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[attr="class","cbody"]The fact of the matter was, he did not know who he was without magic. It was a truth that he wasn’t likely to admit, but it was true nonetheless. He was a man without magic, and he did not know what that meant. He did not know what he was supposed to do, or who he was supposed to be. And he had no idea what to do about that. Fixing it was something that seemed impossible, but he knew that it was not a good thing at all for him to be this bored. That never did him any favors. Andromeda had struck some deal with the Order members that had met with her and it had involved immunity up until a certain point. He had abided it, had not done anything too reckless and had not even taken one Mudblood or Muggle into their dungeons since then.
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But if he stayed this bored, he knew how it was going to end. And without magic, he did not have too many ways of letting off steam that would be considered healthy. Instead, he knew he had to figure out a way to keep busy. Was getting a job at the Ministry the right decision? He was unsure. He had left the Ministry for a reason. As much as he did not mind his wife having power, he did not want to work in a position that was under her. He did not think that was something that he could do and the best way that he could support her was by leaving that position. It wasn’t as if he was incredibly attached to heading up the aurors’ office anyway. He had taken the job because Wentzell had offered it to him and he was not going to turn down a position of power in the Ministry.
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But in the end, it had been a lot of paperwork and he had not mined getting rid of it. If it meant that his wife could be Minister, and he could support her without getting irritated about him being her boss, then he would do it. It had been the best decision at the time. He hadn’t minded not having a place to go every day. He had his journals and his experiments, and his other obligations. There had been ways for him to fill his time.
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With the epidemic striking down his magic, he had no idea what to do. He had just been angry for a long time, and he did not know if this was going to help. He thought that there was a good chance that it wasn’t. That paperwork would prove to be just as annoying as he had found it before, and that this would do nothing to help him at all. But he would not know that for sure unless he gave it a shot. There was a position available, so he had seen no reason not to take it. If Griff hadn’t wanted to give him a job, then so be it. He would have figured something else out. But since there had been a job to give, Rodolphus was going to give it a shot. There was simply no reason not to.
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Someone had to turn these kids into half decent aurors. That was something that he was capable of. Death Eater recruits had been coming to him for years. Fathers had brought their sons to him to ask them to mentor them. Yes, he could not necessarily use the same methods of teaching here in the Ministry, but there was no denying that he knew how to teach combat. He had been a warrior all his life. It was the one thing that he knew that he was good at.
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Whether or not his wife would see it that way remained to be seen. But since he was here, he saw no reason to keep it from her any longer. He had a job in the Ministry again. She was his boss—a few rungs higher up the ladder than before, but still. “Head of Auror Training,” he confirmed with a nod. “With nothing amusing in the dungeons, it seemed like a good idea to fill my time with something.” She had to understand that. She knew that he had been relatively intolerable lately.
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[attr="class","cbody"]Being without magic was not something that he should ever have had to come to terms with. It shouldn’t have been a possibility. But it was one. There was no denying that. It had happened and a cure would come or it wouldn’t. There was no way to know for sure. Rodolphus knew that keeping the country running was the Ministry’s top priority, and finding a cure was the hospital’s, and the foundation’s. He knew that was what was going on at Lestrange Foundation, though he did not have much of an idea what they were doing for sure. He didn’t do much with the foundation.
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It had the Lestrange name on it, but it wasn’t something that he was interested in. It had been Andromeda’s idea, and an idea that Rabastan had jumped right on board with as well. As long as it didn’t fail, he didn’t care if it had their name on it. If it did, then there would be problems. But he was quite certain that his wife and his brother wouldn’t allow that to happen. They were rather determined and invested in the place. He had only been there once or twice since it had even opened. The medical field in general was just not something that held any kind of interest for him.
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But it did give his brother something to do. Rodolphus knew that was for the best. Rabastan did not do all that well when his mind was not occupied. He had not been in a good state of mind after Azkaban and he was doing better now. He was almost normal. He had a job to focus on, somewhere to go every day. In some ways, he envied him for that. Rodolphus did not feel like he had much of a point or a purpose. He had no job to go to, nothing to focus on. Without magic, there was little use in even creating. If he could not experiment with spells, if he couldn’t try them himself, then he was not much of a spell inventor. His position on the Wizengamot was not much of a job. Sitting through cases did not take up too much of his time, since there were not too many trials that required the full court. If they didn’t, he was not the person that they asked. For good reason. It was not the way that he wanted to spend too much of his time, and they knew that. So he was usually only called in when the whole court needed to be there.
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Taking his boredom and frustration out on people helped him to feel a bit better. Most people did not need a reminder of who he was. Most people were not stupid enough to no longer fear him just because of the epidemic. There were so many ways to make people suffer without using magic. So many ways to torture and to kill without a curse or a spell. Sometimes, people did need reminded of that.
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Some Mudblood on the street was of little concern to him. The vermin was hardly even worth his time. Even the few words that he’d spoken were lost on her. If he had his magic, she would have been writhing on the ground in pain already. But that was not an option. Instead, he stepped closer to the creature, a hand coming up to grip her jaw firmly between his thumb and fingers. “That could very easily be arranged,” he warned, his grip on her only tightened in warning. He could lock her in his dungeons and grant her the slow death of starvation. Somehow, he doubted she would be spewing sarcasm after a week with no food in her belly.
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[attr="class","cbody"]His mind had gone to Lilith for whatever reason, and he had decided to see what would happen if he wrote to her and summoned her to the castle. Rodolphus had been sure that she would come. No part of him had thought that she’d even think to deny him. Even from their brief meeting last year, he had learned enough of her to not believe it was in her nature to deny a man anything. So, on a whim, he had written to her, and had told her to come to the castle. He had no thought of trying to see her elsewhere. He had known what he wanted from her, and why should he come to her to get her on her back? No, summoning her to the castle had been the only choice, really.
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He had known that Andromeda wouldn’t like it. If he had invited her to join him, she would have played at being darker than she was. She had those moments. Moments when she wanted people to believe that she was a Black, that she could scare and intimidate the way that a Black should. But he did not think that was something that she had inherited. It was not something that they all had. Narcissa had no inherited such a gene either. Bella… of course, she had. She had been the Black that everyone knew, that everyone feared. No matter what Andromeda did, she would never hold that fear for herself. Even if he put a plaything in front of her like Lilith, he knew that she’d play the part. But she wouldn’t be fooling anybody.
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And he hadn’t wanted his good time ruined by that. He had made sure to summon Lilith when he had known that Andromeda would not be around, for that precise reason. He wasn’t even sure exactly where she had been. Off with Rabastan, perhaps. At the foundation. He didn’t know. What had mattered was the fact that she was not home, and he could take his time with the Squib that he had brought into his home.
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Her body had been as good as he had remembered. And this time around, he had been able to take his time with her, as he had been unable to do in the dress shop. He had introduced her to things that he had not been able to before—pain mixing with pleasure in such a way that she had surely never experienced before. There had never been pain without pleasure. He was in a good mood, so there had been no reason for it. Rodolphus was sure there would be a time when she would catch him while in a poor mood and he would take it out on her, but that hadn’t happened that time around. Instead, he had just enjoyed her. Enjoyed her reactions to everything that had hurt and felt good throughout the time that they had been together.
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Rodolphus had not summoned her thinking that it would be something that would happen again. But it had put him in a good mood—by his standards anyway, for the first time in over a year. For the first time since Andromeda had made the ridiculous decision to take the Ministry for herself, honestly. Now Lilith was his pet, and he knew that buying her clothes was an easy way of making her happy. The happier she was, the more she would be willing to do. And, when a bad mood did strike, it was much more fun to tear down and demean a happy person. Building her up only to break her down would likely prove to be an enjoyable game. Time would only tell.
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He knew that he’d pick out some things to buy her even if she hated them. Things that were his tastes, that he wanted to see her in—and then likely rip off of her. But letting her pick out what she liked was important too. “Well, then it is yours.” It was easy to please her with these things, but it did leave him wondering when the last time she’d went shopping was. Did she even know her own size? He didn’t want to buy something if it didn’t fit her—having to come back here because she’d chosen incorrectly would annoy him. “You’ll try it on first,” he decided, waving over a store associate. The girl took the dress from Lilith to start a fitting room as they moved on. The next dress was… different. Not as much of his taste, but he did very much enjoy the back. When she spoke again, he raised his eyebrows. “What pleases you about it?” Something was on her mind, and he’d rather like to hear how she decided to answer that question.
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[attr="class","cbody"]May had brought changes that he had not been expecting. An understatement, actually. A part of him had always known that Andromeda would eventually come to realize that he could not give her what she wanted. She had acted like she didn’t need a husband that could actually be a husband. Like she didn’t need someone that could tell her that he loved her too, and take care of their sons, and be the type of man that most women wanted. She had acted like she hadn’t needed or wanted that, that she only wanted him, but a part of him had always thought that it was going to come to this. That it was always going to get to the point where it wouldn’t be enough.
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He just had not thought that it would be with his brother that she found that ‘enough.’ That had been the surprise. Rodolphus had recognized the telltale signs from his brother. But he had never thought that Andromeda would reciprocate that. He had certainly never thought that she would cheat. But she had chosen what he’d always told her that she’d want in the end. The softer man. The husband. The father. The things that he had told her he couldn’t be. He had warned her, after all, and he had ended up being right.
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That was fine. He had no attachment to Andromeda. Since she had become Minister, their relationship had grown more strained in his mind. He had looked elsewhere and had never hid that. And now she was with a man that would worship her like she was a goddess on earth. If that was what she wanted, that was what she was going to get. That was just the way that Rabastan was when he loved. That would work with her, or she would tire of that too. She was a woman that seemed to tire of things quite quickly, after all. Flighty had been a word used to describe her in more than a few conversations he’d had in passing weeks, and in whispers in conversations that he was not even a part of. Her support in the purist circles was certainly waning. And without that support, what did she even have? The Order would never trust her again. Really, by the end of this visit from the ICW, she might have Rabastan and nothing else.
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But that was of little interest to him. There were much more interesting developments that had been made this month. He now shared custody entirely, which meant there were full weeks where he had the boys at the castle. Lilith was nannying them now, of course. Andromeda had wanted him to keep up Sonya, or whatever the hell her nanny’s name had been, but he had not needed a nanny more loyal to her than to him. Lilith was certainly more loyal to him, though he had still warded Andromeda out of the castle. He had little doubt what would happen if Andromeda showed up while Lilith was there. Better not to risk that at all.
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By the time he was done with Lilith, he thought she would be more than able to kick Andromeda out of the castle herself but for now, he didn’t think that was much of a possibility.
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Then there was the matter of Dani Kopitar-Higgs. She had been a pleasant surprise. He had always known of her and had always known her, but not well. He knew that she was married to an imbecile, and that any purist would be idiotic to cross her. She held more social power in their circles than just about anyone. And their last meeting had been… beneficial. They had talked about his wife’s lax protocols and what the ICW’s visit meant for the United Kingdom and for the Death Eaters. Personally, he thought that making their time here more challenging had its benefits. It would certainly make things complicated for Andromeda, that was for certain, though that was not the sole reason he thought that it would be fun. There were, in his opinion, plenty of good reasons to challenge their presence here.
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That wasn’t entirely why he was here today. He had never been to this club before, though he’d recalled that Andromeda had bought them memberships. Dani had intrigued him, but their last meeting had been business. Today was something else entirely. Assuming she was even here. His eyes flitted over his surroundings with mild interest, before he waved over a house-elf. “Find Lady Kopitar-Higgs if she’s here—and bring me a whiskey neat.” He said, as he sat down at one of the stools by the bar. The house-elf squeaked out a response that he barely paid attention to until a rocks glass appeared in front of him. He nodded in thanks as the house-elf disappeared again.
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[attr="class","cbody"]The events of the last couple of weeks—longer than that, honestly, were ones that he should have expected. Andromeda was much more suited to Rabastan than she was for him. He had told her a long time ago that he was never going to love her. That he could never love her. It was not an emotion that he was capable of. Once upon a time, it had been. Before Azkaban, before years of solitary confinement had made him into a different kind of man, it might have been possible. He had still not really felt emotions the way the rest of the world did. He didn’t know if he had been born that way or if years of his father’s teachings had made him that way by design.
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But the fact of the matter was that Andromeda was a woman. Despite what she wanted to say about what she did or didn’t need, she was not different from other women. She wanted someone to love her back. When she told him that she loved him, he either didn’t answer or told her that he knew. He would never be able to say those words back to her, and he knew it. She knew it too. Rodolphus had given her an out when she had realized that she was pregnant, and she had not taken it. She had said that she didn’t need a man like Colin Ferguson. A man that would be a good father, that would love her and be more of a husband than he could ever be. It had taken longer than he expected for Andromeda to realize that she did need those things. All along, he had known that they would get here eventually. He knew that Andromeda was not the woman that she was pretending to be.
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He had not thought that she would realize that she needed a man that could love her back, and that man would be his brother, though. That was something that had been more of a surprise. He had seen the way that Rabastan acted around her, he knew his brother well enough to know what that meant. But he had not thought those feelings would be returned. He remembered very clearly when Andromeda had wanted wards in their bedroom so Rabastan couldn’t get in and all of the times when she’d implied that she’d feel more comfortable if Rabastan didn’t live with them at all.
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Yes, he had seen those opinions changing over time. Being out of Azkaban had done well for Rabastan and he knew that his brother was more stable now than he had been in a long time. But it was certainly quite the change to go from being afraid of the thought of him being able to come into the bedroom, to spreading her legs for him. Quite a change indeed.
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He had decided that Roarke could obviously not remain in Andromeda’s care given the current state of things. He was his, and his was Blair’s. With Blair gone, and Andromeda switching brothers, there was no reason for her to have Roarke anymore. Arcturus—fine. The fight to get him from her would be impossible, but Roarke was not biologically hers. He would not stand for a cheating, flighty blood traitor to raise his heir. He had enjoyed how much the thought of losing Roarke had hurt her. He had enjoyed her begging more. In the end, he’d conceded to joint custody. For now, anyway. Maybe the ICW would do him a favor and arrest her. There were too many people who had committed crimes in the United Kingdom to arrest them all—but the Minister that had continued the registration of Muggleborns? Maybe she’d be in chains by the end of their trip here.
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But for now, they would be switching by the week. He had the boys until next Wednesday. That was fine. Sophia had been fired—he was not going to have a nanny in this house that was more loyal to Andromeda than she was to him. Instead, he was going to have Lilith watch them. She had experience with children, with the added benefit of being around to shag her when he wanted to. If she trusted herself to take care of them, then he trusted that.
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Since he’d spoken to Dani earlier this week, she had been on his mind—and so had what she’d told him. The concerns that she and other Death Eaters had, because of the ICW and because of the changes in policy that his wife had made. But currently, his mind was more on the ICW. Their arrival gave them something of an opportunity. Perhaps it was time to stir up some trouble. Carefully, of course, in a way that would not lead back to him specifically. Or at least, not give them any proof. They would all likely know who was responsible. But that was fine.
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It was past dinnertime when he left his study to head into the kitchen. He was certain that Lilith was putting the boys to bed and then she’d likely go back to her flat. But he was quite sure that she’d managed to find time to make something for dinner too. Or at least, she’d thought to tell the house-elves to make something, because the familiar smell of good cooking overwhelmed his senses as he got closer to the kitchen.
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As he had expected, a meal was what he found when he made it into the room. Setting the plate down at the island, he poured himself a drink before sitting down. After a quick break from work, his focus could go right back to his plans for the ICW.
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[attr="class","cbody"]Finding out that his wife had been sleeping with his brother had not come as much of a surprise as maybe it should have. Rodolphus knew his brother. He knew him well enough to know what the signs were when he fancied himself in love. He had seen it with Bellatrix, and he had seen it growing with Andromeda over the passing months. And maybe he should have cared more than he did. Most men would have. The slight of an unfaithful wife should have offended him beyond belief. Perhaps it would have. But his patience for his wife had been waning since she had decided she wanted to be Minister. Her having power wasn’t the problem. It was everything else about the situation that had grown to irritate him.
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He had gotten bored. It wasn’t entirely surprising to him. It wasn’t that he had been faithful through their relationship, because he hadn’t been. If he wanted a pretty young thing, he had her. Sometimes, he’d had her with Andromeda. Their marriage had been far more interesting before she had been Minister. That was when it had all started to go downhill. Her regulations toward Muggleborns had gotten more lenient, and she had started to lose favor with the Death Eaters and the true purists. She had been losing ground with them for months. She would continue to now.
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The Death Eaters had been the power behind the Ministry since the original takeover. When Wentzell had control of the Death Eaters and the Ministry, he’d had all the power he needed to implement changes and keep the wizarding United Kingdom under his thumb. When he lost that power, Andromeda had gained it. She’d had the support of the purists, and he’d had power over the Death Eaters which had put more power in her corner. There had been no stopping her with the purists behind her and the Death Eaters as the power behind the Ministry. But that had started to change. She could deny it all she wanted. She could play at having power just because she could call her Minister and she could sit behind that desk.
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But the person who was the Minister was rarely the one that had the most power. The Dark Lord’s reign had been proof of that. The Minister had been a figurehead, while he had held all the power. If Andromeda thought she was the most powerful person in the United Kingdom, she was kidding himself. He couldn’t tell if she was that naïve or not. It was just not what was of significance today. She was growing more insignificant by the day in the eyes of the purists, whether she wanted to admit that to herself or not. And now, there was something new to contend with.
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Word of a team coming into the United Kingdom from the International Confederation of Wizards had been whispered about since word had first leaked from the Ministry. He wasn’t entirely shocked that they had stepped in. It had been months with the Ministry making no progress with the epidemic. The economy was practically down the drain, it was a wonder they hadn’t devolved into full chaos. It had been longer still of an unstable government, led by two people in a row that had no experience in politics. Wentzell had not had a political background and as much as Andromeda wanted to play at being Minister, neither did she. Rodolphus was sure that the ICW was there just as much for the state of the government as they were for the epidemic.
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He had his own opinions on just what they could do with this information. The smart move was to keep their heads down. International Wizarding Police had accompanied the team and he knew that they’d likely love to put Death Eaters in international prison. He imagined that was likely a hell of a lot worse than Azkaban.
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At the same time, giving them the slightest push into chaos… that might just prove to be fun. They had come here to solve the problems in the government, weren’t they? Maybe it was time for a bit of fun, time to stir up a few more problems. It was something that was certainly on his mind, though he didn’t know how much of that had to do with how enjoyable it would be to cause more problems for his wife. The epidemic, the failing economy, the presence of the ICW, a custody battle and the Death Eaters causing problems? There was only so much one woman could take, after all. Yes, that could definitely prove to be at least a little amusing.
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The woman that asked to meet him here was an enthusiast of chaos. He had no doubt about that. He wouldn’t be surprised if that was why she had asked to see him today. The choice of venue was a good one. He appreciated it. The last time they were here, he had been announcing their change in leadership. This time, he was unsure just what they were there for, but he knew that he’d find out shortly. “Making time for you is most worth it, my lady,” he answered, with a smirk, watching her as she stood up fully from her curtsey.
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As he had assumed, this meeting had to do with the team that had arrived from Geneva. He considered her words, then gestured at the closest pew to where they were standing. “Please, sit…” He offered. There was no reason for them to discuss this while loitering in the aisles. He joined her moments later, taking a seat next to her. “Go on.” He had the same concerns, of course, but he wanted to hear what she had to say about it first.
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