"No," Lucius agreed, coming back to lean again on the mantle. He felt an extraordinarily rare flash of sympathy with Bellatrix - she was perhaps a little more reasonable than he had given her credit for, in things that mattered. He had no doubt she understood the consequences. "No secret at all." But there was some play in the joints, apparently. Good.
"The trick is keeping Him thinking He needn't bother looking," he said, sounding tired. None of this truly mattered - He didn't need a reason at all, and even if He had ... they had both given Him plenty to run on already. "No better way than ignorance, I suppose. All the same - you ought to have asked me. He's my son. - And I might not have worried so much, you know." He wasn't quite ready yet be conciliatory, although being difficult in the face of such a very generous characterization of his activities over the past couple of years was making him feel like something of a cad.