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Frederick Lestrange (patriarche) wrote in accersitus,
@ 2008-02-27 17:53:00

Entry tags:

*thread-inprogress, alexander lestrange (2020), andromeda black (1965), bellatrix black (1962), cygnus black (1974), druella rosier (1946), druella rosier black (1974), frederick lestrange (1974), meda lestrange (2020), narcissa black (1974)

Interrogations; common room [ML, DRB, FL, CB, XL, BB, AB, RL, NB, DR, CD]
WHO: Meda Lestrange, Druella Rosier Black, Frederick Lestrange, Cygnus Black, Xander Lestrange, Bellatrix Black, Andromeda Black and possibly Rabastan Lestrange, Narcissa Black, Druella Rosier and Cecelia Dymond
WHERE: BLR (Black, Lestrange, Rosier) common room, soon to be the BLRD common room
WHEN: 10 December, 1001
SUMMARY: Frederick intends to get the truth about the future after the young Cecelia's arrival sets events into motion. IN-PROGRESS thread.
RATING: TBD

Completely and utterly certain she hadn't done anything wrong, Meda had nonetheless made record time to the common room, bursting in the door to find her grandmother, the one of her mother's time, ordering house elves about in some frenzied burst of reorganization. For a moment, she stood panting in the middle of the room, staring first in confusion and then concern when Druella turned toward her and a pained, almost pinched look was immediately replaced with the woman's normal calm, even expression.

"Meda, dear – Meda Lestrange, have you been running in the corridors?" Druella asked, a pale eyebrow lifting sharply. "What did I say about-"

The door having only recently closed behind Meda, it flew open again, this time smacking off the stone wall with a thunderous bang that cut off Druella's scolding as Frederick strode into the room. He caught sight of Meda almost immediately.

"Sit, now."

With a sharp movement, Meda dropped to the floor, those bright blue eyes in all their expressiveness communicating her distress. She hadn't done anything!

"No, not the-" He cursed and threw up one hand, then advance on her, uncaring where she sat so long as he had the truth from her. The more imposing he was, the faster she would speak, and her on the floor gave him that very advantage. "I want the truth, Meda, the entire truth about the future you hail from, and I want it immediately."

Suddenly, this was so much worse than if she had been in trouble. Meda shook her head violently as soon as the demand registered.

"I can't, Grandperé Lestrange," she protested, locking imploring eyes on him. "I can't."

"You can and you will and-"

"Frederick, be reasonable," Druella began, but Frederick cut her off with a sharp gesture and a look.

"No! She will tell me what I want to know," he snarled at Druella and then returned the full ferocity of his gaze toward his granddaughter, whose eyes had grown nearly twice their size, "and you will do so right now!"

Meda could only shake her head, which only seemed to enraged Frederick more, for he cursed vividly before ordering her once more. "I said now!"

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fearedpatriarch
2008-02-28 12:41 am UTC (link)

Xander looked behind him, seeing Meda's tears (something he had feared by the telling pleading note to her voice)and something inside of him caught fire. He was FURIOUS at his grandfather. How could Frederick go about saying people shouldn't know the future and then accost his own blood granddaughter for information? How could he talk to MEDA like that?

"She's crying not using some ploy like histrionics, you fool." He blinked, he had never been anything but respectful to his family, as they had always been his rock, the people who he defended even in school even when they wouldn't have known if some stupid kids smarted off something.

Cygnus went to Meda, not liking her sitting so dejectedly on the floor. "Come on, Meda...there are far more comfortable places to sit than the floor, and I won't have a granddaughter of mine crying down there like that." He shot Frederick a quick, warning look. He understood that he wanted information, but this was swiftly getting out of hand and he wouldn't stand for it.

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missmeda
2008-02-28 01:00 am UTC (link)

"Alexander, no matter how he is behaving, you should not speak to him like that," Druella scolded quietly, laying a beringed hand upon his shoulder. Though, admittedly, her displeasure lay with Frederick at this point, it would not do for her grandchildren to forget their own upbringing and manners as well. Too, it was easier to reprimand a grandchildren than it was to reprimand a grown man and friend.

Frederick for the most part ignored Xander, focused instead on Meda as she took Cygnus' hand and rose from the floor. They would get no where without something to tip her hand, something he sensed he very well had right now.

"Tell me about Azkaban, Meda. Rabastan has already said it is part of the future."

Sucking in a sob, Meda gaped at him, this situation turning from hopeful pleading to aching upset in a flash with that word. Why would her father tell him that? Why? And why didn't he just tell them everything?

"You weren't ever supposed to know that's what happened to them," she sobbed, turning into Cygnus instead of releasing his hand. Despite never having a flesh and blood grandparent to behave to with, only the cold feeling of a portrait frame to cling to before, the gesture was still remarkably natural.

"Them? I want the entire truth, Meda," he demanded, moving closer to her.

She wasn't afraid of him, only of the truth, but denying him was just as painful when she wanted so much for him to love her, accept her, be pleased with her – not be like this.

"Dad and Uncle Roddy and Aunt Bella, that's why Xander and I were born so late!" she sobbed.

"That's preposterous!" Frederick thundered as Druella's hand flew to her mouth, he the picture of furious disbelief, her pure shock. "We would never have allowed them to be taken to that place!"

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fearedpatriarch
2008-02-28 01:29 am UTC (link)

Xander, true to his good breeding, bowed almost instantly under the soft weight of his grandmother's hand. "I'm sorry." He said quietly. "I just don't like it when Meda gets that upset."

Cygnus froze when his granddaughter spoke, his grip on Meda tightening slightly as he tried to recover from the reeling shock of three such promising young people locked away. Rabastan must have locked away from the rest of the world for some time or Narcissa must have been otherwise occupied and...Gods. His Narcissa might have suffered a divorce or the death of her husband or a good many other things.

"Meda?" He pushed her back, just a bit, so that he could look at her wet face. "Meda, don't cry, no one is in prison. Your father and the younger versions of Andromeda and Bellatrix are right here, and Rodolphus is safe at home. Tell me more about what you mean. Slowly."

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missmeda
2008-02-28 02:00 am UTC (link)

That soft weight on his shoulder had increased considerably as Druella gripped Xander unconsciously, rocked to the core by Meda's revelation. Bellatrix in Azkaban? It was unthinkable, even if there was a considerable different between the small child here and the focused, single-minded woman left behind in the nineteen seventies. While certain Meda was not lying, it was still impossible to believe that this could be true.

Having no patience for 'slow', Frederick paced away, his mind afire with this knowledge, of both his sons locked away as well as his daughter-in-law. The Cause had gone unchecked for so long that the idea there had been a mass capture was impossible, doubly so given the precautions he and Cygnus took and made their children take as well, but what else could explain this? The damnable Mark was something he had only tolerated on his sons, a whim of Tom's in his ever-descending spiral of thirst for power and demand for loyalty, but now he saw it as the greatest mistake the old ones had ever let come to pass, to defer to Tom in marking their progeny because his power had far outstripped their own over the years and real objections had long since been replaced with carefully guided suggestion, some which Tom refused to even hear.

Behind him, Meda gathered herself to try and explain through her tears, because Cygnus had asked. "Not now, but they have been, they will be," she sobbed, looking up at Cygnus with a heartbroken expression. "They... after the Dark Lord fell, Uncle Roddy and Aunt Bella went to find the Longbottoms for information and Dad... Dad was there too and they... they got caught and... and went to A-az-Azkaban for a really long t-time-"

"And we did nothing? Nothing?" Frederick demanded as he interrupted, turning back to face the group.

Even had he not interrupted, Meda would have been able to say no more in explanation, forced to talk about this yet again, to think about the entire period of her family's life. She turned her face away Frederick, from him and from Cygnus, and prayed it would not come to what this seemed to be moving toward. Yet he expected more answers.

"You couldn't!" she sobbed, refusing to detail more.

"Lies!" roared Frederick, face flushing with fury. "Of course we could, you have no concept of what Cygnus and I have done to protect our families!"

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fearedpatriarch
2008-02-28 02:44 am UTC (link)

"Meda..." Cygnus said, his voice very careful, trying, straining to remain calm when the most illogical thing in the world had been said. "You know full well that Frederick and I would do anything in the world to keep our children out of Azkaban. We would pay off officials if we had to to keep them free. What are you not telling me. What are you..."

He was cut off by the sound of the door opening. Bastan came through, his eyes wide and worried already when he came in and turning even more alarmed when he saw the distressed state of everyone. For heaven's sakes, Druella, even cool normally collected Druella was clutching Xander's shoulder tightly. "Father, you said no good would come of telling Mother who she was, and I think that you have a point. No good can come of telling people the future, even if they want to know, its too dangerous." It wasn't the truth, of course, Rabastan still thought that a man had the right to know what was about to happen to him under certain circumstances, but he didn't want his father to learn what happened to him, and he didn't want his father to learn that in the future the Lestranges and the Blacks who were Meda and Xander's grandparents were dead.

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missmeda
2008-02-28 03:00 am UTC (link)

Frederick rounded on Rabastan, that same fury in his eyes and only increasing at have Rabastan throw his own words back in his face. "You are dangerously incorrect, young man," he growled, moving closer. "Was I to accept you bandying about Azkaban and unhappy marriages as reasons for people not returning to where they belong? Ignore it and pretend it had not been said? I think not. I do not know what your game was, Rabastan, but now it is out of your hands and we will know the truth, so be silent!"

It was growing too much for Meda. Frederick furious, Rabastan denying him information he had made her tell months ago, Cygnus so calm and yet doubting her, telling her things she knew so well. It wasn't a conscious choice to prove she was not a liar, just the only reaction to everyone demanding the truth.

"I know, I know, I know! This isn't about me not knowing! You would have if you had been there, but you weren't! You were gone, both gone!" she sobbed, backing away from him. And then, true to Meda's level of distress, she darted for the door.

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fearedpatriarch
2008-02-28 04:48 am UTC (link)

"Meda stay, please." Bastan said quickly, reaching for her wrist. Though he was tempted to tell his father to ease up on Meda, he could think of nothing more than the fact that in seven short years his father would be dead. DEAD. Regardless of how angry he had been up to this moment with Frederick for being so rude to Meda, there was something about knowing that he would be dead so soon that made him forget, made him want to change the world. It made him want to make them all stay here forever. Seven years, and that was the long end of the estimate. He didn't know the specifics, his father could be dead in just a year, less...maybe a little longer, and Cissa's father too? Damn it all, this was WORSE than when he found out about Azkaban, that was a temporary thing, years of his life gone, yes, but he evidentially recovered well. It is an odd thing, for a son to think about losing a father, it makes him feel loss that was unimaginable, it inevitably leads to him thinking about the shoes that he now has to fill and finding that he is woefully inadequate. Bastan, however, could come up with nothing other than a swift pang of panic and loss. He wasn't READY to lose his father. He didn't WANT to lose him.

"Gone?" Cygnus interrupted, unable to think of anything but that word. Oh...so he had died by then, died early by the sound of it, and Frederick too. He was reeling, and not wanting to fall to the ground, he reached one hand blindly out until it connected with the wall and steadied himself. "How?" It was the most absurd question imaginable, but there it was. He wanted to know now, not to know if it hurt or if he lingered in pain, but to know something about what sort of death it had been. Was it the mundane type where he caught some illness that overwhelmed him, or was it in battle? Perhaps it was selfish, but if he HAD to die, he at least wanted to die for SOMETHING instead of senselessly.

Xander walked to Meda, his hand patting her back as one would pat a small child's head. "You don't have to tell them anything else if you don't feel up to it, Meda." He promised. If he had to smuggle her out of here himself, if he had to find some invisibility cloak to do it, he would. He wouldn't put up with her crying for much longer.

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missmeda
2008-02-28 05:09 am UTC (link)

Having forgotten she was gripping Xander until he moved away from her, Druella stepped back, hand out almost blindly and sat down in the closest chair. Her other hand had not moved from her mouth, an instinctive reaction to conceal the obvious expression of her own horror. Her daughter in Azkaban, her husband dead? How had she and Narcissa survived that? ...Had she herself even survived losing a husband and two of her three children?

Part of Druella knew she should be taking charge of this, calming tempers, consoling tears, stopping the flow of information before more pain occurred, but her body was strangely frozen.

Meda pulled her hand from Rabastan's grasp, retreating from him to Xander's side, wanting still to run but not wanting to fight him standing in her way. He had mentioned Azkaban, Frederick had said it twice now and the second time Rabastan had been hear to hear it, here to hear but not refute and why would he have said that, made all of this happen? Why?

And there were still question to answer, questions she wanted to stop so much. "The war, in the war," she sobbed in response to Cygnus' inquiry, clinging to Xander. How to find the words to explain how many patriarchs of pureblood families had fallen in that year, how many sons and heirs of lines were ended? There was no way, no way at all to add to what her words had just done, in changing forever her grandparents and her father in knowing the truth she had tried so hard to avoid telling anyone for so long. Something Rabastan had said might have put Frederick on this path but she was the one who had led them all further.

"How in the war?" After all he had asked, Frederick could not let this lie as it was, not now that this damning evidence had been presented. There were too many questions. Without answers, assumptions and fears would grow and now, knowing these monumental points, he wanted to know the rest.

"Have it out now Meda, just have it all out rather than let it sit and more questions and misunderstandings occur."

The request was strangely without the force of before, the cool and clipped tones more suited to business transactions than the discussion of his own death and the deaths of others. It was, at least, a request now conscious of the distress he had brought to his granddaughter in demanding answers.

And so, despite wishing she could be anywhere else, Meda told them the truth, or the truth as she knew it, of all that had occurred from their time on, every last bit she knew so the damned questions would stop. When the words would not come, she looked to Xander to continue the tale, picking back up when she once more found her voice, the telling leaving her trembling violently in her brother's arms when it was done.

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fearedpatriarch
2008-02-28 05:52 am UTC (link)

When it was done Xander pulled her into a hug, resisting the urge to glare at them all for making her so tired and upset. "It's finished." He said, his tone final as he led her to a couch. She felt so...limp, as though she were near unconscious or just plain spent. Never had he seen her so emotionally exhausted before.

Rabastan drew closer to his father, wanting to be near to him now. He had not meant to incite all of this when he suggested that part of them stay here, but now that he knew, he never wanted any of them to leave. Here he could avoid the war, here he could keep his father safe, here he could give his children the grandparents that they had never had. Here...was where they all had to stay.

Her little legs carrying her as swiftly as they could, Bellatrix chose the least opportune time to barge in. She stomped up to Frederick, looking fierce, but then she saw her mother and Rabastan and Meda and the look of fierce determination faded. Even her father looked distraught. "Maman?" She questioned tentatively. "What's wrong? Was Mr. Lestrange mean to you like he was mean to Bastan and Meda?" She turned an accusatory look to him. "What did you say to them?"

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missmeda
2008-02-28 06:06 am UTC (link)

Feeling so because she was limp, like a wrung out piece of cloth, Meda quietly followed his lead and then sunk on to the couch, curling up with her knees drawn tightly up. Bellatrix's entrance only made her bury her face against her legs, not wanting to face any more of the chaos no doubt to come from the revelation of everything.

Though Meda had not spoke at length, only in fits of detail to cover the important and significant from the seventies onward, it was still a monumental thing to face. Of it, Druella could only draw an empty sense of knowing however impossible it seemed to her in thinking on it now, she had somehow survived in some fashion. It meant she had to do the same right now, while the children were present, especially with Bellatrix now in the mix.

"No, Mr Lestrange was not mean to anyone," Druella lied smoothly, silencing the no doubt vehement response Frederick had been working up to form the silent of near-apoplectic frustration at his pint-sized accuser.

"Now look at you, how did you manage to rumple yourself in such a short time?" she fussed, rising from the chair with her usual grace, a quiet moment of gratefulness to her body for obeying. She crossed the room and caught up the straggling hair ribbon and set to work fixing her child's hair as though nothing that had just happen had actually occured.

It was the shouting and crying that had drawn Andromeda, however, as she had not opened her journal to know anything that had been going on. In the doorway to the common room from the dormitories, she paused and leaned against the arch, looking at everyone with a worried expression.

"Has something happened?" she asked, brow furrowed.

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fearedpatriarch
2008-02-28 04:38 pm UTC (link)

"No, dearest." Cygnus strode quickly to Andromeda, lifting her into his arms and giving her a hug. It was still a bit of a shock to get used to having her here with them again, but that wasn't to say that it was a bad thing by any means. Having her HERE was some sort of gift that he hadn't earned by any means but it was a second chance, one to prevent the both of them from making the mistakes they had before. "We were all just standing here talking." It was another sort of regret. Knowing one's exact time of death (or even an approximation) is dangerous because you start thinking fatalistic thoughts about the things you wish you could have done or done better or NOT done...and Cygnus was determined that in the little time that he had left he would work on repairing his relationship with Andromeda. Even if it was an Andromeda who wasn't really HIS daughter.

Bella squirmed impatiently as her mother straightened her ribbon. "Something DID happen." Bella said, looking pointedly at Frederick, though her manners kicked in at the last moment and prevented her from listing the play by play of the argument--or the little bit of it she had heard.

"Nothing happened." Cygnus insisted, kissing Andromeda's forehead. "We were just having a lively discussion, boring adult things that you don't need to worry about." No, the future was the last thing that he wanted to talk about with his daughters, as in a short matter of time one of them would be married off to Lucius Malfoy of all people, one would be in prison, and one...He swallowed deeply. One would no longer be referred to as a Black. A man who had always believed in destiny in the past (as it was HIS family that was destined to prosper, to uphold blood purity) now he wanted nothing more than to change the future.

"If nothing happened, then why is Meda so sad?" Bella asked, her little face scrunching into a worried look.

"She's fine." Xander said quietly, resting a hand on his sister's back. "She will be, she's just tired for right now."

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