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Date: 20 June 2019
Location: Lestrange Castle

It was well past midnight, but Rodolphus had not yet thought of going to bed. Sleep was not something that had come easily to him for a long time. He couldn’t truly remember the last time he had slept easily. Before Azkaban, the first time. When life was so much less complicated—when he had been more man than monster, when there was actually something redeemable left in him. But he had not been that man for a long time.

Most of the time, he did not miss that man. He did not care or wonder how life would have been different if he had gone down a different path. There was no reason to waste thoughts on such matters. He was Rodolphus Lestrange. The Lestrange name had struck fear in wixen in the United Kingdom for a long time—far longer than the Dark Lord had been around, but it had been he and Rabastan that had truly given them something to fear. The pair of them had been a force to be reckoned with, once upon a time, as had Bellatrix. It had just been the three of them, and their quest for power, and infamy, and everything else that the Dark Lord had promised them. There was not a name more feared in their ranks than Lestrange, even before Azkaban had tarnished them. Changed them. Molded them into different beasts entirely.

Those that went into Azkaban did not come out the same. There was no denying that. Whether they had been in the prison for a month or a decade, the place warped people. Some came out completely unrecognizable. He had been no exception to that. Most of his adult life had been spent in Azkaban. More years of his life had been spent in the prison than out of it—and the same could be said for Rabastan. In some ways, he was more used to a cell in the bowels of the prison than he was in the Lord’s suite at the castle.

Perhaps that was why sleep so often eluded him. He had grown used to sleeping on the cold stone of the prison, in whatever contorted position he could manage that night. He was used to the darkness of those solitary cells, to the sound of the rats and vermin that shared the lower cells. The sound of the waves crashing against the outer walls, a constant reminder of how deep down into the prison he was. Of how a watery death could await him should the stones of his cell fail him. After years of that, going to sleep in the massive bed, with the soft sheets and comforter, was next to impossible.

He slept when he can. There had been more of a reason to with Andromeda in his bed. Her habit of sleeping nearly entirely on top of him had helped, somehow. It had also kept him in the bed, and sometimes lying there was enough to bring sleep to him eventually. There was not much of a reason for that now. There were nights when Dani was here, there were nights when Lilith was here, but most nights, they were not. He saw little reason for either of them to sleep here. He had not rented Lilith a flat for her to not use it, and Dani still had that unfortunate husband to go home to. No, most nights the castle was empty apart from him, and the boys every other week. It meant there was little reason to retire to his bedroom when he knew that sleep wouldn’t come until much later.

The castle was quiet, though it often was. Still, the silence of the halls and the lateness of the hour made the cry easy to hear even all of the way from his office. For several minutes, he thought nothing of it. When a baby cried, Andromeda got him. Rabastan got him. A house-elf got him. Or, more often these days since two of those options were obviously now not really possibilities, Lilith got him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had heard one of the boys cry, and he had thought to get up and do something about it. He didn’t comfort children, he didn’t rock babies to sleep, change diapers, or feed them.

But…

Nobody else was here. It was the middle of the night. Lilith was not here, Dani was not here. The house-elves were possibly home, but possibly still off completing the task that he had given them earlier that evening. That was of the utmost importance, and not something that he wanted to pull them away from because a baby was crying. Maybe he would stop. Whoever it was. Maybe he was crying for no reason and after a couple of minutes, he’d fall back to sleep. Or lay there and not sleep, like his father, but at least not be crying. That was fine too. Rodolphus had no preference on the actual sleeping, it was just the not crying bit that he was currently worried about.

He refocused on the work at hand, which needed to be completed before the Interrogation unit started for the aurors-in-training. But the crying continued… for another minute, and then another, until nearly ten minutes had passed. Clearly, this was not just going to stop on its own, so he put the work down and got to his feet. He went down the familiar path to the nursery—not familiar because he spent much time in there with the boys, but familiar from how many times he’d taken this same path to find Andromeda there.

The room was dark apart from the nightlight, and he hesitated in the doorway for a moment before stepping the rest of the way into the room. His eyes moved from one crib to the other. It was Arcturus that was blubbering, though it was probably a miracle that Roarke hadn’t joined in by now. It looked like he was awake. Sighing, Rodolphus headed over to elder of the two, eyeing him for a moment. How did one pick up despondent toddlers? Wasn’t he too old to be rocked? Or held? Salazar, he didn’t know.

Grumbling to himself, he scooped the boy out of the crib, only for him to cry louder. “Yes, I know, you like your mother better,” he muttered as he headed over to the chair. “Funnily enough, so does my brother. You’re not alone.” Rodolphus dropped down onto the chair, before starting to do his best attempt at rocking in some kind of comforting way. The mindless rocking continued and so did the crying for a time, before it settled down into whimpering, and then nothing. Breathing slowed into the telltale signs of sleep, and still, Rodolphus sat there, much like when the boy’s mother had fallen asleep on him, not moving in fear of waking him.