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November 19, 1980:
Barty was fire, destroying everything that came too close. He was amber flames dancing atop the bodies he burned. He was the scratchy voice of the inferno as it whispered violent thoughts into your ear. Fire is unruly, fierce, and uncontrollable. There’s little you can do once it gets loose, only watch as it ignites all you love into a beautiful sea of crimson.
Evan was the spark that got him started. When they met the empty hearth inside his stomach was set ablaze and the light returned to his olive eyes. He was the fuel that kept Barty living, the quiet wisps of oxygen that fed the flame inside of him. Take away the fuel, heat, or oxygen, and the fire will go out.
When Barty was with Evan he felt unstoppable, like if the man he loved was close enough, they could overpower anything that came their way. That’s how it was for a while, for so long they survived the war that took away everyone else they knew. When he saw the green light flash from Moody’s wand and hit Evan square in the chest, it surprised him when he didn’t get up again. Evan never stayed down, no matter what spell you hit him with, he would find a way to get back up. He always managed to get his way back into Barty’s arms every night. Evan couldn’t die, not like this, not this quickly. He was worth too much, someone like him shouldn’t be able to go out so soon. But he did, and Barty went with him.
When he heard Evan’s body fall into the snow, he couldn’t help but pray. God was never something Barty believed in, it didn’t make sense to him that the world could be this cruel if someone so kind was supposed to be watching over it. Even so, he prayed that God would give him back the only thing he’s ever needed. Life had repeatedly screwed him over, the least it could do was keep his spark alive. He crawled over to Evan’s still body, silent tears racing down his ivory cheeks. He can feel his hand shaking as he lifts it to Evan’s neck, desperately checking for a pulse. Of course, there wasn’t one. Because God doesn’t give to the wicked, no matter how hard they try not to be.
His breath came out in labored huffs as he looked into Evan’s icy blue eyes. Those eyes that once contained a spark of humor whenever Barty did something to make him laugh. Those eyes that once shone bright with tears whenever Barty did something to make him cry. Those eyes, once so filled with life, drained clean of their soul.
Barty screamed, he screamed with the hope that Pandora could hear him, wherever she was. He hoped that his scream could be loud enough to reach Dorcas from her new life, to reach Regulus from his grave. Evan is dead he yelled, It’s just me, I’m the only one left. He’s not only crying for Evan anymore, his sobs are shared with the mourning of all his friends. A tear for Pandora, who made even the most tragic moments something to be grateful for. A tear for Dorcas, who tried so hard to save Barty from his own two hands. And a tear for Regulus, who will always have half of Barty’s heart in his arms. All of his suppressed emotion spilled out of him at once and all the passersby thought that the world must be ending. For Barty, it was.
⏾⋆.˚
August 22, 1979:
“I wish we could stay like this forever.” Evan mumbles as he lays beside Barty. He pulls the blanket over their heads and giggles when Barty pulls him closer.
“What’s the blanket for?” Barty teases.
“To protect us,” Evan answers. “When we are under this blanket, nothing bad can find us.” He looks pointedly at Barty’s forearm, where the Dark Lord had made his mark.
He finds it unfair how upset Evan is over Barty joining the Death Eaters. He and Regulus had both joined as well, what different was it for Barty? Usually, he would have said something about it, but he sees how peaceful Evan looks right now, and he doesn’t want anything to ruin this moment. Not like anything could, when he’s with Evan nothing can possibly go wrong, but the blanket of protection had been pulled off of them and left them vulnerable to the calamity of the world.
“Panda?” Evan asks, his voice laced with concern.
“Evan, I-” She makes a wild movement with her hands and Barty wonders if today was the day Pandora Rosier had finally lost it. Her hair generally had loads of effort put into it whenever Barty saw her. It was either in loose braids falling down her shoulders, flowers and butterflies enchanted to grow and fly around her head, or put neatly into two space buns on each side of her head, each bun made into a different color of the rainbow. But today, her wavy blonde hair was a mess atop her head, as if she’d been running her hands through it, pulling some strands out of frustration. Her eyes were bloodshot and open wide, looking desperately between Evan and Barty.
Evan seems to know what she’s talking about and jumps out of bed, reaching out to grab Pandora by the shoulders. She shoved him off and sprinted in the other direction. Evan ran after her, and after a moment of confusion Barty ran after him too.
The Rosier twins were something akin to crazy. Pandora was a seer, who would disappear for weeks after receiving a vision, only to return covered in dirt and a crazed look in her eyes, refusing to tell anyone but her twin where she had gone. Evan would talk to himself for hours, but whenever a real person really tried speaking to him, he would go silent and stare at them until they walked away. Evan was the light of the end of the tunnel, and Pandora was the wind kindly guiding you to the exit. The twins always had their own thing going on, their own form of communication, a way to connect with each other since it was so hard for them to do with everyone else. Barty just wishes they would share this one thing with him.
They followed Pandora up the stairs from the Slytherin dungeons and outside, through the hidden exit Regulus had used whenever he wanted to go outside and look down at the water. He always said how much he liked the way the waves looked when they crashed into each other. It’s so dark under the water, as if it’s keeping secrets from us.
Barty has a feeling that Pandora had found out the secrets of the lake. Apparently she had. Evan came to a stop just before the land joined with the water, Barty slowly after, but Pandora kept moving. She raced through the water until it just passed her waist. She wailed like a baby, her face contorted in pain. Barty has seen people get tortured by the hands of Voldemort, he’s seen death and suffering to a degree that no human should ever have to, but he’s never seen someone in this much agony. Especially not Pandora, he’s never heard her so much as whine when she was upset, nothing ever seemed to faze her. There’s only one thing Barty can think of that could break Pandora Rosier.
“Regulus is dead.” Evan murmurs, his face blank and his breathing heavy and quick.
Barty gasps for air before asking, “How long have you-”
“Panda has been telling me stories of a boy who drowned ever since we were children.” Evan says, “Never knew it would be him.”
Evan steps into the lake and wades through the water, towards Pandora, trying to pull her to land. Barty would have gone to help but his body feels like lead. His absolute best friend, the boy who taught him how to love, the boy who he could run to whenever things got hard, the boy that could handle anything you gave him, that boy, Regulus Black, died. Trapped under the water for eternity, never again to see the light of day, or feel the warmth of the sun he held so dearly. He’d never be harassed by Evan and Barty’s relentless teasing, or make flower crowns with Panda, or have long, late night talks with Dorcas. He was only eighteen. Barely an adult and the only life he knew was the one where he was trapped underneath his mothers thumb.
Barty wishes there was enough space under him and Evan’s blanket for just one more person.
⏾⋆.˚
November 3, 1981:
It’s been nearly a year since Evan died, two since Regulus. Barty’s walking quietly down the muggle streets of London, quietly mumbling to himself. He has been going on missions for the Dark Lord daily and decided it was time to take a break and collect himself. The only reason Voldemort had allowed him to do so was because of how well he’s been serving the Death Eaters. After Regulus died, he and Evan would go on any trip asked of them, fulfilling the task to perfection. After Evan died, Barty would do everything asked of him and more. He would go out and kill anyone he recognized from school, he would torture information out of anyone who looked suspicious in the slightest, and he was rewarded for it.
He sighs and sits down on a wooden bench overlooking a small playground. He sees a small brown haired boy sitting alone at the edge of the slide, staring at nothing. Eventually, a black haired girl walks up to him, she holds out her hand and asks him to play. The boy's face lights up as they run off. Watching the scene unfold gave Barty a melancholy feeling in his stomach, as if that boy could’ve been him. In another world, maybe it was. In a world without prejudice and war. In a world where Barty wasn’t forced to fight against the people he cared about. In another world completely.
“Barty?”
“What.” Barty answers absentmindedly.
“Still chipper as ever, I presume?”
Barty looks over at the seat next to him, only to see the person he thought had left his side years ago. “Dorcas?”
“Nice to know someone still remembers.” She grumbles.
Barty doesn’t care enough to ask what she meant by that. “I thought you hated me so much that you couldn’t even be seen with me.”
Dorcas’ jaw clenches, “Don’t even act like it was a crazy thing for me to do.” She spits out. “I left you because you wanted people like me dead.” She grabs Barty’s arm and shakes it, like that was point enough. It was.
“Is it bad that I stood for what I believed in?” Barty sputtered.
“When what you believe in puts innocent people at risk, yeah.” She says, her eyebrows furrowing in frustration. She exhales and her features relax. “I heard Evan died.”
“Yeah, me too.” Barty scoffs,
“I’m sorry,” Dorcas mumbled, looking at Barty solemnly.
“Shouldn’t you feel sorry for yourself too?” Barty snaps. He fiddles with his jacket zipper as he talks. “You were just as close to him as I was.”
“I’ve been feeling sorry for myself a while now.” She says, “You were all dead to me the day you took the mark.”
They sit with one another in silence for a few moments longer. It reminds Barty of how they were at school. Dorcas was the only person Barty felt comfortable with in silence, because he trusted her. Even now, as they sit on opposing sides of the war, he’s grateful that it’s them. Grateful that someone as brave as Dorcas was able to make it this long.
If only he knew that she had a whole other war going on in her mind, similar to his own. They both lost their other halves, and it was going to cause the demise of them both.
Three months after he ran into her, he heard from another Death Eater, Peter Pettigrew, that Voldemort ended up killing her personally. Barty would be lying if he said he didn’t expect that. Dorcas was such an impactful person, it’d be a shame if she went out quietly.
⏾⋆.˚
June 24, 1995:
After a life of sleepless nights and lonely days, Barty felt that he was ready to pass on. He was ready to do things on his own terms, as he always did. He missed Reg and his snarky remarks. He missed Pandora, and her eccentric personality. He missed Dorcas and her willingness to always do the right thing. He missed Evan and the nights spent under the covers without a care in the world. He hated mourning all of that, when he could so easily get it back. He was glad to have one definite thing in his life, that he was going to die. That was until he was given the opportunity of his dreams.
He was trusted with the murder of the boy who lived. Although he could not care less whether he lived or died, there was something else that made this plan so appealing. He was given a chance to avenge his spark. Part of the mission was to capture Alastor Moody and use his body as a disguise to infiltrate Hogwarts. This is the first time Barty had done something personal for the Death Eaters, and he planned to do it perfectly.
Everything started out going according to plan, Barty managed to capture Moody. It took all of his restraint not to kill the man the moment he saw him, Voldemort said he wanted him alive, so alive Barty would keep him. He was able to successfully put Potter’s name into the Goblet of Fire and go through the school year without being caught. It was hard not to blow his cover at times, especially when he first saw Luna. The moment she walked into his classroom, he knew whose child she was. She had the same wavy blonde hair and blue eyes as her mother. The same whimsical aura that scared fellow classmates away. But it was not only Pandora whom she resembled. Her mannerisms were so similar to Evan’s that there were moments that Barty caught himself thinking that she was Evan at times.
When he heard that Luna’s mother had died in an experiment gone wrong, he had felt betrayed in a way. Pandora had left them years ago, but at least he knew that the world was still blessed by her presence. Because a world without Pandora was not a world anybody should want to live in. She was the fireflies zooming through an empty field, she was the first flower blooming at the start of spring, she was the carefree laughter of a child oblivious to the evil of the world. A life without Pandora was a life that made even the wrath of the devil look at you in pity, and that was the life Barty had now lived. He was standing alone at the edge of his mind, his anguished voice echoing through the depths of his mind.
Maybe he deserved how it all ended; he ended up getting caught, he was taken once again by the Aurors, and now he was sitting at the will of a Dementor. Nothing ever went Barty’s way, he couldn’t even die the way he wanted. His life would be taken by the Dementors, but his soul will forever remain confined to the hell that is earth. All his life he waited for death, and not even that would come easily. Because people who murdered, tortured, and killed didn’t deserve anything easy. At least, that’s what he’s been told. Perhaps it isn’t true though, Evan had done all those things and more, but Barty believed that he deserved peace in everything he does, in life or death. As Barty took his final breaths, his head was consumed by the memory of a blonde boy who should have gotten much more than he did. They might never see each other again, but their spirits have been intertwined since the moment they first locked eyes. And that was all Barty needed to know before he was finally able to find rest.