He shrugs. "What could you all have done about it once you weren't there all the time?" he asks, something of the years of bitter practicality lingering in his eyes, although his tone is brisk. "Evan did what he could, but Wilkes was fairly useless, Avery was a creep who would have demanded unacceptable recompense, your brother and I never had much to do with each other, and I was hardly going to drag Regulus or Narcissa into it."
He's looking thoroughly bemused by this point, with a perplexed smile. "Those are just all the women he had anything to do with," he says. "Not the ones he made angry. I'm not sure he did make an enemy of anyone but Gwendoloena angry in his own right, rather than as his king's agent, as a matter of fact. And," he smiles, "I think even then that allowances can be made for an ex-husband's interference with his former wife's remarriage, although I must confess that the details of the story never made sense to me. Really I think it must have gotten confused with the Eros and Psyche myth."
"I know," Severus tells him with what is, for him, a warm smile. "Really, I'm surprised sometimes you don't go about in a gold and black scarf, just to really confuse people."
"Thank you, I'm quite well-set up in that department," Severus tells him drily.
Severus blinks at him. "Because then you'll continue to tip them outrageously."
He chuckles. "Well, I've really only any use for the spines." Pause. "Maybe the eyeteeth. But do as you like."