Work Text:
January 1st, 1982
Pandora had never been one to take no for an answer. From the first moment they locked eyes, two bumbling first years at the long and quiet Ravenclaw table, she pushed just as hard as he did.
Only Pandora wasn’t pushing away like he found solace in doing.
She didn’t find relief in making others uncomfortable until they finally left her alone. She didn’t snap, growl like a beast, and mock their house and classmates like he did. No, she drove them away by just being her. Inquisitive and full of knowledge, he was never sure if the stories and tales she spun were true or not. She kept pestering them all, unaware or uncaring that they did not find her particular brand of oddity endearing.
Maybe that was why she kept so close to him. There was nothing endearing about him, but their shared proximity on the outskirts of their house forced them together. Lab partners and lunch mates never by choice but as a last resort. Forced into the only open seats, one of them weaving tales of dreams and long-lost theories, the other crude and cruel for the sake of it.
Maybe that was why she just stared when he barked at her, called her names and tried to tear her down inch by inch. Found the smallest flaws he could in her work and ridiculed them. She just studied him, whispering peculiar nonsense about beasts and the meaning of things that did not matter.
Whatever it was, it kept her close. And at some point, after her brother had grown sick of watching Barty drag her good name through the mud, he stuck around. Too quiet and funny with a penchant for bad luck, bringing his quiet, razor-sharp friend too. A fifth witch rounded them out, cool and calm, uncaring for any of them on the surface. All of them unbalanced in their camaraderie and unwilling in their desire for change.
It was the culmination of all those friendships and moments together that brought him here—even through the splintering and loss of Regulus, leaving them in the night like a bandit. The only thing he stole was their hope in a fool's chase. And then Evan had been ripped from their hands, the light leaving his eyes on dark, wet cobblestones. Dorcas had been first, really, abandoning them for the so-called light and good she found.
All of it left the two of them alone, outsiders as they always had been.
His time was short. Every day was a bet against the fates—a race against time itself. The clock on his freedom slowly ticked down. He knew what he had done. There was no denying his complacency in what happened in that manor, how the memories of their screams followed him around, a heavy wet rain cloud drenched what tattered bits remained of him.
Barty avoided coming here and doing this task for the longest time. He hoped and prayed that, as his muggle-born mother often had, she would forget about him. That she could use those riddles, she threaded into her stories and find the real meaning, one that saved her from him.
That Pandora, in all her wonderment and wisdom, would finally move on from the pet project that was him. As he stood outside the rounded rainbow door, fist hanging in the air, he pondered what he might tell her. How he would put it into words.
The horrifying reality that some dogs needed to be put down.
Some dogs bite just because they are bad.
No amount of training or love can rewire the rancorous venom in their blood.
They were born that way, with no control and rabid rage.
Barty bites just because he can.
But she was a martyr for what she believed—risking her freedom for this final ask. She sounded desperate in the letter, sometimes sending two to three owls a day. Finding him even as he hid out in empty tavern inns and bounced from manor to manor. Their lord was gone, and all the good grace he had given Barty vanished with him in that little cottage at the hands of a mudblood witch and her baby.
Dora rarely asked, usually only told but not demanded, a strange understanding from those who loved her. But she begged him to come and see her before the new year. He’d let her down again. Of course, that was what dogs did. The calendars already said ‘82, but he would not be the scum of a friend he was if he didn’t push his luck. It was a particular type of self harm to watch tears build in her silver-rimmed eyes and ask for her unearned forgiveness one last time.
The cottage was busy, with different coloured walls and tea cups strewn about, stars and garlands hanging from the ceiling. He avoided looking up for too long, unsure he would keep the firewhisky he choked down if he saw Reggie’s star. She didn’t push on that, just greeted him with that soft smile that, despite the icy winter cold on his skin, his own life meant so little to Barty at that point, willing to even wear a coat, managed to warm him.
For all the anger he wanted to hold, being near Pandora was like the first drag of a cigarette, its warm and inviting as it rolled down your throat. Unaware that it might make you cough in shock or kill you one day, she was her brother's twin, after all. She steadied your nerves and gave your hands something to do.
Today, it was a baby.
If the hangover and loneliness weren’t enough to drag Barty to the brink of insanity, looking down at the spitting image of his best friend was. He had never held a baby. No one had been foolish enough to let him try. And the closest he’d ever been to one now haunted his nightmares. Images of a sandy blonde baby crying in a crib alone made him sick.
Looking down at the wide-eyed infant left him speechless, unable to protest Dora’s forceful shove of her into his arms. The only thought his brain could muster was that she was perfect. With pale blonde hair and bright blue eyes, round as saucers and deep as the black lake, they once lounged around. She was a piece of all of them, something pure and innocent, a reminder of who his friends were before life grabbed ahold of him—snapping its jaws and shaking them till they were tattered or dead.
But here she was, staring up at him with the love he was so unworthy of. As he looked around the room once more, too overwhelmed by the tender innocence in her eyes, he was struck by it. How every corner of the home was designed for her, curated with Dora’s gentle touch, cushioned and decorated with things that showed how special Luna was.
She only knew a world with love.
When he finally brought his gaze back to her, it struck him. She was everything they could never have been. Just like her mother, even with round, pudgy cheeks and a watery stare, she still knew, though. She saw through him, those pale blue eyes looking directly into his mind. As if her goodness challenged him to be better, to muzzle himself when the burn to hurt crept up his throat. To swallow the acid that lined his organs and threatened to melt away every speck of good in his radius.
His arms trembled, threatening to drop her, worried about what she might see in him. Terrified, the contents of his fraying mind might twist and bark at her. Pulling at the clinking metal chain that contained them only when necessary, clamping down on anything soft, snapping at her delicate perfection.
There wasn’t a blemish to her creamy porcelain skin, just like her soul. But there were plenty on him. The grimy, home-done tattoos on his wrists and fingers looked like a mouldy disease against the crisp pastels of her sleeper.
It was unnatural for someone as rabid and infectious in his hate to be this close to something so good, like hanging a fresh white sheet on a summer line with bloody scrapped hands. Those tattooed hands swaddled her like the teeth of a wolf wrapping its foaming maw around a newborn lamb's neck. Even if they did not puncture, the threat was too great.
But as his thumb brushed her cheek, no stains were left behind. No, Luna leaned into the touch and cooed as if she did not care and never would for all the wrongs he had done and the hurt he was capable of.
Pandora’s voice cut through the swirling tornado of thoughts in his mind. Puncturing his rabid “I think you’ll make a very fine godfather, Barty. If you let yourself.”
On instinct, the ones he didn’t even know he had, Barty held the plump, swaddled baby closer to his chest. Seething he struck the collar around his neck snapping, disgusted that she could be so foolish in her choices. What kind of mother could she be to ask such a thing? Who was she to make such a risk with an innocent life? “You’ve lost it, Dora. I always knew you were mad. You can’t trust me with a fucking baby!”
The noise made Luna cry out, and Pandora tilted her head to the side, watching the anxiety of the wails work across Barty’s features. It’s deafening the sound of a baby in your arms crying, each fat tear down her cheek like the puncture of a barbed collar in his neck. Dora doesn’t offer to fix it or give some strange remedy like he expects. She just stares doe-eyed and waiting, like maybe she enjoys watching her child suffer, making her just like everyone else Barty has loved.
He feels helpless, eyes wide and hands trembling, as he looks back at her. Luna’s sniffles are growing louder, and her cries increasing. When Dora finally does act, it’s not to comfort the child he thought she loved. It’s to comfort him, coach and coax him through the barrage of sound and the assault on the weak morality he has left. “You can do it, Barty. Come on, give it a try.”
Spit works down his throat in a slow, painful swallow. His head shakes back and forth as his waist moves opposite, trying to tell her no, that he can’t do it.
That he wasn’t made to make things better.
He’s the wolf.
Luna is the lamb.
Even if he does not bite, he is a threat. It makes him dizzy—this new overwhelming need to fix the situation, but slowly, as he rocks and twists, Luna slows her tears. Her fussing turns to coos of content, the smallest of laughter in the air.
The noise is like an arrow to his heart. A feeling he’s not sure he’s ever felt fills his lungs. Proud of how loud her little voice is when she giggles. Proud of how happy she sounds. Proud at how she bounces back so quickly from pain, more resilient than anyone he knows. Her cheeks are still red, and eyes still bloodshot from the pain he caused, and as he looks closer to check, he watches his own tears slip from his chin. Clear and clean landing on the sleeper she wears. The only pure part of him, the only thing that matches her.
He swings her in his arms till they burn, and his feet are numb from standing, a dog walking the yard, patrolling to keep his owner safe—a penance he must pay for hurting her so. Dora doesn’t say anything else, just takes the chance to watch the two of them from a chair. In the corner of his eye, he can finally see the exhaustion on her features, dark under eyes and cornsilk hair falling from her braid and frizzy on her scalp. Where Luna has the glowing complexion he always knew as Dora’s, now Dora looks sallow. Watercolour eyes follow his every move as if she’s trying to memorise the scene.
He makes a promise to come back, to hold Luna more and to listen to Dora when she needs it. He’s not good, and he never will be. Nothing more than an inky black stain on their beautiful quilt of life. But maybe Dora needs something to do. Maybe he can be her project again. She only asks one more thing of him, graceful disappointment on her face at his offer, “Keep her happy and safe, Barty.”
However, Barty doesn’t get the chance to do either of those things. In two days' time, his father called him to the Wizengamot. Neither of them aware of how deep Igor Karakoff’s betrayal will go.
Dora never visits him in Azkaban. He’s not sure if she’s even allowed. And it’s no place to bring a baby or someone with a soul as vibrant as hers. The dementors would have nothing to feast on. But they do take pleasure in leaving him numb. It’s a comfort, really, when they suck away the parts of his soul when he hears two guards gossip about her—a strange rambling witch, dead in her own home at her own hand.
Her daughter having watched the whole thing.
It’s twelve years later. On a different New Year’s day, in a quiet castle when he decides to finally sit by the Black Lake again. The ground is frozen solid, painful when he finally hobbles down, the fake peg leg making it hard to move around. Even after months, he’s still not quite used to it.
The bite of the icy mud under his arse is a comfort, he’s come to expect the pain of existing by now. Knowing that any comfort he could find on these shores is just a charade, a distorted color blind reenactment of what he once had. No one who sat with him in this spot before still breathed. The unluckiest of them all to still linger.
The polyjuice often suffocates him, his collar and leash growing too tight in its final form. It’s easy to snap in this form, though. They all think he is mad, old and crotchety, and they expect him to be cruel.
He’s not cruel to her, though.
Sometimes, he wonders if that is really his purpose here. Dora’s words haunt him, that maybe she knew this was what he would do, that Barty was destined to be alone in the end. Trip kids with curses when they laugh at her, or charm their lips shut when they call her that name Godric awful nickname. It is all he’s good for, protecting her with unneeded force just as he once swaddled her in sharp teeth.
Other times, he wonders if Luna knows. He catches her watching him at meals and never calls him Mad-Eye. Always professor. The word is slow and stumbling as if she doesn’t quite believe he is one, either. Dora told him once that he could teach arithmancy. They were young and stupid. She was hopeful, and he was mean. Maybe Dora knew then, too.
He keeps his distance—it’s the best he can do, for all the sins he commits along the way, they are never towards her. When the cloaked figure finally looked down at him, floating above, his icy chill made Barty’s fingers numb. And he thinks of his half-kept promise.
Dogs can’t control when they bite. They can’t predict when the anger will boil over, and the taste for pain and flesh will be too much. But Barty isn’t a dog, no matter how many years he spent believing he was. One year of half-good deeds isn’t enough to change his fate, but he thinks Dora would be proud. She always had a thing for strays.
In another fifteen years, when Luna looks around a crowded, lively dinner table celebrating and welcoming another year free of war, her lovers’ hands are in hers. Someone leans over and asks what her favourite class was in school if she even had one with all that happened. And she shocks them all with a simple, dreamy response, the answer easily rolling off her tongue.
“Defense against the dark arts, in third year.”
“Really? When that nutter was pretending to be Mad-Eye?”
“We’re all a little strange, but Barty was always very nice to me. He always had been.”