The Sinistriad
Atta-Nycol
CHAPTER 1
Sinistriad:
Of the most excellent and lamentable tale of hard-earned love, and then its loss; of hubris, and its sentencing; of the games gods play with mortal fates; and the men that sometimes overrule them.
Rodolphus Lestrange took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs to catch the burst of afternoon sun streaming in behind him. He reached up and ran both of his hands through his thick brown hair, slicking it back and then mussing it artfully forward again, letting his hands slide down to scratch his beard. Rudy was proud of this beard; he was the only sixth year in the entire school that had managed to grow one thick enough to merit keeping. Alongside his height and his thick frame, it made him look much older than most of his mates. He glanced at a table of nearby girls very prettily pretending not to pay attention to him and smiled smugly to himself. Stretching for their benefit, Rudy hoped that the sunlight would catch the definition in his arms. His eyes ran discreetly over one of the girls, wondering if she'd let him kiss her later if he just walked up and asked. Gryffindor, probably a fourth year. Long tawny hair, a little thin, but well kept; skinny—not a flier. He didn't know her surname. She'd probably tell him exactly where he could kiss her, and he doubted it would be a pleasant sort of place. Gryffindors.
Rudy let his chair fall forward again with a sharp crack and propped his elbows on the table, adjusting the rolled up sleeves of his collared shirt.
His younger brother Rabastan didn't even bother looking up from his homework. "You're bored, aren't you," he said in a disinterested sort of way. Rabastan was knee deep in a meticulous essay for transfiguration, and not about to let his brother's attention span put him off his purpose.
Rodolphus nodded gravely in response, an expression of apology etched across his features. Locking eyes, the brothers stared at each other for a moment. Rabastan was just as tall as Rudy, and looked very much like him. Though they both shared their father's features, Rabastan was notably thinner and it made him look much more severe, a distinction that Rabastan fully embraced. While Rudy had an easy, intentionally casual attitude and manner of dress, Rabastan's shirt looked as crisp and rigidly buttoned as a military uniform, his robes still clasped neatly in the front, rather than thrown over the back of his chair. Rudy often said Rabastan dressed the way he did to avoid being mistaken for his brother. Rabastan often agreed, his smile so understated it could almost be missed, and sometimes wondered aloud why Rudy didn't dress more neatly in an effort to be mistaken for him.
"Look over my transfiguration before I lose you completely." Rabastan slid his essay towards his brother, who swept it up with an intentional flourish. "And don't wrinkle it."
"I won't."
"You will if you treat it like that."
"Calm down, I am not going to wrinkle your parchment. And even if I did, it wouldn't matter because you're going to recopy it anyway."
"I am not."
"You are too. You always recopy your essays. Even—" Rudy snatched the paper away from his brother's fingers as they reached out to grab it back—"For the summer tutor. And I should know; it makes me look bad."
"Rudy," Rabastan said offhandedly, "You wouldn't claim to look bad even if you saw yourself in a mirror."
Rudy tipped the corner of the parchment down to shoot a flat look at his brother, who almost allowed himself to smile as he reached for another set of homework parchment. He hadn't even unrolled it before he snatched up his wand and threw a foul look over his shoulder, aiming at Gregory Nott as he and a few of the other fifth and sixth year Slytherins descended on their neat study space, pushing his organized piles of paper around and moving his books. He forced himself not to say anything, snapping at Nott instead. "Did you empty the common room just to come and bother me?" He kept his wand trained on Nott. It would be impossible to do anything with the House nearby—and most of the upperclassmen were.
The entire sixth year class had sat down with them. Jonathan Wilkes, who spent more time in detention than he did in class, had propped his feet on the table; Walden Macnair, his faint black moustache constantly being groomed by his gnarled right hand, trophy of a hippogriff bite during fourth year, sat backwards on one of the chairs; Evan Rosier, with a dangerously seductive smile and a suite of ex-girlfriends that meticulously avoided meeting his eye, leaned back casually, crossing one leg and eyeing the table of girls across the way. Rudy, whose dangerous reputation was only enforced by his inspired performance as a Beater for the Slytherin House Quidditch Team, tipped his chair back onto two legs again.
Most of the fifth years were also present, although even at full strength they wouldn't have been as fierce, and so were left to stand. Tommy Avery, who was a shade too fat and too yellow-blonde to look more than whiney when he was upset, leaned one of his shoulders against a nearby bookshelf, crossing his arms over his chest. It made him look even more dumpy than usual. Marcus Parkinson, whose family had more gold than anybody in all of England, knew his money could buy him out of anything and was therefore rarely bothered by much. He leaned over Rabastan's shoulder, glancing down at his homework. Rabastan himself was the only one afforded a chair, where he sat rigidly straight, ever reinforcing the militant reputation that won him the command of any chess set he came across, and most of his living fellows besides.
Regulus Black was probably sneaking off somewhere, nicking things out of a mate's trunk. He was Slytherin Seeker, and had been for several years, but he was better known for his ability to smuggle anything in and out of the castle or anyone's pocket. Also absent, as always, was the reclusive, sweating, greasy Severus Snape. Snape had a glare that could put off even Macnair most of the time, but as a group the fifth years were tame compared to Rudy and his friends. They might have had a tougher reputation if they could get away with bragging, but among older brothers these things are difficult. Besides, Rabastan noted, the fifth years were smarter than that. His eyes slid towards the unthreatening slouch of Tommy Avery, watched him glare at the back of Nott's head, wishing for his chair. There was a good chance that Greg would trip when he stood up, but nobody would really notice. The fifth years did not get caught.
It was a fair assessment, and Rabastan felt he had the right to make it. He knew these boys almost as well as his own brother. Had considered courting their sisters. Had made the mistake, once, of suggesting he'd do something other than waltz with several of MacNair's cousins, and lived only because Rudy had laughed and agreed that he would too. Knew better than to try and work while he allowed them at his table.
"Hey Rudy. I think your kid brother wants to put itching potion in my sheets." Nott smirked at Rabastan and threw himself down in a chair next to Rudy.
"Did you hex him again?"
Nott composed his face as innocently as possible. "I would never do any such thing to a member of Le Famille Lestrange. Aren't all of them crazy?"
"Yeah, I'm not surprised he wants to poison you. Hey—" he addressed the remainder of the table sharply. "Watch the piles. I put that there for a reason."
"Sorry," his friends muttered, and haphazardly moved the papers back to their original spots. Rabastan nodded in thanks. "Didn't mean to disturb the General and his battle plans," Marcus added. Rabastan looked at him askance, his face impassive.
"Yes we did, idiot." Nott contradicted. He turned to Rudy, and grandly announced, "We've come to break you out of the library." He thumped the table with his fist. "The sun's come out, it's before supper, and there's flying to be done." Rudy nodded in grateful agreement, and raised an eyebrow at his brother.
"I'll stay, thanks," Rabastan said drily, reaching for his essay from Rudy again. Rudy let him have it. " 'Sgood," Rudy said. "I know you're not done, but don't forget to talk about Hamilton's Postulate. It'll be a nice touch—probably nobody else will mention it."
"That's charms," Rabastan said, momentarily confused. "I know it is. Hamilton proved it was possible to combine charms by finding the right combination of wand movements…" His brother arched a brow at him, in open invitation to continue. "but it could be applied… to…combine a transfiguration with a charm?"
"Good," Rudy smiled. "And why is that important when you're writing up vanishing spells?"
"Circe and her bounding band of bastard pigs… stop pretending to be Dumbledore and get out to the pitch…" Macnair rolled his eyes.
Rabastan blinked, mentally running through his essay, trying to focus as multiple side conversations struck up to avoid the academic discussion. A brief history of vanishing, how to vanish an invertebrate, how to vanish a vertebrate, why vertebrates are more difficult, why vanishing is a crucial part of wizarding life and transportation… "It's—I don't know."
"Because it's the principle behind invisibility. When you vanish an object, it goes away and reappears somewhere else, right? But if you turn something invisible, it remains solidly in place. Since that's contrary to the nature of a vanished objected… it stands to reason that invisibility is the combination of a vanishing spell with a charm thrown in somehow.
"That's rubbish—a theory at best." Rabastan said. "Nobody really knows why invisibility works. What do they think the charm is?"
"I don't know," Rudy shrugged. "Hamilton doesn't know either. That's why they call it Hamilton's Postulate."
Rabastan nodded slowly, his brow unknitting in his sudden understanding. He made a note to himself on another bit of parchment and glanced back at his brother. "Showoff."
"Well, he is the best in the year," Rosier said, absently, giving the thin Gryffindor a sly smile, his bright green eyes lit up.
"She's going to hex you in about two seconds," Rudy warned, noticing. He looked deliberately in another direction. "She's not available."
"How do you—ah," Rosier laughed in surprise as the Gryffindor smiled sweetly at him and made a rude gesture. "Insubordinate." He turned back to Rudy. "I take it you were similarly disrespected?"
"Knew better than to give her the chance," Rudy responded.
"Mudblood," Nott muttered.
"You're only interested in Bella Black anyway," Rosier needled Rudy.
"Would you lay off me and Bella Black?" Rudy snapped. "I was—"
Their argument was cut short by the cacophony of a suit of armor clanging through the library doors, running into every possible obstacle on its way in. Peeves, the short, fat, resident poltergeist of Hogwarts Castle, shrieked from the hallway, "LOST HIS HEAD, HE HAS—GONE TO FIND PINCHY MADAME PINCE TO GET HIS HEAD—"
Laughter broke out among all the study tables as the students watched the suit stumbling aimlessly through the library.
"Our savior is nigh," Nott intoned to the laughter of the table. "Walden, if you please?"
Macnair twisted his face into something like a smile. He reached below his chair with his knotted hand, flung his arm up into the air, and sent a medieval helm flying up towards the ceiling. With a whistling swipe of his wand, he sent it spinning across the library, where it firmly lodged itself onto the shoulders of an unsuspecting student.
Rabastan's face tightened in anger. Unless he was much mistaken, one clumsy suit of armor was making its way towards one scrambling, livid Severus Snape. "You bastard," Rabastan swore, standing up immediately.
"What," Nott demanded. The table burst into further peals laughter as the Snape fell backward off of his bench with a clang, pallid legs showing as his robes dropped. "Look at him, he's hilarious!"
"We sleep in his room!" Avery whined.
"Thank Circe I don't," Nott laughed, as the suit found Snape and began attempting to beat the helmet off his head with loud clangs.
"Evan's mangy little mudblood just ran off to tattle on him and all his big bad friends," Rabastan muttered, glancing at his brother.
"Shit," Rosier said, glancing at what had been the Gryffindor studying table, and was now empty. "I don't know how to untransfigure a suit—that's way past NEWT—all we did was take it's helm off—"
"It was your idea," Wilkes reminded him, meanly speaking up.
"I didn't think we'd be seen," Rosier said, defending himself. "Walden had to be so bloody public about it—"
"Calm your ass down, Evan. I got this." Rudy beckoned to his brother, and they both quickly advanced on the suit of armor, wands drawn.
The flying helm took both Aurora Sinistra and Severus Snape by surprise, as it interrupted their quiet afternoon. The two friends had just taken a brief break to stretch their legs by walking down to the lake and back. Snape had relented to her pleas after watching Aurora untie and rebraid her long blonde hair several times, unable to charm a straight braid without a mirror to help her aim. He agreed to walk if she promised to stop muttering about a braid that nobody was looking at anyway, and she readily agreed.
Aurora was naturally beautiful, with good skin and long legs, but she didn't often pay a lot of attention to her appearance. Although her mother was a pureblood most of the family had cut her off after she married Peter Sinistra, who would have been good stock himself if fate hadn't dictated he be born a squib. Her parents might still have had some money for the occasional set of new robes or makeup, but they were also compulsive gamblers. What money they did make came from horses, and even that was spent soon thereafter to invest in the next race. Sev was right; a crooked braid was the least of her worries. It was just him and just the library, and nobody was looking because there was nothing to look at anyway. Sev knew, because he thought the same thing about himself. He was a brilliant wizard, one of the more talented students in the fifth year, but his father was a muggle and his mother wasn't the most talented of witches. He came from different blood, but to the same end: it was hard for them both to be magical at all.
Frustratingly, Aurora had found it more difficult to focus when they'd sat back down in front of their books than she had before they'd left. Afternoon sun was pouring into the library windows, making it warm and truly soporific among the smell of parchment and old books. She'd rebraided her hair again after running her wand through the loose waves several times to calm the frizz.
"Wish there was Quidditch," she'd muttered to Sev's deaf ears. She picked up her quill and began to doodle a cartoon Quaffle, thinking about how good it would feel to have some practice with Hun-Cheol and Rebecca Goldstein, the other Ravenclaw House chasers. She was going to lose her trim figure—the one aspect of her appearance she really did care about— if they didn't start practicing more often. She wasn't really good friends with either of them, beyond Quidditch practice. Hun-Cheol was a typical Ravenclaw, desperately devoted to his studies, often to the detriment of Quidditch; Rebecca was a little less academically overbearing, but she was also excessively girly. What time she didn't spend at homework or Quidditch practice, she spent in front of the mirror, or giggling at nearby boys.
Aurora later wished she'd been as dedicated as Cheol. Maybe she wouldn't have looked over her shoulder to see the clamoring suit as it entered the library. She might have looked up instead to scratch her nose, might have seen the latest humiliation as it spun across the library and headed straight for them…
When the Lestrange brothers approached, wands drawn, she'd already taken a few blows from the suit as she tried to help her friend, and she was livid. "Well don't just stand there, posing for a portrait! Do something, you prat!"
Rudy was momentarily taken aback by the vicious assault. "Have you cast any spells at it yet?"
"No!" Aurora shouted over the noise of the suit. Rudy moved into position and began a slow enchantment while Rabastan tried to pull it back with a charm. He hoped Rudy knew what he was doing—suits were a tricky business. Rudy wasn't its original commander, so he'd have to entice it to listen to him, like recruiting a soldier from another man's army to turn double agent. When it paused in its ceaseless hammering, and pulled back slightly, Rabastan automatically ordered it to be still; when it was, Rudy made a couple of decisive swipes in the air with his wand, and all the disjointed pieces of armor fell to the floor with a loud crash. The brothers nodded at each other.
As Rudy pulled the helmet off Snape's head, Madame Pince grabbed him by the ear and pulled him away.
"Ow!" Rudy shouted.
"Shh!" The librarian responded, pointing to her office door.
"Madame Pince," Rudy argued in a hushed voice, "I was only trying to help—I'm sorry that the suit was loud, but—"
As the two argued in whispers, Rabastan reached out to help Severus and Aurora off the ground. Aurora took a hand, but Severus didn't.
"He did try to help, Sev," Aurora said quietly.
"I didn't need his stupid help—I hate them," Snape spat, getting to his feet and stuffing things aimlessly back into his bag. "I hate every last one of them—"
"That's my potions book."
"Shut up, squibspawn! Just go away and leave me alone!" Sev tore his bag off the table and slung it over his shoulder, grabbing another book and pushing past Aurora in a huff. Aurora resisted the urge to call after him that a degenerate muggle hardly made a better father than a gambling addicted squib, but it was close.
Rabastan cocked his head, calling Aurora's attention back from Severus' retreating form. She thanked Rabastan, but he didn't budge. "What?" She demanded. "You want to have a go at me too? I bet you set it on him, you stupid, Slytherin, pureblood asshole—" She yelped as a hand latched onto her braid and didn't let go.
"The hell did you call me, squibshit?" Macnair had bent his head to breathe uncomfortably down the neck of her robes. Aurora glanced around for Madame Pince, but her back was turned as she continued to berate Rudy for helping them.
"Let go of my hair, you pureblood prick," Aurora snapped, jamming her elbows back towards her attacker as the Slytherin boys closed in around them.
He let go and shoved her back towards the stacks, laughing. "A real witch, isn't she?"
"Better than you and Tommy Avery. How many more times are you going to fail astronomy?"
"You watch your mouth, squib—"
"Yeah, yeah, squibspawn, I know. Go roll around on the owlry floor. It rained today—should be nice and mucky." Aurora pushed out of the circle of Slytherin boys towards her own table. Macnair grabbed her neck this time, pinning her against one of the bookshelves.
"I'd watch the way you talk around your betters, if I was you," drawled Rosier.
Aurora glanced around. Unarmed squibspawn versus most of the upperclassmen of Slytherin House. She brought her eyes back around to Macnair, and said nothing. He leaned forward and hissed into her face. "Like bare hands, do you? Huh, squibshit? Is this how your nasty squib father lays his hands on your mother?" He pressed closer and Aurora cringed without meaning to, coiling her knee to slam upwards.
"Assholes," Rudy said, walking up, oblivious. "We ran out of time to make it to the pitch." He beckoned as he backed away again, heading for the library doors without sparing a glance or a comment for Aurora. "It's Slug Club tonight, and none of us are dressed for dinner. He'll bore us with long tales of how he knows the Minister's personal tailor, or something, if we don't go now."
"Circe. Anything but that again."
Rosier let her go immediately and turned to walk away his mates, all of them retreating without a second thought. Aurora rubbed her neck as she turned and walked out of the stacks, fuming that something as trivial as the Slug Club took more precedence than her bullying, fuming at how stupid it was to be mad that they had gone away, fuming at her stupid parents for giving birth and passing their sins on to an innocent child. Reaching the mess that had been her homework, she stood unmoving for a moment, staring at the sun-bathed table, hating the spilled ink and splattered parchment. Retrieving her bag from the floor, she violently stacked the papers and books and slammed them into her bag. She thought about leaving the ink for someone else to clean up, but Madam Pince was already glaring at her. She siphoned the ink away and jetted it back into her inkbottle, which she then deliberately threw into the garbage can with as much force as she could muster. Madam Pince raised one sharp finger and pointed to the doors, throwing her out for the transgression, but Aurora was already headed in that direction anyway.