barty crouch jr — headcanons ( for @loonsloon ily )
i headcanon him as any eastern asian ethnicity because i can .
barty being born an only son so all the pressure falls onto him and him only .
he was a hatstall between ravenclaw and slytherin — though for my personal indulgence i do adore ravenclaw bcj .
deriving from canon descriptions , barty always did excel in academics , but particularly in subjects barty sr never cared much for . he enjoyed literature and philosophy ( do they even teach those in hogwarts ? def not lol ) , questioning the world as it is , subjects that can’t make up a soldier out of a boy . but the fact that he was quite the dorky bookworm was always hidden, cast under his need to present as careless for knowledge and schoolings because his father stressed it was meaningless compared to the tough grit a soldier should embody .
barty was initially dyslexic & was born into the world deaf . i kind of … ick at the idea of magic correcting disabilities , it’s just erasure ? so yes ! he is deaf ! and when he acquires the right auditory tools to help him hear again ( because i’m sure hearing aids exist ) , barty relies on listening to read and study for the time that he’s unable to accomodate his dyslexia . i imagine it was probably why barty sr sought him hopeless in the academia department , and why barty never confided in his father about the struggle either . ( a little bartylus headcanon — he would get regulus to read out for him until they learnt a spell that accommodated his dyslexia ) .
barty was difficult to get along with at first with the rest of the skittles group . he has a sharp tongue and keeps to himself in underlying fear of not meeting people’s expectations , so he avoids it instead . regulus however caught his eye first , because he was the image of perfection and somehow barty envied that in a sense . it’s an academic rivals to close friends to lovers sort of thing for them .
barty warmed up to pandora next , before anyone else . somehow her peculiar nature reminded him of his mother’s witchiness ( in canon lore it’s said she was a wispy looking witch , wtvr that means ) . he grows protective over her in a way a brother would , and is probably the softest with her than anyone else .
barty copped more emotional / verbal abuse than physical but when it was physical he usually grew more reserved and pushy against those who care for him — again in avoidance because what if he isn’t good enough ?
barty sr had a habit of grabbing barty’s hair at times during physical fits , so one day barty begged regulus to shave it off to a buzz so nobody could ever tug on his hair again.
barty always is known to have an ‘ugly’ resonating nature — and is naturally attractive for the way he’s quite disturbing and confronting to look at . he isn’t completely good looking but he isn’t horrible to look at either . his buzzed hair and intentionally pierced ears , his split tongue ( because he can and will ) , all those bold elements of his making up contrast the perfection appearances of his lovers ( aka regulus being the image of perfection, evan being a beautiful looking boy i’ll speak more on it in another post ).
barty develops a phobia of magic when he breaks out of the imperious curse . in a canon divergence au where sad sad voldy dies or temporarily disappears until he reappears later in golden era , he probably disappears to the muggle world to live out his days and cope with an environment free of magic that can control him. he despises being around the essence of magic, feeling it bend the laws of existence , just as his father did him.
however barty coming back as moody and taking control of his body probably is his way of coping with the trauma his father inflicted on him by using the imperius curse ( yeah it probably takes place after he’s caught being a DE but i’m sure it wasn’t sr’s first time using it on him ) . if he can control someone else’s body freely , he doesn’t have to feel like he can’t control his own at times .
the imperius curse probably had dissociative impacts on him where barty , after his father dies , struggles with discerning between past and present . he’ll look at his hands and question if he’s the one in control or not , or feel outside - of - body experiences where his own body is a mere vessel or carcass .
he struggles to understand regulus at first because he learns of his silence in conditions he clearly is unhappy about . it reminds him of his mother in a sense who watched her husband do wrong , inflict harm to her and her son and yet never did anything about it . possibly why he holds an ounce of resentment or a grudge to regulus before he softens up and opens his mind .
i’m sleepy and i can’t think of anything else so enjoy xx
