He'd never realized just how much time he spent worried and stressed, until the moment when every burden he'd been carrying just vanished as though it had never been.
Drifting in peace, he almost didn't understand the words that reached him. Softly. A high, quiet voice. Unlike his own, but somehow exactly what he needed to hear.
"You want to join us."
He nodded. It made perfect sense.
"You will swear loyalty to me and my cause," the voice continued.
He nodded again. Nothing else in the world mattered.
"Swear it."
"I will be. . ." Something intruded on his peace, a flicker of concern. His family? He had a family. He'd forgotten.
"You want to join us," the high voice said, insistent, confident.
What had he been thinking? He couldn't recall.
It must not matter. He nodded again.
Something touched his hand, a distant sensation that mattered nothing. A spot on his left arm felt cool, numb. That didn't matter either.
"Will you obey my commands and accept my Lordship over you?" the voice asked.
He nodded. It seemed right to agree.
"Say it," the voice commanded.
"I will obey. . ." He trailed off as that nagging sensation of something important tugged at him, insistent. Something he shouldn't forget.
"Excellent." The voice returned, shattering his feeble train of thought. "You must always remember this moment, should your devotion waver."
And then darkness and fear and uncertainty flooded back, the misty calm of peace gone in an instant.
In a flash of panic he found himself in a dark alley, surrounded by masked figures. Lines of heat burned into his hand, icy darkness seared into his arm.
Unbreakable.
He knew it at once, the memory of what he'd sworn in that haze clear amid the uncertainty that surrounded it.
The Dark Lord stood before him, smiling in a cold sinister way with absolutely no shred of happiness in it.
"Welcome to the Death Eaters, Lucius."