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She woke up in his cell, and she didn’t panic. She knew what to do. She had made Theseus practice the Imperius curse on her until she could break it; until even his voice couldn’t coax her into doing things she didn’t want to do. When she was eight years old, she saved up her allowance until she could afford a book on counter-spells, meant to be used as a Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook for third-year Beauxbaton students, and she sat down with a dictionary and read every chapter on lock-breaking again and again until she understood it. Until she memorized it.
Leta promised herself long before she ever set foot on the Hogwarts Express that she would learn everything she could to avoid her mother’s fate. Leta wouldn’t be a white man’s plaything.
This situation was different, but not different enough.
First, with no small amount of effort, she broke the locks. She’d woken up in a very traditional cell, with bars in intervals much too small for a human to slip through, but more than large enough for a vampire bat to slip through.
It was funny, in hindsight. Becoming an animagus had been such a fanciful idea, meant to impress entirely the wrong brother. After she stopped talking to Newt, she’s had this insane daydream about going to him as an animal. That way, she could stay around him, and look into his loving eyes without worrying about everything else.
She never went through with it. By the time she completed the process to become an animagus, she’s lost her nerve, and half convinced herself that Newt wouldn’t take her back as a friend in any form.
She’d never wanted to end her friendship with Newt. She’d never stopped loving him, in various complicated ways. But Newt Scamander wasn’t an easy person to be in school, and when he was Newt Scamander and Leta Lestrange’s best friend… Newt could ignore the rumors, but Leta couldn’t. She couldn’t stomach the things their classmates were saying about him because of her, and even worse were the things their classmates said about the two of them. Leta overheard a Gryffindor girl accuse her of enchanting him, and she ran straight to the toilets to throw up.
Then she told Newt not to talk to her anymore, and spent the next four years dreaming up a crazy plan to talk to him as an animal; a plan she had never actually worked up the nerve to follow through with, even when she was able to become an animagus.
Still, it had been useful. Grindelwald had underestimated her, and that was all the chance she needed to escape. She flew not into the castle but out the small window, into the sunlight and away from the castle.
She flew until she was physically tired from flying and magically tired from maintaining her bat form, and then she transformed back into herself: a tired looking métisse with a throbbing headache.
She knew where she was, though. She went to Innsbruck with her father and Clarisse once, when she was nine. The Christmas market had been so beautiful that the memory had stayed with her forever, though her father had been very strict with her and insisted that she remain quiet and decorative while he dealt with business, the nature of which Leta didn’t remember, but as an Auror, she realized it must have been illegal.
Her father had rewarded her with a doll and some apple cider when he was done. She and Clarisse were never much of a family to him, but they were the perfect cover for a lover of the Dark Arts who was seeking some new additions to his collection.
She couldn’t apparate away. The closest city she could picture clearly enough to apparate to was Paris, and it was much too far away. Flying was also out of the question, without a broomstick or a carpet. She couldn’t risk the floo network either. It would be easy enough to find witch or a wizard, but she had no way of knowing whether or not a random stranger in Austria was loyal to Grindelwald—and it seemed more likely than not that anyone living this close to his lair would be loyal to him.
That just left the trains. She could sneak her way onto a muggle train easily enough. That wouldn’t get her back to London, but it would get her to Paris, and she knew exactly where she could find a floo back to London from Paris.
She didn’t like confunding the ticket collector. Spells that altered people’s minds always made her feel slightly queasy. Still, it was done, and other than when she had to make transfers, she was able to sleep for most of the Journey from Innsbruck to Paris.
Things were strange in Paris. As soon as she arrived, she knew she couldn’t take the floo. The whole city had the energy of a place that was being… watched. Leta knew of only one living seer with that kind of power, and he didn’t work for the ministry.
There was only one untraceable way to get from Paris to London. Even muggle transportation was out of the question. These things didn’t come cheap, though, and Leta didn’t have any money on her.
Being trapped in Paris with no money was the height of irony. Leta’s childhood home was still exactly where it had been, and filled with all the same valuables, but she couldn’t touch them. When her father died, he left everything he owned to Corvus. But Corvus was dead. Both officially and in reality.
According to pureblood law, though, Leta was something worse than dead: female. She was denied any claim to her father’s wealth or estate. It all went instead to her British cousin, Bran.
Leta had never liked Bran. Bran had liked Leta a bit too much, considering he was her cousin and more than twenty years her senior. It was him who persuaded Leta’s father to send Leta to Hogwarts rather than Beauxbatons, as a trial run to see if Hogwarts was the better option for Corvus.
In November of her sixth year, her father died. It wasn’t surprising; he was old. Slughorn and Dumbledore and several other of Leta’s professor’s took her aside and tried to comfort her, but Leta wasn’t really sad.
Newt even approached her in the Great Hall one day. “I’m sorry, Leta,” he said, not meeting her eyes. She almost yelled at him, until he said, “I know you don’t want me to talk to you anymore.” He was apologizing for talking to her; not for her father’s death. That was... much worse, really, but not at all his fault. “But I heard that your father died and Theseus said I should tell you I’m sorry. I know that you’re not sorry, but apparently I should be, so I am.”
She smiled at him. She hadn’t meant to, but she loved him so much in that moment that it had been impossible not to, just for a second. Then she caught herself, and wiped it away so quickly that he may not have even noticed. “Thanks, Newt. I appreciate it. Now go back to the Hufflepuff table.”
He looked like a kicked puppy for a moment, but then he nodded and left.
Two days later, on Saturday, Slughorn knocked on the door of her dormitory and presented her with a pass allowing her to go to Hogsemeade, and a note which said that her presence was requested at The Hog’s Head Inn to discuss “a family matter” with her dear cousin. The note actually called him her “dear cousin.” She should have seen where it was going. She didn’t really want to meet with him as it was, but the allowance her father had given her at the start of the school year was nearly gone and if it got her through that school year, it certainly would not have gotten her through the next year. If there was any chance of Bran taking pity on her and tossing her a few galleons, she had to see him.
So she bundled up and walked over to meet him at the pub. He insisted on taking her coat, and then his dark eyes swooped over her and lingered in all the places she hated boys looking. He gave her a bag of sweets and ordered her a firewhiskey, then sat down and made her talk about how school was going and Slytherin’s ranking in the race for the House Cup until her firewhiskey arrived. He waited until she’d taken several drinks to say “You’re seventeen, aren’t you?”
“Not yet,” she admitted. “I will be next month.”
He nodded slowly. “Well, one month’s not so bad.” He took a drink of his own whiskey, and then smiled. “Leta, do you know why your father didn’t leave you anything in his will?”
There was a long list of reasons, really: Because he still thought his son was alive; because Leta was female; because his horrible wife would have thrown a fit if she thought that was the faintest possibility that she’d have to share some money with Leta; because he just hadn’t thought about it; because--
“Because women are supposed to be taken care of by their husbands.”
Leta had responded with a frozen smile. “It’s too bad I don’t have a husband.”
And this man, who was more than twice Leta’s age and in complete control of the situation, chuckled, and something in his eyes froze Leta’s blood. “I can help with that.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a little black box, opened it to show Leta the enormous diamond ring it held, and pushed it across the table. “Marry me.” He didn’t even word it like a question. Not ‘will you marry me,’ but simply ‘marry me.’ There was enough of an upward inflection that the few other people in the pub might have heard it as a suggestion, but Leta knew the men of the Lestrange family to well to hear it as anything but a command. Marry me. I even bought you a ring to be nice.
No. Leta’s answer was immediate and definite, but she was in too much shock to say anything. No. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life in that horrible house with this horrible man, who was little more than a younger, English-speaking version of her father. No.
But all sound was caught in her throat along with her breath. She couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t move.
Bran reached across the table and covered her hands. “Speechless? Of course. You’re young. But listen to me, Leta: this is the ideal time for you to get married. I’ll let you finish school, and then we’ll move back to Paris. You won’t ever have to work a day in your life.” He caressed her hands in a way he probably thought was soothing. “I know that your father neglected you, but I won’t. I’ll give you everything you want. Just say one little word. I’ll even make all the arrangements myself, so that you can focus on your studies. You’ll never have to worry again.”
And then Leta’s heart restarted, and she was able to pull her hands from beneath his. “No,” she said, spitting the word as quickly as she could.
By the time he processed her answer and the anger flashed through his eyes, she was on her feat. “What did you say, whore?”
He stood as well, and as he began to let loose a string of insults about Leta and, for good measure, her dead mother, Leta could see his hand moving toward his wand.
As Leta turned and ran, she saw the owner of the pub jumping out from behind the bar and rushing at Bran with his own wand drawn. Leta left her coat behind and didn’t stop running until she was back at Hogwarts, holding tight to her wand even as her fingers lost all feeling in the cold.
She went straight to the Slytherin dormitory and back to bed, and she didn’t tell a soul what had transpired.
The following Monday, Professor Dumbledore asked her to stay behind after class, though for once she had no idea what she had done wrong. After her classmates had left, Dumbledore reached behind his desk and produced Leta’s coat. “The owner of The Hog’s Head Inn sent this to me with a note saying that student matching your description left it in his pub over the weekend. Is it yours?”
Leta had never been so grateful for a stranger’s kindness as she was to that pub owner. It was getting colder by the day and Leta would never have been able to afford a new coat. The coat was exactly as she’d left it, except that the sweets Bran had given her were tucked in the pocket. Leta sat on her bed and ate every one that night. It was the closest thing to an inheritance she ever got. Bran immediately changed the wards on the Parisian estate, and Leta was left destitute.
Luckily, Dippet agreed to let her stay at Hogwarts that summer. It was the most peaceful ten weeks of Leta’s teenage life. When the next year rolled around, she was able to beg and bargain her way into a set of second-hand textbooks. Ink, quills, parchment, and new clothes were out of the question. She picked up what was left behind at the end of class or in the library, and once or twice she got desperate enough to break her rule about not talking to Newt Scamander to ask him if she could have a pot of ink. He gave it to her without hesitation, both times. It was a difficult year, but she found a job immediately upon leaving Hogwarts, and eighteen months of hardship were well worth the lifetime of not being married to Bran Lestrange.
Until now.
Now, she was trapped in Paris with the Dark Lord very likely looking for her, and the only chance she had of getting out of this mess was to come into a large sum of money very quickly.
Bran was not an option. Lestrange men do not forgive. If Leta was to knock on his door now, the kindest thing he would do would be to return Leta to Grindelwald immediately.
Breaking into that estate was suicide, though, even for someone who’d been raised there and knew all of the protections around it. Leta knew so much about the protections around that estate that, even in this situation, she knew better than to try it. She had to come up with another plan.
Then it hit her, like a punch to the gut.
The coffin. The tiny coffin. They’d buried Corvus Lestrange, but of course they hadn’t had a body, so her father had bought this beautiful tiny casket and filled it with family heirlooms until it was heavy enough. Rocks would have done just as well, but Leta’s father loved to do things in the most dramatic way possible. When Leta had questioned him, he said that it would be fun for Corvus to dig it up some day as a way to celebrate his return.
Leta could pay for passage back to London. All she’d have to do is dig up her baby brother’s coffin.
It wasn’t as if her brother was inside of it. That had been all she could think at his funeral. He’s not really in there. Her father and stepmother let loose a few crocodile tears, but Leta sobbed. He’s not really in there.
She was the only one who’d ever gone to visit that grave. Naturally. Her father and stepmother didn’t think there was any reason to visit.
Once, on her first summer home from Hogwarts after the ship went down, Leta came downstairs dressed in black and headed for the front door. In a rare fit of parenting, her father asked her where she was going. She’d told him, honestly, that she was going to Corvus’ grave.
He’d stared at her in confusion for a moment, then smiled. “Clever girl,” he said. “It’s good to keep appearances.”
She’d never seen him look proud of her before.
He handed her ten gold bezant and told her to buy herself a treat on the way home.
She spent one bezant on a bouquet of all the flowers that meant “I’m sorry,” and gave the rest to a homeless woman. She couldn’t stand the idea of being rewarded for what she’d done.
And just like that, she was back there, standing on her family plot. She looked at her father’s grave, and then her step-mother’s. Leta’s own mother had been buried in that plot for a very short time, but then Yusuf dug her up and, Leta assumed, took her body back to Senegal. That was fine. Leta was pretty sure that’s what she would have wanted anyway. Now, the plot held Leta’s step-mother, and Leta looked at that and felt an even deeper nothing than she felt when she looked at her father’s grave.
And then there was Corvus’ grave. His headstone and his coffin, anyway. The Atlantic was his real grave.
There was no plot for Leta. She’d asked her father why not, once, just in case he’d forgotten about her, and he scoffed and said that it was a woman’s greatest honor to be buried next to her husband and sons.
Leta stood over the smallest plot, took a deep breath, and began making a digging motion with her hands. It was better to do it with magic than with physical force. In the first place, it felt less personal. In the second place, Parisian police would stop a mud-covered Black woman walking around with jewelry faster than Leta would be able to say, “I’m a Lestrange.”
Finally, she pulled the coffin up and sent a small gust of wind to blow any loose dirt off it. Then, she squatted down, careful not to dirty her dress, swallowed the vomit that rose up in her throat, and opened the coffin.
Her stepmother’s jewelry box sat there. It was worth a pretty Knut in its own right, but not the 30 galleons it would take to get back to the United Kingdom.
Leta ran a finger over the embossed raven on top. She used to love this jewelry box. Clarisse used to get so angry when she caught Leta looking at it.
Leta popped it open.
The diamonds and gold chains sparkled. They didn’t look at all like they’d been underground for two decades.
There was enough there. More than enough.
Leta snapped the box closed and scooped it up under her left arm. With her right hand, she replaced the coffin and reburied it, careful to keep everything looking immaculate.
Then, she took one last look at the headstone.
“I’m so sorry,” she breathed, not for the first time.
Then she turned and left.
Thanks to her father, she knew all the worst wizarding streets in Paris by heart, but she had to avoid them now. The people who ran and frequented establishments on those streets were exactly the sort of people who would know not only who Leta was on sight but also be well aware that Gellert Grindelwald had supposedly killed her several nights ago. They would all be the sort to run straight to Gellert Grindelwald with this information, too.
So she went to a muggle pawnshop. She checked the jewelry for curses first, of course; she wasn’t stupid. But, finding none, it seemed well worth the risk to sell to muggles. She’d take any heat she got from the French Ministry for it later.
And then she had money. It wasn’t difficult to find the man selling illegal portkeys. Though Leta had never patronized such a person in Paris, she’d busted enough of them in London to know the sort of places they hung out; she simply had to cross-reference it with what she knew of Paris as a city.
And then she was back in London. The sky was grey, everything smelled of fish, it was raining, and Leta was home.
She’d been working in London when Theseus found her. She wasn’t exactly lost--not in a physical sense, at least--but she’d been coasting through life since graduating, working in a small shop in Diagon Alley and living in a tiny apartment not far from there. Theseus had come in wanting his robes fitted, and after a moment of staring at Leta, he smiled. “Leta Lestrange,” he said, in a friendly tone that people seldom said Leta’s name in, “Is that really you?”
She confessed that it was her, and his smile didn’t waver.
“I haven’t seen you since you and Newt got into that fight.”
There had never been a fight. Newt wouldn’t have told his family that there was a fight, either. It made sense that they would assume there had been, though. Leta didn’t correct it. “It’s been a long time,” she said, allowing herself to smile back a little.
While she helped him, they chatted about his life, her life, Newt’s life, and the health of Mr. and Mrs. Scamander. Leta expected that it would end there, and that she’d take herself home, thinking of this as one of the most pleasant days she’d had in a while, but ultimately a fluke.
Instead, Theseus asked her out for coffee. Theseus asked her out, and for one shining moment, Leta saw visions of a future where she wasn’t Leta Lestrange, and people liked her, or at least bothered to get to know them before deciding they didn’t like her, and maybe, just maybe, someone loved her.
Theseus was not a replacement for Newt. He’d have been a very poor one of if he was. Where Newt was free-thinking and socially stunted, Theseus was conformist from his haircut to his shined shoes, and so charming that when Leta was on his arm, people forgot who she was. And Theseus showed love in ways that Newt never could. Theseus held her without being asked, told her she was beautiful without burying it in a metaphor, and fantasized right along with her about the happy little future they would have.
Leta never stopped loving Newt, but she grew to love Theseus as well. When he asked her to marry him, her heart stopped, not out of fear like it had with Bran all those years ago, but because she was shocked that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her--not to possess her, but to have her as a partner and confidant.
She joyously accepted, and that night, for the first time since she was thirteen, she practiced signing her name “Leta Scamander.” She had always loved the way that name looked, and the way that it felt on her lips.
She prayed that Theseus was home when she got to their doorstep. She didn’t have her key, so she had to knock, and she found that once again, her heart was in her throat. There was no knowing what Grindelwald might have done to Theseus after he captured Leta. Even if Theseus was fine, the truth about Corvus was out there. What if he couldn’t feel the same way about her anymore?
The door opened, and Theseus stood there with puffy red eyes. He froze when he saw her.
“Leta…” He breathed. “But you’re…”
Then he pulled out his wand. “Revelio.”
Leta held still. This sort of thing happened when one was marrying an Auror. She understood that he had to be sure. When the spell passed over her and nothing changed, she smiled slightly. “It’s me, Theseus. Grindelwald didn’t kill me. He just captured me.”
“But you escaped…” Theseus said.
Leta nodded.
And then, Thesues stepped over the threshold and pulled her into a rib-crushing hug. She could feel a fresh wave of tears wetting her dress, and she hugged him back.
Whatever had happened, whatever he had learned, it was all okay. It was going to be okay.
“Grindelwald took me for a reason,” Leta said. “I don’t know what, but he’d have killed me if he didn’t need me for something. He’ll try again.”
“We’ll be ready,” Theseus said.
And Leta believed him. She leaned into his arms and let the smell of his shirt calm her down. Leta felt safe.