May 5th, 1890 — Oakshire Hall, Kent

It had been over a week since the healer had called - that had been enough to sour her mood for days - and in all that time nothing had changed which was to say Tiberius had given no indication to her that he was even aware the visit had taken place. Tig had finally had enough. It was just rude at this point and how long did he intend to wait before he acknowledged her? She would rather have waited for him to break the silence so he could see how little it mattered to her. She wasn't going to wait though and she had good reasons for not waiting aside from impatience and she'd think of them later. She wasn't going to make it obvious what she was doing if she could help it, he didn't need to know.

Her scheme had been inspired at least in part by the nurse accosting her about some situation with the child that didn't interest her enough to actually listen in but her ears did prick up when the woman mentioned Tiberius being likely to drop in on the brat after dinner that evening. Tig dismissed her without addressing the issue that had brought the woman to her in the first place in favor of scheming.

Just before dinner she took a quick detour to the nursery, placed a stealthy confundus charm on the nurse and transfigured her daughter into a lynx cub. She then left the door open and sauntered off to dinner.

Afterwards she made sure he left the room first giving him about a minute head start before following after him. It was her intention to be within earshot when he happened upon the disoriented nurse and either an empty room or his furry little daughter cowering in one of the corners so she might at least enjoy what she could of his reaction, then she'd scarper to her room and wait. Regardless of what he found he'd have to assume it was her doing.
""

---

Tiberius Lestrange

The following 1 user Likes Antigone Lestrange's post:1 user Likes Antigone Lestrange's post
   Ophelia Devine

---

The fact that his daughter Imperatrix (whichever version of her survived to adulthood) might be his only legitimate child had in no way increased Tiberius' desire to spend any time with her, or to devote any energy to her care or well being. If it hadn't been for the periodic prompting of the servants and the establishment (at their suggestion) of a routine visiting schedule, he might have foregone seeing her entirely, simply because he was liable to go days at a time without recalling that she existed, much less devoting any serious thought to her upbringing. That being said, spending ten to twenty minutes in the nursery a few times a week was not such an imposition on his time that it was worthwhile to make excuses to avoid it, generally speaking. Over the course of her life these little events had become increasingly rehearsed, which suited Tiberius just fine, because it meant that he needed only sit through the presentation of whatever meager faculties she had developed since his last visit and then take his leave. He was expecting this visit to be no different. He would walk in and take a seat on the sofa, and the nurse would offer little prompts to his daughter to direct her through whatever she'd planned to demonstrate for that day. Say hello. Show your father your nice new dolly. Do you know what color dolly's dress is? Very good. Show your father how you brush dolly's hair. Where is dolly's hairbrush?

As if anyone cared about the doll's hairbrush and the fact that his daughter was now capable of retrieving it from her toy box without assistance. Well, apparently the nurse did; she always looked quite pleased with these accomplishments. Tiberius supposed that was what they paid her to do, though, so perhaps it was unsurprising.

The nurse wasn't waiting for him when he reached the room, the way she normally was; instead, she was in the rocking chair, humming what might have been a lullaby to what was quite certainly a pillow. The door to the nursery was open, the room was in chaos (at least compared to the immaculate tidiness that was customary for his visits), and the toddler was nowhere to be seen. Tiberius froze in the doorway for a moment as he tried to make sense of the scene. The nurse was befuddled, most likely, or had some other magical interference with her mental capacities, because she didn't react to his appearance in the doorway at all.

Was this his daughter's work? It would have been early for a magical outburst, but — well. They were based on uncontrolled emotions, from what he understood, and half of her genetics had come from Antigone, so anything was possible. That could explain what had happened to the nurse, but not where his daughter had gone. For that, he would probably need the servant to have her wits returned to her. After a long period of silence, then, Tiberius drew his wand and cast "Finite Incantatum."

  

Tig stood flattened against the wall outside the nursery, biting her lip with anticipation as she tried to imagine what was happening only a few feet away on the other side of the door frame. At first all she could hear was a muffled, high pitched sort of humming noise which she had to assume was the nursery maid - she refused to believe such a sound was even capable of coming out of Tiberius.

Finally she heard him utter a counter curse which she had to assume was directed towards the nurse, that seemed the most logical place to start rather than the lynx cub that was his own daughter. While he was supposed to put two and two together fairly easily, it wasn't quite as obvious as an oddly behaving grown woman.

A quiet mewling sound broke Tig's concentration. Looking towards the sound revealed the source as her transfigured daughter. Damn it. The whole game would be given away if Tiberius heard it and came to investigate. Tig mouthed the words 'shut up' furiously at the cub. Even when she was at risk of ruining Tig's plan, the feline version of her daughter was infinitely preferable to her ignorant, sticky, wailing human form. Perhaps they could keep one twin as a pet instead of a daughter instead of killing her. Then again it might just be better to get a real lynx for a pet, the dead were less of a liability than a transfigured child.

Her daughter was either more stupid than she thought or just very distressed, but she certainly wasn't cooperating. She was inching closer and mewling loudly. Tig snatched her off the ground, "I said shut up, you little beast," she whispered angrily into her ear. She quietly put some distance between herself and the door so she could speak quietly with less risk of being heard. Tig genuinely wasn't sure what three year olds were capable of, cognitively speaking, but she'd soon find out. "Go find your father - your Papa," what were they calling him? "He's in the nursery - in your room - go find him." She was about to put her down and decided to quickly add, "He's got a present for you." Tig set her daughter down on her four paws again and to her own horror, she accidentally gave her daughter a scratch behind the ears as she had the habit of doing with Moselle. At least her daughter was probably not smart enough to recognize it as an affectionate gesture.

Tig gave her daughter a firm nudge with her foot and watched her slink back into the nursery. Tig crept back to her original eavesdropping spot.

---

  

---

The counter curse had worked properly, but it hadn't done him much good. The nurse couldn't tell him anything of substance that had taken place while she'd been befuddled, or from directly before. She had no idea what had become of the nursery, or where Imperatrix was. This was looking to be a problem that Tiberius would have to involve himself in solving, which was obnoxious, to say the least. They paid the nurse to take care of their offspring so that neither he nor Antigone had to bother with it, but it wasn't as though he could just skulk back to his study and leave the servant to settle things when his daughter was actively missing. They'd already had one daughter "die;" if they lost another due to negligence, people would talk. Except he supposed they wouldn't really have to tell anyone that one had died, if she did — they could just go and get the spare and no one would be the wiser, except the servants. Still. Better to prevent her from falling down the stairs and breaking her head open, or something along those lines, if they could.

"I suggest you start looking," he growled at the nurse, who nodded in an agitated, flustered way and headed towards the door. She had only just reached it when she was accosted by another growl — this one literal.

"What the hell?" Tiberius asked as he looked back at the doorway. The nurse had scampered out of the way and there was a cat rushing towards him. Not one of Antigone's cats, he realized, but something that looked much closer to what Antigone herself looked like, in her Animagus form. Only smaller.

He hadn't put all the pieces together yet, and he didn't know what this animal was or where it had come from, but he now had a fairly strong suspicion that his wife was behind it.

"Antigone," he mumbled, using her name as though it were a curse. In the meantime, he flourished his wand at the tiny charging beast and sent a stunning spell in its direction.

The following 1 user Likes Tiberius Lestrange's post:1 user Likes Tiberius Lestrange's post
   Antigone Lestrange

Tig heard her name and took it as her cue to leave. Hopefully their transfigured daughter would distract him long enough for her to get to her room and look like she hadn't just thrown herself through the door.

Smirking, she changed into her animagus form and slinked off as quietly and as quickly as she could to her room.

---

  

---

The stunning spell missed the cat, which launched itself into his leg and dug half a dozen razor-sharp claws into his trousers. Tiberius swore and kicked the thing, which yowled as it bounced against the nursery wall. He took the opportunity of it being momentarily stunned from physical trauma to send another magical spell at it, which transfigured the nearby toddler's chair into a makeshift cage which wrapped itself around the cat. The place that the thing had latched onto his leg hurt, and pinpricks of blood were already staining the inside of his pant leg, but Tiberius ignored it in favor of approaching the cat and getting a better look at it. Definitely a lynx, and therefore definitely Antigone's handiwork. What was her game? What had become of their daughter? She was the one who had come up with the plan to keep them both alive, and argued for it in the first place, so it seemed unlikely she would have intentionally harmed her, or left her alone with some wild cat for purposes unknown. She might have endangered their daughter accidentally, if she'd been focused on some other goal, but there wasn't any complicated magic or potioneering that would make sense with this wild creature, the destruction of the nursery, the befuddlement of the nurse, or the absence of their offspring.

With a scowl, Tiberius picked up the cage and stormed off to his wife's room. Upon arrival he flung the door open without knocking, and tossed the wild cat onto her bed. "What is this?" he demanded.

  

Tig made it back with time to spare and so was quite pleased to be discovered casually sat on a chair pretending to read a book. What she hadn't been expecting was for Tiberius to have brought their untransfigured daughter with him.

She put her book to one side and glanced over to the caged animal. "It looks to me like a lynx cub in a cage." She looked away for a moment and then to him, then nonchalantly added, "It's also your daughter."

Really this wasn't quite what she'd wanted, he was supposed to piece together the missing daughter with the sudden appearance of an infant version of her animagus form and then untransfigure the child. He was then supposed to come to her room alone and try to reprimand her for it or at least question her a little and then she'd move him along to other matters that were of greater interest to her. Their daughter was an unwelcome third wheel.

---

The following 1 user Likes Antigone Lestrange's post:1 user Likes Antigone Lestrange's post
   Tiberius Lestrange

---

Antigone had transfigured their daughter into a lynx cub and left her to roam loose in the nursery. Of course she had. It made exactly zero sense and accomplished nothing, so why wouldn't she have done this? Tiberius had never claimed to understand his wife, but at moments like these he wondered quite seriously what could possibly have been going on in her mind. He had a hard time empathizing with even normal people, but he knew enough about their behavior and habits to know that this was not normal.

"You're lucky I didn't kill her by mistake," he growled irritably. "She nearly attacked me in the nursery."

He supposed that if he had accidentally killed their daughter, Antigone would have blamed him for reacting with violence to having his leg mauled, not herself for having created the situation in the first place. Still scowling, Tiberius flicked his wand at the bed and transfigured the cage back into a small toddler's chair, which left the lynx loose on her bed. She looked rather shaken by the entire ordeal, but since she had just been locked in a magical cage and tossed carelessly through the air, Tiberius couldn't say he blamed her.

"Change her back," he told his wife, figuring that it would be easier for her to do so than for him to attempt it, since she knew the spell that had been used to transfigure her originally.

  

Tig smirked slightly at the thought that he'd nearly been attacked by a toddler, she wished she'd seen that but then she probably would've given herself away snickering in the doorway.

Imperatrix had played her part so Tig was quite willing to turn her back, hopefully the little girl would then trot off back to the nursery and Tig could go back to forgetting about her existence. Tig waved her wand lazily in the direction of her daughter and reversed the spell. "There, happy now?" She shot an annoyed look at the toddler on her bed - why hadn't she left already?

---

  

---

Happy was hardly the word for it. His daughter was returned to her human self, though, and appeared unharmed. He had no idea at all how long she'd spent as a lynx, and whether or not that was likely to have any non-physical consequences, but he supposed time would tell. If she did end up an imbecile, or deeply traumatized, or something, at least they still had the spare.

Without deigning to answer his wife's inquiry verbally, Tiberius walked instead to her bed. He had no idea what her game had been or whether she had intended it to end in quite this way, but he had little patience for it. Their daughter, too, looked unlikely to move on her own; she was either terrified or shocked, and was only staring at him with wide eyes. He scooped the small girl up in his arms, turned, and headed towards the door, intending to return her to the nursery and hopefully to the care of the nurse, whom he could only hope had recovered her wits enough to be useful in righting the room and getting his daughter back to her banal toddler self.

  

Tig frowned in disbelief as he picked the child up and seemed to be leaving without another word. By all means remove the child from her room but she didn't think he'd be coming back again. "Is that it?!" If she sounded incredulous it was because she was incredulous. All of her effort and he was just going to stroll on out? He wasn't even going to reprimand her?

---

  

---

As far as Tiberius was concerned, yes, that was it. He didn't understand what she was trying to do and wasn't in the mood to try and play a game without any conception of the rules.

Wordlessly, he headed down the stairs to the nursery. The nurse was gone, probably desperately looking for the missing child that had turned out to be in the hall the entire time. Shaking his head, Tiberius deposited the still-quiet toddler in the center of the room and drew his wand to begin magically setting things to straight.