Thoughts on Voldermort/Lucius?
thank you very much for the ask, anon!
i back it entirely - indeed, i have a wee bit of lucimort lurking in the wips folder - because it's got the potential to be such a mess.
by which i mean, lucius is clearly one of voldemort's favourite death eaters during the first war - and certainly his favourite from the interconnected elite male social group which makes up the majority of his minions [bellatrix and snape - his other favourites - are exceptions in terms of gender and social class respectively, and they depend more on voldemort's goodwill for their status among the other death eaters to be maintained than someone like lucius would.]
he is implied in canon to be a major source of new recruits for the dark lord - the prince's tale [and the adult snape's relationship with him] suggests that he was the conduit through which snape was recruited, and a plausible case can also be made that he was the person who first introduced voldemort to regulus [although i prefer to imagine that this was bellatrix].
he is also widely known to have been a death eater, which suggests that he took some sort of public-facing role in voldemort's operation - likely one which traded on his social standing and political and financial influence. i find he's often written in first-war fics as reasonably cautious in terms of his public image - less likely to openly indicate his allegiance than characters like rodolphus lestrange - but i think it's always worth emphasising that nobody, even people on the anti-dumbledore side, buys the story that he was under the imperius curse. that he gets off because of his wealth and influence is an open secret - and cornelius fudge says this out loud at the end of goblet of fire:
âMalfoy was cleared!â said Fudge, visibly affronted. âA very old family - donations to excellent causes - â
all of which means we can suppose that - prior to his downfall in 1981 - lucius was extremely important to voldemort.
and we can also imagine that voldemort was fond of him - and, indeed, we can prove this, since he tells us in deathly hallows that this fondness for lucius made him weak:
To tell Snape why the boy might return would be foolish, of course; it had been a grave mistake to trust Bellatrix and Malfoy: Didnât their stupidity and carelessness prove how unwise it was ever to trust?Â
voldemort is - of course - referring here to the fact that he gave lucius a horcrux to look after. this is an intimacy in and of itself - and it's striking that, of the only two horcruxes he places in a death eater's care, one is given to a woman whose relationship to him is canonically something more than master and servant. that lucius receives the other allows us to suggest the same thing - that his relationship with voldemort was also an intimate one.
but lucius receiving the diary actually suggests an even closer relationship between him and voldemort than that between voldemort and bellatrix - since the diary is evidence of the dark lord's pre-voldemort life.
i'm always struck in order of the phoenix that lucius doesn't bat an eyelid when harry taunts the death eaters waiting for him in the department of mysteries with the fact that voldemort's a half-blood - whereas bellatrix is deeply offended by the suggestion. this is proof - i think - that he knows the truth about [or, at least, understands a reasonably accurate account of] voldemort's origins, and i think we can also assume, given his access to the diary, that this must include voldemort's birth name.
[and - while i think that we're supposed to assume that abraxas malfoy was a death eater and that he's probably a similar age to voldemort, and while i really like the idea that the diary is initially given to abraxas - this would still be the case even if abraxas and voldemort had never set eyes upon each other.]
we know from canon that voldemort is generally extremely cagy about his early life, but that he is nonetheless prepared to reveal certain things about it with people he profoundly trusts - which is why barty crouch jr., for example, knows that he was named after his father. the depth of information about him which lucius is implied by the text to possess can therefore very easily be used to write an intimate relationship between them during the 1970s which sincerely matters to voldemort.
which lucius then utterly destroys.
it's clear from goblet of fire onwards that voldemort is generally furious with the death eaters who pretended to have been under the imperius curse after his disappearance - and that he isn't happy at all about being forced to take these men back into the fold, lest he have no core supporters.
but it's also clear that he's furious at lucius specifically for his failure to come and find him:
âLucius, my slippery friend,â he whispered, halting before him. âI am told that you have not renounced the old ways, though to the world you present a respectable face. You are still ready to take the lead in a spot of Muggle-torture, I believe? Yet you never tried to find me, Lucius... Your exploits at the Quidditch World Cup were fun, I daresay... but might not your energies have been better directed toward finding and aiding your master?â
âMy Lord, I was constantly on the alert,â came Lucius Malfoyâs voice swiftly from beneath the hood. âHad there been any sign from you, any whisper of your whereabouts, I would have been at your side immediately, nothing could have prevented me - â
âAnd yet you ran from my Mark, when a faithful Death Eater sent it into the sky last summer?â said Voldemort lazily, and Mr. Malfoy stopped talking abruptly. âYes, I know all about that, Lucius... You have disappointed me... I expect more faithful service in the future.â
and voldemort's shattered trust in lucius manifests itself almost at once. while lucius still seems to be favoured by him for most of order of the phoenix, we actually get hints that voldemort sets his tumble down the rankings into motion well before the debacle in the hall of prophecy.
snape tells sirius that lucius malfoy recognises him in padfoot form not only because he enjoys humiliating him, but because he feels safe to do so - evidently, he knows that, even if voldemort was made aware of him revealing this information [harry's standing right there!], the dark lord wouldn't regard it as something he was saying to try and help sirius [and, therefore, evidence that his loyalty to the order is worth investigating] but something he was saying primarily to insult lucius ["you're so careless that even this fucking idiot recognised you."].
similarly, while lucius is evidently the person in charge of the operation in the department of mysteries, it's also clear that bellatrix is there to - to some extent - keep an eye on him.
but most significantly, the information which is most useful to voldemort during order of the phoenix - that harry would do anything to protect sirius - comes to voldemort via narcissa [the person kreacher goes to when sirius orders him out of grimmauld place]. this is a precursor to something the dark lord goes on to do a lot over the course of half-blood prince and deathly hallows - circumvent lucius and use narcissa [and draco] as tools to humiliate [and, specifically, emasculate] him.
the vitriol which voldemort directs towards lucius far exceeds that directed towards any other death eater, even those - yaxley, the carrows, snape - who got off their charges post-1981 by pretending to have renounced him, and those - travers, the lestrange brothers, dolohov - who were captured in the department of mysteries. and his rage can absolutely be written as having been caused by lucius - for whom he felt something and who he assumed reciprocated those feelings - revealing that the whole thing actually meant much less to him.
which gives us some absolutely banging premises for fics.
maybe lucius ends up with voldemort in the first war because abraxas pimps him out - mary and george style - to try and secure the dark lord's favour. maybe his canonical tension with bellatrix is because voldemort plays them off against one another for his physical affections. maybe lucius tries to fuck his way back into voldemort's good books post-resurrection, but finds the dark lord considerably less amenable to this than he was hoping. maybe voldemort's punishment of draco for the sins of his father ends up having a sexual element.
and maybe there's a bit - one languid summer in the late seventies - when it's actually quite sweet. blondes do, after all, have more fun.
