Chapter 1, Crazy Train

Rod had recently heard a song on the Muggle radio called crazy train. He could be down with that...Riding a crazy train instead of this stupid uber car with an overly chatty Muggle driver. Bella and he made Rabastan answer the man's incessantly polite questions as they simply stared blankly at the back of his head while he drove, hoping it would terrify him into shutting up. It didn't work as well as they hoped.

"Where you guys headed," he asked cheerfully. "I mean I got the address, but it's an office building...so you got some exciting business in there or something?"

"We're going to our shrink, and she's not particularly hot, so no...not exciting," Rabastan answered after a moment of consideration.

For a moment the Muggle uber man was taken aback by the answer, but he smiled, nodding. "Everyone needs therapy these days, I guess. It's a tough world, ain't it."

"You don't know the half," Rabastan muttered and that was true. Obviously Mr. Muggle knew nothing about Azkaban, or getting screwed over by The Dark Lord after all he'd done for them or being freed from Azkaban only to be forced to live among the Muggles as another form of random punishment.

"You all from England or something," the driver wondered after a too short moment of blessed silence.

"No, France," Rabastan snarked and the guy just nodded. Rodolphus couldn't suppress a sneer, because gods but Americans were bloody thick.

"And we're stuck living here," Bellatrix muttered woefully, causing Rodolphus to grin.

They always thought along similar lines and he loved that. She was his wife, and his best friend and his partner in crime. When they were allowed to just live, life was never better. Here they were stifled though, and it was more frustrating than anything else. And now he had to go to the damned shrink again. It wasn't fair. Once a week they had to do this and it was uncomfortable in so many ways! Rodolphus didn't feel like anything was being shrunk but their fun and their options and their freedom from Muggles, wait that was a lot. Weren't shrinks supposed to help, though? Weren't they supposed to shrink one's problems or something?

Rodolphus stared balefully at the back of the driver's head as the uber car turned into the office building where their shrink had her office.

"Fun fucking times ahead," Rabastan said happily as he popped open the passenger door of the uber car and hopped out. He hated going to the shrink as much as Rodolphus did. Bellatrix hated it, but not enough for Rodolphus's liking. He and Bella exited the back of the car and walked toward the main doors of the large office building. They even had to ride a damned Muggle elevator to get to the shrink's office. Muggle this and Muggle that, and Rodolphus wanted to claw out of his skin while screaming a lot it felt so dirty. He didn't indicate his strong feelings on the matter, though, merely keeping his eyes straight ahead of him as he headed directly for the elevator thing with Bella and Rabastan flanking him.

When they reached the shrink's office, the place was quiet and cool as always. The room was decorated in supposedly soothing shades of blue, but Rodolphus felt blood red was far more soothing. The shrink never asked him, though, so he didn't share that. She opened the door to Bella's knock with an easy smile at all three of them.

She was middle aged and slender with wavy brown hair that went past her shoulders and lighter brown eyes. She was nondescript enough and uninteresting rather like her office. Her fucking name was Sunflower Sasquatch. What was up with these fucking American witches? They were nearly as headfucked as the American Muggles! Sunflower waited politely for the three Lestranges to seat themselves and get comfortable before she began the session. Rabastan sank into a chair near the water cooler thing. He poured himself a small paper cupful while Rodolphus and Bellatrix settled side by side on the soft sofa in the corner. Rodolphus found it abhorrent and classless to drink from paper cups.

"So how was your week," Sunflower began.

"Okay," Rabastan replied.

"Depressing and rageful," Bellatrix said.

As his wife and little brother had covered it, Rod remained silent. He was bored.

"How are you, Rodolphus," Sunflower asked. She'd noticed and that was annoying. He scowled.

"Fine."

"Still bottling I see," Sunflower observed gently, giving him a disappointed look that was also annoying.

He really hated it when his wife and his shrink said the same thing! Nothing was more annoying than that...Well almost nothing. Living among Muggles was more annoying than that...Probably. Bella had learned the bottling term from Sunflower and she used it far too much concerning Rodolphus. He felt that bottling, if that's really what he was doing, made everything...safer.

"I am not bottling. I have nothing to say," Rodolphus said when it was clear from the long silence that Sunflower really did expect him to say something. "I see no point in coming here weekly, honestly. It's stupid. I know it isn't your fault that the Ministry makes these silly sessions a requirement for our continued freedom if one can call it that."

Unruffled by his words, Sunflower arched a brow. "So you still don't feel free even though you have your own place, and can come and go as you like?"

"We would not live among Muggles by choice, so of course it isn't freedom," Rodolphus snapped. Why was she asking things she was already fully aware of the answer to? Bella had certainly said nearly the same words enough in her many tirades during these weekly sessions.

"We could compare it to living among wizarding society in London, yes, but we could also compare it to Azkaban, and it would certainly look a lot better...a lot more like freedom," Sunflower pointed out.

Rodolphus shrugged. He supposed some could see it that way if they didn't realize how foul Muggles were. Of course it was better than Azkaban, but it didn't mean it was bearable or easy or fucking enriching in the least. He knew Sunflower didn't want to hear that, though, so he fucking bottled, remaining silent. It did no good to talk about his feelings, supposedly the reason they were there. His feelings could not be pacified after all, so what was the point?

"I think you would all get used to living among the Muggles if you made more of an effort to integrate," Sunflower said. Her coaxing tone gave Rod chills of dread. He just knew she was about to give them some awful assignment. Last week she'd made them go to a farmer's market!

Rabastan bought peanut butter cookies that had given Rod the shits for two days, which only made him hate Muggles all the more. Bella had bought a bracelet. They still hated Muggles, so he saw no point to integrating. To be fair, he'd never seen a point and now his view was only more firmly cemented due to those damned cookies, but still. He wasn't alone. The other two agreed with him, they just spoke up more than he bothered to do was all.

"The more you integrate with Muggles, the more you will learn about them," Sunflower continued. That gentle tone was really fucking scaring Rodolphus. The woman may look unassuming, but she was scary. Fuck if you weren't hot like the three Lestranges, being scary was something he supposed.

"The more you grow to know and understand the Muggles, the less you will fear them."

"Wait, we don't fear them," Bellatrix exploded. "We hate them."

Rodolphus and Rabastan nodded.

"We fear nothing," Rabastan said. "We fucking survived Azkaban, remember?"

"Yes and I want to keep you from returning," Sunflower said. That coaxing tone was still heavy in her voice and Rodolphus didn't like it one bit.

"I want you all to buy a cell phone today when you leave here. I want you to use that cell phone to join Muggle social networks and begin posting there. You may research first to see what others are posting, don't worry. Just begin the process, you don't have to accomplish it all in a day. I want you on Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, even youtube! I bet you three would be hilarious to watch on youtube," she chuckled. "As soon as you set up your channel, I will subscribe! I'll set up a tiktok to follow you there as well. I can't wait to watch your progress, and I promise you shall have lots of fun!"

Rodolphus exchanged a confused glance with Bellatrix. They hadn't understood a fucking word of what Sunflower just said. Of course they knew each individual word, or most of them, but not what they meant when combined into the odd Muggle jargon with which she was apparently all too familiar.

" .Instagram," Bellatrix asked carefully. Horror showed itself in her wild dark gaze as she looked from Rod to Sunflower.

"Google it when your phone is set up," Sunflower said.

"Google is a Muggle learning device that will teach you everything! It really is quite impressive. The Muggles are progressing in technological leaps and bounds!"

"Which is terrifying," Rabastan said. The other two Lestranges nodded.

"We already have the Muggle computer and net thingy and home phone. Do we really need a cell phone," Rabastan asked and Sunflower nodded.

"It makes making videos and building a following on many of those social networks far easier. I really want things to be as easy for you three as possible."

When all three Lestranges gave her doubtful looks she sighed. "I have actually come to like all of you very much in spite of my better instincts combined with my full awareness of the psychotic nature of all three of you. I feel you got a bad hand dealt to you with in many ways. Mistakes were made and British wizarding society takes no responsibility.

"All I wanna say is that they don't really care about us," Bellatrix sang under her breath, then gave Sunflower a dry smile. "As you can hear, we've been listening to Muggle radio as you told us to do two sessions ago."

"I want to ride a crazy train," Rodolphus said, and for some reason, Sunflower couldn't stop laughing for nearly a minute. She was almost hysterical and he wondered if she was quite alright, but didn't care enough to ask.