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Barty stumbled into the bathroom, his breath falling out in harsh gasps. Ignoring the terrified voice of Pandora outside, he clumsily fumbled the latch, locking the door behind him. Grappling at the smooth tiles on the wall, he desperately searched for something to steady him, before collapsing, his back slamming against a sink. He hissed in expectation of the pain, but it never arrived. Somehow, this made everything worse.
Completely empty inside, a voice echoed in his mind. Why are you a liar Bartemius?
“Be quiet,” he whispered. “Be. Quiet.”
He slammed his head into his hands, gripping his ears as tight as possible, trying to block out everything. Still, he couldn’t stop the words from earlier repeating over and over again. “Your mother… fallen ill… disappointment… lazy… BRAT.”
Barty threw his fists backwards, jolting himself off the floor.
“I’M NOT.”
His voice cracked pathetically.
His father was wrong, Barty’s mother was going to be okay, she had to be. And it wasn’t his fault she was sick he didn’t mean to be such a bad son to her, he just couldn’t bear the thought of growing up, becoming like him.
A wave of loathing clouded Barty’s vision. Wasn’t this just like his father though? Hiding away in a stupid bathroom, even if the walls were a deep green, rather than blue. It wasn’t as if he could tell the difference through his tears.
A whine cracked out of his mouth as he reached up to claw at his face again. That evil voice was back. It was worming into his skull. He could feel his skin tearing, his eyes bulging out, he could.
Oh shut up Crouch, you’re such a child. The voice snarled. Still Daddy’s perfect little prince after all these years?
“No, I’m not, I’m NOT.”
Everyone can see it don’t be stupid. Like two peas in a pod your aunty used to call you! Same name, same face, same nature.
The voice seemed to revel in this last comment, delighting in the way Barty dug his nails into his temple.
‘Not the same face anymore,’ he thought recklessly. ‘I’m going to tear you out until there’s nothing left. Until he’s all gone and you are too.’
The voice only grew louder, and Barty’s breaths grew faster, heavier, his fingers cracking with effort as he clawed at his skin. There was pain now, finally- something human about it that spurred Barty onwards, even as his head seems to implode from pressure and he could feel something wet smearing across his hairline.
A scream tore itself from him, ripping his throat as it escaped, but some part of Barty was sure it wasn’t his own. Black spots danced across his eyes and his knees began to buckle. He collapsed, body burning and the last thing he registered, in the back of his shattered mind, was the bathroom door bursting off its hinges.
He came to in a fit of yelling, fists swiping at whatever was unlucky enough to be close.
A hand grabbed his shoulder, calloused and rough, one he would recognise even in death probably, and the haze vanished from his vision, leaving him face to face with a tear stained, but thankfully unharmed, Pandora.
“Panda?” He whispered, voice too sore to speak, and the girl flung herself at him, cradling his head in the crook of her neck. Barty’s stomach twinged with shame. How had he let himself get so close to hurting her?
He untangled their bodies, although he knew better than to pry his friend’s hand from where it gripped his wrist, and stared around in shock.
“I blew up the door,” Pandora whispered next to him.
“I can see that,” Barty muttered, staring at the charred fragments of oak littering the bathroom floor just feet away. “New spell?”
“You like it,” the girl replied, stating his opinion as if she already knew what he thought. She was right of course. Barty didn’t even need to answer.
Then, however, her voice took on a strange tone. “You should probably see this,” she said quietly, tugging on his arm to pull him to his feet.
Together, they stumbled towards the now empty doorframe, fear tugging at Barty’s stomach.
Pandora was a practical person, sure, but she was also the sort of person who liked to talk about feelings, and it unnerved Barty that she didn’t seem eager to get him to ‘open up,’ as she called it, so that she could pick apart his thoughts. He found himself wondering how long he’d been passed out, and what she could have discovered in that time that he needed to see so urgently.
The pair reached the large wardrobe at the end of the Slytherin boys’ dorm and now, Barty was certain something was very wrong.
The cupboard had been stolen by Dorcas last year so that she and Reg could practice a new spell on it. The enchantment made it so that when the door was closed, it was impossible for anything inside to escape; even though all it took to open it from the outside was a simple turn of the handle. This meant that the wardrobe was essentially a mini, impenetrable fortress. (Barty would know since Reg locked him in one night as punishment for ‘snoring too loudly.’)
Whatever was inside must be dangerous. Especially if the usually fearless Pandora felt that she couldn’t handle it, which really wasn’t looking good for Barty, whose legs were still slightly shaky.
“Panda, what’s in there?” He whispered, wincing as his still-sore throat twinged with pain. His friend didn’t answer, instead reaching out and slowly turning the silver hand of the wardrobe.
Barty lurched forward to stop her, but Pandora, infuriating as usual, yanked the door open in one swift motion and his protests died on his lips as he stared in shock at the creature in the darkness.
Eyes like his stared back, resting in a familiar thin face that reminded him all too much of his father. The beast had Barty’s shoulders; Barty’s nose; even the same scrappy haircut. Its mouth curled into a smirk, the same smirk Barty had seen a thousand times in the mirror, but there was something terrifying in it, something that radiated pure venom.
Barty slammed the door just as the creature leapt up, its body (probably identical to his, he realised with a shiver,) thumping against the wood. It began to shout, hurling insults at him.
These were strangely human, however, clumsily attacking his clothes and calling him a “stupid cunt,” rather than the demonic hissing and curses Barty had expected. Somehow, this unnerved him more.
“What the fuck was that?” he yelled at Pandora, spinning round to face her. She was usually the one person who he refused to get angry with, never failing to calm him down when he was in one of his ‘moods,’ but right now, he felt like setting something on fire. Multiple things, in fact. And her attitude of ‘just open the door and see what happens’ was severely getting on his nerves.
“That was you,” the girl replied, unreasonably calm, and Barty shoved down the instinct to punch a wall.
“I know it looked like me,” he hissed, “but I’m obviously right here and not screaming my fucking head off in a wardrobe.”
As if to illustrate his point, the muffled swearing of the thing increased in volume.
Pandora narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not stupid, Barty.”
He knew she wasn’t but he stayed silent anyway.
“Just sit down,” she continued. “This is really very fascinating.”
Of course only Pandora could find an evil, face stealing creature ‘fascinating,’ Barty thought to himself, but still, he could never say no to his friend, even if he was severely tempted to hex her in her sleep tonight, so he crossed his arms and slumped on the nearest bed, looking as irritated as possible.
Pandora smiled. It was slightly unhinged.
“So,” she began, catching one of her braids between her fingers and winding it slowly around her pinky. “When I came into the bathroom earlier,” Barty’s face flushed with shame at the memory, “I saw you.” She dropped the braid and began slowly pacing instead. “But it wasn’t just you, that creature was there too.” She stopped and looked right at him. “Barty you were pulling it out of yourself. Like peeling off your shadow.”
Barty’s heart dropped into his chest.
“You fell onto the floor and the other you just stood there. He looked right at me and he was confused, not angry yet. He didn’t know where he was and he didn’t try to attack or anything like that, you know what he did?” Pandora paused, a thoughtful look on her face. "He said, ‘damn, nice tits.’”
Barty’s mouth fell open. He wasn’t sure whether to just pass out again or open up the wardrobe door and kill the other him right then and there.
Suddenly, the voice from the cupboard paused it’s muffled yelling, before shouting something louder, it’s voice irritated and whiny, like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
“I fucked your mum!”
Barty surged to his feet, seething with rage.
“That thing in there is NOT me Panda, I don’t give a shit what you say. I would never be that much of a fucking dick to you, and I’d never say that about- about-” Memories of the letter flashed back into his mind. Your mother… fallen ill… your fault…
“IT’S JUST NOT ME OKAY!” Barty yelped. Pandora was staring at him, her eyes boring into his face, but she wasn’t right, she wasn’t.
He knew she was.
Barty flung open the wardrobe door, glaring daggers at the figure that was once again sitting on the floor.
“Fucking kill yourself,” he spat.
The creature only laughed.
Ten minutes later, Regulus, Evan and Dorcas were back from Charms.
Their questions of where the other two had disappeared were forgotten as Pandora explained the situation, although she thankfully left out Barty’s little incident, as he was calling it.
Now, all five students stood facing the wardrobe, waiting as Pandora carefully opened the door.
Somehow, the figure inside lay curled up, eyes closed and ribcage rising and falling gently. Barty could see now that its hair was ginger, strangely the same colour as his had been as a young child and even more astonishingly, it didn’t seem to be waking up.
Barty stepped forward and kicked it, causing Regulus to give him an irritated slap on the back of his head, but the Other Barty still didn’t move.
He kicked it again, harder this time, and it finally reached out a hand to half heartedly slap away his foot.
Irritatingly, nothing else happened.
“Fucking get up,” Barty snapped, as the last of his patience disappeared.
The creature shoved itself into a sitting position and glared at him.
“What do you want?” it said angrily. “I’m trying to sleep here, wanker.”
Pandora stepped forward, placing a hand on Barty’s shoulder to stop him punching the beast’s head in. She had the kind of look of her face that most people would get sent to a mental asylum for, and he was sure her brother, Evan, would be wearing a matching expression of morbid fascination. It annoyed him that the creature was somehow good enough to spark the twins’ interest, after all, he was the one who created it, but that didn’t stop his friend’s eyes from flicking all over the thing’s body, likely noting down the similarities to Barty’s. Or maybe she’s just wondering how it’s possible to find clothes that fucking ugly, he thought to himself in an attempt to cool his temper.
Pandora held out her hand, helping the boy to its feet. “Do you have a name?” she asked, as the room looked on curiously.
It’s probably some shit like Hornkus Binglefuck, thought Barty, still seething with rage.
“Well if you want to know so bad,” the creature laughed in a poorly executed attempt at flirting, “it’s Hornkus Binglefuck.”
Barty’s blood ran cold, heart thumping in his chest as he managed to force out a snigger.
“What kind of a shit name is that,” he drawled, watching as Hornkus turned to scowl at him.
“About as shit as Bartemius,” Dorcas muttered from behind him, almost too quiet to hear. Unfortunately, Hornkus’ eyes widened in glee.
“That’s your fucking name?” he laughed, and Barty almost put his arms around his stupid pale neck and strangled him.
Fuck Dorcas for saying that, fuck his dad for sending the stupid letter that started all this and most of all, fuck himself for being so much of an arsehole.
Barty stormed out of the dorm, Hornkus’ cackles echoing down the staircase behind him.
Over the next few days, Barty realised that he might be the shittiest person alive. Of course he’d always known he was annoying, cruel, obnoxious, as his dad liked to say; he’d even tried deliberately to be an asshole, he enjoyed it. But it turned out it was only fun when he was the one being a dick. When Hornkus did it, Barty had to face up to the fact that he was a terrible person. And he was just like his father.
He saw the man in the way Hornkus loved to shove younger kids in the common room, on the rare occasion he was allowed downstairs disguised as Barty. As they reached out their arms to break impact against the wall, Barty could swear he was seven years old again, blood trickling down his forehead as he crumpled to the floor. His father hadn’t even noticed his own child running after him, excited to announce that he’d showed his first sign of magic, as the older man rushed into his study, slamming the door into Barty’s face. It took three hours before a house elf found him and stitched his head back together.
He saw him when Hornkus leant on the wall next to Dorcas for the third time that morning, and Barty thought of the way his father would always sit too close to his mother at dinner parties. She would never speak, her husband answering any questions directed at her. She barely ate any food, but always wiped her mouth neatly with a napkin, dabbing and dabbing and dabbing until she’d rubbed off all her lipstick, so she would be sent out of the room to ‘tidy herself up.’ Barty always thought she looked beautiful anyway. His father didn’t agree.
Hornkus was everything Barty hated most, with his sneering face and his fair hair. How much time had Barty spent learning glamours for one boy to constantly rub it in his face that his messy black layers were a lie? He was stupid and he put too little effort into anything and he showed Barty that everything he’d always denied was true.
Maybe worst of all, Barty’s friends couldn’t seem to get enough of him.
Evan, who had always called on Barty whenever he was curious about some strange thing, spent all his free time with Hornkus, experimenting and researching. He owned the jar of Barty’s blood that had lead to a full two days in the hospital wing, yet now, Hornkus was the one with Evan’s hands running along his back, strands of hair plucked out and stored in a glass vial.
It made Barty sick and he didn’t even know why.
Of course Hornkus had to be kept a secret from the other students and teachers, sleeping on the floor of the dorm, but somehow Barty had always thought it was his thing, being snuck into the boy’s tower. He was the Ravenclaw turned Slytherin, defying the rules by dragging a single mattress onto the floor next to Regulus’ four-poster each night, until Slughorn gave up and ordered an extra bed. He was reckless and crazy and didn’t care about getting into trouble. That was the place he had made himself, and it just wasn’t fair how easily it had been stolen from him.
Barty couldn’t be near his friends anymore. The sight of Hornkus’ face, all too like his father’s, made him sick. He couldn’t return Dorcas and Reg’s joking insults. The way Hornkus’ smile twisted with cruelty was burnt into his memory, haunting him. He couldn’t even hide away in some forgotten corner, alone, because that would mean being left with only his thoughts, and Barty just couldn’t face the truth.
The truth that he hated Hornkus. And that Hornkus was himself.