"I think understanding the Strangers is one step closer to being one yourself," Lucius adds, tone a little careless. "Upon sympathising with the notion of what one has lost, what little there is to gain." Which means he does, or did, understand it at one stage, for all that the very state of them, their poverty and their mutual rejection and all the shallow appearances of how they live day to day inspires visceral, pitiless distaste in someone like Lucius Malfoy.

He drinks a little more until melting ice collides, submerged. "All a matter of perspective, of course."