Poison & Wine

You only know what I want you to
I know everything you don't want me to
Oh your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine
Watson Stroud | Outfit

Andromeda was quite certain that of all of the meetings that she had had over the last week, there were only a handful that had been left for today. She had tried to make sure that everyone was covered, and she knew that there had been some that the girl put on the schedule at the last minute today. Apparently Mr. Stroud had been absent from the Ministry for a while after Christmas? Something that Andromeda thought raised some questions, but apparently the girl, whom she was quite sure had a name, though she often forgot it, had managed to track him down, and tell him that he was meeting with her this afternoon. Andromeda really needed to make a point to learn Isolde's daughter's first name. It was probably ridiculously simple, but Andromeda had always had a horrible habit of going through assistants too quickly to bother learning their names. She thought that she would have do to her best not to break this one. The girl was Isolde's daughter after all, and her being a pureblood, and her mother holding a position at Andromeda's hand was a decent enough reason not to do something that was going to make her cry. From the way that people acted when she walked down the hallways, she would hate to see what people that she was actually upset with looked like. 

When she had taken this job last week, she had done so thinking that she was going to have to keep up certain appearances to make people respect her. Because she was a woman, and she had just taken over what was very much a man's world. She knew that, and she knew that it was something that she was going to have to prove to all of them, but in doing so, she was going to refuse to give up any piece of herself. She was stronger than that. And Andromeda knew just how powerful she was. That was part of what made her formidable. Or at least she had been told in the last week that she was a bit formidable. That was something that she was still trying to wrap her head around. Taking over the Ministry hadn't been done entirely by herself. Of course she hadn't up and decided to gut someone and then light them on fire in the middle of the atrium. She had been a bit more subtle about the whole thing. There had been notices. And then the name on the door had changed, the stationary around here had changed, and there was a new Minister. It was as simple as that really. She had swept in, and she had taken what she had wanted, and there hadn't been a fight. There had been a display of power that had sent a message, and all in all that was all that she had needed. 

Being Minister meant that there were things that she had to worry about that were outside of the normal things that a pureblood woman had to deal with. They all had other things that they had to deal with. They all had things that were on them. Husbands. Children. Homes. Dinners. Parties. They all had that. Andromeda had all of that, and now she had four countries that she had taken it upon herself to run. There was something in that that she wasn't quite prepared for yet. She was still trying to sort it all out. There were changes that had to be made, policies that had to be updated, but she was a Lestrange, and she was a Black, and there were certain aspects to both of those names that should have told people in what direction all of this was going to go. It wasn't all that hard to see the side that she had chosen in all of this. She was the Lady Black. She was the Lady Lestrange. She had become both, and she had taken the most powerful position in the United Kingdom, for herself, and she had done it as a wife, as a mother, and above all else, she had done it as a woman. That alone was enough to set her apart from everyone else in this position for the last three decades. The knock at the door signaled that Mr. Stroud was indeed here, and she pulled herself out of her thoughts and slid her smile onto her face as she stood. "Enter." 

Poison & Wine

He hadn’t expected to be summoned to the Minister herself. He wasn’t that important nor influential, so he had expected that his work would be the same as always. As had been the case at first. He had assigned the Unspeakable-Apprentices their tasks for the week and started to read the reports they had left him from last week. It was a task that, after thinking at first that this would be incredibly boring, he had over the months started to enjoy. The papers enabled him to overview the whole department, including all weekly changes. And as it were always the same people recording what they did in the same environment, it wasn’t difficult to find out where each individual’s problems were. Then he could give the attention they needed to every trainee, which was saving a lot of time. By now, he had an impressive collection of reports, and he was positive that all the trainees had massively improved since he had first met them. It was nice to see his efforts rewarded. He needed to make an effort, he knew that he was replaceable like almost everyone. He had replaced the Muggleborn who had been in charge before him almost without a problem. And as he had been able to witness last week, it was also no problem to replace the Minister. Thus, he did what was expected of him. He didn’t work more than he had to. There were other things to do, and he was no singular case in the ministry. Most people understood that a company that you had inherited from your parents needed a lot of attention. Still, he had always taken care that he would do exactly what was expected of him from the Ministry. Sometimes even more if he had the time. Never less.

With the children back at school, he was able to work without pretending to research Roz’ whereabouts whenever one of his children would be near him. It was depressing. He liked to be in their presence, but it was troublesome to constantly look desperate. Or look as if he tried to hide his desperation behind optimism. He was quite convincing at assuming these looks, and it was something he was proud of. But it wasn’t really enjoyable and the profit was so far in the future. It had been a very depressing Christmas. He had needed all his energy not to yawn while they had been sitting somberly around the Christmas tree. Arthur might not have noticed, Watson wasn’t sure whether the boy had looked at anything but his hands, but Vi had been a little less self-absorbed, so he couldn’t just stop acting.

At the Ministry, there was no other acting required but everyday good manners and these were no challenge. Behaving like that was something he did more or less automatically. And while he had been surprised at the summons to the Minister. The young woman who had delivered the message was also one he had never seen before at the Ministry. But then, it made perfect sense that the Minister would exchange all, or at least a considerable part of, her support staff. There had been several changes, but none that affected him. Or at least that was what he had thought. He had no idea why she wanted to see him. He couldn’t be really in trouble - then others would have dealt with him and not bothered talking. And not to forget, he had done nothing to cause himself trouble. Unless he’d have to face some sentimental female solidarity. But as far as he knew, Lady Lestrange didn’t know Roz. Neither was she a sentimental woman. There was a reason why she now was leading the country.

She might just want to get to know all of the Ministry. He had heard that she had talked to many, and it made perfect sense. She hadn’t been here before, she needed to get a good overview. It was what any reasonable person would do. As far as he could judge, there was no reason to be anything else but a little nervous. And who wouldn’t be a little nervous when he was about to meet the leader of his country? Having arrived before the door, he quickly checked his clothes that he was acceptable looking and then knocked. Upon being invited in, he put on his politest expression, opened the door, and stepped into the room. “Good morning, Minister,” he said. “You wished to see me?”

These meetings had stretched into a second week, only because there were enough people in this ministry that she wanted to meet that she hadn't had time to schedule them all in her days, and still have time to actually be a human being. She knew that she needed to try and be a little more balanced, but after the rather stressful situation that came with taking over an entire country in a morning, and then putting together a staff, and filling an office, after the fact, she thought that she was doing quite well. Acquiring Lady Parkinson from the Department of Mysteries was something that she thought was almost amusing. She hadn't forgotten the fact that Pansy's predecessor had come from that department as well. Somewhere that she had let her go back to without so much as a second thought. Andromeda thought that there was something else that she would have liked Athena to work on, something that she thought that the other witch would thrive at. But they weren't there yet. Did she wanted to get there? Yes. Did she think that it was something that people were going to raise their eyebrows at? Probably, but it was the smart move. It was the smart move both politically, and socially, and she thought that that was something that they could use a little more of around here. Moves that served more than one purpose.

Athena was not the one that Andromeda was scheduled to meet with next though, and she thought that she should have at least recognized some of the names in her calendar, but she hadn't known this one. She had only been in the Ministry when they had called the Wizengamot together in the past, and she hadn't seen anything of Watson Stroud before. She didn't know him, she didn't know his story. All she knew was what she had read in the file. He had a wife, who was a muggleborns, and two children that were currently at Hogwarts. Twins, in their sixth year. What she didn't know was what he actually thought about all of this. Because if he had had a muggleborns wife, then she wasn't sure what she thought. He was a halfblood, and that didn't' really bother her, but it did make her question his loyalties for someone that had ranked high enough in this place to be asked in for a meeting in these first weeks.

He was a trainer. Someone that they trusted with the youngest minds in their fields. They were the ones that were going to be training an entirely new generation. She didn't think that they had room to doubt them there. She needed to know that they could at least trust him to do right by the students. By those that wanted to learn. She didn't care if he liked her or liked her politics. She didn't even really care what he thought about the muggleborns in the end. Because being married to one… She thought that the most generous thing that anyone could say in that situation was that it was complicated. Andromeda knew what complicated felt like, she had been there, done that, but she had atoned for her mistakes. She was Andromeda Lestrange now for a reason, and she was also good enough to be the Minister of this entire nation. She was the one running this country now, and she wanted to know if she was allowing Lord Selwyn to put his faith in the wrong person. Because she knew for a fact, that there were too many things that could go wrong if you didn't entirely trust the person to do the job right. She didn't want poorly trained Unspeakables, just because their trainer had faults of his own.

She was sure that he was doing just fine though, or she doubted that he would have been kept around this long. In any case, she had wanted to see him. There were only a handful of people in 'high level' positions that she hadn't wanted to see. Graves. The male Graves. He was in the middle of the European Cup, and he had more important things to do than meet with her for half an hour to tell him to keep doing exactly what he was doing. She had met with his wife, instead, and Andromeda had thought that meeting with the Mrs. Graves, was probably a little more important. The woman was the Chief of Legal in this government after all… Her brother-in-law, was a second that she hadn't thought that she needed a meeting with. If she wanted to talk to Rabastan she could do it across the dinner table at home, there was no need to ask him to come into her office, and then promptly have to figure out how to actually get him into her office when he said no… And Griffith. She hadn't asked him to come in here either, but she thought that that was for much the same reasons. She had seen what that department was doing for a year now as she looked over Rodolphus's shoulder and helped him read through some of the files. Confidentiality had never really been their thing… Nodding Andromeda held her hand out to the chair in front of her, "I do, please, join me Mr. Stroud."

While going through the corridors and travelling from Level Nine to Level One, it had occurred to him how curious his situation was: After over twenty years he had come back to the Ministry. When he had left shortly after completing his training, his twenty-year-old self would never have thought that there'd be a reason to return to this place. The wonders of the Department of Mysteries were without end and it was because of them that he had decided to try and become a bureaucrat in the first place when that distant relation of his had offered him a place after his graduation. But though the objects contained there were as marvelous as the friend he had asked for advice had described them, he had hardly finished his apprenticeship when he grew bored. He had seen everything there was to see in the department, and from then on he'd spent every day doing the same boring tasks, preserving, protecting, and — the rare exception — acquiring new artefacts. The reward for all his efforts? A monthly income like any other Ministry worker. He was around priceless treasures every day, but he couldn't use them. He had considered every possibility, and there was no way that he could get one of the objects out of the Ministry. So he saw no point in staying.

He had not made it exactly clear that he was leaving for good (as he had fully intended to do back then). His parents had been proud of a son working at the Ministry, and his pride wouldn't suffer that his parents thought ill of him. He was perfect, and everyone around him should agree with that. So he had announced that he wanted to see something of the world during a year and would be travelling for the next couple of months. It was nothing out of the ordinary that a young man should wish for something like that, and thus he had had to face little to no resistance. He went away, frequently bothered by letters from his family, most annoying among them those from his aunt's uncle, the very man who had made him come to the Ministry in the first place. But luckily he soon died. And then the Dark Lord came back, and his parents were literally glad that he was out of the country. It was amusing to read their worries and fretting while he got to know the mafias around the world and how to acquire and sell interesting substances and objects. He had established all his important connections back then, including lose contact with a few Death Eaters. They had persisted throughout all the years and in the end, irony of fate, brought him back to where he had started.

He wasn't a twenty-something anymore and his priorities had changed. His income was steady, both in legal and illegal ways, and he had seen, stolen, and sold enough marvels around the world that those contained at the Ministry were not that far from the common anymore. There remained  objects that were beyond anything he had ever met with, but there was nothing commercial to a room full of love or an arc to the netherworld. There were still many lesser things down there that once upon a time had made him wish he could sell them on the black market. But Roz had excavated enough precious stuff during her successful career that he felt like he had seen it all. And heard even more. Most of the things he in the end managed to obtain were not dangerous per se. He used to take what brought in the most money from collectors though when he was working with Death Eaters, things tended to be a little different. But much of the information about ancient magic he had gained from listening to his wife. Roz was brilliant in her field, and her finding his coveted artefacts often involved dangerous journeys through pyramids or enchanted jungles. In addition, his interest in her tales was not only beneficial for his profit but — as he believed — also for their marriage. There was nothing better to make her feel like they were having a perfect relationship than his constant and sincere interest in her experiences.

Sometimes he now wished he could have her opinion on certain subject matters. But then, you could never have everything, and on the whole he was more than content with what he had. It was nice to get to use all the knowledge that he had collected over the years in a perfectly legal context. Little had changed in the Department itself since he had left, so he had had no difficulties in feeling at home again, and that he had seen a lot of the world was also of advantage when dealing with the trainees. At least he felt that he would have appreciated a more experienced person when he had been in their places. He had ended up being mostly bored, but then his trainer had had about the same droning voice as Professor Binns. He felt like he was doing a good job and that his protégés were steadily improving. There was no reason for him to be in trouble because of his work, the only reason  would be political or in one other word, Roz. He had heard many things of the Lady Lestrange like everybody in the country had, but that did not mean that he knew anything about her other than that she was not a woman to underestimate. “Thank you, Minister,” he said, sitting down in the offered chair and smiling expectantly at the new leader of the country.

There were things that she knew that the world wasn't expecting and taking the Ministry with no bloodshed was one of them. But that was exactly what Andromeda had done. She had taken the Ministry, and she had done it in a way that was as cold, and graceful, as a snake could be. Because she thought that there was one thing about the Death Eaters that she had never really understood. So many of them were Slytherins. So many of them had been raised with the same standards and ideals that she had. And yet so many of them thought that it was necessary to demonstrate power in ways that were so bold. So, in your face. That wasn't necessary, and she had demonstrated that. You didn't have to be obnoxious about it to be powerful. You just had to know what you were doing, and what to do about it. You just had to play your part to the fullest, and learn who it was that you were, who it was that you wanted to be. And if she were being honest, she didn't know if this was who she wanted to be at all. But it was who she needed to be. There was no going back to who she had been before. There was only going forwards.

There was only doing what she could to survive. Because if there was one thing that Andromeda Lestrange knew how to do it was survive, and she intended to make sure that the entire nation survived with her this time around. She didn't want to lose anything. She didn't want to lose any one. She had lost too much in her life already. She had lost too many people, to many mistakes had been made. And she wasn't going to do that again. She wasn't going to be in that position. She wasn't going to put herself in positions where she had to make sacrifices. She wasn't going to put herself in positions where she had to give up a part of herself. She had done that. She had made those choices, and she was done with that. She was a Lestrange, and it was time to start acting like it. It was high time that she earn the name attached to her own. It was high time that someone held them all accountable for their actions. The entire Ministry, now answered to her.

That was not something to take lightly, but it wasn't something that she thought was absolute either. There were checks and balances now that there hadn't been in the last administration. She was not a dictator. She would not allow herself to be. Andromeda was brilliant, and she knew that. She understood politics. She knew how to play the games, negotiate, all of it. She could thrive here. But she was also smart enough to ask questions. She was smart enough to know when it was okay to admit that she didn't know something. When it was suitable to ask someone else. To have someone explain something to her. And then to turn around and ask someone else. If she didn't know, she wanted more than one side of a situation explained to her. There were not going to be decisions that were based entirely out of her heart anymore. She couldn't allow for that. They would never survive, and that was what this was about. This was about survival. Magic had to survive. And that was what she knew how to do, she knew how to survive. They would fight this, they would combat this. And they were going to do it in ways that she thought that they could at least attempt to explain. Because that was the problem that Ares had had. He did what he wanted, and he couldn't explain it.

He had taken the mudbloods and fastened them in a cage, and there had been no explanation. There had been no one saying that they were doing it for this reason, or that reason. There was nothing like that, and Andromeda thought that if they were going to bring the people around to the causes that they wanted them to focus on, they were going to have to do so from the ground up. They were going to have to rebuild a society to trust them, and that started at the bottom. They had to make sure that they were all on the same page. That everyone in this building that she now called her own, was of the same mind. Things needed to improve, they needed to change, and they were going to be that change. Together. Slipping into her seat across from the man that she did not know Andromeda allowed her gaze to access him for a moment before she tapped the file that was sitting in front of her with her finger. His file. She knew about his wife. She knew that he had two children in Hogwarts. She knew that they were both in Hufflepuff. That the girl was struggling with everything that was happening… Andromeda knew everything. "You've only recently rejoined the Ministry, is that correct?" Her voice was soft, not the warm honey that it had been before everything had changed, but soft as freshly fallen snow would be in the depths of winter…

Nothing ever stayed the same. The only certainty in the world was constant change, and either you adapted to the changes or you were bound to lose. It was a simple truth and only a fool would try to close their eyes to it. He wasn’t a fool and he had always known that governments were no exception to this rule, on the opposite. So there was nothing either welcome or deplorable in what had just happened. It was simply a reality with which he had to deal. It was basic politics, and considering how free of violence it had been, it was far more ordinary than he had originally expected, especially in comparison with the coup before. Now the question just was what did ordinary imply. They wouldn’t have ousted the government if they had not enough differences to the former Minister. Then again, he couldn’t completely rule out that this was not the case either. He wasn’t familiar enough with the exact nature of the Twenty-eight’s problems with the old minister, but as far as he could tell, the main one had been the man’s personal life. So there was a chance that this whole government overthrow was only a childish whim that would have no consequences for the normal citizen like he was. At least it shouldn’t because he had done nothing wrong. He had only ever acted in his family’s best interest and who didn’t? Just because Roz didn’t have enough foresight to understand why what he had done was best for her too in the long run didn’t mean that he hadn’t done her a favour all options considered. At least she should respect that what he was doing was greatly improving their finances, and if that wasn’t laudable, what was?

And he did hope that she would survive being a trainer’s assistant. She was more valuable to him if she would. So whatever the change of government was bringing, he honestly hoped that she’d still be alive until the next change came. It might not be bad if her situation worsened a bit — the more she suffered, the more entitled she would be later to receive a compensation for what she had been exposed to. So he wanted nothing of the new government but to keep things as they were, including Roz in a more or less alive state. As of now, he had no reason to believe that his wishes were unreasonable. Everything was after all more or less happening as he had guessed it would. The purebloods had been increasingly unhappy, so the change was more or less predictable, though the time and the protagonist had been long unclear. Watson had originally thought that there would pass more time until the minister’d change, but then a little over a year wasn’t that short of a time at the head of a government. But while he had been prepared for Wentzell to do not last all too long, he hadn’t considered the Lady Lestrange a likely candidate as successor for a long time. Of course, this had changed after the ball where she had more or less spelled it out for anybody who knew anything about politics to see, but he couldn’t deny that he had not expected her to enter the political world like that. She hadn’t mattered in a long while in her own world as far as he knew. Of course, though his family was rich and they had had repeatedly had business with them, he was no part of their society.

“It is, Minister,” he confirmed. He didn’t know the woman, had no idea what she truly was thinking. After all, her past was rather convoluted, and there would definitely have been candidates for the Minister post of who he would have been more confident as to what they would want to hear from him. He had originally expected that once Wentzell was felled, his position would be taken up by another Death Eater. This woman was not one of them though. The simplest explanation was that she was a puppet they had put into place to calm the public because Death Eaters were still largely considered criminals. But he had heard and observed enough that even the little he had seen until now had made him very sure that the Minister was far from the kind of woman anybody in their right senses would use as a pawn. No, whatever this woman was doing was certainly going to be what she wanted to do. And he knew too little of her to be sure what she wanted to hear from him. The files in front of her were, if he was not very much mistaken, telling her enough to deduce why he had got the job — about his Muggleborn predecessor who had been killed during the takeover — about the objects he had obtained over many years that had been very helpful for numerous Death Eater operations — about how he had handed over Roz to keep his peace. She certainly knew all this and maybe more. “Since July,” he decided to add. Preciseness was something that was appreciated by pretty much everybody.

posion & wine your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine

Tags: Watson

Andromeda's Outfit

If Andromeda had to guess, she would suspect that a good majority of those in this place didn't know what to make of her just yet. She was not the first person that anyone would have thought was going to up and take the seat of the Minister for Magic. But she had. She had taken it, and she had plans for it. What she was going to do with this office was simple enough. All she wanted to do was correct the situations that she had been handed. At least for now. They would, she was sure, end up trying to comprehend, and correct, other things along the way. There would be bigger things that they tackled later on, but for right now, she just wanted to fix the messes that were in front of her. She just wanted to change the way that the story was being told. And she wanted to learn as much as she could from everyone, in every department, about the way that things were run before. Andromeda was not going to say that she was an expert on any of it after one meeting, but she did learn quickly, and she wanted to know as much as she could about certain things as soon as she could learn it. If that meant that she stayed up late into the night reading for the next month, that would be what she did. She thought that Rod would fall asleep regardless of whether or not she had a light on, so she wouldn't be disturbing him, and she could read with him asleep next to her. That wouldn't bother her. She wouldn't leave the bed unless the boys cried. She liked being close to him, he was her center. Andromeda's gravitational force didn't pull her to the center of the earth, it pulled her to him. She needed him, more than she thought that he even realized, but she did, and so if she had to sit up in bed, and read into the night while he slept beside her, that was what she would do. She was going to do this, and she was going to do it well. She wanted to do it well. That was what she thought made her a little different than her predecessor. Ares Wentzell had not wanted this. That much was clear by the way in which he led this country. He had not wanted this. She did. She wanted this. This decision to come in here, to take this office, by a show of power, was more than enough of a statement that she did want it. That she wanted to do something with it. There was so much potential in the office that she now held. There was so much opportunity, and he had wasted it. The last several ministers had seemed to waste it on their own agendas. And Andromeda wasn't going to say that she didn't have one of her own. Because she did. Anyone that knew her knew that Andromeda was exceptionally good at pulling puppet strings. She did it within her own family. let alone someone letting her get ahold of an entire nation. But she had it now, and she knew that with the right strings pulled, with everyone moving towards the same ends, they could actually get something done out of this place, and just maybe, they could do something positive with it. That was the message that she wanted to get out. That they were moving forwards. What that meant was currently up for interpretation. And that was precisely how she wanted it to be. She wanted it to be a bit of a mystery. Her entire life was shrouded in just enough mystery that it was hard to get a read on her, and that was exactly the point. No one could take advantage of her, if they didn't know where she was truly letting her thoughts and ideas wander to. Her sister was the occulmens. Narcissa was gifted in that particular skill set. But it was Andromeda that was much better at hiding in plain sight. "And what brought you back to the Department of Mysteries?" There was a purpose behind her line of questioning, something that she hadn't had to worry about too much, she knew many of the other heads, in title at the very least. But she did not know this man, other than what the very in depth file she had on him said. You could learn a lot from a file, but you could learn a lot more from a conversation. And that was precisely what she intended to do. Learn about him

Politics was a game about who was at the top, about who had the most power. It was something he didn’t care about. There was nothing desirable about heading a country in his opinion, especially as the last couple of years had proved how uncertain the position as head of a government was. A Minister was just too much in the public, all their mistakes were being analyzed and criticized and it was practically impossible to act so that nobody would be offended. It was a dangerous game, and Watson didn’t understand why there were so many who wanted to play it. Wasn’t it better to always remain two or three steps away from power and observe the nursery school of vanities that were all struggling to come out on top. It was sort of amusing though it was a game that could end deadly. No, he really didn’t want to take part in it. As long as he could profit, he was content. All he had to do was try and figure out how things were evolving and then adapt.

There was no point in having opinions of his own. His social standing was above average but still far removed from any danger to be drawn into the games of the purebloods. He didn’t have any personal bonds with them, his only connection was from his company. Business relations were always better than family ones. These only brought problems. His parents were always interfering and curious about what he was doing and running the company. Roz’ parents were looking at him full of suspicion when he brought the children to them. And even Roz was angry at him. As if it were his fault that he had had to turn her in. Why couldn’t she understand that this had been the only reasonable thing to do? Any man in possession of his wits would have done the same. He had sacrificed enough for her that she shouldn’t be so pettish because he was being realistic. He had thought he’d have married a cleverer woman. Not that he hadn’t profitted from her, but if she had only a more down to earth approach about how to deal with valuable artefacts, he could have made far more money out of her. And then there were the children. They trusted and adored him of course. But he couldn’t help but suspect that they might be just as naïve and unpractical as their mother if they learnt what had happened to her. After all, his children were Hufflepuffs. It was the most embarrassing misfortune he had ever suffered.

But his family didn’t matter at the Ministry. He wasn’t in contact with Roz or with any intention of being so as far as they knew. His children didn’t matter at all to them. He could neatly separate them from what he was doing in his job. Only the latter was of any interests to the Ministry. Or at least this had been the situation until now. The new Minister was exactly this: utterly and entirely new and therefore unpredictable. He had his ideas about what kind of a person she was and why and how she was where she now was. But there was no certainty. Normally, these overthrows of government didn’t happen the way this woman had organized hers. It was actually impressive. She had undeniably been prepared and knew what she was doing. If someone didn’t pay attention to politics, they might have even been able to miss it. It was maybe the best way anyone could go about when they wanted to seize power. It had been a far superior coup the last one though — or rather because — it had been so unsensational.

But the fact that he was impressed by the new Minister didn’t mean that he was thrilled. He hadn’t predicted her in time, and he didn’t know much about her. He didn’t like it when he couldn’t estimate where something was going. He only hoped that this conversation would be what he thought it was: just a talk that she wanted because she was new and was clever enough to know that she had to learn as much as possible about her subordinates. If she was as smart as he conjectured, this would be the whole point of this meeting. “The position was free, Minister,” he said, completely truthfully. He'd be e a fool if he tried to lie, and it wasn't like he had to give any details about the exact circumstances — circumstances with which she was most likely familiar anyway. “And I was still in contact with a few of my colleagues who suggested I should come back. And as my brother was willing to invest more of his time into the company, I was glad to be given this opportunity. It’s the most fascinating place I’ve ever worked at. And I’ve been all around the world.”

Poison &

Wine

She knew that she was unexpected, at least by anyone that hadn’t realized the game that she had played. She was not foolish enough to believe that there weren’t plenty of people that had seen what her had done. There were those that had seen the move that she had made, but this was different. She was in a position now where things had to be different. The choices that she made had to mean something, and she was sure of herself in ways that she hadn’t been the first couple of days. Andromeda had hit the ground running in this situation. It was the only thing that she had been able to do given the circumstances, and she had built a team on the way up. Pulling people in from other departments, from other areas, she made sure that she was stacking her team around her in ways that would be beneficial, not only to her, but to the country as a whole. And it wasn’t that she was so feminist in her ways that she wouldn’t allow men in high positions, it just hadn’t worked out that way. She had chosen the best people for the jobs. Whatever that meant.

There was very little in the Ministry that she would say that she was an expert on. In some ways she was more than convinced that they were just going to have to suck it up and figure it out. Because she couldn’t guide them on exactly what to do, and she wasn’t going to try. There was going to be no more coddling of departments though. She didn’t care if they were her cousins, or a stranger, everyone was going to be treated the same way. They had to earn their place here. People had been put into positions because of who they were, and what name they carried, and who they supported, and she knew that that was exactly how she had gotten into this chair to begin with, but Andromeda was not foolish enough to believe that that was a stable way to run a government. If they were good at it, and they knew what they were doing, that was fine. They could stay. But keeping everyone right where they were, just because she should, was not how this was going to work. If Andromeda played by the rules of doing only the things that she ‘should’ she would have been sitting at home in Dorset knitting or something.

She wasn’t going to play by those rules. She wasn’t going to be confined to be a housewife, and raising their sons, and only doing that with her life. Andromeda knew that Rodolphus hadn’t excepted domesticity out of her. Perhaps he hadn’t expected this, but he wasn’t one to have a meek, and timid wife either. She was sure that there were plenty of things that he had to say about her being the Minister, but there was only one thing that he would have had to do to stop it, and he hadn’t. He hadn’t told her no. And for as twisted, and messed up, and off the wall as their entire relationship was, she thought that that alone was enough to tell her something. That alone was the type of love that he managed to show. Because he didn’t have a love language. Not really. Not in the way that other people did, because he didn’t love. He couldn’t love. And she knew that. But he hadn’t told her no either. He hadn’t stopped her ambition, when he was the only one with the power to do so.

Andromeda didn’t listen to people very often. No one gave her orders. No one but him. He had that control over her, because she was his wife. And she knew that there were times when she deferred to him. But not on this. Not on something like running the country. She could do this. She could be the leader of this country, and she could make sure that they didn’t get buried under all of this. Because they were going to crash and burn, and everyone that she loved was going to end up in prison if they didn’t figure out a way to make all of this balance out. If they didn’t figure out a way to make it all realign and work itself out. But those were the long-term goals, keeping everyone out of Azkaban. Right now, the goal was to learn about the man sitting on the other side of her desk. “The Ministry, and the Department of Mysteries, are very interesting places, that is for sure. You mentioned the business, you have a family business?” There had been mention of it by name in the file in front of her, Stroud Magical Holdings, but she didn’t know exactly what they did.

@ watson - 810 - andromeda's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOXOGRPHY 2.0

There wasn’t much he asked out of life. All he wanted was to be well respected and earning a considerable amount of money. What others here at the Ministry strived for, power, was not something he had much use for. Some power was certainly useful and necessary to be well respected. His family, while far from being influential like a pureblood family, was still considerably old and, more importantly, financially successful. Of course they couldn’t compete with the riches of old pureblood families, but they still owned considerable sums of money, and Watson was exceedingly proud to say that he was responsible for its growth during the last twenty years. It was always a little difficult to incorporate the money he got from his more interesting branches of work, but patience usually made everything fall into place. The goblins hardly ever cared where money came from as long as it had nothing to do with goblin work — and he was very careful not to deal with goblin made artefacts or only over several intermediate stations. A few times there had been just too precious excavations that it would have been a crime not to get into their possession. For what else did he have an archeologist as a wife. She really could use her talents to his advantage, that wasn’t much to ask from the own wife.

And still, as modest as he was in what he expected of her, she would not understand. That much he had learnt about her after about the first two years of their marriage in which he had cautiously tried to familiarize he with the concept that the old stuff she dug up had an actual use for their bank account. He had done everything in his power — though very subtly of course so that she never noticed what he was trying to do — she to familiarize her with the idea that it was pointless to put all this valuable stuff into museums when it could be sold with amazing profit. But she had never shown any sign that she understood and that he could be honest with her. He had to work without her knowledge and though that had gone very well, it would have still been easier if she had known and be willing to be cooperative. It was disappointing. He had hoped for a more reasonable disposition in her when they had married. He could have made so much more money. Still, he wasn’t complaining. She had been mighty useful in the past and hopefully would be again in the future.

Right now she was safely put away at Kolna for the next few years and he didn’t have to worry about anything. That was, unless his children would be as foolish as to find out where she was. He was fairly confident by now that they were convinced she was dead, which was good. That meant they had no hope of finding her again and therefore little motivation to search for her. Though they might be as stupid as to try to figure out how she had died… no, not even his children could think that something like that was worth wasting their time with. That was the problem with Hufflepuffs, they had no sense for what was really important in life. As stupid as Roz was in some respect, she was still a very smart person and that he could appreciate. But what was a Hufflepuff good for? He had no idea why they existed. Such impractical folk. And the most shameful and least understandable thing was, his children were among them. His children — two goody two shoes with so little practical knowledge. He didn’t know how that could have happened.

There was nothing Hufflepuff in the new Minister, and that was hardly surprising. Had ever a Hufflepuff been Minister? He didn’t know but was fairly certain that the answer was no. This woman certainly wasn’t though, and that was what was important. It also meant that she would hardly care about much else apart from him doing his job decently, which he had been doing. He wasn’t a fool to believe that just because he had been given the position for, let’s say, questionable reasons, he afterwards didn’t have to work in it. If he had had gone about work in this manner, he might be in trouble now — he didn’t know enough about the new Minister to say for sure. What he knew was there was little to criticize about his work. And he felt confident that this woman would not want to change too much all at once, so she would keep everybody there wasn’t an obvious objection to. And there was no objective reason for why she would want to get rid of him. Nothing in her demeanor neither pointed that way. Her questions were fairly basic. “I have. A real-estate company. We buy and sell property. It’s been founded by my great-grandfather,” he answered with another polite smile.