Dam Would Break

The legs of her wooden chair scraped over the stone floor, and Stella Sinistra jumped at the sound even though she'd caused it herself. She looked over the table that stretched out in front of her, a wooden plane ending abruptly, with Barty's narrow, boyish chest looming above it. Then his shoulders and neck, and finally his face, which showed no sign of disturbance at the noise she'd made. He stared pathetically, hungrily, out at her, and she thought that this was the face of a guilty man, but then she thought that no, this was merely the effect of the dementors.

They exchanged no words. If my lips could only speak his name, she thought, but they twisted soundlessly, in vain. Then the half-hour was up, and she stood and walked out of the room and out of Azkaban, her straight shoulders forming a frame over the cold hollow of her chest.

* * *

The day before, Mrs. Crouch, nearly her mother-in-law, had held a teacup over a saucer with a trembling hand, the china clinking together as she took a great, shuddering breath. And Barty's father, hair neatly combed, interrupted the silence as if responding to something one of them had said. "Well, did we expect that life was ever fair? My God..."

Stella bit her lip and continued to sit with the Crouches until the tea had gone cold. After she left, she realized she had forgotten to return Mrs. Crouch's handkerchief, which had been given to her "just in case." Stella didn't cry once, though; it was as if her tears had all drained down and formed a layer of ice that gathered round her heart.

* * *

There was no memorial service when he died a few weeks later, only a brief notice in the paper: Convicted Death Eater Bartemius Crouch Jr. dead in Azkaban Prison at age nineteen. After that, Stella had gone back once to return the handkerchief, and Winky turned her away at the door, saying, "Oh, but Mrs. Crouch is very ill, Miss Sinistra."

And then there was the memorial service for Mrs. Crouch only two weeks after that, and Stella had gone and stood silently by as her almost-mother-in-law was borne away into the earth. There was a polite nod of the head from Mr. Crouch, and then, for just a moment, the sensation of robes brushing against the back of her hand and the feeling that fingertips had lightly run the length of her forearm. But when she turned in response to the touch, she saw no one there, and so she attributed it to the wind.

* * *

The next day, Stella thought, I sowed a field of rose and reaped a whipping rod, and she put away Barty's photograph, stowed her wedding trousseau in her parents' attic, and finally removed the engagement ring from her left hand and returned it by owl to Mr. Crouch, whose great-grandmother had been the first woman to ever wear it. The handkerchief, embroidered with an ornate C, was folded neatly at the bottom of a trunk, and two years later made its way with her to Hogwarts when she became the new Astronomy professor.

* * *

After ten years, the handkerchief worked its way to the top of the trunk, surfacing among old stockings and innocent white lingerie once meant for a honeymoon, and from there found its way accidentally into Stella's pocket. She carried it around for three days before realizing it had belonged to Mrs. Crouch.

It was just her luck, she thought, having a cold on the night of the Yule Ball, and the smoke from the Pepper-up Potion had just stopped streaming from her ears as dinnertime arrived. She'd found herself sitting beside Moody that evening, with his mad blue eye that fixed on the handkerchief when she withdrew it embarrassedly from her robes to dab at her nose. Following his gaze, she'd looked down, seen the insignia, and returned the handkerchief quickly to her pocket without comment.

When they danced, Moody's peg leg didn't scrape against the floor, but made hollow thumps like lonely heels walking down a stone corridor. Her feet nervously dodged his leg, and then he twirled her, if a bit awkwardly, that unsettling blue eye stopping its rotation to look directly at her. Transfixed by the old Auror's eye, she suddenly recalled the moment, exactly fifteen years before, when her beau had spun her awkwardly around the Great Hall as they celebrated Christmas at Hogwarts with the professors and the few other students who had not returned home.

Stella wanted desperately to confide in Moody at that moment. For all the things I hid away and all the words I could not say, the dam would break, she thought. If only she could speak his name and somehow melt the ice that was still hardened around her heart, but again, she remained silent until the music died and they politely parted.

* * *

Her illness passed and she put the handkerchief away, and though the winter thawed into spring, she remained as cold as ever, even in the warmth of that June when a dementor sucked the soul from Barty's mouth. There was no memorial service this time, either, and as his body was moved to St. Mungo's through the Floo, Stella stared out at the Forbidden Forest from her perch atop the Astronomy Tower, wondering if she could see the trees which shaded the spot where the remains of Mr. Crouch's body lay. She shivered in the evening breeze with the grim conviction that now what was done was done, and the dam would never break.