5 times Barty lost a bit of sanity and the one time he went insane

4. crush

Barty went to Hogwarts in 1972. He was 11 years old, as was everyone else. He arrived at the train station by himself and got on train by himself too. He didn't try to meet anyone, so he sat down in the first empty compartment.

A few minutes later somebody knocked on the door. Barty looked up and saw a pale dark haired boy with a pleading face, who was standing outside. As he gave a quick nod, the door opened and the kid walked in.
"Hello, I'm Regulus, Regulus Black."
"Barty Crouch Jr." he muttered a reply not looking at the boy again.
"You may know my brother, Sirius." Regulus sat down across Barty.
"I do. He's a friend of someone I knew."
"You knew? In past tense?"
"Yeah Regulus, I don't know him anymore. You may speak in poetry but you sure aren't smart." Barty spoke.
Regulus was very confused on the poetry part but decided to stay quiet. He figured out it was better to leave the quick-tempered boy alone.

After sometime of silence they heard someone running around the train. They ran by their compartment once and when they came back they stopped. Regulus and Barty noticed a blonde boy outside of their door. He just opened the door, not waiting for the boys' confirmation.
"Guys guys please, let me stay in your compartment. My twin just got like a million friends in 5 minutes and I've supposedly said something they don't like so I'm getting hunted."
"Sure." Barty approved.
"Thank you." the new boy panted, "Evan by the way, Rosier."
The other two boys also introduced themselves.

"So..." Evan seemed much louder and extroverted than Regulus and Barty.
"Look if you're not gonna talk and just rely on us to come up with topics we'll be quiet, so say something smart or shut up." Barty told Evan.
"Okay yeah sure. Uhm... Well how are you guys?"
"As good as you can be having to be in a compartment with a stupid person and some annoying extrovert." Barty complained.
Evan just gave an offended look, but Regulus responded.
"Look Crouch, just because I didn't understand one thing doesn't mean I am stupid!"
"Yeah yeah..."

A year passed. Regulus indeed turned out to be quite a smart guy and Evan not so stupid either. They spent most of the time together as they were dormmates and they figured out how to like eachother. They had to put up with Regulus' brother and their friend group who was known for playing stupid pranks on people. James proceeded to not look at Barty even once, and pretended to forget he excisted. Barty and Evan got into detention lots of times for the stupid things they did and they became really close.

Another year passed. There was something going on with Regulus and James, mostly in Regulus' point of view, the gryffindor rather focused on the red haired girl in his year. Of course Regulus didn't say anything to his friends, he'd rather die than let people know about him liking guys, but it was kind of obvious he fancied James. Meanwhile Evan's twin Pandora started hanging out with the boys more often, getting closer to Regulus. Barty had been acting most of his tests as he wasn't dumb, no far from that, he just never acted like he was smart.

And again another year passed. They were 14 years old, while the famous quadruple of gryffindors were 15. James started dating Lily Evans and Evan and Barty notices a change in Regulus' behavior. The two boys were inseparable. In class they'd sit next to each other, they'd walk through hallways shoulder to shoulder, their beds were together, they'd sit on the quidditch pitch watching the game together.

Another four seasons passed and they started 5th year. James and Lily had some issues in their relationship so they took a long break and Regulus got his hopes back up. James actually started to take interest in Regulus soon enough. Meanwhile Sirius and Remus Lupin made their relationship public even though everyone always knew, they weren't particularly good at hiding it.

Barty liked watching people. He liked noticing the different ways they'd do stuff, they ways they'd talk and interact with other people and just in general they ways they'd be. He didn't need to listen in class so he rather let his eyes wander around looking at his classmates examinating their movements and faces. He'd get accused of staring, mostly by girls and he got kind of a bad reputation with that but he never really cared. If a person would love him, they'd love him unconditionally or not at all.