Extraordinary Normalcy

Extraordinary Normalcy

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

-- Henry David Thoreau "Walden"

"Only man for the job!" Fudge had enthused, too-soft hands patting his shoulder. "Couldn't ask anyone else - they'd only much it up. Not as reliable as you, Crouch." He'd smiled that nervous smile that slid and slipped across the faces of people when they talked to him now, their eyes never quite meeting his. "Special child - precious to us all. Sure you'll do splendidly."

Bartemius didn't understand special children. He didn't know the numbers behind what made one child special and another not. His son had been a special boy - or so his mother had enthused, her eyes lit candles whenever they shone on her son. He had been a puzzle-never-solved to Bartemius. Beloved, treasured - but never understood. Barty Jr. had spent his youth dreaming of a million things he wanted to be. Dragon-tamer, Quidditch player, Auror, writer - Barty had dreamed so big that his entire life was filled with wanting, with needing, with dreaming. Bartemius no longer remembered what he had wanted when he was a boy. He had vague memories of straight columns of number blocks lined up on red-carpeted floor and his mother's voice as she sighed a lament over the syllables of his name. He'd been a sensible child, of that he was fairly sure.

Bartemius was well aware that he was being lied to. It was a polite sort of lie, and he didn't mind. Those lies were respectable. They told him he was needed, and that part was true. The reason differed, but in the end that didn't matter.

They sent him because he could blend. Because he could stand in lines of Muggle-born, train tickets in his hand, and no one would notice him. Just as no one noticed him when he wore wizard's robes and strolled the narrow, crowded streets of Diagon Alley. He was ordinary, unnoticeable - and there was no fault in that. He was a cog in the wheel, but without him, it wouldn't turn as smoothly, and that was enough for him.

He'd never though it might not be enough for his son. Gifted child, his mother's love - so much chaos Bartemius couldn't fathom wrapped in a body that had fit in his lap and smiled so rarely, once he got too big to fit.

His tie was squarely tied and his shoes shone with the polish Winky had put on by hand. He looked respectable, decent, normal. He felt like a lie, and he was fine with that. Sometimes you had to lie to see the truth. It was the way of life, compromise, the middle path, the most sensible route.

Barty had always seen in black and white. He'd been blind to the gray his father lived in. He had been as proud of that single-minded blindness as Bartemius had been of his gray-toned adaptability.

The man who answered the door was familiar. Bartemius had seen his face in the files he'd studied before he'd come here. Broad and flushed with meaty hands that shook too long and a hard look in his eyes. The woman - Petunia, his memory supplied - hovered behind them. He saw the echo of Potter's wife in the angle of her chin and the shape of her eyes, but he saw none of the kindness that had always hung around Lily Potter like a halo.

He had liked the Potters. They had been far too unpredictable for his taste, but he had liked them. Before the spell had taken hold and wiped away his will, Barty Jr. had said that James Potter died screaming as his wife sobbed through a closed door up a narrow staircase.

He smiled his hellos, effusive and friendly but proper and reserved. Bartemius knew all the right words and mouthed them, wondering briefly if it was their emptiness that made them the right things to say, or whether they were empty only because they were proper. His lies and lines were carefully prepared. He was here to speak of a deal that would never happen, a contract that would go unsigned. The hors d'oeuvres Petunia had set on a plate were perfectly shaped and sized but tasted like plastic.

Bartemius felt a tug at his hand as Vernon laughed heartily at a joke he had carefully cut out of a business magazine. The suit he wore was the same one the man on the cover had held. The child tugging at him was rotund and blonde haired, with a pug nose and too-close eyes. He smiled at the boy, noting the wrong colored eyes, the blonde hair, the missing scar. This was not Harry.

"Say hello to the man, Dudders," Vernon boomed with his affable grin which always looked slightly unpleasant to Bartemius. "You have children at home, Crouch?"

Petunia hurried forward to scoop up her son as Bartemius nodded. "One. Nearly grown now, though. He scanned the room and finally spied the boy. He was a slight child, as thin and shadowed as the Dursleys' son was bright and robust. "Is he yours as well?"

Vernon's nose wrinkled in barely contained disgust. "Him? No. My nephew, his parents died in a car crash. Took him in. Troublesome child. We think he may be a bit addled."

"Good of you to take him in." He returned as Dudley beat fat fists against his mother's shoulder until she set him down. He promptly made his way over to Harry and pulled the small stuffed bear away from the smaller boy.

Petunia smiled, her teeth too large in her narrow face. "Our little Dudders is on the shortlist for Amkin's - best preschool in Britain!" she enthused.

"How wonderful. He must be a bright boy. Is your nephew going as well?"

She beamed at the compliment and answered without thinking. "Oh no. He'll go to the local school."

"No sense in wasting entrance fees on a lad who won't understand anyway," Vernon added as Dudley sent up a howl from the corner of the room.

Petunia gave a gasp of dismay and hurried over as the blonde boy waved the bear around. "Played with my bear! MINE! Not 'Arry's!"

Petunia gave Harry a fierce glare. "You play with your own things! Leave Dudley's alone - you'll only break them anyway!"

Vernon coughed and tried to cover up. "Shall we move to the sitting room?"

Crouch nodded. "Please."

The conversation meandered for a time, and as soon as Bartemius could steer it back toward Harry, one or the other of his guardians would push it back toward their own son. Both children toddled into the room with them. Harry stayed quietly in the corner, his hands now gripping a ragged bear that was obviously far less expensive and new than the one Dudley had left abandoned in the center of the room, his own attention flocking toward the TV remote, which Petunia kept taking gently away and then giving back when he started to wail.

He was surprised when Harry suddenly stood next to him. The large, solemn green eyes were overpowering in the small face. "Harry! Don't bother our guest!" Vernon thundered, eyes going small and sunken.

Crouch hurriedly shook his head. "No,no. It's all right. I like children. Hello Harry."

"'Ello." A soft answer, as if unused to be addressed.

"Is that your bear?"

Harry nodded. "Found it."

Petunia smiled thinly. "It was one of Dudley's from when he was younger. A gift from some relative most likely. Dudley never favored it, so we let him have it."

"What's his name?" Crouch asked gently. The bear was threadworn and missing an eye, and the small arms wrapped around it reminded him of Barty when he'd fallen asleep holding Mr. Merlin. The glass eye looked glazed and he remembered that Mr. Merlin still sat above the bed as his son stared sightlessly at the ceiling, a house-elf hovering over his bed like a mourner at a casket.

"I dunno." Harry's shy answers were unlike his own son's once boisterous youth.

"He's slow. Not very creative either. Dudder's names everything, don't you Dudders? Usually uses names from his television programs," Vernon interrupted.

Dudley had noticed that Harry was getting attention, and waddled his way over, pushing Harry aside with a rough hand. Harry let him, used to it, or so it seemed. Crouch hid a frown and smiled at Dudley. "And your bear? What's his name?"

The child cast a disinterested glance toward the bear in the center of the room. "Voltron. My other bear was named that, too."

Crouch nodded, eyeing Harry, who looked near to drifting away. Vernon remarked distastefully. "Going to be all we can do to keep him from a bad end. Too much like his father."

"His father? Was he bad off, then?"

"Oh horrid. Hung about with these loud fellows. One rode a motorcycle. Hippies or something like it. Hair always in disarray. Can't imagine what my sister saw in him," Petunia shrilled in response, looking offended at the topic.

Harry spoke suddenly. "Want a doggie." He blurted it guiltily, looking at Crouch as if he expected him to understand.

Vernon sneered. "Always wants things he can't have. Dudders knows what's proper to have - asks for all the right toys. Not that one. Wants animals all sorts of things we'd never have in the house."

"Special boys always want too many things," Crouch soothed, smiling at Harry. "Maybe you'll have a dog, someday."

"Not in this house." Petunia sniffed as Harry smiled tremulously. The smile disappeared and Harry looked at Crouch with disappointment, as if he'd made a promise that could never be kept.

Bartemius had always kept his promises. Save one. Green eyes suddenly seemed brown as he remembered the one he'd failed to keep.

He looked away as the child he'd came to see walked slowly and with an odd dignity back toward the corner, Vernon glaring after him when he thought Crouch wasn't looking.

"I'll just go and check on dinner and leave you two to talk business," Petunia offered with a smile, leaning to peck Vernon on the forehead in an oddly ritualistic manner. As if this proof of their affection was done whenever company arrived, part of the show. Crouch rubbed at his head, its dull throb familiar now, the pain of keeping part of him disciplined to control a far-away body that would be his son's, if his son were allowed to be himself.

Vernon settled in to talk of a business deal that Bartemius had no true interest in, and would never see through. He played the role of buyer, spoke intelligently of comparative prices he'd researched thoroughly. The evening passed slowly and the children moved through only occasionally, Dudley paraded through and Harry ushered away. Once Crouch saw him disappear into a small door beneath the stairs and wondered if that was where the boy went to hide. Barty Jr. had hidden behind a false wall in his closet when he was upset. He'd opened the closet door and then crawled back inside when he was ready to be found again.

He said a gravely serious goodbye to Harry at the end of the night. Harry seemed to like that better than when he smiled. Dudley shook his hand at his father's behest - his chubby little fingers were coated with something sticky and Crouch had resisted the urge to wipe his hand on his thigh as he bid his final goodbyes.

He drove the rental car back to where he'd gotten it from, walked to a lonely street where the only eyes that watched him belonged to a small and ragged dog. At home he could hear the squeaky tones of Winky's voice as she sang to Barty Jr. He looked at the room where his son lay and turned, as always, down the hallway.

Even now, he wasn't sure if he had saved his son or given him a new brand of hell. He remembered the clear paths of his past and stumbled on the thorns in his way now.

He had always known where his life would lead. Somehow, it had come to here anyway.

But such thoughts served no purpose. He would take a pill to ease his head and write his report on the Boy Who Lived. How he thought the child would be miserable, unwanted, and unloved - but unharmed. It would be filed next to his report on wand-fibers and nothing would come of it.

Some things, at least, Bartemius could still be sure of.