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Great expectation, the propensity for crimson glory — they wear it in the stitching of their clothing, heavy in their gilt seams. In expectation, what Dickens wrote of was the sacrilegious, never the sacred. A Greengrass is always this, are they not? At the very least, a Lestrange is.

Dynasty and devastation, rule and ruin.

“Oh?” It’s a disbelieving utterance, her eyes narrowing into dark-lashed crescents. If not a living gaze at her back, surely there laid one of those feeble, ghostly spectres of the dead. Haunted by legacy, blessed with glorious, absolute ancestry. Did he not suffer the same? But to be of the exquisite elite was never truly to suffer, except in the impurity of others.

“Haven’t we progressed beyond assumption? Here, I thought we had a common understanding,” she lilts, and without any semblance of permission, raises her hand delicately against his cheek. It’s cold, it stings; silver faucets and black seas, crystal decanters and marble pillars. “Beauty, but with none of its sharpness.” Her words, soft but unkind. She disapproves, this much is obvious, but his absolution lay in his veins, thick with divine purity.  

“Subtlety, darling.”

Such devotion, unbridled and feral in its conviction, hung like a cowl on her shoulders. Miles didn’t have to recall her name to know her for what she was. This is the path their forefathers set on, and here they were gladly taking the mantle. Dogs striving for dominance. Miles should be one in the games, just as eager to claw down and sing praises for their purity. But he was just a husk. A parrot repeating a greater someone’s words.

Her touch disgusted him. Dried ice against warm skin. It burned, not because of its impropriety nor the drip of condescension that gathered at her feet, but because he knew her for an entity his father wanted him to emulate. A true pureblood heir, and all the natural airs that came with it. With a steady hand that belied his weakened state, he gripped her wrist, applied enough pressure to burrow in between the ulnar styloid and triquetral and pushed it away.

“A common understanding perhaps, but our views surely diverge on the means to reach it,” face contorted in defiance as he looked down at the book she cradled. “Tell me… do you aspire to be the ‘prince’ when the dust settles?” Mockery laced his tone. Miles felt cold and it added to the ache in his body, the child in him that refused to die fussing for his removal.

“Excuse me?” she said her eyebrows raised as she stared at him in disbelief. “One, you wish you could be blessed with me even thinking about you, two, don’t you ever disrespect me like that. I don’t owe you anything you filthy pig.”

Lips twisted into a facsimile of a smile, it almost looked painful on his face as his mind tried to war with the fact that a muggleborn dared stand this close to him. “Did I stutter?” His words came soft and languid, but it didn’t drive the hint of menace burning in his eyes. “One, don’t fool yourself, love. You’re going to be thinking about me this whole day. And two... Augmenti,” icy blue light erupted from his wand, gushing towards her face with cold water. “Looks like I just disrespected you again. Now I’ll say it once more, get out of my way, you filthy mudblood.”