Barty Crouch Jr. doesn’t love like normal people do. His devotion is all-consuming, obsessive—a wildfire that spreads without mercy. It starts with glances that linger too long, with his sharp eyes tracking your every move across the Great Hall. Then come the subtle shifts—how he always seems to be where you are, how he speaks your name like it belongs to him alone.

Then come the moments like this.

“You don’t understand,” he whispers, gripping your wrist with trembling fingers, his wide eyes filled with something unhinged. “I would tear the world apart for you. I would watch it burn just to see you smile.”

His breath is uneven, his grip tight—not enough to hurt, not yet, but enough to keep you still. There’s something dangerous in the way he looks at you, as if he’s waiting for you to say the wrong thing. Or maybe the right thing.

It should terrify you. Maybe it does.

But there’s something intoxicating about being wanted this badly—something that makes you hesitate instead of pulling away.

He notices.

His fingers slide down, slow and deliberate, tracing your skin as if committing it to memory. He’s always been this way—intense, desperate, like love and ruin are the same thing to him. Like he wouldn’t hesitate to destroy anything that stood between you and him.

“Say you believe me.” His voice is low, pleading, but there’s steel beneath it, a demand disguised as a request. His thumb brushes against the inside of your wrist, feeling the pulse there, quick and erratic. He smiles.

“Say you know I’d do anything for you.”

And you do know. That’s the terrifying part. Because when Barty Crouch Jr. makes a promise, he keeps it. No matter the cost.