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+----- Thread: Naturally || Oleg (/showthread.php?tid=1323)
Naturally || Oleg - Seraphina Ashcroft - 10-14-2026
Wednesday, 6 June 1923
Argentum Memoriae
Argentum Memoriae
The morning started like normal: Seraphina Ashcroft arrived at seven on the dot, ready to get to work on the case she’d been working on for a month now. She had her tea, and started the day by checking in on any notes that had been left overnight outside her door.
At seven-thirty is when everything changed.
The Prophet arrived promptly and she took that as her signal for her first break of the day. Sera pushed her work aside and sat back with the paper, reading about the current goings-on in the Wizarding World. Engagement announcements, business dealings, and then the gossip section.
Normally not one to be distracted by such things, Sera found herself drawn to the photo of a girl she recognized. Not just any girl she recognized.
Alice. Luminița.
The photograph moved on its own, the way photographs always did. Alice was laughing. Alice was on the bar, dress gone, a young man’s hands at her waist. Alice looking nothing like the girl Sera had catalogued from across the ballroom in February. That girl had been carefully poised, perfectly controlled, performing and looking dreadfully bored.
This Alice looked free.
Sera sucked in a breath and set the paper down. She then picked up her correspondence and read it again, the same sentence four times without retaining it.
Her brown eyes kept going back to the photos of her daughter having the time of her life. Sera opened her drawer and pulled out a cigarette. She lit it and sat, her arms crossed, her eyes on the gossip pages, while her daughter danced the night away in the photos staring back at her.
Eventually, after one cigarette, Sera managed some more work. A response to an owl. But the paper sat there on the corner of her desk, the young girl continuing to dance like she had no care in the world.
By half past ten, Sera had smoked another two cigarettes, and had gotten hardly any work done. That was it. That was all she could manage.
It didn't take her long to arrive at Argentum Memoriae with the Prophet folded and tucked under her arm. The clerk at the entrance was perfectly polite. Mr. Zdravkova was occupied. He would be notified of her arrival. Would she like to wait?
Of course she said yes, before even thinking about how he had her wait the last time she met with him. That had been planned. This was spontaneous. She could only imagine the pleasure he’d get from making her wait.
She was shown to a room that could have been the exact same from the last meeting, but she couldn’t say for certain. She quickly lost track of time. She moved to a window, opened it, and smoked another cigarette. The first time she left the paper, folded, on the table. The second time she took the paper with her.
Was she breaking the Vow? She’d agreed to make no moves without his knowledge or consent. Well, she was not blabbing her mouth to anyone or doing anything that would give anything away so she didn’t think she was.
Sera kept staring at the photographs of her daughter, feeling herself losing her patience. Her jaw tightened when she looked at it, so she kept folding the page over again in a deliberate attempt to distract herself.
The door opened hours later, and the second that Oleg appeared, she was on her feet. The paper was in her hand, the photos of Alice visible.
“I thought you should see this,” she said, holding the Prophet out. “Given our arrangement.” She paused, her eyes on Oleg’s face. “Her name is in every paper in Britain. I want to know if this is yours.”
RE: Naturally || Oleg - Oleg Zdravkova - 10-19-2026
Oleg had seen the papers, of course. He read them every morning, front to back, and the rather disreputable photographs of Alice Ravenstone—half-naked, inebriated, and lewd—had hardly escaped his notice. In fact, the faintest trace of satisfaction had curled at the corners of his mouth, a glint of triumph flickering in his eyes as he’d watched the images repeat themselves over and over again.
The first in many steps towards seeing Thatcher Ravenstone removed from society, just as he had vowed to Seraphina.
And speaking of.
The woman’s appearance at Argentum Memoriae came as no surprise—quite expected, even. A distressed mother, unable to reach her daughter and forbidden by their arrangement from interfering, suddenly confronted with Alice’s face splashed across the gossip pages of every newspaper in Britain. After months of being kept in the dark.
Of course she would come by.
And of course she would wait.
Oleg had been informed of her arrival hours ago, but he hadn’t been in any particular hurry to meet her right away. Desperation, after all, had suited Seraphina remarkably well during their last meeting. When he entered the small sitting room in which she had been shown, the air inside was thick with it, tinged by a faint trace of cigarette smoke.
“Ms Ashcroft.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes, but they shone with a faint glimmer of amusement as he took in Seraphina’s state. Agitated. Tense. The woman was on her feet almost immediately, newspaper clutched in her hand, looking as though she’d been waiting for him, quite literally perched on the edge of her seat.
“I thought you should see this. Given our arrangement.”
He accepted the Prophet without a word, his gaze passing over the photographs of Alice with the same composed indifference he might have given a financial report.
“Her name is in every paper in Britain. I want to know if this is yours.”
Oleg’s smile widened almost imperceptibly. He lifted his gaze to hers, one brow arching ever so slightly, before tossing the folded newspaper onto the low table beside him. With unhurried ease, he settled into one of the armchairs, crossing one leg over the other and interlacing his fingers over his stomach.
“Why, how could it be?” Amusement laced his voice, light enough to pass for genuineness. “It looks to me as though Alice has taken it upon herself to demonstrate to the country that she knows how to enjoy herself. I certainly never instructed her to.”
RE: Naturally || Oleg - Seraphina Ashcroft - 10-19-2026
Sera watched as Oleg settled into the armchair with the ease of a man who had been waiting for this moment since he read the paper this morning. She knew at that moment that had expected her the moment he saw the photos himself. And she knew that by comparison, her less than polished appearance was amusing to him.
She remained standing at this point, too wound up to sit back down.
“No,” she said pleasantly. “I imagine you didn’t.”
She let that sit momentarily, studying him with her brown eyes.
“You didn’t instruct her to climb on a bar. You didn’t instruct the photographer. You didn’t instruct the Prophet to run it on the front page of the gossip section.” She paused. “And yet, here she is. While you may not have a hand in what exactly happened, I feel your influence must have pushed her there. I just have not figured out how.”
Sera looked at him evenly, the same way that she had looked at him in this room in April. The same composure, slightly more frayed at the edges than she had been that night. She wanted a cigarette badly enough that she could feel the absence of one, which was its own kind of tell she could do nothing about. She would not ask if she could have one.
“I am not here to argue what you did or didn’t instruct. I am here because my daughter’s reputation has been handed to every gossip in Britain on a silver platter, and I would like to know that you understand the difference between dismantling Thatcher Ravenstone and dismantling the girl in the process.”
Another pause.
“Because from where I am standing, I cannot yet tell which one this was. Or how this is supposed to help with targeting Thatcher.”
RE: Naturally || Oleg - Oleg Zdravkova - 10-21-2026
The smile on his lips remained undisturbed as Seraphina went on her little tangent.
She was right, of course. His influence had most certainly contributed to Alice’s appearance in Britain’s gossip columns. Not directly, though. Never directly. All he had done was push the first domino, set in motion from far enough away to cover his tracks, strategically positioned and carefully aligned. The rest had been natural progression.
People truly were remarkably predictable when given the right incentive.
The information he had managed to gather on Alice had been sparse, but sufficient. Quiet, composed, almost painfully boring. There had been nothing that had stood out. Nothing save for the simmering disdain she seemed to harbour towards her father and the things he had allegedly done to her and her sister.
Liliya had mentioned it. She had met with Alice through her work on Everleigh and gathered quite a bit of knowledge. Who would have thought Liliya might prove useful after all?
Judging by Alice’s resentment toward her own father, it had been easy to imagine she also despised the marriage the man had arranged for her, and that she might choose to escape if given the opportunity.
Well. Oleg had merely made certain it presented itself. How convenient that it had worked so smoothly. This article had certainly accelerated matters considerably.
Unfortunate that Seraphina seemed unable to appreciate benefit over cost.
Silence settled after she was finally done speaking.
Oleg regarded her with cold amusement, that smile still in place, his entire demeanour entirely unfazed by her concerns.
His lips widened by a fraction.
“As I understand it,” he said evenly, “your wish was to free your daughter from the marriage arrangement awaiting her after graduation and to see Thatcher Ravenstone removed from society.” His gaze flicked to the paper on the table before returning to Seraphina. “I believe this has aided in both.”
RE: Naturally || Oleg - Seraphina Ashcroft - 10-21-2026
Sera was quiet for a moment longer than she intended to be, her eyes focused on the man before her.
He wasn’t wrong. That was the problem that she was wrestling with. She had stood in this very room in April and asked him to free Alice from an arranged marriage and remove Thatcher Ravenstone from her life, and the girl in the photographs – laughing, unguarded, dress gone and not caring about it – looked more free than anything Sera had managed to give her in seventeen years of absence.
It wasn’t lost upon her that she had made a decision about Alice’s life when the girl was only seven months old and couldn’t object to it. Oleg had made a decision about her life without asking her either. Both of them had told themselves it was for her benefit. Both of them had their own reasons underneath that.
Seraphina was not comfortable with how clearly she could see the parallel.
His smile hadn’t moved and he showed absolutely nothing resembling concern. She felt the frustration of being unable to argue with the result while still objecting with the method. He had done what she asked. She couldn’t pretend otherwise. The girl in those photographs was not the girl Thatcher Ravenstone had been trying to contain.
But Alice hadn’t chosen any of this either.
Without deciding to, Seraphina finally sat. She did not slouch, despite how deflated she felt. She was still properly trained, after all.
“I am aware of what I asked for,” she said finally. Her voice was quieter than it had been a moment ago. “I am asking whether the girl survived the method, and whether something this loud could have been handled with a bit more grace.”
She’d grown up hating that word: grace. Pureblood society expected women to exude grace, and surely Thatcher Ravenstone had taught her as much. But the girl dancing on the bar, in just her slip, lacked that quality.
And, perhaps, Sera was just a little bit jealous of that fact.
RE: Naturally || Oleg - Oleg Zdravkova - 10-26-2026
Oleg watched the information sink into Seraphina’s mind like water seeping through dry cloth. Slowly, but inexorably.
She knew he was right. She knew she could hardly argue with the results, no matter how much she resented the method. The realisation rang loudly in her silence. Had she expected different strategies, quieter solutions, more honourable ways?
Perhaps.
Likely so, even.
It didn’t concern him.
Seraphina had asked for certain outcomes without specifying the means, and she had made no request that he spare her daughter’s reputation in the process. Frankly, Oleg didn’t care. The girl meant nothing to him. What mattered was the success of the arrangement, the fulfilment of his side of the bargain, and the favour he would eventually collect in return.
The laurels were his to claim, no matter what.
Collateral damage like this hadn’t been planned, but it certainly didn’t cause him any sorrow. If anything, Oleg saw the value. The photographs had thrust Alice into the public eye, and with her came the inevitable scrutiny of the man who had raised her. Thatcher’s reputation, his judgement, and his arrangement for his daughter would all be fair game now. A useful development, but naturally, Seraphina thought differently.
Her voice returned to its normal volume and composure by the time she settled into her chair, though accusation still sat beneath her words.
Oleg’s expression remained imperturbable.
“Grace,” he repeated with a faint hint of amusement, brows perking up ever so slightly. “How much grace Alice handles herself with is far out of my control, Ms Ashcroft. The way she conducts herself in public, the imprudence of getting drunk in the arms of a man whilst wearing nothing but her slip, the foolishness of doing it in a space where anyone might recognise her face is but her own doing.”
His smile lowered to little more than a slight curl at the corners of his mouth. He let a moment pass before he inclined his head in a gesture of concession.
“Yes, I arranged for that young man to approach your daughter. He was instructed to encourage her to abandon the arrangement, and yes, I intended that to have consequences for Thatcher’s reputation and his relationships.” Oleg’s smile widened again. “But what Alice chose to do with the opportunity was never mine to dictate. I provided the opening. Your daughter decided how to use it.”
He paused, his gaze steady upon hers, growing harder.
“The method was never the problem.”