Chapter Text
“Follow the raven,
One that's pure and righteous.
Follow the wind it carries,
Slight and strong.
Miles it goes,
Until it reaches the blossoming tree.
Return to the roots,
And sing our lovely song.”
“Corvus oculum corvi non eruit"
The cobblestones echoed her footsteps behind her. They left a sound of righteousness and purpose. Her fashionable heels, a darling shade of blue, were worn by an even more chic woman. This woman had an air about her. One of seriousness and melancholy that protected her from roguish men and talkers. However, that did not prevent them from staring at her. Staring at her golden glassy skin and her styled hair. Outright gawking at her as if she were a crown jewel displayed in the throne room of the queen’s castle. She ignored them all. What else could she do but learn to stand up straight with a placid look and ignore them?
Miss Leta Lestrange that was her name. This lovely and somber woman whose deep ocean blue shoes clicked cobblestone-like music on this dreary and spotty day in London. Continuing briskly Leta took a turn onto Whitehall Street. Busy people in their black suits carrying umbrellas greeted her. She watched them pass, the crowds, the faces, she couldn’t name a single person in great clumps of black cloth. They were all moody and closed off on this ugly Tuesday. Leta walked up to a white building with shrubs hidden behind its pillars and opened it up. The top of the shrub lifted nicely and she climbed in proceeding then to slide down a chute. The shiny darkness of the tunnel she slid through was brightened by a light at the end. Leta was carried to the light landing on the floor of the Ministry of Magic.
‘Her people’ she thought. How strange that there were two worlds. Worlds she could cross between, choose between, and yet with so many places she could run to and pick from. She knew she wouldn't fit. After all, she didn’t fit in at London, Hogwarts, or in her own home. Her mind understood she was not wanted and so at times, it would decide to get rid of her.
Witches and wizards all chattering past her. Like in the muggle world upstairs here, black clothes declared their presence in the crowd. In her black dress, she fit right in with this compact unit of workers. Sometimes she felt as though they were all in a trance of work, home, kids, partners, and the gossip column. There would be nothing to pull them out of the routine they all marched in. ‘How lovely to live in a pattern’ Leta thought.
It seemed that sometimes it was only her that would be snatched from her life. Put in a box where she would scream and pound to get out while a gossamer rope wrapped around her neck. Tying a knot for each breath she took as revenge for murdering that boy. She would never fall into a trance of work, home, and family, but she tried. First with Newt and then with Theseus. Falling in love with the safety and comfort they offered. She could love them both, but it seemed as though she couldn’t live with them. When she pictured a life she couldn’t imagine her and Theseus curled around a fire or baking pies in the kitchen. She wanted it so much, but her mind ever so calculating and correct denied it. It kept her awake at night and killed her every morning knowing that her mind was still on the boat. Still watching the little bundle float so beautifully down.
Dark blue heels reflected on the polished black floor carried the woman to an elevator that was crowding up. As she entered the golden doors clicked behind her. “12th floor,” she said to the witch standing in front of the panel of buttons. The witch a tall brunette wearing all black with small gold earrings responded with a nod before pressing the button. The cool calm voice announcing the floors came up as they shot up past the golden statues and the clumps of dark clothes.
Watching them Leta wondered what would pull them out of their trance. A lover's death, a failure, a need for revenge, or a secret? She tilted her face examining them. Seeing which face glanced upward at the shooting golden elevators. Like a tired wolf gazing at an animal, she marked them carefully. She would never attack but always prepare. The elevator reached the 12th floor and she emerged onto a purple-covered hallway lined with dark doors. At the end of the hallway, she encountered an arch leading to an open room and a wooden desk in the center. A little golden plaque on the desk read ‘Secretary Leta Lestrange.’ She could be so much more than this she thought. She was certainly intelligent enough, she thought. At least more so than Chavous Hollinger, the current head of the International Magical Office of Law. Chavous Hollinger was a tall white-haired old man who had never taken a day off of work or worn anything that wasn’t a suit or formidable robes in the last 50 years. Rumors stated that his wife had left him 5 years into their marriage. This would explain his constant state of anger and annoyance. His first response to a problem was to yell, whether it was at one of his workers, her, or an inanimate object that he found offending it didn’t matter. Normally he was a smart man, but his anger issues tended to cloud his decisions and thinking.
Leta noticed that between Chavous Hollinger’s disgruntled attitude and annoyance with others a sort of melancholy. As if all the words and spit he threw were supposed to make up for the wife that left him and the quiet dark house he went to every day. Was he out of his trance she wondered.
Leta remembered a house similar to Chavous Hollinger’s. It was a quiet brick manor that was full of cobwebs and hate. A house that did not welcome its residents. It was filled with a mad hateful man, his only daughter, and memories of a happy woman who was stolen and had died just to fulfill one madman’s desires.
Walking over to the corner Leta took off her hat, gloves, and coat and hung them on a coat rack. She then went back to her desk and settled into a mahogany desk and glanced at the papers left there. Papers need to be sealed, delivered, and signed. She put her hands on her head she hated this menial work. She didn’t even want to be here, but Thesus’s insistence on joining the ‘ministry family’ had her agreeing to the position as secretary to the head of the International Magical Office of Law. The wood door leading to Chavous Hollinger’s office opened behind her. “ Miss Lestrange I need you to deliver these piles of paper downstairs to the Auror office,” Chavous Hollinger said dumping a pile of papers on her desk. She glanced up. His voice was so rough for this softened rainy day.
“Yes, Mr. Hollinger” she agreed, moving the papers to look through them.
“All this business with Grindelwald it’s giving me extra work. Muggles and the magical community panicking it's the last thing we need after the Great War. You know we are still rebuilding in York. That dragon the Germans released did a number on the wizarding community there. It was lucky that the muggles thought it was an airplane.”
“Of course Mr. Hollinger,” Leta went on agreeing with his rant. Her eyes follow the old man hobbling around and grabbing his hat from the coat rack.
“And have you heard that preposterous rumor of the young boy Credence or whatever being your brother?” He now turned now to look at her. The white gossamer neck wrapped around her neck. It was tightening and choking as if to say ‘I have got you now.’ The ghost of her little brother had come to haunt her. To tell her to suffer the same fate. Children of the same blood must not harm each other. Wasn’t that the meaning of that stupid Lestrange motto? Wasn’t that what she did? The old man was busily chuckling about the absurdity of the rumor. He did not see the girl’s eyes flash with fear and panic become her face. See her calculate and recalculate how he might’ve survived. Wondering if he lived would he reveal that she tried to kill him?
“Congratulations on your engagement with Theseus by the way, he is a fine man,” Mr. Hollinger said leaving the room and walking down the empty hallway. Leta slowly looked down at the diamond on her finger and the picture of Theseus on her desk.
The white gossamer rope had tied a knot around her neck. She saw the knot and the rope as a ball and chain that would drag her down to the bottom of the ocean.