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He knows the work when he sees it. Only one man makes his kills so: the body laid flat on the floor as for a wake, laid out as wizards lay out their dead. On the back, eyes open, hands cupped together on the chest, as no one lies in life. And three gunshots, each as precise as the last: head, heart, hands. Mind, body, magic.
He draws his robes out of the way and kneels beside the body. "May the road be a desert before you," he whispers to the dead man. "May every door you try, be barred. May righteous men turn their backs on you, and may your arts fail you, and your wand break in your hand." It is a wizarding curse, because if there are words the Muggles use to damn their dead, he does not know them.
The hole between the eyes is the one that killed him. He would have been dying when the second bullet entered his heart, and dead by the time the third pierced the back of the left hand, and drove through the back of the right into the center of the chest. Severus knows who did this.
During the war the papers called Lucius Malfoy the Executioner, and no man was more feared. The Muggles will make nothing of this, but Severus knows. It is as neat as a Summoning Charm. He closes his father's eyes and washes his father's blood off his hands before he goes.
Lucius is at Malfoy Manor. He is not hiding, because he does not believe he has done anything wrong. He is in the library, reading to his son. "Get rid of him," Severus says, and Lucius pushes the boy off his lap onto the floor.
"Go and find Mummy," he says to Draco, and then he turns back to Severus. "How was Azkaban?"
"You killed my father."
"Yes," Lucius says, setting the book aside and standing up. "Consider it a gift." He is unchanged since Severus saw him last, dressed in plain gray robes, and with his long fair hair in a braid down his back. The squire's son at home.
"An unlooked for gift," Severus says. "And an unwanted one."
"You would never have brought yourself to do it."
"Perhaps I did not want it done."
Lucius smiles. "I've missed you, Severus. You always were the only one brave enough to question me."
"Question you? I'll kill you." Lucius has his wand in hand, that quickly. He is not as good a duelist as he is a marksman—but he is the quickest draw Severus has ever seen. "He was mine," he says more quietly. "Mine to kill, Malfoy. Thinking about it was the only thing that kept me sane."
"You forget," Lucius says, "that I loved him, too, Severus. He was like a father to me."
"You hate your father," Severus says. "The Dark Lord was like a father to you. Dumbledore was like--."
"Yes," Lucius says, sheathing his wand and turning away. "I know. I hate them all. But he was the one who put a gun in my hand. He changed my life. I owed him a clean death—surely you must see that."
"What makes you think I wouldn't have given him one?"
Lucius doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to. They both know what Severus did in the war. Lucius thinks of poison as unclean, a coward's weapon. "There's only one thing I've ever been good at, Severus," he says instead. "Grant me that much."
"There was nothing clean about what he did to my mother."
"No," Lucius agrees. "Shall you require an eye for an eye? You see where that got Lord Voldemort."
"You never dared to say His name before. I would not be so confident in saying it now."
Lucius smiles. "You're questioning my loyalty. How charming, in a traitor."
Severus shrugs. "We are both traitors now, Lucius. Need I remind you what He would do, if He knew that as soon as you heard He was dead, you crawled back to your father and begged for your life?"
"I never pretended to be anything more than I was," Lucius says, quietly, dangerously. It is not quite true; their lives have been spent masked, but of all of them Lucius was the most honest. Everyone knew what he was, because that had been the whole point: that he was a Death Eater not because he believed in anything Lord Voldemort stood for, but because his father had despised the Dark Lord so.
"Yes," Severus. "And here you are, safe beneath your father's robes. It is easy to be honest when you have Abraxas Malfoy's name and fortune to shield you. The Imperius, was it, Lucius?"
It ought, by rights, to make Lucius furious. He has hated the old man for as long as Severus has known him. But he only shakes his head. "I tried to get you clear," he says. "Severus. I promise you I tried. Dumbledore--."
"And so you killed my father instead? Fuck you." He spent three months in Azkaban, waiting for Dumbledore, for the Malfoys, the Death Eaters—for even the Dementors to take notice of him. For a moment Severus is so angry he can hardly breathe. His eyes blur. He lurches forward and catches hold of Lucius's robes. "Fuck you," he says again, and kisses Lucius hard on the mouth.
Lucius is quiet against him. He opens his mouth when Severus bites his lip, and he doesn't struggle when Severus forces a knee between his legs. But he doesn't kiss Severus back, and there is only one erection between them. Severus has raped him before, by the Dark Lord's will. He could do it now. Lucius has his wand at hand, but he will not dare to fight, not in his father's house.
For a moment he thinks about it. His eyes are closed; he opens them, and his hand tightens in Lucius's hair. There is a spot of rust brown blood on the white cuff of his shirt. His father killed his mother with his hands, because he was a Muggle, an animal.
When Severus was eleven his father stopped drinking for almost two years. Every night of those two summers that Severus was at home, he woke to his father screaming, dreaming of being shot down over occupied France. When he was six his father taught him to play football, and when he was fourteen, to shave. The truth is, Severus loved him as much as he hated him, and his mother was a witch and a bitch who could have left her husband or killed him at any time.
The truth is, his father is dead, and not by his hand. Most of his friends are dead or in prison for the rest of their lives. Lily is dead. He meant to fuck Lucius or kill him, but instead he finds himself leaning against him, crying like a lost child. And after a moment Lucius's arms come around him, and he pats Severus's back awkwardly.
"I'm sorry," he says against Severus's ear. "I'm so sorry about everything." But sorry won't raise the dead or win the war. It does no good at all for either of them to be sorry now. He thinks of his father, put down like a rabid dog, and of Lucius laying the body out for Severus to find.
It is because of Lucius that Severus became a Death Eater--but the rest of it, he did to himself. He has no one to blame.