King Will Do

At the sight of Allard, the relief of him living was soon replaced with an electrocuted look she couldn’t hold back. Her husband, in a terrible state, clearly needing professional medical help, suddenly brought a new flavor of terror in Lara’s eyes. She sprinted to him, determined not to touch him until she concluded she wouldn’t do him any harm by it. 

She stopped closely and let a sharp sigh out. ‘’I’ll take you to St. Mungo’s.’’ Barely able to apparate herself successfully and usually insisting to be escorted if possible, she knew he was in no shape to do it and even if he opposed, hospitalization was the only thing he needed, even if it went without saying that everyone else he fought with was there as well.

@allxrd​

Allard knew Lara didn’t have the capacity to deal with the blows he’d been dealt, but it didn’t matter. After his first attempt at Apparating failed, he considered going straight to a hospital. He doubted he was the only one who’d disappeared from the field in a desperate need for a bed at the hospital. The thought quickly passed and made him feel guiltier than any infidelity ever had. The transportation was so painful, so suffocating, it felt as though he might’ve fully lost consciousness before he landed slumped over one of the chairs in their safe house.

Thankfully, Lara didn’t touch him. The hand he raised to place his fingertips on the familiar outline of her cheekbones and jaws proved he wanted contact with her - he was just embarrassed by the sound that might’ve escaped his mouth if he’d been touched instead. “We will...home first, then different fireplace...all Floo...” He hadn’t realized just how tired, how pained he was until he had to speak. “They can’t know...about this.” In his heightened state of paranoia, he feared someone might track where they came from if they used Floo transportation to get from their safe house to the hospital. The only network this fireplace was connected to was their home, easily destroyed or hidden by either of them as the rightful homeowners. 

Allard tried to push himself up but collapsed again with a groan. It ignited such a wild, sudden fire in his torso that shot up through his neck and forced his eyes to turn on Lara sharply. There was a new energy surging through him just long enough to ask the question he was despearte to hear an answer to. “Are we going to continue to be cryptic or shall we finally both tell the truth about which side of the battle we’re on?”

Allard Dupond is twenty-one years old, attending Hogwarts University, was a former student in Beauxbatons and spent a year in Ravenclaw.

                                              ❝Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains

↳ MAGIC

Allard was taught magic from the moment he was able to walk, seeing his governesses and tutors more than he saw his parents. Though he is not very gifted naturally, it has been counteracted by years of tutoring and often begrudging study sessions. 

↳ BACKSTORY

Allard Dupond, being the heir to his family’s name, estate, fortune, and all the respect and power that comes with it, has never wanted for anything in his life. Everything from basic needs to the most sudden and extravagant whims were served to the eldest Dupond son on a golden platter. As far as he was concerned for much of his life, he was the only real Dupond son. Olivier, his supposed younger half-brother, was treated like his servant for much of Allard’s life. Naturally good looks and his status and wealth made Allard among the most eligible bachelors in the wizarding world, something he was aware and very proud of. Possibly one of the most popular students at Beauxbatons Academy during his time there, he ruled the school with an iron fist and a charming smile and more control than most realized at the time.

Allard being a purist is no shock to anyone who knows his traditionalist pureblood family, but he tends to take it to a new extreme. Starting in his third year at Beauxbaton, he began implementing a social system that excluded muggleborns or half-bloods with “dirtier” blood. Everything was planned carefully, and went so seamlessly that it seemed entirely natural. By his sixth year, his influence with prefects and even some teachers was strong enough that a few bad words about a muggleborn was enough to change their opinion on the student. His pride and confidence only grew the more he saw his plan taking shape, and there were enough people who backed him (even unknowingly) to make sure everything was set into place and went along smoothly. However, it grew tiring having to look after those under him. Planning and manipulation is where his strengths lie, but he grows too bored, irritated, and uninterested with leadership.

He thought his reputation would never crumble, but he was foolish enough in some of his endeavors for a girl to end up pregnant in the middle of his seventh year. Before he could cover the mess up by himself, the news reached both his parents and the governors’ board of Beauxbaton. In a rush to get out before he had an expulsion to mar his records, Allard agreed to attend Hogwarts for his remaining months until NEWTS, with Olivier in tow.

He was not alone at Hogwarts upon arrival, either. Pierre Dubois, another former Beauxbaton student who transferred to Hogwarts, was an old friend of Allard’s. Eager to show-off, Allard often liked to include Pierre among a small circle of his friends that he exposed to the lessons and training in Dark Arts he received privately from tutors while at home. In some cases, Allard could be all too willing to use some of those friends as models to practice on, but all in the name of improving skills for the greater good.

Though Allard’s time at Hogwarts was short, it was enough for him to make an impression, for better or for worse, among different students. Within a week after graduating Hogwarts, a letter came to inform him that his child had been born early and was now residing and gaining health with the young mother in southern France. Even if bastards were hardly uncommon in the Dupond line, this was Allard’s first child, and it was a pureblood, giving it some reason to be spared. An almost unspoken rule of thumb was to always keep the firstborn child alive, legitimate or not, to account for any potential issues that may arise. With the approval of his father, Allard moved the child and mother to a family cottage in a remote location where he spent the remaining summer with them while tutors continued to come through and offer him more lessons. Starting out in university a term later than most was of no concern to Allard, as he was certain he would succeed there. He believed there wasn’t a problem he couldn’t fix with magic or money.

Magic can’t resurrect the dead, though, and no amount of money he was to inherit could truly make his blood what he thought it always was. Once someone who thought he knew the truth of the world, Allard might have suffered less if he was hit by a train than the waves of revelation that struck him repeatedly after his son was born. Pierre died in an encounter with a criminal who was on the run after sneaking out of Hogwarts, and Allard had to bury someone he viewed as a worthy friend and even a brotherly figure. His older half-sister, Marie, then made a dramatic and sweeping re-entrance in his life, and took off again with Olivier, perhaps always with the intention to share a secret that only a handful of people knew. Allard was an illegitimate child, conceived by an affair after his mother and Benoit Dupond were married. He was raised as the heir despite it all, and still remains the supposed heir even after the exposure.

The identity of his true father was one that remained a mystery for months on end, months during which Allard struggled to find a way to stand as tall as he had before. His magic suffered, he strove too desperately for Benoit Dupond’s approval that he already had, and he found himself in a curious scenario with the pureblood Lara Avery after Halloween masquerade ended with their departure together. Marriage was something he believed was for a man who was thirty or older, but there was something different about the girl who arrived without a mask to a masquerade, the girl who’d poured historical truth on an unsuspecting crowd through someone else’s mouth. By Valentine’s Day he was engaged, by April Fool’s Day he was a married man, and on his son’s second birthday he learned who his father was. Ambassador Dubois, father of the deceased Pierre Dubois, the boy Allard had often wished was more his blood than Olivier supposedly was.

Allard still works for Benoit Dupond, and still intends to remain the heir to the fortune and name, but he has distanced himself from his mother and the man he now views as no more than a boss and mentor. He wishes to branch out even more, part of him wishing for the power he felt when he ran Beauxbaton. His involvement with Jonathan Marks and his part in the attack on the Selwyn-Marks wedding have not been revealed, and he will do all he can to ensure they are not. He believes what Jon wants to do is very in line with what he wants to do, but Allard knows better than to let himself be exposed. 

↳ PERSONALITY TRAITS

» {+ positives} creative, humorous, intuitive » {- negatives} impolite, perverse, vain

↳ BASICS

» BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood » ELEMENTAL POWER: air » AFFINITY LEVEL: moderate affinity + studious » DATE OF BIRTH: 8th of December » WAND: 13 ¾ inches, vine tree,  doxy wing, slightly springy » FACECLAIM: Ben Barnes

Allard noticed the difference in her appearance and tone almost immediately. Their exchanges were always so light, so easy to forget afterward but still look back on fondly. He’d heard murmurings about what she and her friends tried to do, the things they talked about, but he still just thought of her as the pretty joke shop owner he’d first exchanged some flirtatious remarks with years ago now. Marriage, homewrecking, and battle scars hadn’t changed that. His first instinct was to bring some levity to the conversation again, and he had a few jokes formed and ready on the tip of his tongue. They rolled back down his throat and exploded in his chest at the mention of the Killing Curse.

Roxanne Weasley wasn’t fucking around.

It was a quick calculation he made as he took an extended sip of his drink. Her honesty only came because she didn’t know who he dealt with behind closed doors. It only came because they were friendly, not friends, and this conversation could be as easily lost from his memory as nearly every other they had before. If she was truly allied with the people who were one of the greatest threats to Jonathon’s plans, Allard wasn’t going to let this pass by him so easily. If she wasn’t…well, an open ear was a tedious but necessary start to open legs.

“We all see through this vow of peace,” he stated definitively. “I’m bored of it all already. We all are. This isn’t Hogwarts and it isn’t the real world we were prepared for, but it’s the real world we’re in. It’s not sick. It’s life now.”

“It’s life, but we are supposed to be sad about it,” she insisted, refusing to be comforted so easily, but taking a more matter of fact tone than her previous regret. “We aren’t supposed to anticipate it, to say,” she continued more feelingly, no doubt she actually was saying the words for herself and not continuing a point, “I hope I get to use my wand tonight.”

“ I want to draw first.” Now started she didn’t back down from making what she called sickness clear. “I was being dramatic about killing curse green before. I wouldn’t try that again. Not because I don’t think I could make it work, because I want pain and scars. I want to see the effects of spells that are supposed to only be seen in books.” She would tell him that she’d want to see them outside of battle, to immobilize someone and test several out slowly, but that comes close to admitting about Darius, or admitting she almost had done so again–would have done so again if given a little more time to pretend she’d exhausted other options– on someone who had done nothing to her and she only had Charlie’s word was so much as linked with anyone she should want revenge on as an upstanding citizen, and who wasn’t violent herself by his admission. She wasn’t stupid. Allard wasn’t to trust with everything. “I know I’m not the only one. Look at my cousin.” She didn’t specify which cousin, but Louis’s mania was common gossip. “But, you know, I think my intentions are less pure.”

“Are you bored of peace or are you just saying that to sound shocking?” She looked at him with hope, through the melancholy. Allard was normal, not moral by most standards but decent enough in her eyes that he would make her feel less warped if he felt the same pull she did. Not crazy like Louis, like Charlie showed signs of even though Charlie was quickly becoming her favorite kindred spirit, or worse then them both because anger and tendency to channel it into beating someone to pulp or throwing fireballs wasn’t half of the problem she was beginning to think she had–the one that let Jonathan draw comparisons that had sent her back into this spiral.

“Wise to play to your strength and realize your limitations instead of exerting empty control, posturing for the sake of it.” He kept his commentary brief. They had plenty of opportunities to discuss Allard’s business, and while their conversation was mainly playacting for an audience, as two old friends sharing a strange reunion they didn’t need to linger either.

“I have my own contact at the Prophet, but the political reporter might be more suitable. Please do introduce us. I wouldn’t call it sensitive, but you might have a more accurate insight to public perception. I can only speak for myself.” 

How was he? His most loathed question.

“That is too broad a question to answer without keeping us occupied for longer than would be polite to my other guests, but I have been doing well, despite some of the circumstances I have found myself in, hunted by the aurors.”

They were acting, something obvious to maybe more than a few present, but he didn’t care. He was ready to keep the conversation flowing for the sake of appearances, but something Jon said piqued his interest. “Who’s your contact at the Prophet?” he asked, the first genuine words out of his mouth in minutes.

Allard contained his smile to the pleasant width that would be expected, but it threatened to stretch wider at the mention of being hunted by Aurors. “And how brave of you to invite them all here tonight, along with nearly the entirety of the Wizengamot it seems? We don’t need to go through your whole guest list, but it’s an impressive one just from who I’ve seen so far. But, like you said, you have other guests and to talk to you too long would be impolite to them. Next time let’s not wait years to talk again.”

“Thank you. It’s surpassed my hopes. I can’t take much credit. The majority agree it’s time to come together in peace. It’s the only way we can truly move forward.” Jon maintained the surface level earnest speech he would have given any member of the press, though there was a light of amusement in his eyes. “If you want to solicit an interview, then just point me to the reporter you want writing it. I heard about your acquisition of the paper. I hope that’s not all you’re after though. Once we were close enough I was one of your groomsmen and we haven’t seen each other in…how long? Years!”

Allard smiled knowingly at the mention of an interview and shook his head. “I’m afraid our old acquaintance wasn’t something I was counting on for a story. It hadn’t even come to mind, actually. Since I took over I’ve been involved more with the business side - the advertisements, customer complaints, subscriptions, things like that. I leave the editorial decisions, and attempts at stories, to my editor-in-chief. Just until I have more of a pulse on the entire business.” Allard thought with all his experience with his father and school-learning he’d settle into his ownership well - but with every business there were little differences that made it impossible to prepare. It was painful sometimes to have to sit through people telling him about things he didn’t know about or might not even understand, and he didn’t like the idea of just blindly trusting others, but they’d been in the business longer. And after the backlash he got when he pushed back against them once, looking like an ignorant child throwing his daddy’s money around, he decided to alter his approach to management.

“If you’d like, I can put you in contact. I believe everyone deserves their chance to tell their side of the story, though I think the Prophet might reach a farther audience. I saw their political reporter milling about, but he might not be who you want for something so sensitive. Would it be sensitive? How have you been?”

“Does it sounds insincere if I say I am especially glad you made it tonight? I think  those words have come out of my mouth too much in the past hour. I’m not trying to come across as political. It’s a true statement for so many people.”

Allard couldn’t stop smiling. Allard was having a blast. Of course he initially wanted to speak with Jon right away, but he waited, knowing what it’d look like in such a massive crowd with varying levels of curiosity in both. Naturally a man who owned a newspaper would be interested in the man of the hour, but he waited to let Jon come to him. “I’m glad I made it, too,” Allard said. “What you’ve managed to put together is remarkable.”