The Zdravkova Family
| The Zdravkova Family | |
|---|---|
|
[[File:|frameless|260px|center|alt=]] | |
| Motto | |
| Social Class | Upper Class |
| Established | 1387 |
| Blood Type |
Pureblood
|
| Residence | Zdravkova Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia |
| Head of Family |
|
| Archetype | |
| Family Owner(s) |
|
Overview
The Zdravkova Family is native to Russia, residing in their palace northeast of St. Petersburg, situated in between Lakes Ladoka and Onega. First established in 1387 by Igor Zdravkova, the pureblood family has since grown into one of Russia's most successful, influential and powerful families to date, using their generational skills of Legilimency and Occlumency in their ever-persistent pursuit for more. Through keen sense for business, strategic utilization of blackmail and ice-cold determination, the Zdravkovas have grown what started as a small shop selling memory charm services into an imperium that grants them access, influence and leverage throughout all layers of society.
Family Tree
Argentum Memoriae (Memory's Silver)
The Zdravkova business builds upon the foundation of memory and its importance to pureblood families' legacies and common people's sentimentalities alike. Having honed the art of memory extraction, restoration, archiving and alteration through the work of generations of talented and thoroughly trained Legilimens, the Zdravkovas have managed to amass a fortune not only in Galleons, but also in innumerable, invaluable memories in payment for shadier kinds of business.
Current patriarch of the family, Aleksandr, oversees all four branches from his office at the palace. The four branches' leadership positions are entrusted to the most capable -- usually male -- family members, favouring order of succession but occasionally skipping over insufficient, incapable or too young members, as deemed so by the Patriarch.
Situated in St. Petersburg's magical part of the city, Argentum Memoriae stretches over three levels above ground, and a massive net of vaults underground.
Archiving
Currently led by Grigor Aleksandr Igor Zdravkova, Aleksandr's only living son.
This is the most important and profitable part of the Zdravkova business, the one that made them as wealthy and of high prestige as they are, providing a service that is highly unique. Pureblood families that like to conserve their lineage’s history in the form of real memories pay good money to keep their own vault stacked with thousands of vials worth hundreds of years of family history, preserved to showcase triumphs, achievements, victories, anything they desire, for future generations to learn from or to marvel at. Clients have the option to connect their floo to their vault for easier and guaranteed private access. A pensieve can be installed as well. Costs for this service are high, covering extractions, vialling, storage and access.
Anyone can open a vault, if they can afford it, vault sizes ranging according to need. If no floo is connected to the vault, clients will have to come in through the main entrance, where they will be led to their vault by a house-elf. Clients have to provide proof of identity and must be magically registered by blood to be able to access vaults. Wizards can be added or taken off access lists.
Alteration
Currently led by Nadežda Katerina Zdravkova, Aleksandr's only daughter.
This is the part of business that has made the Zdravkovas as powerful as they are. Alterations are done behind closed doors, the practice being highly illegal and therefore not a service openly provided or advertised. This is the shady side of business, sought out by only the most desperate of wizards, able to pay not only the prize in gold but also the prize of having the original, unaltered memory stored in the private archives of the Zdravkovas.
There, it sits, until it becomes a useful tool of blackmail and coercion, used as leverage in the Zdravkova's pursuit for power and influence.
Alterations typically involve the manipulation of witnesses' memories that would otherwise be incriminating in court and that belong to people that can't be eliminated otherwise, usually done against their will and instigated by other high-ranking pureblood wizards aiming to protect themselves. This might involve their own family members at times.
Tracking down the target, obscuring committed crimes by using advanced and intricate mind-altering spells, planting false alibis, completely changing a memory altogether -- all these things are done by the head of branch themselves, aided by a few trusted employees and requiring immense skill and care.
The Zdravkovas are very selective in who they chose to help this way, their own agenda always at the back of their mind. If they deem an altered reality as useful or getting their hands on incriminating memories intriguing, the head of branch will always get the job done, always one of the family's best Legilimens and always someone ruthless in nature.
Extraction
Currently led by Victor Sergej Igor Zdravkova, Aleksandr's youngest nephew.
This is the part of business that makes it accessible for the common folk. This service provides the possibility of conserving treasured memories like weddings, proposals, trips, important events, etc in fresh detail for private revisits at home through the use of pensieves. Extracted memories are copies and stored in vials customers take with them, a safe option of storing what might otherwise get lost to the forgetfulness of time. Various offices provide trained Memory Extractors who coax forward the memory in question, using their specialized skill to keep every detail exact to its host's remembrance.
Recent Notable History - Family Lore
Aleksandr Andrei Igor Zdravokva
Born as third in line, Aleksandr was never meant to lead. Fiercely loyal, stubbornly responsible and coolly rational, he accepted the role birth assigned him, never complaining for the lack of power, happy to fulfil his duty and destiny.
But things take a turn when his oldest brother Sergej, freshly stepped up as Head of Family, begins to make all the wrong choices. Worse even, when his other brother and next in line, Ilja, won't see reason either, siding with Sergej on policies that slowly start to drag their family name through the mud.
For a while, he tries to reason with them but to no avail.
He makes a decision.
When yet another conversation leads to nowhere, Aleksandre opens fire, engaging both brothers in a duel that ends in death and with him as the heir.
There is little resistance among the family. The Zdravkovas build on power and harsh decisions, they follow the one most capable, the one earning himself respect through ruthlessness. The family thrives under hard, strict leadership and Aleksandr has provided nothing but, further establishing and growing their name, prestige and pride.
Family first, family above all. These are the principles he lives and teaches, ruling with an iron hand, oftentimes slipping into cruelty if necessary.
Nadežda Katerina Zdravkova
Nadežda, the only daughter of Aleksandr and Katerina, got married to Dimitri, a close ally's eldest son, at the age of 18, dutifully taking on the role she had been assigned by her father. She grew up as a mellow girl, eager to please her family and ready to do what was expected of her. Through a cruel twist of fate, Nadežda was never able to carry a child however, unable to fulfil her single most important duty, enraging her husband more and more as time passed on.
He grew violent, bursting into fits of anger he shamelessly takes up on his wife, making her life a living hell that she tries to navigate as best she can.
But when her brother Roman runs away with a woman promised to their brother Grigor, Nadežda loses her last tether, her closest friend and ally. His betrayal sits deep, not only to their family but to her personally as well. Angered, she wants to help in the efforts of the couple's retrieval but gets refused by her husband.
Nadežda doesn't rebel, but over time her shame and guilt for failing her duty slowly morphs into resentment. For her husband, for her brother.
When word came through that a baby girl had been born, something in Nadežda broke.
One snowy night, when Dimitri had sunk into drunk oblivion, drowning the rest of the anger he had let loose on his wife once again, Nadežda snapped.
Dimitri is found the next morning by a screeching house-elf, sprawled on the floor of his study, a gashing wound to the head. The murderer is found only hours later, a sobbing servant, confessing immediately. Maybe Aleksandr Zdravkova had meddled with a few minds, planting a false memory. Maybe he had fabricated a false alibi for Nadežda, freeing her of any suspicion.
Even married away, Aleksandr never forgets the people that belong to him.
Having no use to Dimitri’s family, Nadežda gets sent back to the Zdravkova where she readopts her maiden name and fights her way up into the role of one of the most important figures in the family’s business. Through hard work, persistence, ruthless determination and a heart grown cold, she manages what no Zdravkova woman before has done: earning herself the leading position of the most brutal branch of the business.
Her burning urge to find her niece never ceases. She continues to hunt them through Europe. Even after the trail goes cold, Nadežda never stops looking. Using some of her rougher employees as help, she very slowly uncovers her brother's path, landing herself in London in April of 1918 after thirteen years of a search declared useless.
Liliya Nadežda Zdravkova
Liliya Zdravkova grew up as Eira North, an orphan hundreds of miles away from her true home in Russia, deposited in Cardiff, nameless and alone. There, she was raised by muggles, abused and mistreated for eleven years. Hogwarts became her reprieve, most notably the library. She quickly became one of the top students, eager to learn, eager to get away from the orphanage that clawed her back in every summer break.
The abuse and mistreatment continues, more intensely, now that the staff's suspicion is confirmed — something about her is different, something about her is wrong.
Eira endures, but fiercely. She strikes back where she can, usually against her fellow orphans whose bullying rarely ever gets admonished, growing a determination to find her true family.
Something just tells her it exists. Something tells her, she's not alone.
In the end, she gets found first, by her aunt Nadežda. A woman determined to reintegrate her lost niece into the Russian pureblood family she was stolen from. Eira, now Liliya, learns that her parents ran off together, destined to arranged marriages but having fallen in love with each other instead. They flee across Europe, marry, have a daughter. Always closely followed by Nadežda, always living in fear of getting dragged back, having to face their families' wrath.
At last, they end up in Britain. Liliya is just about a year old when Roman and Anastasia feel the hunters closing in around them, afraid their daughter would have to grow up with what they so desperately tried to escape, or worse, find a more final fate all together.
And so, one cold December night, they lay her down at the backdoor of the muggle orphanage, and disappear into the dark. It never becomes quite clear what exactly happened after. But it is safe to say, in one way or another, Roman and Anastasia chose to end their lives, more willing to die than end up in their relatives' hands.
Liliya never forgives her parents for what she had to endure on their behalf. The abuse, the loneliness, the way it formed her into something she should have never become.
She continues her education at Hogwarts, the connections she's built there seen as a potential foot in the door to expand the Zdravkova family business one day, but only for another year. Appalled by Britain's muggle sympathiser scandals, the Zdravkovas leave Britain, and take their lost daughter with them.
Liliya has to leave behind every friend she's managed to make, transferring to Durmstrang where she finishes her education. Forced to adapt to the new circumstances of her life, she grows colder, harsher, ruthless. With an upbringing as a nameless, unimportant, unruled orphan, she has to unlearn habits, desires and emotions. She has to break who she used to be, to rearrange the pieces into a woman deserving of a name as old and prestigious as the Zdravkova's, has to mould herself into a version that belongs into a society she struggles to understand and navigate.
She fails, often. She gets punished, she kills the parts of her that don't serve her anymore, she elevates the parts that do. Bit by painful bit, Liliya reshapes her entire being, locking away the old version so far it feels unreachable. Her loyalty and devotion shifts towards her family, her determination to prove herself, her worth, gains her the trust she needs to win small freedoms back.
Nevertheless, Nadežda knows her niece's volatility, her need for control and regulation.
And so Liliya is promised to Lev, her cousin and future husband. A union not only to ensure a young woman's wavering chaos, but part of a bigger plan.
News came in from Britain. The old Minister is done, power is shifting, values are rebuilding themselves.
The Zdravkova scent their chance of expansion after all.
They send a branch of their family — Liliya, Lev, his father and wife, their flock of children. A mission to gain access, to get involved and important. To bring their unique business and build it, to use the generational gifts of Legilimency to their advantage.
Liliya doesn't mind. She has plans.
