"Which is exactly why I never trust sausage," he fires back, amused. "He wouldn't even have tried to fight if he found you'd eaten one of his cats?" He shrugs, "That's what he was encouraged to think. No, that--well," he considers, "I suppose he might have convinced himself it was a trick of the light. But I meant that he could easily have convinced himself that he wasn't guilty of what was, after all, accidental."
"You could have had to ba--" he begins with hugely forced lightness, and stops himself with a sigh. "Rough?"
"That," he declares flatly, nose wrinkling, "is a dreadful image." Philosophically as he tests the whisky, "At least he appears to have a sense of self-preservation."
Severus scowls "I don't know what that had to do with courage," he says shortly. "It was to be done, that's all, and it was never expected that the job would fall to anyone else, whatever Draco was told. That was clear from the start." He nods. "No, I expect you'll get on. I just don't think he's interested in noncombatants."