A/N: This little piece of crack was hammered out today with much distraction and difficulty. I hope you enjoy it.
"Sir, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem." Hermione's face was concerned, a stark contrast to those of Harry and Ron, who looked bemused.
"Yeah, Professor," Harry said at last, after a lengthy bout of silence. "You're like a hundred and fifty. All these sweets aren't healthy at your age."
Ron snorted.
"It isn't funny, Ron!" Hermione snapped. "Honestly, don't you two read? At his age, he's susceptible to heart disease, and diabetes, and…. And stuff!" She shot both Ron and Harry a withering look.
Harry backed away, palms raised. "Calm down, Hermione. I'm on your side. We both are. Right, Ron?" He cast Ron a significant look, his face appealing.
Ron, a fast-broadening grin spreading over his face, contained himself no longer and burst out laughing. "You guys are NOT serious! He's Albus-frickin'-Dumbledore, for Merlin's sake! He beat Grindelwald! He can handle a little heart disease, right sir?" He gestured to the man in question, bringing the trio's gaze in Dumbledore's direction. Hermione's expression was livid and on the verge of tears, Harry looked significantly worried, and Ron was still smiling, but it was rapidly fading as he glanced back and forth between the faces of his friends. Looking at Dumbledore, there was no reason to smile.
Something had happened to Dumbledore after the battle in Department of Mysteries, and it was something terrible. Dumbledore had suddenly been struck with an insatiable desire for sherbet lemons. No, this was nothing like his former penchant for the sweet. This was an addiction in the truest sense of the word. He had tried to fight it at first and had managed fairly well through the summer months, rationing himself to no more than nine a day, so what weight he gained was distributed evenly and gradually, and could easily be camouflaged by flowing robes and a charm generally used to conceal pregnancies of expectant single mothers. However, the more he resisted, the weaker his resolve became. He grew irritable, snapping at Snape when he brought potions for his newly blackened hand. He reduced Madame Pomfrey to tears, calling her habit a "ridiculous monstrosity" that "well befit an assassin." Even McGonagall, his best friend on the staff and in life, was called a "tartan terror." When McGonagall tried to suggest that maybe his overindulgence of sweets was resulting in the frightening personality changes, Dumbledore forced her into her Animagus form, telling her to "go cough up a hairball and see if I care, bitch."
The staff was torn between concern for his well-being and complete insensitivity
in response to his newly violent temper, vicious satire, and biting sarcasm. These dreadful changes in his personality had made Dumbledore almost nothing like his formerly benign self.
The man who sat across from them, wedged into an armchair large enough to accommodate a small nation, was far worse than all that. Nine sherbet lemons became fifteen, fifteen became thirty, and before long, Dumbledore was consuming five sizable packages of the sweets a day.
And that was with normal meals in between.
Such eating habits were doomed to only one end. The man opposite them was gargantuan, a gelatinous horror wedged behind a marble-topped desk that he likely weighed more than. Melancholy eyes, sunken behind twin cushions of fat, peered out at the children from behind half-moon glasses. The area around his mouth was sticky from the constant supply of sherbert lemons, and his beard, formerly snow-white, had a sickly yellow tint in places. Dumbledore no longer cut an impressive figure when he entered a room. Now, his presence inspired bewilderment, revulsion, and pity.
"Miss Granger is right," Dumbledore said at last, his voice small, perhaps saturated with guilt or maybe muffled by the new layers of fat that warped his appearance to a repulsive caricature.
Ron's smile dissipated. "Is- is there anything we can do to help you, sir?"
Dumbledore frowned, thoughtful. "No, I don't think…"
"You could join Weight Watchers sir," Harry supplied helpfully. "I'm sure there's an equivalent in the wizarding world. And stop eating those!"
Dumbledore had reached the candy dish after much difficulty and was eating still more sherbert lemons. Hermione yanked the dish out of his hands, and ran from the room, while Dumbledore struggled to find his wand in his ample girth.
"Harry! Mr. Weasley! A little help, I think, would be most-"
"No, sir. We're staging an intervention," Harry said firmly, crossing his arms. "Ron, go get Professor McGonagall, maybe she can make him listen. And if all else fails, she's allowed to hex him and we're not."
"Right, Harry," Ron said worriedly. "Hang in there, sir. We're trying to help you." He too, ran from the room, leaving Dumbledore alone with Harry.
"Harry, I don't think you understand. I need-"
"NO, sir!" Harry's temper exploded. "What's the matter with you? When did you lose all self-control? Look at yourself! How much do you weigh now?"
"Harry, listen to me! This isn't a simple matter of a psychological dependency! There's magic in this." Dumbledore's eyes were twinkling again, but not with happiness. It was more of a bright, painful awareness of a terrible fate.
"What do you mean? It started after you hurt your hand?" Harry asked, feeling panicked without knowing why.
"No, much before that. I believe the trouble started after the battle in the Department of Mysteries." He looked at Harry entreatingly. "Can I have a sherbet lemon now? I really need a sherbet lemon, Harry."
Harry shook his head. "It's for your own good, sir. Then what?
"Before Voldemort Disapparated, I believe he put a modified Imperius curse on me, the command being to eat sherbet lemons incessantly. But because it is modified, I'm fully aware of it, and powerless to break the dependency immediately! I need a gradual withdrawal! It's not something you can just quit at this point, like… I don't know…a cookie addiction!" Suddenly, his face turned ashen in color and he was consumed with tremors. Harry panicked, tearing the office apart in search of a sherbet lemon, liquorice snap, anything, but it was too late. As Hermione returned, the dish of sherbet lemons gone (likely relocated to Ron's pockets) and McGonagall and Ron in tow, Dumbledore sagged in his chair unconscious.
A brief summary on Harry's part led to Ron taking action. "NOOOOO!" cried Ron, producing handfuls of the sherbet lemons from his pockets and forcing them into the unconscious headmaster's mouth, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, Harry was horribly aware of a growing sense of triumph as well as a searing pain in his scar. McGonagall summoned Madame Pomfrey who contacted paramedics, five of whom lifted Dumbledore onto a stretcher with much difficulty and presumably took him to St. Mungo's.
"Professor!" Harry gasped, hand on his scar. "Professor, Voldemort's part of this, he's really happy! I think he planned it! What can we do?"
"I don't know, Potter," McGonagall said grimly. "The combination of curses has had an effect like that of alcoholism. He could die… from lemon drop withdrawal." Her mouth became a thin line.
"She can't be serious, can she?" Ron asked.
"It's my fault. I kept him from the sherbet lemons!" Harry cried. Hermione and Ron stood beside him, Hermione with her arm around him, and Ron clapped him on the back.
"He'll be okay, mate. Can you see what You-Know-Who is thinking?" Ron asked.
McGonagall nodded. "Don't blame yourself, Potter. You couldn't have known. What does Voldemort think of this? How much is he aware of?"
Harry screwed up his face in concentration. "I think I can see….."
Malfoy Manor
"Excellent, Draco. See to it that his medical care is….substandard."
"Yes, my Lord." Draco bowed and scurried from the room.
Lord Voldemort ate a cookie, his ninth that day. "With that obsolete fool Dumbledore out of the way, nothing will stand between me and Hogwarts. Severus, I expect you to be headmaster." He began a new cookie.
"It would be an honor, my Lord."
"Indeed."
There was silence, punctuated by the crunch, chew and swallow of cookies. Snape's eyes widened. Voldemort's previously skeletal frame had filled out. Actually, he was on the verge of appearing plump. An idea struck him, one that might end the Wizarding war once and for all.
"My Lord?"
Voldemort inclined his head, waiting.
"You know, my Lord, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem…"
FIN