Mid 1931

"Madame Lestrange," Vinda greeted, turning her nose up at her hostess.

She smirked. Vinda always behaved like this with her whenever Corvus was out of earshot. She raised an eyebrow, leaning in and whispering, "Madame Grindelwald."

Vinda's eyes widened. Were it not for her artificially applied rosy cheeks, she was sure the French lieutenant would've been blushing. "Vous—"

"Vinda," Queenie interjected, cutting her off and placing a hand on her shoulder. She briefly met her eyes from behind Vinda. "Let's go inside."

Queenie literally pushed Vinda towards the Dining Hall and Madame Lestrange continued to greet the guests in the Entrance Hall. She exchanged pleasantries with all, clamping down on her nerves. Grindelwald and his acolytes were temporarily moving in because their French safe house had been compromised. Lestrange Manor was now the official (amongst followers) headquarters of the great movement. Those who fancied themselves the elite freedom fighters for the whole of wizardkind were now free to roam her house and she couldn't do anything about it.

Upon entering the Dining Hall, she found Grindelwald standing behind the seat to the right of the seat at the head of the table—her seat. She sighed inwardly. Pure-blood protocol dictated that the two highest ranking (fe)male guests sit on either side of the host(ess). Glancing at Corvus who was standing behind the other head seat, she could see that he had followed the rules; Vinda was on his right and Carrow was on his left. She sauntered over to her seat, her heels clicking on the cold, hard floor, and sat down with everyone else.

To her delight, Grindelwald did not tap his wine glass and make some extravagant speech. Nor did he try to irritate her by engaging in conversation with her. In fact, he barely looked at her, his eyes fixated on the uncomfortable looking blonde on his right. He was talking to her in a hushed tone but she didn't have to hear the words to know that the Dark wizard was saying something unpleasant. More than unpleasant, if the way Queenie's face had drained of colour was anything to go by.

"Madame," MacDuff spoke from her left. She tore her gaze away from Grindelwald and Queenie, realising that she'd been staring at them, and turned to the man.

"Oui, monsieur?" she replied airily, donning the pure-blood facade of superiority and elegance she'd perfected over the years.

MacDuff began to make polite small talk and although she wasn't really listening, she responded in kind where necessary while watching Grindelwald and Queenie out of the corner of her eye. As MacDuff paused to select another starter, she stole a glance at Corvus and saw that he was casually conversing with Vinda. He seemed to feel her eyes on him and met her gaze across the table with a smile, and she returned the smile, faltering slightly when she saw Vinda giving her a snobbish look again. She narrowed her eyes at the other woman before turning her attention back to MacDuff.

She would have to get used to the presence of her dinner guests. She was going to be living with them for an indefinite period of time.

.:. QK .:.

"You're sleeping up here tonight?" she questioned from her seat in front of the dressing table, combing her waist-length ebony locks. She heard Corvus close the door behind him. "The others are all downstairs."

"Exactly," he said, placing his black silk dressing gown on the back of her chair. He had a set of his nightclothes in his hands. "You sleep next to me on most of your non-transforming nights but you haven't slept in my room ever since they moved in. I know their presence makes you uncomfortable so I've decided to join you up here."

He was right. Due to the attempt on her life, she felt strange sleeping on the same floor as Grindelwald even though she didn't think he had anything to do with it. She still had nightmares about the ordeal, not so much about the attack on her but rather about how she had taken the assailant's life. She had committed a murder, self-defence or not, because she could have just as easily spared the woman's life. "You can't just give the guests an entire floor to themselves. It's not done."

"I don't think they know that I'm up here," he stated by way of explanation, shrugging his shoulders. "It won't make a difference."

"If you say so," she said, smiling at his reflection in the mirror. He smiled back, heading towards the ensuite as she put her comb down. "Be back quick!" she called after him, feeling giddy as she let herself fall back onto her bed. She closed her eyes, thinking about Corvus.

Ever since the guests—or rather, nonpaying tenants—moved in, she hadn't been able to be as open and affectionate with Corvus in the way she realised she'd long taken for granted. Although she was sure that her relationship with Corvus was old news both among the acolytes and the rest of the wizarding world, she was reluctant to let everyone, especially her enemies, see how strongly she felt for her so-called husband. In Grindelwald's eyes, she was sure she was nothing more than a pure-blood mistress—though he referred to her as Madame Lestrange—he could replace anytime with a pure-blood wife, preferably one of Corvus' Lestrange descended 'cousins'. She didn't want to draw unwanted attention to a relationship that would only last a few days and end up forcing a certain Dark wizard to engineer an (even more) premature end to it.

"My love," a voice whispered, making her shiver. Her eyes flew open and she saw Corvus standing at the foot of her bed.

"My love?" she repeated questioningly, cocking an eyebrow up. He never called her that.

He surprised her even further when he practically pounced on her, attacking her lips with his. Her eyes widened and she pushed at his chest, her back still flat against the mattress, trying to get him to at least look at her. She hadn't taken the quarterly potion yet. She didn't want any mistakes to happen again. She froze when she heard the soft thud of his pants hitting the floor.

"Stop!" she cried out, turning her head to the side and ripping her lips away from his. She tried to push him away again but he was too strong. He was scaring her. The cold look in his eyes froze the blood in her veins. "I haven't taken the potion!"

"Be quiet!" he muttered, slipping a hand under her short nightgown and pulling at her underwear. She struggled underneath him, his other hand pinning both of her wrists above her head. She continued to writhe until she saw his hair begin to change colour from raven black to a coppery silver, and heard his grunts become lower and deeper.

"Corvus!" she shrieked, part relieved and part horrified as she realised what was going on. The man trying to violate her pulled back and pulled his pants up just as Corvus opened the door to the ensuite. She tugged her underwear back on, watching numbly as Corvus chased the man to the bedroom door and beyond.

.:. QK .:.

"It was one of the acolytes," Corvus spoke, sitting next to her on the bed. "I didn't see his face." She bristled. It wasn't one of the acolytes. It was the leader himself, the same bastard who'd told Corvus about his false parentage.

"It wasn't," she countered, bringing the covers closer to her chest. "He wanted to ruin me for you. He would've put a child in me to rip us apart."

"A child? He didn't...?" Corvus trailed off, his voice strained.

She shook her head, shuddering at the thought. "He didn't. He didn't get that far but only because he started changing back." She covered her face with her hands as an intense wave of shame crept upon her. "If he hadn't, I would've let him... after a while."

"I would never do that to you," she heard him say, flinching when she felt him put his arm around her. Less than a second later, she remembered that it was actually him touching her and she relaxed in his embrace, dropping her hands from her face and leaning into him. He was right. He'd never be so rough and demanding with her, especially after being told she wasn't protected; he knew how strongly she felt about using contraceptives every single time.

She peered up at him, sniffing. "If I tell you something, will you believe me?"

"I will," he answered instantly, tightening his hold on her. She sighed, bracing herself. Saying he would believe her was one thing but actually believing her was something else entirely.

"You're not Aurelius Dumbledore."

He stiffened, releasing his iron-clad grip on her. She responded by snuggling further into his chest, afraid that he would become angry with her. "What?"

"I talked to Albus Dumbledore," she blurted out quickly, fast enough that he wouldn't be able to get a word in. "He said it's impossible for you to even be a half-brother because his father died a few years before his mother who died in 1899. Even if you were born to his mother in 1899, you wouldn't—"

"-be a Dumbledore," he finished with her, clenching his fists. "When did he tell you this?"

She gulped, realising how bad her answer was going to sound. She could lie, of course, she could, but then she wouldn't be able to forgive herself whenever she next looked at Corvus and every time after that. "Around a year ago," she confessed quietly. She could've sworn she heard a pin drop.

Corvus moved back, away from her, leaving her feeling both cold and worried. She watched him anxiously, waiting for the outburst of anger. It didn't come. Instead, he got off the bed and strode out of the room without so much as another word.

"Grindelwald!" he yelled, his no doubt Amplified voice carrying all the way to her room. She grabbed her silk gown from the foot of the bed where Grindelwald had thrown it and donned it, willing her trembling legs to hold her weight as she swung them over the bed and got to her feet.

"Corvus, my boy, calm down," Grindelwald soothed as she stopped at the top of the stairs from the first floor to the second, well out of view of the inhabitants of the first floor but close enough to discern what was being said. "My dear boy, what is the matter?"

"Is it true?" Corvus demanded, his voice shaky. "That I'm not Albus Dumbledore's brother?"

The lack of reaction from the rest of the acolytes who were bound to be witnessing the confrontation confirmed what she already knew; all of Grindelwald's inner circle knew of their leader's plan to use Corvus as a weapon against Dumbledore.

"Whatever the girl has told you—"

"It's not her that I don't believe!" Corvus interjected. She felt a wave of relief wash over her as she leaned on the bannister, all fear of Corvus being angry with her gone. "Either Dumbledore lied to her... or you lied to me."

"Albus' father sired you within the four walls of Azkaban and gave you to your mother's sister to take you to America. Your aunt died because Albus wouldn't take you in and care for you like he did his other siblings. You were only ever your father's bastard in his eyes. You weren't from the same womb as him, not like Aberforth and their beloved Ariana. Had Leta Lestrange not swapped you with her own brother, you would have died too, just like Albus wanted you to."

She couldn't take Grindelwald's lies anymore but barely stopped herself from jumping to Albus' defence. There was no guarantee that Grindelwald's words were one hundred per cent untrue and she had no tangible proof to discredit him anyway.

Luckily, Corvus was not in the mood for blindly believing his dark mentor. "So he predicted the shipwreck?" he questioned sceptically. "Or did he somehow cause it?"

Grindelwald chuckled. "Albus is many things but he's not a seer."

"Not like you. If you knew that ship was going to sink, why didn't you warn my aunt before she boarded it?"

"I did not foresee it. I had already severed ties with Albus."

"So then how did you know who I was?"

"He didn't," a female with an American accent announced. "You don't have your Occlumency wards up when you drift off to sleep. I heard what you were thinking last night while you were asleep and I heard you clearly admit to yourself that there was never an Aurelius."

"Queenie!" Grindelwald warned.

Queenie was not deterred. "I can't follow someone who tries to rape a woman to keep her husband under control. I've held my disgust in for days now but I can't do it anymore. You could've humiliated her any other way."

The admission was chilling. Grindelwald had planned to rape her to humiliate her and at least one of the acolytes knew it. Two others, besides Queenie, were women themselves. Had they really just stood by, knowing their leader was going to do that to her?

"Avada Kedavra!" Corvus roared, and a body was heard dropping to the floor mere seconds later.

No longer able to eavesdrop quietly, she ran down the stairs to see one of the acolytes—Kraft, if she recalled correctly—lying dead on the floor in front of Grindelwald. She stared at Corvus' remorseless face, horrified. His use of the Killing Curse, no matter how deserved, was terrifying.

"Corvus..." she started, only to be cut off.

"Avada Kedavra!" Corvus repeated, only for Grindelwald to effortlessly block it.

"All is not as it seems," Grindelwald tried as smoothly as ever. "The—"

"Avada—"

"Expelliarmus!" Vinda called out, Disarming Corvus.

Queenie drew her wand and pointed it at Vinda.

"Queenie..." the Frenchwoman trailed off threateningly.

"You follow him if you want to, Vinda," Queenie said, shaking her head. "I can't, not after learning what he's willing to do to get what he wants. My sister and... my boyfriend would never forgive me."

"Disapparate!" Grindelwald hissed, glaring at Queenie and at her before disappearing into thin air. His followers left one by one, leaving their fallen comrade behind. It really demonstrated just how little Grindelwald and his ilk cared for one another.

She sidestepped the corpse, glancing at Queenie before going to Corvus who was despondently staring into space. Losing one's identity after spending decades searching for it couldn't be easy and for all the pain she'd gone through in her thirty years, she couldn't claim to even begin to understand what he was feeling.

"Corvus..." she whispered, cradling his face with her hands. He didn't reply, sweeping her up into an embrace instead. She held him tight, ignoring Queenie's presence.

He had never been Aurelius to her anyway and, one day soon, she'd show him that he was worth more than just a name.