Disclaimer: O Rowling, Rowling! Wherefore am I not Rowling? Sadly I'm not her
And I didn't write Harry Potter
A\N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed\followed\faved! If there are any spelling errors it's probably because I was watching Coraline while I wrote...
Chapter 2 – In which Harry makes a fuss, the Death Eaters don't swear, and Snape babysits
"Next!" hissed Voldemort, gesturing for Rookwood to take the useless man back to the dungeons. Wormtail, in the meanwhile, brought another prisoner in the room. He was a short, plump man with dirty blonde hair and a disgustingly freckled face. The Dark Lord bound him with a flick of his wand, eliciting a frightened wimper, then laid back in his seat and nodded toward Yaxley.
"Who is this one?" he asked softly, trying not to look as tired as he felt. The Death Eaters around him weren't much better, everyone yawning, rubbing their eyes and trying hard not to nodd off.
"He's Jack MacKinnon," whispered Yaxley reading his notes "brother of Edgar McKinnon... the guy Harry offed last time...he's thirty-nine, part of the Order of the Phoenix, married, and has a sweet tooth, especially for Peppermint Toads and Sugar Quills"
"Well then, Dolohov, do your worst and pry out some information. Quietly"
"Yes, my Lord"
Even the usually blood-thirsty Dolohov didn't seem to be up to the effort of torture, and that became especially obvious when he kneeled until he was face-level with the prisoner and held up three fingers.
"Listen here, McKinnon. I give you three bags of Peppermint Toads, and you tell me where Dumbledore's hiding, yeah?"
McKinnon gaped.
"Come on," scowled Dolohov "I'll even throw in a bag of Sugar Quills, what do you say?"
McKinnon shot a terrified look around and started screaming at the top of his lungs. "You...you're crazy...You're all crazy! Let me go! Someone help me! Let me go!"
A second later, every Death Eater had their wand at the prisoner's throat.
"Silencio! You little bastard" hissed Macnair ferociously "what do you think you're doing, uh? Disregarding people's damn efforts, is it?"
Mulciber leaned in with blood-shot eyes, so close to McKinnon that he was spitting in his face. "Do you know what that is?" he pointed jerkily at Harry's crib in the corner of the room "It's a damn crib, that's what it is. With a baby inside. Now, how many hours do you think we've spent to put him to sleep?"
"Two days, you piece of shit," said Dolohov, pointing at the huge bags under his eyes "We haven't slept for two days to put him to sleep. What if you had wakened him?"
By now, if McKinnon had still his voice, he'd have probably been screaming his throat raw.
"And they call us the bad guys...what about this scum? Who wakes a sleeping baby?"
"Yeah, I bet he kicks puppies in his spare time!"
"That fluffy idiot! I can't believe he bought baby food for the wrong age" complained Macnair trying to feed Harry and being spit all over instead.
Voldemort didn't know if he was more disgusted by the spitting, the idiocy of one Crabbe senior or the 'fluffy'.
"Nott, is that milk ready? What the fudge is taking you so long, you son of a biscuit?"
"Just a second, for duck's sake...I can't find my wand, has someone seen it?"
"It's here, you marshmellow-head!"
Mulciber must have noticed the look of intense confusion on the Dark Lord's face, because he hurried to explain.
"It was Dolohov's idea, my Lord...no swearing around the baby, and all that. So we substitute the bad words with child-friendly ones"
"Well," he said hesitantly. "you should know that when you talk like that you're mother-puppy disturbing"
Everyone looked at him. There was something deeply unsettling about hearing words like 'puppy' come out of Lord Voldemort's mouth.
"Ah-ha, I finally caught you," taunted triumphally Rookwood as he managed to body-bind an Order member.
"Elphias! Just let me finish with Yaxley and I will help!" screamed another one of Dumbledore's puppets in the chaos.
"It's no use and you know it," yelled back Rookwood laughing sadistically "once I get them, I never let go, especially this sugarplumming son of a cupcake!"
Everyone stopped doing what they were doing to look at him. Friends and foes alike stopped fighting to stare at Rookwood with the same creeped out, disbelieving expressions.
"I...uh..the baby!...it's not...I'm not...I don't... Dammit. Can we pretend that didn't just happen?"
"Yeah, well" said Elphias Doge, who would have scratched his head if he hadn't been bound. "We can, but it's a bit hard taking you seriously right now...I mean, 'sugarplumming'? 'Son of a cupcake'? Really?"
Snape had been on his way to go to Dumbledore and either cry on the old man's shoulder or kill him or both, when he'd received Voldemort's message. He had kept the child because of an accident involving his soul. Snape had then changed his plans and got back to headquartes.
What he wondered was when his plans had changed to babysitting Harry. The only thing he knew was that when the Dark Lord had given him that task, he had answered with something profoundly intellectual, like "nguh".
He didn't know how he felt about the entire ordeal yet, and adding a baby to the mix was not a great way to shed light on things. In general, however, he felt eerily calm. It might have been the shock, of course, but he felt like his sadness for Lily's death was balanced by James's, which made him quite happy, so that in the end he didn't feel anything.
The only problem was their son.
The child was peacefully sleeping, and Snape hoped he would have stayed that way, because at the moment he wasn't sure if he hated him for being Potter's son or loved him for being Lily's.
He bent over the crib, and watched the infant sleep tightly. He was envelopped in pure black covers, hugging a human skull, and using Nagini as a pillow. Snape suddenly understood.
This was no child of Lily's or of James'.
This was a hundred percent the Dark Lord's.
A couple of hours later, Snape was ready to carve out his eyeballs and eat them with a sprinkle of salt and a sidedish of salad.
Harry was throwing a tantrum. Point was, Snape couldn't understand what it was about. So he had called the...experts. Or at any rate, people with more experience than him.
"Hmm," said Narcissa pensievely, listening to Harry's wails. "I think he's bored. Bella, sing him something"
"Me?... Alright," a huge, insane grin made its way through her face as she started singing some traditional nursery rhymes. Or something like that.
"Mary had a little knife, little knife, little knife, Mary had a little knife, its blade was sharp and steel. Everywhere that Mary went, Mary went, Mary went, everywhere that Mary went, she was sure to kill. She brought it to school one day –"
"Okay, okey, stop," interrupted Snape, with a wrinkle between his eyebrows that cracked his sardonic expression. "That will be enough, and to spare. I think it's better if you two go"
He pushed the two Black sisters out and closed the door behind them.
He looked at Harry, who seemed al little curious about what was happening but ready to revert to the screaming, and wondered what Bella was thinking. What kind of things was she singing? What was he going to grow into, if people like Bella were his rolemodels? 'Mary had a little knife'...of all the foolishness!
Snape cleared his throat purposefully.
Afterall, if he wanted something done, he had to do it himself.
He leaned in towards Harry.
"Peter Peter, people eater, had a chainsaw long a metre, slaughter slaughter, so divine, cook and roast and serve with wine..."
Harry squealed and wriggled his fingers in pleasure.
Snape smirked smugly. Now he made a fine nanny, if he said so himself.
It was the middle of the night when everyone was about to throw in the towel. Harry couldn't be calmed down in any way. They had tried everything from feeding him, to changing his nappy, to giving him his favourite dark artifact... Bellatrix had even sung him 'Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen', but even that hadn't worked.
He waved his tiny little fists in the air, and continued screaming like he had for the last three hours, ignoring the Death Eaters' attempts to soothe him and make him go back to sleep. He wailed, and bawled, and generally made a racket, and nothing seeming to calm him.
Just when everything seemed lost, the door opened, and Voldemort entered regally, slowly making his way to the crib.
His stony expression betrayed nothing of what he thought of the ruckus.
He glanced at the screaming infant.
Harry immediately quieted.
The Death Eaters turned to look at one other, everyone with a stunned and extremely awed expression. They could have kissed him for the miracle he'd worked, and seeing as the man was a bald humanoid snake without a nose, that was saying something.
"That's our Lord," whispered Avery, eyes brimming with awe and pride. These were the times they remembered why they had chosen a life of crime, danger and Crucios voluntarily. "His aura of evil is so overpowering that when babies see him, they stop crying"
"It will be simple," explained Voldemort matter-of-factly, pacing back and forth, brisk like a war general but betrayed by the magalomaniac glint in his eyes. "Once we have seized control of Britain, conquering Spain and France will be easily done by kidnapping or blackmailing some diplomats. As more and more becomes mine, the other European countries will surrender like the mindless, weak sheep they are,"
He unrolled a world map and magically glued it to the wall, then he used his wand to point at the places.
"Europe acquired, you realize that there are still four more continents to go. The best way to proceed at this stage is seeding doubt and instilling fear of each other in their hearts. Of course, I have taken into consideration that they could form some sort of alliance or coalition, but I reckon that their weak nature and mutual distrust will be enough to ensure that they don't interfere. As for America, they are disorganised but powerful, but still, I have enough minions for that, and I plan to reclute more. The plans for Africa are still in progress. Any questions?"
"Gahoo"
"'Gahoo'?" asked Voldemort, a bit insulted. "I lay down my best plans for world domination and that's what you say? 'Gahoo'?"
Harry giggled.