#yes carewyn in that last doodle is wearing her 'fakepick' outfit from my good!rakepick au finale

[carewyncromwell]

“I'm in love with a fairytale, Even though it hurts,  'Cause I don't care if I lose my mind... I'm already cursed.”

~“Fairytale” by Alexander Rybak

x~x~x~x

I blame this ENTIRE idea on @drinkyoursoupbitch​​​...but yes, with this, I issue a new challenge for all of you --

The R AU Challenge!

Basically, take one of your MC’s closest friends or even love interest and make them a sleeper agent from R, placed at Hogwarts specifically to help them find and infiltrate the Cursed Vaults. How do they fill the role of villain (or anti-villain)? What sets them apart from their canon self? How does MC and their friendship with them affect them? Do they go through a character arc of redemption, or does MC get corrupted by them instead? And yeah, as you can see, I chose Carewyn’s future love interest Orion for my entry! 💚

It was so fun designing Orion’s R look! I naturally had to include some long gloves over his blousy tunic because Orion, and his necklace (similar to his one from the game) features an evil eye pendant, specifically a light blue one, which used as a symbol of protection and as a conduit for peace, solitude, and deeper, more open-minded thinking. The red “R” tattoo, in my personal canon, only appears when its magic is activated or when someone with it makes skin-to-skin contact with another R member: I’ve drawn both Jacob and Rakepick with it in the past. I also headcanon Orion’s wand being made of beech, so I kept his wand’s coloring rather light compared to the rest of his outfit. 

As a member of R, I see Orion as an anti-villain in the vein of Princess Kraehe/Rue from the anime Princess Tutu -- a talented, but tragic figure who was raised knowing nothing but selfishness, cruelty, and manipulation, but still somehow knows how to love, no matter how much pain it causes him. 

In this version of Orion’s storyline, he’s picked up from the orphanage he was raised at by R as a very young boy. It turns out that his father was indebted to R for some unknown reason, only to die in the height of the Wizarding War. This debt was then transferred over to his child -- thus Orion, as long as he can remember, was a loyal servant to and puppet of R’s will, most notably its Leader, the cold and cruel man who Orion doesn’t know is called Charles Cromwell. The mark on his face, cursed to only appear when its magic was activated, made it so that Charles Cromwell always knew where he was and could inflict any of the Unforgivable Curses on him, even without articulating the spell or being right beside him. Among other members of R, Orion was referred to as the Magpie, referring to the bird of the same name, which can be symbolic of bad luck and deception. This symbol turned out to be more appropriate to Orion than any of R’s leadership realized at first, however -- for the magpie can also represent good fortune and true love. 

At Hogwarts Orion serves as R’s faithful agent, keeping an eye on the Cursed Vaults -- but while at school, he’s enough distanced from Charles Cromwell that he can actually live something akin to a normal life. The flying prodigy soon makes friends in the Quidditch world and even earns the position of captain while only a fourth year. He also makes friends -- not just his team, but especially his best friends, Murphy McNully and Skye Parkin. Then, in his third year, when the Ice Vault is causing havoc, a new figure appears: the “Cursebreaker,” Carewyn Cromwell. Knowing R won’t want anyone else going after the Vaults, Orion craftily arranges it so that Carewyn’s friends try to coax her onto the Quidditch scene, thinking to both keep an eye on her and distract her enough that she won’t have time to get in R’s way again. But once he gets to know Carewyn after she seeks out the open Chaser position on his team, Orion soon realizes that Carewyn’s seeking the Vaults out for her brother’s sake, and that she won’t rest until she finds him again. Orion soon develops a soft spot for the noble little Cursebreaker, and wants all the more to coax her back onto his team to try to keep her out of harm’s way. When that doesn’t work, he appears to her in his red robe and explicitly warns her to stay away from the Vaults, only for Carewyn to refuse to back down. And so Orion -- ever a master at reading people -- reluctantly tries to use Carewyn’s heart against her. If Carewyn won’t back down for her own sake, perhaps she will for the sake of the people she loves...and so Orion uses the Imperius Curse on Ben one year and Rowan the next, trying to scare Carewyn enough that she’ll stop pursuing the Cursed Vaults. Try as Orion might, though, Carewyn will not be deterred. And, as Professor Rakepick herself warns Orion at one point in his sixth year, R would never leave her alone, even if she did --

“You know R as well as I do, Mr. Amari. Surely you don’t think you’ll be able to keep her safe, now that she has caught their notice?” 

Orion himself merely keeps his back to her, clasping his hands tightly in front of him as he obscured his anger behind a cool, passive-aggressive mask.

“She certainly has caught your notice. …I do believe, Madam Rakepick, that you warned the student body to stay out of your way, when you first arrived. Do not force me to echo that warning myself.”

It’s also Rakepick who told him that R’s Leader was the man called Charles Cromwell. She says coldly that Charles isn’t having Orion scare Carewyn to keep her away from the Vaults, but instead to scare her into joining R, as her brother had before her. Orion doesn’t known how much if any of this is true, but it troubles him greatly. He hadn’t known Carewyn’s brother had been forced to join R as well, and if it is true, that Carewyn’s family is in R, as his father had been...then it means that Carewyn is fated, like him, to join their ranks. As much as that thought makes him nauseous at the start, it also fills Orion up with a bizarre kind of comfort. He’s always known that upon leaving Hogwarts, he’ll have to go back to being R’s puppet again. He’ll have to abandon Quidditch, his friends...the entire person he’d been able to be at school, forever. But if Carewyn joins R...then he won’t be completely alone, once he graduates school. They won’t have to be enemies any longer. He won’t have to frighten her or her friends again. They won’t have to fight each other. And R will no longer threaten the safety of the friends that they’d both made while in the safety of Hogwarts’s walls...the friends they’d each come to see as family...

There could be some peace for both him and Carewyn if they merely accept their fate, Orion thinks. What point would there be in them fighting against R anyway, aside from more suffering? Maybe that’s why Carewyn’s Patronus took the same form as his, that time R sent a dementor to Hogwarts. Maybe, somehow...he and Carewyn were fated to meet...to serve together, as servants of R...

But Carewyn Cromwell, of course, is not one to believe in Fate. And so now our Slytherin paragon has to find a way to both defeat R and save the wisest, gentlest young man she knows from their abusive, defeatist claws.