...prologue...
the rising sun
Vienna is born on a warm morning in mid August.
The sun is just barely rising above the dusty clouds when she presents herself to the world, with tiny flicks of bright blonde hair much like her mother's, and a loud wail that would shatter the floor her parents have been walking upon — this is the first good sign that her lungs developed properly in the womb, because Vienna is born nearly two months before she was supposed to, not carried full to term. This day — August the fourteenth — is the first of many times Vienna will be anxious to leave a place where she should feel like she belongs. As is the custom of many pureblood families, the gender of the baby was never asked, and it was left up to whatever happens whenever the mother gives birth. The morning of the fourteenth, Malachi Lestrange is waiting outside his wife's hospital room in the eerie halls of St. Mungo's (he had requested — or persuaded, if you will — for a private suite, and his own team of reliable, pureblood healers), his eyes scanning a column of the Daily Prophet, every now and then rolling his eyes as he watches a halfblood he recognizes, or a obvious muggle born pass by.
When the healers come out and announce to him that he does in fact, have a new baby, he nods and walks in. It's upon the sight of his wife, still tired but holding a bundle of pink in her arms and looking at it softly does he scowl, and shake his head — he takes on glance at the small head of blonde hair, the facial structure with no similarity to his own, the only being the small green eyes that blink up at him for a moment before they close in content, and he walks straight out of the suite, dragging two boys, aged two and ten years old, out of the room.
When Vienna is bought home after spending a week at St Mungo's for observation, she is placed in a small nursery right beside her younger brother, Rabastan, is room. The nursery is filled to the brim with toys — a toy depiction of the Hogwarts express, stuffed snakes, a toy wand and broom — and is painted a emerald shade of green, with silver decorations throughout the room. Malachi, Vienna's father, refuses to paint it another colour. On the third night, when Malachi is fast asleep with a murmuring charm placed over his room door, Vienna's mother, Isabelle, takes her wailing daughter into her arms and lets her clutch a small blue stuffed eagle, holding it tight between her hands as Rabastan sits at her feet, hugging her legs in an attempt to fall back to sleep after a nightmare.
For the most part, Vienna doesn't cry much as a baby — the girl had a weird depiction of calmness to her that bothered Isabelle to the brim, it was worrying and she felt that the people around Vienna had completely silenced her, however, she never voiced said opinion. When Vienna did cry, the nanny was always the one to calm her down, and when the nanny wasn't around it was Isabelle who did that — in the years since her birth, Malachi had only once held onto Vienna (it was for a family portrait about seven months after her birth). Rodolphus leaves for Hogwarts soon after Vienna is born, as he's turned eleven. The farewell at the station is hearty — Malachi gives Rodolphus more emotion in the two seconds it takes him to say goodbye than he has given Vienna in the year she's been alive. Isabelle wishes him well and frets over whether he has everything, still holding onto both Vienna and Rabastan tightly. Rodolphus nods, looking bored and gets on the train followed by Bellatrix Black, who is also starting Hogwarts the same year — Andromeda Black, who is around nine years old, fawns over Vienna in Isabelle's arms as they watch the train take off.
When Vienna is nine years old, she starts going by Vi.
Nobody ever calls her Vi, because her parents insist on calling her Vienna. An entire year of begging and rolling of her eyes, corrections and muttering every time Malachi snaps and screams at her to stop talking at the dinner table — the last time Vienna corrects him is the time he throws a plate at her. It hits right above her head on the wall, eliciting a silent gasp of breath as she backs up against the wall — Vienna never asks her parents to call her Vi again. From then on, the only people call her Vi are Sirius and Regulus.
Vienna's just turned eleven when she starts at Hogwarts. The farewell at the station, as like the last eleven years of her life, is icy cold. Malachi pats both his sons on the back and wishes them good luck, hoping for good grades and upholding of the family name, reminding them of rights and wrongs and telling them he's proud — he scowls once at Vienna and rolls his eyes, taking off towards the Black family before she can say goodbye. Vienna only breathes deeply and turns to her mother instead.
"You'll behave?" Isabelle asks quietly, bending down just the slightest bit to fix the collar of Vienna's jacket.
"Yes mother," Vienna mutters quietly.
"Speak up," Isabelle scolds, a glint taking over her eyes for a moment.
"I know," Vienna sighs, recalling the same line she had heard her father scream a hundred times, every time she did something wrong. "Ladies should never murmur."
"No," Isabelle shakes her head and glances at Malachi for a moment, who's speaking casually to Orion Black, before looking back at Vienna and bending down to her height, clutching softly onto her shoulders. "You should never murmur because then people won't hear what you have to say — what you have to say matters."
Vienna boards the train with the brightest smile she's had in almost two years.
It's on the train that she sits with Sirius for the first five minutes — he runs off after meeting a few rowdy boys in another compartment, but he wishes her luck. Vienna sits alone for half of the ride, until eventually there's a knock on the compartment door. Andromeda Black, now dressed elegantly, hair tied back and in her seventh year at Hogwarts smiles at Vienna and leads her towards her compartment — the blinds are closed but it's inside that she's introduced to a boy named Ted.
Andromeda seems excited when she introduced Ted to Vienna, as though she hasn't ever had the chance to introduce Ted to anybody. "This is Vi!" She exclaims, smiling widely. Vienna's heart soars out of her chest at the sound of her nickname, and she smiles widely at Ted as they sit down and he asks her what she's most excited about at Hogwarts. It seems Andromeda and Ted both know better than to bring up the topic of houses, so they leave that be — Vienna thinks they both know that she has to be sorted into Slytherin, it's the only thing keeping her father from cutting the cord.
Vienna isn't sorted into Slytherin.
McGonagall calls her name loudly in a startling moment. "Lestrange, Vienna," She exclaims and with a huff, Vienna straightens her shoulders like her father and mother had always berated her to do, like she had seen Bellatrix constantly doing once she started hanging around Rodolphus during his final years of Hogwarts a few years back. She walks up to the stool confidently and sits down, and before the hat engulfs her head she catches a glimpse of Rabastan, sitting at the Slytherin table watching her with suspicious eyes.
Hmmm, interesting, The sorting hat mutters. Despite being told by Rodolphus and Rabastan both what the sorting hat is like, she is still startled by how loud the hat's voice is when on her head. Talented. Very very talented. Outspoken, intelligent, and cunning, but caring. Where to put you?
"Please, please, Slytherin," Vienna mutters so quietly, and the hat seems to hear her as it grumbles.
Slytherin, It hisses. Yes, you are a Lestrange after all. The first female heir I've seen in a while. But...no. Slytherin won't do you well, not at all. You'd do well in Hufflepuff...
The sorting's hat seam opens at that moment and Vienna waits for it to scream out Hufflepuff like it so clearly wants to, but it does not.
"Ravenclaw!"
Vienna's years at Hogwarts fly by quickly. After her sorting, her father no longer speaks to her at all — he solely ignores her very existence. Rabastan and Rodolphus are the stars of the family now. Rodolphus marries Bellatrix Black during Vienna's third year at Hogwarts — it's the same year she learns that Andromeda Black has been disowned by her family after she marries a muggleborn. The muggleborn's name is Ted — Vienna smiles happily for a moment when this is announced, but one glare from Malachi has her looking right back down at her plate.
The biggest scandal of the seven years is when, during Vienna's sixth year, Sirius Black is disowned. The uproar comes in the form of Walburga Black, who is furious and burns him straight off the Black family tree — there's one similar to it in the Lestrange manor, and that night Vienna sits and stares at it for hours after everybody's gone to sleep. The tapestry of her name is a reminder that once she's gone from here she's left with nothing and nobody — Sirius had friends from Hogwarts, Vienna has nobody close enough to her to take her in. It stares back at her, reminding her of what she's in for if she stays — a life of pain and suffering, marrying a rich, pureblood aristocrat (some could get lucky, and get somebody like Lucius Malfoy, like Narcissa Black did — somebody who, though an asshole, would protect them). Vienna saw a Rosier in her future from the conversations she had heard between her parents behind closed doors, and the Rosiers' would eat her alive. The same life of opium wealth filled with the rise of a man who calls himself the Dark Lord, somebody who the pureblood society suddenly started worshipping. The tapestry stares at her as if it tells her the other option — trying to leave and getting herself killed (the day Malachi Lestrange lets Vienna leave this family alive...that is a day that would never come, as far as Vienna was concerned).
Vienna's downfall occurs on a late August morning, exactly seventeen years after Vienna was born, to the dot. The sun is just barely rising and Vienna is sitting in the darkness of her room, not trusting herself to go to sleep. Her mother and brothers are spending the weekend at Malfoy Manor, helping Bellatrix and the Malfoys' plan the wedding of Narcissa and Lucius, which is supposed to take place in the winter — she can hear her father shuffling on the other side of the door.
Really though, it is Malachi's own downfall.
Bursting through the door is his first step to the downfall. Hurling a stack of muggle books that had been in Vienna's closet last night is the second step, and throwing a killing curse her way is the third.
So when the curse hits a wall as Vienna ducks, rebounds and creates a light that blinds him as he steers himself off the balcony, falling four stories down into the wall enclosed garden of the manor with a sickening crack, Vienna feels nothing but emptiness as she stares wide eyed from above at his body.
As they say, karma's a bitch.
note ———— yes i did absolutely create a revamp of murder she wrote. ajdjdhbs i missed vi so so much she's my comfort character i had to bring her back, plus this plot is so much more fun to write. and yes, i 100% see vi's aesthetic being dark academia, and rem totally being light academia...it just fits. anyways, a few changes from murder she wrote are that vi is in her seventh year, the same yr as remus, reg doesn't help her hide the body, and there's some mama drama going on. also, just a side note if anybody's read my other reg fic, gemini season, this coincides with it but reg won't be mentioned too much, neither will holly so it's not like necessary at all to understand this! (holly might show up later but now anytime soon mostly bc this is set the year before reg and holly even meet! sterling however will show up a little, for those who have read gemini season, so be warned for spoilers abt her and possibly abt verity later on)! also i wanted so bad to stick to og andrew as rem, but it just wasn't working out well so i went this direction instead