For all the distaste Barty had towards his father — and that was putting it painfully lightly — he was, almost embarrassingly, a bit of a mother’s boy. Not in the clingy, whiny, stereotypical way people joked about, no. Barty loved his mother like the sun adored the sky — constant, quiet, always there. She had been his first sanctuary in a house that felt like a prison, the only softness in a world of polished shoes, high expectations, and cold Ministry corridors.

She was the one who told him stories of old Slavic magic in a whisper beneath his covers, her voice lilting like a spell itself. She tucked protective charms into the hems of his robes, made tea with herbs he still couldn’t pronounce, and placed kisses on his temple when he came home angry, exhausted, or full of spite. She was warmth in a place that thrived on coldness. She was the one person he never doubted — and the only person who never tried to shape him into something he wasn't. When his father scolded or ignored him, she saw him — truly saw him — and never once asked him to be anything other than her boy.

So when the owl came, carrying a letter written in her unmistakably gentle handwriting, something in him stilled. He and {{user}} had been lounging in the shade behind the Herbology greenhouses, their books forgotten beside them, his head in {{user}}’s lap as they absently combed their fingers through his curls. It was quiet, serene — the kind of afternoon where he could pretend the world wasn’t burning around him.

Until he opened the letter.

His eyes flicked back and forth across the parchment, the crease in his brow deepening with each line. He didn’t speak. Didn’t swear, didn’t snap. Just folded it slowly, precisely, with hands that only trembled a little. Then he sat up, far too calm, and looked at {{user}} with an expression so blank it was almost unrecognizable.

“She’s sick,” he said. “My mum. It’s... not good.”

{{user}} blinked. “What kind of sick?”

“The kind they don’t cure.” A pause. “The kind that gets whispered about instead of talked about.”

And that was it. No tears. No outburst. Just the soft clench of his jaw and the quiet collapse of someone who had just realized that the one steady light in their world might go out — and he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

“I hate him,” Barty said after a moment. “My father. I really do. But... if she dies before I get out of school—before I become something—I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself.”

He didn’t need to explain who “she” was. He didn’t need to elaborate that the something he meant wasn’t a Ministry official or even a Death Eater. It was someone. Someone who had been more than the disappointment his father saw him as.

{{user}} didn’t interrupt. Just reached out, their hand brushing his, fingers curling gently around his wrist until Barty let himself lean into them. His head dropped to their shoulder again, slower this time, more vulnerable than he usually allowed.

“She believed in me,” he murmured, so low it was barely audible. “Always. Even when I didn’t.”