3Most say It's impossible to predict where a person's breaking point is, that point where love can turn to hate, where sanity turns to madness, and where loyalty dies in the face of betrayal. The arrogant think they will never break, that the force of their will alone will carry them into death first. Barty Crouch Jr. knew better.
He was nineteen the first time he saw the breaking point. He had resolved to swear fealty to the Dark Lord Voldemort, not because he believed in the man's rhetoric, he in fact found the Dark Lord to be short sighted and his plans unrealistic. No, he followed because that was the path that led to change, to the purge of a government that Barty despised above everything. He cared little about muggle borns and even less about muggles; what Barty hated with all the malice in his heart was the Ministry of Magic, and the embodiment of the Ministry in the form of his father. He wanted nothing more than to see the Ministry burn and he wanted to hold his father's head in his hands and force him to watch everything he had put ahead of his son and family collapse in front of his eyes. He wanted the old man to watch in despair, then live a long life in hell knowing all he had ever striven for had come to nothing.
These were the thoughts that fooled the Dark Lord when his mind was raped with Legilimency to prove his loyalty to Voldemort's cause. These were the thoughts that fueled the hate with which he cast the crucio's against the muggle brought in as his initiation test. In his mind's eye that Muggle wore the face of his father, and his crucio was fueled by every disparaging word his father ever said about he and his mother, every missed dinner and ignored holiday.
Blood poured from the muggle's mouth, eyes and ears, his vocal chords ripped from his screams as he choked on his own blood, and his muscles cramped so viciously that the snap of bone was heard. Bellatrix, the psychotic bitch, was jumping up and down and laughing in glee at the torture, her eyes wide. She looked almost aroused by the screams, her bosom heaving the tight corset she always wore, tongue swiping across her carmine lips. She revolted him in her madness and her mindless frenzy; she was no better than a rabid dog. His hate for Bellatrix added even more power to the curse he cast, and Barty was nothing if not a powerful and talented wizard. Then it happened.
He could hear it, like music, like the whine of mosquitoes in summer, like a tuning fork being struck, but also unlike any of them as it was truly like nothing but itself. It surrounded the muggle as he lay, limp, unable to move or scream or even beg for mercy. Barty moved closer, fascinated, as the sound, sound that was almost vibration increased in pitch and he knew somehow, that when that sound came to a certain level something important would happen. Not death, no, death was simple, he had seen death, and caused death already, really it was no different than butchering animals for food. No, this would be something else entirely.
"What are you waiting for? Kill it!" Bella stomped her foot in frustration and he flicked his eyes away from the man and hissed at her, the look in his eyes so venomous that she took a step back and fell silent.
"Bella, let the boy do as he wishes." The Dark Lord's rich baritone rung with authority as he watched Barty with interest, one dark brow rising in inquiry.
Barty felt the hairs on the back of his arms rising, but curiously, the pitch of the noise was no longer rising. There needed to be more, something stronger than magic, something deeper than physical pain. Barty knew well what was far worse than any physical pain ever could be. He sheathed his wand, it was no longer needed, the muggle already in such agony that the burned nerves were unable to comprehend more. He leaned forward and spoke softly in the man's ear, his voice calm and quiet. The hum ratcheted up immediately, and Barty listened to it for a long moment before speaking one more sentence. The man spasmed, wet, choked howls coming from his mouth as he writhed, but Barty wasn't listening to that, he was listening to a sound like crystal dropped on stone, like the creaking of ice on a river in spring.
The sound of the breaking point.
He became an expert on the breaking point after that. It was a game, it was art and it was his obsession. He quickly became the most trusted interrogator in Death Eaters, and one of Voldemort's most trusted lieutenants. Eventually the Dark Lord confided in him that blood purity was simply the platform needed to secure the loyalty of the rich purebloods, that the Dark Lord's end game, like Barty's own, was so much more. They were more than a Lord and his vassal, they were kindred souls on a mission, walking the path together towards a common goal, if for slightly different reasons. In a world more sane they might have been friends. Perhaps they were.
He argued against pursuing the Potters and Longbottom's, for all the good that it did in the end, trying to explain that divination and prophecy were woolly branches of magic at best, and far more prone to become self-fulfilling once acted upon with intent. He searched along with the others after the explosion, though they sought different things. Barty had not been a Ravenclaw for nothing, he looked for something special, for a vessel fit to hold a portion of a soul as reliquaries in the muggle world held pieces of their saints.
He heard the vibration of his own breaking point as he was dragged from the courtroom after capture, his fathers' words ringing in his ears, but he fought it back, refusing to allow the betrayer the satisfaction. For long months he suffered under the Dementors, his every failure, every mistake on constant replay in his head. He was barely aware when he was removed from his cell, only the dawning realization of the sacrifice his mother, the only person who had ever truly loved him, pulling him from the horrors inside his mind. He tried to fight back, to do something, anything to not leave her in that hell, refusing to accept that she was dying and this was her last gift to him, the undeniable proof of a mother's love. He would have fought back, but the Imperio hit him with the force of a hammer, and in his weakened, barely sane state there was not enough left of himself to fight it.
It took him years to break the spells his father imprisoned him under, and years beyond that to recover enough strength to escape the hell that was his home, but recover he did. The vibration of the breaking point was always steady in his ears now, like the drums in the head of a character in a muggle book he had read when he was a boy, and he wondered if that meant that he was mad. But didn't merely questioning if you were mad prove that you were not? He didn't know nor did he care.
Things were different when he emerged back into the world. His Lord, his friend, the one person who had understood and accepted him was no more, in his place was a misshapen and horrific abomination, a victim of magic gone terribly wrong that survived on potions and unicorn blood and reeked of madness. His old compatriots had become weak, cowardly or gone mad. Their great work was in ruins and all they had dreamed was in tatters. In desperation, he turned to the darkest of magics in hopes of finding a way to restore his Lord so they could continue the work.
He spent countless days researching and attempting to determine with arithmancy what ritual would have the best chance of success.
What arose from the cauldron was nearly as much a horror as the homunculus that had gone into it, and Barty knew that he had been deceived. Had his master's soul been intact the ritual would have created a body that would have been hale and whole. Worse was that the Dark Lord seemed unbothered by his altered appearance, his entire focused on the boy he had mad the focus of the prophecy. Barty begged him to see reason and ignore the boy, ignore the prophecy, and for the first time he fell under the cruciatus from his master. Even that pain, however, paled under the realization that the man he had worked so hard to restore was gone forever and in his place was a mad, malformed thing obsessed with nothing but power, immortality and prophecy. The vibration in his head increased. It was difficult to think beyond it anymore, but he tried.
Killing his father was less than satisfying, he had wanted to show his father the breaking point first, hear it shatter and watch as it left his father a shell with empty eyes as he had wanted to do to Barty, but it wasn't to be. He was making mistakes now, mistakes he never would have made before, he couldn't think the way he used to, couldn't hold onto the myriad threads of complex plans. It was so loud in his head, the whine and the vibration of his own breaking point never allowing him to sleep, to think, to relax. The more he tried to ignore it, the more he tried to rebuild the tattered remains of his life, the louder they became.
He can barely hear the questions the so-called Leaders of the Light ask him when he is caught impersonating Alastor Moody. He would have killed the old fool if he could, it would have been far less risky, but Polyjuice doesn't work with the hair of the dead. He is conscious of Snape giving him Veritaserum, he always had suspected that slimy git was a traitor. It's the first time that he has ever had Veritaserum, it's always been considered pointless to give it to Occlumens and before the noise in his head Barty had been an extremely talented Occlumens. He understands now why it's such a heavily regulated potion. For the first time in longer than he can remember his thoughts are clear, as sharply focused as they were before the Dark Mark, before Azkaban, before his universe fell apart. He has been asking himself how things went so wrong, how every dream he had ever had turned to dust, how the one person he had loved and trusted beyond all others had turned his wand on him for no other reason than expressing his concern. Now he knows the answers.
A muggle poet once said, "when ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise." Barty knows that as truth now. He knows many things. He knows the answer to all the questions that have been plaguing him since he was a boy. He sees clearly how Voldemort regarded him. How the Dark Lord saw an angry, lonely teenager longing for understanding, longing to belong and blessed with more talent, power and intelligence than anyone recognized and decided to collect him. He saw how the man drew him in with false sympathy and used their similarities to cement his loyalty. He saw how he had willingly embraced cruelty as a way to feel powerful and in control; how he had turned himself into a willing slave for scraps of praise. He saw himself kill over and over, his victims all wearing the face of his father, the man he blamed for all his woes. And he saw the folly in that as well. And as he saw his own actions and motivations for what they truly were, as the Veritaserum stripped away all his self-delusion, his excuses and his justifications and full sanity was forced into a mind in no condition to receive it he heard it again, the painfully clear tone of crystal on stone, of ice creaking on a river in spring.
Barty Crouch had once again found the breaking point.