It's not just black or white

you're the one running in fear

@griffith outfit

Brooke wasn't sure that she liked this at all, she wasn't sure that this was something that someone like her could handle but she was being forced to do it anyway. All she could do was make it day to day. That was all she wanted to do, was make it through each day and she was okay. She didn't like to talk to people unless she had to, but she was smart and she was talented. Or she had been before the world had gone topsy turvy. She was trying to make things work, and trying to find her peace. 

She was working, doing her job and then she was going to go home and sleep. She was going to eat a whole back of her favorite snack and get a good cheese high. It was all that was on her mind and all that she could think of really when she was working. She was headed to her next assignment and wearing a bandage already on her arm and couldn't help but sigh as she stepped into the office that she needed. She waited patiently, to be appointed and told what to do and where to go. It was that easy and that simple for her, until she got spells and other things thrown at her.

Leaning against the wall she sighed and pushed some long hair away from her glasses.

Didn't You Know

Outfit

When Andromeda had claimed that she had this plan to take over the Ministry, Griffith hadn't quite known if she was kidding or not. But she hadn't been. There had been no jest in her words as she had told them that she had every intention of taking the Ministry of Magic. But what had surprised him more than anything, was the fact that Rodolphus had chosen to step aside, and name him as his successor. He knew that there were other options. Of course, there had been other options, but really, Griffith thought that he was the logical one. It was a rather, convoluted, situation that their family found themselves in. They were all related without really being related at all. Rodolphus and Andromeda were family, in the sense that he couldn't really explain what they were. They were a little bit of everything, depending on the situation, depending on what they needed them to be in the moment. That was something that Griffith didn't think came around all that often. Something that you didn't think was going to make any sense, and probably never would. But if you lived it, you just knew. You couldn't explain it… But it was there.

It was a sense of something greater than what was right in front of you. It was a sense of belonging to something. And he belonged to that family. He belonged in a way that he hadn't really considered that they had belonged before. Because they had. The Yaxleys were Twenty-Eight. But they weren't the kind of Twenty-Eight that was exclusively tied to Twenty-Eight. They married outside of the fold. They didn't choose witches that were going to link them to other people. They were a rather solitary group within the group. And he thought that they were going to have to work that out. They were going to have to try and make sure that people understood what it was that they believed. Because while they were not the traditional sort. Griffith thought that it was plain as day that he was very much in support of this new regime. There were Yaxleys all over this Ministry really. His uncle was here, and his sister. His cousin. He knew that Sloane wasn't going to be a Yaxley too much longer, and that she didn't really have anything to do with the Ministry, but Carlisle did, and he was to be her husband one of these days.

Things were changing all around them, alliances were built, and torn down. Things were made to be what they were. They were made to grow, and change, and that was what he was realizing was happening here. The Ministry was growing, it was changing, and he had to admit that he hadn't been expecting that. He hadn't expected that a group of women, no matter who they were, and how powerful they were, could come in here, and start setting things to rights. They were moving again. There was momentum again, and he knew that that was a good thing. He knew that they were going to have to try and work out what was best for everyone. They were going to have to try and come up with a solution that kept everyone on track and wasn't looking to get anyone killed. That was his job. At least, Griffith had made it part of his job. He was going to look out for their Minister. Part of him wanted to assign her a protection detail. Aurors that they had trained, and trusted, to keep an eye on her. It was likely to get him a lecture, but he wasn't sure that it was the worst idea he'd ever had either.

Running a hand over the back of his neck as he made his way down the hall, he thought that he would have to see what he could do about maybe just mentioning that. Perhaps to Rodolphus first, since mentioning it to Andromeda was likely to get him smacked before she had even thought it all the way through. There were some downfalls to being family and being treated the same as she would have treated her own sons. Because he seriously doubted that she would have smacked someone else for just trying to keep her safe, but he would have gotten smacked. If he was going to run this office the same way that Rodolphus had, he knew that he was going to have to think about it. That he wasn't going to be able to protect her just because he wanted to. Because there was no way that Rodolphus would have offered her guards. He would have just done it himself. Though Griffith thought that he had a little better vantage point for that than he did. But that was beside the point. He was headed down the hall towards his own office after stopping in his uncle's and Madam Graves', when a girl caught his eye. "What are you doing?" She was leaning on the wall, as if she were waiting for something, but he didn't know who was in charge of training today. If she was here for his own trainees, or if she had gotten the worst end of all of this, and she was going to be subjected to Rabastan.

This was a life that she was scared of, something that she had never wanted to face but diversity made things difficult; especially in the onerous way that the wizarding world seemed to think of her and the people like her. The one thing that seemed to be rather common was the distaste for her kind. Leslie had wanted them all to run away. She had wanted them all to leave the country and start afresh in America, she had wanted to do it, but her mother had said no. Brooke had had a hard enough life thus far with the divorce and her father not being in her life, Lydia had not wanted to make things harder than she needed to, but if her mother could see the way that things were, Brooke knew that she would have changed her mind in a heartbeat.

Things were so difficult for them at times, she barely slept and she ate constantly (when she had food that she could binge that is), she had to keep her fucking shit together. She was trying, but it was hard She was just a kid. She didn’t ask for any of this. She didn’t ask for anything, she didn’t want any of it, but instead was forced into this life, she would rather die at times. She would rather spend her life in solitude or something along those lines. She didn’t want anything more than this, but she was a good girl, a quiet girl.

The Death Eater approached her and she stood and then lowered her head. ”I am waiting for assignment, sir. I was not given one for today. “ he said softly and respectfully her eyes looking past his chest. Not making eye contact was a master skill for her. ”I was told that I should wait for assignment for today or the week, whichever would please.”

Taking over the Ministry was not something that he had expected of the woman that had become a part of his family in a way that he couldn't quite explain. There were times when Griffith thought of her as a friend. As Davina's friend. And then there were times that she was more parent than she was anything else. He didn't quite know what to classify her as. She was Andi. And now she was the Minister for Magic. She was something that he had never seen coming, And now they were stuck in this cycle that he couldn't quite explain either. Because she was the Minister, and Rodolphus was heading the Death Eaters, and he had gotten Rodolphus's old job. Honestly, Griffith had thought that there would be more of them that would have put up a fight about working for a witch, but they had surprised him. They had gone about this change as easily as any of them could have hoped for, and he thought that that was a good thing. He didn't want to have to protect her from people that were supposed to have been on their side. Granted, Griffith wasn't sure what side anyone was really on, but they weren't attacking one another so he thought that they were okay right now.

In the grand scheme of things, he thought that he wanted to get her some body guards or something, and he knew that he had been shot down about that idea. But he thought that if he could get someone to listen to him, he might actually have a point. They could all admit that Andi wasn't the best at making sure that she herself was taken care of. She was going to be more preoccupied with the country, or the boys, or Rodolphus. She wasn't going to be focused on making sure that no one was tailing her. That no one followed her when she went out in public by herself. Griffith had seen her handy work first hand, but he knew that there were plenty of people that could underestimate the middle Black sister. She wasn't like her elder sister. She was not the Lady Lestrange that either of the last two of them had been. She was not the Malfoy that her younger sister was. She was a different kind of witch all together, and Griffith thought that her encounter with Death, as she so eloquently put it, had changed her.

She had had a total disregard for her own safety the entire time that he had known her, but now, now he thought that it might have been at least looking into getting someone to keep an eye on her. He knew that Rodolphus was perfectly capable of looking over his shoulder when they were together, but he didn't think that they were the date night kind of couple. They didn't go out. When she did go out she was alone, or she had the boys. Griffith didn't think that he could be faulted for wanting to at least consider the possibility of someone maybe making sure that no one tried to assassinate her. Ministers had gone around with aurors at their sides for decades. It wasn't a new thing. And it wasn't like he wanted them to follow her around the building. She didn't need to create any wider of a berth than she already did in the corridors. But he thought that having someone shadow her if she were to leave the building, until she got back to the castle, wasn't a terrible idea. She was the Head of State for Merlin's sake. They couldn't just continue to let her wander about on her own.

He knew that it wasn't going to go over all that well if he brought it up, and he thought that the best way to go about bringing it up might have been to bring it up to Pansy. He thought that if they could get the idea out there, if they could get it in someone's head that it wasn't the worst idea, he might have a shot of actually getting it accomplished. He knew that she was going to hate it. He knew that Andi was likely to skin him alive, and Davina was likely to just tell him that he was an idiot, but he honestly thought that they at least needed to talk about ti. They needed to go over the issue, and not just write it off because Andi pushed them to let it go. Someone had to stand up to her, and he was family. The girl in the hall pulled his attention away from that though, and he focused on her instead. "You've been sent to the aurors or the hit wizards?" He knew that they both used whatever came their way, but if the girl was Rabastan's he would at least ask the other man before he sent her to his trainees instead.

She didn’t like this, but Brooke knew one thing and it was simple. Self preservation was something that not many people could really grasp, either you had it, or you didn’t; and in their world, being a muggleborn meant that you died if you didn’t. She had watched people come and go as they either died or were assigned to replace maids, butlers or gardeners who did. She was thankful she had not been pushed into one of those position. As miserable as she was with her job, she knew that things could be much worse for her, so she was trying to not take anything for granted in that moment. She just wanted it all to end, but she would take the beatings that came her way.

She watched the man as he spoke and then ducked her head in respect, tucking dark hair behind her ear as she lowered yet eyes to the ground hands clasped before her. She tried to be respectful, because she valued her life, she wanted to live and find some sort of happiness, a way to know that things weren’t so miserable without a reason. ”The aurors, My Lord. “ She knew who the Yaxley male was, he was handsome she supposed but he wasn’t really her cup of tea. She leaned more towards the feminine looks personally, but then she was gay, so that was a lot of it.

”I was told that if you have no need of me, I should seek out the other department.” She hated going there, she hated the things that were said, and the way that she was looked at, but that was how things were for her.

Having them all in the alley was working, he supposed. There had to be some better way to do it, but that wasn’t really his problem. Griffith had other things to worry about that weren’t what it was going to take to keep them where they were now. That was Andromeda’s problem, and from what he could tell, it wasn’t even really a problem. Griffith thought that they were pretty set the way that they were now. Everything that was Griff’s responsibility in this place was on this floor. He didn’t have to worry about more than that, and even then, he reported to his uncle. There was a chain of command in this place, and he didn’t step outside of it. He knew that he had been gifted his position here, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t take it seriously. With everything that had gone on, Griff actually did care about the auror’s office, and making sure that things were done right. He wanted them to have a solid future in front of them, and that meant that he did do things the way that he was supposed to. Even if he didn’t always like it, he did listen, and sometimes that was enough.

He wanted to push further on some things. There were mudbloods out there that had never been accounted for. Some that had run. And he knew that he wanted to make examples of them, but he also knew how difficult that might have been. It wasn’t as simple as a black and white world anymore. There were shadows, and grey areas, and things that he couldn’t help. Circumstances that changed everything along the way. He wasn’t sure that that was something that they needed to talk about though. No matter how true it was, he didn’t need to broadcast the reasoning behind the fact that they had never gone looking for the Potters. There was a reason, and the family knew it. As much as Griffith hadn’t wanted to believe that that was the reasoning, he found himself ignoring it the same way that Rodolphus had before him. Because he loved her. Because he wouldn’t be the one that did it. There were plenty of other things to focus on. Things that weren’t going to hurt the family. Because family had to come first. It always had, and those were his puppet strings.

She was good at pulling the strings, and she now held the strings of the country in her hands. She was commanding the nation, in the same way that she commanded the family. Rodolphus might have been the Head, but when it came to the Lestranges, Andromeda was the heart, and watching them now, he had to wonder just how long that had been the truth? Just how long she had been the one holding on to his heart? Griffith didn’t know a lot about Azkaban, but he knew enough, and he knew what they said about Rod… that he hadn’t lost himself in there. Even if he hadn’t, there wasn’t anyone that didn’t lose something, and he had to wonder… The way that he was with her, the way that things just seemed to look… To him it seemed so possible that that was the truth. That she was the thing that he had lost… The puppet master behind it all, and Griffith knew that he was just a puppet too. When they had given him this job, they had kept it in the family, and that meant that the family was staying in control. Control, once possessed, was not easy to give up.

He knew that. He knew how easy it was to want to hang on to that. To want to have something to cling to, and they had done their best to take it away from the mudbloods. They didn’t want them to have much control, and they certainly had deprived them of a good deal of hope. They were manipulating, and they were strong, and Griffith thought that that was perfectly clear in the fact that they hadn’t so much as tried to rebel against them. That there had been no push back. The girl in front of him now was young, younger than even he liked to think about them being, but that didn’t change the fact that she was there, and assigned to his aurors. Training had been a part of his job before he had taken over for Rod. He had liked training the younger ones, and he nodded when she said that she had been assigned to them. “Come along then.” He nodded down the hall, and set off in that direction towards where some of the younger recruits were sitting at their desks. They could make use of her yet, he was sure about that.

-Didn't you know?

tag: @griffith // words: 311 // notes: ---

Living was the goal. Living to see the next day, it was all that she needed to do. She just needed to make it through to see the sun rise and she was happy. She knew how to do this, she could survive Kolna she could live with the loneliness, it was all easier than they made it seem at times and she could do this if she could just push through. She hurt all over, she was tired and she wanted her mother, but she she could do this. She was no longer a child, and in their eyes her age mattered not.

She was always scared. Especially when she had to go to see Lestrange. Those were the times when it was hard to think that she would make it through the day. It was hard to sleep knowing where she would be going, but she hoped that this day would be easier. She had dreams that they would give her coffee and doughnuts and get to know her, treat her like more than wat they thought she was, but she knew that was not what was going to happen. She would never be treated that way by them because she was nothing to them.

With her head ducked she followed the man, biting her full lips and trying to not make eye contact with anyone. Shame flowed through her every time that she did this, their words and looks, the jeers that came from some. She was a person, regardless of her blood and their words shouldn’t hurt her, but they did. Her feelings didn’t matter to them, her words, her mind, her heart, her soul, they were nothing because she was filthy. She was nothing. She would be nothing, but at least she was alive. At least she wasn’t dead.

”As you wish, My Lord.”

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