AN: It's been a while. I know. Enjoy!
XXX
It was going to be one of those days. Voldemort could smell it in the air as he sat up in bed that morning.
He sniffed again, calculating.
Sniff. Sniff. No... wait, maybe it would be one of those othe –
Nope. His nostrils took in another whiff of it, the snake-like flaps flaring rather unhealthily for the plastic surgery job.
Yep. It was going to be one of those days.
He tossed his matte black comforter aside (800 thread count, mind you) and swung his feet to the floor.
Traversing downstairs to the kitchen, he discovered that the distinct smell that he had detected was the decisively potent odor of Severus Snape's pastry cooking.
"Morning, my lord!" the Death-Eater-Turned-Buddhist said with a very slight tickle in his throat as he removed what appeared to be charcoal cemented to a pan from the oven, amidst billowing clouds of black smoke. "Crumpet?"
"New recipe, Severus?" the Dark Lord asked dully as he walked directly past the man and pulled a box of generic bran cereal from the pantry.
"Spot on, my lord!" Snape said, surprised. "I found it the other day in the latest issue of my Tea Weekly subscription. These are supposed to be lovely with some Earl Black."
"You don't say," Voldemort said drily as he tapped out an assorted bowl-full of bran flakes and flax sticks, and drowned them in some one percent milk.
Snape was about to carry the conversation on, quite enjoying the fact that the Dark Lord was taking an interest in his hobbies, but was stopped when Voldemort took his first bite of cereal.
Flicking a lump of barely-chewed bran flake from his face, Snape winced as the Dark Lord thundered, "What the hell is this stuff?"
"Don't ask me," Snape squeaked, hoping to avoid being spewed on again. "Lucius bought it! At that healthy foods market!"
Blackness clouded Voldemort's face, and he hissed, in his patented menacing tone, "you mean... the organic foods co-op?"
"Yes! I mean – no! I – I – I mean – !"
But the Dark Lord had already swept (quite darkly) from the room.
XXX
"Lucius!" Voldemort bellowed to the blond hair slumped between two couch cushions. "Where did you purchase this infernal cereal?"
"Hm?" the Death Eater raised his head and glanced at the box being brandished a good three inches away from his face. "Oh. That. You like it?"
"It's infernal!" the Dark Lord roared.
"They have different flavors," Lucius suggested. "Wanna try Crannut 'n Barley?"
"Hardly," Voldemort said sourly. "You got this at that blasted co-op, didn't you?"
"Whoa, dude, chill. The co-op is like, so totally good for your chi, man -"
"I don't give a damn about my 'chi'!" snapped Voldemort. "As far as I'm concerned, my 'chi' is scattered about the magical world in seven different pieces!"
"But that's why you need flax, man. Flax can mend your soul! They make clothing out of flax, you know."
"Lucius," the Dark Lord interrupted curtly. "I do no want my breakfast cereal and my clothing to be the same thing. That is disgusting. And secondly, I don't want you shopping at that hippie-dippie, organic, 'free-range' co-op anymore. If we can't do evil by destroying that one Potter kid and his pathetic concept of 'love,' we sure as hell are doing evil indirectly polluting the earth with pesticides and supporting big-buck, community-killing corporations! Now run out to Wal-Mart and get me some Reeses Puffs. Scoot!"
The Death Eater lugged himself out of the room, mumbling some indistinguishable complaints against "The Man."
"Ever since he watched that Food Inc. documentary he's gone all soft," the Dark Lord said to himself. "I warned him not to order that instead of Spiderman Three off of Netflicks, but did he listen? Nooo..."
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named then turned his attention to the kitchen once again.
"Snape!" he yelled. "Turn off that accursed NPR and come listen to me!"
XXX
At least things were finally starting to go his way, around mid-morning. Took 'em long enough, Voldemort thought.
He spun around in his spinny chair and faced his assembled Death Eaters.
All three of them.
No, wait, recount.
Voldemort squinted, using his fingers beneath the table so the other wouldn't see.
All two of them.
"Where's Bellatrix?" he asked aloud.
"Group therapy," Lucius and Snape replied together.
"Oh. What for?"
"Drug use," the two chorused together again.
"Ah."
The three of them sat there awkwardly at the unnecessarily large conference table.
"Well," the Dark Lord said after a few moments. He glanced down at the meeting's agenda. "I guess that crosses off items one through five."
The other two examined the papers in front of them, finding that the first five scheduled points involved equal pay raise discussions and gender discrimination jokes.
"So... You... guys know any good jokes?"
The two in front of him shook their heads blankly.
"I don't know why you put that on there, sir," Snape said meekly. "It's really not an issue here."
"Ah," the Dark Lord muttered, nodding wisely.
They sat there some more.
Lucius coughed.
Silence resumed.
Snape picked at a knot on the table.
More silence.
"You know, um, the final episode of Lost is rerunning in, like, five minutes, so if I could just, you know..." Lucius jerked his head in the direction of the door.
"Oh, yeah, sure," the Dark Lord started. "Yeah, uh, um," he glanced around briefly. "Oh right. Um. Meeting adjourned.
"Good work!" he called after the emptied spinning chairs and swinging doors.
XXX
The afternoon found our Dark Lord sitting glumly on the back porch step. He was using his wand to conjure up a magnifying glass to fry ants with. The ability to cut out the middleman by just zapping the ants with his wand had yet to occur to him.
I can't do anything right, Voldemort thought to himself. I can't even get that nuke on Call of Duty!
If only I could nuke Hogwarts... that'd show Dumbledore and his mamby-pamby 'love' up.
Suckers.
Hah.
Little wisps of smoke carried little ant souls up to ant heaven.
The Dark Lord sank back into his depressive bought of angst.
Who am I kidding? he asked himself bitterly. I could pwn all the n00bz in the world and I still wouldn't be able to destroy Hogwarts.
This was positively awful. Wasn't there some sort of cure for Failure Disease? Hadn't he seen an infomercial for that before?
Well there had to be some sort of pick-me-up in the world for these kinds of days. Other wise how would people survive through this kind of day?
A thought occurred to him. And it promised to be very, very successful.
The magnifying glass vanished, and Voldemort bolted inside.
There was a cure to all problems, the closest thing to an Elixir of Life, and perhaps the absolute best thing ever since sliced bread –
... and it was hiding somewhere in Snape's kitchen.
"Where where where where where where where?" The Dark Lord muttered aloud, riffling through the spice cabinet.
"Can I help you with something, my lord?" Snape asked coming in to the kitchen curiously.
"It's here, somewhere," Voldemort gasped. "I can smell it."
His red eyes locked on the top shelf of the pantry. He ran. He leapt. His claw-like hand closed around air.
"Curse you, child-proof housing contractors!" he howled to the ceiling, whirling around for dramatic affect.
And also to make a mad dash for the step stool on the other side of the room.
The other Death Eaters were filling the room now.
"Crap!" Bellatrix hissed. "D'you think he's found our booze stash?"
"Sir?" Snape began tentatively. "Are you perhaps looking for the - "
"Chocolate!" the Dark Lord exclaimed triumphantly holding out a piece of the crisp brown substance for the inspection of Greater Good. "The cure for one of those days!"
"This, erm, wouldn't have anything to do with my crumpets this morning," Snape asked meekly, "would it?"
XXX
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