I'm a little more

bust ya back than take it for free

And that’s how I'll always be

So, he could have had better timing. And he knew that. But Harry had taken the meeting when he could get it. And he had owled Yaxley last week, and he had only responded yesterday with a meeting time almost an hour after he had gotten the letter. Harry was sure that it was supposed to be some sort of situation where he answered, and didn’t expect him to be able to show, but he had made it work, and he had made the meeting, and he had convinced him to give him the job. They couldn’t really afford not to, after all. They needed all of the help that they could get.

And he knew that there were plenty of people in this office that he wasn’t going to like. That there would be plenty of tension in that department, but so long as he could avoid internal conflict as much as possible, they would be fine. There weren’t all that many of them that still had their magic, and Harry thought that the worst that they could do was get the jump on him. But he had been fighting for his life since he was a kid. He knew how to get out of here if he had to. And there was a part of him that was glad to be going back to the Ministry.

He was glad that he had some purpose here again. And he wasn’t the only one. Adaline was here now, and he knew that Kingsley had taken a position as adviser yesterday as well. They were slowly gaining a foothold in the Ministry again, and that was something that he thought that they weren’t going to have. Certainly not with a Lestrange as the Minister for Magic. But it was not one of the Lestranges that they had fought against before. No… It was Andromeda. And that made it different in every aspect. Because she was a Lestrange. And Harry was nearly certain that her first loyalty would be to her husband, and her own children. But she had taken Adaline back as well.

Asked her to come, was the story that he had heard. And he thought that by slowly taking them. Potters. And Shacklebolts. There was a bit less Lestrange showing in the woman that he now knew that he didn’t know. There was a time when he thought that he did. When he was certain that he knew the woman that he had spent time with, helping with Teddy, and then around his own children as well. She had been family, for a long time. And she had a different family now. One that Harry was still trying to get used to.

It was that family that he knew that he had walked into the middle of here. He knew who used to run this office, and who ran it now. He knew that the Head of the Auror’s Office was never too far outside of the Minister’s pocket. Though he did not pretend to know how all of the purebloods were interconnected, he knew that many of them were. Still, it was not Yaxley’s office that his eyes had drifted towards, and Harry only pulled out of his thoughts when the door opened, and the man that he had been trying to avoid thinking about being in this office all day, appeared.

Nodding once, but not taking his eyes off of the other man at all, Harry spoke, “Lestrange.” They were going to have to work together. They were going to have to figure out how to exist in this office. And he knew that while a Lestrange and a Potter could work together one floor above them, Level Two was not Level One.

Rodolphus Azazel Lestrange • 626 • harry's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[nospaces]

[attr="class","cbg"]

[attr="class","cbgtop"]

[attr="class","cimg"]

[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]But lend me your heart

[attr="class","cscriptde"]and i'll just let you fall

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]Lend me your eyes, I can change[break]
what you see, But your soul you must keep[break]
Totally free

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]Coming back to the Ministry had been a necessary choice. The whole reason that he had left was to avoid working in a position subordinate to his wife. But the Epidemic had shifted those priorities. He had realized that there were worse things than working for Andromeda—and one such thing, was not working at all. Most of the time, he just stayed home. He read. He drank, smoked an occasional cigar, while Andromeda worked all day. It was not acceptable. If his father had been alive, he wouldn’t have stood for his son doing something like that. Rodolphus didn’t often think in terms of that. It had been so long since his father had died, and so long since he’d needed his approval. Not that getting it had been all that hard to do. As far as being a Lestrange went, he had always excelled.
[break][break]
But he could not sit at home while Andromeda worked. That, in his mind, was far worse than working in a Ministry that she ran. Any position that he could get would keep him more occupied than he was currently. And when he realized that the head of the auror training program had moved onto Locksley Institute, that had seemed like the best option. Heading up the entire office had always been a monotonous amount of paperwork but training the new aurors—that could even prove to be interesting. Or so he had thought, anyway.
[break][break]
It hadn’t been bad. It was definitely something, though he’d had Andromeda on his back already. Every week, the new recruits were ranked on their performance and he had barely posted his first ranking when somehow word had gotten to Andromeda about it. She had brought it home with her and everything and had gotten all in a huff about how he’d done the rankings. Just because a girl had happened to be top of the class and now was near the bottom—as if that was his fault. Apart from that, it had been going well though. It was far better to have something to get up and do every day than it was to be stuck at home with no one but house elves and babies around. Feeling useless was not something he was used to.
[break][break]
And now he had something to do. Of course, his week had not been made better by the news that Griff had agreed to hire Potter of all people. Everyone in his life had started to make the most moronic of decisions these days—meetings with Potter and Shacklebolt, hiring the little Potter, and now hiring the bloody Boy-Who-Lived. Rodolphus understood that they needed people around that had not gotten sick, but this just seemed ridiculous. He didn’t know how Griff expected them to even work in the same vicinity.
[break][break]
Their work did keep them decently apart, at least. His job was to train the new aurors—and boss around the instructors that did most of the actual training. Potter was an auror. He had cases, he was in and out, and that worked out well enough. When he pulled open the door to his office and saw him standing there, he knew he should probably play nice. Murdering a Potter in the middle of the Ministry was frowned upon now, however tempting it was. “Seems like there’s a Potter everywhere I turn in here these days.” Whether he was on level one seeing Andromeda or here, there was always a bloody Potter around somewhere.
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]584 ● @ potter ● outfit

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

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I'm a little more

BUST YA BACK THAN TAKE IT FOR FREE

AND THAT’S HOW I'LL ALWAYS BE

Coming back to work in the Ministry was a choice. And he knew that it was one that Hermione wasn’t necessarily going to like. But it was one that he had had to make. And he knew that he hadn’t had to. He knew that he could have stayed at the Project, and left it at that, but he also knew that Adaline was right, and that he couldn’t actually do that. He couldn’t just sit idly by, not when he had his magic. Not when he knew that he could actually do something. He was Harry Potter, after all… And the choices that they had made to protect their children…

They had been the right choices at the time. They had been the choices that they had needed to make. The choices that had kept them all safe. Now? Now he wasn’t so sure. Now he didn’t know what it was that they were going to do, or when. He didn’t have answers. He didn’t have anything. None of them did. They had come back to a world that was even more in trouble than it had been when they had left. It was just a different kind of trouble. It was the kind of trouble that made him think that there were sinister things going on.

Harry had always been one to jump to the worst conclusions, but he couldn’t help it. He always tried to see the best in the people that he cared about. And he thought that he was half decent at that at times. But he also knew that he had a tendency to jump to the worst-case scenarios in any different situation. And that wasn’t something that he prided himself on, but it was something that had been the case ever since he had first come to know that he was a part of this world. This world that he hadn’t known had even existed as a child. The world that had had it out for him from the minute that he was born.

There was something about growing up like that that was going to make you a little skeptical of everyone. And coming into the Auror’s Department. Working under a Yaxley. Working in generally the same place as a Lestrange. Not just any Lestrange, because while Harry harbored some animosity for the woman upstairs, it was not the same as the man down the hall. The Lord Lestrange was someone that Harry didn’t want to be around at all.

Rodolphus Lestrange was a monster of epic proportions, and Harry was trying to not think about it. He was trying not to think about everything that had happened, and everything that he didn’t have, everyone that was no longer a part of their lives because of men like him. And it was men like him that were leading this department. That were training their new recruits. They were everywhere. He in this office, his brother in the other.

Harry had to hope that they had decent men and women working under them. People that were going to teach the recruits fairly. That weren’t going to discriminate. That weren’t going to do what they were doing just because of what their name was. Just because of where their loyalties laid. And for his part, Harry wasn’t too sure of anyone’s loyalties anymore. An Epidemic changed a lot of things. “The same could be said for a Lestrange.” There were three of them stalking these halls now. Two lords, and the lady. Every one of them with more power than the last.

@ lestrange • 598 • harry's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[nospaces]

[attr="class","cbg"]

[attr="class","cbgtop"]

[attr="class","cimg"]

[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]But lend me your heart

[attr="class","cscriptde"]and i'll just let you fall

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]Lend me your eyes, I can change[break]
what you see, But your soul you must keep[break]
Totally free

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]When he had come into the Ministry to ask Griff for a job, he hadn’t known just what job he would end up with. He had known that he wasn’t going to ask for his old job back. He had given that to Griff and he had left. He wasn’t just going to waltz in and expect it back. That was just ridiculous. But he had still be sure that there were plenty of jobs that were available. They needed as much help as they could get with the epidemic leaving so many of them without magic. Granted, he was without magic as well, but still. He’d had no doubts that he would be able to find something to do with his time.
[break][break]
And it had worked out in his favor that the former head of the auror training program had recently left the department. That was a position that obviously needed filled as soon as possible. Sure, he wouldn’t say that he was strictly qualified for that position. He had never trained an auror before. But hell if he hadn’t trained Death Eaters, and wasn’t that close enough? He thought that it was. Being a Death Eater was hard—getting through the trials were hard. If people survived that, and he helped to make that happen, then obviously he could train some aurors. They would be far better aurors with him at the helm than they would be with anyone else, in his opinion.
[break][break]
Like Potter. Merlin forbid someone put that man in charge of the next class of aurors. They didn’t need people like him in the Ministry at all but, for whatever reason, Griff had allowed him to rejoin the office. Rodolphus did not understand the logic behind that decision. He had magic still, yes. That was certainly beneficial when so many aurors were without magic. But he was still Harry Potter. He was not a person that was going to work well in an aurors’ office next to the likes of Griffith Yaxley, Rodolphus Lestrange, or Rabastan Lestrange right down the hall in the hit-wizards unit. Honestly, why did Potter even want back in the Ministry? That was perhaps even more suspicious. And yet, instead of asking those questions, Griff had just decided to let him come back.
[break][break]
It wasn’t his decision to judge, but it was hard not to. There were Potters everywhere these days. For whatever reason, Andromeda had hired the mini-Granger to work in her office and not as a veiled hostage situation. That would have at least been more strategic. On the surface, it was a job offer. Under the surface, it was a threat to keep the rest of the family in line. But that wasn’t what it was in the slightest. He was just surrounded by Potters because his family for some reason kept hiring them. What was next? Was Rabastan going to hire Potter’s wife as a hit-witch? At this point, nothing would surprise him.
[break][break]
And really, it was a surprise to him that she wasn’t lurking around here somewhere. She might have been a Mudblood, but he would not have been shocked to find her somewhere in the Ministry too. Then they would just really be everywhere. “Soon I expect I’ll find your wife lurking around the place. Won’t that be fun?” He said, dryly. He considered himself excellent at veiled threats when he wanted to be. And that wasn’t a threat, per say, even if he could think of plenty of reasons why it would be fun to run into her. Reasons that his wife would surely not approve of given the terms of their infamous meeting, but it was still amusing enough to consider.
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]618 ● @ potter ● outfit

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

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I'M A LITTLE MORE

BUST YA BACK THAN TAKE IT FOR FREE

AND THAT’S HOW I'LL ALWAYS BE

He hadn’t really thought that Adaline was serious when she had first suggested that he come back here. But then he quickly realized that she had been. And Harry knew that he had left for a reason. He knew that he had left because this wasn’t the place for him to be anymore. With Durant in the Minister’s office, things hadn’t been the way that they needed to be for him to function here. But now? Now what was he supposed to think? The woman in the top office was an enigma. To everyone it seemed. And Harry didn’t know what to think about that.

He had supported his daughter’s decision to come nad work for her godmother. If that was what she thought was right, then he was going to let her do it. He wasn’t going to stand in her way if she was working towards something that she thought might change the future. And he didn’t know what to think about any of the rest of it. Coming back now, when there were Lestranges roaming the halls, and Yaxleys back leading the Law Enforcement Department… He didn’t know what good coming back was going to do. Not really. But then he had gotten here.

And there had been a sense that proving that he was worth having, and making them tolerate him, was more than essential. He wanted them to think that he was needed here. And just working in the same room as some of them made his blood boil. A long time ago, and really even a short time ago, he would have fought them and not thought twice about it. He had fought them. In Diagon Alley that day. That had been the last time. The last real time that anyone had to draw their wands on one another. And that had been nearly three years ago now.

That alone seemed like it was impossible. That it had been nearly three years. But he knew that that was the case. Everything had changed in that amount of time. The world had changed. And he thought that it had happened a couple of times. There were faces that he didn’t recognize. People that he hadn’t seen before in these halls, even some that he had never met. And they were here. Filling the desks of people that he couldn’t even being to describe missing. There were people that would always leave a void.

Ron should have been here. HE should have come back with him. Kingsley should have been in the Ministry. Either in the office that Griffith Yaxley was occupying, or the one that Andromeda Lestrange sat in. His wife should have been here. Kingsley’s wife should have been here. There were faces around these halls that needed to be here, and that weren’t. Desks filled with people that he didn’t want to think about being there. And the man that was standing in front of him now was one such face. Harry thought that there would never have come a day when he could stand across from Rodolphus Lestrange, and not at least throw a punch.

Fighting with magic wasn’t fair when only one person had it. And Harry was a little worried that the older man could still handle himself in a physical fight, but he didn’t think that it was going to come down to that. He didn’t think that either one of them were going to be swinging at the other in the middle of the Ministry. Harry wasn’t going to get fired over something like that, and he had a feeling that being sent up to talk to the man’s wife wouldn’t sit kindly with anyone.

Especially not Rodolphus Lestrange.

Harry expected the taunting. He thought that it was something that just came with the territory when a big man, with a big ego, had been reduced to little more than the squibs and the muggles that he so desperately loved to hate. “I’m sure it would be. I think she owes a couple curses to some people within these walls.” Lestrange was one that Harry himself would have liked to curse, but Antonin Dolohov was another, and he thought that Hermione might just have it out for the older man. After all, he had cursed her twice.

@ lestrange • 719 • harry's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[nospaces]

[attr="class","cbg"]

[attr="class","cbgtop"]

[attr="class","cimg"]

[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]But lend me your heart

[attr="class","cscriptde"]and i'll just let you fall

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]Lend me your eyes, I can change[break]
what you see, But your soul you must keep[break]
Totally free

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]A job in the Ministry again was not something that he would have expected for himself. But when push came to shove, Rodolphus had needed something to fill his time. He had needed something to do. Filling his time with absolutely nothing had done nothing but fuel his anger and frustration, and he knew that it would only be a matter of time until he took that out on the wrong people. Or the right people, at the wrong time. These days, he knew that was a risk too. The arrangement that had been agreed upon during that little meeting meant that all Death Eaters needed to watch their step. Their actions would not necessarily come with no consequences anymore. He knew that as well as anybody. Andromeda had made sure of that, and he had no plans of going back to Azkaban in his life. Not now, not ever.
[break][break]
If the tides turned, if Shacklebolt or some other fool took over the Ministry, he would make the necessary decisions to keep himself from that fate. Too many years of his life had been spent in that prison. He would not so much as step foot in it again. No Lestrange would, if he had any say in it. He would not allow his brother to ever be sent back to that place either. It did not matter to him what he would have to do to make sure that didn’t happen. He would put himself into the grave before he went back to Azkaban—and he would do the same to ensure that his brother did not get sent back there either.
[break][break]
Rabastan had not done well in the place. Worse than he had. No one would know it, but Rabastan was more sensitive than he let on. As fearsome of a Death Eater as he was, Azkaban had truly been hard on him. The dementors had worn on him. Rodolphus hadn’t had that problem to the same degree. Although he had not always been… like this, he had certainly never been normal. He had never felt emotions the way that other people did. Dementors could not torment him with memories that made him miserable, because he had no sad memories. He wasn’t sure that he had ever really been sad before. They had only managed to take away the memories where he had been as close to happy as he thought he had been in his entire life. Memories of him and Andromeda in their flat. Her half-drunk off of wine and wanting to dance, their stops fo the Chinese place around the corner and the many times that he had watched her sleep, curls spread out on her pillow. He did have good memories to take, there was no doubt about that. But he couldn’t deny that prison had been easier on him than it had been on his brother.
[break][break]
Solitary confinement had been the hardest. It was impossible to keep time in such a place. He had shared the small space with more vermin than he had cared to think about. There was no reason to try to get them off of him. There was no spare room to even attempt such a thing. When he had first gotten out of Azkaban, it had not been uncommon for him to scratch at spots where he was sure something was crawling. He was just so used to something being there. An itch was never just an itch, it was a cockroach, a spider, a flea, a rat, lice. In Knockturn Alley, at the work camp and in those flats, it had not been much better. He had shared that space with vermin as well, but it had been an improvement. Things had improved greatly since then.
[break][break]
But he did not like the sight of Potters in the Ministry. That, in his mind, was most certainly not an improvement. Rodolphus had known better than to try to go after the Potters. He knew what that would do to Andromeda if he found them, so he had not looked. He had told Griff not to look. But that did not mean he liked them. It did not mean that he liked the sight of their spawn in Andromeda’s office, or Potter anywhere near the aurors’ office. It didn’t mean that he wanted his Mudblood wife anywhere near the place. If veiled threats helped to keep her away from the place, then he would gladly say anything that he needed to convince Potter that keeping his wife away from the Ministry would be in everybody’s best interest.
[break][break]
“And I’m sure they’d say the same.” He could not curse her now, of course, but there were other ways to cause torment. He was gifted at more than just curses, after all. It was something he’d had to fall back on more often these days.
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]813 ● @ potter ● outfit

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

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I'M A LITTLE MORE

BUST YA BACK THAN TAKE IT FOR FREE

AND THAT’S HOW I'LL ALWAYS BE

Leaving the Ministry had been a choice that he had not taken lightly. He had always wanted to be an auror. But when Durant had been in charge there were just some things that hadn’t been the same anymore. And now that Andromeda was in charge, Harry wasn’t sure that the situation was any better. He didn’t trust her. And he knew that Adaline had formed her own opinions of the woman. She was his daughter’s godmother, after all. But that didn’t change the fact that the witch that they had known then was not the same one that was sitting behind that desk upstairs.

And Harry was sure that all of them coming back into the Ministry had to be ruffling feathers. He knew that it had caused upheaval in his own home. Let alone in a home that’s residents wore the name Lestrange. The Ministry was a mine field, and Harry considered it to be a blessing that they weren’t dealing with casualties anymore. For a much as they all seemed to still hate one another, there was almost a sort of peace. Yes, the muggleborns were still in captivity, and they were going to still continue to fight for that. But they weren’t killing one another. As much as they were fighting, there was very little bloodshed.

Everyone had other agendas. Everyone had other things that they were working for. That they were going to try and accomplish, and that meant that they couldn’t go around killing one another. He had thought that it was nearly a joke when Kingsley and Hermione had come home, and they had said that they were going to hold the Death Eaters to some sort of peace treaty? A truce, really. It was an agreement that crimes of the past were pardoned. That nothing that they had done before that day would count against them.

Blank slates.

Everyone had a blank slate, and Harry didn’t know what to think about that. There were some of them that were doing good. There were some of them that he thought were going to be able to stick to it. The younger ones. Or the ones that had made names for themselves regardless. But there would always be those that he worried about. Lestrange. Dolohov. The ones that he thought had it out for him, and for Mia, more than just about anyone else. There would always be the ones that he was going to worry about coming after them. Truce or not truce. There were always going to be the things that they had to deal with. The lives that they had taken. The chaos that hung in the balance.

People that they loved, on both sides, were dead, because of the people that were living right now. And he knew that it went both ways. The man in front of him had lost a wife in battle. And whether or not he had cared about her, Harry didn’t know. But he did know that Molly Weasley had killed her to protect Ginny. He knew that Yaxley had been put in the hospital after the battle, and there had to be someone that he blamed for that. He knew that he had killed. That Mia had. That Kingsley and Oralee had. They all had the other side’s blood on their hands.

No one was innocent. No one was entirely in the right. And that was the travesty of war. That no one’s hands were actually clean. They had imprisoned the Death Eaters, sent their families to ruin. They had retaliated by coming after the muggleborns. They were still fighting the same war. Maybe it had progressed. Maybe they weren’t killing each other on a battle field anymore. But they were still fighting the same war. And he thought that there was a possibility that they just might always be.

Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the man that was supposedly leading the Death Eaters. A man that was working in a department that Harry thought that he had no business being in. Working for someone that was working for someone, that was working for his wife. Harry had to admit; it was a position that he had not expected to see the ‘great’ Rodolphus Lestrange in. “What qualifies you to actually work here, Lestrange? The fact that your wife is the boss?” Taunting him was probably the wrong move. But there was something about his question that was genuine. What was he doing here?

@ lestrange • 754 • harry's outfit

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[attr="class","ctopline"]But lend me your heart

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[attr="class","clyrics"]Lend me your eyes, I can change[break]
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[attr="class","cbody"]Rodolphus had not been a supporter of his wife’s plan to meet with Shacklebolt and the rest of them. He had thought that it was a bad idea, actually—simply because nothing good could come from it. What could they possibly want? They would try to act like they had the ability to help, like they could contribute to the cure or something like that, but there was no reason to think that was the case. There was no reason to give them anything or promise them anything, when they couldn’t prove they could deliver on whatever it was they were promising.
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If they had come into the Ministry with the cure in hand? That would have been another story entirely. But they hadn’t. They had come into the Ministry with nothing, and Andromeda should have turned them away, because they were nothing. Instead, she had worked with them, and now it felt like there were more unwelcome additions to the Ministry each day. First there was Potter spawn in his wife’s office, and now there was an even more annoying Potter in the aurors’ office, which meant that Rodolphus was going to have to deal with him far more often than the littler Potter. At least Griff hadn’t had poor enough judgment to let him be a training instructor. Then Rodolphus would really have to deal with him a lot. With him just being an auror, he would hopefully keep himself scarce most of the time. If he knew what was good for him, anyway.
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But if he had learned anything about Potters, it was that they never knew what was good for them. If they did, then Potter would have kept on walking. Instead, he had decided to talk to him, and to attempt to antagonize him. It was not an easy thing to do. Yes, there were ways to piss him off, yes, he was occasionally prone to uncontrollable bursts of rage, one of the many gifts that Azkaban had left him. But Harry Potter, of all people, did not have the ability to walk into the Ministry and rile him up by a few paltry insults. Honestly, he hoped that the man wasn’t really trying, because that would just be pathetic.
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He didn’t hate the job that he had at the Ministry. As much as he had not wanted to work under his wife, being without his magic had changed that tune. He would rather be working, doing something, than sitting at home doing nothing. If that meant that his wife was still in the Minister’s office on the next floor, so be it. It wasn’t as if he directly reported to her. It wasn’t as if he had to think about her at all while at work, or deal with her at all. He could focus instead on the aurors that he was overseeing. Training them was something that he had actual experience in. Yes, he was used to Death Eaters vying for their mark and not aurors, but generally speaking, it was similar enough.
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A dark chuckle passed his lips at the man’s words. Of course, he wouldn’t know just how many vicious Death Eaters had been trained by him—that had only gotten their mark when he had deemed them worthy. There was no reason for him to know that. Insights into how the Death Eaters were initiated wasn’t worth revealing just to shut Potter up. That was not worth it in the slightest. Instead, he went a different route. “Careful, Potter. I don’t need magic to know the best ways to hurt you.” He cared about too many people. Hadn’t he learned by now what a weakness that was? “It would be a shame if your daughter didn’t make it home from work today—or if your Mudblood and that creature she’s carrying just vanish off the street.” Accidents happened, after all. People just vanished in the blink of an eye.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]659 ● @ potter ● outfit

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