judge, jury, and executioner

When it came to executions, Walden didn’t have a preferred method. In his personal work he had opinions about how things should be done, but at the Ministry the crowd was all that really mattered. The fact that people watched as he took someone’s life and condoned it - he still couldn’t believe they paid him to do what he did. Walden would’ve felt guilty each time he received his pay check, but he wasn’t capable of feeling guilt.

As he strode down the glossy black stone that lined the Ministry’s halls, Walden ran into a pale, familiar face.

“Lucius,” he smiled, slowing down to a stop to catch up for a moment. “I didn’t expect to see you on the tenth floor.” He extended his hand to Lucius, a missed drop of blood spatter decorating the cuff of his white dress shirt. Walden did his best to clean any stray spatter that found its way onto his clothes, but occasionally he missed a drop or two.

“What international affair brought you all the way up here?”

@softboi-malfoy​

As they waited, Walden cradled Estrella, gently rocking her back and forth. She was too young to glean anything from Miriam yet, but as she grew older, Walden potentially saw Miriam tutoring Estrella in potions. If Hogwarts only hired teachers a competent as Daisy, then there would be no need for it, but Walden highly doubted they would ever raise their standards that high, so additional education would most likely be necessary.

A house elf briefly announced Miriam’s arrival as she walked in, after which it and the others promptly vanished from the room. Walden set Estrella down in the nearby bassinet to properly greet his guest. “It’s so good to see you,” Walden said as he walked over and hugged her. “How have you been?” While Walden ached to boast about his daughter, proper etiquette had to be observed first.

@miriamclearwater​

It wasn’t anything important, but while doing some spring cleaning, the MacNair house elves had found a small pendant that had been Walden’s great grandmother’s. At first glance it looked like any other sapphire pendent; it was deep blue in colour, a marquise cut, and nearly flawless in quality. However, when held up to the light, the pendant was charmed so that the light it filtered cast the image of two dancers, moving around each other but never meeting, in an iridescent blue hue.

There was some old story to go along with it, a family narrative that Walden had been expected to memorize as a child but had now long forgotten, but that wasn’t why it had captured Walden’s attention. When the house elves had brought it to him, Walden knew it was too beautiful to place into storage again. Instead, he wanted to gift it to Daisy. However, before that could happen, he needed the pendant to be fixed.

The damages weren’t severe, but in the state it was currently in, the prongs of the pendent angled the sapphire so that light that passed through scattered to multiple different locations. Aesthetically it looked only looked slightly out of place, but when one attempted to view the dancers, they appeared out of sorts and in several different places at once. Before he gave it to Daisy, Walden wanted the necklace to be in mint condition. That’s why he decided to bring it to Dervish and Banges get it fixed.

Walden walked into the shop, up to the counter, and rang the bell in the hope of getting the someone’s attention. He didn’t have any expectations of who would be helping him, but he didn’t expect it would be a near familiar face. It was Edith Clearwater.

Though they hadn’t met before, Walden knew her sister well. And from her sister, he knew the kind of views that Edith held. Walden’s hand had been in his pocket holding the pendant in preparation to show it to whoever was going to help him. When he saw it was Edith, he released the pendent. He’d suddenly changed his mind about where he was going to take his business.

“Edith Clearwater. All families have their disagreements, but I can’t imagine how horrifically you must’ve treated to your sister to make her speak about you the way she has.”

@edith-clearwater​

They were meeting today at Zahi’s residence to look at aesthetic options for gardens of the new property, as well as a few carnivorous and aesthetic options for indoors. While Walden didn’t intend to work much at the Hogsmeade property since that was largely where Daisy would be, he wanted to be prepared in case he needed a simple, low effort clean up option.

Zahi knew of the intent of the meeting prior - he had to in order to properly curate a selection of plants for Walden to look at - but Walden hadn’t notified him that he’d be bringing Estrella along. In all honesty, Walden hadn’t planned on it, but as he prepared to leave, he’d caught a glimpse of Estrella’s big brown eyes and he couldn’t bring himself to leave without her.

“Zahi, good to see you again.” Walden held out his free hand to shake Zahi’s. “I don’t believe you’ve had the honour of meeting my daughter yet,” Walden beamed as he looked down at his pride and joy. “This is Estrella.”

@zahishafiq​

For now, Daisy had set up a make shift office in the dining room, papers spread out across the glossy hardwood tabletop, some even floating as she arranged and sorted her work. Or perhaps it was students’ work that she was going through. Walden stood in the entrance way, peering from a distance in admiration of his ambitious, dedicated wife. As his eyes scanned the pages, he thought he could make out different handwriting, but he really didn’t have the best vantage point to judge.

On Daisy’s left, the dining chairs had been cleared to make room for one of Estrella’s bassinets. In the several minutes Walden stood there, Estrella lightly cooed once or twice, but aside from that, barely made a peep. Of course she was the perfect baby, quietly resting while her mother worked; she was a combination of both of them after all.

It was a perfect scene and Walden hated to interrupt it, but Daisy was needed elsewhere in the house. He stood up from the frame he was leaning against and walked over to his wife. Standing behind her, he reached down and gave her a kiss on the cheek before resting his hands on her shoulders. As he spoke, he began massaging. If he had to take her away from her work, he was going to soften the blow with an impromptu shoulder massage.

“I know you’re in the middle of working, but the workers are ready to start painting your study and they need a final decision on the colour.”

@msdaisymacnair​