Bellatrix walked Ravenna through the steps of the floor softening charm. It was a rather useful spell that fortunately fell into the area of not being taught at Hogwarts but also not being a Black Family Spell, and thus was something she could teach her best friend. And quite fortunately, Ravenna was rather excellent at Charms, so it worked out quite nicely.
She was rather distracted though, because she didn't know how the fuck to process the most recent revelation. Truth be told she'd always thought that Ravenna was rather wasted at Hogwarts. The school wasn't nearly martial enough to make use of the fact that the girl was a god damn prodigy when it came to DADA, and Slughorn's ambitions limited just how far Ravenna could take her talent when the man was more interested in cultivating her political future than her potions making one. Though at least Slughorn was trying to teach her about politics, since it wasn't like Hogwarts offered any sort of civics class.
But she'd comforted herself by figuring that, like her, Ravenna was learning Family Spells. The Potters were an old House, with a very martial history that had only recently switched to commerce. Their magic would probably have been a good deal Lighter than the House of Black's but not impractical, and honestly that Lightness would have suited her soft-hearted friend well.
So to learn that Lord and Lady Potter had been prioritizing the letter of the law over Ravenna's education was...distressing, to say the least. The basics of the Trace were well known, and the fact that the magic of the Potter parents (and probably the magic built into their estate, given how old it was) would interfere with the Trace too much and thus make the laws against Underage Magic unimportant for them should have been clear. It was clear to her parents she knew, and most of their House mates. Bellatrix could safely say that at least half the spells she knew had been taught to her by her parents during the summers after the completion of her first year. She'd just always assumed Ravenna was the same.
This would not do. Bellatrix had plans for Ravenna. Some concrete, some tentative, others entirely half-baked, but all her non-sexual plans relied on the Potter heir being able to live up to her full potential. Yes Ravenna was skilled but Hogwarts by itself wasn't going to produce the amazing witch she knew her friend could be. Which meant that Bellatrix was going to have to do the extra work to cram more magic into Ravenna.
"Everything okay Bellatrix? You're scowling." Ravenna said, cocking her head to the side. She was breathing a little heavily, and Bellatrix took a moment to admire the resulting effect it had on Ravenna's breasts. Her friend had the best rack in school, and Bellatrix felt no problem in admiring it. Particularly not given how Ravenna blushed whenever she caught Bellatrix doing so.
"I'm fine, just trying to figure out what else to teach you." She said, waving off the concern. She had a good repertoire of skills, but a fair chunk of them were Black Family Spells, or budged up against that classification enough to make her wary of teaching them. And another handful of them were fully Dark, and not something she wanted to see Ravenna using. That left a decent number of spells, but not enough to make up for what Ravenna wasn't learning at home. She bit her lip, then brightened as something occurred to her. "What do you know about Elemental Affinities?" She asked. Ravenna blinked.
"Never heard of them." Bellatrix fought back a growl. That shouldn't be surprising, but she wasn't happy to hear it. Yes they weren't dealt with in Hogwarts because they were purely martial, yes full Masters of Elemental Magic were rare, yes the fact that they were purely combat driven meant many considered the whole branch Dark, but she didn't know any other pureblood who didn't know at least their own affinity and some spells associated with them. But getting upset at Ravenna wasn't going to do any good.
"Right. Well...I've never had to teach them before, so I'm going to have to cut this lesson short to do some research." She said finally. "But either tomorrow or next weekend we'll get you started." This might be perfect in fact. Yes, Elemental magic was less versatile than more general schools of magic, but it was powerful and rare, falling only out of favor because it was viewed as a relic of a less civilized time. If she could get Ravenna decently skilled in whatever her Affinity wound up being by December, then her friend would be a uniquely intriguing and valuable prospect for the Dark Lady. Obviously the older woman wasn't in a position to turn down recruits with skill, but the more powerful and skilled Ravenna was, the better she'd be.
Admittedly she hadn't brought up the topic of the Dark Lady to Ravenna, but she was sure everything would be fine. Yes, Ravenna was from a traditionally very Light family, and yes, Ravenna was so fiercely anti-Blood politics that Bellatrix had stopped using the term Mudblood just to stop seeing the disappointment and sadness in Violet's eyes, but it wasn't like the Dark Lady was calling for extermination. Just for a better cementing of pureblood power and to bring about an age where witches and wizards no longer had to hide in the shadows from Muggles. Yes they could pass for Muggles but they shouldn't have to. Surely Ravenna could see that. She...just didn't want to be the one to try and make the pitch to her herself. She didn't really want to think too hard about that reluctance though.
Ravenna made everything complicated. And she didn't know how to feel about that.
"You don't have to…" Ravenna began, but Bellatrix wasn't having any of it.
"Maybe not, but I want to." Truth be told she was rather certain that she did have to, for Ravenna's sake, but that wasn't what her best friend would want to hear, so she kept that to herself. "Now then." She closed her eyes, and suddenly the room they were in shrunk, and a door in one wall appeared. "I just made you a rather lovely bathroom, so you go clean yourself up and rest, and I'll be heading back down to do some research, okay?" Truth be told she was pretty sure she could get the book she needed to appear in this room, but she wasn't certain she'd be able to resist at least trying to get a look at Ravenna if the other girl was wet and naked, and that wouldn't go well.
"Well...if you're sure…" Ravenna said finally, frowning a little but seemingly deciding not to push much harder.
"When am I ever not sure?" That got a chuckle.
"Fair enough." Bellatrix beamed.
"The door leading back into the castle's going to stay, but you'll only be able to see it from this side. Nobody's going to walk in on you, don't worry." Bellatrix was pretty sure she'd kill anybody that walked in on Ravenna in the tub that wasn't her. It wouldn't even necessarily be a conscious decision, just a fact of nature. She grinned and then hurried out, heading for the Slytherin dormitory. She had an hour and a half before lunch. That wasn't enough to get a good grip on teaching Ravenna Elemental magic of course, but it was enough to get a head start on things.
She entered the Common Room to see her least favorite House mate sitting nearby, next to the admittedly less obnoxious Lucius Malfoy. "Rodolphus, if you say a word I will put you on the other side of that glass." She said flatly when the boy grinned and opened his mouth, pointing at the enchanted window that gave them a view of the lake. "I'm not in the mood right now."
"What did Potter do this time?" Lucius drawled as a rather put out looking Lestrange snapped his mouth shut.
"Ravenna, nothing. The Lord and Lady Potter on the other hand appear to be law abiding." She said dryly. "As in, the letter of the law." Lucius winced. To a Slytherin, there was nothing quite as terrible as having avenues for power and advancement cut off because someone with power over you was too stubborn to work out loopholes. He didn't even need to know the details, the idea of having parents who stuck to the letter of the law was bad enough.
"She has my condolences, and you have my best wishes in whatever you intend to do to rectify the situation." Bellatrix nodded and gave a half sarcastic, half sincere curtsy before heading off to her room. Supposedly the Gryffindors had communal dorms, multiple students in a single room, to help foster camaraderie or some such. She thought that was a bit much, Slytherin wasn't a den of backstabbing and sabotage after all, and was rather glad that the Slytherin dormitory took advantage of the space being underground provided.
She entered her room and looked over her bookshelf. It was rather more full, and more organized, than Ravenna's and she soon found the book she was looking for. Understanding and Approaching the Elemental Arts by Asarra Bryke. She grabbed it, sat on her bed, and started reading.
Then, a couple pages in, the door opened and she had to resist the urge to snap as she looked up. Seeing Andromeda made things a bit better though. "What's up Andy?" She asked, giving her middle sister a smile. Andromeda just shrugged.
"Bored, thought I'd see what you were up to." The other girl said flatly. She tilted her head to the side, reading the title. "Didn't realize you were planning on getting more into Elemental magic." She said curiously.
"I'm not, not really. This is for Ravenna." Andromeda chuckled.
"Of course it is." She said dryly. "Why does she need you to read it for her?"
"Because I'm going to be helping her figure out her Elemental Affinity." Bellatrix said, not looking up from the book. That made Andromeda blink.
"She doesn't know it?" Bellatrix growled and lowered her book.
"She doesn't know any of the god damn Potter Family Spells either." She snapped. She couldn't get too upset in front of Ravenna, since it wasn't her fault and in general she didn't like upsetting her best friend. She couldn't get too upset in front of Lucius because the details weren't hers to give out and she wasn't close to him besides. Andromeda could be trusted though, and she'd warded her room herself besides. Andromeda's eyes widened. "Lord and Lady Potter have decided to follow the exact letter of the law when it comes to underage magic it seems."
"But...but she's their heir." Andromeda pointed out. "And it's not like there's going to be any Muggles to see her, not with the size of their property."
"I know." Bellatrix snapped before sighing. "Anyway, obviously that status quo can't be allowed to stand. But I don't know enough good spells that aren't Black Family Spells or Dark to make up for it. On the other hand, if I can get her started down the Elemental path…"
"That'd give her something powerful and unusual, especially if her Affinity isn't something bog-standard and boring like Fire." Bellatrix, whose Affinity was Fire, stuck her tongue out at that. "And so it'd be harder for anyone trying to hurt her to counter." Andromeda finished, nodding.
"Among other things, yeah." Bellatrix agreed.
"Well, that seems fair and important, so I'll leave you to it." Andromeda said. "Oh, before I go, Narcissa asked me to ask you to stop using her love of fashion as a weapon to threaten people with."
"No."
"Fair enough."
Meanwhile, up in the Room of Requirement, Violet was lounging in the bath, staring up at the ceiling as she mulled over recent events. She hadn't really had time to just sit and think about what was going on. First she'd been panicking, then she'd been following Bellatrix to breakfast, then she'd been giving James and Sirius a tour, and then she'd been dueling (and learning from, wasn't that strange) with Bellatrix. Even when walking back to the Slytherin dorms she'd been more focused on the future than the present. Now though, in a magically heated bath with no rush to get anywhere until lunch, she could just sit and think about what had just happened.
Four hours ago she'd been thrown through time and space, from Gringotts in mid-summer to Hogwarts in early fall, nearly thirty years in the past from where she'd started, give or take a year, she wasn't in the mood for math at the moment. And it had all happened because of an absurdly complex and magical trunk made by her ancestors. Which was...just super. Suddenly she wished for some booze and a cigar. She'd never had either, but it felt like the time for them. Both items appeared besides her, and she chuckled. She'd forgotten she wasn't in a normal bathroom. She made them disappear again. It was too early for alcohol, that was something she'd heard on TV somewhere, she was pretty sure. Plus she didn't know her tolerance, and she didn't want to get drunk. Then she paused, and decided her mother had slipped her a bottle of something sweet and relatively mild with a wink and a comment to use it for 'special occasions'.
It worked, and since she'd entirely failed to do more than the most basic of nudges to her family's attitudes (her attempt to get her father to at least reference any practical spell training during the summer or winter holidays had been met with a brick wall, so she guessed she could only do so much to alter her past) she guessed that meant her (grand)mother was a bit more lighthearted then one might expect of a proper Lady. She let out a hum, then pushed it aside for the moment. She'd drink to lost friends alone that night.
Because she had lost them, she was fairly certain. There'd been no Ravenna Violet Potter before, she knew. She hadn't just swapped minds or possessed the poor girl. For all the differences wrought by their very different upbringings, Ravenna was her. And while it was possible that the trunk would suck her back up, and spit her back out where she'd entered, she rather doubted it. The thing seemed too powerful to be anything more or less than an absolute last ditch effort.
If she were to guess, the thing had done...something to scan her mind, similar to the Mirror or Erised but more in depth and focused on facts rather than desires, and then found the time and place she could do the most good for the Potter family. Personally she'd have gone with back when Voldemort was a kid, to either try and steer her like she hoped to do with Bellatrix and others or kill her, but who was she to question a magical trunk made by what she still had trouble thinking of as anything less than gods of magic.
So Ron, Hermione, Neville, Hermione, the Twins, Lupin, Tonks, her Dumbledore...gone, all of them. Every friend, mentor, and person she cared about, lost. Some might be alive right now, others might be born in the near future, but she wouldn't have the same relationship with any of them ever again. Hell, with her mucking up the timeline who knew how many of them would even be born? That was a...distressing thought.
So she shoved it aside. She couldn't worry about that sort of thing right now. What's done was done, and it wasn't even her fault. Not technically. She hadn't done anything on purpose. She'd been told to open the trunk by her parents, so she'd opened the trunk. That was it. She bit her lip, stood up, nodding. She was, once more, in an incredibly shitty position only tangentially of her own making. And all she could do was try to make the best of it. That meant starting with the Black sisters (mainly Bellatrix, since Andromeda was probably fine and Narcissa was young), and working her way through the other Slytherins. She just had to figure out what in the fuck she was going to offer them that Voldemort wouldn't or couldn't. She couldn't just empathy them into not going down that road after all.
She groaned as she climbed out of the tub. "Fucking trunk." She needed to figure this out though. Okay, what did she know about the Wizarding political system? ...distressingly little, now that she thought about it. But, Ravenna did know how it worked. And it was...Violet didn't know how else to phrase it but "Hmm."
The Minister of Magic was elected by popular vote. There were no term limits, but an election had to be held every seven years. It could, however, happen sooner, in the case of enough public outcry and a successful referendum. The Minister then appointed Department Heads in the Ministry as needed, occasionally reshuffling them but mostly leaving their predecessor's picks in place unless it had been an unusually fierce campaign.
The Wizengamot was the legislature, and the judicial system. Only a portion of the members of the body were involved in the courtroom proceedings however. The Wizarding World was a bit blood obsessed, but they still required at least some legal training before you could judge crimes. Two thirds of the Wizengamot were Purebloods, with seats passed down through the family, while the other third were elected and based upon geography, giving Half-Bloods and Muggleborns some semblance of say in the legislature. Whenever a Pureblood family died out, their seat was replaced by an elected one. Which...did explain where the panic was coming from, though it didn't really impress Violet overly much. Yes there weren't a lot of Purebloods left, but still, a war because possibly in the future they might lose their stranglehold?
But this left her with a problem. She couldn't offer them money. The Potters were one of the richest families in Britain, but not so much richer she could pay them all into peace. She didn't have significant political power to offer them. What then? They had more than they could ever need but fear and greed was making them panicky and scared. Any change to appease them would be just as liable to start a war from the other end. And she was here to stop any war from breaking out, not just the Death Eaters. Where was the opening?
"...Oh." She murmured as it hit her. There was one thing that the Purebloods didn't consistently have. The Head of State. As often as the Minister was someone weak and pliable like Fudge it was someone stronger, more stubborn, and occasionally even progressive and idealistic. Rigging the elections was not only tricky given magic, but liable to backfire and cause a revolution. But what if...instead of a Minister...there was a King or Queen.
She nibbled her lip, pacing and thinking it over. There had never been any British Wizarding royalty she knew. The Ministry of Magic was a direct expansion from the Wizard's Council. And this was Britain besides. There would be limited historical counterpoints to draw from for the average wizard. It wouldn't be easy, she knew. But at the same time, she wasn't sure what other options there were.
A Pureblood monarch. One from an old and noble family. But one with a moderate enough history to not cause too much distrust from the Half-Bloods and Muggleborn. Pureblood didn't mean evil after all. The Weasleys, the Diggorys, her family, the Longbottoms, there were good families there. And hell, Sirius proved a Dark family could produce a decent person. Succession tied to the bloodline, to make it harder for a Malfoy or Lestrange to take over.
Of course, there'd be the problem of making sure the monarch knew the threats, and realized how close they'd come to two disastrous wars in as many generations (admittedly, she'd been punted into the past before the second war had gotten in full swing, but people were already dying and she doubted it'd have been much better than the first). It might be for the best if...well...if they already knew everything. What to watch out for, what the failings of Wizarding society were towards anybody who wasn't a Pureblood. And if they came from a family famous for being Light…
"Nope!" She said suddenly, shaking her head. "No, no, I'm not going to start plotting to make myself Queen of Wizarding Britain. That is...no." That was a very dangerous road to go down, and she was not risking it. She kept shaking her head as she finished dressing and fled the Room of Requirement. If that's where her mind went when she was alone with her thoughts these days, she'd be better off in the Great Hall eating lunch. She just hoped Bellatrix was there, she'd probably be able to distract her from her plans of going full Ceaser.