#thread;apolline

Lestrange Manor was home. When facing impending death, it had been Rabastan's instinct to return here, to the place where he would be shrouded by the impenetrable bonds of blood loyalty and the protection of the thickest, darkest magic. He knew the house inside out, years spent roaming its rooms, discovering its secrets and respectfully keeping them. It would never be his. But it would always contain a part of him.

So far, he'd been there for only a few days. But he'd seen more of his parents than in total over the last month. He lingered unwell in his childhood rooms, too exhausted to do very much. Finding comfort in the familiar surroundings, he was even grateful for his parents' daily visits, when usually he would prefer to be left alone. Each day they would study him, patiently waiting until he was fit enough to hold a conversation for longer than a few minutes. At that point, he summoned them along with Rodolphus and Bellatrix, and shared everything pertinent that had happened, for it affected all of them. A family should not keep secrets that could damage its components; a family's strength was only as good as its unity.

The fact that Andromeda had discovered his secret was dismissed as non-essential; they decided that Rabastan would speak with her himself.

The rest of the conversation, which centred on Apolline and the resulting error in his work, was one of the most uncomfortable discussions they'd ever had. It was a curious thing to watch both parents pale and darken at the same time. But somehow they managed this impossible feat, and it rendered them silent and glowering.

"Are you certain," his father eventually bluntly began, "that she will not come to us in a few months, claiming she carries an heir?"

It was the final straw for his naturally mild mother, who rose to her feet and strode behind her son's seat, placing her hands flat against his chest in a fierce act of maternal protection. Her passivity had gone to the wind, thrown aside in the face of a threat against her family. She was repulsed. Rabastan could feel her nails gritting into his shirt, her quiet fury as heated as the fire that blazed behind his father's ordinarily stoic eyes.

"Do something, Corvus," she demanded. "Do something, or I will kill that unnatural half-breed and her Veela mother myself. For too long, they have been a stain in our lives."

The Lestrange patriarch looked between his wife, who he valued but had never loved, and his youngest son, who he had never wanted but who was proving his worth. There was no warmth within this family. But there was savage, unyielding loyalty.

The Beauséjours would pay.