There wasn't a response he could have given her that would have frustrated her more. This time it was her own lip she bit down on as she to keep her cool. It was probably still too soon to be belligerent, he might just try to send her back to the forest or kill her right there. There had to be something she could do to hasten her reunion with her wand.

"That'll take weeks." She refused to live like a muggle for even one week. If it really came down to it then she'd damn well try to teach herself wandless magic just to spite him but that would probably be a lot of effort for minimal gain. "There must be something I..." Before she could finish her sentence in such a way that would sound too close to begging, she fell silent and instead raised her left hand, thrusting it towards him and holding it there in a way she hadn't since their wedding day, albeit a great deal more rigidly.

---

  

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The fact that it would take weeks to prove she was capable of behaving herself as a wife was sort of the point. He'd just threatened to murder her in the woods; she might have said anything to convince him to spare her. He needed to know that she was going to follow through with what she had said, not take her wand and run off into the woods again — or worse, try to find a way to incapacitate him. He wasn't sure exactly how her Unbreakable Vow would respond to his death, but if she could cripple him to the point where he wasn't able to draw his wand to kill her — well, she'd be more or less free to do as she pleased, and he'd be powerless to stop her.

Tiberius raised an eyebrow as she held out her hand, her bare finger prominent. He could see the line on her skin from where the ring had been sitting for years.

This was a good start, he supposed.

"Accio Antigone's ring," he muttered, reaching down to brush his fingers against his pocketed wand. It flew from his armoire to his hand, where he replaced it on hers. "It's been cleaned," he pointed out. "It was filthy."

  

"Presumptuous of you to think I'd be back for it." She didn't doubt he'd only had it cleaned for her funeral but it pleased her to tease him for it anyway. She chose to ignore the mention of its cleanliness or lack thereof.

Once it was back on her finger she inspected it dubiously. His mention of having it clean made her realize that he could have done any number of things to it while it was in his possession aside from cleaning it, and it wouldn't be the first time he'd given her a ring without mentioning it was cursed. He couldn't have been sure she'd ever get the chance to wear it again though so it was also possible he hadn't bothered. "Cleaning had better be all you've done to it." If he hadn't then it was an opportunity he'd lost and she wouldn't give it up to him freely again.

She wanted to continue pressing him about her wand but could think of no way she might be able to negotiate it from him, what bargaining chips did she have left? She supposed she could find ways to make do in the time being, ways he probably wouldn't approve of but he hadn't prohibited her from using magic, he was only withholding access to her wand.

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"It was my mother's," he snapped in response. "It deserves more respect than you've given it." He wasn't the sort to be sentimental about this sort of thing (or about anything), but there wasn't a good deal of either of his parents left in the house to preserve. The room Antigone slept in had been his mother's, but her clothing had mostly been sold after she died, except for a few items of particular value that had been passed on to Tatiana. The furniture and decor had stood for several years, but after his father's incarceration when Tiberius and Tatiana had been sent away and the house had been shut up, most of it had fallen into disrepair. Sunspots and uneven fading on the cushions and yellowing of the wallpaper had meant he'd had to have the place redecorated when he inherited it, prior to his marriage to Antigone. A few pieces of furniture remained here and there from his childhood, his father's books, and this — his mother's ring.

Not that Antigone had any reason to care about that. She had never met the former lady of the house and probably would have disliked her on mere principle if she had, the way she had decided to be contrary to every Lestrange she'd been introduced to in the early days of their betrothal and marriage. Still, the ring was a part of Tiberius' history, and now a part of his children's history — he would have kept it for them even if he had murdered Antigone in the woods.

  

A slight sneer flickered across her face for a brief second as she was reminded of the origin of the ring. She'd never met his mother and she never would, the woman was as real to her as any fictional character and she refused to feel beholden to someone who was very much dead. As long as it wasn't cursed. Tig bit back a petulant remark and tried an altogether different tact.

"Respect?" She tilted her head slightly to one side as she feigned confusion. "I don't believe I'm familiar with the concept." She smirked as though pleased by her own wit and stepped backwards away from him. Surely he'd find some humor in that and forget about his dead mother, there was a topic she had no desire to waste another second on!

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Tiberius sneered at her remark. "Maybe that's because any time I try to give you some, you immediately do something to lose it," he retorted. Honestly, their relationship had started out incredibly respectful — at least, from his end. She had never been thrilled about him having the audacity to exist, or to marry her. He, on the other hand, had been reasonably accommodating of her wishes when it came to the wedding — except for her primary wish, which had been that it didn't happen at all. He'd given her a nice room, newly furnished, and whatever allowance she needed. She'd had freedom to do as she pleased with her time — until she had proven that she couldn't be trusted with it, and he'd had to restrict her movements more and more. And she had the effrontery to claim he had never respected her!

Or maybe she was saying she wasn't capable of treating anyone else with respect. That he could believe.

"I think we're done," he said coolly. He had no intention of returning her wand, and there wasn't anything else she might want from him.

  

There was her cue to leave.

She chose to ignore it.

Strangely the idea of leaving the room was very unappealing to her and she decided to put it down to not wanting to be bored. Tiberius was the biggest pain in her side but he was a considerably more interesting way of passing time than reading or sewing or contemplating her own existence.

"I think we're not," she thought. Tig turned her back on him and started nosing around his room - brushing her fingers over furniture as she passed and stopping to snoop into anything that might open. "I didn't think you'd end up a bird."

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Tiberius was usually conscious of trying not to rise to Antigone's jibes, but if this was her way of baiting him, he wasn't sure what she was getting at. He had been quite content with his animagus form, all things considered. He still wasn't sure it was worth all of the effort that had gone in to obtaining it, but he had never been too keen on the idea in the first place. As far as animals went, it was fairly useful. He'd already used his new wings to search her out more effectively than he could have with a simple spell. It was a respectable form to have; it was a bird of prey, a predator. Was he overlooking something? Some reason she might have to disdain him for it?

"Why?" he asked, glancing over at her. It wasn't the wolf he told her he'd be expecting, when they'd first had that conversation years ago — but he hadn't ever really anticipated that, since he'd lied about it being his patronus form. A falcon was more useful than a wolf, anyway, for most tasks. A wolf probably would have been better suited to snapping her little cat neck in its jaws than a falcon, but — well, hopefully that wouldn't be relevant again after their earlier spat in the woods.

  

She shrugged nonchalantly. "I thought you'd be something larger. With teeth." It was actually the truth as much as she'd hoped he became something she could ridicule him over, like an insect.

"What would you have done if you'd turned into something awful, like a spider or a fish?" She doubted his answer would be particularly interesting but she was going to probe him for information all the same until something caught her interest. "Were you afraid?" She stole a sidelong glance his way that she hoped he caught.

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"Afraid?" he repeated incredulously. Tiberius shook his head and let out a short, mirthless laugh. "It isn't as though anyone forces you to go live as an animal for months once you become an animagus. If I'd turned into something useless, I would have just moved on," he said. It wasn't a lie, either; he hadn't invested much personal stock in becoming an animagus, except to prove that he could. He would have achieved that regardless of what he turned in to — though he may have been reticent to transform in front of her if he had ended up as something embarrassing.

"I suppose if I was a fish I might have suffocated and died," he said with an unconcerned shrug. The possibility really didn't worry him too much — at least not now that he could safely discount it ever happening to him. It was easy in retrospect to seem confident about the transformation, but she knew that he'd failed it once. Luckily, she would never get a chance to see the note he'd written before attempting it, to realize just how seriously he'd considered the possibility that he would fail again and die.

  

His denial was nothing less than she'd expected but the laugh was enough to make her smirk. It struck her as quite revealing. "You'd still have to live with the knowledge that your entire being amounts to that creature, it's not as if it's random." Thank Merlin she hadn't ended up a goose, while it might have given her wings the direct comparison to his killer bird would have made it all the more intolerable.

Tig turned around again to face him, leaning backwards into the piece of furniture behind her. "Did you tell the Ministry?"

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Tiberius hadn't really considered the transformation in such terms before. The only practical difference it would have made it him would have been that he wouldn't have wanted to show off his animagus form to Antigone if it had been something embarrassing, but he attributed that more to her and her proclivity for taunting him whenever possible, not any innate insecurities he had about it. What did she mean by that, his entire being amounting to that creature? He didn't particularly feel as though he had much in common with a falcon at all, despite the fact that that was the form his transformation had taken.

"No, I didn't tell the Ministry," he said with a shrug in response to her question, putting aside what she had said first for the moment. "Why bother?"

  

She had assumed as much and so his response was relatively uninteresting to her. Tig exhaled heavily and stared vacantly at a spot on the wall. She didn't want to leave and she didn't want to stay if he wasn't going to entertain her in some way, intentionally or not. That meant having a stimulating conversation with him that, hopefully, remained civil.

But how was such a thing done?

She stared at him silently for a good long while as she considered.
""

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Her silence, to Tiberius, implied that she thought there was more to the story, though he couldn't imagine what she had been expecting him to say. "You didn't register yourself as an animagus," he pointed out. "I don't think the thought even crossed your mind. It was the first thing you told me, after you'd done it. Why didn't you register?" he asked.

  

She hadn't expected him to say anymore on the subject without her encouragement and so was a little surprised. "I'm not going to give the Ministry that kind of power over me," she scoffed. Wasn't it obvious? She hadn't expected him to for the same reason but perhaps the thought hadn't even occurred to him. "That's what I have you for, isn't it?" She looked over at him ruefully with an almost smirk.

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That was an unexpected answer. While Tiberius certainly thought that he ought to hold that kind of sway over Antigone — that every husband should occupy a position of power and respect over their wife — he had hardly expected her to talk so openly about it. He would have assumed her pride would have prevented her.

"That's the idea," he said smoothly. "It doesn't always seem to be effective, in your case."