A Happy Family?

As children typically are, Robert Algernon Barnabas Rowle was born. His was a wealthy and established family; and so he was promptly put to the breast of a nurse and raised by a nanny, trotted out only for special occasions. The years would see him joined in the nursery by a brother and sister before he departed for Hogwarts, and two more siblings would arrive during his time at school.

At Hogwarts, Robin was sorted into Hufflepuff (1858). He was not immensely gifted in any academic area, but a hard worker and easy to please. Indeed, for many years he counted being named house Prefect (1862) one of his greatest accomplishments, though his father never let him forget that he failed to attain Head Boy status.

On leaving Hogwarts, Robin accompanied his mother to the continent for a season, where the two finally began to develop a familial bond. When she returned to England, he remained for the better part of a year, sowing his wild oats (though not too fervently, and not that many) and whatever other things young men get up to.

When he returned home, it was straight into the Ministry of Magic (1866). After all, Algernon Rowle would not have a useless son, nor did he intend to die anytime soon so that Robin might inherit.

Relations between Robin and Philip, his next sibling, had always been tense, but came to a head when they were 22 and 19 (1869). Home from a tour of the continent, Philip confided in his brother that he was going to play professional quidditch. Knowing it would not go over well, Robin tried to soften their father to the idea but when Philip found out, he hexed Robin severely, leaving him deaf in his left ear. Robin never learned what their father said to him, but Philip was not the same after that day, and any talk of—indeed, seemingly any interest in—quidditch faded away.

Curses

It started with Miranda.

A vision on Christmas morning, one that ripped through her like a scythe and foretold the betrayal of her father. The family knew then, of course, that she had the Sight, but what they did not know—what they could not have fathomed in that moment—was that Algernon Rowle would see his daughter’s gift as a threat to what he had worked so hard to build. On that day in 1862, he conducted his first Imperius Curse. It would not be his last.

Robin’s own turn did not come until 1878. Ever the dutiful son, he had followed his father’s expectations for him to the letter—until he met her. Though it was only a matter of blood purity that separated them, Robin was not so foolish as to think his purist father would allow the match, and so the two planned to elope in secret. Miranda, though, saw this in his tea leaves, reported to their father… and Robin never made the scheduled rendezvous. His last concrete memory is of his father’s face, impassive as always.

His time in-between went exactly as Robin’s life was always supposed to. He married a pureblooded daughter of the Crabbe family in 1879, one who would go on to bless him with three children. He continued his professional trajectory, eventually being named head of his Ministry department in 1882. And tragedy, too, played out, with his mother succumbing to the laughing plague of 1884.

Awakening

He had the parchment in hand, one declaring his intention to run for Minister of Magic, half within its envelope. For Robin Rowle, who had never been particularly ambitious, this itself was puzzling, as if he had entered a rather lacklustre dream partway through.

Then the memories began trickling in at different places, all the things he had lived-but-missed in fifteen years. The memory of his mothers passing and all the associated grief hit him at once—his wife found him sobbing on the floor of his office after more than an hour of it. The reason for her intrusion? To tell Robin his father had suffered a stroke.

Robin swiftly goes to Hogsmeade where Miranda waits, and one look at his sister is enough to assure Robin that she is going through much the same. Slowly but surely, the siblings—indeed, all five of them—begin to piece together their father’s crime, and grapple with what it means for their pasts—and their futures.