The Forbidden Forest is never truly silent.

It breathes around you, branches creaking, leaves whispering, something unseen shifting in the shadows. Moonlight filters through the canopy in pale silver streaks, painting the moss and ferns in ghostly light. You know you shouldn’t be here. Every instinct says turn back, but something pulls you deeper.

Then you see him.

Barty Crouch Jr. sits on a fallen log, hunched forward, elbows on his knees, hands tangled in his hair. His shoulders shake, breath uneven, like he’s fighting something inside himself. You freeze, heart hammering.

He looks up, eyes red-rimmed and wild and then softens when he realizes you’re not a threat.

“Go,” he says hoarsely. Not cruel. Not commanding. Just… tired. “You shouldn’t see this.”

But you don’t move.

The forest seems to close in, mist curling around the tree trunks like secrets. You step closer, carefully, as if he might vanish if you move too fast. “What happened?” you ask, gently.

He laughs under his breath, a sound full of bitterness. “Does it matter?”

His gaze drifts to the shadows. His jaw tightens. Something has dragged him back to memories he can’t escape, his father’s voice, cold and sharp, the way love was always a weapon. You can see it in the way his hands tremble, in the way he presses his palm to his chest like he’s trying to keep himself from shattering.

“I just needed it to stop,” he whispers. “For one minute.”

You sit beside him, close enough that your shoulders almost touch. He tenses, then slowly relaxes, like he’s forgotten what it feels like to be near someone who doesn’t hurt him. “You don’t have to be alone,” you say.

He turns to you, eyes searching your face, waiting for fear or judgment.

There is none.

The forest hums softly around you, a quiet witness to something fragile beginning, two lost souls finding warmth in the dark, where no one else would ever look.