It ain't me

I ain't no millionaire's son

I ain't no fortunate one

Carlisle was trying to figure out what he was supposed to be doing. He couldn’t just keep staying at home. He had been in the school, and he had given that up when Andromeda had changed it back to Defense instead of Dark Arts, but there were certainly times when he missed it. He would have taught Defense. Maybe he should have asked to stay on. Maybe that was what he should have done. But now? He knew that he couldn’t do that now, and he didn’t think that Macmillan would have kept him on anyway. He didn’t know the witch, but he thought that neutrality seemed to be the point over there now.

Everything was rather neutral leaning, or he thought that that was what Andromeda was trying to do. Taking meetings with Potter, and Shacklebolt. The thought made him roll his eyes, but he knew that it wasn’t his choice, and he didn’t really care. He didn’t care who she was going to take meetings with, if it meant that they were going to get their magic back. Without magic he didn’t know what any of them were doing. Today he had had to be in the Wizengamot. It was his turn to sit in on the little cases that they were presenting today. But he had wandered out to get coffee.

And now he had made his way up here instead of going back downstairs. He had no real purpose for being up here, but he knew where his feet were taking him. Rodolphus’s office. Of course, it wasn’t the same office that he had had before. That was Griffith’s now. And Carlisle seemed to feel worse knowing that they were both here. That they were both doing something and he really didn’t have the qualifications to do anything. He could teach. But he couldn’t go back to Hogwarts, and he couldn’t teach Spell Invention without magic. Not unless he got Avery to hire him…

Maybe that was the answer. Maybe he would have to go out to Locksley and see if he could get Avery to hire him, even without his magic. They were going to train them to be soldiers, warriors. The police force. They were the ones training the law enforcement recruits, and he thought that he could do that. He could teach them like he had taught at Hogwarts. He could teach at Locksley. That was the only thing that he really knew how to do. And he had been good at it. There were plenty of them, even the Order’s kids, that had actually learned something from him.

He would get there though, they would figure it out. He would figure it out. Going to work at Locksley would mean going back to work though, and it had been Sloane that had asked him to give up Hogwarts. She hadn’t wanted him to go back. But working at a university was different. Working there meant that he would still be home every night. It wouldn’t be as all-encompassing as it was to work at Hogwarts. You had to give up a part of your life to be a Hogwarts professor, no matter how prestigious that was. He had liked it, but he thought that maybe he’d like that too.

Right now, though, he had come up here, and so he thought that he might as well see how Rodolphus was liking being back in the Ministry. Getting out of the house and doing just about anything had to be better than this. Knocking on the door he opened it at the same time. He didn’t think that Rodolphus was likely to yell at him for coming in unannounced. “Well, look at you, back behind a desk…”

Rodolphus Azazel Lestrange • 624 • carlisle's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]It ain't me, it ain't me,

[attr="class","cscriptde"]i ain't no fortunate one, no no no

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]It ain't me, it ain't me,[break]
I ain't no fortunate son, no no no

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[attr="class","cbody"]The decision to come back here was not one that he’d made lightly. It had been months since the Epidemic had left him—had left all of them, apart from Griff, without magic. In that time, he had been waiting for a cure that might not be coming anytime soon. He knew that medical research could be slow. Creating a cure would take time and even then, there was no way of knowing if the first attempt would even work, or how many attempts they would actually get through because they found the real solution to the epidemic.
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Without magic, work on any new curses and spells had needed to be indefinitely suspended. There was nothing that he could create without magic. There were other ways for him to pass his time—he had always enjoyed reading, but there were only so many books in the bloody house. Since the meeting with Potter and Shacklebolt, Andromeda had been talking a lot about clemency and how he couldn’t get caught doing anything illegal. At least she hadn’t told him not to do anything illegal—just not to get caught. Rodolphus didn’t know why that mattered all that much since she was still Minister. Unless she was planning on passing the reigns off to Shacklebolt or something, Sazalar help them.
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At this point, he would not be all that surprised. Rodolphus had not thought that she would like being Minister and as far as he could tell, she hadn’t. He thought that she was much more suited to the foundation that she seemed to enjoy so much. She and Rabastan worked hard on that—it bored him to tears, but he didn’t have anything to do with it. Rodolphus knew that he could have been a board member, but nothing about that place had honestly interested him all that much. He’d leave that to them. It felt like his wife and his brother were spending a fair amount of time together these days. He had noticed that.
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Not that he thought they were up to anything. He didn’t think that he was at risk of losing his wife to Rabastan, though his brother’s attention had seem to fade from the witch he’d said he was going to marry. Where that attention would fall to next? Rodolphus was less certain of that. But he supposed he was not all that surprised that the courting of Athena had fallen through—it had been the talk of engagement that had caught him off guard to begin with.
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But maybe he would have another witch in mind. Only time would tell when it came to Rabastan. It wasn’t really something that he cared to put all that much thought into. His brother would get married or he wouldn’t. Either way, the Lestrange line had its heirs. Now they just had to find a cure to the epidemic, so they didn’t have to concern themselves with the possibility of their sons being Squibs somehow. Figuring out how to deal with that, however, was not his forte. Healing magic never had been.
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Combat had always been what he was more suited for, which was why training the aurors had only made sense when he’d decided to come back here. He would whip them into shape—probably break a few in the process, but that just came with the territory.
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When he heard a knock on the door, he glanced up, expecting Griff or someone like that, but instead seeing a face that he often didn’t in the Ministry. “Better behind a desk than sitting at home,” he said, with a chuckle. Working under his wife was a hell of a lot better than practically being a stay-at-home father—minus the actual parenting. He’d leave that to Andromeda and the house-elves. “You have work here today?” There was a chance he’d had a case to deal with that was small enough that Rodolphus hadn’t been summoned in as well and honestly, better him than Rod. Wizengamot cases got rather dull.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]671 ● @ carlisle ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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IT AIN'T ME

I AIN'T NO MILLIONAIRE'S SON

I AIN'T NO FORTUNATE ONE

When he had heard that Rodolphus was back at the Ministry he had been surprised. If there was one thing that had been perfectly clear when Andromeda had said she wanted to take the Ministry, it was that Rodolphus would not work for his wife. Carlisle didn’t think that he was a man to go back on his word very often, and so the entire situation made him rather curious. There was no reason to think that something was wrong. There was no reason to believe that this was indicative of some other change, but it was unexpected. That he would go back on his word was not something that he had ever expected of the other man.

He remembered the advice. No matter how drunk that he had been. That the older wizard had given him, even if he hadn’t meant to. He had had a choice, and he had been faced with that choice. The one between what he was supposed to do, and what he wanted to do. And he had listened. When he had explained that there was a choice to be made, he had listened, and he had to hope that he had done the right thing. For himself, he thought that he had. He thought that Sloane was the right choice. But it still made him worry. It made him want to go up one more floor and see his cousin. If she was jumping ship here, he wanted to know.

But he hadn’t come here to bother the Minister. He had come to bother Rodolphus, and Griffith. Sloane had had something for him to drop off to her cousin, and so he had done that, and then he had found his way down the floor to come in here. He rather liked Rodolphus, and he thought that he might as well get answers from the horse’s mouth about whether or not going back to work was the right idea. It had been rolling around in his own head for a little while, and he didn’t quite know what he was going to do with it, but he had to do something.

There had to be something that he could do, and Locksley seemed like the answer. He had liked teaching. But he knew that he couldn’t go back to Hogwarts, and he wasn’t cut out to work in the Ministry. He didn’t think that there was anything here that he could have done. He wasn’t trained to work in any department here, and he didn’t really want to work with this much family anyway. They were far more academic than they wanted people to believe. One of his sisters was a professor. The other was a journalist. He was a Spell Inventor. They were smart. All of them.

Carlisle didn’t think that there were all that many people that expected that the Death Eaters were actually intelligent. But a good majority of them were. There were CEOs, and Department Heads, and lawyers, and journalists, and inventors. There were Unspeakables, and Deans and professors, and everything else that people didn’t think of. They were everywhere, and he thought that it was crazy to imagine that he could go back to doing that. He was a good at it. He had managed to make even the Light blooded students pass Dark Arts.

Carlisle was glad that he was met with a chuckle when he let himself into Rodolphus’s office, and he shook his head. “That I can agree with. Being home is driving me mad.” And he knew that he hadn’t been home as much as Rodolphus had. He had been home for nearly a year now. That would have been maddening after working here. At least here there was something happening. “Nah, brought something by for Griff. Thought I’d come see you. Maybe go bug your wife. You know, fill my day with being a nuisance.”

@ rod • 652 • carlisle's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]IT AIN'T ME, IT AIN'T ME,

[attr="class","cscriptde"]i ain't no fortunate one, no no no

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[attr="class","clyrics"]IT AIN'T ME, IT AIN'T ME,[break]
I AIN'T NO FORTUNATE SON, NO NO NO

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[attr="class","cbody"]Being back in the Ministry was not something that he had honestly expected to happen. When he had left the Ministry, he had been nearly certain that he would not be returning. He did not enjoy his job so much to miss it. Work at the Ministry had always been more of an obligation than anything else. It was not been something that he’d been at all interested in before Azkaban. Back then, he had cared more about power in different forms, and invention. It had only been when Wentzell had taken over the Ministry that he had found himself with a job there. He’d had three, actually, since he’d taken all of the ones that had been offered. He had been the Ministry’s executioner, he had of course taken his seat on the Wizengamot, and he had been asked to be the head of the aurors’ office.
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It had really only been the latter position that he’d been unsure of. Killing for the Ministry was something that he could do with ease, and he knew that he had to keep his seat in the Wizengamot. He could technically pass it along to Rabastan but when the Ministry had first been taken over, his younger brother had not exactly been the most stable person in the world. He couldn’t very well expect him to sit in on cases back then. Now? Now he probably could, in all honesty. He was much more stable now than he had been back then.
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But at this point, there was little reason to give up his spot in the Wizengamot. Rabastan was busier than him these days. It seemed like his younger brother was always off doing something. Between his wife and Rabastan, it was no wonder Rodolphus had felt like he was sitting around doing nothing. They were both either off working or conspiring together doing Salazar knew what. Rodolphus knew his brother well enough to guess what was on his mind. Whether or not Andromeda had those same suspicions remained to be seen, in all honesty. Maybe she did. He had said it to her more times than he could count. She knew that he was not exactly husband material. He had given her that out when she had been with Colin and he hadn’t given it since. But he knew that she was still well aware that there were things a husband could give a wife, that he would never be able to give her.
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It wasn’t that he didn’t want to give her those things. It was simply that he was incapable of it. Before Azkaban, it might have been possible. There were parts of him back then that had still cared. He knew that he’d thought he had loved her back then, and he hadn’t been sure if he was able to love anybody. But he had come out of Azkaban harder than he’d entered it. Those pieces of him had been chipped away. They were so far separated from him that he could barely remember feeling that way at all. He could remember it—the memories, anyway. But the feelings that he had back then were different now. He wanted her to be safe. She mattered to him. But he did not love her. He was never going to love her.
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And he thought that Rabastan did. Or at least, his brother fancied himself in love with her. Whether it was real or just because he no longer had Bellatrix… that remained to be seen. There was no way to know that for sure, but he knew his brother well enough to see the familiar signs. He treated Andromeda similarly to how he had treated Bellatrix—minus all the elixirs and potions they’d commonly taken back then. That was not something that he thought his wife was going to start partaking in. “I was starting to feel like the bloody nanny.” He didn’t actually watch the kids, but still. He was there, they were there. It was absolutely ridiculous. “Sounds like a productive use of your time.” Rodolphus added with a chuckle.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]684 ● @ carlisle ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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IT AIN'T ME

I AIN'T NO MILLIONAIRE'S SON

I AIN'T NO FORTUNATE ONE

Carlisle knew that in the course of the last two years, their entire lives had changed. All of them. From he and Sloane, to Rod and Andromeda, Griff and Davina. It was complicated. And he knew that there were always going to be things that they didn’t understand, but he was certainly thought that if there was one thing that they could all relate to, it was hating doing nothing. There was nothing that they hated more than that, and he knew that he had given up his job willingly. But he had had magic then.

He had had something else to do. Now he just was home, and brooding, and he thought that he was likely to really just annoying Sloane more than anything else. She could still work. Perhaps she wasn’t brewing, and creating new liquors, and all of that. But she had her company to run. She had all of that to worry about managing, and she was working, and it was driving him crazy to just go to the Wizengamot when they called and have nothing else to do. He was going to go a little crazy if he didn’t find something to do soon.

And he had heard that Rodolphus had come back in here. He had heard that his cousin’s husband was going back on his word, and that was honestly something that he hadn’t expected in this particular case. He thought that the older man would have stuck to his words when it came to not working for his wife. Carlisle wouldn’t have put it past him not to work here just out of pride. But if he had come back, it made him feel like maybe he wasn’t the only one that was going a little stir crazy at home. And the last thing that they needed were a bunch of stir-crazy Death Eaters.

Perhaps they were a little less dangerous without their magic, but Carlisle didn’t honestly think that they couldn’t cause quite the problems if they put their minds to it. There was plenty that they could do. There were plenty of things that they could get up to. But Andromeda had made the truce with the Order, and he knew that he would never hear the end of it from his wife, or his cousin if he got sent to prison now. He had managed to avoid it the first time. There had been fines, and fees, and workloads. They had not been the prime of the Rosiers. But they had managed.

Growing up the way that Edmund had had made him a better man now, or at least that was what Carlisle chose to believe. Their children were not going to repeat their sins. They had seen the fall. Or at least his had. Rodolphus’s children still fit in Andromeda’s lap. And but he thought that the fact that she was their mother might mean that they weren’t quite as blinded by principles as they had been growing up. He had seen his brother die fighting for a cause, and had only known that he too was going to die fighting for what Evan had believed in. That had been his defining trait.

And their children had only seen the aftermath of war. Not the actual fighting of one. Carlisle did not regret fighting in that war. He wore his Dark Mark proudly. He was always going to be a Death Eater. He had learned that pride from his father, and he wanted to be the kind of man that his father had been. A good father, a decent enough husband. He had been good to his mother, even if he hadn’t been faithful to her. And he had proved that he was that kind of man. But he was trying to do better this second time around. He wanted to be someone that his kids could be proud of, that his kids would mourn. Even Lucy had mourned Father, and they hadn’t gotten along nearly as well as he and Father had.

“I highly doubt anyone mistakes you for the nanny. I’ve seen your nanny…” There was no question about that. Whether Andromeda had hired the nanny for aesthetic value or not, it hadn’t hurt her being around their castle. “But wasting all of your time seemed like a much better way to spend the day than home with Brenna.” Not that he really minded being at home with the baby, but still. He thought that this was at least semi productive. “Besides, I had to see for myself that you were back.”

@ rod • 766 • carlisle's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]IT AIN'T ME, IT AIN'T ME,

[attr="class","cscriptde"]i ain't no fortunate one, no no no

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[attr="class","clyrics"]IT AIN'T ME, IT AIN'T ME,[break]
I AIN'T NO FORTUNATE SON, NO NO NO

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[attr="class","cbody"]There was a chance that he would grow tired of this job. He knew that. The last time he’d had a job at the Ministry, he had been bored within the month. But he had kept it. With Wentzell in power, he was not just going to willingly hand off any measure of power in the Ministry. There had been no way of knowing just when that power would prove to be useful, and he’d intended on keeping his hands on it for as long as possible. That hadn’t been necessary when Andromeda had taken over. He had not needed the position anymore, and he had not wanted to work for his wife. It had really been quite simple. Passing the job off to Griff had been an easy choice to make, and for a while, he was glad to be rid of the responsibilities of the job. It had been a lot of work, and it had not been work that he enjoyed doing.
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The work that he had now was right up his alley, though. He had been instrumental in the recruitment of Death Eaters in each uprising, and initiation into the group was certainly not as easy as joining the Order was. There were trials to get through, tasks that were not for the faint of heart. They could not have just anybody become a marked and masked Death Eater. Only the best could stand among them, and he had been a big part of figuring out who the best had been, once upon a time. Training them, seeing who had what it took and who didn’t—it was something that he had been quite good at. He always knew which ones would break under the pressure. It was something that he could see in their eyes day one.
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Training up the aurors was not the same as training Death Eaters, obviously. In fact, if anyone had ever told him that he would be training aurors in his lifetime, he would have laughed in their face. But the aurors now were different than aurors in the past. With a purist Ministry, their job descriptions had been altered slightly. Yes, there was general crime-fighting and all that nonsense to attend to, but some of their tasks could require his kind of apprehension, or, better yet, his kind of interrogation style. There was plenty that he could teach them—as long as Andromeda wasn’t in Griff’s ear about his methods.
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Being out of the castle was certainly better than being there, there was no doubt about that. Training aurors was much better than sitting at home with the nanny and the boys. He would leave sitting home all day to them, because he much preferred this. Even if it was still a lot of paperwork, even though there was no torturing—physically torturing anyway, there were certainly ways for the head of the auror training program to torture his trainees. That was just in the job description, in his opinion anyway.
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Rodolphus had not expected a visitor in Carlisle, but he didn’t mind the man’s presence. In fact, he might even have some suggestions for trainee torture—he had taught at Hogwarts, after all. Surely, he’d come up with amusing ways to torture students without actually laying a hand on them. That could teach some valuable lessons. “Yes, as have I.” He didn’t know if Andromeda was hoping to get the witch into their bed at some point, but somehow he doubted it. She seemed to like her as a nanny, and he didn’t think she’d want to replace her after a romp in the sack with the pair of them. It was probably not the best idea. “Well, here I am. Trying to figure out the best way to torture the next generation of aurors. Any suggestions?” He raised his eyebrows at the man, hoping that he’d have some suggestions.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]652 ● @ carlisle ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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