Barty Crouch, Jr. is not Oedipus Rex. (culling) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-08-28 03:41:00 |
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Following The Incident at dueling practise, Barty was fairly certain that he wanted to, if not die, then not deal with people anymore, ever again. He was a failure, that much was blatantly obvious, and he did not deserve to have anyone he considered to be a friend, let alone anything else that made him happy. Achilles seemed to be the only exception to this, given that he had not left Barty alone since he had practically crawled his way back into his flat. The cat seemed determined to see to it that Barty had company of some fashion, and he even insisted on joining Barty in bed when Barty flopped onto his side, intent on sleeping for a good, long while -- ideally, it would be forever, or else he would find out that some past period of time had all been a dream, or something of that nature. As much as he wished to be alone, Barty felt he was in no position to pass up affection from the only living being -- aside from his mother -- that stood a chance of showing him any and, with Achilles nuzzling softly at his chest, Barty drifted off to sleep.
Barty's place was warded, naturally, but the wards of an eighteen-year-old, however talented, did not stand up against the experience of a fifty-nine-year-old Death Eater who was bent on getting in, even if said Death Eater was not actually at the apartment to Death Eat.
Antonin took one look at the sleeping Barty, gauging his condition from what he could see -- clear exhaustion, which did not please him at all -- and spent a few minutes using charms to pack what could be readily taken, stepping out of the apartment for a moment to arrange delivery of the rest of the things with the landlord, who seemed too awed by speaking with a Dolohov to argue. Returning to the room, he scowled at the potions on the desk and started methodically sorting them and packing them into a padded case that he normally took with him on house calls.
Had Antonin not shown up at Barty's flat, the boy likely would have slept right through the night and well into the next day, but Achilles was far from sleeping and, at the sudden advent of a visitor, he perked up attentively, sitting up but refusing to abandon the Blond Boy With the Food. He regarded the new person in the flat curiously -- or as curiously as a kitten could regard anyone -- for a moment before recognizing him as the Small Man With the Big Desk. While it was certainly not a common occurrence for anyone to visit the flat, except maybe the Blond Boy's Small, Dark-Haired Mate and the Blond Girl With the Treats, Achilles could have overlooked that, had it not been the Small Man With the Big Desk. The Small Man With the Big Desk was important.
Mewing softly -- though he got progressively louder as the Small Man With the Big Desk saw to packing up everything -- Achilles nudged against the Blond Boy's chin. When that failed to rouse him, Achilles took to licking the Blond Boy's face; at long last, and with a small groan, the Blond Boy's eyes fluttered open.
"Achilles, what..." Blearily and feeling quite muddled all around, Barty raised his head a bit. ...Where had his things gone? ...He hadn't packed anything up on his own power, and his wards should have kept... Oh. Oh, Mr Dolohov was here. ...Wait -- Mr Dolohov? "...Sir?" he managed to get out, squinting in Mr Dolohov's direction and attempting to discern whether or not this was real.
"You," Antonin said, still packing away the potions carefully, "are not saying here one night longer. You must take better care of yourself. You are exhausted, and if I know you at all you have not been eating properly. You weigh less than I do, Barty, and you are a good five inches taller, that is not a healthy state of being."
...What in the world was going on? Barty could not really say. He had no idea why Mr Dolohov had come here, why he was packing up Barty's things, or why anything was currently going the way it was. It was not as though Mr Dolohov was incorrect -- being perfectly honest, Barty hadn't been eating properly, but there were still other potential problems with this. "...But I can't go home," Barty sighed. "My father was explicit about that." ...Maybe this was just a dream. Dreams were supposed to be wish fulfillment, were they not?
"No, you cannot. That man does not deserve to call himself a father," Antonin growled, setting the padded case of potions down and reaching out to give Achilles a pat. "The third floor of my manor is vacant; the place was built for a man with far more children than Theresa and I were blessed with. You will stay in one of the suites there, until I am satisfied that you have learned to look after yourself properly."
...Some excuse for wish fulfillment -- after the shenanigans at dueling practise, all Barty would have needed to do in order to feel like a failure would have been to get his journal and attempt to write more than he already had. The least that this dream could have offered him was the attempt to kill his father, or else made him not be so exhausted. "...'s not necessary," Barty sighed, letting his head flop back onto his pillow. At least this was probably a dream and, thus, would be done with soon and, hopefully, replaced with a dream of murdering Father. Barty enjoyed those dreams.
Finishing with what packing he could do, Antonin transfigured an empty bottle into a cat-carrier, setting a pillow in the bottom and carefully putting the unprotesting Achilles inside, before looking at Barty.
"It is a good thing, right now, that you are so light," he murmured. "I will not be able to do this when you are a healthy weight."
He cast charms to have the things he wanted brought with them levitate and follow him, and then leaned down, sliding his arms beneath Barty's knees and shoulders, and lifted the boy. It wasn't fun, not so soon after having his shoulder dislocated, but he wouldn't need to hold Barty for long. Getting the carrier in his right hand, he was about to Apparate when a fluttering noise caught his attention, as an owl entered in through the window.
"Go to the Old Parsonage in Whitechapel," he snapped at the bird. "He'll be there."
Antonin had Apparated with unconscious or semi-conscious patients before; it wasn't something he had to think about overmuch, just do, and a moment after vanishing from Grindylow Gardens, he was setting Barty down on a bed in one of the third-floor suites, letting Achilles out of the cat-carrier.
Even without the aid of the sleeping potion that had accompanied the owl, Barty slept straight through the night and, much to his pleasure, he was privileged enough to have dreams of patricide. When he began to come around, he was somewhat startled by the lack of light -- after spending four days, admittedly, running himself ragged and then the travesty at dueling practise, Barty would have assumed that he would have slept much longer than that. Oddly, he felt rather rested, but he could not have slept that long, if it were still dark.
It was not until Barty sat up and properly looked around his surroundings that he noticed that he was very much not in his flat. ...But, what? ...He vaguely remembered Mr Dolohov coming to his flat and saying various things about leaving, and taking care of himself, and probably something else, but he had dreamed that, hadn't he? He had to have dreamed that, right?
Catching sight of Mr Dolohov at the desk, working on some kind of paperwork, rather answered those questions and, before he could even think about stopping himself, Barty gave a small groan and flopped back into the bed. He would have been much happier to return to his dreams about patricide. They were infinitely preferable to whatever this was.
"Welcome back," Antonin said mildly, setting aside his paperwork and turning to look at Barty. "How are you feeling?"
"Better," Barty answered almost automatically, "if more than a bit disoriented." This was ridiculous. Perhaps Barty had done something stupid once -- well, he did have a history of doing stupid things in this same vein, but he had only worked himself ragged and attempted to duel once -- but that was hardly call for him to be practically kidnapped to what he presumed was Mr Dolohov's home.
"Good. Some disorientation is to be expected, but you will get over it." Antonin's voice was very calm, very level, and the slightest bit cold. "Would you care to explain what you have been thinking of late?"
Truth be told, no -- Barty did not wish to explain anything to anyone right now. After the previous night's debacle, he was more than certain that he was going to be in an ungodly amount of trouble with Severus and Mr Lestrange, and likely Madame Lestrange as well, and he had no desire at all to explain this unfortunate series of events any more than was necessary. "I hate hypochondriacs," Barty said bluntly, rolling onto his back, staring at the ceiling, and very much wishing that he had Achilles, so that he could pet the kitten rather than fuss with something.
"The bane of any healer." The warmth in Antonin's voice dropped another degree. "I am, however, referring to the fact that you seem hell-bent on adding yourself to the number of patients we have in the long-term afflictions ward. You have not been eating, and it is painfully obvious that you have not been sleeping, either, or you would never have had such a lapse in judgement. Explain yourself."
'Explain yourself.' Merlin, Barty was in truly deep trouble if the phrase 'Explain yourself' was being used -- he did not even have a suitably petulant, adolescent sarcasm in his thoughts. 'Explain yourself' had been a phrase to fear in his father's house because, invariably, it meant that Barty had done something insufficiently or outright wrong.
"It was accidental at first," he explained honestly, but with a sigh nonetheless. "I... I just stayed up too late trying to finish reading the Healing texts I borrowed from Aloysius, then went to work and I managed it well enough, so I... I thought that I would be fine, which was obviously an egregious assumption on my part and I should have known better, from being supposedly intelligent if not from precedent. ...But I allowed myself to be blinded by my desire to be better than the rest of the trainees in my group -- especially this one in particular, who I absolutely loathe -- and to prove that I did not find myself in the program courtesy of nepotism or my father bullying the administrative staff in my favour -- as though he would; he would not even expend the effort to tell me about my mother's pregnancy face-to-face, why on Earth would he help me with anything?"
Barty paused, sighing as he stared blankly at the ceiling. "And I was an idiot about everything, put myself in a position I should not have by going to dueling practise instead of sleeping, allowed myself to lose my senses in the face of the excess stress of dueling, and gave Demetrius a concussion, amongst other things."
"You are not an idiot," Antonin said quietly. "You are under a great deal of pressure, from your family and work as well as your duties to our Lord, and I fear you expect far more of yourself than you would ever expect from anyone else. It is not good to put such high expectations on yourself, but I suspect I could tell you that until we both perished of old age and it would not sink in. Some things cannot be changed, and there is little I would change about you, save your tendency to work yourself into the ground."
He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He felt so old, sometimes. "Barty, you must take better care of yourself, or you are only going to get sicker, and more upset with yourself. You must see that. And you are of far too much value, to me and to our Lord, for me to stand by and watch you mistreat yourself so." He laughed softly, almost bitterly. "You young people, healthy people, you do not put nearly so much value in your health as someone like me. Nevertheless, the point stands; I will not let you continue as you have done thus far."
During the lecture -- which Barty more than deserved, as he well knew -- all Barty could really bring himself to do was listen attentively and idly fuss with the hem of one of his sleeves. He swallowed thickly and, logically, he knew that Mr Dolohov was right -- but it was not that simple. It was never that simple, and it had not ever been that simple. Regulus did not understand, Anzhelina did not understand, and Barty rather doubted that anyone else understood, though at least Mr Dolohov knew that it was nigh impossible to tell Barty something other than what he believed and expect him to do something with what he'd heard. ...By the same token, though, Mr Dolohov was still right, even if he wished to blind himself to the fact that Barty had been a royal idiot. After an indecent amount of silence, Barty finally managed a small, quiet, "I'm sorry, sir."
"It is all right, as long as you learn from it," Antonin told him, rubbing the bridge of his nose again. He'd been out in the light too much today, and his eyes were starting to give him trouble. "I do hope you will agree to staying here; regardless, you cannot go back to that place. It is not fit for someone of your station."
Barty heard Mr Dolohov express his hope that Barty would agree to staying in Whitechapel, but he knew better than to consider this an offer that could be refused. He was rather perturbed by it -- even though he did not mind having less time to spend around Alecto or Mary MacDonald, he had grown to appreciate Aloysius, on some level, even if he did carry on with Pepper; besides that, he had obligations to Mr Rookwood in talking to Aloysius -- but nothing about Mr Dolohov's tone or about what Barty knew of his unofficial mentor lent him any reason to believe that he had a choice in this matter.
Sighing somewhat, Barty sat up and looked soberly at Mr Dolohov. "I will stay without fuss, sir," he answered.
"Good. I have arranged to have your things sent here. There is a library across the balcony or through the sitting room and to the right; the facilities are through the door to the left. My office is on the other side of the library, and I ask that you not go there unless you need me and I am working. Other than that, there is an informal kitchen and dining area on the floor below as well as the usual entertaining areas on the ground floor, and the servants will be instructed to be as helpful to you as they are to me. The only places I ask you to refrain from entering under any circumstances are Anzhelina's suite and the tower on the top floor of the manor."
Barty nodded, registering all the information that Mr Dolohov had for him and making a special note to avoid the places he was instructed not to visit. He hardly needed to be told to avoid Anzhelina's suite, as he respected her far too much to invade her privacy in such an easily misconstrued manner, and, although he was certainly curious about what was in the tower, he knew far better than to put one toe out of line after he had already failed so completely and utterly and when Mr Dolohov was in no way obligated to care about him or even feign doing so. "Of course, sir," he replied simply. "I will mind your guidelines and avoid being a demanding guest."
"I am sure of that." He gave Barty a tired smile. "The tower contains my wife's things, that is all. No great secret, but I prefer them to remain undisturbed."
...Oh. ...Oh. "Of course I won't disturb them, sir." Barty would not have dreamed of upsetting Mr Dolohov's relics of his wife; such things were far too personal to meddle in. After all, Barty certainly would not have wanted anyone upsetting his mother, in her fragile (and pregnant) condition; he could only assume that his attachment to her was comparable to Mr Dolohov's respect for his late wife's memory, but it hardly seemed to be a leap of logic. "I... will I be allowed to go to work tomorrow?"
"Of course." Antonin was almost surprised at the question. "As long as you sleep and eat well, I am hardly going to stop you from doing anything you want to do."
Barty just had to be sure of his boundaries; he was no stranger to having them, but he suspected that Mr Dolohov's rules and his father's were not the same and he hardly wanted to overstep them. "Thank you, sir," he said with a small smile. "...I actually would like to eat something, if it is no trouble." He was not sure of the time, but the last thing he had eaten had been lunch at the hospital the previous day.
"Of course. I will have one of the maids bring something for you, if you wish; it is somewhat early still for Anzhelina to be up, or for me to really be considering breakfast just yet, but some of the servants keep odd hours, and the night cook will not mind making you something. He is well-used to my hours, I fear; some of my patients are more comfortable seeing me at night, after work, so my own meals can sometimes be a little varied."
"That would be lovely, sir," Barty said with a wider, but still rather small, smile. He did not yet feel perfectly at ease here in Whitechapel, but he assumed that he would grow to be more accustomed to how life went about here. Briefly, he averted his eyes, but he looked up again when he said, "Thank you."
"I just want you to be well," Antonin said softly, getting to his feet. He was far more tired than he had any right to be, and he had to work in the morning. Still, Barty was here now; that was a start. "People care about you, Barty. Get a little more rest when you have eaten. I shall see you in the morning."