Next subject so helpfully obtained, Severus immediately takes the man - leaving the ropes as they are - and gets right back to work. There's a moment of struggling, but Severus is too good at Legilimency for it to last. He rifles through the man's head without deliberate viciousness - it's not as if he needs to take any care; the state of him after doesn't matter.

He looks for names, faces, memories of meetings and conversations, the locations of anything incriminating. There's not a wealth of it, but it's enough to get the leads he's looking for; the bitter hate that flows through the man under his hands for magic-users is familiar. It feels like his father, and it makes the cruelty in which he works even more jagged around the edges. He remembers, in moments like these, just why he took the Mark.

After he's taken everything he needs and left the rest of the man broken, he backs away mentally. The man - Anders, whatever's left of him - gasps brokenly as best he can, spitting out a slurred but still passionate, hateful insult. Severus squeezes his throat, doesn't smile. Cruciatus flows through him where they're connected and Anders shrieks, muffled, spasming until he gives up. The light leaves his eyes as Severus watches. And then he drops him to the floor.

He steps back, shaking his right hand again - this time there's blood around his wrist near the cuff of his coat, and he grimaces, but only in mild irritation. It's not Anders' blood.

"There are documents upstairs in a green box, in a floorboard. Information to compile a hitlist."