They say the distinguisher between real life and a dream is your ability to pinch yourself. If your in a dream you'll feel nothing, it'll seem like you didn't even grab your arm — if your in reality, it'll probably hurt like a bitch. The night that Vi's dad falls off the fifth story balcony of their gigantic home, Vi spends ages upon ages pinching her skin until her arm is red, hoping and praying that the man's still breathing — he is, in fact, not. It's the picking of Vi's nail polish as she sits on the polished floor that her mother insisted the house elves hadn't cleaned properly, so much so that one poor soul was beheaded in the exchange; the tapping of her fingers against the floor as her cold eyes stare head on at the catastrophe she's created; the sound of the clock beating a minute too fast for the world does not stop in her path to undoing a terrible mistake, if one could call it that — these are all the things Vi thinks of when she deems herself a monster much later on in her story. The world does not stop for Vi, and so as she prays to Merlin and drags her father's cold and dead body in from the garden, Vi does not stop for the world.
It's in true fashion that for centuries and before, the Lestrange family has always had to have some form of psychopathic tendencies running in the family — maybe that's what made the men the way they were. Vi wouldn't know if the women actually ran the same, for they had all married into the family — until Vi. Born on a warm August morning as the clouds had just begin to surface along with the sun, Vi (or as her mother had kindly named her, and insisted on calling her so for the next seventeen years — Vienna) was the first of many lines of the Lestrange family to be a girl. It had shocked her father, Malachi, thoroughly, as he already had two sons — Rodolphus, and Rabastan — and was expecting a third male heir to be the pride and joy of the family — instead, he had gotten Vi. Vi — with her cherry red nails and her dimpled smile, a fascination for muggle music and the taste of cotton candy, was the same Vi who had practically jumped as she walked towards the Hogwarts Express her first year, besmirching the name of elegance the family upheld, and the same Vi who had been sorted into Ravenclaw instead of Slytherin, the same Vi, who despite being a part of the house with some of the most brilliant wizards and witches to exist, struggled with schoolwork like no other. Vi, who her father had quickly deemed a nuisance to the Lestrange family bloodline (which was, suspiciously short — Vi had a feeling people had been killed in the past for not believing the bullshit that spewed out of their parents' mouths).
Entering her final year at Hogwarts, Vi wishes upon herself nothing more than the ability to forget the previous summer. However, as it seems the wracking of guilt and fear that furrows in her chest like a weight at all times of day makes it harder than ever to remember that her father getting hit with his own rebounded killing curse, was in fact, an act of self defence, and him being edged off the balcony and four stories down was most certainly not Vi's fault — it makes it harder to forget whenever she realizes that she hid a body, so instead she finds it useful to deem herself a monster.
As it turns out even more so, monsters come in pairs...
CAST (Nobody survives this assassination...)
elizabeth lail———vienna lestrange
daniel sharman————remus lupin
ben barnes, sirius black | aaron taylor johnson, james potter | karen gillan, lily evans | harry mcentire, peter pettigrew | kiera knightly, andromeda tonks | james franco, ted tonks | katie mcgrath, bellatrix lestrange | gaspard ulliel, rodolphus lestrange | sam claflin, rabastan lestrange | alicia silverstone, isabelle lestrange | luke evans, malachi lestrange | ian somerhalder, iago lestrange
If the stars didn't shine for you...
...then who?
HEAVY IS THE HEAD...
WARNING! Themes and depictions of violence, abuse, depression, declining mental health, murder, death, neglect and trauma — read with caution.
...WORLD ON FIRE...
sept 1978 — oct 1981