Disclaimer: Harry Potter equals book

Book equals rights

Rights equals someone else's

Someone else's equals not mine

Harry Potter equals not mine

I'm probably going to send in the next two chapters soon as well, so be on the lookout for those! A bit of free time seems like it's going to rear its wonderful head soon, so there may be chapter six wandering into this story soon!

Chapter Three

The Death Eaters and Voldemort filed into the large basement, which had been redone to look like your everyday, typical evil-doer's room. There was a large table in the middle of the room, surrounded by chairs and covered in a disgusting, moldy green tablecloth, for decoration. The Death Eaters enjoyed plotting in this room. One of them didn't. But no one could tell.

"Oh!" Becky cried, grinning around at everything. "This room is wonderful!"

"Yes!" squeaked puppet-Voldemort. "I rather enjoy it. It has a wonderful atmosphere of evil scheming goodness! I find myself having rather productive days in here."

"NOOOOOOOOO!" puppet-Harry screamed, her finger falling limp as he hung down. "He's too good for the Good Side, for the Order! Just too good! I can feel the evil working into my soul just as I stand here."

The rest of the Death Eaters looked oddly at her, as though they were trying hard not to laugh but failing miserably.

"I'm… I'm so sorry, Dumbledore," puppet-Harry whispered. "Will you ever forgive—"

The swishing of a cloak and the hurried footsteps of someone who was thinking of murdering someone else in the close vicinity and in the very near future interrupted her skit.

"THAT NAME IS NOT STATED IN THIS HOUSE, MOST PREFERABLY IN THIS ROOM," Voldemort growled, very angrily, "UNLESS IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY!"

"Calm down, Dark Lord," Becky said, with an almost sarcastic raised eyebrow. "I honestly don't understand how you could possibly have been afraid of dear old Dumbles. Even when he was alive, he was an old barmy man who couldn't lay so much as a wrinkled hand on your excellent work."

She smiled calmly, and pointed Harry at the table. "Should we sit, now that everyone is present?" she asked.

Voldemort was looking livid, but it seemed as though if he said anything, he would explode. So he curtly nodded, his face flushing a nasty purple color. Becky nodded as well, the first time she had been serious since she had met Voldemort. She slipped the puppets off her fingers and sat, interrupting the silence only with a very soft, "Of course, I'll be able to give excellent suggestions to His Majesty."

Bella was the only one who had heard her. "Why?" she asked, sounding rude and accusatory, but looking more along the lines of curious and interested.

Becky smiled knowingly as she pulled her robes away from her legs so that it draped over the sides of the chair. This way, she wasn't sitting on an uncomfortable lump. "I taught him everything he knows."

Bella turned away again, disgusted.

Voldemort glared around the table once everyone had taken a seat. "I believe you have all met my new... uh... " He struggled for a term to call her. "My... uh... Apprentice." It was lame, admittedly, but the best he could come up with. The other Death Eaters, clad in dark robes, started to snigger. Of course they had met Becky. She was a little hard to miss.

He nodded curtly. "All right then!" he growled in his evilest voice. "Becky, you are to retain respect toward all my other faithful Death Eaters." Then he added, in his silkiest voice, "I do not necessarily require that my Death Eaters show the same type of respect to her, however." They began to laugh again. She smiled widely, her eyes cheerful. She then took out of her pocket a small felt finger, black felt, a small pair of scissors, beads, and twenty tiny pieces of colored construction paper. She lay this in a neat pile right in front of her and glanced around expectantly.

Voldemort sighed and sat down. He began the meeting immediately. "Potter's seventh year begins in three days," he said, cutting right to the chase. "He is still in Hogwarts, so therefore very protected. Then again, he is taking his N.E.W.T.'s this year, so we have one year before he is out of Hogwarts. We can either wait until he is out and plan all year-- boring, I say, but safe—"

"It's your funeral," Becky muttered, rolling her eyes and sighing.

"--or try to defeat him while he is at Hogwarts itself. I need to know your opinion." He gazed around, wishing for sleep.

The other Death Eaters were amazed. Usually, he tried to tell them what he thought and asked who would do what, when, telling them what to do as soon as they had answered him. He hardly ever cared what they thought.

Bella finally gasped. "If he succeeds in passing his N.E.W.T.'s," she whispered, "he will consider his job. What do you think it could be?"

The Death Eaters were quiet for a moment, thinking. They all noticed that Becky was cutting the black felt with her scissors and shaping it into the form of a robe. She slipped it over the felt finger and pulled a needle and black thread out of her pocket, very quickly sewing it up. She added long black yarn to the tip, as well as construction paper dots on which she drew heavy lids. It looked just like Bella. Except for the fact that it was as small as Bella's own finger. Then, as Becky calmly put away the felt, beads, paper, needle, thread, and the scissors, she said, very clearly, "An Auror." She sat up straight and added, "He enjoys saving people and is extremely good at Defense Against the Dark Arts. It is his dream job."

Voldemort nodded. "How can we prevent him from passing something he is so good at?"

Avery answered, after a moment, "Fail him at something he's bad at but is required for an Auror job."

Voldemort nodded again. "Right," he said in his high voice.

Bella's voice floated across the table. "How will we fail him, though?"

Voldemort's voice replied, "Get someone on our side to get into Hogwarts as a teacher and set hard work for him. Something you don't learn until a few years out of Hogwarts."

Bella's voice spoke back. "But will that work?" she asked, sounding as though she had swallowed a bit of helium, because her voice was a little high and squeaky. "He is, though I hate to admit it, not unintelligent. He could defeat us if we do that."

The Death Eater's heads were swinging back and forth between Bella and Voldemort, who were both holding their mouths closed as they spoke, like ventriloquists. They were also both looking confused.

When the Death Eaters noticed this shared confusion as to why they were talking, they turned as one to Becky, who was bobbing the Voldemort- and the newly made Bella-puppets up and down as though they were talking. She looked as though she was thinking out loud-- which, of course, was just what she was doing. She was looking expectantly at the Death Eaters, as though waiting for one of them to react.

Voldemort sighed, and then held out a long-fingered hand. "Give those to me," he said.

"Why?" Becky asked, a slight smile on her face.

The other Death Eaters gasped, but Voldemort simply said, with a slight smile playing across his own mouth, "They are obviously good, as well as easy to plot with. I wish to use them."

Becky very cheerfully handed them over, then added, "Then, for your sake, I'm going to use the Harry puppet because we need his reactions to your schemes. Will Harry keel over and die, or will he simply get a bonus point on his N.E.W.T.'s?"

Voldemort blinked, and then surprised even himself. "Go ahead, then."

She gleefully pulled Harry out of her pocket, and Voldemort slipped the other two nervously onto his fingers. He was aware that every single Death Eater was watching him, amazed. Was their evil Dark Lord actually about to use finger puppets?

As soon as Harry was slipped onto Becky's finger, he gasped. "It's Voldemort!" he squeaked. He immediately curled up into a little ball and lay on the table, shaking.

"Well," Voldemort said, still nervous but liking the puppets, which had immediately changed size so that they matched the size of his fingers. "That's an improvement, isn't it? At least he's scared."