Two men walked into an opulent study, slowly, heavily, as if exhausted, and dropped themselves each into a chair, hands moving slowly and a little shakily as they divested themselves of dark cowled cloaks and bone white masks.
"Eppy!"
Pop. "Yes, master?"
"Bring us a bottle of firewhiskey and two tumblers."
"Yes, master." Pop.
A few minutes later, whiskey delivered and poured, first mouthful swallowed, the paler man blew out a heavy sigh.
"Well, that's a big load of shite sunk where it won't be dredged up again, then."
"What do you mean?"
The blonde man just glared in response.
"Oh, don't give me that look! I've a fair idea I know what you refer to, but humor me and spell it out – perhaps I spotted something you overlooked, and since that's rather less likely than the other way around, you do the talking. You usually prefer it that way anyway, old friend."
Looking down his aristocratic nose at his companion, Lucius Malfoy began to sum up the no good, very bad, night the two had just lived through.
"Well, he could hardly have botched his own return much worse, now could he? Let's see; he manages it, somehow, without the support of any of us in the old crowd that I can think of – I didn't see a single one of us there that didn't seem surprised, and the only one who might've been in on the job was that miserable coward Pettigrew, since he was the only one not standing in our ranks when we were summoned. So bringing us there was an obvious show-off, strength demonstration, dog and pony job. Exactly as his opening lecture to us would indicate, too.
Only then he goes off the rails and decides to make the centerpiece of this demonstration some sort of exhibition duel... With the Potter child, of all opponents. What's that supposed to prove, I ask you? Look at me, I'm the mighty Dark Lord, so incredibly skilled and strong I can even kill a half-trained teenage schoolboy in single combat! That'll bring in the recruits."
"You mean it would've, if he'd actually managed?" Anthony Nott might perhaps have been smirking.
"Maybe it'd have had some effects, then, on the propaganda Dumbledore spews that makes the brat out to be some savior of all wizardkind, at least! But there's no reason he couldn't have done that much in private, without involving the rest of us. Why make a spectacle of that killing, and why make a spectacle of it to us? There's no avoiding the fact that the boy is a boy; what's killing him in front of us inner circle members supposed to prove? We've all of us gone up against far tougher and won. Seriously, what was our lord trying to achieve there?"
"Well, he wasn't... entirely balanced, let's say, towards the end there, as I recall..."
"He's sane enough to have got himself a body back, at least. But I see your meaning; he might be obsessed with all things Potter. Not that that really helps, if anything it's burning a bridge preemptively – even I'm old enough to know old Charlus Potter was never half as enamored by all that light-side hippogriff dung as his brainless playboy son. No chance of the grandson turning out any less opposed to us than his father was, now, is there?"
"Do you seriously think he might've turned to our side? I thought you had your own differences with him – wasn't there some sort of confrontation between you two a couple years back?"
"Oh, give me a break, Anthony! I wasn't exactly on my best game that day; one of my higher-stakes plots had just unravelled on me, I'd found out my own son had been seriously at risk as an unforeseen side effect of it, and the kid tricked me out of a house elf while I was busy controlling damages; I got blindsided. And no, I doubt he'd ever have joined us, but there might've been a chance of him remaining neutral or stepping out of the country, or somesuch. Keep in mind, after all, once he inherits and somebody gets the message through to him – around the edges of Dumbledore's thumb, no doubt – of just what his station in society is, he'll be the social peer of most of us. Not that that'll ever matter now, but if it had been handled right..." Lucius made a throwing-away gesture; "But that potion's spilled, no point crying over it."
Two men looked into their tumblers of alcohol, and simultaneously emptied them.
"So what do we do now?"
Another heavy sigh.
"Not a whole lot we can do, is there? We're as stuck as we were fifteen years ago, especially if he's still as... unbalanced... as he was then. If we could turn his eyes towards more political approaches to our goals, perhaps... But that remains to be seen. And we won't have much time to act; if Dumbledore's got any sense, the kid's memories are currently being shown off to all and sundry for to drum up support against us. All we can do in the short term is reactivate the old lines of communication and try to shake ourselves out into an effective organization again, get a command structure in place hopefully before we'll desperately need it to defend ourselves with. Not much time for politicking anytime soon, I should think."
"Pitch our own ship before the storm hits and hope the captain's not completely off his rocker?" Lucius nodded, sadly. "You're right, it's all too familiar from a decade and a half ago by the looks of it. Very well, no point putting that off then; the night's late, and I'll need to see to my own house and family in the morning. We'd better both sleep on it, and once those lines of communication come up again, let's confer. Maybe we'll both have some better ideas then, Morgana willing."
And with that, the two men stood up to stretch the cricks out of their backs and head off toward their respective beds for troubled sleep.