#thread;alecto

Dear Narcissa and Lucius,

Congratulations on the birth of your son. He has been born into two great families. This is his gift from ours to yours, Lestranges to Malfoys. We will protect him as our own.

Cissa, I suggest you don't let our mother into the room when the figurines are visible. She's unwanted in any space she enters, after all. She'd probably end up quite dead.

Love,

Of all the people to encounter tonight, it had to be Frank Longbottom. Just his luck. Rabastan could feel his blood boiling as he stood with Alecto, maintaining a false expression of polite amicability as they chatted about when the babies were due. All the while, he was imagining the many ways that he could make Frank suffer. His fingers tightened around Alecto's waist, as much an involuntary reaction as to warn her to remain calm. They would have their revenge. But not here, with so many people to bear witness. All in good time. They had waited this long. A little longer wouldn't hurt.

"Twins normally arrive earlier," he told Frank. "We're looking forward to it, and I'll be relieved for Alecto not to endure the full nine months."

Gift for Alecto & Rabastan Lestrange, delivered by house-elf a few days after the children are born. @alectocarrowx @r-lestrcnge @xrodolphusxlestrangex

Dear both,

Congratulations, even though you won't yet let us visit. Must we truly wait our turn with the rest of the peasants?

We joke, of course.

This is our gift to the children. An ugly contraption, isn't it? You may set it to hover beside their cribs. It plays music that will lull them to sleep - and lull their enemies into a deathly coma. The pulleys activate magical details that babies are supposed to find interesting. Moving lights and colours, the stars rotate. That sort of thing.

With our best wishes,

Rabastan hadn't believed a word that came out of Rosmerta Abbott's infuriating lips the last time they'd spoken. So he'd kept an eye on the pub and its activities, or as much as he could do between everything else. On the whole, he'd let it go. He did not believe her stupid enough to continue anything suspicious, and he'd had more pressing matters to attend. Placing heavy attention here would be a waste of effort. But that didn't mean he'd stopped completely.

Dragging Alecto and the twins out, he'd decided to put his family to good use and had situated them outside on a bench while he surreptitiously checked the enchantments placed on the building. Stopping halfway through his examination as a barmaid approached with their drinks, he adjusted his hold of Rhad and tolerated the witch's attention as she made inane gurgling noises at the poor child. The sacrifices they all made. He smiled, insincerely. Then once she'd left, he resumed, his son balanced in one arm, while he cast several darker spells towards the kitchen.

"Still nothing." It was what he'd expected. So he reached for his drink and pushed Rhad's hand away from the cold glass. "Have you heard anything from Dumbledore, recently?"

Rabastan did not feel. Emotions were weakness. His family was cold. Even now, as he stood between his two long-awaited heirs, he did not know precisely what stoked his stoic heart. Pride, certainly, and the satisfaction of having fulfilled an expected duty. It was the closest to unconditional love that he could experience, yet he didn't recognise it. He acknowledged possessive loyalty, knowing that he would do anything for these helpless infants. There were no limits. He had always accepted to make sacrifices for this war, swearing both to kill or be killed. These goals were now inflamed, churned into a wildfire that seared for his new family. It was imperative to correct their world, to make it worthy before they grew old enough to suffer its shortcomings. His ambition for power had escalated. His fidelity to the cause - already dangerously merciless - had become destructively altruistic. He would sooner bring society to its knees than permit his children to witness its flaws.

Reaching down, he hooked a finger around the boy's crib and swayed it indolently. The child reached upon with a tiny fist, greedily clamouring for a taste of his father’s attention. Rabastan allowed him to grip his finger and found - to his surprise - that he was remarkably strong. Good. To reward this quiet show of power, he reached down and picked up the child, holding him unnaturally at arm's length while he studied him in the candlelight, greatly amusing Alecto, who told him to stop observing Rhadamanthus as though he were a item of furniture instead of his own son. Scoffing through an easy smile, he judged the child to be adequate and held him in a more comfortable fashion before attending to his daughter in almost the same way.

Asteria was a quieter thing, simply peering from her blankets with thoughtful eyes. He could have sworn she considered him utterly ridiculous for rocking her crib so pointlessly. Clever girl.

After Mira left, Rabastan sat beside Alecto. He hadn't troubled to light the lanterns, finding something soothing in the darkness that flooded the room like a deepening pool. Moonlight pierced the shadows, breaking through the tall glass windows and lending a deathly glare to the still unconscious witch. She was already pale through blood loss. The light exacerbated her appearance, and he sat there with macabre fascination, mulling on the fact that this was as close to death as he would ever want her to be. He'd forbidden his elf from cleaning the floor. It seemed incorrect to cleanse it of her blood, which still stained the dark wood to an even blacker shade. He did not want to remove it. It was an irrational desire, as though vanishing the stain would somehow diminish the reality of what had occurred this night. Logic had abandoned him. He cared nothing for his sanity or his self-control, simply sitting and staring as he waited for her to awake.

Though Alecto and Rabastan had risen early to prepare for the wedding, they had not yet put their minds to it, despite a few hours having passed already. These days, Alecto was in a chaotic mood that was difficult for even Rabastan to navigate. He was normally accustomed to her reasoning and her wants, able to match them both with his level-headedness. But she did not want listen, of late. So he had taken to ignoring her wild antics until they passed naturally, asserting quiet and harmless solutions wherever he saw fit.

The latest outburst was due to her bridesmaid gown being too snug. She had already spent a good amount of time bemoaning her figure a few weeks prior - not that Rabastan had seen anything amiss with it. It was true that she'd consumed more indulgences than usual, being away from Hogwarts and still recovering from her curse injury. But frankly, he was pleased with the results. He was not complaining about an increased amount of curves. Still, since she would not listen, he had simply waited for her to leave then transfigured an extra inch to all of her clothes.

Unfortunately, he forgot about the gown, which did not arrive from the seamstress until the day before. So it had triggered her malcontent, and he'd done what he'd thought was most efficient: dragged her back to bed to make her forget. It had worked. For now.