Antonin opened his eyes. The water was murky with stale soap and scrubbed-off grime, and he pushed about it with his hands, causing it to ripple. He blew out with his nose, and tried to pop the bubbles underwater.
Suddenly, the water darkened as a figure appeared to block out the light. Antonin sighed, letting out a few more air bubbles, but persisted in staying underwater. Seconds passed, and then minutes. His lungs were burning now, and his head was feeling faint, and he wished he could hide here, underneath, forever but—
—with a great big gasp, he surfaced for air. The bathwater sluiced down his hair and body in great sheets.
The Dark Lord hovered at the rim of the bathtub, seemingly oblivious to his shameful state of undress, coddled by the undulating, translucent, greyish bathwater.
"I cannot fathom why any person might care to spend two hours in the bath," the Dark Lord began. "Where are my reports? My scene-by-scene analysis?"
The Dark Lord looked down at him through his nose. His piercing gaze seemed almost to cut into his skin, and Antonin was overcome with shame. He worried that the Dark Lord could smell the filth of another man on him, that the Dark Lord could sense that he had defiled himself yet again with the body of another last night, no matter how hard he tried to scrub it off in the bath. With a flick of his wand he summoned a towel, and climbed out of the bath, wet and sopping, to dry himself. The Dark Lord made no pretence of averting his gaze, as he continued to stare at Antonin like he was fully deserving of the shame he felt in being so naked in front of his Lord.
When he was dry enough he let his towel drop to the floor as he slipped his robes over his head. He felt so small and violated and he wanted to throw himself on the ground and kiss the robes of his Dark Lord and beg for forgiveness and ask for him to stop looking at him in that way because it was killing him inside.
The Dark Lord continued as if he was fully unaware of the humiliation he was inflicting on Antonin even though he could only have meant this deliberately so.
"Malfoy has proposed a fee hike in member's dues, and Avery has proposed we unify our way of dress. Lestrange is concerned about the education of the younglings. She thinks they need remedial sessions in the Dark Arts, Antonin."
Antonin had followed the Dark Lord out of the bathroom and was duly keeping pace behind him as they wound through the Georgian manor that used to belong to the Riddle family. The Dark Lord took him upstairs into the study where he summoned several rolls of parchment into Antonin's arms, followed by a quill, and three pots of ink that clattered into him so hard they nearly spilled over. Slipping out of the study, the Dark Lord headed down into the pantry where he downed a small goblet of life-extending potion made of blood-coloured berries, and then bounded up the stairs at quick pace into the dining hall. The meeting was not due to start in another twenty minutes but the Dark Lord loved to be unsettlingly early, glaring from the head of the table at all who had the cheek to be merely punctual as they sheepishly filed in from the fireplace.
There was a trick to it, and the ones who would be the most loyal were always present and seated upon his entering of the room. On entering, they split ways, the Dark Lord heading right to encircle the table while Antonin headed left and made a beeline for the corner edge from where he recorded the minutes of every meeting. The good thing about being him was that it was his duty to arrive trailing few steps behind the Dark Lord, but the downside was in having to put up with the Dark Lord keeping a close eye on his daily ablutions and such whenever he chose to stay.
Pleased with the loyal followers who were already in place and rapt with attention, the Dark Lord took his seat. At his right was Bellatrix Lestrange, and at his left was Rodolphus Lestrange. Death Eaters of decreasing rank ran down the length of the ancient oak table, polished to a fine degree and decorated with ornate carvings. Wedged diagonally in between Rodolphus Lestrange and the Dark Lord at the left corner was him, Antonin Dolohov, of debatable rank and certainly in age the least senior.
He was painfully aware that the rest of the Death Eaters regarded him with some snobbery. He was not of an illustrious family and he did not have the means at his disposal to support the Dark Lord the way some of them did. This was the inner circle, the most exclusive, prestigious collection of the Dark Lord's associates and he always seemed a rogue entrant.
The meeting was duly begun and the post-mortem of the St Mungo's attack began. The good part of it was that despite being unable to get to Dumbledore, they managed to obtain everything else they intended to. It was not as if they were foolish enough to place priority on assassinating Dumbledore that night, and they had worked out a multi-pronged strategy so that they were guaranteed of at least one benefit. They were granted at least three: they were well on their way to amassing the critical number of corpses for an army of Inferi, in the pandemonium of emergency evacuations they had snuck in to access confidential medical records and they had also made off with several rare antidotes and blood samples that were the real reason for the attack. Finally, there was the inadvertent revelation of key members of Dumbledore's secret organisation. They had a fool of a Prophet journalist to thank for proving their hunch right.
Several Death Eaters were discharged with the care of the precious antidotes and blood samples, and they moved down the agenda to the other issues. The question of the younglings came up again, and it was Nott's idea that Antonin, being the youngest in the room, would have the clearest idea of how to get along with the youth of the day and therefore he would be in charge of the Dark Arts remedial sessions.
It was with glee that Lestrange added on that they would subject his tutees to an admission test, so to speak, in a few months or so, to see that Antonin was serious about his commitment to the Death Eaters.
Malfoy added on that he could charge a small fee for this tutelage, as the entire inner circle knew he struggled with a backlog of unpaid member's dues. Malfoy was hardly any older than him, yet, armed with his privileged upbringing, had all the airs of someone much older and more accomplished. This was his first meeting as part of the inner circle, though he was present in place of his ailing father.
It was at times like these that Antonin wished the Dark Lord would say something for him, to tell them that they were being unfair to him and that he was a special case, but the Dark Lord never said anything in his defence, presumably because it was unwise to offend the inner circle when he still depended on their clout to advance his plans. Antonin thought of the day when the Dark Lord would ascend into power and he thought of the recognition he might finally receive as his longest-serving servant.
Sometimes, he missed the days when it was just the two of them wandering through the forests in Albania, or crawling through the snowdrifts in winter in Finland, when their world was smaller and ambition just a word and politics far from the mind.