Rodolphus Lestrange had been thinking about his Bella. Sitting in his dank Azkaban cell, he thought of her wavy dark hair and the way it framed her pale, thin face. He thought of the curves of her hips and the fullness of her lips. Suddenly, he heard the lock of his cell click open and a wiry-haired, tan-skinned middle aged woman trotted in. She wore very fine robes and had a "Minister for Magic" pin clipped to her chest. She looked slightly familiar, Rodolphus just couldn't put his finger on where he had seen her.

"Hullo, Mr. Lestrange," said the woman in a stuffy voice. "I am Hermione Granger, Minister for Magic—"

Granger. He remembered her now. She was a Mudblood his Bella had tortured at Malfoy Manor, a close friend of Potter's. But she wasn't a teenager anymore. She was taller and more imposing, and had a womanly figure.

"—I have come to inform you that you have been granted a full pardon from the Ministry under influence of your nephew, Draco Malfoy."

Granger finally had Rodolphus's attention. He was to be...released? He had never been more overjoyed, not since his Bella was alive. Azkaban was a miserable place. Even though the Ministry has removed those wretched Dementors and stopped serving slop, this hadn't mattered to Rodolphus. He knew how cruelly they were taunting him. They had placed him in the same cell where he had been placed last time he had been in Azkaban.

The cell he had shared with his Bella.

How dare that bitch Molly. What nerve she had, to kill his Bella and think she could get away with it! And she had, because the Ministry was now overrun by Potter and his cronies, and of course they would never prosecute Molly, who had been something of a mother to Potter during the war. So of course Molly would never face consequences for her actions.

"Are you listening to me, Mr. Lestrange?" snapped Hermione.

"Don't talk to me like that, Mudblood," Rodolphus grumbled.

"You're lucky I even agreed to let you out," said Hermione bitterly, a haughty expression on her face. "But Mr. Malfoy made a strong case in favor of your pardon, and since he's certainly turned over a new leaf since the war, I granted him his wish. He's certainly very fond of you."

Rodolphus suppressed a smile. He had been fond of the boy, too. The Dark Lord had placed him in charge of training his nephew in all the areas Rodolphus was strong: Occlumency, Divination, silent Jinxes... They had grown close, almost like father and son. Rodolphus had missed so much of his nephew's life during his first time in Azkaban, and he had been delighted to meet him. Rabastan's daughter Petronilla had died during the first war, claimed in a thestral accident when she was still very young, so Rodolphus had to be an uncle to somebody. And now Rodolphus was missing even more of Draco's life now that he was back in Azkaban.

"Tell me about Draco," urged Rodolphus. "Is he married? Does he have children?"

"He's married to Astoria Greengrass, who I'm sure you know," Hermione replied crisply. "Records show that her father did business within your...circle. He was a treasurer for the Death Eaters, was it? Well, they both have nothing to do with the Dark Arts now, and they're raising a son together, Scorpius, who is a very fine young man."

A son? Was he adopted? Rodolphus remembered Astoria, the quaint and quiet daughter of that seedy banker Greengrass, and the younger sister of a girl named Daphne whom Rodolphus remembered only as a vixen. There had been talk of Astoria marrying into the Malfoy clan, but when Lucius and Narcissa discovered that Astoria was riddled with a blood disease that rendered her infertile, all plans were abolished. After all, infertility ruined the entire purpose of a pure blood marriage.

A purpose Rodolphus's pure blood marriage had never fulfilled.

Another haunting memory of Azkaban was the child Bella had lost there. It had been his child, or so she said. It was buried in a small patch of nightshade that Rodolphus's cell overlooked.

The Healers said it had been a boy.

Rodolphus turned his thoughts back to Draco. If the boy had married Astoria and severed all ties with his previous connections to the Dark Arts, then things had certainly changed. The Draco whom Rodolphus knew would never go against his parents' wishes, and they had wished for nothing more than for Draco to marry a girl who could have children.

"The boy, Scorpius... is he their biological child?"

"Yes," said Hermione, and for a moment her face looked slightly curious, as if there were something important that Rodolphus was implying that he knew. "As far as I know, yes. His Ministry papers says he is."

Then the disease must have somehow been cured. How strange...

Looking bored with Rodolphus's pensive look, Hermione snapped, "Are you coming or not?"

Rodolphus gave his cell one final look.

"I am."