Who: Rabastan Lestrange and Clarissa Gamp What: Up to no good, and finding out they aren't the only ones When: BACKDATED to Saturday 18th May, during the Gryffindor v Ravenclaw quidditch match Where: Hogwarts, specifically McGonagall's office Warnings: Some language, general DE cattiness, passing reference to wild fantasies...
It wasn't Rabbit's first time poking around the professorial quarters of Hogwarts, and his schoolday forays hadn't been anything like official either. (No cozy invitations for Rabbit; Slughorn was certainly astute enough to realise that, however collectable the Lestrange surname, the younger iteration was cut from very different cloth from the elder.) It was a good afternoon for it, windows letting in the slant of afternoon sunlight and the occasional breeze-carried cheer or gasp from the quidditch pitch. Corker of a game, apparently. Keeping everyone nicely busy. Ordinarily Rabbit would genuinely have liked to be appreciating it, but there was far more interesting entertainment in the offing.
And not just because his partner in crime was a pretty blonde, though that certainly wasn't a downside. "Up past the Transfiguration classroom, right?" Rabbit said to Clarissa, as they paused at the top of a staircase. "Assuming she's still in her old rooms. If she's taken up the Headmaster's suite this might get trickier."
Clarissa paused to get her bearings and, oriented, rolled her eyes eloquently before she began walking again. She hadn’t been here in years, and the moving staircases and twisting hallways took a bit of getting used to. “I’m sure she hasn’t. She’s hardly the type to usurp darling Dumbledore’s quarters before the body’s fully cooled, is she? Or after, for that matter. That suite will be empty for at least a year, if they don’t just go ahead and turn it into a shrine to self-righteousness and lemon drops.”
Rabbit followed along, keeping an eye and an ear out. Of course, McGonagall was hardly alone in clinging to memory of a fallen leader, though it was more of a practical matter for some than others. They went up past the Transfig classroom, and veered away from the stairs up towards Gryffindor down a quieter corridor. And there, right at the end. Yes, Rabbit remembered this door from schooldays. He'd never managed to get in, of course, but as a schoolboy he hadn't had access to all the resources he now commanded.
Like the set of lockpicks he pulled out of his pocket with a merry and musical jangle. He spun the ring around a finger as he glanced over at Clarissa. "Keep an eye out?" he suggested, as he went down on one knee and squinted at the door handle.
“Bo-ring,” Clarissa complained in a cheerful sing-song even as she turned to do just that. It was unlikely that anyone would be wandering this part of the castle on a Quidditch day, but she kept her wand ready just in case. A stunner and a little memory charm would do for any student who stumbled by. “You know that if we are caught I'm going to blame you entirely, of course.”
Rabbit's mouth got an amused curve, but he didn't so much as glance away from what he was doing. The lock wasn't too fiddly--couldn't be too complicated when a professor needed to be coming and going, sometimes dragging a recalcitrant student by the ear--but it was old and comfortable and knew its mistress and knew Rabbit wasn't her. It chewed up one of the delicate little picks, and Rabbit had to tease it back out and try a different one. Good thing talking the reluctant into bad ideas was sort of Rabbit's core skillset; he was nothing if not persistent and creative about it.
"I was planning to imply heavily that you had an old fantasy involving McGonagall's desk that you wanted to enact--oh, there we go." And the lock clunked grudgingly open. Rabbit nudged the door open and gave a little wave of his hand. "Milady."
“Now, Rabbit,” Clarissa replied, pressing a hand to her chest and affecting an expression of shock, though they were in enough of a hurry that she dropped it after a moment. “Between the two of us, who seems more likely to have debauched fantasies?”
Trick question, that.
She peered at the doorway for a moment, cautious, and then advanced through it wand first and wary of any wards that her partner’s lock picks hadn’t cleared up. Nothing happened, which seemed, if anything, more suspicious. “Could it be that easy?”
Rabbit edged in after her, casting an eye around the room--McGonagall's personal study. It was tidy and stern but in that homely, comfortable way that Gryffindors seemed to find so reassuring. "Probably more wards on her actual living quarters." Rabbit nodded toward a door on the far side of the room, firmly closed. "But maybe we won't need to mess with that." As much as Rabbit was always curious and itching to dig into everything, they were here for a purpose. He tilted his head toward the desk. "You want to do the rummaging, and I'll keep a look-out?"
That made Clarissa grin, bright and excited. Of course she wanted to do the rummaging. She was honestly a little surprised that Rabastan would cede the honour to her; it was bound to be more fun by far that being the watchman.
She approached the desk and waved her wand again, but no jinxes revealed themselves, and they didn’t really have time for her to do a more thorough magical check before getting down to business. But then, the old bat was a Gryffindor, and therefore unlikely to put any dangerous warding on a part of the room that was so relatively easy to get to in case of snooping children. Her partner was right: the bedroom was far more likely to have nasty surprises if nasty surprises there were to be found, and she’d worry about that if they had to go there.
Of course, the living quarters were far more likely to produce a few strands of hair for the polyjuice, but they did have time to investigate multiple areas (and if this opinion was biased in that it gave Clarissa the excuse to get right down to rummaging, as Rabbit called it, well, so be it. The blonde had no shame over her biases.)
The desk was surprisingly cluttered for a woman of McGonagall’s particular demeanor, with papers and books spread out in layers. Clarissa started at the right and began picking through things. The majority appeared to be student essays, and she sighed in automatic boredom. “She actually reads these things instead of just slapping ‘Os’ on all her little proteges’. How disappointing.”
Rabbit took up position just inside the door, pushing it nearly entirely closed but leaving a sliver of space for watching the corridor. (He'd likely hear anyone coming first; sound had always carried like crazy down the stone corridors of the castle.) He didn't bother stifling his grin at the enthusiasm with which Clarissa fell upon her task. They were all chafing at the sudden change in circumstances; Rabbit was finding his own ways of dealing with it, and the least he could do is give Clarissa a bit of fun as well.
He grinned wider still at her comments. "I'm told Gryffindors believe in this thing called fairness." He wrinkled his nose dramatically; fairness, of course, was for those who lacked the imagination or wherewithal to rig the game ahead of time.
Clarissa looked up from her task long enough to give Rabbit a look heavy with skepticism. “Do they? Or do they believe in self-righteousness?”
She cleared the essays aside, careful of the parchment and to leave them stacked for easy replacement. The book beneath was likewise handwritten, a ledger rather than a text. She paused, flicking her wand to flip a few yellowing pages. “Huh. They do keep permanent records on the troublemakers, after all.” Another few flips and she spotted a date. “Very permanent, as it turns out.”
Rabbit tilted his head against the doorframe. Was that an approaching voice? No, just a particularly loud gasp from the quidditch pitch, and then riotous uproar. Either a brilliant goal or a brutal foul. Or vice versa. "If it's me, I didn't do it." Of course, he probably had. Or he'd incited someone else to do it. And then he actually caught up to what she'd said. "Wait, how permanent?" He didn't come away from the door, but he looked over with a burgeoning grin. Could they check out his brother's permanent record? Rabbit had always suspected that, surely, someone that closely related to him couldn't have been that perfect at school. Or, wait, what about his father's record?
“Well,” Clarissa replied, looking up to return Rabastan’s smile. She could imagine what he was thinking. “They keep them for at least seventy-five years- I suppose they’ve got the room for it- so I’m sure we could find plenty of blackmail material if you’re in the mood. When were your parents here, exactly?”
That was infinitely more interesting than keeping watch, though Rabbit did take the time to ease the door close, and lay on a flimsy sticking spell, just enough to give them a moment or two in warning if anyone tried to come in.
Then he just about skipped across the office to admire Clarissa's treasure. "When aren't I in the mood? Dad was 1982. Or '83? I forget. Mum was '83 but she will be dead fucking boring, I'll put money on it." He peered over her shoulder at the book, not going to do anything so rude as try to lay hands on it himself (not when she can hex him so easily, at least).
Clarissa did indeed shift slightly, not to block Rabastan completely from seeing the ledger but to remind him that she was the one doing the rummaging. He’d offered and she wasn’t about to let him take it back now. “Pity he’s the dead one, then.”
Still, she flipped forward to find the years Rabbit had mentioned.
Rabbit's official policy on his father's death was not commenting--far safer that way--and anywhere there were far more interesting things to be engaging with, as Clarissa's elegant fingers rifled through the pages, giving flashes of years and names and accomplishments rendered largely meaningless by the passage of time.
There was a slip of tartan ribbon pressed between the pages at 1983, not visible above the pages, but marking the place nonetheless. Rabbit lifted an eyebrow, and leaned further forward. "McGonagall's interested in my father too?" he suggested, not really believing it, and glanced quickly down the names on the page. There was his father, and there was Mulciber, and Nott, and Priscilla Parkinson too, a prim non-entity of an entry saving only the special Herbology prize, and--
Rabbit couldn't help a sharp breath. Tom Riddle.
Clarissa was not a Death Eater close to the center of power (if anything, she was close to those close to it, or at least had been; the winds of change were, however, upon them, and she knew it and meant to take advantage.) She didn’t know the Dark Lord’s true name, and so the reason for Rabastan’s tiny gasp was lost on her. She wasted no time, however, in following his gaze down the page in the wake of it, and while she couldn’t place exactly which entry he was peering at, she could narrow it down well-enough. Nor did she miss the more familiar names as she looked.
“Not just your father,” she murmured, playfulness bleeding out of her tone. “All of them.” She looked up again at her companion, trying to read his expression. “So much for our pleasure jaunt.”
"Is there any greater pleasure than finding out the unexpected?" Rabbit said, but his tone was likewise missing its usual drawl. He looked over the desk, eyes quick but sharp. "Where was this? Was there anything else with it?" Maybe McGonagall had just been reading up on the poor departed Corvus Lestrange. Or maybe this was a golden opportunity to find out just what the other side were unearthing. Any little extra piece might help when the time came to shake down the rat.
Clarissa gestured at the pile she’d made of the things on McGonagall’s desk, ready to be replaced where she’d found them in order. “Essays, mainly. Nothing that piqued my interest in the least before this.”
She looked up, checking her companion’s expression. “We still need to find a bit of hair. If we’ve got it, we can get back in here again, keep track of her progress.”
"You're right." Rabbit cast one last glance over the desk, as though willing something to jump out at him, then stepped back. "Let's not get too distracted. Try the drawers, maybe. She might have a comb tucked away or something." Then again, what did Rabbit know about the grooming habits of women? He headed back to keep watch at the door.
"Can you hear the game?" Clarissa asked as she rummaged. Two of the desk drawers were locked, but the top opened easily enough, and perhaps- yes, a spare tie of the sort that one might use to twist her hair back out of her face. She made a pleased noise and lifted the thing up for inspection. Not much. If she had time, she'd hunt more thoroughly. "How long do you think we have?"
Rabbit had quietly cancelled his sticking spell and eased the door back open; the corridor outside was still empty and silent. He glanced back at Clarissa's happy noise, and gave a tight smile. "Hard to tell with quidditch," he pointed out. He had a rough idea of what the game would probably look like, courtesy of a Parkinson cousin on the Ravenclaw team (his ostensible reason for being at the game at all), but the thing about quidditch was you just never knew when the Snitch would pop up and--
A roar erupted from the distant pitch, as the massed crowd all went up in unison. Yes. That. "Sounds like that might be it. Let's finish up here." It wasn't like McGonagall would be sprinting straight back, but no point taking undue risks.
Clarissa nodded and tugged the strands of grey hair free from the tie, wrapping them into a neat loop around her finger and sliding the little bundle into a small pocket of her robe with a murmured charm to keep it from becoming tangled with any other lint that might make its way in. “Right. I’d like more, but we can always look when we come back,” she said, almost to herself, as she flicked her wand to replace things as they had been on the desk. “Anything else before we leave, darling?”
Rabbit watched everything settle itself back on the desk--Clarissa certainly knew what she was about, not that he'd ever doubted her--and checked the corridor again; still empty. "All good from my end. Back to the stands?" He flashed Clarissa a cheeky grin as he nudged the door open enough to let them out. "Or did you have an old schoolgirl fantasy you wanted to try out?"
Finished after having looked over her work to ensure that McGonagall wouldn’t notice a pin out of place, Clarissa turned back to Rabastan with the sort of smile that would have been a smirk if a lady like her were capable of such an ugly expression. “Well. There is the one about the prefects’ baths and Sluggy’s stash of pineapple rum…”