When Hermione Fights

Condolences

After last week's Special from Astoria's POV on 'The Art of Temptation' we return to the Dark Lord and the audience with his Right and Left Hand. That Special is the last in quite a while so we will be able to concentrate on the main story for the coming months.

Chapter beta: Livy

Chapter translator: Aivy

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Lucius' POV

Still sitting in my drawing room after Severus had stormed out, pondering the day and the night before, I remembered what happened after the Dark Lord had ordered us into his chambers and Draco had left happily.

It had grown late. The Dark Lord, Severus, and I had retired to the rear drawing room, which was furnished in the same dark, cool colours as the rest of the mansion.

Black and dark green tones dominated the room, but in contrast to the throne room, a warm fire crackled in the really large marble fireplace, spreading a pleasant warmth. The cold floor slabs were covered with extremely huge and very thick soft carpets with allegorical depictions of snake stories, into which the feet sank deeply. The cold stone walls were decorated with tapestries and gobelins, which gave the whole place a more cosy touch than the otherwise accessible parts of the manor. Apart from that, the room was minimalist, simple and very straightforward, like everything else.

Severus was immersed in his usual brooding and there was, if anything at all, a small grunt from his direction every now and then. Other than that, he just sat on his wide armchair with a gloomy expression on his face and left it to me to entertain the Dark Lord.

It was the eternally same arrangements about how the Death Eaters were to be led, which was mostly up to me, since HE did not want to deal with the common folk too often. When I thought about the idiots, I understood his attitude to only appear and show himself on special occasions only too well.

This way, the effect was always much more impressive when he demonstrated his power than it would be if he showed up all the time and was constantly present. He did not need to do that. What else were we for, me and the Inner Circle?

In fact, I did not really bother with the lower-ranking Death Eaters myself. For what did I, in turn, have the Circle, namely the Lestranges - excluding Bella - and Nott and what were their names?

I used them to maintain order in the ranks, which I had created in a similar way to a military organization, otherwise everyone here would do whatever they wanted, which was not feasible among the madmen here. Everyone listened to my command and I... well, unfortunately, I listened to the Dark Lord's order, but well, that was the only downer.

We talked about the Order and its increased activity in searching, the reason for which we had not yet been able to find out. Severus did not say anything either, kept a low profile, so we did not ask. There was no point, the Dark Lord knew that as well as I did. If he had something important to report, he would tell us. Right now, he would only say that the old man probably did not even know himself what he was looking for.

But then, I knew what they, the Order, had lost. I hoped that they would soon stop this amateurish, sensational search for Potter, otherwise I would have to reveal my secret, which I did not want. I rolled my eyes inwardly. Did the Order consist of amateurs who thought the Dark Lord and his followers were blind, deaf and mentally deficient?

This time the harsh order to find out the reason for the unusual activity was given to Severus, which he accepted sullenly and announced that he would tackle it at the next Order meeting. It was too glorious how cleverly he hid his knowledge, but so did I. Soon afterwards, we were allowed to retreat, leaving the dark and cold estate with billowing robes and the masks back in place.