Barty Crouch jr. who was smarter than his father ever could be. Who could remember an entire text book after just a night. Barty would spend years pretending he was stupid just to spite his dad until Dorcas pointed out it would be better to beat the old man at his own game. Barty was never favored by any of teachers, he was a slytherin who was loud and cruel and a know-it-all if you got his started. He never got a McGonnagal to be concerned for him when he came back after breaks far to quiet and would jump a foot in the air any time someone pointed a wand at him. There were no adults who cared when he decided to be angry instead of scared. He wasn't James Potter with a blinding smile and a heart big enough to care for everyone around him. He wasn't Regulus either, who could detach with vicious cruelty and a reputation to match. He was just Barty the boy set to live in a man shadow despite being so much more than his father could ever dream of.
Game nights have become relatively normal within the Potter-Black-Crouch household because all of them are incredibly competitive and don’t like to back down from a challenge, they’re also all the type of people to overthink games and become quickly hated by their friends when they’d play together because of that. Each of them have games that they’ve banned in the house through process of elimination: Monopoly, any of the Mario games, Settlers of Catan -- after a particularly heated competition between the three of them all on 8 or 9 points before James won, Barty flipped the entire board, and Regulus didn’t talk to them for the rest of the day -- Uno twice, among many others.
And they’ve decided, this game night, that card games were their best approach for the safety of their house, relationship, and sanity. The thing is, James isn’t the best at these games, they can admit that. They do well with the games that they do play, and they were also part of the reasons behind some of these games getting banned from their household, but there’s never been anything that they’ve banned because they were too good at it like Regulus with Monopoly.
Until they’re on their third card game, Regulus and Barty have only won thrice, collectively. James has won every. Other. Round. That they played. James has a track record of 16 out of 19 games.
“I’m going to kill you.” Barty mutters, looking James dead in the eye, “I swear to God if you win again, your body will not be found.”
“Okay,” Regulus hums, pushing Barty away from the table where, thankfully, James and Barty are sitting opposite each other, “I think card games are getting banned from game night, too.”
“We’re going to run out of games to play on game night soon.” James says, although they admittedly have a cocky smile on their face as they place down their hand, showing that they’ve won. Again. Barty nearly flips the table. Regulus gently takes the cards from both of their hands and cleans the ones on the table, putting them back in the box before walking over to the ‘banned’ shelf that they have and putting the pack on it.
“Running out of games or not,” Regulus states, “We’re done playing games tonight, I think we’re too high strung.” James agrees and goes to start making the three of them some hot chocolate to ease some of the tension that they’ve caused.
When they’re done and Regulus has calmed Barty from the edge of murder -- Barty asks him how he’s not upset at James winning constantly, and he is, but he’s calmer than Barty and therefore needs to calm him down -- and the three of them are settled down on the couch with a comfort show, Barty finally asks, “How are you so good at card games?”
James takes a second to answer, “My dad really liked playing card games when I was young, that was usually what we ended up playing and if you think that I’m good at card games, you should never play with my dad. It also became a thing that since Peter was good enough at chess, I could never beat him, so we’d start playing cards and he’d get frustrated then it was a back and forth of us going between chess and cards.”
“Which is why you two don’t play games together.”
James nods, “My dad is incredibly strategic and, to beat him, you had to learn how to best him in his own game.”
“Well, it’s just another banned game.” Regulus rolls his eyes, pressing a kiss to both of their lips as they fully settle down.
