Lucius was dumbfounded.
In June, his son had returned from Hogwarts with news that gave him a splitting headache. The Boy Who Lived had thwarted another attempt at resurrection by that lord at Hogwarts.
In other words, that lord had once again come out the loser in a clash with the Boy Who Lived.
Lucius rarely swore, but at that moment, he felt so full of curses that keeping them in was painful.
After his wife Narcissa heard the news, she was just as conflicted and miserable as he was. Their blithely oblivious son, however, did not think anything was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
They still had something belonging to that lord hidden at home.
When that lord had entrusted the Diary to him, he had said he was giving him something so important because he trusted him.
Lucius had actually been rather excited at the time, because he had earned that lord's trust.
He had been so young!
Now Lucius was older and wiser, and thought things through more carefully. Every time he remembered it, his head hurt.
Lucius did not know what it was, but the evil magic emanating from it sent chills down his spine, even though he had once spent all day studying dark magic.
He had tried to "communicate" with the thing.
There were quite a few magical objects in the wizarding world that possessed living qualities, but Lucius had only ever seen two with that degree of intelligence. The other was the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts.
In fact, Lucius felt that even the Sorting Hat fell far short of the Diary.
Most unsettling of all, Lucius could vaguely sense that the Diary could beguile people's minds.
That lord really had left him with something troublesome.
Once things started going wrong, they simply would