may i fury.

{ non binary, they/she } huh, who’s TATI GABRIELLE? no, you’re mistaken, that’s actually DOVE LONGBOTTOM. they are a 25 year old MUGGLEBORN wix. they are the adopted child of NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM AND HANNAH AN. they are known for being CYNICAL, AGGRESSIVE, and RUTHLESS but also PRAGMATIC, JUST, and LOYAL. i hear they are aligned with THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, so be sure to keep an eye on them.

                            ↪ stats. pinboard. @mortemsignalboost​.

“Knock knock,” Dove quips, not knocking at all and not waiting to be invited in before entering either. There’s a small smile on her lips, a look of victory that’s a rarity. There’s a magically enlarged bag hanging over her shoulder ( a tote, with political screenprint and all ) that Dove drops on Hermione’s desk triumphantically. “Surprise! Brought a gift.” This really is unlike them: this near-giddiness. There’s still some soot clinging to her skin and they smell oddly of fire, but they’re grinning. Maybe I was born for this, she sometimes thinks, this kind of bloodshed, this kind of violence. But it’s not the destruction of earlier that morning that makes her grin, is it? It’s the twenty-something wands in the bag. She nudges it towards Hermione. “Well, not for you. For the youngins. But still.” 

They find themselves like this often: parallel playing, but there’s hardly any play at hand here. Has there ever been, really? Dove thinks back, sometimes, to childhood days and senses the same kind of dread that lives within in her now. Doesn’t matter, though: nothing will change that, but plenty can be done to try and change that for future generations. Either way, Ro is working on his thing, while Dove works on theirs. The potion book ( acquired through questionable means, don’t ask ) in front of them is stuffy, all brittle pages and dust waving up, but there’s some interesting things in here. “We should just try and get this potion into some purist dickhead’s water supply, I think. Poison their tea without setting foot in any of their houses.” They scribble down a page number in their notebook, take a small nip from their glass of muggle scotch. “How’s your thing getting along?”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. But then, that’s how the story always goes these days, doesn’t it? The things that aren’t supposed to happen, happen — these are bad things, ugly things, heartwrenching things. Dove’s eyes are bleary from smoke, shards of glass crunch under their boots and they squint, trying to find any of the other Order members that had come. Then, a flash of red: it’s easy to miss, really, but it’s that signature Weasley-tint of red. Near-orange. Hardly moving. That’s uncharacteristic. “Shit.” 

Mission accomplished. There’s a slight manic edge to the expression on Dove’s face as she enters the room she shares with Lydia, the polyjuice potion out of her system. They’re themself again, mostly unscathed and fully safe, and Dove knows that their youngest sibling will find relief in it. So, she sinks onto the mattress and watches them, for a moment, before giving a soft nudge against their shoulder, “I’m back,” she says, tone uncharacteristically soft. This kind of gentleness is saved for a select few. When Lydia wakes, Dove smiles a little. “Harry and I stole a bunch of wands, for the kids.” They also wreaked some havoc, of course, but Lydia would care more about the former. Dove hopes it makes her smile. Hopes it makes her proud, even. 

Being in Muggle London filled Scorpius with all sorts of conflictions. He supposed that it couldn’t really be called Muggle London any more, not since the Dark Lord shattered the statute of secrecy and proclaimed himself lord of all. But there was still the distinction, the lack of magic and the mundanity of it all. But privately, Scorpius had always wondered what life had been like before. When these people lived in peaceful ignorance, blissfully unaware of the secret world that surrounded them. He’d been given patrol duties tonight, but he was alone - he preferred it that way. It was a quiet evening, until a cool voice cut through his peace. “Longbottom,” Scorpius acknowledged, reaching for his wand. “Of course. I hear that Twilfitt and Tattings change their window displays at midnight, so I just had to be there for the change. You know me, always dressed to impress.”

“Dressed to impress?” Eyebrows shoot up, and Dove takes a few steps forward. One finger drums against her wand but it remains still by her side. They won’t say no to a fight ( as they never do ), but for now they’re waiting too see what Malfoy might decide to do, whether he was a good little Death Eater or a cowardly one. “Don’t know who you’re trying to impress, but you look pretty lacklustre to me. Probably ‘cause you spend your time gawking at Twilfitt and Tattings’ bullshit clothes.” Wasn’t there a Dolohov on their payroll? She’s not quite sure, but then high-end clothing stores aren’t her topic of interest. “But right, if you’re just out and about trying to find a sense of style, you’re not gonna be any trouble for me, are you?” 

“Funny,” Rahim said, doing his best not to glare. Dove was helping him, but she was still Dove, so he guessed it was too much to ask that she wouldn’t manage to still be as combative as possible. Still, he guessed it was the thing that had made him stand a little taller, knowing that she had showed up, was with him on this. Dove might be unbearable, but they were also strong, in a way almost no one else Rahim knew was. 

He needed some of that strength, fighting down a constant unconquerable onslaught, all shame, all fear. “Don’t thank me,” Rahim said abruptly. Being thanked for leading his own father to the slaughter was a little too much right now. Rahim shrugged, “It’s just that I think you’re the only one person who really knows as well as I do why it has to happen.” He let a shadow of dark humor fall over his features. “And you’re so annoying I probably won’t feel that guilty if you die.”

Truthfully, Rahim wasn’t sure how true that really was, but it gave him back some bravado, as sparring with Dove usually did. He hardened his features. “I have to do it.” He tried to let himself believe it, while handing Dove a vial on a chain necklace, filled with dark fluid. “Well, first take this. It’s my blood. It’ll let you through - the wards don’t allow outsiders. Especially not Muggle-borns.” Hardly able to say that without another wave of guilt, it was a good reminder of who his father was. Rahim swallowed, and then nodded grimly. “It’s better to do it here. He’s alone. He’s still strong, but I figure the two of us can … overpower him. I’ll do it. The Killing Curse. It’ll be quick. And he won’t think I can do it so… that’ll give me the advantage.” 

The end justifies the means: it’s a tricky mantra, if only because it has been misused so much before. But Dove considers herself above most, or at least does when it comes to her morality, and so thinks she can do well by that mantra. Besides, it seems to be the one the enemies use as well, and their means are far more harrowing than hers. So, if the means tonight are a collaboration with Rahim Lestrange, a gloomy, wholly unfunny individual who was apparently totally okay with her dying, then so be it.

“That I do,” she says. Their motives were surely different, but at the end of the day, Dove didn’t much care for Rahim’s motives. There was something there, clearly, some kind of wish for repentance that they would never fully understand and so they didn’t bother to. “If I die over this, I’ll become a ghost and annoy you forever more.” She’s not too bothered by the statement, in all truth. An indifference to her death was better than someone wanting her actually dead. “Same goes for you, anyway.” That’s not true, but they don’t know that.

The heavy cloaks fit their polyjuiced faces, which is to say that they’re pretentious and befitting of pureblood idiots. Dove does not enjoy it, in all honesty, having to don a different identity in order to do these things: they’d prefer to walk into Diagon Alley with their face warped into a grin before unleashing a little bit of hell. But, she’s sensible enough to know that there’s more at play here than just her own desire to give into her anger. So, she looks like someone who looks nothing like her and doesn’t grumble.

Next to her is Harry, or at least, next to her and underneath the skin of a stranger is Harry. Dove looks at him. “Quiet, hm? Guess people aren’t fond of early morning jogs in London.” She keeps moving, pressing forward, eyes moving over the storefronts. What a world. The Death Eaters had succeeded in a way, then: Dove was not part of this world, never had been. Might be, one day, if it wasn’t destroyed before she could lay claim to this street where her parents had walked as children.

There’s a wand store and Dove halts. This isn’t their target: their target is a business that set up shop in what was formerly the Weasley twins’ business. “We should break in. Grab as much as we can get, for —” Their face twists with anger. “For the kids.” Scholomance students, sharing wands, muggleborn kids smuggled in with no Ollivander’s to go to. What they should do is stay focused before the Polyjuice runs out, but somewhere, Dove is their father’s child. And while she could never teach as he does, she cares all the same for these wartorn children. 

She stares at the various, differently-coloured goblets of Polyjuice potion with a crinkled nose. It’s freshly brewed by her own hand, but they won’t take credit for the stench coming off the cups. “You know, all this work for this batch, and because these folks are such shit people, it ends up tasting and smelling like absolute garbage,” she says, before grabbing a goblet with a muddy-lavender looking concoction. “Let’s turn into someone else for an hour though, yeah?” The plan is to flit in and out of Hogsmeade to run some quick errands, nothing more, nothing less. Dove despises the entire ideal, of having to turn into someone else, but their father frets enough as is so fine. They’ll drink the nasty potion. “Wanna see if we can slip into Honeydukes while we’re there?” Might be nice, to steal some candy, get it to Scholomance.

There’s a strange longing that comes from being in a city this massive, so filled to the brim with people — Dove hears stories of London of before the war spread farther and wider and thinks that she might be a city person. So, when she slinks around the city, and feels like an insignificant cog in a metropolitan machine, she almost thinks she could be anonymous. And yet: here is a familiar face, though hardly a friendly one. Dove halts, the entrance to the Leaky in their periphery and raises a hand in mock-greeting. “Fucking Malfoy.” Her other hand – dominant, left – is on her wand already, held slack by her side but held all the same. “Doing some late night window shopping, too?”

date: 22 april, 2am location: outskirts of lestrange manor who: rahim & dove @longbbottom​​

The grounds weren’t literally haunted - his father didn’t like ghosts, and apparently, none of their forefathers had either - but it felt that way. Like he was being watched, watched and judged, the verdict guilty. Traitor. He loves you, he’s always loved you, how can you do this? How can you do this again? Except for once, thinking about Dani strengthened him. A noise from behind had Rahim turning, wand in hand. He lowered it a moment after. “No one followed you?” He knew she wouldn’t like being questioned, but the anguish clouding his mind didn’t allow for anything else, the question shaky as Rahim looked up and around, met their eyes.  “No one else can know about this, Dove. It has to be just you and me.”

His expression was a little wild, Rahim knew, but even that was nothing to the sick, grim churn inside his stomach. Oddly, it had settled, now that she was here. Maybe it was fitting that it was Dove he’d had to ask. There’d really been no one else. Whatever this bond between them was, it wasn’t like, and it wasn’t trust. Rahim figured she didn’t really care if he made it through this, and the same was more or less true in reverse. There was really only one thing that held them together, all it came down: their last names. He could imagine, years and years ago, a huddle outside a family home just like this. Frank and Alice Longbottom as unaware of what was about to come as his father was now. 

He didn’t exactly like the thought of playing the Rodolphus and he imagined Dove would like being cast as Bellatrix or Rabastan even less. That was a thought to keep to himself. He gripped his wand again, swallowed down on doubt. There was no other way but this. Everything had been leading up to this. “Thanks. For coming.” 

Dove would never have stood for this – a collaboration between a Lestrange and a Longbottom – if the goal wasn’t this: to end the life of another, worse Lestrange and rid this world of someone who carries the legacy of his parents’ sins in the worst possible way. With pride. So a deal is struck and Dove agrees, because if there is one thing she hungers for it’s vengeance. Selfishly, she keeps it to herself and when she arrives, she arrives alone. There’s a quirk of her brow, the pull of her mouth. “There’s ten people behind me, actually.” Deadpan. They throw a demonstrative look over their shoulder, then look back at Rahim. Come on now.

There’s little empathy there, but there’s something like respect for the fact that he is willing to do this, that he is willing to ask for their help. And with that, then, comes the respect for his wishes. “Just you and me, Lestrange. Don’t worry.” There is a part of her that wants to parade around after this victory, lay loud claim to it in a way one might have done in those medieval times of long ago — heads on pike, all that shit. But fine, if the price she has to pay to watch a Lestrange bleed is silence, she can keep her mouth shut.