InsaneJournal

Title: How to Save A Life, pt. 1/?; "A mixed up man, and I guess that's me"
Characters: Barty Crouch, Jr./James Potter, pre-slash.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: "...he’s removing himself from existence to do everyone a kindness, not to traumatize some children he didn’t know. No doubt seeing a corpse would have done that."
Word Count: ~1,840.
Warnings: Some language, but mostly it's just morbid. Suicidal ideation.
Disclaimer: They're all JKR's kids and/or the kids of JKR's kids; I'm just playing with them. Inspired by blurred_lines canon, but on a total crack tangent from there; all characters are, thus, inspired by their portrayals there. There are a lot of mentions, but special shout outs where they're deserved: James is cupcakecalamity's, Regulus is coeur_delanuit's, Antonin is musify's, Severus is hafren's, Anzhelina is plum's, Lily and Druella are bollywood's, Demetrius is andronicus's, and Aquila is eatamango's.
A/N: This is totally dedicated to cupcakecalamity, seeing as we now share an obsession with this pairing.

Barty feels oddly even thinking in such terms, but it is bloody cold – Muggle London in February, he chides himself; of course it’s cold; he would ask what manner of idiot he is, but he rather thinks that the answer to that question is painfully obvious; clearly, he is the sort of idiot who left his cloak and his little brother at home – home meaning The Old Parsonage, as he’s meant to be overseeing it in Antonin’s permanent absence; he still doesn’t understand why Antonin ever genuinely thought that Barty stood a chance with Anzhelina, but trusting him with the house was not an oversight. The cloak, he supposes, was a natural thing to forget and at least he has the scarf and sweater Antonin gave him last year for Christmas (even if they feel rather looser than he remembers), so it really could be worse; the phials of Calming Draught are freezing in his pockets and at least he knows that Aeschylus is with Olga and Yelena, for the time being, and that Severus and Demetrius will go see to him…

He’s the only reason why Barty would reconsider this course of action – Aeschylus Caspar Crouch, Barty’s dear younger brother, and the only hope left for their family now. After Antonin died and Druella whisked Anzhelina off to the Continent, they told Barty that it was just grief; Severus, Seph, Demetrius, Chloris, Aquila, Jacqueline, Julianne, Corbina, Astra… they all said that it was just the misery of bereavement, that, like everything, it too would pass, that Barty had managed to recover after Regulus and Mother died, so surely he could and would recover now – but, ever since Christmas, it’s only gotten worse. Just once, Barty wishes that he would get anxious like he used to, for the sole purpose of his feeling anything at all; he doesn’t sleep well, and for reasons that cannot be attributed to waking in the middle of the night to attend to his brothers; he knows that he’s gotten thin – several people, both at the hospital and away from it, have pointed this out to him, though only Severus, Seph, Julianne, Astra, and Aquila seemed to truly be worried about it, and he means no insult to Winky or to Antonin’s chef, but eating just enough to stay alive has been a particularly gruesome chore.

As dead as he already is – and what better word than “dead” exists for what he is. He feels nothing strongly anymore, beyond exhaustion, exasperation, and gaping holes in his sense of self that, once, were filled by everyone he loves and the hope that he could have made the world better for them. What got him through Regulus’s and Mother’s deaths was his faith that, ultimately, the Dark Lord would be right.

…Then the Dark Lord did nothing to save one of his most loyal followers – absolutely nothing. He had even laughed. Antonin was dead, murdered in nothing short of cold blood by that Mudblood bitch Lily Potter… and the Dark Lord had laughed – and everyone wants him to just get through this the way that he got through his mother’s and Regulus’s deaths. How can he do that? How can he go back to believing in that man; how can he listen to anything that the Dark Lord says, to anything that his followers say and be expected to treat it the same as he would have beforehand?

You can’t watch that – you cannot watch the man you’ve reverently followed since you were sixteen stand there and fail to save the man that you call father in all but blood and pesky legalities – and expect to manage things the same way that you would have before you knew the depths of cruelty that lay within the heart of the man you followed.

Now, all Barty has is Aeschylus. He’s left a note in his room, warded to Severus’s, Demetrius’s, and Aquila’s eyes only, describing what to do with Antonin’s home and servants; they will either know what to do with Aeschylus or will give him to someone who does know. Perhaps he will find his way to Lucius, Narcissa, and Draco, or to Marius and Astra; in either case, he will be better off where he ends up than he would have been had he stayed with his older brother; his older brother could hardly manage one life, let alone two; his older brother was a complete and utter failure who served no genuine purpose in the world; all he did was breathe fall flat on his face.

The only point of contention left is where Barty means to die. He has wandered around Muggle London for at least an hour and all he has learned is that Muggle London is far louder than he expected and that he’s an idiot for not even grabbing some kind of coat before leaving Whiteparish. Every alley is full of grime and every park he’s been to has been filled with children; he learned from Aquila, not too long ago, that back when they had first started down the Dark Lord’s path, he and Severus killed an innocent child, whose only crime had been having vigilante-minded parents. Sitting on one of the arctic cold benches in Hyde Park, he’s watched little families wandering by – mothers and fathers of all colors, each holding the hand of a small boy or a small girl; older children, who were still no more than nine, running ahead of their parents, then turning around and laughing at how clever they were – one girl, who couldn’t have been more than six, had been left with an older brother, who had been meant to watch her; when he failed, she slipped away and skipped over to Barty’s bench and, for no apparent reason, handed him one of the colorful, paper notes that Muggles used for money, apparently worth twenty pounds, which was more than enough for any purposes he might have had. All he could think was that he knew people who would have more than gladly killed her if she dared to show the signs of magic.

Damn it all, he cursed to himself on that bench; he could not kill himself in a park, where children could see it; he’s removing himself from existence to do everyone a kindness, not to traumatize some children he didn’t know. No doubt seeing a corpse would have done that.

Now it’s getting dark and he has no idea where he is. He could easily Apparate back to Whiteparish… but the point of leaving was so that Olga and Yelena would not be the ones to find him. All Barty knows that he’s cold, that it has started to snow, and that he’s twenty tonight although no one cares he supposes that it must be significant, and–

“Bloody oi!”

“My apologies,” Barty mumbles, falling to the ground and ignoring the clattering noise near his hips. “I just… I was thinking, and I did not look where I was-”

“Barty?!”

Barty looks up and he thinks he might well die right here: not only has he been recognized, but the person he walked into, the one who fell to the ground opposite him, had to be James Potter, who has his infant son with him.

“Hello, James, I… what are you… what are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here; what are you doing here?” James readjusts the boy, who appears to be sleeping, so that he can stand up. Extending a hand, which, despite himself, Barty takes as assistance getting off this cold, dirty pavement, James goes on: “You know this is Muggle London, right? Seriously, I mean… what’ll they do to you if they catch you out here?”

James hardly needs to define this they of his, as everything is implicit: he means the Death Eaters, Barty’s so-called fellows (although James doesn’t know it) and the People In Charge. Right now, Barty doesn’t know what the people he has previously allied himself with will do to him and he doesn’t rightly care. He’s going to die anyway; what does it matter what the Lestranges will want to do to him for wandering outside of some hypothetical boundaries? Wordlessly, Barty just looks down at the sidewalk.

“Barty?” James asks. “What’s-”

Sensing the question before it comes, Barty snaps: “Nothing – nothing is wrong at all. It’s just… everything is fine.”

“Well pardon me for not believing you,” James says with some indecipherable smug twist of his lips.

“I haven’t the slightest idea why you would not believe me. Everything is perfectly fine.”

“You’re distracted, it’s cold and you’re only in a jumper, and you’re in Muggle London, for one thing.”

“That would be three things.”

“Well, you’re still anal; that’s a good sign.”

“I have no idea what you are-”

Very much without permission to do so, James ruffles Barty’s hair. “Of course you…” Honestly, Barty knows where this is going, so he has no idea why James stops talking, much less why he so abruptly trails off; but the last thing he expects is what comes: “Barty, what the hell is that?”

…Oh, Merlin. Shame rushes over Barty like a hot shower, drenching him in warmth despite the fact that he was utterly freezing. This is not supposed to be happening: he is meant to have come to Muggle London, found some place that was peaceful enough for him to do the deed, and taken the four phials of Calming Draught in his pockets. Running into James Potter should not be deterring him – except that one of them has fallen out and, now, James crouches down and picks it up. When he resurfaces, he holds it mere inches from Barty’s face.

“Barty,” he insists again, “what is this?”

“Are you an idiot, Potter?” Barty snaps desperately, looking up at him with pursed lips and a wrinkled nose. “Or did you simply not take NEWT-level Potions?” There is a brief period of silence, filled only with James staring at him so intently. “…It’s Calming Draught,” Barty finally acquiesces.

“Why do you have it? You seem oddly calm, by your standards.”

“It is not any of your business, James; honestly, I…” Barty attempts to grab the phial back, but James just pulls it away. “Give that back, please.”

“No. …How many do you have?”

“Likewise, it is not any of your business, James-”

“How many do you have?”

“Four. Now will you kindly-”

Before Barty can finish his sentence, James has turned him around, put an arm around his shoulders, and taken to leading him down the street; Barty cannot even pay attention to where the Calming Draught ended up, at this point. All that really matters, as far as he can tell, is that James Potter has decided that they are going to his home in Godric’s Hollow, that his mother is making them supper, and that Barty’s gotten far too thin, so he gets automatic second helpings.

Barty has no idea why he finds arguing so impossible.