Nothing ever changed in Azkaban.
The dementors glided past the cells, their cold auras causing the inmates to cringe against the back walls.
The weaker ones screamed during the day and sobbed during the night.
The stronger ones cried quietly at night.
The food was deposited in their cells magically three times a day— it was the same thing every time:
Oatmeal and water for breakfast.
Oatmeal and water for lunch.
Oatmeal and water for dinner.
The oatmeal tasted like nutrition potions and the water tasted like copper.
It was monotonous.
It was dreary.
It was maddening.
And it made Lucius regret every decision he had ever made.
Thursday, January 14
Nothing stirred up the excitement of the dementors more than the distant cracking on the far shore that indicated new prisoners were being brought in.
New minds to torment. New memories to drag up. New joy to steal. Occasionally, though not recently, it even meant a new soul to suck out.
Lucius pitied whoever the new arrival was, but not nearly as much as he pitied himself.
The dementors sudden presence in the corridor that held Lucius' cell caused him to cringe against the back wall, as far from the seeping chill as he could get. He should have known that the new arrival would be placed in his relatively empty corridor, the last two inmates on his block had been recently kissed, their shells tossed in to an unsecured unit to be disposed of once they ceased breathing.
Lucius had been relieved when they had finally been kissed; Azkaban was never silent, but it had been mercifully more quiet once his corridor held only him. A luxury he would now lose, apparently.
The new inmate did not immediately start screaming. They barely made any noise other than a surprised 'oomph' as they were carelessly tossed in their cell by whatever unlucky auror drew the short-wand on delivering them to the island. In fact, Lucius may never have realized his new block-mate's identity until he heard a very distinctly twangy voice crudely saying:
"What the fuck just happened?"
Lucius closed his eyes, horror crashing in to him harder than any dementor could bring.
Merlin and Morgana, no.
"Potter?" Lucius hissed through the charmed bars. He tried to crane his neck around to see more in to the cell that was now occupied, but the inmate stood out of his eyeshot. "Is that you?"
Potter's distinctive voice floated back to him, "I- yeah. It's- it's me. Hey."
Lucius groaned, all sense of decorum fleeing him at the confirmation of his worst imaginings. He hit his head on the bars, welcoming the dull ache to take away the anger and ache building in his chest.
"You unforgivable moron," he hissed acidicly. "Who will protect Draco and Cissa now?"
"I- I don't know," Potter whispered back. The boy sounded confused, distraught. Lucius was not in a forgiving mood though, as his mind thought of his son.
"Why are you here?" Lucius asked sharply.
"Someone killed a student," Potter said. "It wasn't me though."
As if every inmate did not say the same thing.
"I'm sorry," Potter said softly when Lucius did not respond to him after a few minutes. "Hey, M-Malfoy, are there a lot of dementors here?"
"Hundreds," Lucius said flatly, hatred for the boy burning inside him. "I hope they make you truly miserable, Potter."
Lucius imagined that it would take days to break Potter. Weeks, even. Perhaps even a month or more of the dementor's auras forcing themselves on the strong willed, fierce, unimaginably powerful leader of the Grey Wixen Party. He found that it was not an unpleasant thought, imagining the day when Potter began weeping or screaming as the other inmates eventually did. Potter left Lucius to rot in this prison, and he left Draco and Narcissa without his powerful protection.
Lucius would wait for Potter to break, and then he would bask in the perfect revenge of it.
Lucius overestimated the length of time it would take Potter to begin breaking.
He very grossly overestimated the time it would take.
It took less than a few hours after the dementors first began circling the boy's cell for Lucius to hear Potter make a terrible noise of distress. Lucius stuck his face against the bars, hoping to catch sight of Potter's breakdown, but he could scarcely see more than Potter's back against the bars with his head tucked between his knees. There were two dementors outside his cell, undoubtedly enjoying the fresh emotional climate that Potter brought with him.
Lucius scoffed and sat back, watching the moon in the sky as his only ability to track time within this hell.
The moon had barely moved from its position, it was now partially hidden behind a tree on the distant shore, when Potter spoke.
"What are you doing?" he whispered.
Lucius had been prepared to ignore him, yet the compulsion to needle him struck rather violently. "Waiting for your inevitable breakdown," he sneered. "Inevitable means certain to happen, if you were unaware."
Potter made a sharp huffing sound. "I was aware," he said. "You- you don't like me much, do you?"
"You were meant to protect Draco," Lucius said simply. "You have failed and left my son alone."
"He has S-Snape," Potter stammered after a few minutes through chattering teeth.
Severus would never wield the type of magical and political power that Potter did. Severus was a brilliant man, strong in his own right, but Lucius counted on Potter to protect his son.
"A poor substitute," Lucius spat. "Though I suppose if you ever see the light of day again, you'll be as worthless as any other inmate; weak and pathetic. Pity."
Potter made a small noise, and Lucius shifted so he could see the moon if he looked one direction, and the boy if he looked the other direction. Currently, as the moon was attempting to hide, it was more entertaining to see Potter curled up in to himself.
"I can't cast anything," Potter said quietly. "It's- it's just not listening to me. My magic, I mean."
"Idiot," Lucius said coolly. "This entire island is warded against wandless magic."
"But- but Sirius became a d-dog, didn't he?"
"Sirius is an animagus. Sirius simply channeled his inner magic to transform, you daft boy. A werewolf would transform within a cell as well. In fact, Greyback is here somewhere. Perhaps he'll find you on the next full moon."
Even a werewolf could not break through the bars, but Potter didn't need to know that.
Potter didn't say anything for a long moment, Lucius heard him make a small noise and then it was silent once more.
Lucius scoffed and turned back to the window.
Potter was a moron.
After some time of watching the sky and thinking of his wife and child, Lucius stood to move to the cold slab with the thin blanket that they called a bed. He wouldn't sleep, he never did during the nights, but the blanket offered a small amount of comfort while he suffered through the sounds of the other prisoners crying.
Lucius made no noise when he cried.
He couldn't bear the shame of it.
He did wonder if Potter would cry; he ventured to guess that he would, based on the small sounds he had already made thus far.
The great Harry Potter, the strongest magical prodigy since Merlin himself, and the boy couldn't handle more than five hours in Azkaban before snuffling.
Pathetic.
Potter did cry that night.
At first, he attempted to muffle it, but, as the dementors presence grew, so did the volume of Potter's cries.
And it was horribly, nauseatingly, pathetic.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please. I'm sorry. Mum, please. Stop, please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mum. I'm so sorry. Sev, help, please.
"Shut up, Potter," Lucius groaned. The incessant cries and wails were tearing at him. How dare Potter get himself thrown in prison, leaving Lucius' family so vulnerable, and cry out for his dead mother? How dare he cry for Severus, who was undoubtedly crying for his boy as well?
It was disturbing.
"Who... M-Malfoy?"
"Of course it is me," Lucius grit out irritably. "Quit whining."
"'M s-sorry."
Terrific.
Potter developed a stammer.
The boy was blessedly quiet for a while, leaving Lucius to force down the oatmeal and water that appeared in his cell in relative peace.
Then the blasted dementors rounded their block again. Lucius could hear their rattling breaths in the corridor, he could peer through the bars and see them gathered in front of Potter's cell. Even from his position, he could feel their freezing effects on his insides. And eventually, as the dementors clearly thrived on torturing the boy, Lucius could hear Potter once more through the rattling breathing.
"Stop," Potter pleaded, a plaintive whine to his thin voice. "Please, p-please, stop."
Lucius ground his teeth. He rolled his neck. He even attempted to muffle the childish cries coming from Potter's cell with his hands over his ears, but eventually he broke.
"They won't stop, Potter," he called to the boy, less harshly than intended. "They're playing a game with you. They enjoy dragging up your worst memories and trauma."
What trauma Potter had, Lucius did not know. And he preferred it that way. Otherwise, he had to listen to a boy the same age as his Draco being tormented by the foulest creatures on the earth while he cried over a sordid personal history.
It was discomforting, realizing that Potter did not have a history of luxury and love as Draco had.
Lucius was able to ignore Potter for quite some time, his attention focused solely on the sun whose rays never warmed the Island of Hell that he was stuck on. Potter's quiet cries were mixed in with a melody of cries and screams from other prisoners, Lucius preferred that. Easier to pretend he couldn't distinctly distinguish Potter from the others that way. Lucius was even able to curl up on his side and close his eyes, seeking out rest for a few hours until his next meal was delivered.
He had no idea how long he had been able to sleep, but, judging on the suns position in the sky, he believed it hadn't been long, before something woke him.
No.
Someone.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Potter was going to go utterly mad.
Which... which meant that Lucius' closest friend, his brother in all but blood, would lose the child he so clearly adored.
Lucius scooted over by the bars of his cell and twisted his neck to try and spot Potter.
"Potter," he called down to the shivering boy curled in a ball. "Quiet down. You have to calm down."
Potter's body wracked with a sob, and Lucius could see him shifting to a more upright position.
"That's it, Potter," he called to him. "Sit up and calm yourself."
Potter's voice was hoarse when he eventually spoke. "W-what day is it?" he whispered.
Lucius refrained from scoffing, though he did roll his eyes. "I have no idea," he said. "What day were you arrested?"
"The-the fourteenth. I think?"
Lucius closed his eyes for a moment as he thought. "Then it is likely the sixteenth," he said. "You've been here for two nights."
He believed.
Time occasionally managed to slip by at times; Lucius would blink and suddenly the sun would be gone and his dinner tray cold on the floor before him. Other times, Lucius would watch the moon for days, and it never moved.
It was difficult to track days at Azkaban.
Even as Lucius attempted to harden his heart against Potter, it was quite tragic that Potter apparently had enough traumatic memories in his lifetime to be so quickly broken by the dementors who continuously came back to feed on him.
Dementors loved to draw up a persons worst memories, distracting the person with the darkest moments as they sucked the happiness from their soul. If they were continuing to draw themselves to Potter, then the boy must have quite the terrible memories inside him.
"I- I have a potion I n-need," Potter said softly. "On the tenth. D-d'you think they'll l-let me have it?"
Lucius did scoff at that. "You killed a student, you will likely not be getting your potion."
"Oh."
'Oh.'
Lucius leaned back against the wall now that Potter was silent once more. There was not a lot to do in Azkaban, and by that he meant: there was nothing to do in Azkaban. Which left Lucius with unlimited time to think.
"How is Draco?" he eventually called down to Potter's cell, interrupting the muted sniffles he could hear coming from the boy.
"Draco?" Potter repeated. "Good, I guess. He's- he's hap- happy, I think. I saw Cissa too, over the holiday. She's good too... if- if you were wondering."
Lucius closed his eyes and imagined his wife. His lovely, beautiful, brave wife. So dedicated to their family. So dedicated to him.
"Thank you," he told Potter.
There was nothing more to be said.
Lucius closed his eyes once more and drifted away to a reality that did not include a young man attempting to stifle his sobs because Lucius so cruelly told him to be quiet.
It was not Potter who woke him this time, rather it was the popping sound of dinner being delivered to his meal that woke him. Lucius had drank half his glass of water and a decent amount of the oatmeal when he realized he could no longer hear Potter at all.
"Potter?" Lucius called down to the boy. "Are you eating?"
Nothing.
Lucius moved so he could press his face against the bars and look for him. Potter was in his cell, curled up against the wall with his head tucked between his knees, as he had been since the night he arrived, an uneaten tray beside him.
It wasn't Lucius' problem if Potter chose not to eat.
It wasn't.
Would Severus treat Draco like this? If it were reversed?
Possibly.
...
No. No Severus would not.
Severus would be civil to Draco, at a bare minimum. He would convince him to eat and attempt to assist him in maintaining his sanity.
Lucius sighed at his own sentimentality.
"Potter," he called as loudly as he dared. "You have to eat. The taste won't improve any once it's cold."
Potter didn't move, yet Lucius was certain he was awake.
"Potter!" he said sharply. "Wake up and eat!"
"Go away," Potter finally replied, his voice a whisper that Lucius had to strain to hear. "You aren't real."
What?
What in Merlin's name did the boy just say to him?
"I'm not real?" Lucius repeated. "Potter it has been three days, surely you haven't already lost your mind entirely?"
Potter said nothing.
"Wake up and eat, you stupid, insufferable, chaotic, brat!" Lucius yelled sharply. "Right now, Potter, eat!"
Potter stirred, his hands twitching from their grip on his trousers. "Snape? Is that you?"
...
Sure.
Why not?
"Yes," Lucius said, attempting (poorly) to mimic Severus' silky drawl that Narcissa once (irritatingly during a spat early on in their marriage) referred to as 'as enticing as dark chocolate'. "You need to eat, Potter. Drink the water. Now."
It took a minute, Lucius had been prepared to snap at Potter again, call him a brat or a dunderhead or some other Severus type of insult, but then Potter lifted his head and reached out slowly, shakily, for the glass of water.
"Excellent," Lucius coaxed him gently from his cell. "The food now too, Potter. Pretend it is something you enjoy." He recalled Potter once served disgusting, greasy, pizza at an alliance meeting. "Pizza, perhaps."
Potter started and his hand shook, slopping water down his front as he audibly took a gulp. "D-Dray?" he whispered, his eyes wide as he took in Lucius now. "Dray?"
For the love of Merlin...
Do not let 'Dray' refer to Lucius' son.
"Yes," Lucius growled through grit teeth and a clenched jaw. "It's me. Eat, Potter."
It was perhaps mildly lucky that Lucius was in a cell, he may be tempted to snap the fool boy's neck otherwise.
Draco was a strong name with ties to his Black roots. 'Dray' was scarcely even a noise.
How dare Potter rename his son?
Arrogant.
But Potter picked up a spoon, and Lucius felt as if his duty to Severus had been served, so he scooted out the boys line of vision and attempted to sleep once more.
As time wore on, Lucius discovered that he truly hated Harry Potter.
He hated Potter for being arrested and leaving his family alone.
He hated Potter for breaking up the monotony in the most harrowing way possible.
He hated Potter for his damn 'trauma' that continuously drew dementors to their block.
Mostly, he hated Potter for making it so difficult to hate Potter.
Life was particularly cruel to Lucius, it seemed.
"D-Dray, come back," Potter cried one morning, sobs audibly wracking his body. "I'm sorry, p-please, I'm so sorry. Don't d-die, please. Please. Please. Pl—"
"I'm not dead," Lucius snapped, unable to bear hearing Potter plead for his son's continued life. The boy had a knack for disarming him. "I'm resting, Potter, as you should be."
"Dray?" Potter breathed. "Didn't th-they kill you too?"
Had Potter always lived on the precipitous edge of madness, simply waiting for a breeze to push him over the edge?
"No, they did not kill me," Lucius said. "They did not kill you either, merely arrested you. Have you ate today?"
Potter laughed, causing goosebumps to erupt on Lucius' arms at the unstable sound.
"It's poison," Potter whispered in a conspiratorial tone that bounced around Lucius' mind. "Or piss," he laughed again, a cackle to his tone now.
Lucius hated Potter.
"LEAVE HIM ALONE YOU CRETINS!" Lucius foolishly shouted at the dementors one night. "YOU'VE BROKEN HIM! STOLEN HIS SPIRIT! WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT?"
They didn't respond to Lucius, they largely ignored him. Lucius had led an easy life up until he joined the Dark Lord, he had no true memories of terror to pull up.
Potter though, by the Gods they seemed to enjoy tormenting that boy.
Some time later, when the sharp coldness of the dementors receded and the dreary chill of Azkaban settled over them all, Potter coughed.
"M-Malfoy?" he whispered, his voice cracking and weak. A harsh difference from the soft and dangerous tone Lucius used to hear come from the commanding boy. "'M alive. I th-think."
That drove a snort from Lucius, one that Potter would likely never recall to report to anyone of importance. "Unfortunately for us all," Lucius drawled, his tone lacking any bite and sounding almost fond.
An absurd concept. Since Lucius hated Potter.
"I hate it here," Potter confided quietly, pitifully. "Every- every thing I've ever d-done wrong. 'S all here, isn't it?"
Lucius had no idea how he was meant to interpret what was a nonsensical statement in the midst of Potter sounding mostly lucid, so he merely hummed.
"I hate it here."
"Everyone does," Lucius murmured, too softly for Potter to hear.
Potter screamed as Lucius watched the moon and silently cried.
Potter's scream was sharp; sharp enough to cut glass and stab Lucius' chest over and over. Eighty years from then, Lucius would still hear Potter's scream in his nightmares.
Lucius would remain in Azkaban for years longer if someone would only retrieve Potter.
...
Because Potter was terribly annoying.
"Can you see the stars, Potter?" Lucius called to him, his voice a mere shadow to Potter's endless scream of hurt. It seemed to help, sometimes, Lucius speaking to Potter. It occasionally soothed his screams to the much quieter mutterings and mumblings of a madman. "I cannot see them, but perhaps you can. Draco was named for the stars, you know. Narcissa hopes he'll one day name his children for the stars as well, do you believe he will? Luna was also named for the night sky as well, wasn't she? Draco, the star. Luna, the moon. What do you believe they would name their children?"
Potter's scream had tapered off when Lucius said Luna's name. "Lue, run," he said. "Run, Lue. Run. Run. Run. Run."
Perhaps the screams were preferably to the mad ramblings that left an ache in Lucius' chest.
Potter seemed incrementally more sane during the day lit hours. Lucius oftentimes successfully cajoled him in to eating and drinking, and Potter would stammer through stories to Lucius as if he were Draco.
"'M so cold," Potter said one morning, his chattering teeth proof of his words. "D-Dray, are you c-cold too? You can have my bl-blanket."
Had Potter just admitted to being cold and offering up his only protection against the cold in the same sentence?
"Keep it, Potter," Lucius told him with a heavy sigh. "Tell me something that makes you happy."
It was another trick Lucius began to utilize when Potter stopped recognizing him as a different person from his son. Listening to Potter ramble on about flying and dueling was a tolerable way to waste a couple of hours between the dementors rounds.
"Fred," Potter whimpered softly. "I m-miss him. Do- d'you think he'll come soon?"
"I hope so," Lucius said truthfully.
Lucius couldn't resent the boy for sleeping, but dear Merlin, he would never successfully scrub Potter's nightmares from his consciousness.
Potter cried for his mother.
He apologized to his mother.
He sobbed Severus' name, apologies rolling off his tongue in a constant stream.
Potter yelled out to his lover and his friends, begging them to be safe. Begging them to live.
It all painted a harrowing picture of a rather haunted young man. Potter fears his mother, fears she would hate him. 'Don't go, mum. I'm sorry. Don't leave me. I'm sorry.' Potter respects Severus, counts on him for protection, craves his pride and affection and fears his abandonment. 'Sev, I'm sorry. I'm not lying. Please, please, Sev, help me. Don't go.' Potter reveres his friends. Cherishes them as they belong to him and are his to protect. 'Go, Lue! Save yourself Theo! Sue, I'm sorry.'
Lucius purposefully forced himself to not think of Potter's other nightmares, the ones that caused him to whimper and beg some invisibly entity haunting him to 'stop' and informing them that 'it hurts'.
The more Lucius learned about Potter, the more he wished he didn't.
Lucius never asked to know these things about Potter.
He is unlikely to ever forget them now that he knows them.
"'M gonna die here."
Lucius stared up at the stone ceilings, allowing the small drip to fall carelessly on his foot. "You believe so?"
"I was always 'sposed to die," Potter said, seemingly not hearing Lucius' response. "In a cupboard. In a dumpster. In a graveyard. Now p-prison." Potter let out a peal of mad laughter that no longer caused Lucius to shiver, as accustomed to it as he now was. "For the bullet I didn't shoot. 'S karmic, Dray."
"Ironic," Lucius corrected him, his heart heavy. "You meant ironic, Potter."
"No," Potter whispered, "it's karmic. I d-deserve it."
When Potter's broken cries assaulted Lucius' ears not long after that conversation, Lucius fought back with a soft lullaby he used to sing to Draco.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are grey.
You'll never know dear, how much I love you,
so please don't take my sunshine away."
Potter's ragged breathing seemed to steady out after that.
Until, of course, the dementors came back again.
"Potter," Lucius called, as became his custom when a meal tray arrived, "you must eat now. Drink your water too, brat."
Potter hissed at him, sibilant noises that he slipped in to on occasion.
"Now, Potter," Lucius snapped. "Eat. Drink."
"I c-can't," Potter whined. "He's in m-my head, Dray. Whispering. Make him go. 'M not his. 'M not."
"You make him go," Lucius called back, now unfazed by the same sentiment Potter continued to share in his relatively lucid moments. Someone was always in his head, it hurt, Potter hated it. "Think of your friends. Your broomstick. Your Weasley."
A despicable choice for the future Lord Potter-Black, but as Potter would likely now never win a war, Lucius supposed a Weasley boy was an adequate lover for a broken man.
Potter hissed some more.
Lucius firmly told him to eat, using the same tone he'd once used to tell Draco that, no, he cannot have a pet dragon no matter how much he whined.
Although, Lucius also bought Draco a plush dragon instead and he praised Potter when he saw the boy lift the cup in his ever-trembling hands and ignore his oatmeal.
He'd always been an overly indulgent parent.
***
Lucius used to be able to track time in Azkaban. He could watch the moon rise and fall, watch as it chased the sun in a never ending race.
Of course, Lucius also used to believe that Azkaban was monotonous and dreary.
So perhaps he had went mad even before Potter's arrival pushed him in to it.
It was certainly madness that made Lucius envision a spot of pink out of the corner of his eye one day when the clouds in the sky masked his only ability to mark time.
...
Pink?
Lucius twisted around, craning his neck uncomfortably to look towards the far end of the corridor.
It was not madness, it was Narcissa's niece, Nymphadora. The young witch strode purposefully down their block, her eyes burning with justice and rage even from the distance Lucius saw them, as she and a young man in Potter's alliance, Abbott, went straight to Potter's cell.
Oh thank Merlin.
"Where are you taking him?" Lucius hissed to the witch when she threw Potter's cell door open.
"Home," Nymphadora said simply. She lifted her auror badge secured to a chain around her neck and flashed it in Lucius' direction. "He's been cleared of all charges."
Lucius let out a sigh of relief to see Abbott and Nymphadora prop Potter up between them and stride up the corridor. Potter paused as they passed Lucius' cell and stuck his hand out.
"'M gonna get you out," he whispered hoarsely.
Lucius looked at the young man who was nearly unrecognizable. Gone were Potter's mischievous and cunning eyes, gone was his confident smirk of constant amusement, as if he were aware of something terribly humorous that no one else knew of. He looked gaunt; hollow and empty.
Lucius had never known anyone to break so quickly, so completely, within Azkaban.
It caused an ache in his chest that he was too saddened to be resentful over.
"I believe you believe that," Lucius said diplomatically. He reached through his bars and squeezed Potter's offered hand briefly. "Go home, Harry."
Potter nodded weakly and allowed Nymphadora and Abbott to lead him from the prison.
Lucius watched him go with a bittersweet taste in his mouth. As much as Potter very desperately needed out of that prison, Lucius would give almost anything to be going free as well.
***
Lucius had his wish granted before the sun was able to fully rise the next morning.
He could feel it, he could sense the rush of magical power that cleared the dementors from his block. And, aside from Potter, there was truly only one wizard capable of such a showing.
Lucius bowed his head deferentially as the cold aura that promised pain if he misstepped even slightly appeared silently before Lucius' cell.
"Lucius," the Dark Lord said, his high pitched voice cold and bordering truly furious, "where is Potter?"
"Potter, my Lord?" Lucius prevaricated, feeling the first droplets of sweat he'd felt in months well up on his forehead. "He was released, yesterday, I believe."
The fury of the Dark Lord increased to the point where his magic was forcing itself inside Lucius, freezing his lungs, chilling his heart.
"Who released him?" the Dark Lord hissed. "Who, Lucius?!"
"The aurors, my Lord," Lucius cried out, struggling to draw in the air required to speak. "They said he'd been cleared of all charges."
"I WAS MEANT TO FREE HIM!" the Dark Lord screamed, sounding truly mad. "I PUT HIM HERE AND I WAS MEANT TO FREE HIM!"
Lucius cringed away slightly, preferring the chill damp of the Azkaban walls to the cold fury radiating off the wizard before him. He murmured an appropriately reverent noise of agreement, unsure why the Dark Lord would want to free a broken boy from prison after placing him there, but unwilling to question it either.
"Lucius, rise now. Retrieve the others. We leave immediately," the Dark Lord snapped. "We will stop by Thicknesse's home on our way back to Macnair's Manor and I can discover why he freed my consort."
...
Had Lucius gone as mad as Potter?
"Your- your consort, my Lord?" Lucius asked hesitantly, fear racing through his veins for daring to question what he thought he heard.
It was a mad thought to have, undoubtedly a side-effect of prolonged exposure to both Potter and the dementors, but Lucius imagined Frederick Weasley's gobsmacked expression at hearing the Dark Lord claim his partner in such a way.
It was only his overwhelming fear that kept him from laughing at the mental image.
The Dark Lord was in Lucius' face in an instant, his red eyes flashing with danger and his lips pulled back in a feral snarl. "Potter is mine," he hissed in Lucius' face. "Retrieve the others. Inform them that we will have a meeting upon our return."
"Y-yes, my Lord," Lucius stammered, craning his head back to get away from the fearsome wizard before him. "I'll go now."
The Dark Lord took a step to the side, allowing Lucius to scamper around him, cringing away from touching him as if an erroneous house-elf.
"Lucius," the Dark Lord called as Lucius all but ran down the corridor.
Lucius turned around immediately, dropping his head in a bow. "My Lord?"
The Dark Lord's voice was thoughtful, curious truly. "How was Potter? While he was here? When he was released?"
Lucius considered it and then attempted to word it in a way that he... thought... perhaps... the Dark Lord wanted to hear.
"Utterly broken, my Lord," Lucius said truthfully. "The dementors broke him."
The Dark Lord's scream of rage sent Lucius flying down to corridor, eager to escape him and complete the task he had been assigned.
Apparently, that had not been the answer the Dark Lord desired, despite his own admittance at putting Potter in the prison.
And, as he gathered up the followers of the Dark Lord in their various cells, Lucius could not help but believe that he had missed quite a bit in his imprisonment.
Perhaps, if Severus did not die from the grief of his legally proclaimed heir becoming entirely mad, he could ask him at some point what exactly had shifted in this war after Lucius' imprisonment.
He would likely also ask about Potter's health, when he could.
Blasted boy.