Lucius stepped out of the Apparition and spent a moment simply standing still and observing. He was already cloaked in a Disillusionment Charm, and he had a curse hovering at the forefront of his mind, which meant he would be quicker about casting it than most of his opponents would be able to believe.
Only silence came back to him. He was in a small private cemetery attached to the Crouch estate. There were weather-beaten stones in every direction, and wildflowers and weeds swarming all over the monuments. Lucius thought he could hear the soft songs of birds in the distance, but any that were nearby had probably flown away from the sharp crack of his Apparition.
Lucius nodded, and started walking.
He wound his way among the stones, his eyes darting from inscription to inscription, his mind on high alert. It would have been more convenient if he could have walked directly to Mathilda Crouch's grave, but detection spells didn't work on the dead. Lucius had read speculation that they latched onto the spirit, which was why they would work through Polyjuice and glamours and the like, and the dead had none left.
At last, he reached a large headstone that had tilted slightly from what seemed to be a lightning strike at the base. MATHILDA CROUCH, read the letters. BELOVED WIFE. It had only the date of her death, not her birth.
Lucius smiled, wondering if it stung Barty to know that his father hadn't bothered to put the word "mother" on the stone. He held up his wand and spent a moment considering what curse to use.
Well, of course, when he thought back to the Dark Lord's tactics in the war, there was only one real choice. It would be magically taxing, but it was also likely to trip any wards or alarms Crouch had on the grave, and perhaps even alert him through his blood connection with his mother. The magically sensitive could feel it, and the mad.
Lucius readied himself through deep breathing and settled the quiet in his mind like snowfall. Then he aimed his wand at the grave and whispered, "Inferius."
The ground rent itself apart, leaping into the air in great gouts of dirt. Lucius stepped back out of its range. He'd cast the spell before, and he'd expected that. Right now, he watched with calm eyes as the magic streamed into the grave and grasped the body there.
It twisted the bones out of the thin silk shroud that had held them, but Lucius collected the wisps with a swipe of his wand before they could go very far, and redressed the corpse. The worse the impact it had on Crouch, the better.
The body wavered back and forth as Lucius's necromancy pummeled it, bright green light like the Killing Curse filling the sunken hollows of the skull. Lucius smiled a little as he felt the spirit dragged struggling back to the body.
It wasn't the whole of Mathilda Crouch's spirit—that had gone on to wherever people went who did not become ghosts—but it was enough to animate the body and give it a semblance of her voice. That, too, should drive Crouch mad.
The body trembled at last, and the eyes lit with the dull green glow of an active Inferius. The corpse knelt before Lucius and asked in a harsh, rasping voice, "Master, how may I serve?"
The crack of Apparition echoed across the graveyard. Lucius turned his head and smiled.
"Go and greet your son."
The spirit almost certainly didn't remember who its son was, but it shuffled to its feet, obedient to Lucius's will, and made its way towards the tree where the crack had sounded. Lucius turned to face it, twirling his wand between his fingers.
Barty Crouch came around the tree.
One look at his mother's body trundling towards him with outstretched arms, and he went completely mad.
"You dare!"
The curse he threw at Lucius was a lethal one, but Lucius had wielded it himself in his Death Eater days, and he knew how to counter it. He leaped forwards, and his shield deflected it into a headstone, which wavered and ceased to exist.
Meanwhile, the Inferius had almost reached Crouch. Crouch held out his arms and embraced it, weeping.
More mental than I thought.
It wasn't the way Lucius had planned to capture Crouch, but it was also too good an opportunity to be wasted. He whipped his wand down, reinforcing the Inferius's will with the movement, and its arms closed around Crouch.
For a moment, the madman visibly struggled, but he just as visibly didn't want to break his mother's bones. Lucius decided the matter for him by Stunning him and watching him drop to the ground with cool contempt.
It is easier to capture him when he isn't attacking on the offensive, Lucius thought, and then set about returning Mathilda's corpse to its grave and preparing Crouch for transport to Malfoy Manor.
....
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