Entry tags:

*thread-inprogress, alexander lestrange (2020), frederick lestrange (1974), meda lestrange (2020), narcissa black (1974), rabastan lestrange (1974)

Frederick's arrival; staircase [FL, ML, RL, AL, NB, ?]
WHO: Frederick Lestrange, Meda Lestrange, Rabastan Lestrange, Alexander Lestrange, Narcissa Black and?
WHERE: The staircase, ?
WHEN: 18 November, 1001
SUMMARY: Frederick is pulled from his own time, sans his companions, and dropped into the mess of the past. IN-PROGRESS thread.
RATING: TBD

Fortunately for Frederick's temper, but unfortunate for anyone within range, he had just caught sight of a young woman dressed... well, remarkably common, but in a definitely modern way compared to the ridiculous fool who had pressed a journal into his hands and urged him, in a language long dead, to write in it before abruptly leaving. First Rabastan and Narcissa had gone missing, then there had been the dealings with that fool Dumbledore, then Cygnus and Druella had disappeared and then, to compound the frustration and absurdity of it all, there were idiots daring to parade around as Salazar Slytherin.

If the clear decline of this school or the fools who dared kidnap and conceal his child had any ill effect on Rabastan, Frederick would see the school, with all in it, torn to the ground. “Girl!” he called out, making quick work of ascending the remaining stairs with long strides that, perhaps uncouthly, took two stairs at a time. As he reached the young woman, he stopped. "Girl, come here, provided you can understand me," he demanded, beckoning the young blonde over.

Meda, happily minding her own business on her way back to the common room of the dormitory set aside just for her family, stopped short at the sound of an eerily familiar, but very displeased voice. An unnamed, unconscious thrill shot through her as she turn and looked down the staircase. And then up. And up – sweet Merlin, Grandperé Lestrange? And had he truly been this tall?

Impatient with the blinking young female – though, thankfully a Slytherin, judging by the scarf around her neck – Frederick snapped his fingers sharply at her. “Who are you?” he demanded. Dark eyebrows knit together as he stared down at her, despite the fact he was still several steps below her.

Oh Merlin. How was Grandperé Lestrange here? Even more, how was she supposed to answer his question? “Meda,” she finally got out, her voice unsteady and her blue eyes saucer-wide in her face at being presented with the living force of her grandfather. He was... absolutely brilliant and had her arms worked she likely would have throw them around his neck and hugged him with all the force she possessed.

“Meda...?” Frederick snapped out in question of the rest of her name, perhaps more abruptly than even his predicament called for, but her wide-eyed, almost worshipful gaze was unnerving. “Oh, nevermind,” he growled as words appeared on the journal's open page. He growled again before all but carving a response into the pages.

Rabastan raced toward the stairs, worry for Meda building. He tried frantically to remember what Meda was wearing, if it was overly Gryffindor or Muggle friendly, not because he didn't approve of those things for his daughter, but because he knew that his father wouldn't, and he didn't want her to get in trouble with him, or hurt. He had never really stood up to his father before, but he would, for Meda.

Somehow he knew he was in for a lecture, both for disappearing as well as for having a daughter like Meda. He would not trade or change her for anythign, and he supposed that he was not actually responsible for the way that she was, but he thought perhaps there would be a lecture waiting there for him just the same ont he proper way to raise children and ensure that they followed the right traditions and...

He stopped thinking and started running harder when he heard his father cursing loudly in french. He skidded to a stop at the base of the stairs, slightly out of breath. "Father, it's alright, she's my daughter..." A testament to how much the time away had changed him, never once did he consider that that statement might be the most ridiculous one he could think of just then.

Despite appearances, it was not Meda that Frederick was cursing at in the least. No, it was the words appearing on the journal pages, the last name of Bellatrix that was wrong, the images that did not fit... it was that he cursed at as it continued.

At least until one name, Andromeda Black, next to a child's face appeared. That sight had left him unable to continue to respond to the writing in the journal, only watch as yet another anomaly, a too young and misnamed Druella, appeared in image and word and began an exchange with the Bellatrix in the journals.

And then the familiar voice of his son, something that should have only served to give him relief from the pervading tension that had plagued him since discovering Rabastan missing, delivered another incomprehensible blow. At a loss to combine something that should be in Rabastan's future with names that were in the past now, Frederick stared at his son and then back at Meda. Despite the utter madness, his sharp gaze reassessed the girl before him for some sign of a Lestrange, one that came nearly the moment he looked for it, in the wrinkling of her brow that was so much like Rabastan's despite the facial features and coloring that were not.

Hands on hips, Meda gaped at Rabastan, the sound of his voice snapping her from her reverie at seeing Frederick curse in French. “Oh, for the love of... Dad! You needed to break that to him gently, after you explain what's going on,” she chided, then turned back to Frederick with a wide, bright smile. “He didn't take this very well either, so it's okay.”

Stepping down another step, though it meant her grandfather was now towering over her, she patted his arm. “You might want to sit down, this is pretty big.”

Rabastan groaned. Perhaps he should have thought that out a bit more, and, you know, built up to it. "I thought he was going to kill you from the ruccus he was raising." Rabastan said apologetically.

He moved to his father, looking at him a bit uncertainly. perhaps it wasn't that long since they were face to face but it felt like much longer. It felt like it had been years.

"I'm sorry, father, for not doing this as well as perhaps I should have. We should talk, you, Meda, and I...but perhaps in a place more conducive to private speech. If you'll follow me....." He led the way quietly to a classroom, wanting his father to see another tangible reminder of Hogwarts to hint at where they were and what had happened. Thankfully they followed him.

He closed the door behind them, sitting down in one of the desks. "Father...how long have I been gone?" He thought perhaps this small talk, though it was still about somewhat irregular matters, might calm him a bit, give them all a chance to cool down.

Meda blinked at him and then snorted. “Kill me? Ha!” she exclaimed, shaking her head as though completely amused by some very outrageous notion. To her, it was the height of outrageousness, even if to another, it seemed quite likely.

As they walked, for he was glad to have the moment to assemble all the factoids of chaos, Frederick glance at Meda several times, finding her studying him with avid interest each time. The more he studied her, the clearer the Rabastan-like things about her became clear. Whoever her mother was – though it seemed insane to think of his teenage son as a father yet – she had obviously contributed an excellent bloodline, as despite Meda's strange garments peeking from beneath the collar, sleeves and hem of her functional robes, there was the air of good breeding about her in addition to her bone structure.

The question Rabastan asked when the three were in the room focused Frederick, centering him on the thing that had plagued him since early morning – his son missing. Striding across the room to the desk Rabastan sat at, he clapped his hands on his son's shoulders, piercing gaze looking him over, searching Rabastan's face, locking gazes with his son for several long moments. Rabastan was fine – not kidnapped or held for ransom, not injured, tortured or dead. Once this was solved, he would contact Cecelia. Ah, his sweet Cecelia, for her he should likely bring Rabastan home for a short time, to reassure her.

Later. For now, the matter at hand. “Since last night, by all accounts,” Frederick said, eyebrows knit together. “Neither your nor Narcissa's dorm mates could place you in bed after your rounds and alerted Slughorn to that fact this morning. We have spent the entire day searching for you two in the castle.”

A pause, then a rapid-fire question. “How long do you think you have been gone?” he asked, standing back up, eyes narrowing as the idea of memory tampering occurred to him, once more treating Meda to a scrutinizing look before dismissing it. No, this young woman was somehow impossibly a Lestrange in some fashion.

"It's been somewhat longer than that for me. It's been months for me." Four months, to be more specific, or was it five? In any case it wasn't something that he should probably be overwhelming his father with so soon, not when he still didn't know that he was so far in the past. There was something warm and comforting and familiar about the way that Frederick clapped him on the back though.

He loved Meda, and in his way he was beginning to love Narcissa, but at times, because this was so sudden, he was left with the sensation of playing house. He was pretending to be the daddy and Cissa was pretending to be the Mum and a girl their age was pretending to be the grandmum...it was hard to be the Dad. He was supposed to be the one to hold things together, the one that everyone went to and relied on and all did all of the things right the way his own father had done them, and he wasn't ready. He wasn't even out of Hogwarts, for heaven's sake, he was the younger brother, and yet he was playing at being some sort of patriarch, and a father of two.

That wasn't to say that he didn't love Meda or Alexander, because he did, very much, and he thought of them as his children, but there were times of crisis when he wished that their parents were there as they had had YEARS to learn the eccentricities of their children, they would know how to comfort Meda or Xander or deal with them or...

"Oh D...Father, I'm so happy that you're here." The words were unexpected, sudden, and a bit frank for Bastan's taste, but he couldnt' help it. He had been wishing so vehemently for someone from his own family, whether it be his Father or Mother or Roddy or even a more distant relative, and now that his father was here he was certain things would improve.

Months? What manner of hell had his son been subjected to, to think a day was months? Yet, even as Frederick sought blame, he knew the situation as he was taking it, at face value, was not at all as it seemed. So many details were pointing to being displaced from time, from the wrong names to the look of the school, but that was ridiculous. The easier explanation was that something dark was at work.

Meda watched him intently all the while, drinking in this living, breathing man who was flawlessly like the portrait. Given that he seemed to be directly from Dad's time, it was not that strange he would be so perfect. But no one knew that, knew that the portraits were of men in their prime because those men had died in their prime.

Finally, she couldn't stand it anymore, the urge growing in her that had been fifteen, nearly sixteen, years in the making, and crossed the space between them. “It's going to be okay, Grandperé Lestrange,” she said and then clamped her arms around his waist, her head just reaching the middle of his chest.

Stiffened and for once in his life completely uncertain what to do, Frederick stared down at Meda, then looked up at Rabastan, the expression of consternation almost comical, then down again. There was no deceit in wide blue eyes, no dark foreboding in the pit of his stomach as she clutched him. Anxiousness on his part, oh yes, as the stranger of a child embracing him, but none of the faithful warning sense that had served him during his life. Or perhaps he was insane to not see this entire thing as some trick.

“Salazar's beard, you look like Cecelia,” he stated gruffly after a moment, though perhaps it was not completely true, for she looked like someone familiar, but it was only the softness and roundedness of features that made him think it was his wife she reminded him of so completely. His Cecelia was dark of hair and eye, not fair and light-eyed.

“How is this even possible?” he demanded, looking back up at Rabastan.

"That's a great compliament, you know," Rabastan said in something of a stage whisper. "Though I'm sure you guessed that from the portraits in your time." Bastan had always been quite proud of his mother, as well of his father. He thought the two of them and him and Roddy looked like the perfect little well bred family, and he had not been above pointing to family pictures when he was younger as an example of the way things SHOULD be, the perfect family.

Rabastan sighed quietly, sitting back a bit more in the desk chair. I have no idea how this happened, Father." He opened his mouth, trying to remember each detail of what had happened so that he could relate it to his father. Perhaps Frederick would be able to find the perfect solution. He told his father everything about Meda and how they had learned she was his daughter as well as Narcissa's.

"And then Xander showed up, but no one that we've known has shown up since. We were starting to wonder if there was a way to bring them or get home." The only topic that he avoided was the time difference, as he wanted to break that to his father a bit more delicately. As far as his father knew right now, unless he had managed to deduce more (and knowing his father that wouldn't be much of a suprise) was that they had been pulled...somewhere.

A grandson. A grandson and a granddaughter. The Lestrange name lived on beyond any future progeny of Rodolphus, and what more, it was yet another unity of the Lestrange and Black blood. For a moment, Frederick nearly chortled, certain Cygnus would be as pleased as he, but he was sobered by the thought Cygnus and Druella had disappeared – or rather, he had disappeared from them, by all accounts.

The talk of portraits, however, combined with now knowing the year his grandchildren hailed from, stalled all other thoughts. It did not necessarily have to mean talking portraits, portraits of the deceased, but the thought of Cecelia as a portrait sickened him. Salazar, especially if Meda and Alexander were from two-thousand twenty...

He had to focus, he needed to know the rest and he could sense there was much his son had not said, beyond the fact he had failed to mention the other names in the journals.

“What year is this?” he asked Meda, who still had not let go of him, using that same demanding tone as used when situations were not going as planned and answers were not coming fast enough. That, compounded with the complete absurdities of the time line of his son's future stretching out in his mind left him frustrated. That he had seen a man who looked like Salazar Slytherin, despite thinking the man some lunatic, suddenly made him tense even as she gave her answer.

“One-thousand and one A.D.,” Meda told him, her expression worried at what the news would bring, but knowing she could hardly avoid the question. “It was the Founders who did it. Not the ones from where we are, but ones from... one thousand A.D. another time line. They're the ones that messed everything up and these Founders, because they decided never to do the spell the the other ones did, are the ones who are trying to fix it.”

Frederick pulled away from Meda with a string of cursing in French that was both loud and explicit, pacing to the window to look out on the grounds that were, indeed, far different than he had ever known them. The forest was larger and wilder, the lake larger too.

Arms dropping to her sides, Meda looked after him. “I'm sorry, I know how awful this is,” she said quietly. “But now that you're here, everything's going to get fixed. We'll find a way home.”

Turning away from the window, Frederick stared at Meda, perplexed by the open faith in her eyes and words.

“Did I do that often in your time, go around fixing everything, including the fantastical and outrageously impossible?” he asked, dark amusement in his tone, but never reached his face as he saw something shift in her expression. She had far too open and expressive a face.

“What, what is it?” he demanded.

"The problem is, it keeps pulling people from different times. Cissa's sisters are young... both of them." He raised an eyebrow in his father's direction, hoping that he would understand what he meant without having to spell it out in front of Meda. Oh, he knew that Meda knew what had happened with Andromeda running off to marry the Tonks boy, but he didn't necessarily want to dredge up every bad memory for her, every story of past wrongs, because to be honest he thought that his Meda had had to put up with far too many of them. A father that was likely still haunted from Azkaban, an utter lack of extended family, a family stigma of shame...

"I'm sure that you can figure out a way to return us all to our respective times, Father, or at the very least to pull Mother and Dru--I mean Lord and Lady Black--here to help." It would be odd to see Lady Druella Black again after getting so used to having a much younger Druella Rosier, but if it could get them all home...well then it would be worth it. The more he thought about it the more he missed Rodolphus and his mother...not so much the time, that had been an intense but brief sort of homesickness...no, this was about the people who weren't there. He could only imagine how much Meda and Alexander missed their parents, as he was not daily confronted with reminders of his parents as they were.

"Father," he said quietly. "Maybe we can fix it. I mean, if people keep showing up, I don't see why we can't go back!"

Rabastan's response did not seem to be the answer to Fredrick's question of Meda, but once more his thoughts were redirected, first by the idea of the too-young Black sisters plural when beyond Narcissa, there was now legally only Bellatrix, then by the thought of his wife.

“I saw,” he said, holding up the journal before flipping it open once more. “Both of them, looking young, as well as their mother.” That was truly disorienting, thinking a woman he had known for years was possibly no more than a child. “Looking as though she stepped right out of-”

“Nineteen forty-six,” Meda supplied helpfully. After all, beyond the cursing, Grandperé Lestrange had thus far been taking the facts as they came to him, so she reasoned he might appreciate the precise details of certain things. Well, except for her House affiliation. That bit of information she knew to keep to herself.

Predictably, Frederick cursed again, then rubbed his face, though it was not over Druella's age he did so, but the weight of realizing not just Cygnus and Druella, but Cecelia was a thousand years away from him. He had not even owled Cecelia this morning when the owl from the school arrived, thinking he would have answers long before the morning faded to afternoon, likely even have Rabastan back before she returned from her day in Paris. And now she was unaware as to where not only Rabastan and Narcissa, but he himself, had gone.

He cursed again, the warning signs of a normally buried but volatile temper surfacing as his hand at his side flexed, moving as though seeking his wand without conscious thought. Perhaps there was something to be said for Cygnus' manner of dealing with his temper and right now, a few hex marks on the wall would give the damnable, still new, castle character.