#lestrange

From the top, left to right: Pleione Carrow and Flora Greengrass, on their wedding day, March 16th, 1950. Portrait of Flora Greengrass, 1975. Portrait of Pleione Carrow, 1979. Pleione Carrow and Flora Greengrass at a soiree, 1943.

No one was surprised when Flora Greengrass and Pleione Carrow chose to have their weddings on the same day, in the same venue.

Even in school at Hogwarts, the two could always be found with their heads together, sharing in some secret the rest of the world was not privy to. Upon graduating in 1945, they both took up jobs in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, working as secretaries to the department head and his deputy.

The rumours first started in the summer of 1948, when Flora Greengrass scandalized the wizarding world by turning down an eminently respectable offer of marriage from Titus Fawley. Titus Fawley was considered an excellent catch by all the matchmaking pureblood mamas, and Flora’s turning him down shocked even the most liberal-minded of them. Very soon the ballrooms of the wizarding elite were afire with whispers of an illicit relationship between Flora and Pleione and formidable dowagers tut-tutted openly at the Carrows and Greengrasses for having let their daughters run so wild. The source of the rumour is still disputed, but most accept privately that it was Titus Fawley, jealous of the closeness of the two, who first spread the rumour that Pleione and Flora were not merely friends, but were lovers.

Naturally, their parents could not be seen to be doing nothing about this breach of morals and respectability and began pressuring their daughters to find husbands for themselves.

Two years passed before the two were approached by Henry Mulciber, a fellow colleague at the Ministry of Magic (quite respectably betrothed to Dahlia Parkinson), who offered them a means out of their predicament. He had two friends, he said - naming no names - who were similarly situated and would understand the delicacies of their circumstances - unlike most other pureblood men their age. They would, he was sure, be able to reach an agreement that would be mutually satisfactory to both parties and keep their parents’ noses out of their private sex lives.

Intrigued, the girls agreed to meet with his two friends and were pleasantly surprised (and impressed) when both the gentlemen in question amicably discussed the terms of their marriage and did not impose upon them the behavioural strictures most pureblood men of the time would have imposed upon them.

Of course, both Pleione and Flora knew of the rumours about those two. Practically the entire wizarding world knew about those two.

In the spring of 1950, Pleione Carrow and Flora Greengrass married Antinous Lestrange and Charles Nott, under the strict proviso that both sides be allowed to continue their non-marital relationships with each other.

Thus it was that the Lestrange boys came to have not one father and one mother, but two fathers and two mothers. Perhaps it was the best for them, for their natural parents were aloof in nature while Charles and Flora were doting and fond adoptive parents, showering the boys with affection where their mother coolly reprimanded them for being rowdy and their father coldly demanded to know if this was how Lestranges behaved.

Yet all the affection in the world did not keep them from following in their fathers’ footsteps and becoming Death Eaters.

[Picture sources: ‘Let them Eat Cake’ by Jimmy Backius for Elle Sweden, August 2008, Tilda Swinton by Paolo Roversi for Vogue US December 2005,Hedvig Palm wearing Valentino Spring/Summer 2012 by Julia Hetta for Elle Sweden June 2012  andCaroline Trentini and Heather Marks, Ladies in Waiting W by Paolo Roversi October 2004.)

Not every Black went to Slytherin. Not every Lestrange was a seccessionist. Not every Malfoy was a muggle-hater.

The Malfoys never talked about Nephilius Malfoy, Abraxas Malfoy’s younger brother, and one of the few Malfoys to have firmly fought for the rights of both Squibs and Muggleborns.

Of course, he had a nasty way of showing up precisely when they didn’t want him around.

The Blacks simply stripped the family disgraces of their names. Off the family tapestry they went and as far as they were concerned, were no longer Blacks, even if they pretendedto carry the name as both Sirius and Alphard did.

The Lestranges had the simplest method for dealing with those who failed to toe the family line.

The ghost of Dido Lestrange will tell you exactly how.

The Sacred Twenty Eight: The Noble and Most Ancient House of Lestrange

Four heirlooms of the Strangers; powerful warlocks the muggle Gauls called sons of Toutatis. A death coin for enemies, a torc for luck, a sword for immunity and a dragon’s infinity knot.

There is little that the two branches of the Lestrange family agree upon - the longstanding disagreement between the French and the English line stems from a feud in the early 11th century which was never resolved satisfactorily. In fact, the only thing they do agree upon is their divinity. The Lestranges, unlike most venerable wizarding families, trace their descent to a wandering family of warlocks in Iron Age France whom the Gaulish tribes came to worship as protectors of the tribes and in time, war gods. (The other thing both lines of the Lestranges agreed upon was that blood was awfully nice and one could never have too much bloodshed.)

The feud between the two branches is a complex matter. It began in 1066 A.D. when the Lestrange patriarch died, leaving behind two sons and a tidy amount of gold, lands and peasants to be divided between them. His will was never found (destroyed, claimed each of the sundered lines of the Lestrange family) and the two were left to divide his wealth between them as they saw fit. It is here, in their telling of their history, that the stories of the English and the French Lestranges diverge and each side claims theirs was the truest, they were the most wronged.

The French Lestranges tell a story of greed and avarice. The younger, ambitious and hungry for a life far beyond his means, demanded he be given the lion’s share for he had plans that his elder brother lacked. His elder brother refused, quite rightly, but the younger was not content to let the matter lie. The younger Lestrange rallied a motley army of serfs,household knights and mercenaries to wage reckless war upon his elder brother. This proved to be his undoing for his brother held the stronger claim to the lands and wealth and the greater part of the family’s forces rallied to him.  Thwarted, humiliated and bankrupted, the younger Lestrange - they claim - fled with his family on William’s ships to England with several priceless family heirlooms (stolen, not their own, ought to be returned), to escape the hand of justice which truly ought to have been their inheritance.

The English Lestranges tell a very different story altogether. In their tale, the elder Lestrange promised his brother the share of money their father would have wanted him to have. But when the time came to divide the wealth, the elder son turned his back on his brother and declared that this father would have never left the younger the share he demanded as his birthright - yea, would not have left his younger son any money at all if not for the tenderness of his heart. Greedy, the elder called him, irresponsible, frivolous, and so speaking, cast his brother out with nothing to his name.

Thus cheated of his inheritance, the English Lestranges claim the younger brother did what he could and attempted to rally the Lestrange fiefdom to his cause - failing only because they were niggardly cowards who lingered, tending their fields instead of fighting for him. Penniless and pursued by muggle bloodsuckers he fled with his family and came to England on William’s ships, with nothing but their clothes and some heirlooms which were theirs (not stolen, their own, made for them, owned by them). For their loyalty to William of Normandy and their prowess on the battlefield at Hastings, they were well rewarded and given a fiefdom of their own. This marked the beginning of the English line of the Lestranges.

The truth was such a complicated matter. Those who had looked into the matter, family biographers and the like, had ended up throwing their arms into the air in despair and given up - until finally they chose their sides by their proximity to each branch of the family. Those in France declared the French Lestranges wronged - the English dogs had stolen from them, ought to return the priceless goods stolen from them. In England, however, they sang a different tune: the frogs were penurious swindlers who had come by their just deserts when their brother had left, taking their most precious, most valued treasures, claiming it as his inheritance. Miserly swindlers who would cheat their brothers deserved as much.

As for the truth? Truth was cast to the wind - who knew what the actual truth was? History was, after all, nothing more than a set of lies those with power agreed upon.

The Dark Lord and His Forces on Flickr.

“The Dark Lord and His Forces”
photographer- @christajnewman
Time/Place- Dragon*Con 2011

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