CHAPTER 13.2
"You." Lucius half rose, shock crossing his face before he caught himself and sat back down, gripping the cane hard. "You can remove it? You can actually remove this?"
"Yes. I've studied it, and I know how." Severus kept his voice level. "I won't erase the mark itself, but I can strip out the parts that actually hurt you: the compulsion to obey, the pain. How does that sound?"
"What do you want in return?" Lucius asked immediately.
"Nothing unreasonable. Teach me Legilimency and Occlumency. That shouldn't be difficult for you. And track down someone willing to sell me a dragon's heart and blood, and a phoenix's heart and blood. Can you manage that?"
"What do you need those for?" Lucius asked, clearly thrown.
"A potion. Does it matter?"
"Hmm." A pause. "First I want proof you can do what you're claiming."
"Fine. Give me your hand."
Lucius glanced at the room: the table behind them, the cluster of wizards, the young witch in a pink waitress uniform moving between tables. "Here?"
"It takes seconds," Severus said, brushing the concern aside.
The tables were small enough that catching Lucius's hand was easy. He pointed his wand at the mark and sent an invisible pulse of magic into it.
Removing a binding seal wasn't difficult for him. He'd spent the last five years of his previous life inside the darkest organisation in his world, the Magistrate, gathering intelligence and preparing for something he'd waited a long time to do. In that environment, he'd studied genuine Dark Magic, not the pale approximations this world had settled for, and the mechanics of binding seals were well within it. He could summon demons. He knew necromancy. He carried curses that no one in this world would be able to undo. He rarely drew on any of it in practice, except for the curses, but it was all there, lodged deep, as reliable as memory. The Dark Mark was different from what he'd encountered before, but the underlying structure was the same, and he could work inside it without the one who'd placed it noticing a thing.
"What are you —!" Lucius yanked his hand back, already drawing breath to say something cutting, and then stopped. He went very still.
"I've removed the compulsion and the pain," Severus said calmly. "The mark itself remains, and your master can still reach you through it. When he tries to cause pain, you'll feel warmth instead. The stronger the warmth, the more convincingly you'll need to perform." He tilted his head. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"How," Lucius said carefully, "do you know this?"
"Let's say I came across a description of a binding seal in an encrypted text from the restricted archive: written by Salazar himself, as it happens. I tested the principles on a Death Eater first." Severus kept his tone light. "You know how I am with books."
Lucius believed him, though not entirely. But who knew better than Lucius whose bloodline his master claimed? His own father had been practically at the Dark Lord's right hand, and the Malfoys had the kind of money and connections that turned questions into answers. Tracking down what one specific wizard had managed to find would not be hard.
He won't tell Father. He'll use this himself.
Lucius served Voldemort, but loyalty had never been the heart of it. He was always watching for the moment the scales shifted, always keeping his options open: ties to the Black family, favours with the Sacred Twenty-Eight, quiet debts with foreign wizards who might matter later. The Malfoys treated influence the way other families treated investments. Lucius attended meetings, smoothed disputes, arranged deliveries of potions and Dark artefacts, and made absolutely certain nothing ever traced back to his name. What he was waiting for was control of the family, fully and finally, so that he could decide for himself which side deserved his backing and which side deserved to burn.
"Fine," Lucius said. "I'll look into those ingredients, but I can't promise speed. You understand the situation. The books I'll send with a house-elf."
"I'll be waiting."
"One additional condition. You remove the same components from the marks of a few others."
"No difficulty there." Severus smiled. "Then I have one condition of my own: the ingredients come to me at no cost."
Lucius's expression didn't move.
"For a family like yours, even a hundred sets wouldn't make a dent," Severus added.
"Naturally. That isn't a problem."
"And give me a general picture of how things stand between the two sides. Nothing sensitive, just enough that I know when to keep my head down."
They talked for a while longer, then both stood.
"One more thing," Severus said.
"Hm?"
Severus's eyes narrowed slightly.
"There's no point trying to take what I know by force. The source is destroyed, and I've made a vow of silence. Break it and I die. So let's keep using each other quietly and in good faith."
Lucius's face didn't change, but Severus caught the brief shift in his eyes.
"Don't talk nonsense. We're friends."
"Glad to hear it," Severus said, with a small, entirely genuine smile. "Let's stay that way."
//===================//