"You don't want him to break off the contract?"
"Of course not!" Harry answered immediately. "I love him, but I refuse to be in a loveless marriage! I want a man who will love me and will accept it as the truth when I tell him that I love him. Nothing I say is enough for him, he doesn't believe a word that I tell him about anything!"
"I believe that is his father's fault."
Harry snorted. "I know that it's his fault. Why does he hate Rabastan so much? He doesn't treat Rodolphus nearly as badly as he does Rabastan, why?" Lucius sighed. "What is the one startling physical difference between Rabastan and Rodolphus that you have noticed?"
Harry blinked as he was caught off guard. His anger simmered down as he thought about the strange question as he tried to think of the answer. It came to him in a moment of insightful clarity.
"Their eyes." He said softly. "They look so alike at times that they could be twins, but they have different coloured eyes."
"Exactly. The Lestranges have predominantly all got brown eyes, Xerxes and Rodolphus have the same dark brown eyes and Rhadamanthus has a pale hazel, all except for Rabastan, who has dark blue eyes. His mother's dark blue eyes."
"No." Harry shook his head, unable to take in what was being hinted at, it was completely inconceivable to him. "Please tell me that Rhadamanthus doesn't hate Rabastan so much just because of his fucking eye colour?!"
Lucius glared at him but said nothing about his use of foul language as Harry started up his pacing again at a much more violent pace, his tight turns becoming almost jerky as he moved.
"Rhadamanthus loved his wife, Rosia. He loved her from the moment he laid eyes on her in Hogwarts and he pestered Xerxes to make them a betrothal match." Lucius said simply. "She wasn't as keen as he was in the beginning, but her father refused to allow her out of the betrothal contract as the Lestranges have always been very influential and wealthy and they're one of the sacred twenty-eight families, so they did enter a formal contract and a courtship and they eventually married.
Rhadamanthus only ever wanted one child. One son and heir to carry on his line, so when Rosia gave him Rodolphus, he was a very happy man and Rosia was very happy with her big, healthy son and thus, she began to show more affection towards Rhadamanthus. He was incredibly happy with the family that he had. His beloved wife was coming to love him in return, he had the one boy child that he'd wanted and everything was perfect in his life. Until Rosia announced that she was pregnant again a little over two years after Rodolphus had been born. Rhadamanthus was not pleased with the news and he tried increasingly desperately to convince Rosia that they didn't need a second child. He failed miserably as Rosia had always wanted more children and seven months later, when Rosia was into her ninth month of pregnancy, she gave birth to another baby, Rabastan. He was as hefty and as healthy as Rodolphus had been, but in Rhadamanthus' eyes he would never measure up. He was an unwanted intrusion into his perfect life and family. Rhadamanthus has never loved Rabastan and he's never wanted him. He has come to resent Rabastan and that resentment has bred a dark desire to completely destroy him, mentally, physically, it doesn't matter as long as he causes Rabastan as much pain and torment as possible."
Harry's fist clenched tight at that and he took longer strides in his pacing, trying to work out the rage that he was feeling, but as Lucius' story progressed, he was only getting angrier and more worked up. He wanted to find Rhadamanthus and destroy him before he got the chance to destroy Rabastan, which was apparently his life's only desire and a fervent mission of his. Harry would die before he let that bastard completely crush the already injured and suffering Rabastan. He swore it.
"As you can imagine, Rosia kept Rabastan incredibly close to her after his birth, knowing as she did how passionate her husband had been in his wish to terminate Rabastan before his birth. I believe that she even slept in his nursery with him, which naturally, did not best please Rhadamanthus at all. The way that he saw things, Rabastan was coming between him and his beloved wife who had previously been showing him love and affection, and now, very suddenly, she was sleeping out of his bed and was spending every single moment with this new, unwanted baby. In reality, Rosia was just trying to keep her son safe from the anger and hate she could see in her husband's eyes. I believe that all of her previous misgivings came flooding back to her and she realised exactly why she hadn't been keen on the betrothal to Rhadamanthus in the first place.
When she suddenly became sick just a few short months later, Rhadamanthus was distraught and he found her the best possible care, but despite all of the finest medical care and all the attention of specialist healers that Galleons could buy, she still died just three weeks after falling ill. Rhadamanthus was unable to deal with her death, so he fled from it to India, leaving a near newborn Rabastan and a three-year-old Rodolphus in Xerxes' care. He didn't come back for twelve years and, even then, it was only to 'do his duty to his line'."
"He came back just to set up Rodolphus' betrothal and his future marriage?" Harry asked with a frown.
Lucius nodded. "He had forgotten how old Rodolphus was, however. He thought that his son was actually a year older than he really was, not that it stopped him. Rodolphus and Bellatrix didn't have much of a betrothal, they went almost straight to engagement and then a month later they were married. But as soon as he had trapped Rodolphus into a loveless, hate-filled marriage that he didn't even want with Bellatrix Black, Rhadamanthus flounced back off to India and left Xerxes to deal with the mess that he'd left behind. Xerxes tried everything, and I mean everything, to break the marriage between Rodolphus and Bellatrix, but Rhadamanthus' wording of the contract had been airtight, Rodolphus had signed it and had gone through with the ceremony and the consummation and Bellatrix's father, the late Cygnus Black, was very uncooperative. He'd married his oldest and least beautiful daughter to a very prominent family, after all. Why would he want to break their marriage? Especially as Rodolphus had 'already sullied' his daughter, as he'd phrased it."
"He actually said that?" Harry grimaced in distaste.
"Almost word for word. So Rhadamanthus had ruined his oldest son's life at just fifteen. He didn't come back from India again until Rabastan was nineteen. He'd always hated his youngest son, he even blamed Rabastan for his wife's death, insisting that it was he who had made her so sick in the first place, but as soon as he saw those eyes, his wife's eyes, on Rabastan he made it his mission in life to destroy him as he believed that Rabastan had destroyed his marriage and killed his wife, at least from the way that he had seen things. Two short years later and Rabastan and Rodolphus were in Azkaban, where they were unreachable by both Rhadamanthus and Xerxes and where they stayed for fifteen long years, but the damage had already been done in those initial two years and
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