content warning: suicide

musical mood: castle of glass - linkin park

"Hit me!" Cass screamed into the oncoming traffic, louder than she'd ever been before, as cars began to swerve around her, blaring their horns. "Fucking hit me! Hit me!"

"Crouch, get out of the fucking road!" Moody roared, as he grew closer to her, looking rather silly as he jogged on his fake leg. She ignored him, keeping her eyes glued on the cars in front of her. While her heart was racing, it wasn't in a bad way, in a fearful way. No, it was like she was free, for perhaps the first time in her life.

"I'm not scared! Hit me! Fucking hit me! Do it, you fucking cowards!" Her voice chased after the next car that had swerved to avoid her, nearly running into a double decker bus in the process.

"Crazy bitch!" She heard the driver shout out the window.

Moody attempted to jump into the road, to follow her, but a speeding car cut him off. "Crouch, cut this out! What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"Hit me! Come on! Come on!" Another truck missed her by mere inches, and she let out a scream of frustration. "Fuck you! Hit me, someone fucking hit me! I'm not scared! I'm not scared, I'm not scared, I'm not scared!"

There was another failed attempt from Moody to jump into the road, as he nearly got runover himself by a red bus. The driver stuck his hand out the window, flashing him a middle finger. If Cass had her wand, if it hadn't been snapped in half by that pink bitch, she would've hexed Moody to keep him away from her, or even better, use it to end her own life. It would be much more efficient than standing in a road, waiting for someone to hit her.

Just as she was about to lose hope, just as she was about to realise no one was going to willingly hit the crazy teenage girl and go find another way to end her pathetic excuse of a life, a semi turned the corner, and rapidly sped at her. There was no way it would be able to swerve to avoid her in time, even if the driver did somehow see her.

"Crouch, move!" Moody shouted as he attempted to get through the traffic, but to no avail.

"Yes! Come on! Hit me! Come on! Come on! Come on!" Cass egged the semi on as it approached her, as if daring the driver to hit her. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as she prepared for the impact, the inevitable pain before the bliss, but it never came.

Strong arms wrapped around her body, and suddenly, she was flung in the air, landing on the sidewalk with someone on top of her, breathing heavily. Her head smacked against the concreate, hard, and her eyes shot open. Only for a moment, though, and while her vision was blurred, she could still somehow make out that the man who had just saved her life was Barty.

"Fuck you." The words came out of her mouth slurred, slow. The last thing she saw before she blacked out was her brother pushing himself up onto his feet, and sprinting away.

*

Light poured through Cass's vision the moment she opened her eyes, and she squinted as a dull pain seared through her head. She glanced around, though it was hard to see much through her blurry vision. She was in a bed, a white bed, and there was white everywhere. The walls, the floor, the door. Was she in heaven?

No, if she was in heaven, her head wouldn't be killing her. Besides, if there was such a place, there was no way she would've made it there.

"Crouch, you're awake." A gruff voice said from next to her, and she nearly fell out of her bed in shock. How had she not seen Moody there?

"Don't call me Crouch." She muttered. Her throat was raw with a similar pain as her head, like she'd screamed so much she'd lost her voice. Maybe she had.

He stood up from the chair, and while her vision was too blurry to get a good look at him, she could easily tell he was exhausted. "I'll go get a healer, tell them you're up."

"A healer?" She frowned. "Where...where am I?"

"You're at St. Mungo's."

"Why?" She knew that was a stupid question, but she asked it anyways, rubbing her head with the palm of her good hand.

"Crouch-"

"Don't call me that."

"Right, Cassiopeia," Moody took a sharp breath, clearly trying to keep his emotions composed. What was he, angry? Scared? A mixture of both? "Why do you think you're here?"

She shrugged. "You tell me."

He let out a cold laugh. "Oh, I don't know, maybe, just maybe it has something to do with the fact that you fell down a flight of stairs, jumped in front of a car and split your head open. Or that you've been seeing your very dead brother and clearly need psychological help?"

"Sirius told you that?"

"Not so loud!" He hissed, before continuing, his voice lowered. "Padfoot told me everything you told him. Cro-Cassiopeia, why didn't you tell anyone sooner? Why didn't you tell us what you were seeing?"

Cass shrugged. She knew why, though she'd never say it out loud - she didn't want anyone to look at her the way Moody was looking at her now, like she was fragile, about to break.

It wasn't true, she wasn't about to break. She had already broken.

"Barty isn't dead." Cass said after a moment of silence, pushing herself up into a sitting position.

Moody shook his head, his expression full of pity. Cass wanted to crawl out of her skin. "Of course he's dead. The Ministry had his soul sucked out. No one can survive that. There were witnesses and everything. Dumbledore saw it himself."

"He isn't dead! I'm telling you, he's alive! He was the one to push me out of the way of the semi!"

He shook his head again. "A muggle did that. We don't know who, he ran off before we could find him, but you owe him your life."

"Why would a muggle, a stranger save my life?"

"Why would Barty?" He challenged, raising his eyebrows. "If he was alive, why would he risk exposing himself to save your life? He killed your father, he would've likely tried to kill you next, had they not caught him."

"No, no, I saw his face. It was him."

"You hit your head, you were hallucinating."

"I wasn't! I'm not mad, I haven't gone mad, it was him! I touched him, my hands touched him when I pushed him! He's alive, Moody, I swear it!"

"Cassiopeia, calm down!"

"I can't! I can't calm down, he's alive! Barty is alive, why don't you believe me?" She cried, pushing the blankets off of her and attempting to stand, only to be prevented from doing so by some sort of invisible forcefield around her bed. She tried again, but her foot physically could not penetrate the clear air. She turned back to Moody, eyes wide. "What's happening?!"

"They deemed you a flight risk. At risk of running away."

"I know what a flight risk is. But that means..."

"You're going to be staying here for a while, yes." Moody confirmed her worry with a nod. "To recover physically and mentally. Fuck, Cassiopeia, you almost got yourself killed."

"Yeah, that was kind of the point."

Moody pursed his lips, clearly unsure how to respond to that.

"I'm not mad." She said after a moment of silence, taking a deep breath. "I don't need to be here."

"You tried to kill yourself."

"I'm not mad." She repeated, with a sense of urgency in her tone.

"You may not be mad, but you still need to be here. You're seeing dead people. You jumped into moving traffic. And, if that wasn't enough, the healer said you had alcohol in your system."

She bit down on her lip, the memories of her time with Connor flooding her. Oh, how nice that had been. How had things gone from so lovely to so horrible in a matter of hours? "So what?"

"So what? You're fifteen years old, you're too young to be drinking! Where did you even get it from? Was that where you were when you left?"

Cass ran a hand through her hair, glancing at it to see it was black and blue from bruises, either from falling down the stairs or when Barty had pushed her out of the way of the semi. She wondered for a moment, rather vainly, her battered up her face looked. "What does it matter, Moody?"

"Alastor." He corrected.

"Sorry. Alastor."

"It matters because I'm your guardian. I have to take care of you now, whether you like it or not."

"No one made you pick this role. You could opt out. I wouldn't blame you if you did."

He shook his head, and she sighed.

"I was with a friend - a muggle, I knew back in Stromness. I wasn't partying, or anything like that. We didn't drink much, just a little. His sister had left some in the fridge. You don't need to worry about that."

"I trust you're telling the truth."

"Why wouldn't I? I have no reason to lie about anything. Not anymore."

*

Turns out, at some point in the night, between falling down the stairs and being pushed by someone who may or may not have been Barty, Cass had received a concussion, broken a rib, and fractured her shoulder. The healers had of course, fixed her up for the most part, but that didn't stop the rush of pain she got every time she made a wrong movement. When the forcefield was taken down, and she was finally allowed to leave her bed to use the loo, she glanced in the mirror, and gasped. She hardly recognized herself - she had a black eye, Dahlia's slap still left a red inflamed mark on her cheek, and her entire face was grazed in scrapes and bruises that were sure to take ages to fade. Other than that, she had to have lost several kilos in the past few months, her cheeks hollow and her bones sticking out awkwardly, like they had with Barty.

She was forced to attend therapy with other teenagers residing in the mental institution part of St. Mungo's, talk about bullshit like how she was feeling to complete strangers and have them pretend to understand. What did they know? They'd got a 30 second run-through of what had happened by some head doctor, and made it their personal duty to cure her.

The only interesting thing to happen was seeing Adelaide Burke, Bethany's younger sister, roaming the halls, eating in the same cafeteria as her. She'd heard enough about the youngest Burke child to know attempting to speak to her would more likely than not result in a flurry of insults, so she didn't, but she knew Adelaide saw her too.

One day, while Cass sat, poking at her uneaten meal with a fork, Adelaide approached her, setting her tray next to hers and staring at her.

"Er, hi?" Cass frowned, staring at the girl. She was pretty - that was undeniable, with the same silky black hair and porcelain skin as her sisters, but there was something even more stunning about her. Perhaps it was her lucky genetics, or simply the fact that Cass didn't know enough about her to dislike her like she did Dahlia, and even Bethany.

"You're Crouch, right? Cassiopeia Crouch. You got expelled."

"Yup, that's me." She pursed her lips. "You're Adelaide Burke."

"Mmm, unfortunately." She hummed, eyeing Cass up and down. "What happened to your face?"

"I fell down the stairs."

"That sucks."

"Yeah."

"This food sucks too."

The corners of Cass's lips perked up, perhaps the first smile she'd had since she'd been institutionalized against her will. "Tell me about it."

"So, what is the one and only Cassiopeia Crouch doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" She shot back at Adelaide, eyebrows raised.

"Tried to jump off the Astronomy tower."

Well, Cass certainly hadn't been expecting that. "Er...why?"

Adelaide shrugged, like she was discussing something as simple and unassuming as the weather. "I felt like it."

"Lovely."

"Your turn, why are you here?"

"I jumped in front of a car."

"What's a car?"

"Those things muggles use to get around."

"Oh, those."

Cass shifted in her seat, unsure of what to say, and Adelaide continued. "Well, why'd you do that?"

"I felt like it." She mimicked the youngest Burke sister's response.

Adelaide smirked as she bit into her brownish red apple. "Well, I heard from a healer you're psychotic. That you were hallucinating, seeing your dead brother."

Her eyebrows jumped up. "A healer told you that?! Aren't they supposed to be confidential?"

"Not so much told me as much as I overheard." She snorted, taking another bite and gagging. "Shit, this is disgusting."

"Then why'd you eat it?"

"I'm hungry." She stared at Cass like she was dumb.

"Fair enough."

"So, is it true that you're psychotic?"

"No, it isn't."

"That's what the healer said."

"It's psychotic depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Whatever that means." Those were the diagnoses the head healer had given her after a day of monotonous questioning. While she didn't quite like the sound of it, or even agree with it, who was she to argue with the expert? They'd just insist she was crazy and make her stay in this place for longer.

"So, psychotic."

"I think they're different."

"Whatever you say, Crouch."

"Don't call me that."

"What, your name?"

"My name is Cass. Or Cassiopeia, if you're feeling formal."

Or Cassie, if you're George Weasley, but she didn't think her heart would be able to manage hearing that name spoke aloud ever again.

"Whatever you say...Crouch."

She clenched her jaw, taking a deep breath as she reminded herself that she couldn't beat someone up in a mental facility, not if she wanted to get out anytime soon. But fuck, was Adelaide cutting it close to being worth it.

The two continued to eat in a remote silence, only making small conversation, nothing of actual relevance. While Cass certainly didn't like Adelaide by any means, she walked away from their table in somewhat better spirits than she had started. At least she was witty, and interesting, even if she called her Crouch.

Nearly two weeks had gone by when Cass was called out of their group therapy session, with a visitor.

"If it's Alastor, tell him to fuck off." She told the healer who had come to collect her. "I don't want to talk to him." He'd been trying to visit her since the day she'd arrived, but she'd turned him down each time, citing her stay there being his fault. She hated him for it, hated him for the misery she was being forced to endure at the hands of this fucking place.

"It isn't your father, dear."

She stared at the healer like she was stupid. "He isn't my father, he adopted me. There's a big fucking difference."

The healer just smiled, probably used to mentally ill teens berating her on a daily basis. Cass would've felt bad, had she not been so pissed off.

"Come, he's in your room."

Cass followed her into her private room, a tiny one with only a bed and a desk. There were no windows to jump out of, no way to suffocate or strangle or hang herself -she'd searched for it all.

When she stepped through the door, she just about passed out as she made eye contact with Albus Dumbledore. He was sat on her bed, reading one of the few books she'd been allowed to store in her room, and looked up at her as she entered with a sad sort of smile.

"Hello, Miss Crouch."

"Cass. Call me Cass."

"As you wish, Cass."

"I'll leave you two to talk." The healer said, before exiting the tiny room, shutting the door behind her and leaving the two alone.

"How are you doing?"

Cass blinked. "I'm grand. You?"

"I'm alright, though I could be better. I imagine I will be, once I'm back at the castle. This place would put even the happiest of wizards or witches in a dismal mood, wouldn't you say, Cass?"

"I suppose so."

"Come, have a seat." He patted down the bed, urging her to sit next to him.

She did so, feeling a bit awkward in the process. The last time she'd spoken with Dumbledore, she'd been so drunk that she'd thrown up all over his office. She couldn't imagine he'd forgotten - she certainly never would. "Er, Professor, no offence, but why are you here?"

"No offence taken." Dumbledore smiled at her. "I've appealed the school board about your expulsion. They've agreed to let you back into Hogwarts."

"What? Why?"

"Why have I appealed to them, or why did they allow you to come back?"

"Yes, er, I mean, both."

"I see potential in you, Cass. As for the school board, while I can't say for certain, I believe your stay in St. Mungo's may have helped your case. Your mental instability was seen as a defence in why you would bring such a book to the school. Now that you're working on your issues, there is seemingly no risk of you hurting anyone."

"I'm not mentally unstable." She told him through clenched teeth, resisting the urge to raise her voice. "And I would never hurt anyone, not with the type of magic in that book."

"Of course not. Though I must ask, wherever did you get that book from?"

She bit down on her tongue, pondering if she should tell the truth. If she admitted she'd stolen from a professor, that certainly wouldn't help her chances at getting back into Hogwarts. But then again, she hadn't a thing to lose. If they didn't let her back inside the school, she could still run off to France, with or without Connor at her side.

"I stole it from Quirrell. I thought he was hiding something, and I was right. How do you think he got You-Know-Who on the back of his head? He tried to kill me before I could translate the book and warn you."

"You're a clever girl, Cass. We could use more minds like yours at Hogwarts. And more souls."

And with that, the headmaster stood up, leaving Cass alone with her thoughts.

*

Because Umbridge had snapped Cass's wand, she needed to head to Diagon Alley before returning to Hogwarts and get a new one.

Moody accompanied her, of course, now that she'd been released from St. Mungo's, she wasn't allowed to be out of his sight if she left the house. Not that she had any desire to. While she ached for Connor, she missed his touch, the feeling of his lips on hers, she also realized he, just like George, deserved better than her. It was best for her to isolate, to keep herself far away from anyone she could hurt. She shouldn't have slept with him, not because she didn't love him, but because he loved her, and he shouldn't.

Even if he hadn't really been there, Barty had been right. She hurt Connor, she hurt everyone, and while she never voiced how she felt during her stay at St. Mungo's, the desire to die hadn't fully left her. In fact, the isolation and boredom had only made it worse.

"I'll wait out here." He told her as they reached the wand shop.

She gave him a curt nod, before stepping through the door.

Cass wasn't the only student inside the shop, though, the moment she shut the door behind her, she made eye contact with Blaise Zabini, a Slytherin boy in her year, who she'd rarely talked to but had always seen nice enough. He was friends with Malfoy, though, which only made her pity him.

"Hey, Zabini."

"Crouch." He nodded, and she didn't correct him. She simply hadn't the energy.

"What are you doing here?"

"Broke my wand. Crabbe set it in fire." He shrugged, his lips pressed together tight with the corners drawn up, like he was containing a laugh. "I just got my new one, I was just leaving."

"I see..." She glanced down at the ground, as Ollivander approached her. Zabini stepped away from her side, exiting through the door, the odd smile still on his lips, like there was a joke at her expense.

Cass swiftly shrugged the feeling off of her. He probably wasn't expecting to see her there, that was all, what else would he be laughing at? Maybe kooky old Ollivander had said something amusing to him before she'd entered.

"Miss Crouch, back so soon?"

"Unfortunately."

"And what happened to your old wand?"

"Doesn't matter. I need a new one."

Ollivander raised his eyebrows, but said nothing as he went back into his shop, searching for wands. They went through several, just as they had the first time she'd entered his store at just eleven years old. After many failed attempts of waving wands about and causing considerable damage, including accidentally setting fire to the poor wandmakers robes, they settled on a long, firm walnut wand with a unicorn hair core.

"Got everything you need?" Moody asked her as she entered the outside world, shivering at the temperature. It was only early October, yet it was already freezing cold out, and would surely start snowing any day now.

She nodded, twirling her wand about in her fingers. She'd missed the feeling of the wood against the palm of her hand, even if it wasn't the same texture as she was used to, it still provided the sense of security that she craved.

He grabbed her free hand to apparate away, and she winced at the contact.

"Bad hand." She reminded him.

"Sorry." He moved his grip up to her shoulder instead, which, while was still sore from dislocating it, it was nowhere near as bad as whatever had happened to her hand a few years prior.

They returned back to Grim Old Place, and Cass ran back up to her room to finish packing her stuff. When she finished throwing everything in her trunk, double and triple checking she hadn't accidentally packed another illegal book or something along those lines, she returned downstairs, levitating her trunk behind her.

"Making use of magic already?" Sirius eyed her as she entered the living room.

"I surprisingly missed it." She shrugged. "Magic makes things easier."

"Try not to get yourself expelled again, alright, Cassiopeia?" Moody gave her a nod as she approached the fireplace, grabbing a handful of floo powder.

"I'll do my best. No promises." She rolled her eyes, an unusual smile slipping onto her face. Sure, she didn't much like Moody, but she found that, as she left Grim Old Place, she'd miss him and Sirius more than she imagined. She shifted from foot to foot, some of the floo powder slipping out from between her fingers. "Er...bye, Alastor, Sirius."

"Bye, Cass." Sirius smiled. Moody only nodded.