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Lucius has a meeting with the Board of Governors at two, several letters due his solicitor before the end of the business day, an increasingly neurotic wife to manage or to find someone to manage, dinner and billiards—allegedly; doubtless it will turn out to be snooker—with the Secretary for Creature Affairs on the schedule, and a blood-spattered Antonin Dolohov seated on the divan in his drawing room, proposing that Lucius have the neurotic wife arrange a dinner party wherein they and their dozen-or-so houseguests eat a person.
“It’s not cannibalism,” Dolohov rasps. “They aren’t our kind.”
Prison, such as it was, was not kind to Dolohov. He wasn’t always sane, but he was not always insane either. As recently as 1980, there was no way Lucius would have had to articulate to him that regardless of the vital biological, political, and moral distinctions between pure wizardkind and the politely-termed Other Categories, it remains well past gauche to consume anything so much as shaped like a human outside certain protected rituals.
Lucius isn’t about to explain it now, either. “I’ll discuss it with Narcissa,” he clips instead. He will, even—Dolohov is her fault, from the perspective that they were introduced through Demetria Chilston-Snede, whom only Narcissa ever liked. “But frankly, I doubt we can support the staff for such an event.”
“Staff,” Dolohov spits, in the horrible croak the Dementors left him. There is dirt on his feet on the Bisnagar carpet. “Throw her on the sideboard and I’ll eat her up raw.”
The in-between is an ugly place, Lucius considers as he departs. This is true now and has ever been true. The Statute of Secrecy is ugly for the way it lies in between extinction and domination. Half-breeds between wizards and animals. This time now, very ugly. When their lord was indisposed, it was possible to arrange things properly around his absence. When he returns in glory, the mechanisms of power will function properly again, returning the beasts and the people and the gold of the world to its proper place, mopping up the muddy alleys of Wizarding Britain.
For the evening and for the interim, Lucius may be forced to debase himself by playing stick-and-ball games with half-breed halfwits, but Malfoy Manor will host a dinner party correctly, or it will not host one at all.
Almost 2 o'clock. He will remind Narcissa of the estate’s standards later, he decides, selecting a cloak for the afternoon, then reconsidering for one that will transition well to the evening. He may as well write his solicitor from his London office. There is a wailing from the east wing that may be a Lestrange or a victim of a Lestrange. When the Lestranges act out, the Carrows contract an imitation madness, and if Bilikins wishes to pop by to discuss the audit of the rents in person it won’t do to have accompaniment.
There is a dead peacock in the front hall, much to Lucius’ dissatisfaction. The staff is not so much limited as non-existent for the interim—Lucius has been promised compensation in the form of labor, but for now he summons up the memory of some distasteful disposal charms that even at the time of the last war were better suited to the hired muscle than to political operators like himself. As dissatisfied as he is, Narcissa would be worse off. He imagines asking her about the dinner party.
“Oh, why not,” she’ll begin, shrilly, and, “in our own home,” and, “these people, Lucius, are not what we agreed when,” and, “I have serious concerns about the efficacy of,” and, “imagine the effect on poor Draco,” until he is forced to raise his voice to hush her up.
Lucius is tired of imagining the effect on poor Draco. He remembers fondly the days when a marital dispute could be resolved with a trip, for her, to her sister’s in the south of France, and a discreet woman, for him, in an apartment in the city. Another casualty of the in-between: too many eyes, for now, looking in on you from all directions. Lucius pictures a lovely woman named Sonata waiting for him on the other side of the entire mess, and Apparates.
He is on time for the board meeting. “Say!” says old Penuarie as he takes his seat. “What have you got on the front of your robes, there? Slipping, lad?”
Lucius looks down. It is, very evidently, a piece of viscera of unknown provenance. Sighing, he recalls the disposal spells for a second time. “Would you believe it if I told you I was forced to Confringe a Muggle teenager who tried to grab my wand?”
The board laughs—they are, as a group, tremendously old-school. Lucius applies a smile.
“My apologies for my appearance today—we’re amidst quite a complex audit of the estate’s holdings. I spent the morning supervising down at the slaughterhouse.”