Leta Lestrange



"You're too good, Newt. You've never met a monster you couldn't love."

- Leta's opinion of Newt Scamander (and of herself)

Leta Lestrange (1896/1897 - early September 1927) was a pure-blood witch born into the pure-blood Lestrange family. She attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry between 1908 to 1915. While at school, she developed a close relationship with Newton Scamander. Leta was the fiancée of Newt's older brother Theseus by 1927.

Early life
Leta Lestrange was born somewhere in the United Kingdom area circa 1897, the only child of Corvus Lestrange and his first wife, Laurena Kama. The Lestranges were an old, respected British pure-blood family, deemed one of the "Sacred Twenty-Eight" by Cantankerus Nott.

Sometime after Leta's birth, her father married his second wife, Clarisse Tremblay. This marriage produced one child, a son, Corvus. However, at some point, Clarisse died, and both Leta and her half-brother were taken by ship to be given up for adoption. Bothered by his incessant crying, Leta switched him for another baby in the crib. When the ship sank, one of the escape boats capsized and her half-brother drowned. The switched baby ended up being raised by an unrelated woman in New York.

Hogwarts years
She attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. While there, she developed a close friendship with Newton Scamander, bonding over their shared love magical creatures and their outsider status.

In 1913, one of Leta's experiments involving a Jarvey went too far, endangering the life of another student. It also violated laws prohibiting the possession of this creature. Rather than see his good friend expelled, Newt took the blame, and was thus sentenced to be expelled from Hogwarts in Leta's place.

Later life
"I don't really know what Leta likes these days because people change."

- Newt referring his and Leta's falling out Newt Scamander remained in love with Leta many years after their parting. He kept a framed photograph of her in the work shed inside his magically-expanded suitcase during his travels. In late 1926, while visiting New York, Queenie Goldstein saw the picture, asking Newt about it. She used Legilimency on him, noting that Leta was "a taker" in their relationship.

By 1927, Leta worked at the British Ministry of Magic as assistant to the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement Torquil Travers. She had also become engaged to Newt's older brother, Theseus Scamander.

Death
She died in 1927 when confronting Gellert Grindelwald at the Lestrange family Mausoleum in Paris.

Physical appearance
Leta was described as beautiful in her youth.

Personality and traits
"She was a taker."

- Leta's self-serving nature According to Queenie, Leta was a taker and not a giver. Leta has been described as a quite complicated, damaged and confused lady. She is a kind of tragic figure and Newt is absolutely still in love with her; she has a kind of power over him.

Leta's personality, in several ways, contradicted the "evil Slytherin" stereotype held by many students of the other Houses, Gryffindors in particular, and was in stark contrast to the personalities of later Lestranges, such as Rodolphus and Rabastan. For instance, Leta seemed to put no stock in Pure-blood supremacy beliefs, despite her family being one the the Sacred Twenty-Eight, she quickly befriended and grew very close to the usually anti-social Hufflepuff Newt Scamander, she had poor self-esteem due to her lingering guilt in the role she played in her brother Corvus' death, and she only occasionally hexed fellow students of other houses in response to them jeering at her.

Much like Horace Slughorn and Andromeda Tonks, Leta represents the positive aspects of Slytherin ambition without any of the usual ruthlessness, since she achieved a high-ranking post in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement under Torquil Travers without alienating her former close friend Newt, and maintained a mostly kind, albeit bitter and self-deprecating disposition. Indeed, Leta's Slytherin ambition and cunning would mostly be delineated in her efforts to not seem like such a freak among her peers, and her efforts to fit in better at school. After hearing her former teacher Albus Dumbledore confess his own guilt over not loving his late sister Ariana enough, Leta learns to accept her past sin, thereby saving Credence Barebone from Yusuf Kama's revenge, and successfully resisting Gellert Grindelwald where Queenie Goldstein could not - sacrificing her own life to save both of the Scamander men she loved, much like later fellow Slytherin Severus Snape would do. Indeed, it was Leta's selfless and heroic death that finally induced Newt to mend his relationship with his brother, and choose a side in the Global Wizarding War, as well as inducing Dumbledore to respect Leta's memory by more actively working to support the resistance against Grindelwald.

Etymology

 * Leta most likely originates from the name Leda, daughter of Aetolian king Thestius, an Aetolian princess who became a Spartan queen in Greek mythology, of which the story of Leda and the Swan is the focus.
 * In the story, Zeus takes the form of a swan and rapes her. Their consummation, on the same night as Leda lay with her husband Tyndareus, resulted in two eggs from which hatched Helen (aka "Helen of Troy", said to be the most beautiful woman in the world and an instigator of the Trojan War), Clytemnestra, and Castor and Pollux (who became the constellation Gemini).


 * The name Lita is of Latin origin and means "gladly."

Behind the scenes
"The relationship between Leta and Newt Scamander is a complex relationship, so I think there will be a lot of time for that to grow and develop, which will be fun."

- Zoë Kravitz about her character Leta
 * Leta Lestrange is portrayed by Zoë Kravitz in and 🇨🇬.
 * A younger Leta is portrayed by Thea Lamb in 🇨🇬.
 * According to director David Yates, viewers will learn more about Leta Lestrange and Newt's relationship with her in future movies of the franchise.
 * Leta may or may not be related to Bellatrix Lestrange. But despite Bellatrix being a Lestrange by marriage (her husband Rodolphus and her brother-in-law Rabastan may or may not be Leta's descendants for that matter), Sirius Black has previously mentioned that "the pure-blood families are all interrelated", meaning there is a possibility of at least a Black-Lestrange (and/or vice versa) union/s at any time including the distant past. As the Black family tree provided by Rowling for the production team of only shows the most recent 8 generations of descent, it is in contrast with Harry's description of the Black Family Tapestry as "sprawling" and "dating back [...] to the Middle Ages".

Notes and references
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