mr-nott - Tumblr blog

[mr-nott]

“I would brush her hair, smelling of violets, and swim again in the hot nights. We would rename the stars.”

— Janet Fitch, from “White Oleander,” originally published c. July 1999 (via violentwavesofemotion)

[mr-nott]

What chess piece represents you?

White King

You are the White King. You are the most important piece on the board, often called the weakest. But you are not weak in terms of tradition and status. The king gives orders to others, ensures difficult tasks are done, and makes the hardest decisions. Yes, the king's movement is weak but in every other aspect, they are strong and important, for it is them that the game is fought for, to begin with. Do not forget your place, my dear king. Even if tradition suffocates you, even if your status haunts your every move. You are the only one who can do this. Be strong, my king.

stolen from: myself tagging: @tmvoldemort

[mr-nott]

it’s okay to murder people but it’s not okay to disrespect your wife btw

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[mr-nott]

"Of course she doesn't need a job," Leontius said scathingly. "She wants one. She wants a research position. She's always been an academic at heart. She wants to make her mark on the world. She wants to fulfill her ambition of discovering something earth-shaking. It's not about money. It's about having an impact on the world."

He had taken his own position in the Department of International Magical Cooperation for similar reasons -- because it provided an opportunity to accumulate more political influence both at home and abroad, influence that he'd used to good effect both for the Dark Lord and for his own benefit. And Cordelia's love for experimentation and pushing the boundaries of magic had led her to take a position in the Department of Mysteries. Theo didn't come from shiftless stock. The Notts worked because they wanted to. Gold and terror weren't the only tools one could use to shape Wizarding society.

"I suppose your son's survival must be a relief to you," Leontius acknowledged. "I'm aware that that for the past several years, that prospect was rather uncertain. But he'll be your greatest legacy, should he manage to find his way out from under your shadow."

If there was one thing that Leontius could say he'd succeeded at, it was keeping his daughter away from the Dark Lord. He'd never wanted her to become a Death Eater, had never wanted her to put herself in danger, and he counted himself lucky that the Dark Lord had been so focused on punishing Lucius, the leader of that fiasco of a mission, that he'd overlooked Theo's existence entirely.

Lucius spends most of his time staring at the wall. He knows every stone, wedged together over and over, repeating on the backs of his eyelids.

He scowls. Lucius doesn't want to be reminded what he did to his family's reputation. How everything he worked for, for his son and for him, for years - gone. One arrest. One mistake. One fall from grace. This will follow Draco for the rest of his life, a shadow he will never shake dogging his footsteps.

"Your daughter doesn't need a job," Lucius says. Getting a job? Having a salary? The idea is absurd. "And she'll be fine on her N.E.W.T.s. I wish Draco read as much as she did." Leontius is making himself upset over nothing. What kind of rich wizard needs a job? If Draco read as much as she did -

Lucius won't see Draco graduate, won't see him reach his full potential . . .

He will simply end, wiped out of the world with a sentence and a jury and a few contracts. "At least Draco is alive."

[mr-nott]

god complex? what's difficult to understand about it? im better and i know it

[mr-nott]

[mr-nott]

Edna St. Vincent Millay, in Letters (1952)

[mr-nott]

The conversation was broken up by the arrival of one of the Auror guards, who looked at both men with an expression of deepest loathing and said, "Oi! Keep it down back here. Nobody wants to listen to your Death Eater bickering."

"Scum-licking filth," Leontius muttered, sneering and casting the Auror a look of disdain. But the Auror didn't rise to the bait, so he was unable to vent his spleen on anyone. There wasn't much Leontius could say to Lucius, either, so he simply snorted and turned away.

The days passed slowly in Azkaban, with no books, newspapers, or wizarding wireless to keep the prisoners on death row occupied. Leontius and Lucius soon ran out of things to snipe at each other about, and eventually they found themselves commiserating rather than arguing.

"I never thought I wouldn't see Theo finish at Hogwarts," Leontius said one morning. "I always imagined I'd see her achieve her NEWTs and then help her find a research position. Who's going to help her now? Who's going to hire her now? Who will even give her a chance, knowing she's my daughter?"

Leontius is correct. There are so many suboptimal things about this situation, things Lucius will just have to hope goes well. Yet Narcissa is, he knows, much more intelligent and capable of the same kind of things that he is in order to keep herself and Draco alive. With her alive, Draco will never not have someone there to protect him as Lucius would.

"The Ministry is much like the Dark Lord," Lucius says. "They will take everything - and they want blood." There will be no blood. There will be only a veil and voices and nothing -

"They gave me Veritaserum, and interrogated me for three days on everything they could think of. Then they gave me to the judge." Several bylaws - which Lucius himself had advocated for - bar the use of Veritaserum in interrogations . . . without the victim's consent. For the immunity of Narcissa and Draco, they demanded everything he knew. The words simply fell past his lips and onto the record, every operation he planned and crime he committed and collaborator he met.

He knew on the first day that they'd kill him for just what he had admitted to, let alone everything else. Narcissa was the only one of them to hold out hope; she is not foolish enough to still indulge it.

[mr-nott]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky // Alanis Morissette

[mr-nott]

From Head of Medusa (1617-1618) by Peter Paul Rubens

[mr-nott]

Hélène Cixous, from The Selected Plays of Hélène Cixous; “Black Sail, White Sail”

Text ID: There’ll be no hymns to our glory. / History has cut our throats.

[mr-nott]

“you should be the bigger person” absolutely not. i’m cursing his entire bloodline.

[mr-nott]

"It wouldn't have come to this if you'd kept your traitor mouth shut," Leontius pointed out. "Surely your wife could have parlayed her betrayal of the Dark Lord into clemency for her and your son, without you selling out every single one of your compatriots." Scowling, he added, "You'd best hope none of the others ever escape. Narcissa and Draco would likely be their first targets, and you won't be alive to protect them."

For his part, he tried to content himself with the fact that Theo was safe, even if she had developed some Muggle-loving tendencies. Unlike Draco Malfoy, Theo had never been Marked. She had committed no crimes. She would never face Azkaban. The worst that would happen to her was that she would have to clean up the mess Leontius was leaving behind. But Theo had always been clever. She would find a way to manage, and maybe even come out on top despite it all. She was, after all, a Slytherin.

Angry as he was with Theo, she was still his daughter. He wanted to spare her as much pain as he could. If he could have protected her from his upcoming execution, he would have.

"Dealing in finery does not always mean sullying yourself with the people who created it," Lucius says. He leans against the wall of the cell, the cold stone digging into his shoulder. They stripped him of his clothes, and every time someone walks by, he feels horribly exposed without the charms that hide the scar snaking small and pale from the curve of his jaw to his ear or the expensive, tailored robes providing a shield of legitimacy and wealth.

This war has stripped him of everything, literally and figuratively; that which it has not stolen from him, it will.

"You should come to terms with it quickly, Leontius - I suggest within the next few months," Lucius says. "Your child will be the only thing surviving you."

Draco will be the only thing left of him, after this. As he has grown up, he has begun to look more and more like Lucius had as a young man, to the point where sometimes looking at him give Lucius a sense of nostalgic vertigo. For better or worse, he has left his own indelible mark on the world.

Lucius's fingers are numb. He thinks of his son.

[mr-nott]

The new Minister for Magic's mercy was going to be his downfall. Kingsley Shacklebolt had ordered the Dementors removed from Azkaban, leaving those who were left of the Dark Lord's followers guarded only by a rotating team of Aurors. Even without a wand, a sufficiently talented Dark wizard could overcome an Auror, and Leontius had had nearly a century of study in which to hone his skill in the Dark Arts. So he had broken out, along with a few of his compatriots -- the Carrow siblings, Rookwood, Mulciber, Avery's boy, and Crabbe -- leaving the Ministry to try to chase them down.

But the seven of them had other plans. It wasn't a wholesale overthrow of the Ministry that they wanted anymore. They simply wanted Harry Potter dead -- him and his mudblood and blood traitor best friends.

They'd caught the mudblood first, and while Leontius would have been happy to kill her straight away, he knew that he couldn't, for Hermione Granger was to serve as the bait in the trap they were laying for Potter. So she'd been subdued, disarmed, and locked away in the basement of Crabbe Manor, long deserted since the deaths of Crabbe's wife and son.

Leontius could hear the mudblood stirring and weakly calling for help, apparently unaware of how truly dire her straits were. Perhaps he ought to enlighten her. Drawing his wand, he eased open to door to the basement, descended the steps, and looked down at the bedraggled girl in disgust. "Cease your sniveling, girl, before I cease it for you," he snapped. "Be grateful we haven't killed you yet."

  Her breath came out rather ragged, her throat sore as she finally came to. Where was she? What happened? How did she end up like this? Eyes prying open, slowly blinking to try and get her vision to as clear as possible, Hermione only saw a deep red colour down her arm. What looked to be her arm, at least, her vision was still rather blurred.

  She sat herself up, wincing and hissing in pain as she attempted to steady herself. Dizziness soon followed, hitting her head as if to make her delirious. She shook herself lightly, her vision finally clearing. She peered at her arms, her legs—her jeans were ripped with some dark patches ( probably blood ) and her arms were a mess ( she swore she put on a jacket, but it seems like it got ruined as she was missing big chunks of the sleeves, leaving her arms exposed ). Her hand came up to get a good idea of how her face seemed. Fingertips brushing her skin, lightly pressing on it, the girl groaned from the pain. Yep, definitely a bruise or two, cuts to accompany them. She didn't even want to imagine what her hair looked like.

  ❝H—Hello...?❞ Her voice came out weakly, cracking as she attempted to speak. With her other hand, she attempted to feel around for her wand... only to find it missing. Shit.

  ❝Is... anyone there?❞ Another attempt as she tried to get to her feet. She struggled, of course, her legs looked as if they could give way at any moment, but she fought her body's exhausted urges to drop. ❝Please—?❞

  She can't even recall what happened, not really. She'd clearly been in a fight of some sort, shown by her damages and injuries. Think, Hermione, think!

[mr-nott]

The very thought of Theodora marrying a Muggle left Leontius horror struck, and he quickly rejected the possibility for the sake of his own sanity. "She would never," he said, shaking his head vehemently. "She knows what's due to her bloodline. She may have developed a taste for what passes for art among Muggles" -- the word art dripped with disdain -- "but she would never pollute the family name. I'm confident of that much, at least."

He knew that his daughter was angry at him, though, and he couldn't help wondering how much of her unexpected liking for Muggle nonsense was a calculated act to hurt him. Perhaps this was her way of striking back. After all, she was insistent that he'd hurt her by following the Dark Lord. She didn't seem to understand that Leontius had only ever wanted a brighter future for witches and wizards. A brighter future for his daughter.

Lucius, a man who has been caught in his own tiny, miserable world for the past month and a half, lets a sneer find his face. Loentius apparently hasn't even managed to raise his own child with the proper kind of values in any way that's retained. Yet it is a tragedy in its own right, as any pureblood wizard rejecting their heritage is.

"Be grateful you won't live to see your daughter marry a Muggle," Lucius says coolly. Yet he is not unsympathetic. Were Draco halfway to becoming a Muggle, Lucius would be devastated. Not that he ever would be, after he had been raised by Lucius and Narcissa. (This being said, Lucius has found some Muggle composers enjoyable. Some very old Muggle things are still left in the Manor. Who can blame him?)

Draco has not lived up to Lucius's expectations in so many ways - his grades, his lack of nerve, his failures - but Lucius cannot truly say he does not wish Draco was his son. He does not regret his decisions to prioritize Draco's survival over his own. Having someone to carry on the family name who he knows will not squander it is the best he can hope for now, and he is glad of it.

[mr-nott]

Leontius' Wand

9 and 5/8 inches, rigid, ebony and dragon heartstring

Ebony:

"This jet-black wand wood has an impressive appearance and reputation, being highly suited to all manner of combative magic, and to Transfiguration. Ebony is happiest in the hand of those with the courage to be themselves. Frequently non-conformist, highly individual or comfortable with the status of outsider, ebony wand owners have been found both among the ranks of the Order of the Phoenix and among the Death Eaters. In my experience the ebony wand’s perfect match is one who will hold fast to his or her beliefs, no matter what the external pressure, and will not be swayed lightly from their purpose."

Dragon heartstring:

"As a rule, dragon heartstrings produce wands with the most power, and which are capable of the most flamboyant spells. Dragon wands tend to learn more quickly than other types. While they can change allegiance if won from their original master, they always bond strongly with the current owner.

The dragon wand tends to be easiest to turn to the Dark Arts, though it will not incline that way of its own accord. It is also the most prone of the three cores to accidents, being somewhat temperamental."