Fancasts: Ade Selwyn - Donald Glover / Rabastan Lestrange - Colin O'Donoghue
A/N Been a little while but I have been looking forward to this chapter, hope you guys like it too. Big love to wonderful Kreeblim Sabs who provides invaluable literary support, as well as hand holding for this story.
Chapter 10: The Overlooked's Tale (Ade's Story)
Another Manor
Ade Selwyn waited for the grand, imposing doors of the Lestrange family library to close behind Rabastan, then allowed himself to pause from retrieving his study materials from his worn satchel. As the wood fell back onto its frame, he froze completely, his limbs rigid as if he had been stunned, his book-laden hands remaining static in the silent air.
We could kill him, slowly wrap our hands around his privileged throat and push our harsh thumbs over his windpipe.
Blue, that's the colour he would go, deep, true blue. White first, through shock and then from the loss of blood flow, then his lips would tinge a dreamy navy.
Coughing and spluttering, wide-eyed and completely at our mercy, who would be in charge then?
He waited, still unmoving, as he heard Rabastan's steps fade into the darkness of the rooms above, then he carefully lowered the thick tomes, gently placing them in front of him before shutting his eyes. He let his now empty hands fall to the abused table where they grasped at the edge, his fingers biting into the unforgiving surface as he imagined his rage flowing out through the chewed tips, till he felt himself start to calm.
The mania left. The red tinted mist that descended whenever Rabastan spoke to him like a serf, the indignation that heated his blood and made his body stiffen and his hands fist. It swept away from him, rolling from his tense shoulders as he sat unobserved in the vast room. His breathing became shallow and slowed, and he released his death grip on the table.
The rage left, but the hate didn't.
Ade was glad.
The hate fuelled him. Propelled him to not just to dream of another existence, but plan for it.
It was the hate that woke him in the morning, an hour earlier than was necessary, the hate that kept him quiet while he listened to the swill that those around him spoke, the hate the whispered comforting truths to him.
None of this will matter one day; no one will remember where we came from.
One day we will have them on their backs, struggling like overturned beetles in the sun. Their faces will be bloody and repentant; they will beg for us to save their worthless lives and we will decide whether to play the benevolent man or an avenging angel.
All the choices will be ours.
Choices, choices, choices.
Ade moved smoothly to position the items on the table to look as if he were hard at work, appearances he was good at, he could perfect a stainless sheen on his countenance to mirror back whatever the person he was with wanted to see.
It's always some version of themselves; people are arrogant like that.
Scion to a family that had made more than their fair share of poor decisions Ade had taken Rabastan's offer of a partnership of mutual value. He had watched the Lestrange spare cart around Hogwarts for years as if he was superior to everyone else. Ade saw him for what he was, a petulant, spoiled school boy who didn't quite fit. He saw how Rab created an extreme version of himself, a snarling shimmering mirage that was designed to intimidate and enthral all at once.
But the performance did not work on him.
Like a glamour charm cast over a scar you knew was there, the mask glittered but did not obscure the reality of the ugly blemish underneath.
Ade considered himself smart, maybe almost as smart as Evander Avery, though he didn't let his intelligence consume his personality as that boy did, Evander was also good, good in a way that he would never be.
But his intelligence hadn't helped him. The Selwyns, having lost a vast deal of their fortune, were no longer admitted to the inner circles of sacred twenty-eight society. They may not have been looked upon as inferior, like blood traitors, but they weren't far off. As such he hadn't spent his summers with their children, learning their ways and studying their machinations. When he got to Hogwarts, he was playing catch up.
He had come with all of the right pieces only to find everyone else was playing a different game.
He had watched Rabastan's quiet feud with Rowle, first with endless boredom and then with something approaching interest. When the lumbering blond picked a Ravenclaw friend Ade knew it would be long before Rabastan would want one.
He made himself the obvious choice.
He feigned his lack of understanding of how the world worked, he may have come late to the game but he was a quick learner and by now he was a pro, but a quiet one. He needed Rabastan as much as he needed him, but Lestrange was not one to have a pet that could think for themselves.
We can show him one day.
Show him how much understanding he lacked.
Show him while we crush his life around him before we break his mind, break it into tiny fragments.
Ade stood rubbing his hands over his face; he had enough to do without working on homework tonight. The meeting had been something of an eye-opener, he had been slightly taken aback at just how much he had enjoyed seeing Avery prostate on the floor, yelling in pain. Not even the boy's formidable father or his fat pockets were able to save him from that fate.
That was the glorious thing about Tom Riddle, apparently sociopathic though he was and charismatic as a sharpened blade he may have been; the man was a real leveller.
Ade stretched languidly before moving through the mismanaged stacks; the general disorder didn't bother him, he had spent so much time in the library he knew where everything was. He came to a stop in front of the books he wanted. Books so dark they made the still air almost vibrate around them with the promise of treasures laid within their pages. Books that seemed to leak their evil into the wood of the shelves they were placed on.
Our kind of books.
Books that speak to our soul.
Ade plucked the book he had been looking for and removed it from the sagging shelf with all the care he could muster before delicately pulling it open and running his hands almost affectionately over the old pages. When he came across a parchment sheet spattered with what was unmistakably dried blood his fingers shook with overwhelming need, and he moved back to the desk to carefully copy out the inscribed words.
Everything will come to us; we just have to be patient.
Patients in the quiet until we can be still in the chaos.
Ade concentrated on the slow curve of his letters filling his parchment.
These zealots with their rules for what you had to wear and what was the appropriate flower to send a dear cousin on his birthday, these setters of the social hierarchy seemed to completely miss that in their quest to preserve their ways they were irrevocably changing them. By handing their allegiance to Voldemort, they removed themselves from the positions of complete power.
The pureblood world had a new regent, and he held many things within his gift.
As Ade charmed the ink on the page to dry and sheathed the new addition to his growing grimoire into his satchel the door opened and Rabastan stalked back into the library.
"Have you finished that charms piece yet? I want to go to sleep" he whined.
Ade's hand clenched automatically as the petulant voice rang out in the quiet space, he would have to work on that, work on those little reactions, those telling little ripples he allowed to disturb the surface of his fabricated visage.
"In a moment Rabastan," he bit out in as impassive a tone as he could.
"Good, see you tomorrow," Rabastan said and left the room, acting like a commanding officer allowing his man to stand down for the evening.
"Yes tomorrow" Ade answered in his normal flat voice.
He packed up his things as the door, once again, slammed shut.
The mark will make us all equal.
Then we will elevate ourselves above them.
Ade idly wondered what he would need to do to get his manor back? He suspected from what he had seen already the cost would be substantial, with flesh and blood the possible currency of choice.
He could cope with that he thought.
After all, so many accidents happened in the field.
