who is looking at him in surprise. "Here's what I think you should do. Chuck your shoes over the rail and hold onto it and then swing your leg over. Got it?"
He pauses, eyeing Barty warily before he nods in reply and does as asked, his shoes hitting the concrete under the bell with a thud. He glances at the stretch of space ahead, into the blue sky and the wispy white clouds above and he swallows. Barty gestures to the bell again to recapture his attention.
"Alright. Now get your leg over and make sure to hold onto the rail. Don't look down. Looking down makes it worse." Barty says, now gripping the rail tighter than before. The boy raises an eyebrow again before he pulls his leg up and climbs swiftly over the railing, as if he's done this before. Interesting.
Now it's just Barty on the ledge. Alone. The kids still glance up every once in a while at the bell tower but they don't pay him much mind. It's just the freak. Barty takes a deep breath and stares down past all the open classroom windows and the kids still wandering around the courtyards. He stares at the ground, which is now slick with rainwater.
He could just step off. It would be over in seconds. No more "freak". No more hurt. No more anything.
Barty tries to get past the unexpected interruption of saving someone's life and returns his mind to the matter at hand. The messy, Tuesday-morning, 11:32am, rainy, basically just tiring, matter at hand. But he can feel his resolve crumbling.
Is today a good day to die?
"Are you coming or what?" a voice from behind him asks. He has a slight accent, Barty notices. Huh.
Is today a good day to die?
No. Today is not a good day to die, he decides, and he turns his head away from the long drop now. It seems like a stupid idea now that he thinks about it, though he kind of wants to know what Mulciber's face would look like if he landed next to him on the concrete.
Barty tries to stifle a laugh at this thought, but he fails and ends up laughing so hard he almost loses his grip on the railing, but the boy whose life he just saved (no big deal) grabs his wrist tightly. Barty glances back at him, at this boy who just stopped him falling off the same ledge they'd both been preparing to jump off two minutes earlier. Their eyes meet and the boy looks determined. His grip doesn't slacken and he looks at him with that same analysing stare.
"Get it over with, freak!" Mulciber's voice calls from down below. Barty flips him off, though he probably can't see him from his great height.
"Bastard." The blonde boy mutters to himself, glaring down at Mulciber. He is still holding Barty's wrist tightly. Barty almost smiles. French. His accent is French, and it sounds nice.
"Thank you so much for saving me. I don't know what I would have done if you weren't here. I'd probably look a like a jelly doughnut on the pavement right about now." Barty shouts, making sure that every stupid kid below can hear him.
The door at the top of the stairs opens and Barty's best friend, Regulus Black, appears. Regulus looks ready to murder him, even more than usual. Barty grins when he sees him. "Morning, Reggie. Such nice weather we're having. Gotta love Britain."
Unsurprisingly, Regulus is not amused. He glances at the blonde boy, who is still holding Barty's wrist like he will fall at any minute. "Today's chip day. Can't die on chip day, can I?" Barty says cheerfully. He grins again and glances down at the courtyard below. McGonagall is scowling up at him. Wonderful. He'll deal with her later. He swings his long legs over the rail and jumps down onto the concrete. From down below there is a smattering of applause. Not for Barty. For the mysterious new kid who just saved him. The hero of the hour. The boy who is still gripping Barty's wrist like he's forgotten he was doing it.
Up close like this, Barty can see him a lot more clearly. He's only a couple of inches shorter than Barty, but his eyes are the most interesting. They are the colour of syrup, with gold flecks in them, and they stand out due to his dark complexion. As warm as they look, they are blank and he doesn't blink much, Barty notices. It's a little off-putting, because his eyes seem like they can look right into Barty and see all the messed up parts that make him who he is. He isn't sure how he feels about that.
"I was up here to skip maths." The boy says in a flat voice, his eyes piercing. "I wasn't here for─"
"Do you think there's such a thing as a perfect day?" Barty interrupts him.
"What?" The boy raises an eyebrow.
"A perfect day. Start to finish. When nothing terrible or sad or generally depressing happens. Do you think that's possible?"
"I don't know."
"Have you ever had one?"
"No."
"Me neither, but I'm looking for it."
The boy lets go of his wrist. Barty only notices the absence of his hand when it is pulled away and he almost misses it. The boy stares at him for another second before he clears his throat and says, "Thank you, Barty Crouch Junior." He picks up his shoes and head towards the door, ducking under the large bell and past Regulus before reaching the top of the stairs. Then he turns around and looks at Barty again. "If you tell anyone about this, I will kill you."
"What's your name?" Barty asks again, because he can't help it. He has to know.
The boy stares at him for a second (he really does do that a lot) before he says, "Evan Rosier." He turns and walks down the dark staircase to a loud and busy corridor, still carrying his shoes.
Regulus watches him go as the door swings shut behind him and turns back to Barty with a scowl on his face. "Explain yourself. Why were you out on a ledge with Evan Rosier, of all people?"
Barty shrugs. "We all have to die someday. Just preparing myself." That isn't the reason, of course. There are many reasons. This very school. Mulciber. Avery. The kids who set fire to someone's house a week ago. The serial killer on the news. The current war in Ukraine. That boy who got hit by a car last week in central Lancaster. There are many reasons to want to leave it all behind.
Regulus sighs and just gestures for him to go with him down the stairs. He doesn't call Barty a freak or a weirdo, and that's why they are best friends.
"How do you know Evan Rosier?" Barty asks as he starts the descent down the flight of rickety stairs. "What you said- you sounded like you knew him."
Regulus' mouth twists and he pauses before he shrugs, though Barty knows he's holding something back. Then again, Regulus usually is.
Technically, Barty is "on probation" this year. This is due to the aforementioned escapade between him and Nicholai Mulciber (which had much more severe consequences than he had originally anticipated). It's also due to several other similar incidents. The desk he burned in a spell of destructive boredom (the lighter was right there, okay?), the spotlight in the drama room that fell and almost hit Avery (so close and not close enough), several other fights, one of them actually in the middle of the dinner hall. As a result, Barty has agreed to maintain average grades minimum, participate in one or more extracurricular activities (art club- it is quiet and he can draw whatever he wants with no judgement- in Barty's opinion, school should be like that all the time), and weekly counselling with the one and only Minerva McGonagall. He must also not "cause any more trouble" for himself. Like burning desks and fighting arseholes like Mulciber and Avery. Like standing on a ledge at 11:27am on a Tuesday morning.
The pastoral office is exactly how you would think it would look. Inspirational quotes on the walls, pretentious leaflets about obscure mental illnesses, and several well-meaning but incredibly annoying counsellors who hover around the school and pretend to care how you're doing. Such as McGonagall. Barty walks into said office with his usual practised air of "I don't want to be here, but here I am". He nods to the secretary and gives his name and she waves him through to McGonagall's office. She is there, waiting for him in her spinning chair like a mysterious anti-hero from a film. Barty wouldn't be surprised if she was stroking a cat on her lap and said something like "I knew you would come here eventually, heroes always do".
If their previous meetings have told Barty anything about McGonagall, he thinks she will want to know what happened on the bell tower. Understandable, but inconvenient.
Barty is waved in soon enough. The only things he's gathered about McGonagall are that she has a no-nonsense attitude and a tendency to pass out biscuits to people she likes. It's not much, because sadly, most of the talking they do is about him. She shuts the door behind him and sits behind her desk, straight-backed and serious. This is a woman with a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit, and Barty is bullshit incarnate. He leans back in his chair and braces himself for the attack that will inevitably come.
"Good morning." Starting off with the pleasantries, then.
"It's afternoon, technically."
"Now is not the most appropriate time to try and be funny, Mr Crouch."
"Barty."
"Pardon?"
"It's Barty. Mr Crouch is my father." He folds his arms. His father has tainted his existence enough; naming him after himself was just an added pinch of cruelty to the recipe for misery and calamity that is Barty's entire life. Bartemius Crouch Senior is one of those people who has to control everything around him. Barty likes being the only thing his father can't. He thinks that's where his innate and unquenchable thirst for liberty stems from, as do most of his personality traits: the need to defy everyone's expectations.
As much as McGonagall has prodded and poked at his "family issues", he hasn't told her any of this. He prefers to acknowledge these thoughts and then tuck them in a box in the corner of his mind. A very distant corner. Guarded with spikes and swinging axes like in a video game.
"What were you doing on the bell tower, Barty?" McGonagall asks, her beady eyes fixed on him like a hawk.
"Well, there was a nice view-"
"Were you planning on jumping off the ledge?"
"God, no. Not on chip day. Never on chip day. Best day of the week, in my opinion. Even though it's on a Tuesday." Barty nods, shooting her a practiced smile. He had been planning on jumping off, perhaps doing a flip on the way down for added effect, but something had stopped him. Something with blonde hair and honey-coloured eyes. Barty half expects McGonagall to ask about Evan, but she continues with the boring subject of his "self-destructive spiralling". Teachers.
"Were you planning on harming yourself, Barty? Because if you were, we need you to let us know so we can provide adequate support for you. This presents a bad image for the school, as cold-hearted as that sounds. Additionally, if you try to pull a similar stunt, we are looking at a serious investigation. No matter the location, I am in charge of your wellbeing and I want to help you, and before you ask for the third time, it is not just because school doesn't pay its employees enough to be able to handle being sued."
"We keep going over it, but I don't feel truly reassured."
"Again, this is not a joking matter. Were you planning on harming yourself?"
"Nah. Who would eat the chips if I had snuffed it?"
"Barty." McGonagall sighs, clearly exasperated.
"Professor." Barty replies in the same weary tone. He pauses before he sighs as well and says dully, "I was not planning on harming myself. Scout's honour." He was not a Scout, so it doesn't count as lying. Either that, or it's a double lie, which cancels out.
"I want you here two days a week now, not just one. Tuesdays and Thursdays."
"On chip day?"
"Yes, Barty. On chip day. I'm worried about you. I've mentioned it before, but if you want me to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist, we can─"
"I don't." Barty doesn't care if he's being rude at this point. He will not, repeat will not see a shrink. That is the last thing he wants.
"Think about it. It might help. You could go and try to speak to Dr. Smethwyck, he was─"
"No."
"Just think about it." McGonagall grits her teeth, her patience obviously wearing a little thin. Barty decides to leave it at that. "Now, let's discuss the summer term last year. You missed almost five weeks of school, Barty. What happened?"
Barty sighs. Not this again. "Er... my grandma─"
"Sorry, let me clear this up. Is this the grandma who has died four times in the past three years?"
"Five, actually." Barty says, leaning back comfortably in his chair and stifling a smirk. "She's our miracle."
He doesn't mention the real reason he wasn't in for five weeks. The gnawing, gut-deep void in his heart, the blank stretches of lost time, the way everything hurt and everything felt numb at the same time, the way his mind shut down and he couldn't draw anymore, and the Asleep.
Is today a good day to die?
Die.
Die.
Die.
Die.
D i e.
D
i
e.
"Barty, are you listening to me?" McGonagall's voice breaks him out of his reverie and he blinks up at her, nodding quickly. "Can I expect you to show up and stay out of trouble this term?"
"Naturally."
"And keep up with schoolwork?"
"Mhm."
"I'm arranging a drug test and I will collect some useful leaflets for our next meeting." McGonagall stands up and holds the door open for him. "Stay alive, Barty. There will always be people who will miss you if you're gone."
Barty stands up, swinging his bag over his shoulder and making his way towards the exit. He doesn't want to talk about what would happen if he went through with it. Regulus and Dorcas would miss him, of course, but that's about it. He doesn't know his father well enough to know whether or not he would mourn. Although he supposes that gives him his answer.
He nods to McGonagall, feeing the need to thank her somehow, though the thought of more leaflets kind of makes him want to go back to the ledge.
Okay, that's a little dramatic. But if you were forced to read self-help books as non-homework homework, you might think something similar.
The real, honest truth is, Barty doesn't want to die. As much as the evidence stacks up against him, he actually wants to be alive, because life is so imperfectly perfect. He really wants to live. But having episodes of being half-dead makes that difficult at best. The contrary evidence is stacked in that thick folder on McGonagall's desk, with his whole life packed into ticked boxes. Like that's all he is. Words on a page, with no real significance or meaning. It's things like that which make it hard to stay in the world of the living. But he is fighting, all the time, to stay. And he's fucking exhausted.
Barty leaves her to her empty promises. He has tried to reach out, tried to get help. He tried to talk to his teacher a few years ago, who jumped to conclusions and Barty stopped trying to explain himself. That teacher promised him proper counselling, and then promptly forgot about him altogether, so he gave up trying.
He leaves the stupid office with its stupid inspirational quotes and stupid pretentious leaflets about obscure mental illnesses and the several well-meaning but incredibly annoying counsellors.
He is just glad that Evan wasn't mentioned.