Barty Crouch, Jr. is not Oedipus Rex. (culling) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2009-01-17 20:52:00 |
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Barty closed his journal and looked up with a low, almost undetectable smirk twisting the corner of his lips ever so lightly. With cold, unfeeling eyes, he did a slow once-over of the library that stretched out before the desk – it was all his, now. Technically, he supposed, that the true ownership was in his grandfather’s hands once more, but the old man had no use for books, and so he could hardly think to stop Barty from claiming possession over the library. In all likelihood, he would not have stopped Barty beforehand either, as it was Barty who was ever-aware of the many empty spaces where he had purloined books and taken them to The Old Parsonage, not anyone else, save, perhaps, Winky. Besides that, Barty was the heir, and, it was his right as such to assert his claim over the family estate and property, and to put them to use as he saw fit, as would more properly benefit the family. His father had not understood the notion of appropriate respect for one’s heritage; his father would have squandered the family’s good name in the search of his flawed vision of a perfect world, and he would have done so without a shred of remorse. They were in better hands now. The Dark Lord had come into the world as a light, showing those who truly deserved to rule where they had faltered and how to reclaim what was theirs, and by his guidance, their glorious cause had prevailed. As several had said, the road ahead would not be easy, but it was worth doing for the greater good, so that proper honour could be paid to the memories of their fallen, and so that the new generation – so that Iris and Alexis, Barty’s lovely new cousins; so that Lucius and Narcissa’s unborn child; so that Barty’s sibling (he had committed the chosen names to memory: Aeschylus Caspar, for a boy; and Thalia Charis, for a girl; if, as Aunt Chloris had, Mother found herself with twins, they could debate the naming semantics then); so that the child that would come from Jacqueline’s marriage to Mister Macnair – so that the innocents would need not suffer in a fallen world that would have kept them chained and subjected to improper lifestyles and ridicule, simply because their blood was Pure. It was, all of it, worth doing. Where his role in all of it would be, Barty was not certain. For all he had dreamed of his father’s death and dénouement, and for as long as he had spent planning for that glorious moment, his only plans for the aftermath had been that life would unconditionally improve, and so it had, but Barty was more than aware of the fact that he could hardly leave himself to atrophy, now that he had advanced the natural order of things. A minute part of him, it sometimes felt, even regretted that the old man had perished. Initially, there had been a haze of accomplishment and painkillers. The primary mania of patricide had kept his emotions high for several days, and he had even been the one, rather than Antonin, to decrease his doses of painkilling potions: some were still necessary, of course they were, Father had left Barty quite badly injured, but the pain reminded Barty of his victory. The pain kept clear in his mind the fact that Father had thought him a useless weakling As the days passed, though, the injuries healed. The pain slowly diminished. It grew duller and slowly began to leave Barty entirely, taking with it the acute awareness of Barty’s great work. All that was left in its wake, he quickly recognized, was a cold numbness and the desire to be in pain again. It was illogical, and he knew that; it made no sense whatsoever. Pain existed because certain things were bad, or dangerous, or otherwise inadvisable, and the reaction was meant to keep people from doing dangerous, unhealthy things… but Barty felt that he hardly would have minded it, now. He felt no guilt for Father’s death, and yet he still dreamed of it – saw all of the events playing themselves out once more, and, when he didn’t dream of that, he dreamed of knives. He dreamed of opening up the scar that ran across his chest and, even though he knew that Antonin would highly disapprove, he could imagine how good it would feel. Barty had twice now found himself obsessing over how his father was no longer here – first, while only half-awake and conversing with Antonin; and, after that, in the middle of the night, when he found that he couldn’t sleep. He hadn’t thought before now that so much of his life had revolved around obsessing over his father’s murder, but it seemed, now, that it had. He could move on, though, and he would have to, or the family would fall to ruin, and he could not allow that. The preparations for the funeral and visitation had all been put in line, and the announcement had been made. Now, Mother simply needed to be informed, and, with proper deference for her, Barty made his way to her wing of the manor. Respectfully, he knocked on her door, and entered when she bid him. Ever mindful of where Father had slept, she had stayed on her side of the bed, and it looked as though she had not moved at all, save perhaps to shift so the bed sheets kept her modest. Even in grief and late pregnancy, she was beautiful, and, even with her eyes stained red from crying as she had been, she would persevere. They all would. “Mother…” Barty sighed softly… the curtains were still drawn. “Would you like to let in a bit of light?” She made a small, noncommittal noise, and Barty opened the curtains. What little light there was hardly helped; the day was painfully, perpetually gray and seeing a mass of snow was likely not the most relieving thing for a grieving widow. “Have you eaten?” “I am not hungry,” she said pointedly, turning her head into the pillow. “Mother, you need to eat. The baby-” “I am not hungry, Bartemius!” This was uncommon: she rarely called him by his full name, she’d never had a cold voice with him before, and the glare she gave him was painful. Barty very much did not want to use this logic, but she needed to listen to reason: “As a Healer, I am going to need to insist. You hardly ate yesterday, and, for your health and the baby’s-” “I do not want to talk to a Healer, Bartemius!” she shrieked. “I want to talk to my son!” Although she no longer glared at him when she looked in his direction, her expression was enough to shake him to the very bone. When, before, had she looked so aged? Had those lines on her face been there last night? And why, when she was barely tearing up, was he so perturbed, when he had seen her crying countless times before? She was perfectly covered, no one could have objected to it, but this still felt as though Barty was looking on something indecent – and, yet, who else would do so? Mother needed someone with her, and Barty needed to endure this, for her sake. Saying absolutely nothing, he knelt by her bedside and bowed his head to let her stroke his hair. “I’m sorry, Barty,” she whispered. “There is no need, Mother,” he said softly. “I should not have yelled.” “I should not have been so insistent.” “You were only keeping my best interests at heart.” Finally, she looked on him with something of a smile. “Are all of the arrangements in order?” “Yes,” he answered gently. “The visitation is tomorrow afternoon, with the funeral on Wednesday. The ceremony and internment will be public, as you requested, and everything will be closed-casket. And-” “It should not need to be closed-casket,” she interjected with an indignant huff. “But, Mother, his head-” “Don’t!” she snapped. “…I cannot believe the nerve of those vigilantes. What sort of person does that to another human being?” Barty almost felt a pang of guilt, but only responded: “Vile people, Mother. Horrid, vile people who have… They’re wretched. But the remaining, loyal Ministry will see them caught and punished, and they will make the world safe for you and for your baby.” Tenderly, she ran her fingers down his face and whispered, “You sound just like him, you know. …And you have the same eyes.” “I’ll have Winky send something up for you,” he said simply. Finally moving a significant amount, she shifted and kissed him on the forehead. “You’re a good boy, Barty. I’m very proud of you.” As he left her room to find Winky, Barty felt as though a lead weight had been dropped into his stomach: it meant more to him when he heard that from Antonin and Madame Lestrange than from his mother, and, even worse, he did not entirely mind this fact. |