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Five Fragments of an Obsidian Heart	By : bitterfig Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male Views: 1266 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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3. Bartemius "Barty" Crouch

Sirius and his mates graduated fifth-year when I failed all my OWLs and sixth-year I was all alone. I�d have the occasional rendezvous with Sirius during a Hogsmeade weekend, but these didn�t count for much. Frenzied bouts of rubbing and thrusting in the fallen down, haunted house outside of town, then he�d go back to that boy whose sad, golden eyes intentionally saw nothing.

There had been a rumor about the school that this boy was a werewolf. That he�d attacked a student. Even though I knew how lycanthropy worked (I paid that much attention in class), I imagined he had become a wolf only after he fell in love with my brother. That for a month he would store up all the pain of all of Sirius� petty infidelities, his thoughtless slights, his lack of love, then, when the full moon came, release it all in a frenzy of blood and animal madness. How else could he have loved Sirius so long and seem so calm? How else could he live unloved so long and seem so sane?

I myself was bad and crazy for lack of my brother�s love. I was all alone so I slept with anyone who wanted me, boy or girl, man or woman. I was getting quite famous around Hogwarts.

Barty Crouch rather snuck up on me.

He was shy but brave. He asked me out like I was a girl even though he was younger than me, a fourth-year. I thought he was sort of cute�a slender, towheaded boy with pale, flat, blue eyes. He was a rich kid, like me. His father was someone important.

We walked in the woods near Hogsmeade, Barty and I. I told him about some of my more recent misadventures and he blushed, though he seemed interested. I hoped I wasn�t frightening him. He seemed so innocent.

He�d brought wine with him�a good, white wine, cold from being carried around in his backpack all day. Sluts adore the illusion of romance. I thought it was so sweet, the way he was courting me. And all his thoughts were how pleased he was that I was there with him and how much he liked me and how cool it was that I knew about Muggle music and how keen Roxy Music and the Velvet Underground sounded. And I thought maybe I�d kiss him, after we�d had some wine.

We sat on a shelf of granite covered with moss and drank the wine. I was telling him about Iggy Pop, then the next thing I knew I was lying on my back, dazed, dreamily looking at the sky through the tree limbs, looking up at Barty who was looking down at me holding a cigarette (not smoking it, just holding it) and thinking how nice I looked lying there, how appealing. Then he put the cigarette out on my stomach. I hadn�t realized until then that my shirt was open. I could feel the pain of the burn, even through the fog in my head. I twitched and Barty smiled.

I had spent the afternoon thinking I was so sophisticated and he was just a child. Apparently, I�d been mistaken. There was much more to Bartemius Crouch, Jr. than I�d realized. I wanted to know what it was, I wanted to see it. I wanted to know what he�d put in my wine. It was divine.

Barty enjoyed hurting people. It gave him genuine pleasure�like ice cream or Christmas. Like kittens playing all in a heap. It made him smile.

I could make him smile. When I let him tie me up with cords in elaborate patterns and fussy knots, I could make him positively beam. Cigarette burns, strangulation, knives and lashes. I could make him positively radiant.

Barty was the one who introduced me to Muggle drugs. It was Valium he�d put in my wine that first day. Muggle drugs appealed to me because I associated them with the musicians I adored and because they were different from the potions and charms wizards sometimes used for similar purposes. Charms and potions ran their course and that was that. You were exactly the same person you had been a few hours before. Muggle drugs weren�t like that. Heroin and cocaine, Valium and speed�they got inside me, they changed me. Because there were consequences to them, they seemed real to me in a way that charms and potions never would.

I still saw Sirius sometimes. When he sent an owl telling me to meet him in town, I would go. Usually I have Barty heal the marks he inflicted, but whenever I went to see Sirius, I kept them. Sirius never asked about the cigarette burns along my ribs, the welts on my back and thighs or the rope burns on my wrists.

I was with Barty for the rest of my sixth year. I didn�t see him all summer and when fall came and we were reunited at Hogwarts, I realized something was very different�different for the better. Barty seemed to have outgrown his fascination with inflicting pain. He seemed perfectly content just to be with me in the usual ways that people are together without cords or knives or flails or cigarettes.

It was lovely. I hadn�t realized how much I missed simple things. Just being held and kissed, being able to return a caress which I certainly couldn�t do when my hands were tied behind my back.

I�d more or less stopped using drugs over the summer. With no pain to numb myself to, I didn�t start up again so I was thinking quite clearly during the fall of my seventh year. Thinking clearly enough to notice things besides whether or not Barty was happy.

I noticed that a lot of people were absolutely terrified of my lover.

I noticed that a lot of kids seemed to be having a hard time keeping their rats and cats and toads that autumn.

There are layers to Legilimency. I�d been content to register Barty�s good spirits and go no further, but this time I went deeper, this time I looked for the cause. I found it in images of tiny, mutilated bodies. Rats and cats and toads.

And for the first time, I wondered if I was the only person Barty had ever slipped a Valium in a glass of wine. It would have been easy enough to find out but, for the first time, I was afraid of what I might find looking into someone else�s mind.

I broke it off with Barty.

In a way, he was like the Muggle drugs he�d introduced me to. There were consequences to being with him. He changed me from the inside.

After Barty, I stopped using Legilimency the way I always had, the way I had used it on James Potter and countless other lovers. I had always known this was wrong but kept doing it. Before Barty, I assumed I was evil and twisted; of course I would do things that were wrong. After Barty, I had a hard time thinking of myself as a dark child. Maybe I was wrong, but after Barty, I didn�t see myself as evil anymore.

I became a Death Eater in February of seventh-year. It turned out Barty had been one since he was thirteen years old. He was the youngest of the Death Eaters. He may have been the most dangerous.
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Five Fragments of an Obsidian Heart