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Alastor had always taken considerable care to isolate himself. The fewer people who shared one’s life, food, and/or abode, the less danger one was in from said people. In fact, considering that his daily interactions had dropped to an average of around 0.25 people, Alastor was probably the safest he’d been in fifty-odd years. That could be framed as ideal. Unfortunately, he was also locked inside his own enchanted trunk and covered in shit and piss, which was rather fucking less than ideal.
Sometimes, he woke up to eye-burning light and his own face staring down at him gleefully. Crouch’s boy, wearing Alastor like a skin suit. Would people notice wee Crouch’s erraticism, his insanity, his wrongness? Would they come looking for Alastor? No, they would not. Alastor himself had tics and twitches, startled at the slightest noises, and kept odd hours. Besides, most of his…acquaintances…thought he had gone stark raving mad twenty years ago but were too frightened to say so. The little twat was free to slime about in the world, sticking his head in only to steal hair and complain about the smell.
It was perfectly dark. No noise entered the trunk. No noise exited the trunk. When conscious, Alastor heard nothing but himself. Heart, lungs, bowels; thumps, hisses, gurgles. Blood rushed in his ears. He was beginning to lose track of time, imprisoned as he was in box after box after box under layer after layer after layer of wards to deflect others’ attention, to hide him in plain sight. Swallowed whole by his own security measures and spellwork. He could not say what day it was. In the beginning, he had tried to scratch tally marks in the wood with his curse-weak fingers and splintering nails, something tactile to keep him fixed in time if not in place. Fuck knew where Crouch had dragged him. The Ministry, possibly, or his lily-livered father’s mansion. Crouch Jr. could not have escaped without the aid of Crouch Sr. Alastor would schedule their Kisses simultaneously: like son, like father, criminals and Dark wizards, the both of them. This was why it was best not to have children. They had a terrible capacity to deviate. Alastor himself was a deviant. Oh, yes: his sweet, doddering parents had not agreed with his bravery in the service of the Wizarding World. An Auror for a son and they had thought him a paranoid, brutish monster.
If Alastor was a monster, he was not a particularly intimidating one now. The fear and respect that his face and form inspired were no longer his. They belonged to Barty Crouch. Alastor belonged to Barty Crouch. Barty Crouch defined his days. Barty Crouch rose and fell on his horizon. Barty Crouch eclipsed the flickering warmth and leered down with Alastor's (Barty's) mismatched eyes and Alastor's (Barty's) scarred mouth and Alastor's (Barty's) squashed nose. Alastor did not like the relief that warmed his chest at the sight of his own face and his first breath of fresh air. Relaxing under the gaze of one's mortal enemy: certain death.
As usual, the horse's arse started flapping. At first, Alastor had listened closely to bitty Crouch's verbal vomit. Then, he had realized that the horrible brat was feeding him school gossip. School gossip from fifteen years ago. School gossip so rancid and useless that Alastor knew half of it already because it had come out on the stand in terrorism trials. Students and their petty squabbles could so easily be nudged to extremism.
"...so Lucrezia ended it with Parkinson, and then he came bawling to me about how nothing meant anything anymore, and I said, old friend, you are thinking too small! His kid sister's in with the Potter child, you know. Second wife since Parky and his Mum had one-way tickets to Azkaban - two more of yours, weren't they? - anyway..."
Crouch kept on. Pain flared across Alastor's scalp as Crouch sawed off more hair. There was an idea. Alastor could count his bald patches. If he could summon the strength to lift an arm that far. Which he couldn't. Annoyed, he tossed the thought aside.
Iron-gray prize in hand, Jr. leaned back appraisingly. To show what he thought of these proceedings, Alastor calmly shat himself as loudly as possible.
"Well," said the disgusting excuse for a Dark wizard, as unimpressed this time as he had been all the other times, "no dinner tonight. Not for bad Aurors."
Then, Alastor watched his own face grin a grin before which it had never grinned. When Alastor had himself back, it would never do such a thing again.
But now, Alastor's face grinned, and Alastor's voice said, "Almost too easy, this is. Alright, Moody, keep your eye open." A wink, a taunt. "Constant vigilance!"
The lid slammed shut. Alastor plummeted back into formless black. Faintness brushed the edges of his consciousness. Typically, Crouch had flicked a spell into the trunk with him, his homespun, poisonous web of sedation. It settled over Alastor's face like a wet blanket. Prison spellwork, just like prison tattoos: performed without the right tools, sloppy, dangerous. But effective. Bordering on genius occasionally. The Ministry's spies in Azkaban kept the Aurors up to snuff on the nasty, back-alley magic that inmates occasionally managed to cobble together. Some of them had been the Ministry's best minds, after all, back in the day. Not the top minds, however. The top minds had not been caught. Of this, Alastor was certain.
Crouch. Horrible man. As prim now as he had been in school. Spitting image of his son, a mincing little fruit. He had been a Hufflepuff. Just like a Hufflepuff to raise a Dark wizard. No dignity. No standards. Drowsiness lapped cold against him. Swimming up through the fog came the realization: outside the trunk was Hogwarts. Of course. The boy. The damn boy.
Alastor's last thought before sleeping was not about Harry Potter. He hoped that someone found him before his buttocks started rotting off.