Secret account. For secrets.

---

A week later, Snape returned with another bottle of blood that Harry devoured in less than a minute. The stale heavy taste coated his tongue, nose wrinkling. When Snape arched an eyebrow, Harry remained sullen and quiet. 

The warm dog smell he associated with Sirius when Snape entered the room had made him think, just for a moment, that his godfather would be right behind him. Harry was disappointed when the door clicked shut and it was only his dour potions professor. Not that he thought Sirius wanted to be anywhere near his least favourite teacher. 

Parchment and ink had been left for him at some point, and Harry thought it might have been to try and alleviate his boredom. Instead, he spent the last few days trying to remember every secret passage he could that led out of the castle. 

He had forgotten to cover it in the pursuit to get the bottle around his mouth. Snape’s eyes flickered over it. 

“...I was just–”

“And do you think your mutt of a godfather would cope with your absconsion, again?”

“My what–”

With a flick of his wrist, the parchment vanished. 

“Oi!” He shot to his feet, a growl in his throat. 

Snape snarled back at him. “Do I have to remind you of where you are, Potter! When the school year starts, are you going to bare your teeth at every teacher that has dared to annoy your delicate sensibilities?”

Just you, Harry thought sourly as he shut his mouth with a snap and settled for glaring instead. 

“Use your brain, boy. If you attempt to leave, you will be snatched up by the ministry faster than Black can apparate to you. Either of them.” 

At that, Harry blinked. All he could picture was Regulus waiting for him outside the gates in his little Slytherin robe, cold hands shoved in his pockets. 

But if people from the ministry were hanging around, then he doubted his brother would be just beyond the walls. 

---

He felt suddenly…strong. Gliding against smooth cold tiles flat on his stomach. The master still mourned the loss of the hatchling and the bigger one who liked to feed her flinching mice. They squirmed as they made their way down her gullet. 

No, that wasn’t right. Harry was a boy. 

But still, she flicked out her tongue tasting the scent of her master in the air as she settled her head upon his knee. Long sharp fingers brushed against his scales before he cupped her face, his forehead pressed against the top of her head. 

“We are connected.” Lord Voldemort hissed to her–to him. “We will always be connected, my soul. My souls…” When she peered at him with her lamp-like eyes, a creature not so different from her peered back; a snake in the form of a man. 

But that wasn’t how Harry left him. He wanted to reach out but he couldn’t, she couldn’t. It felt as if his head was about to split in two. 

Soon, they were rising together and he felt the squeeze of apparition roll down his scales and firm muscle. When they reappeared it was onto cold polished tile and she scented the air greedily with her tongue, mouth open to let the taste wash over her. 

The master had brought her here before. 

That wasn’t correct. 

The master had brought the hatchling and the rest of his brood, and she had been disappointed that the rat had not been left behind with her. But then the master had not returned with the hatchling or the taller one and oh how he had raged. 

It simmered now, just under his pale skin. These wizards, they took and took and the master would have what belonged to him returned.

“What was the phrase? Ah yes…”

Harry peered up at his sire, waiting for his command. 

“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Alas…” He smiled down at him–her. The teeth split his mouth wide and Harry thought of them sinking into the meat of his shoulder. 

We just finished 1949's 'kind Hearts & Coronets', please tell me why I went 'I could make a Tom Riddle story out of this'.

An intelligent charming outsider obsessed with bloodlines and inheritance. Class resentment, calculated murders and a narrator who treats the terrible act of murder with utter detachment...

Tom or Louis??

---

The first time Lord Voldemort said Barty’s name, he almost missed it. Not because he wasn’t listening, but because he had spent his entire life teaching himself not to expect it. The name wasn’t even his own, after all, but a hand me down from his father. 

Tem. Evan had called him, but to everyone else he was Barty. 

The meeting room beneath the manor was cold with stone walls that should have been choked with candle smoke. Not that Abraxes Malfoy would have allowed such a thing. Bellatrix had been laughing too loudly at something Avery had said, cutting through the soft murmurings of the room. 

He stood by the wall, slightly behind everyone else, hands clasped behind his back. At his side, the littlest Black was shaking, his first ever meeting, and Barty almost told him to get a grip. 

“Crouch.” 

His head snapped up instantly and found red eyes settling on him. The Dark Lord tilted his almost waxen face as his gaze settled on him, not through him like he had done to so many of the others. 

There had been something different about Lord Voldemort from every other wizard. Not wrong, exactly, but it wasn’t something he could put his finger on. 

The scent of blood followed him everywhere. 

“Come here.” 

He stood amongst his most devoted, the oldest of his Knights who parted like a solemn sea at his command. 

Every nerve in Barty’s body lit up like a struck match, and he obeyed so quickly that he almost tripped. Someone snorted softly and he realised with annoyance that it had been Little Black. 

He ignored him, just as Voldemort ignored everyone else’s murmurings in the room. 

“I believe you were the one to solve the problem with the wards?” The Dark Lord asked him as he bowed low, head almost touching the floor. 

Barty swallowed, nodding his head of soft straw coloured hair; his mothers hair. 

“Yes, my Lord.” He answered.

“Look at me, child.”

Barty blinked but straightened, aware of the lingering gaze of the other Death Eaters upon him. Lord Voldemort’s attention, however, was solely upon him. 

“How did you solve them?”

The way his father used to ask him questions, it was always in a way designed to expose his failures. If he had done well on a test, another colleague's child had always done better. There was no one to prove himself to because his father had deemed him unworthy of that praise. 

But Lord Voldemort sounded almost curious. He appeared interested. 

“Well my Lord…” Barty started, voice steadying and then gaining vigour as he spoke of ancient runic anchors and rotational arithmetic. The Dark Lord nodded along, brow furrowed in a way that let Barty know he was listening to every word. 

Around them, the room had fallen silent and when he finished his explanation he licked over his dry lips; a nervous tick from childhood. Father couldn’t scold it out of him. 

“Excellent. I expect your notes are quite extensive. Share them with me.”

Barty almost stopped breathing and instead nodded wildly. 

“Yes, my Lord. I mean–” He blinked, “thank you my Lord.” Because no one had really gone out of their way to praise him in such a way. As if they really meant it. His father praised outcomes, of course, but never him directly. 

Praise from Bartemius Crouch Sr felt like signing a satisfactory Ministry report. Praise from Lord Voldemort, however, had him swallowing down butterflies in his stomach. 

The Dark Lord’s fingers brushed briefly beneath Barty’s chin, lifting his face to turn it this way and that. 

Those butterflies suddenly felt like explosions. 

Lord Voldemort was dead. 

Killed by a mere toddler.

At least, that’s what the prophet had emblazoned across its front page on November 1st, 1981. 

Barty knew better. 

The Lestranges had been, rather stupidly he thought, apprehended for the torture of the Longbottoms. They should have been killed when it was evident they possessed no knowledge of where their master was. 

Barty had left the house, irritated and hungry, and that hunger had not abated when he sank his teeth into the muggle he pulled from the street. Their warm body twitched against his, and he wished for the comfort of Regulus’ arms because their sire would not give it to them. Every permitted touch from him was like sunshine coursing through his sluggish veins. 

---

“No,” said Regulus, finally looking up from his piles of annotated notes. “That’s not possible.” The last two years of searching for their master had left both of them miserable and adrift. Barty thought if he hadn’t kept pushing for it, Regulus would have given up and buried himself in the dirt, the selfish bastard. 

“You didn’t see him, Reg. Didn’t feel it. In here.” He reached down, fingers spread against his unbeating heart. “It was like he was there again!” 

Regulus pinched his own nose. “So a weird little boy put a mouse in his mouth? Sirius used to put all sorts of things in his mouth.”

“You didn’t see him!” Barty snapped, pulling his hand away, and Regulus scoffed. 

“Leave the child alone–”

“He killed our master!”

“Thought you said he wasn’t dead, hmm. Thought you could feel it through our stupid bond.” Regulus got to his feet, chair scraping behind him, and Barty scowled at him. 

"Don't start this again–”

“I’ve got leads in East Europe. Do you want to start there or stay in fucking Surrey staring at a four-year-old through a window, like a creep?" 

Barty grit his teeth and swallowed down the spit in his throat and the urge to throw a chair at Regulus' stupidly handsome face. 

“...He looks like Potter.”

Regulus stilled before turning away from him, gathering up his papers. 

“Same stupid hair that sticks up everywhere. Not as swarthy, though; clearly taken after his mum–"

“Shut up.”

“Don’t you want to see him? Your sire's killer? Your–”

But Barty didn’t get to finish as Regulus pulled out his wand; a hex barely missed his head as he ran from the room, and the door slammed behind him. 

—

The boy had turned five in July, and the Dark Lord had been missing, presumed very dead, for the last three. 

Barty stood out in the cold October night waiting for a child that he knew was going to be sent outside. Nearly every single time he had visited, the aunt had forced him out to either weed or sweep or tend to the garden. As if he were no better than a house elf. 

The porch light clicked on, and out stomped the child in his too-big coat and bare little feet. Off he went to the shed to grab something when he paused, sniffing the air.

Barty opened his mouth, scenting the air back. 

The first time he had scented the air near him, he had almost grabbed him right there and then. The boy smelt of blood; their blood. Regulus wouldn’t be able to deny that! 

“Hello?” The daring little thing stepped up to the tree line, and Barty stepped forward, clutching at the bag on his back. The rats inside squirmed to be let free. 

Staring down at the boy, he couldn’t help the grin that almost split his face. The boy was almost Potter in miniature, sans the eyes and his paler skin. He even wore a pair of little round spectacles that he pushed up his nose. 

Regulus was going to fall in love. 

You felt uncomfortable reading the story I wrote about a monster doing monstrous things ... Ground breaking.