Chapter 1
He never stood a chance, he had been an idiot to think he did.
At first, he just assumed that he didn’t stand a chance due to his crush being a straight man. Then, after Regulus came out to him and Evan, he got his hopes up - thinking that Regulus could love someone like him.
So he hoped. Barty spent his days staring at Regulus, thinking of all the things they could do if they were together, and spent the nights awake, creating a universe where he and Regulus were happily dating.
April 4, 1977, Barty watched Regulus as he scribbled down the date. He took notice of how Reggie’s long, slender fingers gripped the quill, how his pale hand moved across the paper as he wrote, how his eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and the slight frown tugging on his soft pink lips.
McGonagall strode in, commanding the attention of the entire room but Barty, who was still staring at Regulus.
“Oi! Evan!”, the boy sitting beside Barty hissed, a balled-up piece of parchment had hit Regulus right on the back of the head - Evan Rosier’s doing.
“Sorry mate, that was meant for Barty. The wanker wouldn’t stop staring at my sister”
“I was not!”Barty could feel himself turning as crimson as the Gryffindor banner, embarrassingly enough. However, he was quite thankful for Evan’s stupidity - for if Evan had taken a moment longer to follow Barty’s line of sight, he would have noticed that Barty had not been staring dreamily at his sister - but at Regulus Black.
“You were! I saw it with my own two eyes. If you lay one of your dirty fingers on her I swear to Salazar's wilting tits I will-”
“Salazar’s wilting tits?? Evan, what the actual hell?!”
Before Evan could reply, Regulus cut them both off with a sharp, “Shut it or I will poison your pumpkin juice again”, accompanied by a sharp glance as all three of them remembered the Pumpkin Juice incident of ‘76. Regulus had tried to put a tickling potion into Snape and Avery’s drinks, who had thrown his book into the black lake the day before, but he had accidentally poured the potion into Barty and Evan’s goblets. The memory of the two squirming around feeling like they were being tickled with a thousand feathers shut the two up quite promptly.
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Barty never stood a chance with Regulus. Not when Regulus had strutted up to the Gryffindor table, pulled James Potter up to stand next to him, and kissed the boy without care what the rest of Hogwarts could think.
“Crouch!”, Dorcas waved a hand in front of his face, snapping him out of his thoughts, “Evan just asked you-”
Not being able to listen anymore, Barty stood up and nearly sprinted out of the Great Hall. As soon as he was out of the hall, the boy burst into tears. He did not stop running until he got to the far end of the black lake, to a secluded area that only he knew about.
Barty kicked off his shoes and dipped his toes into the cold water. He tugged a flower from its small patch beside him and, one by one, picked every petal off of the plant. Next, he grabbed a rock and threw it as far as he could into the lake.
This went on for about an hour - a cycle of crying, throwing anything and everything that he could find, and silently cruising at himself for thinking that Regulus might want him. How had he been so idiotic? Nobody would want a traumatized, fucked up, doomed boy when James Potter was the other option.
Every fiber of his being was telling him to blame Regulus, and yet he could only think about how it was his fault that he could not be loved. He would always be a second choice, or, more realistically, wouldn’t be someone's choice at all.
So then, the sadness of Regulus falling for another was replaced by a fit of anger at himself, for it was his own fault that he could never be loved. No, he hadn’t wanted to be fucked up, but he let it get to him and now nobody would want him.
The anger morphed into self-hatred, which only made the boy cry harder. A sharp pain had developed in his chest, restricting him from bringing his breathing pattern back to normal.
It was long after the sun had set and the moon was shining brightly that Barty’s sobs turned into light sniffles. His watch read 22:27.
Not wanting to go back to his dormitory, Barty decided to conjure a blanket and sit underneath the stars for the entire night.
It was nearly one in the morning when Barty heard it. First, the light whisper of leaves rustling as if something was running through them, then, the faint pattern of paws was heard, so barely audible that Barty chose to ignore it, telling himself that he was simply tired and hearing things.
Then, a menacing howl cut through the silence of the night. Barty knew he could not ignore this - knew it wasn’t just his sleep deprived mind playing tricks.
He didn’t quite remember the order of events that followed - but in flashes, he saw small moments of the encounter.
Firstly, he remembered seeing a giant gray wolf - no - werewolf speeding towards him. Then he remembered seeing multiple other animals attacking the wolf from all sides. Vaguely, he remembers seeing a couple of familiar faces as he was lifted off the ground.
After that, everything was black.