The Beginnings of a Death Eater

21 July 1971

"Ah, you're here," Amycus cheerfully greeted Lucius as he stepped out of the fireplace for one of the many times in the past few weeks.

The pleasant expression on the blond-haired boy's face immediately transformed into one of concern as Amycus came into focus. "Merlin, Amycus, how did you get that cut? It looks like you fell face first on a knife." Lucius gently ran his finger down the other boy's cheek next to the few inch long scab.

"Long story," he mumbled, "I'll tell you later."

"If you know a spell I can heal it."

"I forgot, you can legally do magic outside of school now," Amycus mused, and soon a scheming grin appeared across his face, contorting his cut and giving him an almost maniacal look. "I don't know any healing spells, but I have an idea for some other fun we can have."

Lucius raised a single eyebrow. "Do tell?"

And now the maniacal appearance of Amycus's face was no longer limited to the twisted gash but instead present in his grin itself and the sparkling of his eyes as he whispered, "Muggle baiting."

Lucius raised his other eyebrow in response. It occurred to him that his father would probably consider such activities as being beneath him, but it wasn't as if Amycus could go on his own; he was still too young to legally use magic. "Sounds like it could be enjoyable," Lucius took out his wand and idly began twirling it between his fingers. A few moments later they were hidden by two well-cast disillusionment charms in the nearest Muggle city (neither of them knew nor cared what it was called). "You see four-eyes over there?" Lucius jerked his head in the direction of a middle-aged man sitting at a café table before realizing Amycus couldn't see him. "Watch this."

The man's wire-framed glasses started levitating above his head. At first the man reflexively took his stubby index finger and pushed it up the bridge of his nose, as though the glasses had simply slipped down his nose, and that was why his view had suddenly become blurry. His index finger reached between his eyes without contacting the metal of his glasses, though, and he soon started searching the table, his lap and the floor for his glasses, while Amycus and Lucius silently shook with laughter.

"What an idiot, they're floating right above his head."

The man seemed to have finally realized this for, after another questioning glance around, he reached up and wrapped his fingers around the glasses. Lucius wasn't about to give up such a source of amusement so quickly, though, and after lulling the Muggle into a false sense of security, he abruptly levitated the Muggle himself. The Muggle let out a shocked cry as he started floating one…two…three meters in the air. "S-stop it! This isn't funny!" he yelped.

"Au contraire," Lucius whispered to Amycus, wishing that the disillusionment charm didn't keep him from seeing the other boy's facial expression, the grin he was sure was splayed across Amycus's face.

Instead he heard Amycus's voice come rather coolly, "This seems a bit child-like. Can't you do something a bit more…giving the Muggle his just deserts? They're animals, aren't they? They produce half-bloods and Mudbloods."

His only hesitation a raised eyebrow that Amycus couldn't see, Lucius raised the Muggle another meter in the air with a flick of his wand before ceasing the spell entirely. With a resounding crash, the man fell on top of the small café table, flipping it over, spilling a half-empty cup of coffee and knocking over the nearby chair. The few Muggles that had noticed the man floating in the air immediately surrounded his fallen figure.

Lucius's attention shifted away from the scene, though, for he could now hear Amycus's ringing laughter, could imagine the grin stretching across his face, mischievous and surprised and pleased.

After apparating to a few more Muggle locales, and wrecking a bit more well-placed havoc, they finally returned to the Carrows' house, recounting the different spectacles to each other as though one of them could have somehow missed what was happening.

"What about the one we left in a body-bind? I'm surprised nobody stepped on him in such a crowd.

"The one who was left clinging to a third-story window was better, I think."

"The look on the woman's face whose hair we transfigured into a badger was priceless."

"That was a good one," Amycus laughed before sighing, "I can hardly wait until I'm allowed to perform magic outside of school. I can't imagine the feeling of power," he grinned, eager and enthusiastic and naïve. In a conspiratorial tone he quietly added, "I want to learn the Unforgivables. Can you imagine? The ability to control others, perfectly. The ability to cause pain, unending, excruciating pain, essentially the power to extract revenge! And then the last one. Not the Imperius or the Cruciatus curse, but the killing curse. Power over death itself. You'd be like a god, can you imagine? I don't know when I'd ever use it, but just knowing that you'd to be able to."

Lucius took in a sharp breath. Power over others, both literally with the Imperius curse and figuratively with the Cruciatus curse. Power over death. He had given very little thought to the Unforgivables before now. His family had made it clear that they considered it not only acceptable but important that he be versed in the Dark Arts, but the Unforgivables had always implicitly been forbidden. Why should they be, though? After all, Amycus seemed to be treating them just like any other spell.

"You know, I can think of an appropriate time to use the Unforigvables. All three of them," Lucius blurt out, eager for Amycus's approval. "In service of the New Order. When it rises. Or when it starts to rise."

Amycus looked surprised and then pleased. "I hadn't even thought of that. You're right" and then he flashed Lucius one of his contagious grins; Lucius silently thought that whoever said that something like true happiness, or true love, or anything of that sort, did not exist had clearly never seen him after being on the receiving end of one of Amycus's grins.

7 August 1971

With a sigh Lucius skimmed the letter he had just received from Narcissa, his eyes sticking on the last sentence. "I know this is short notice, but I am scheduled to visit Diagon Alley today, and if it would not be too difficult, I would greatly enjoy seeing you there. I am sure my parents would also be very pleased to see you again." He didn't particularly want to see Narcissa; her constant affection, the way she ended her letters with 'love' as though painfully blind that he felt no reciprocal emotion, the fact that he was sure her parents would see him and imagine what the wedding between him and their daughter would look like—all of these were reasons for his ultimate decision to pretend that he had not received her morning letter and, therefore, would not be seeing them at Diagon Alley.

Feeling as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders at his decision, he cheerfully grabbed a pinch of Floo Powder and threw it in the fire; it had become a near daily-routine for Lucius to floo to the Carrow's house to see Amycus and he saw no reason why today should be any exception. Similar to many other days, though, when he first arrived it was Alecto who was sitting directly in front of the fireplace.

"Er—hello, Alecto," Lucius awkwardly greeted her after crashing into the girl while stepping out of the fireplace.

"Hello," she uttered the word with as much dignity as she could manage, considering she had just been elbowed in the face by the person she was greeting.

"My apologies. Perhaps it would be wiser if you didn't stand quite so close to the fireplace," Lucius used his much practiced polite-yet-scathing tone.

"I was waitin' for you." She gave him a look that suggested that he had hurt her feelings so much that he might as well have just stepped on a puppy. With a slightly more cheerful facial expression she continued, "Y'know, I was thinkin' recently that there's only reason you'd be comin' by here so often."

"Yes, to see your brother," Lucius disinterestedly drawled. "Now where is he?"

"No, I was thinkin', you wouldn't be stoppin' by so much unless you were interested in someone who lived here." Here she delicately placed her hand on his upper arm and blinked in what he imagined was supposed to be a seductive sort of way.

Resisting the urge to burst into laughter, and succeeding in containing all but a single chuckle, Lucius continued his nonchalant drawl, "Sorry to disappoint you but the only person I'm interested in is y—" He abruptly cut himself off before shakily continuing, "The only person I'm interested in is Narcissa. Now, if you'll excuse me." He roughly removed Alecto's hand from his arm before exiting the room, too occupied to notice the insulted look on her face. That had been far too close; what had happened to all of his social training and control? He had almost blurt out "I'm interested in your brother"! Admittedly, it was likely she would have taken it as a poor attempt at a joke, but Lucius found it uncomfortably close to being a slip of the tongue.

With a quick rap of his knuckles at Amycus's bedroom door, he strolled in to see the boy sitting at his desk, a blank piece of parchment in front of him.

"Excellent, a distraction!" Amycus gave him a playful, child-like grin.

"Attempting to finish your summer homework, I take it? Smashing progress you've made, there," Lucius teasingly held up the almost blank piece of parchment.

"I've put my name, my year, and the professor's name. I'd say that's pretty good progress, wouldn't you? Think I deserve a break?"

Lucius grinned back. "Most certainly. By the way—er—I was doing a bit of research and I found a spell that would remove the scar on your cheek from the cut you got a few weeks ago."

Amycus's eyebrows arched slightly before he thoughtfully traced the line of the healed cut with a single finger. "That might be nice," he replied thoughtfully. "It'd make things a bit simpler once I got back to Hogwarts; otherwise people'll ask where it came from."

"Where did it come from?" Lucius asked in the most nonchalant tone he could, attempting to hide his desperate curiosity.

"Oh, uh," the other boy looked away and for a second Lucius thought he was going to decline to answer again. "It's silly, really. I made the mistake of mentioning the New Order to my stepfather."

The blond-haired Slytherin frowned slightly and slowly blinked before asking, "Your stepfather doesn't like the idea of the New Order?"

"Heh, well, not exactly." He embarrassedly looked away before speaking again, "My stepfather's a half-blood. Needless to say he didn't really like me talking about how only purebloods were worthy. So he took his wand and—yeah. Only the one cut though. He's mellowing out with age," he added the last sentence under his breath.

Lucius's mouth made the shape of an "O" and, unsure what he could say, decided against saying anything except the incantation to remove the scar.

"Thanks," Amycus beamed, his previous comment seemingly forgotten. "So, I'm assuming you don't want to work on homework together?" He gave a teasing, sarcastic, mischievous grin while rolling up the nearly blank parchment and throwing the books underneath his desk.

"No, I think not. And no going to Diagon Alley to buy school supplies, either; I'm avoiding Narcissa."

"You know, I honestly don't understand why you're still with her," he adopted a serious, annoyed tone.

"She's a nice person. We've become friends," the other Slytherin stated almost stubbornly, defensively.

"You don't keep dating someone because you're friends. You date someone because you're more than friends." After a moment of hesitation and obvious internal debate he added in a rather offended tone, "What, I'm not good enough for you?"

With a point of his wand behind him, Lucius closed the door before bringing his face very close to Amycus's and gently stroking the others' cheek. "I'm dating Narcissa for my parents' sake. Never doubt that you're the one I love." Amycus unblinkingly regarded him, as though unconvinced, and Lucius placed a light kiss on his temple, his eyebrow, his cheekbone, the hollow of his cheek, until Amycus's stoic face melted into a grin, and now Amycus's soft lips were against his.

Perhaps if they had been slightly less distracted they would have heard the single knock on the door, or the creak of the door opening, or the words "Amycus, Mum was wonderin'—" As it was, it took Alecto Carrow's shriek of "WHAT THE HELL!" for the two boys to leap apart.