We are one people

We could overcome the
complication cause we need to

Help each other, make these changes

Kingsley had been back to the Ministry on a number of occasions since the infamous meeting of the six. He spent time with seer in the Department of Health and Human Services. He visited the Wizengamot chambers to present information to the body on the state of Epidemic research at Lufkin. And of course, he spent time with the Minister. It felt good to have a voice in the Ministry again. He had never wanted to leave. He had believed had so much more to do when Durant forced him and Harry out. But now Potter was officially back on the force, somewhere Kingsley strongly believed his friend needed to be.

And he thought it would be good for him to officially be part of the government again, as well. He'd entertained the idea of going back into the field for half a minute. It would be quite the demotion though, to shift from Dean of a university to street cop again. But Merlin was it tempting. He'd been a damn good auror and he'd loved the work. But those years were behind him. He knew that. He could still dream about it though.

Kingsley was head of the Order of the Phoenix again. In truth, he had always been in that role, even when George had the title. He'd been the one to really speak at meetings, to guide the conversations, and so many of their members had still looked to him, still trusted him. So, when he was ready to assume the role at the top again, it had been a non-event. No one had expected him to really step away from the organization--and he hadn't. He never had. He wouldn't. He believed in it's purpose. But the man wasn't looking to take those loyal to the Order into war. War was good for no one. They needed peace--and they needed to forge a lasting peace. 

So, he was here, sitting across from Andromeda Lestrange, to ask her to make his advisory role with her official. He wanted the world to know that the two of them were working together--that they were moving towards change that would benefit everyone. He wanted her to be a Minister that was more than a blood status or a puppet for the Death Eaters. She was better than that...and he was ready to support her in a public way. 

"May I speak frankly?" he asked, showing the woman respect that was due her--if for no other reason than he respected the position she held--though truly Kingsley still found despite everything, he had respect for the woman that she was outside of being the Minister. Andromeda might not have been exactly who he believed her to be, but she was still an educated and wise witch. She had a life of experience behind her that could not be ignored--no matter what name she carried now. 

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WE ARE ONE PEOPLE

OVERCOME THE COMPLICATIOn

CAUSE WE NEED TO HELP EACH OTHER

When Hermione Potter had come waltzing into the Ministry at the beginning of November, Andromeda hadn’t known what to think. They had been safe. They had been back in London, and she knew it, and Griffith had known it, and hell, Rodolphus had known it. But they had still been safe. No one was going to touch them, and yet, she had come waltzing in here like she owned the place, to what? Try and push forward some sort of change? Change didn’t happen overnight.

And yes, it had been several months now, and some things had been accomplished, but not everything. There were plenty of people in certain circles that were going to think that she had made a mistake by not killing her then and there. There were plenty of people that didn’t like that she was disregarding blood status, in favor of who she thought could help them right now. Because there were more important things that the blood feud. There were more important things than this ongoing war. They were never going to find answers like that.

They were never going to find a way to cure all of this. To try and fix magic, because to Andromeda, that was far more important. She had a country to run. She had to keep the United Kingdom from sinking into the sea. And she knew that there were hundreds of people in this building that were all trying to do that too. That they were all trying to keep this going, to keep it together. And she didn’t have an answer. Andromeda didn’t know what it was that she was supposed to do, or when, or how? They were no real answers here. They had to work together to find solutions.

If that meant that she was taking meetings with people that her husband would have liked her to stop talking to, then that was what she was going to do. There was only so much that she could handle. There was only so much that she could handle on her own. There was only so much that she knew how to handle. Andromeda was good at politics, she always had been. But she was better in an operating room. And treating the country like a dying patient was only going to get her so far.

It had been working, up until now. They were keeping their heads above water, though she wasn’t entirely sure how. Part of her thought that she had her brother-in-law to thank for that, and Andromeda didn’t want to have to thank Lucius for anything. Yet, they were still afloat, and that had to do more with money, and the economy holding, than she wanted to admit. A lot of things had more to do with the economy holding than she wanted to admit. And they could only stretch the galleon so far. That much she did know.

“Of course.” She didn’t think that there was ever a time when he didn’t speak frankly, but she counted on that. There was a reason that they all ended up working together. There was a reason that she chose to meet with the people that she did. They were not people that all shared the same views as her, and that was deliberate. She didn’t want people around her that simply agreed with her every decision. She wanted people around her that were going to push her to make better ones.

@ shacklebolt • 577 • andromeda's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

We are one people

We could overcome the
complication cause we need to

Help each other, make these changes

Isolde was still an adviser to the Minister of Magic. But her obligations at Hogwarts limited her ability to be at the Ministry on a daily basis. The arrangement was different than the one she had maintained at Lufkin--and it was different than the one that Kingsley had at the university. He had meetings that could not be avoided, of course, now and again throughout the day, but truly his duty to the college was not to sit in his office from nine to five Monday through Friday. He was charged with maintaining the university's financial status, reputation, and staffing. He recruited faculty. He wined and dined donors. He was still a politician, even as he was the school's dean. The position was not one that often required him to heavily become involved in administrative tasks there at Lufkin. He oversaw policy changes and implementations. He had handled the terminations related to the epidemic, but he largely allowed his department heads to manage their slices of the proverbial pie. The man had never been one to micromanage. Not as Dean--and not in his time as Minister.

Kingsley had found himself thinking of the former occupation more and more of late. He had enjoyed the role more than he could ever imagined. But he had lost it to Durant...and now Andromeda sat behind the Minister's desk. He wanted the job back, but to get it, he'd need there to be an election...and he'd need to win it. Kingsley wasn't interested in another government overthrow. That was not in the best interest of the country, not in this state of emergency, not with the economy steadily slipping. If anything else bad happened, he had a feeling the bottom would just fall out of it all.

The man did not want that. He had only ever wanted to act for the good of the people. In his heart, it was always about that--which had made him a lot more grey (both in morality and in hair) since his time as an auror. The days of black and white with simple and clean lines  was long done. But he was well versed in policy, politics, and the give and take necessary to make a country successful. He had knowledge to offer--and he had been sharing his experience with Andromeda in an informal way. He thought it would be good for the country to make it official--for the public to see changes coming and responses being made proactively. 

"Thank you," he gave the words with a little bow of his head to the woman. Kingsley had not really planned what to say before coming in here today. He had the gist of what he wanted to convey, but where to even begin. So, he just opened his mouth and started speaking, letting his thoughts flow unfiltered to the witch's ears. "I do not know why you wanted to be Minister. You have shown political savvy, but you are not a politician. I am. I have experience and knowledge that you do not. I am willing to offer that to you. I have been doing so for sometime now in this unofficial capacity, but I came here today to urge you to make it official. Add me to your cabinet as an Adviser." His voice was even as he spoke. There was no judgement or malice in anything he said. No arrogance, either. It was just a calm telling of fact leading into his request. 

You're in my seat, but I'll still help you • 590 • outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

we are one people

overcome the complication

Cause we need to help each other

Andromeda didn’t have all of the answers. She didn’t know what it was that was going to end up making all of the difference. Something. There had to be something that was going to point them in the right direction. What it was, she didn’t know. She had no way of knowing who, or what, was causing this, where it was coming from, who it was going to hit next. Because if there was one thing that she did know, it was that she was a healer first, and that meant that she was studying the disease more than she was looking at anything else.

She was looking at what this was going to continue to do. How the after shocks were stack up and change them all. Because no one was going to come out of this without some changes. Even those that had kept their magic, were going to find themselves in situations that they hadn’t expected. They were going to find themselves trying to understand things that they didn’t have any control over, trying to muddle through the guilt that came with all of it. And there was guilt. She understood that.

Even if she had lost her magic, she was still carrying a guilt that she couldn’t really explain. No one could know. No one except Rodolphus and Rabastan could find out about that little secret. She understood it, on a fundamental level, she knew what it was. Or at least what Rabastan thought that it was. But without anyone else to talk about it with, she was trying to stumble through what she knew on her own. She didn’t want to worry too much about it. She didn’t want him worrying about her either. Because she was sure that he would.

That if the things that she had started to track down were true, the things that he had found her to read, this wasn’t going to continue to be as simple as it was. She had spent hours thinking about the times that she had seen Blair use that magic. The toll that it had taken on the other witch. But for as much as she didn’t want to think that it was going to be that hard, she had no way of knowing. No way of understanding how the power had transferred, why magic had molded itself to their will. There were no answers.

None that made any sense anyway. None that she was going to willingly think about. And that wasn’t what she was supposed to be thinking about right now anyway. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about herself and her problems, she was supposed to be thinking about her country and what they were going to do about any of it. How they were going to save it. They had to find some solution, and Kingsley was right, she knew that he was right. She knew that he was the one in this room that had the most political savvy.

He knew what he was doing, and taking meetings with him, listening to his advice, she didn’t care if they didn’t like it, sometimes it was necessary. She would do whatever was necessary… This was her country, she wasn’t going to abandon it now. Listening to his request, she smiled. She would give him what he asked for, she would grant him the office and the title, she had no problems with that. Officially bringing him back into the Ministry was just another step in the sane direction. “Do you want to?” She paused and then shook her head, “Know why, I mean. Would you like to know my reasoning?” She wasn’t going to force it on him if he didn’t, but she would tell him why, before she welcomed him back into these halls that he had been thrown out of.

@ shacklebolt • 642 • andromeda's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

We are one people

We could overcome the
complication cause we need to

Help each other, make these changes

The Shacklebolt had not been sure how his suggestion would be received. The wizard liked to think that he and Andromeda had reforged a solid working relationship in recent months. There had been a time when he would have called her friend. Now, he couldn't say that was necessary still true. But he knew they were, at least, not enemies. If Andromeda took him on as an adviser, they would move beyond allies and back towards friendship. It would just naturally happen with the two of them working together regularly. He knew that. He knew trust had been damaged between them by choices she had made, but he did not pretend to understand every motivation the woman had. 

Everyone had secrets and complexities to their lives that went unseen by most other people. Without walking in their shoes, with having their pasts, you could never really understand another's choices. He knew that many could not understand why he had married, divorced, and remarried Oralee. But he had reasons. He had done what the truly believed was right by the woman he loved. He assumed there had to be more to Andromeda's story than was known, same as with him. 

Kingsley gave his mini-monologue and was not immediately welcomed to the staff, but nor was he sent away. Andromeda offered him an explanation--and interest in what she had to say showed on his face. The wizard gave a firm nod. "I would." The woman's motivations had been pondered in Order meetings--and he had mused over the possibilities at night alone with a glass of Bourbon, but suppositions were not worth much. Not against the truth freely given from the woman's own mouth. He settled into the seat across from her. His body language showed that the man was open--and that he was listening. 

You're in my seat, but I'll still help you • 300 • outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

we are one people

overcome the complication

Cause we need to help each other

Change was good. She knew that. She was well aware that they could not continue to move forward if it were not for change. But at the same time, she knew that there were times when tradition won out. When something was so deeply rooted that it was hard to prune back. And she knew that trying to jerk it out by the roots wasn’t going to do it any good either. Prejudices ran deeper than that, and they were not going to get them all pruned back. She had them herself. And perhaps they were not the same ones that her husband carried, but they were not ones that the man on the other side of her desk was going to like.

She didn’t think that they were here to talk about her prejudices though. She knew that he had come here with something on his mind. He had been helping her for a while now, and she had been listening to him. But making it an official position showed progress. It showed yet another step forwards. One back towards the grey area that she was so gifted at calling home.

For there were parts enough of Andromeda Lestrange that were plenty dark enough. But she thought that others were never going to see that. That was something that she didn’t need the world to see. The woman that had taken a scalpel to a living man, and peeled layers of his skin back, just for the sake of leaving him in tremendous amounts of pain with every movement. The woman that had pulled that same man’s teeth from his head, and found them in her pocket hours later… That was not the woman that was leading the country right now. That woman was gone. Tucked away in the little box that she could sit quietly in until Andromeda needed her again. Because that woman had a touch of the Black madness that everyone liked to whisper about.

She didn’t expect him to trust her. She wouldn’t have trusted her. Not when she had made the choices that she had. But she thought that if he was going to walk these halls, if they were going to maintain this relationship for real, then he might as well be one of the few that new the truth. No one else really did. She had never actually told anyone why she had taken the job. Taken, being the operative word, because she had very clearly taken it from Ares Wentzell. But it was far from a simple reason. Still, no one had ever asked.

And without being asked, she had seen no reason to explain herself. She had never thought that anyone cared what her motivations had been. They clearly hadn’t been the same as Wentzells. She had undone everything that he had started every chance that she had gotten so far. The children had been the first step towards that. And then the Epidemic had hit and caused her more problems than she had really been ready for. The plans that she had had… They had all come to a screeching halt.

“For them.” The brunette witch nodded to the framed picture of two little boys playing in front of the fireplace. They were laughing and passing a toy hippogriff back and forth between them over the top of the dog. “They deserve a better life than what I had. They deserve a better future. And not just them, all of them. Every child in our world deserves a better chance than we all had.” She knew that it wasn’t enough. She knew that she hadn’t done enough, but she also knew that she wasn’t done yet. “I may have the name that I have. And I may look like her. But I’m a doctor. And I’ve never been able to see the world in black and white.”

She sighed a little bit, and sat back in her chair, “Ares Wentzell saw the world in black and white. It was all or nothing. It’s not that simple. And it’s not an easy path. It’s not the choice that those with names like my own want us, want me, to make. It can’t be all or nothing. And there’s never going to be a middle ground, a grey area, that pleases everyone. But that’s still who I’ve always been. I’ve always been grey. Bella was black. Narcissa, surprisingly enough, was white. And I’ve always been grey.”

It was far more complicated than putting it that simply, but she thought that he knew that. No one was really going to tell the whole truth behind their motivations, but everything that she had said was honest. She was doing it for the boys. She was doing it for their future. Kingsley’s children’s future. The Potter children’s. Ava Blair’s. Brenna’s. She was doing it for all of them. “And it seemed, at the time, that we could use a little less black and white. Black and white only gets people killed. We’ve all seen enough war.”

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