Corruzione (A Barty Crouch Jr Fanfiction)

FOURTEEN - A World Alone

Author's Note: Just a short one this time folks, but I will be continuing this story in the near future.

The two had no choice. The criminal on the run from the Ministry of Magic and the girl who loved him. Together they had nowhere else to go, they had to go to Malfoy Manor, to take shelter with the deatheaters, though neither of their hearts were in the cause anymore.

Darcy felt like a bird who had been freed of one cage only to find she now resided in a slightly larger, more luxurious cage, but a cage nonetheless. For the first time in her life, Darcy found herself friendless, allyless and her fate tied to entirely one person. A person who was regretting their actions himself.

He who felt entirely responsible for their situation, if only he had left well enough alone. None of this would have happened and he would have never have ruined their lives. The depth of his despair could not be known to Darcy, he would not show it to her, it was his turn to get them out of this mess. He would not let her feel the brunt of the loss he had created. In essence, he had made her an orphan, had dragged her from her friends, her prospects only because he was selfish. He had to put it right.

Darcy trailed behind Barty, clutching the singular flower she had snatched from the bunch of everlasting flowers that sat on her kitchen table before they aparated, never to return. Barty entered the gates of Malfoy Manor, which in the gloom, loomed above them as if it was judging them, he knocked on the door and spoke to the person who answered it.

A few spots of rain landed in Darcy's hair and she raised her eyes to the dark sky. In her mind's eye she saw Dora trudging home to tell Andromeda and Ted of her betrayal, she saw Mad-Eye Moody rooting through her flat searching for anything that would let him know her whereabouts, she saw the permanent look of disappointment on Lupin's face when she had said she had killed is best friend. And she saw with a physical stab of pain, Daphne's face crumple when Hermione would no doubt tell her, when they next met, why her friend was hunted and would never been seen as anything other than a deatheater who deserved imprisonment.

"Darcy, are you alright?" Barty's face loomed over her and she came back into the here and now, he was holding her arms, trying to stop her from falling onto the ground. "You cried out," he said, the rain was falling heavily now, it landed in his fringe then dropped onto her forehead. "It's my fault, I'm sorry." But Darcy could not find the words to contradict him, perhaps she did not want to. Really, she thought, it was his fault, but it was also hers, she was responsible for her own actions and they had led her to this.

When she had the strength to stand upright again, Barty kept a supporting arm around her as he was led up the Malfoy's stairs by Narcissa. Barty helped her under the covers of a guest bed and Narcissa drew up a chair for Barty but before Barty could sit and watch over Darcy who he was scared would become catatonic, he was called out of the room by someone Darcy couldn't see.

In Barty's absence, Narcissa conjured a wet flannel and under the pretense of mopping Darcy's apparently fevered brow, bent down to her and whispered. "Don't give up now, dear. There are those of us who yet have a part to play for the better." Darcy stared into Narcissa's eyes, surely she didn't mean for the Dark Lord, no one would ever say 'the better' when referring to him. "Your friends will still need you, and they'll come to realize that in the end." She said and left Darcy alone in the room.

Darcy fell asleep before Barty could return and when she did wake, it was in the early hours of the morning and he was sound asleep beside her. She slid out of bed quietly so she didn't wake him and went to sit on the floor beside the window, watching the peacocks grazing on the lawn. When Barty finally awoke he sat silently next to her on the wood floor, he did not reach out to her, she felt that something had broken between them. "What have we done, Barty?" She whispered, drawing her knees to her chest, without looking at him. He was silent for a moment.

"We've damned ourselves." He sighed.

"I don't even believe in this," Darcy said, scratching at her wrist. "I just wanted to be left alone."

"It's my fault," he said in an echo of what he had said the previous night. Still, Darcy could not answer his plea to be forgiven.

"Maybe we're supposed to be like this, we're supposed to be on this side," Darcy said. But as she said it she knew it could not be true, they could not be destined to end up like they were.

"We only have one option left open to us," Barty said, as though he was thinking it over. Darcy looked at him and they made eye contact but she could not read his thoughts. "We have to betray this side too." His words were like the sun blessing a land which had seen eternal darkness, had he saved them in one breath?

"But you looked for the Dark Lord, you were going to bring him back." Darcy stuttered. "I did bring the Dark Lord back."

Barty shrugged, which if Darcy had been in a lighter mood, would have laughed at because it seemed so out of accordance with the subject. "I've learned—from you—that there is more to life than domination and purity of blood. I've given enough of my life to him and plenty more have given a lot more than I have. I should have realized when Regulus died." He sighed and looked down onto the lawn. "I'm ready to start living."

"But we'll still be outcasts, still on the run," Darcy said. "We'll be even more alone than we are now." She tried to warn him.

"But what a way to live," Barty said, a grin creeping onto his features. "Taking on our own side." He jumped up and pulled her with him, grasping her hands tightly. "What do you reckon?" Darcy needed time to think, she wanted to stop time, only for a few moments to get her head around the events of the last 24 hours, but Barty was moving again, never stagnant. She looked down at their entwined hands, up at Barty's hopeful face and at the guest bedroom of Malfoy Manor. Visions filled her head of the two of them, not much caring for their own lives but sabotaging the deatheater's plans and ensuring that the Dark Lord never ruled over the Wizarding World, never mind whether they survived the year or not.

"Okay." She conceded, Barty's infectious look also creeping onto her face.