Ava Rosier is not what she seems. (pretensity) wrote in acciogoblet, @ 2012-11-28 20:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | [npc] mad-eye moody, ava rosier |
Characters: Ava Rosier, Barty Crouch Jr as Mad-Eye Moody (NPC).
Setting: Hogwarts Corridors in the evening, November 27th, after the first task.
Summary: Barty finds his former comrade's daughter a little too fascinating.
Status: Complete
Ava had escaped the celebrations in the Gryffindor Common Room in favor of the quiet, deserted hallways of the castle. Everyone was in their common rooms by now, but Ava needed to get out of the Tower. As happy as she was for Harry, crowds had never been her thing. Especially not when her mind was in a tangle like it was tonight.
Was it wrong of her to be supporting Harry Potter? Her grandparents, she knew, were furious that the boy was being allowed to compete. Surely she ought to be, too. Harry had defeated You-Know-Who, the wizard who her father had followed so zealously. He was the shining star of the Wizarding World. And, of course, he had dirty blood.
Blood like hers.
Which brought Ava back to her endless struggle. She knew that her blood was bad, was dirty, was disgusting. She knew that she had to lie. She knew that she ought to hate Harry Potter and everything that he stood for. That was the only thing that she had known for certain since the day that her father had disappeared from her life.
But how could she reconcile that with what she knew from her years in Gryffindor? From the friendship of her schoolmates, most especially Ruby, who were no more pureblooded than she? And from the talent she saw from witches and wizards of all sorts of backgrounds and bloodlines?
How was it fair that they should be denied their place in the Wizarding World simply because they were born wrong, just as she had been? It chaffed at her sense of justice. She could not justify the realities of what she had always been taught and what she saw around her. It was frustrating and horrible and she had no one she could speak to it about. To do so would mean revealing her secret and that was the one thing she knew that she must never, ever do.
Suddenly, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up on end and she shivered. She hated the overwhelming feeling that she was being watched. It was the way she felt whenever she was in a room with Mad-Eye Moody, the man who had murdered her father. The man who was now the professor of her favorite subject. The man who treated her far too kindly to make any sense at all.
Swallowing hard, she turned and looked over her shoulder. There was no one there. Sighing and scolding herself for being silly, she hurried down the corridor a bit faster, all of a sudden intent on returning to Gryffindor.
Barty had been watching Miss Ava Rosier very carefully. Her father had been loyal and true to the Dark Lord and had died for the cause. Evan had not some pathetic traitor who denied his devotion in the first moment that it was tested. Just as Lucius' behavior made Barty despise his son, Evan's honorable death made Barty wish to honor his memory through his daughter.
Of course, it didn't hurt that Ava was very beautiful. She'd make someone a fine pureblooded wife someday. In fact, Barty was considering asking for her as part of his reward for the project he was even now undertaking for his master.
It was damned hard to get close to her in his current guise, of course. The good girl obviously feared and distrusted the bastard Auror who had murdered her father. Barty looked forward to revealing the truth about Moody's condition to her when the time came.
As he skulked through the corridors watching her, his hand curled around the gift he had tucked away for her in his robes. When she looked behind her and then began to move more quickly away from him, he smiled and chuckled darkly. Good instincts, that girl.
"Miss Rosier," he said, stepping out of the shadows. "A moment, if you please?"
Ava stopped dead in her tracks. She'd been telling herself that she was being paranoid, that no one was following her, that no one else was in the hallways right now, but here he was. The very man that she had been praying to every deity she knew would stay away from her.
"Hello, Professor," she said, turning and staring at her feet. "I'm just going back to the Tower now. It isn't quite curfew, is it?"
"It might be," Barty said gruffly, limping towards her. "But that wasn't why I stopped you."
"It's not?"
"No," he said. He pulled the book on Wizarding Chess strategy from his robes and shoved it into her hands. It amused him slightly, how shocked she looked. "I heard you're trying to get better at chess. That should help."
With that, he turned on his heel and stomped off whence he had come.
Ava kept staring after him. She felt dizzy and she could feel bile rising in her throat. The man who had killed her father had just given her a gift. No only that, but he had gone out of his way to learn about her interests in order to do so. It was sickening.
Why on earth should he be so interested in her? She didn't think that he was trying to assuage his guilt over her father, if only because Moody didn't strike her as the type to feel guilt over the demise of Death Eaters.
She couldn't explain it, but it frightened her. Ava was not hard to frighten or confuse, of course, but she had never felt anything like this.
As soon as Moody was out of sight, she fled back to Gryffindor Tower. She could hide there. And bury the book at the bottom of her trunk where she'd hopefully never see it again.