multiversallogs | you chip away the old version of you

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you chip away the old version of you

Who: Severus Snape (tiny) and Lucius Malfoy (not tiny).
What: Eating death, basically.
Where: ?
When: Nowish.
Warnings: Premeditated murder; violence both physical and magical, mind control/violation interrogation tactics, references to assault, explicit torture.

If there was ever a time to want to wish for company - or for backup - it would have been weeks ago, when he set his odds against Bellatrix. Now, with the element of surprise and all the time and magic in the world against a handful of unpredictable but certainly mundane targets, he's got the upper hand by miles. But sometimes he's just dying to learn the hard way.

On the patio of a rustic, wooden diner, lurking in the dim light that does little to combat the night, Severus sends out a text.

Someone has been burning witches.

It's a little funny, he thinks, how adept he's gotten at using this thing; he was always the one who could sort through whatever simple Muggle artifacts hampered his acquaintances, causing in them both wonder and suspicion. Even though this sort of technology is decades off for him still, he's taken to it with ease - just as he does with magic. A bitter thought. Truly a child of both worlds.

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There's a hiss of something cutting through the air following the flick of Lucius' wand - launched like snakes, black ropes spiral with intent through the air towards the third man standing in the room. They land hard enough to lash skin, coiling around wrists and snapping them together, reaching out to bind around his throat as quick as lightning to catch him in their tangled clasp. There's a clatter as the weapon in hand falls as fingers try to pry loose the rope choking him, and then twin duller thuds as knees find the ground.

The talisman is summoned in kind and caught in the split second after Severus obtains the other from the woman.

His wand points for the door, then. It is convenient that they are coming to them, he thinks, more or less calm at the chaotic sound of many footfalls and shouting, if stiffly alert. He flashes first a disarming charm at the first sign of movement; the stunning spell proving to be only a fifty-fifty thing.

Severus gets the other one, easy, and for a moment just surveys the scene, five incapacitated people - the two who are disabled versus stunned still attempting anguished, furious communication - before he zeroes in on one of the men from upstairs. He grabs him by the front of his shirt and then drags him back into the kitchen, away from the front room and the windows (curtained as they may be) that face the street. (Not that anyone can hear or see much, from outside, with the sealing spell.)

The man is deposited unceremoniously on the floor, back against the kitchen cabinets, while Severus pulls a glove out of his jacket pocket and onto his left hand. Ever since facing Bellatrix, the Dark Mark has burned (first to charring), and it still gives him some discomfort - hence putting a layer between metaphysical connectivity, now.

He doesn't bother telling Lucius to keep an eye on the rest of them; that's what he's here for.

Severus drags a kitchen chair over to sit on, and then grabs his victim by the neck, forcing his head back and meeting his eyes. He speaks no spell, but the sudden full-body twitch that the muggle man suffers despite the stun that grips him is evidence enough.

Lucius is quiet as Severus sets about moving people around, and he flicks a glance and then moves his wand in an instructional twitch - the rope extends enough to drag across its captive's mouth, between his teeth, silencing furious curses to muffled intelligibility. The silencing spell he casts on the woman is less cruel treatment, admittedly.

He moves to eventually stand and lean in the kitchen door, checking the time on a pocketwatch, and with more visual attention paid towards the room with the unmoving and/or struggling bodies.

A moment later and Severus drops the man he was 'interrogating' - lifeless, terminated with some imperceptible surge of magic. "Whichever one of them is Anders is the ringleader," he says, shaking out his right hand a bit. (Lucius may have noticed by now, Severus hasn't been using a wand.)

He joins the older man in the kitchen doorway, looking out at the four living captives, searching. He saw the person he needs in the dead man's head, but they're all squirming about trying to cover their identities. He knows it's not the woman - some part of him is grateful he won't have to torture her for it - and so he points and says, quietly, "Avada Kedavra." A glimmer of light, and there are only three living captives. It's the only kindness he'll be doing tonight.

"One of you volunteer. Or we'll just pick."

"You don't truly wish to be expendable," Lucius adds, given the reluctance in the room. "So don't be shy."

Immediately, and possibly not necessarily in true response to the wizards' words, the man being in a continued state of being strangled hoarsely grunts out what might be a curse, or indeed an answer. It is hard to make out. Regardless, Lucius spares the heavy lifting by directing the ropes to do it for them; muffled words are abruptly cut off, and the terrorist is dragged across the floor, following the path Lucius' wand makes towards the centre of the room, neatly flipped upon his back.

(And Lucius had noted Severus' particular brand of magic use, and filed it away silently for another time to question as he does with most peculiarities.)

There is satisfaction in treating them like this. Lucius can't say he never found his history rewarding at times.

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."

It ought to be a thrilling read. Lucius glances to the two that remain alive, variously paralysed and otherwise rendered immobile, and back to Severus. He searches, semi-consciously, for signs of fatigue and strain; the practices of Legilimency and Occlumency were never, exactly, the most forgiving of magics for anyone. Cool grey eyes flick towards that glimmer of red at Snape's hand.

But Lucius wordlessly Disapparates to go and seek these documents. Taking something of a mallet approach, there is soon the sound of a wooden floor being indelicately broken open one board at a time in swift, almost musical succession, a few thuds and crashes of furniture waved aside, the noise echoing through the building but never escaping the walls. It stops not long after.

About half a minute later, once he has at least opened the thing and had a rifle through to see if the pages truly held anything of worth, Lucius appears once more, carefully sliding the pages back into places. Grainy candid images, screencaps from broadcasted network video posts, transcripts, CiD numbers, addresses.

"They've been rather busy," he says, not quite carelessly setting it down on an available flat surface. There is a steeliness to his expression, a similar edge that's sharpened his tone, settling his wand to point at the nearest still breathing body. "Finished with them yet?"

By the time Lucius returns, there are only two living persons to greet him; one of them is Severus, clean of blood, holding his wand. The remaining terrorist is on the floor, curled over on himself, fighting against the paralysis spell and whatever else has been inflicted on him.

"Not quite," Severus says, dispassionate and nudges the prone man with his foot. He flinches away. "We were having a heart-to-heart. It seems he's particularly fond of beating unconscious women."

Severus twitches his wand and his prisoner hisses, there's a particular twisting noise from the floor. Some unpleasant curse, impacting unseen ... parts, internal or otherwise.

A slow breath in raises broad shoulders as Lucius contemplates the immediate situation down the length of fifteen inches worth of mahogany. Ask anyone who knows him and they will gladly tell you that no, Lucius is not exactly infamous for his sense of compassion, not even for his fellow magic users, regardless of their breeding. But there are things that can and do offend him. The documents he uncovered beneath the floorboards offend him.

The man writhing at Severus' feet offends him. And so the incantation summons fire; it is not a spoken incantation, and it is not true fire. Flames of deep purple snake out from beneath the terrorist's clothing, smokeless, and instead of burns, it leaves behind bruises and sinks bone deep. A curse that can be flashily frightening and damaging, and thus, useful on the battlefield.

But not useless off of one, in Lucius' opinion.

He doesn't say it, but the bitter, detached thought flits through his head: No, I can't say I find any merits to letting anyone be unconscious, either.

It would have been one thing if Severus looked into his head and saw evidence that he felt assaulting someone that way was a mercy, but no; a grotesque coward through and though. He watches him for a moment, and then points his wand, casting a spell - a small, otherwise harmless one. An invigorating spell. No healing, no helpful adrenaline. Just making sure he's still completely and fully awake. The man makes a pained, miserable, angry noise.

Maybe none of this matters. He'll be dead soon anyway.

Outside a few drunk club-goers stumble down the street, laughing, oblivious to anything going on inside; this evening has become so nostalgic.

The prone form of the man under the unfortunate focus of the two wizard and their various curses twitches and jerks like a fish in its very last death throes, bruises colouring his arms, face, the expanse of skin beneath his clothing-- until Lucius twitches his wand with more determination and utters a sneered, "Avada Kedavra." A flash of green and then all is still.

It's not really a mercy so much as it is time management.

The sounds of the outdoors fails to make Lucius nervous, quietly confident in the spells cast to keep things outside from getting in, and things from within getting out. He gestures towards the documents. "Is everyone who knows of these dead?"

In perhaps disturbing contrast, Severus seems more at ease the longer this goes on; it's something he knows, that he doesn't have to guess at.

"In specifics, yes. There is at least one other individual, either an informant or superior, and his assistant. I assume that person expects these men to have kept notes somewhere." Almost absently, Severus shoves the now-dead man over with his foot, and stares down impassively at his face.

"I'll be interested to see if anyone has anything to say about this."

Either way, the men that injured the young witch are dead. Lucius is hesitant to offer more, wary of the glimmer of further investigation, but can't help but suggest; "If you make these documents a portkey, you could go fishing, as it were. Providing that anyone who knows where and how to look might attempt it, of course.

"That depends on your interest in loose ends, I suppose. Your friend can rest easily," a loose and sarcastic gesture about the place, "as things currently stand."

That's a fantastic idea, and Severus raises an eyebrow, appreciative of the suggestion, and intrigued at the potential. Instead of voicing this - "Are you accusing me of having friends?"

A flick of his wand and the documents float over to him so that he can inspect them without touching, and duplicate anything (potentially everything) he finds to be noteworthy. The portkey spell would be easy enough, but it's the end location that requires further thought. Surely, a secured location, one devoid of sinister shark pits or sharks with lasers, but something less than comforting, too. (Those details can come later.)

Almost absently: "What an infuriating example this place must set."

Everyone living together sickeningly peacefully. (Compared to wizarding Britain.) Handling this without living in a guerrilla combat unit. Existing openly, the integration of culture. How dare they all, etc and so on.

He glances towards the drifting documents and takes that as confirmation, the corner of his mouth upturning at mention of accusation. "Client," he self-corrects, delicately, and with only so much conviction. Lucius occupies his attention to taking the magical medallion he had pocketed that had so neatly defied the stunning spells, turning it over in his hand with curious fingers.

"Cooperation occurs on any level," he adds, wand flicking and another similar amulet rises from one of the corpses on the ground. "When it suits."

Curious, the sacrifices they make, magic to circumvent magic. But then- they all know the symptoms of sycophantic belief. The men in this room. The ones who await them, somewhere.

"What people can tailor themselves to has interested me more and more, of late."

"Quite."

Clipped, reserved, removed. What Lucius himself can tailor himself to has been a thing he's avoided thinking about in depth, and he will give the same careless lack of thought with regard to how comfortable he feels right here. Instead, he places the hovered amulet somewhere where Severus can reach it. "Whatever means you used to find the culprits behind the note," he says, "perhaps you might exercise the same on whatever wizard or witch was coaxed into making these."

Traces on magical items are easier to work, though he doesn't say so; whether Lucius can't or merely doesn't want to bother isn't his business, and this whole adventure has been Severus' undertaking, after all. But he takes the medallion and stows it for later pursual. That spell is one that requires a quiet moment.

In complete incongruity to everything-

"Thanks, Lucius."

"A pleasure." He has the decency to sound a little wry about it, but, the bar is somewhat low, there. Lucius gives one final glance about as if to survey the damage done and finding it to be satisfactory enough.

And it's true; his nature is to advise, and offer suggestion, and coax others into taking the lead, and following. Which doesn't make it not his business, when he adds, "I'll be interested to see where this leads." And with that, he takes it upon himself to go; reality bends a little around him in Disapparition, and he does so silently.

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you chip away the old version of you

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