Leaving the home Rose was side-by-side with Lestrange walking down the road as they led the large group of teenagers and he was pointing to a few places nearby and telling some stories about them. "How do you know so much about this area?" she asked after hearing him talk about time hanging out in the park across the street from Grimmauld place.
"Well I grew up around here, before I became more independent Kreacher would take me out to the park after dark when the muggles weren't around and I'd get to play on the swings for a bit before I had to go inside for more training. I got maybe ten minutes a week of that," Lestrange informed Rose of how he was brought up.
"Hold on," Ginny butted into the conversation. "You only got to play for ten minutes a week?"
They found the pizza joint nearby and they all managed to cram into the corner booth for Lestrange to continue his story, seeing him draw and flick his wand around told them that he had cast some sort of spell and him not faltering in his conversation meant it was some means of masking what he was saying.
"Of course, I was raised as a proper pureblood. I had my lessons on all the family history and the other bloodlines so I would know who was the right sort to become involved with, who were the blood traitors, who was worth talking to, who I should swindle. Then I had my music lessons, then maths, reading, French, Latin, Germanic. I would get a short break before studying magical theory and once I was five I began my lessons on curses, hexes and jinxes. Potions, runes and arithmancy were on the weekends."
"That sounds lonely," Rose reached over and rubbed Lestrange's arm, he turned and offered her a soft smile.
"Well it got better once I had you in my life, a beautiful girl who I could spend time with," Stephen held up one of her dainty hands and kissed it. "I skived off a few lessons just to spend time with you."
"Wait, you were doing wanded magic at home? Underaged! But that's against the law," Hermione protested, ruining the sensitive moment, as now it made sense how Lestrange was so advanced in his wand work and every other subject, he'd gotten many years of a headstart on her. Then she stopped caring that Lestrange broke the law, there was a greater injustice in the situation. "That's not fair."
Chuckling Lestrange handed his menu to the waitress after tapping what he wanted. "It is the pureblood way, you learn these early, at least your parents are supposed to educate you on them. You'd be hard pressed to find a pureblood child who doesn't know the basics, well…" Lestrange trailed off as he looked at Ron who was pointing at a number of different pizzas.
"He's right," Fred nodded, getting a cheese for himself.
"Sort of," George agreed and he settled on a margherita.
"Mum taught us what we needed before starting Hogwarts, it's part of the reason you see such a difference between first year muggleborns and first year purebloods," Ginny said and then told the server that she would like to try a supreme. "We're already aware of a lot of details since we grew up with them. We watched mum and dad use magic at home, so we saw how they use a wand, they taught us about the spells, and we learned the steps for brewing by watching them."
"In a way this is cause for a lot of early prejudices," Lestrange cleared his throat to garner Granger's attention. "We see that the muggleborn students come into the school, they are further behind in lessons, taking more time to learn what we do instinctively. They don't know the families and they don't know the etiquette so it ends up rubbing the purebloods the wrong way."
"Some like the Weasleys see it as honest mistakes, they know you and the other muggleborns don't mean anything when you violate social norms. Some may attempt to educate you on them, others might see it as quaint. Then on the opposite spectrum you have the Malfoys who become irritated at the blunders and how things shift to accommodate the outsiders," Lestrange continued explaining.
"In fact when we arrive back you should ask Sirius and Aunt Andy to show you some proper pureblood interactions, such as how you introduce yourself to someone new, how they conduct a meal, or even asking someone for a favor. And you'll see how dramatically different they are."
"But it shouldn't really matter," Hermione whined as it was sounding like Malfoy wasn't entirely in the wrong for disliking muggleborns.
"Well it frankly does and even if you hold dear your muggleborn beliefs, in the future with your own children, will you outright deny them an education in the magical ways?" Lestrange raised an eyebrow at the witch who looked a bit off-kilter. "What I mean by that is when you have a child and they see you casting a simple cleaning charm would you refuse to explain it?"
"No I mean, if my child wanted to learn I'd teach them," Hermione admitted because she could never believe that in the future she'd not support her children's interest in learning.
"And that's how it begins, your child watches you brew a blood-replenishing potion and they point to the powdered unicorn horn and they ask you, "What's that mommy?" So you tell them what it is, and they ask another question and before you know it you've given a small lesson on potions that your child will take with them when they arrive at Hogwarts. I'm certain that at some point before that your child will want to help you with a potion or may even attempt one of their own and you'll be there step-by-step to instruct them," Lestrange responded as he expanded on his earlier point.
"And a muggleborn like myself wouldn't have had any of that, not because I was forbidden from knowing it, but that my parents simply couldn't teach me," Hermione concluded as to where the point was going. She would be giving her child an advantage over muggleborns not out of hatred for them but because she would love her child and want them to succeed in life and she was picturing generations of that going back and it started to make sense to her that some families would look down on muggleborns since it would seem as they they were holding things back.
"Yes, you'll adopt some ways of ours while trying to keep your own and you'll change, whether you like it or not," Lestrange stated. "But it's the world that you join that you change that many purebloods take problem with. You existed in a world outside their own, with very little overlap between them and they'd prefer that if you want the muggle ways you grew up with that you return to the muggle world and leave theirs alone how they built it and liked it. It's the same as if you moved to another nation, they would want you to adopt their culture if you plan to live in their country."
"That sounds a lot less evil than I had thought," Hermione sadly said. She always heard of English travelers being considered rude in other countries while on vacation, but actually immigrating to live there, she didn't think it unreasonable that the native populace would get irritated if the laws and customs started to change to fit the new arrivals.
"Things are rarely as evil as you think them to be, they are just different and some people want what they have to be different than what others have. Otherwise it isn't theirs anymore, it's yours because you changed it to your ways," Lestrange finished as he flicked his wand to cancel a spell he'd put up earlier.
"Those translation charms are such a pain," Lestrange grumbled. "Making it so our conversation could only be overheard as us talking about shopping, the more complex the discussion the more that isl has to work to find ways to make it sensible or we risk drawing attention with gibberish."
"Couldn't you get it into another language so it's not having to create new conversations?" Fred suggested because that was a different method to disguise a talk, but as they weren't in the magical world where they could put up silencing charms or a muffling charm they would have to use different spells instead.
"I could but it still runs the risk of being overheard if any muggles know the language I translate to, and if I choose one that's very unlikely, it would draw even more attention if half a dozen teenagers walked in all speaking Tsonga," Lestrange answered back.
"Ah yeah, that would be a problem," George concurred with the reasoning for why he needed the more complex spell in this case.
Once the pizzas arrived the conversation died down as they ate until they were all ready to go back to Grimmauld Place.
"Why do we not get pizza up at Hogwarts?" Ginny whined about not being able to eat that more often.
The walk back to the house with some greasy pies in boxes was a bit slower as the purebloods overate and were feeling sluggish. "Probably the same reason they don't serve other muggle dishes," Lestrange shrugged.
"Then we can just ask to have them served," Hermione said because now that she had a talk about pureblood customs she could see that it wasn't done out of malice, but likely they just didn't add muggle dishes to what was served to the students because it wasn't traditional and nobody brought it up. And so it made her feel silly because the headmaster and Professor McGonagall don't hate muggles, and they were in control of the school. "Oh now I feel silly for SPEW."
"Just figured out that the elves in the castle weren't being abused?" Lestrange smirked.
"Well you don't have to be so smug about it," Hermione huffed.
"I kind of have to, you worshiped Albus for a good couple of years but were of a mind that he was down in the kitchen cracking whips across their little backs," Lestrange flicked his hand in a whip-like manner making pssh sounds with every stroke.
"But they could still be better treated," Hermione said.
"You're not going to find many people who disagree," Rose said as she was appalled at the way that Dobby and Winky had been treated but she was also aware of how Winky was behaving after being dismissed and how the elves acted around them. "It's just someone like Dobby and how the Malfoy's treated him was wrong and we can work on helping those elves."
"Well what about Kreacher?" Hermione asked.
"Oh him, he's a curmudgeonly old elf who hopes to retire by having his head chopped off and hung on the wall with the other Black family elves," Lestrange answered as they made it back home.
"That's barbaric," Hermione shouted.
"It's what he wants," Stephen reiterated. "He wants his head on the wall and as he's done his duty to the family, he will have his head on the wall."
"Ahh the whole decapitating Kreacher thing," Sirius said as he was able to understand the entire issue despite only hearing the tail end of it. It would not be the first time that had to be explained to someone.
"Kreacher has told me what he wants, he wishes to serve the family until the end and then when his time is up, he will ask for clothes. Kreacher wants to live as a house elf and he wants to die as a free elf, as all elves do," Stephen informed the witch of what his caretaker in his early years had wanted, it was what every elf the family had taken wanted and what was granted to them all. "It is a better fate than I see for many muggles, who live and die without truly knowing they are free."
Hermione wanted to protest and tell Lestrange that he was insane but the conviction he spoke to her with, it was inarguable, it was simply the truth.
The muggleborn girl just nodded her head before heading off to find somewhere to think because it seemed like everytime she had a long conversation with Stephen Lestrange she came away with a different understanding of the world, one that showed it was more nuanced that she believed because he was pulling back a curtain she herself had vowed to not touch at all.
Rose bit her lip and turned to drag her nail across her boyfriend's chest. "Hearing you talk with such authority is such a turn on," purring at him because that was kind of hot.
"Well then how about you march on up stairs to my room and I'll really give you some orders," Lestrange grinned at the girl. "Like, get on your knees."
Giggling Rose started to move away before Sirius got in her path. "No, I will not let you defile my goddaughter in this home. I promised her parents to take care of her and letting you ruin her future is not going to happen."
Groaning because he was getting cockblocked. "Sirius are you serious," sagging from how Rose looked annoyed and annoyed did not result in sexy times.
"Deadly serious," Sirius warned.
"Fucking Hell," Lestrange tossed up his hands and started to make his way to kitchen to go into the basement. "Fine, fine… because I bet if we still went up there you'd pound and kick on the door the whole four hours we'd be busy."
"Four hours?" Rose questioned just how long they'd be at it.
"Rose, I have had to restrain myself from, as my idiot cousin accurately whined, defiling you for a number of years now. I was planning to do a lot of things to you," Lestrange pouted because he'd been really hopeful to finally get Rose in bed.
Seeing her boyfriend slam the doors on the cellar, Rose turned a sour look at Sirius for getting in the way of what she wanted. So she went upstairs in a huff and didn't come back down until dinner time.