Dobby was…interesting. Lord Voldemort could not quite think of a better word to describe the elf. Interesting was an excellent word to apply to anything that was multifaceted and otherwise concisely ineffable. Against all planning and propriety, he had, in the end, kept the elf as a permanent servant, and had even gotten himself a small house, for safer employment of the house elf. He was uncertain whether it would be proper to regret his decision, even now, four years later.
Dobby and Harry Potter were sitting without a care on the cold wooden floor, playing with blocks. Now, one might think that a five-year-old, nearly six now, as he liked to declare at every opportunity, was too old to be playing with such babyish toys. But Harry Potter was not stacking, pushing around, or chewing on the blocks; he was levitating them, albeit with Dobby's enthusiastic assistance. As the elf was extremely skilled at hover charms, Harry Potter had naturally clamoured to learn the trick to making things float, and Dobby had only been too happy to oblige his favourite human.
Voldemort supposed that Dobby must be the freest non-free elf in the country. At first, Voldemort had tried casting his version of the ritual spells on the elf, but to his great surprise, Dobby's resistance to such magic was much stronger than he had expected, and all attempts had slipped off. Instead, Voldemort was forced to remove the spell that had been with Dobby since shortly after birth, the one that had caused his erratic but nearly omnipresent desire to "punish" himself, as it had shown itself to be a hazard to everyone present.
Of course, Voldemort was not the Dark Lord for nothing, and he was hardly inexperienced in the art of commanding loyalty. Dobby was still better and more trustworthy than any human servant. For one, Dobby did not have any personal concerns outside of serving Voldemort, something which he could not say of his Death Eaters. Furthermore, the elf was much, much easier to appease than a human. For one galleon a month, a glass of milk every day besides the usual cabbage rations, several sets of hideous but cheap clothing, and minimal polite consideration, Dobby's loyalty was secured, at least nominally.
Voldemort suspected that Dobby was much more intelligent than others of his kind. Perhaps his resistance to compulsions was a factor, but Dobby was also very strong-willed for an elf and seemed to have his own moral convictions, which had apparently been developed independently of any Malfoy elf teachings. This was somewhat annoying, and also what called into question his complete loyalty to Voldemort; the elf had ideals, and it was possible that one day he would put his ideals before his duty to his master. Still, such a possibility was much easier to predict and circumvent than, for example, any given Death Eater's treachery as a result of cowardice, greed, or any other of the mass of possible human motivations.
In any case, as long as Voldemort continued to appear to the elf as if he had the best of intentions for young Harry Potter, Dobby's loyalty was probably secured. Though he had been incredibly mistrustful at first, especially after his moment of freedom had been taken away again, Dobby had still taken an immediate shine to infant Harry Potter, and had cared for him like a brother, despite that he himself was barely older than the boy—of course, house elves also matured much more quickly than humans, and at two years Dobby had at least been adolescent. This arrangement had suited Lord Voldemort very well, as it kept Harry Potter out of his way but still in sight. The so-called vanquisher had, as of yet, not shown any signs of malevolence toward Voldemort or any mysterious power, though he was unusually precocious when it came to magic. Even Voldemort himself had not managed to gain conscious control of his abilities until he had been well over nine years old.
Then again, Voldemort had also been raised in a muggle orphanage to believe that magic either did not exist or was the work of the devil.
In any case, for now, it seemed that Voldemort had rid himself of the prophecy's most obvious effects. Usually, according to the texts he'd perused, prophecies were fairly blatant when in action, so Voldemort hoped that he had circumvented it at least temporarily.
Dumbledore, of course, was still an issue. Being "dead," Voldemort found, was an interesting state of affairs. He hesitated to apply the descriptor to himself—if all went well, Voldemort hoped that he would never be subject to that adjective in reality. Death was something he could not imagine; it was therefore a horror, and his only fear. Magic could not capture or defeat death, but it could avoid it, run from it, indefinitely. That was his name, after all; and it was a powerful symbol. Those who feared his name and believed that he had truly fled the pursuit of death unconsciously managed to disable themselves against him by assuming he was somehow superhuman, to the detriment of their own magic. This worked quite well for Voldemort.
Again, however, Dumbledore was the issue. He knew exactly what Voldemort was trying to do. Always, the man addressed him by his true, despicably common and powerless name. Names were liabilities. Tom Marvolo Riddle was a liability, because with another's name as a symbol of identity, it was possible to do all manner of unsightly things, including stealing an identity and monitoring another's status by a spell. The Ministry had classified such deeds as "dark arts," and for good reason—they were blatant violations of privacy at best, and a clear advantage of powerful wizards over the less talented, but Voldemort doubted Dumbledore would consider basic scrying immoral, at least for use on an enemy. Dumbledore himself was damnably immune to scrying, owing to the cunning of his parents. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was nearly impossible to keep clearly in one's head all at the same time, especially while one was attempting a distracting scrying ritual through a crystal ball, reflective surface, or monitoring instrument.
Voldemort, of course, was, by his very proficiency at magic, always occluding, a sure defence against such magic. Any other wizard but Albus Dumbledore who was to know his name, Tom Marvolo Riddle, would only be making a fool of himself attempting to scry for him. Voldemort was not completely certain that even Dumbledore would be able to, but he knew it would be ill-advised to underestimate his opponent; therefore, he assumed by default that Dumbledore knew at any time at least whether he continued to exist.
That was why he was incredibly perplexed as to why Dumbledore had announced to the world that he had been vanquished, especially without any solid evidence, and indeed, knowing that Voldemort was, in fact, still in existence. Was it really possible the man believed so deeply in the power of prophecy? But Dumbledore was nearly twice as old as Voldemort, and equally serious about understanding magic; surely, he knew much more than Voldemort himself on the subject of divination? Therefore Dumbledore must know that a prophesied outcome was only certain if all parties believed in it. Dumbledore, as the recipient, contributed less power than either of the subjects. Harry Potter was far too young to be interpreting prophecies, and in any case, knew nothing about it.
Voldemort tried to simulate Dumbledore's perspective.
He had heard the prophecy, and had presumably elected to believe in it, since it appeared favourable to him. He knew also that Lord Voldemort knew at least the partial contents, as Severus had been caught spying. Then, he determined the two possible candidates, and waited for Voldemort to make a move. Voldemort chose Harry Potter and managed to find the Potters. He killed James Potter and…
Voldemort considered what Dumbledore knew of him, and supposed that it was likely that Dumbledore assumed he had gone to the house to murder the entire family. Voldemort conceded that he had, at least, planned to kill Harry Potter at first.
…Voldemort killed James Potter but left Lily Potter alive, if impaired—apparently, his obliviate, rather rushed and crude as it was, had damaged her mind and left her forever flighty and forgetful, though that had been attributed to the strong magical residue and the smoke from the fire. Furthermore, scrying indicated that Harry Potter also remained alive. To Dumbledore, there would have been no immediately evident reason for Voldemort to have left two people alive, one of them his intended victim, and, combined with the prophecy, Voldemort supposed there was a valid reason to believe infant Potter had somehow vanquished him.
However, scrying should have also indicated that Voldemort was still alive. Voldemort highly doubted that Dumbledore had simply forgotten to check—the man would never have overlooked something so important. But then, how could Voldemort be vanquished, yet alive at the same time?
Voldemort froze as a terrible thought hit him. "Vanquished" implied that he had been incapacitated, but not necessarily that he was dead. Did Dumbledore know of his horcruxes?
Harry Potter giggled loudly and a blue block landed heavily on the desk.
"Lord Vol-de-mort, is no sad." he said. Voldemort glanced at the block and obligingly levitated it back over to the child, whose grammar was appalling, on account of Dobby's unhelpful speech patterns. Voldemort had at least spent some time correcting the boy and teaching him his letters, but the former had been much less successful than the latter, and Harry Potter still spoke like a house elf, though he could read easy children's stories on his own already. At least he could pronounce "Voldemort" properly. Voldemort had trained it into Harry shortly after the boy had learned to address others.
"Do not concern yourself, Harry." he said absently. Voldemort never bothered to speak simply for the child; as far as he was concerned, Harry would learn to understand him either way, eventually.
"What is 'con-cern?'" he heard Harry ask Dobby.
Voldemort reminded himself not to leap to conclusions, especially when it came to Dumbledore. At the same time, he had to acknowledge the possibility that the man could have somehow figured out his method to immortality. Making a horcrux (or horcruxes, in his case) was far from the only method for avoiding death, but to Voldemort, it was the least messy and least debilitating. Of course, he was not yet finished with their creation; he needed his soul in seven pieces for the purpose of symbolizing great power and luck, and that meant he would have to make another. At the moment, however, he was not too concerned about his mortality—after all, even if Dumbledore did know that he had made a horcrux, it was unlikely he would realize that there was more than one, what one or more horcruxes were, and finally, where to find them.
Again, there was also the possibility that Dumbledore did not know of his horcruxes at all. Therefore he had only conjectured that Voldemort had been vanquished on account of circumstantial evidence. But Dumbledore was no fool; the rumour Lucius had heard shortly after Voldemort's visit to the Potters had actually come from an overheard discussion between Arthur Weasley and an auror, probably both members of the Order of the Phoenix. An official announcement had not come out until a week later, and by that time Voldemort had already decided on a planned course of action and had appropriately given instructions to some Death Eaters and completely cut ties to some others, thereby appearing to corroborate Dumbledore's suspicions.
Most of the members of his terrorism campaign had been led to believe he was gone, with the notable exceptions of Lucius Malfoy, Walden Macnair, the three Lestranges, and Severus Snape. The first two had been told the truth, because they had useful Ministry contacts, and the last four, because their loyalty was commendable. In light of the Ministry's much bolder attempts to arrest his followers as soon as they no longer feared his destructive magical wrath, Voldemort had drained the magic from the Dark Mark so thoroughly that all that remained was a small, raised discoloration on the left forearm, as if from a burn, leaving the law enforcement with a much more difficult time, as the Death Eaters had always operated with their magic cloaked and masked. Its most basic properties still remained, but it was no longer a dead giveaway. Unfortunately, those who had been arrested within a month of Voldemort's "death" had not been saved, and were now rotting away in Azkaban, as a break-in without the aid of the Dark Lord was essentially unfathomable.
Igor Karkaroff had also been a damnable traitor, and had given out several names to secure his own freedom. Voldemort would have hunted him down and killed him, passing it off as anger from other Death Eaters at large, but the man had fled back to his home country and, recently, had become a professor at Durmstrang Institute.
Voldemort still wanted to do away with the obviously unreliable coward, but he also knew very well how one could use cowards. He glanced at Harry Potter, who lay on his back while Dobby tickled him. Harry Potter would have to go to Durmstrang, because Voldemort did not trust a child to be able to act well enough to deceive the likes of Dumbledore while under the man's very nose. There was no question that the boy needed to get an ordinary magical education; actually, the boy simply had to be as normal as possible, in case the prophecy cropped up later in an attempt to give Harry Potter a mysterious, unknown power. Because Hogwarts was not available, Durmstrang was the obvious option, as it was the only school that accepted students from all nations—nobody really knew where it was, and it did not have any magical government to regulate it, though it was always up to international standards, as it needed to keep up a good reputation.
Durmstrang was somewhat inferior to Hogwarts when it came to graduating a large number of decently skilled witches and wizards every year, but the institute far surpassed any other at producing great, powerful, and influential people. This was because the professors helped talented and inquisitive students as much as they could, but did not go out of their way to do anything for students who did not desire to learn, which meant that the primary indicator of success was one's willingness to succeed. Whether Harry Potter came out inferior, average, or excellent at Durmstrang did not particularly matter to Voldemort, as long as he fit the mould of some kind of normal magical school graduate.
But Harry Potter, not the boy himself, but the name, still posed a problem. Of course, Dumbledore knew from scrying that Harry Potter was alive and well. He also thought that Harry Potter had done something to vanquish Voldemort, based on the prophecy and Lily Potter's hastily removed memory, which indicated that she had been unconscious for almost the entire encounter, and so had not done something herself. The government was no longer actively searching for Harry Potter, whom most people believed was dead, as scrying was technically illegal, but Voldemort could be sure that Dumbledore, with the emotional backing of Lily Potter, was still trying to find the boy. If Voldemort enrolled Harry James Potter at Durmstrang Institute, it would not be long before Dumbledore discovered the boy, and that could not be allowed to happen. The only thing that would still Dumbledore's efforts would be success—if Harry Potter was found.
And in the worst cases, for Dumbledore, Harry Potter would be found on his eleventh birthday by an automatic Hogwarts letter, or the letter would not be sent, indicating that he was out of the area that Hogwarts served, that was, outside of the British Isles. Either case would be disastrous for Voldemort; Dumbledore would find Harry Potter in the former, while he would know that some trickery had occurred in the latter. Whatever his theory about Harry Potter's disappearance was, Dumbledore knew that no outside magic could have possibly caused Harry Potter to be displaced over such a great distance as to end up out of the country; at most he should have appeared somewhere in the muggle world and been taken to an orphanage, where, unnamed, he could not be viably tracked until his Hogwarts Letter was sent out to his assumed name. A real name, after all, could only go so far; for example, Lord Voldemort would no longer, in fact, receive letters addressed to Tom Marvolo Riddle, because he was accustomed to thinking of himself as Lord Voldemort, which meant that the magic he generated, the beacon for post owls, also identified him as Lord Voldemort.
One could not, however, register at a magical school under an assumed name. Though the acceptance letters were written on enchanted parchment to reflect current conditions, including assumed names and locations at the time the owl delivered the letters, the actual registry of students detected the children through a form of scrying, which meant that anyone under an assumed name would read as "not enrolled," according to the list.
Therefore, Voldemort both needed to ensure that Dumbledore found Harry Potter and that, at the same time, Dumbledore did not find Harry Potter. That seemed summarily impossible, considering those events were by all rights mutually exclusive.
The only option would be to make a fake Harry Potter, and to disguise the real Harry Potter. However, how one might go about doing this was a mystery to Voldemort. Hiding Harry Potter would not be too difficult; subtle glamour enchantments would be enough appearance modification, and his real name could be concealed if he stole somebody else's identity. Stealing identities was very complex magic, but Voldemort was certain it would be possible for him to steal an identity and then give it to Harry.
Making another Harry Potter would be much more problematic. A cauldron-full of polyjuice and impeccable acting might be an option, but it was honestly rather outmoded, and also difficult to execute. Furthermore, it would require something that did not exist—a human being whom Voldemort trusted to carry out such a sensitive task. There was Voldemort himself, of course, but he hardly had the time to spare to go through the horror of school again.
Voldemort paused and suddenly became cognizant of the fact that actually, he was doing absolutely nothing right now. It was rather startling to him that he had managed to grow so lost in his thoughts; such a state of absolute focus was also one of the modes of practicing occlumency, so it was not unprecedented, but, surveying his well-polished, utterly bare desk, Voldemort realised that he really was not busy. He had not truly been busy since he had "died." Of course, he still received Death Eater reports, but two-thirds of those were delivered either by mail or over two-way mirror. None of the operations his subordinates were involved in required his active participation, as the majority of them were political in nature and consisted of slowly passing desirable laws. Already they had managed to restrict the rights of werewolves in the wizarding world even further, thus driving them away from the current government and towards revolution.
The awareness that he himself did not actually contribute anything solid to his movement was somewhat uncomfortable for Voldemort, even though he knew he was necessary, if only as a unifying force. He spoke, and others listened. He stood, and they rallied for action. They gathered around him and he brought out their potential. In that way, he, as a leader, was useful, as a conductor. No member of an orchestra needed the conductor to be able to play his piece well and beautifully—yet, without the conductor, the music produced by the sum of every contributing effort, though equivalent (considering the conductor merely waved a baton about) was simply lacking something. The spirit of the musicians was dampened without a powerful, lively leader.
However, Voldemort could very well remain the leader of the Death Eaters even while he did do something on his own. It felt more correct; power should rightly be obtained by one's own efforts. He had always operated by seeking out further arcane knowledge and continually honing his skill. Idly, he flicked his hand and grasped the familiar, cool contours of his wand, yew, thirteen-and-a-half inches, core of a feather from the mighty phoenix. His wand was a priceless treasure to him. It represented a key to power, to great feats. Without it, he was like his eleven-year-old self, a bitter little boy enamoured with his ability to make things "hurt," but master of nothing.
Of course, that was not entirely true. Voldemort was not dependent on his wand; even wandless, he likely surpassed most ordinary witches and wizards. And even with wand in hand, there was still an echo of that boy in him—there would be, forever. Once he had learned the cruciatus curse, he could never again let it go. There was the culmination of his childish, vindictive glee. Wizards had given it a name and a method, but Lord Voldemort had never cared for such things. One who cast the cruciatus out of an instruction booklet could not hope to inflict the proper level of suffering. It required an entire storehouse of hate and one's very own suffering, brought out deliciously from imagination into reality. That was magic at its purest.
"Up! Up!" Harry Potter squealed. Voldemort glanced to the side and saw, with some surprise, that Dobby was floating in the air, upside down, and apparently on account of Harry. Both boy and elf were laughing joyously, unperturbed by his stare or presence. Voldemort looked at his pale, elegant wand and wondered at the possibilities it represented.
"Great things." he murmured to himself. He still remembered the words Garrick Ollivander had spoken to him on that day that he, a mistrustful orphan of eleven years, stepped into the shop dressed in second hand robes and armed with a string of keywords gleaned from skimming books. Ollivander had put a stop to all of that nonsense. The phoenix feather symbolized power; later, Voldemort had learned that the phoenix feather was capable of channelling twice as much energy at one time as the most durable dragon heartstring, and was therefore usable for realising great feats of magic. The phoenix could see the desires of every heart, but it was neither good nor evil. It cared not for such human concepts. Its song inspired the true of mind and harmed those who did not know themselves, in hopes of awakening them. Voldemort had aspired, then, to be like the phoenix.
"There is no good or evil, only power, and those too weak to seek it." Weak, delusional, blinded. They all described those fools who had every opportunity to become great within their grasp, but instead could not look past the present and the misleading temptations it had to offer. They desired, but they did nothing to attempt to achieve their desires. They saw their personal status always in comparison to those of others. They attempted to become strong by their condescension towards those they perceived as weaker than themselves, instead of by simply growing themselves, their minds or bodies. Those people were the ones most detested and pitied by the phoenix.
That was why Voldemort admired Dumbledore, as much as he hated him as an adversary. Dumbledore had been recognized by the phoenix as someone worthy, someone who had achieved and confronted knowledge of himself. Voldemort was well-aware that he had not yet reached that level; always, he strived to improve his magic, but he knew his imagination and clarity of thought could not be opened to their fullest extent without this recognition of self, this seizure of the power of self-advancement in the face of one's greatest restraint—one's own mind. He could not fathom such an ultimate escape, even for a moment.
Voldemort raised his wand, if only to look at it. Power and self-advancement depended greatly on the self. Others could only move one so far. If he should defeat Dumbledore at this game—thereby striking the morale of those who fancied themselves "just" because they advocated distribution of power among the common, weak, and unlearned; thereby gaining a greater foothold in this sordid competition; thereby coming one step closer to ruling by magic and ruling by might—then he would necessarily have to make a move himself and cease relying on the efforts of others. Others were valuable, because one could certainly not do everything by oneself, but the main strike must be delivered by the mastermind of the operation. Otherwise, the opposition will not be faced with fear or challenge.
So he spoke, softly, almost off-handedly, "I will become Harry Potter." It seemed an appropriate move. The rightful questions now were 'when' and 'how?'
Harry Potter looked up at hearing his name.
"Yes?" he said. Dobby yelped as he fell out of the air, but he managed to right himself before landing on the wooden floor. Harry then seemed to register Voldemort's comment. "But how is you Harry Potter? Harry is Harry Potter. Only one Harry there is." he remarked sagely, in proper elf-English.
"Why don't we trade names?" Voldemort asked the boy, though he was hardly serious about the offer.
Harry wrinkled his little nose. "Harry is not wanting to be Lord Vol-de-mort." he replied. "Harry is being Harry Potter."
"Speak in first person, Potter." Voldemort corrected, scowling. "You're a wizard, not an elf."
"Harry Potter is not knowing Lord Vol-de-mort's meaning." said the boy cheekily. He was smirking in a way that only could have been achieved by spending far more time than was healthy in the company of Lord Voldemort.
"You know exactly what I mean." Voldemort brandished his wand threateningly, and Harry scowled. Recently, Voldemort had taken to casting stinging hexes at the boy whenever he was overly displeased, in an effort to emphasize that he was not Harry's friend, father, or whatever, but in fact a Dark Lord who did not put up with childish nonsense. Actually, Voldemort had had to put up with a large amount of childish nonsense—if anything good had come of it, at least his tolerance for stupidity had increased marginally, as he could not kill, torture, or otherwise fully express his annoyance at the boy for fear of causing a prophecy-related backlash. He especially could not have the boy growing up to hate him, and therefore tended to deal with Harry the same way he dealt with Dobby—a galleon a month, a glass of milk every day, suitable clothing and toys, and minimal polite consideration.
Stinging hexes, however, he allowed himself. He could not let the boy become too rowdy or disrespectful, after all—that would hardly be normal, and besides, Voldemort did not quite have that much self-restraint. Indeed, restraint was not exactly his strongest suit.
"I," Harry said after a moment of silence, emphasizing the pronoun greatly, "want noodles."
Voldemort sighed and flicked his wand, and Harry recoiled, rubbing the back of his hand with a huff and a pout.
"Repeat after me. I would like to eat noodles for lunch, please, my Lord." Voldemort instructed. Harry looked mutinous, and opened his mouth widely, undoubtedly ready to say something unflattering, before his eyes darted to Voldemort's wand again and he apparently thought better of it.
With a long-suffering sigh, Harry muttered very quickly, "I like to eat noodles at lunch please m'lord."
Voldemort was unimpressed, but he waved Harry out the door anyway, having had just about his daily quota of "childish nonsense."
"Tend to him, Dobby." he said, returning to his desk, though, given that there was nothing on it, the action was rather pointless.
"Right away, Dark Lord, sir." said the elf, who pointedly refused to call anyone "Master."
"Thank you." Voldemort remembered to say to Dobby, before the elf popped away.
Voldemort sat down and conjured a roll of parchment and a pot of ink, before withdrawing a quill from his pocket. He had always been horrible at imagining up functional quills, and so liked to have a real one, but for speculative notes the other materials were easily conjured. They would disappear after several days, but he could send the imprint of anything he had written to keep itself in his journal. After that, he could recover the information by spilling ink or any coloured liquid on the apparently blank pages and recalling the index he had assigned to that particular set of notes. It was the same mechanism by which he had kept his notes at school from his fifth year at Hogwarts on, after he had discovered the method from an old library book on study tips.
To prevent others from accessing its contents, he had even cast the very same enchantment on his diary; it had later become his first horcrux, though he somewhat regretted placing part of his soul in such a terribly fragile object. There were only so many protective enchantments one could put on something made of paper, and they hardly seemed enough for safeguarding a piece of his soul, though intellectually he knew that the probability of somebody attempting to cast Fiendfyre at or to stab an apparently empty journal with a large, sharp object coated in a highly caustic substance was very low.
"Transferring Identities," Voldemort wrote at the top of the page. He underlined it for good measure as he contemplated what to write next. Then he crossed the words out entirely; headings were pointless. He drew two small circles, labelled them "A" and "B," and connected them with an arrow. Then he scribbled out the labels and called the former "B," "Harry Potter," instead, and sketched a question mark beside the first circle.
"Harry Potter takes an unknown identity." Voldemort wrote "Muggleborn" next to the question mark, and then added "Harold or Henry." He drew another circle for himself and several more arrows. "Lord Voldemort takes the identity of unknown muggleborn named Harold or Henry and gives it to Harry Potter." Voldemort wrote "GIVES" and circled it. It was probably possible, yes, but he only had the beginnings of a conjecture as to how he might go about doing such a thing. Then he idly underlined "Muggleborn," frowning. Finding a muggleborn who was not yet of Hogwarts age would be difficult, and finding one with the proper name would be even worse. Of course, he could forego the similar name entirely, but, knowing the contrariness and plainness of Harry Potter, the boy would either refuse to use another name or simply forget his new one at the worst possible time. "James?" Voldemort added; it was Harry's middle name, after all.
Stealing the identity would not be too difficult. Voldemort would only need to know the target's name and be in close enough proximity to cast the spell, and then he could simply force his will on the victim to take his name. He would also have to somehow inconspicuously kill the unlucky muggleborn in order to ensure that a magical school did not find a child with no name—the owls would go to all children between eleven and twelve years of age who emitted magic, but again, the enrolment list would only accept people's real names, so not getting rid of the victim was out of the question, but Voldemort was hardly inexperienced at murdering and covering up any evidence.
There was a noticeable "pop" of displaced air, and then Dobby appeared, floppy-eared and wide-eyed in its wake, perched on the desk and nose pressed uncomfortably close to Voldemort's face. Thankfully, he was used to the elf's incorrigible antics, and only stiffened slightly.
"Lunch is ready, sir Dark Lord." said Dobby.
"Thank you. I will be right down." Voldemort replied, indicating with a glare that Dobby should disapparate, which the elf did immediately. Scowling at the mess of shapes and scribbles on his parchment, Voldemort flicked his wand and vanished the entire affair without recording it. He might as well get to lunch. He did not operate well on an empty stomach.
Honestly, he wanted noodles too.
A/N: And identity theft just got real. You all ought to be careful about giving out your full names. Muahaha... In other news, a thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, favorited (what a silly verb), followed, or otherwise interacted with the story! Also, I remind you to point out any errors that annoy you, or complain about errors in general; I do not have a beta, and most of the time I am too lazy to more than cursorily edit what I write.