Severus Snape

Author: verus_janus
Title: So Convincing
Characters: Barty Crouch Jr., Moaning Myrtle, someone else
Word Count: 1330
Rating: R
Warnings: Depression. If you think that's not bad or not madness don't say you weren't warned.
For: darkarts_ldws
Prompt: Barty Crouch, Jr., Driving to insanity
Notes: This is the original story I wrote, in longhand, which I then had to cut to 500 words exactly for the Dark Arts, Last Drabble Writer Standing com. Thank you SO MUCH to valkyriekat_47 and sionna_raven, the com mods. Thank you SO MUCH to mingbutterfly, my alphabeta.

He had discovered the unused bathroom in first year.  It seemed as if there was never anyone there, except the ghost of the girl who carried on and on about distant slights.  He let them pour over him like proverbial water.  It was a bathroom, after all.  He could have said the same things, but they seemed so trivial in her sing-song voice.  But the combined weight of them squeezed him back into this empty room, the only room, with its cold white tile and poor lighting, that did not seem to suffocate him with the presence of his fellow students.

Even the ghost was gone today, and he was glad.  Otherwise he would have had to wait.  Again.  Again and again and again.

He looked at himself in the mirror, steady.  Maybe it would be like a dream.  Could he think it was a dream?  Could he will his hands to act and at the same time protect his brain with some anaesthetic of imagination to trick it into thinking it was not happening?

Why?

He wrote a list, in his mind, but he could picture it keenly and exactly as he wrote it.  Another aspect of genius, he thought wryly.

All right.

1.  He was so lonely he thought his heart would break.
2.  He had a heart, unlike his father, or everything would have been fine.
3.  He had not a single friend, and everyone jeered at him either secretly or overtly.
4.  Everyone knew friends were the only way to success, especially his father.
5.  Friendless, he was flawed and useless (save as an accessory) to his father, who only valued success.
6.  His coddling apologist mother was no comfort.
7.  The more he thought the more he hurt.
8.  The more he thought the more unjust his pain seemed.
9.  The more he thought the more unendurable, inevitable and infinite his pain seemed.
10.  There was no possibility of it getting better.  The other students were not going to change and neither was his father.  And there were no other wizards in Britain.

He looked in the mirror at his robes, pin-striped, cut in the Ministry manner.  Why couldn't he just have regular student robes from Flourish and Bott's like everyone else?  His Ravenclaw tie mocked him.  Even in Ravenclaw...  They should have welcomed his precision, his diligence, the calm perfect progression he flavoured for everything: research to experiment to results.  It was the only sure thing in the world.  It had once made him smile and it would have still if he had smiled at anything any more.

Instead, he was pushed and prodded.  They snickered when he was right.  They snickered when he was wrong - hr has tested it perversely just to see.  Small curses were cast at him.  He never knew if he was ill or if they had done something to him.  Poison?  Were they tampering with his things?  He left them in specific places, edges aligned, taking a photo with his keen mind to see if they were moved.  But then he wasn't sure.  At best - and he was pathetically grateful - there were some who avoided him, afraid of the position of his father.  His father who would never have moved to help him if he were the last person on earth.  His father who had wizards tortured in his dungeons.

He's not crying.  He likes it. If he didn't like it he would cry.
Look, he's crying.  Look at the crybaby cry!
He's not reacting.  Try it again.  Again.  Again.  Again.
What?  Can't you take a joke?

In actuality, Barty never cried.  His face was frozen, neutral, bland, smooth.  If they criticized it, they were simply wrong, and this protected him.  Only his tongue licked out, betraying his nervousness, his longing, his fear.

Look at him.  He should be in Slytherin.

Once he had dared to ask, "Why?"

Well, you're just so stuck up and priggish.  We have to - to take you down a peg.  Or twenty.  It's like... We say, 'Hi, how's it going, man?'  And you just... You use do many words snd you speak so slowly, and your face is all plain.  You'd say, 'Hello there.  I am well, thank you.  How are you today."  that's not how people talk - real people. It's so prissy.

Now he looked at himself in the mirror and was surprised to see water running down from his eyes.  It didn't matter.  He had a razor he'd stolen from Filch's office.  The man never shaved anyway.  He flicked it with his thumb.  He'd practiced honing spells.  He wanted it sharp, so sharp.  Maybe it wouldn't hurt so much.  Maybe he wouldn't feel it so much.  Maybe he wouldn't feel it at all.

He tried it out on the forelock of his hair.  It wasn't ash blond, like some of the children's.  It wasn't gold like yellow butter.  What did they say?  Strawberry blond?  It was just straw blond.  Dirty, indifferent, neither rich brown like mahogany nor really blind at all.  The blade cut it, so sharp it sliced his hair vertically, a slight nick, barely felt.  He cut more.  It didn't matter.  Why not enjoy the simple feeling?  The blade touched his head and blood was running down his face as well, watered down as it merged with the tears.  Maybe the other side.  He cut more hair.  It was uneven, which somehow troubled him.  His skin was white, the blood was red, and the muted tiled background was blue.  O, England.  And his father was Minister.

The door opened, but he wasn't looking now, lost in his hair and the small nicking feeling he got using the blade.  Now his throat...  Just draw it across...

And then, so suddenly he almost jumped, an arm was around his chest from behind.  A hand curled around his.  A palm covered his fingers with his ragged bitten nails, stopping the blade.  He looked down at the sleeve pushed up to the person's elbow where a snake undulated from a staring skull.

Myrtle's voice prattled and flowed aethereally from his left.  "See, I told you.  Just in time, too.  I'm glad you stopped him.  No one ever comes to see me.  Just you.  And him.  No one cares about Myrtle, oh no.  But he listens to me.  I think he's crazy, and I came right to get you.  I couldn't stop him myself now, could I?  And he can't live here with me.  This is a Girl's bathroom.  It isn't decent..."

The other boy was Regulus Black, a slight elegant Slytherin he barely knew apart from the Quidditch matches they were all obliged to watch.  "Thank you, Myrtle, of course you were right to come.  And it was very good of you, too," he said now.  Barty could imagine her preening with praise.

He tried to push against the hand restraining his own, then surrendered the razor.  The other arm, with the forbidden Mark, still held him snugly.  His father hated that Mark.  The other students hated that Mark.

And the Regulus spoke again and the words were more comforting still.  "Shhh.  It's all right.  I'm here.  We're here.  Don't worry.  Don't be afraid.  We will look after you now.  It will all be different.  You'll see.  If it is all over for you anyway, you could join us instead.  Even if you think of it as dying, it's a better way to die, helping us and the whole wizarding world.  Shhh.  It gets better.  And no one need ever know."

The words were like water, pouring over him, drowning the pain, not strident but soothing.  Like music.  Water music.  He rested his head back against the side of Regulus' soft dark hair.  His running blood reddened the soft pureblood cheek.  He was pureblood too.  "All right."

"We just have to fix your hair."