"Now, I have returned."
He stopped before Lucius and looked down at him.
"And you, Lucius, my most cunning servant, were the first to rush forward and rescue me."
"Tell me, what were you thinking during that half-second of hesitation?"
Voldemort's voice suddenly turned shrill.
"Were you weighing whether leaving me to that damned Holmes would serve you better;
or whether taking me away would better demonstrate your loyalty, allowing you to secure a better position in the new order to come?"
Lucius felt all the blood in his body freeze.
He knew that any word of explanation might bring a lethal curse down on him.
"Master, I..."
"Raise your head."
Voldemort gave the order coldly.
Lucius raised his head with difficulty. His usually pale and haughty face was now filled with fear and submission.
He forced himself to meet those scarlet, slit-pupiled eyes.
"Look into my eyes, Lucius."
The next second, an incomparably powerful mental force pierced his mind without warning.
Legilimency!
Lucius's mind instantly became an undefended memory palace that had been forcibly invaded.
Like a brutal king, Voldemort violently smashed open door after door of memories, searching for the answers he wanted.
Images flashed past.
It was a meeting of the Hogwarts Board of Governors.
Douglas Holmes, that man who always wore a faintly amused smile, mocked him before all the governors in an almost humiliating manner.
Holmes's voice was not loud, but it shattered every shred of his dignity.
"Lucius, do you think Hogwarts is a vegetable patch in your family's back garden? That you can plant whatever you like?"
Next came the scene of him being stripped of his position as a Hogwarts governor.
The hypocritical smile on Fudge's fat face and the gloating pity in the eyes of the other pure-blood families stabbed into