Rated: Fiction T - English - Humor - Chapters: 75 - Words: 74,437 - Reviews: 125 - Favs: 81 - Follows: 79 - Updated: Dec 16 - Published: Jan 18, 2016 - id: 11739934
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"Voldemort watched the little scene go down with rapt interest. He always enjoyed phycology . . ." –jCOOLn, "Young Lord"
Bellatrix Lestrange knocked lightly on the lintel of the laboratory door. "My Lord?" she said. "Dolohov brought in another batch of Muggle prisoners, if you…"
"Oh, yes, of course," said Voldemort. "Have him shoot them into the parlour, and I'll attend to them momentarily."
He raised his head from his microscope, and heaved a contented sigh. "You know, I really am a most fortunate man," he said. "All these chances to viciously murder people, torture them into madness, watch mortal fear expose the venal bestiality within them… and then, when I'm tired of that, I can come in here and study the effects of ultraviolet light on Nereocystis seaweed. What more could one ask of life?"
Bellatrix smiled a little ruefully. She would have liked, herself, to be the something more he asked – but she knew it could never be. In the Dark Lord's heart, there was room for only two loves: the Unforgivable Curses and experimental phycology.
"What, indeed, My Lord?" she said. "What, indeed?"
"The ceremony was beautiful and her parents cried. They were the only [M]uggles present and all in all they were about twenty guests." –misgiving, "Wedding Blues"
"Winky!" Dobby exclaimed. "You has not set enough places for Miss Granger's parents!"
Winky stared. "They is more than two guests?" she said.
"They is about twenty," said Dobby. "Does you not know? Miss Granger is being born to a Bari woman and her three paramours, adopted by a Muslim dentist and his four wives, and abducted when she is six years old by a robber band and raised as their collective daughter. That is why she is so clever," he added knowingly. "Peoples from unconventional backgrounds is always having more intellectual stimulation and broader horizons than is the benighted products of the traditional family."
Winky sniffed. "Who is telling you that, Dobby?" she said.
"Miss Granger is," said Dobby. "And she is having nineteen parents, so it must be true. Now quick, Winky, the extra napkin rings!"
"We need to have a long overdue discussion[,] young lay, but it can wait until after lunch." –Scififan33, "A Plea for Help Can Change Lives"*
"Now, then," said Mrs Granger, pulling her daughter off the bookshelf and gazing down at her sternly, "what's this I hear about you and the young Malfoy novel?"
Hermione ruffled her pages sheepishly. "Well, you know," she murmured, "we are Head Boy and Girl this year, and he is very… I mean, that dust-jacket illustration of his, it just…" She swallowed, and gazed up at her mother with tremulous Russian-woodcut eyes. "You don't approve?"
Mrs Granger shook her head. "I may be only a Muggle, darling," she said, "but I still knew, the day I gave birth to a sapient leather-bound edition of The Lay of the Warfare Waged by Igor, that she was destined for something special. I'm not going to stand by and let her squander herself on some common bodice-ripper with a fancy cover and a nice house."
Hermione sighed. "No, I suppose not," she said. "But it was nice, all the same. Do you know what he said to me at the Halloween Feast? 'Finally it is our long-awaited meeting-night. May the autumn mists spread across the river of Heaven, that dawn may never come!'"
"Pshaw," said Mrs Granger. "He cribbed that out of that Goyle friend of his. Don't you know tanka poetry when you hear it?"
"Severus Snape finds himself sentenced to community work for his pas mistakes . . ." –charlottenbronte, summary to "Severus Snape's Sea Change"
Bartemius Crouch glowered down at the prisoner before him. "Severus Snape," he said. "You have been brought here before the Council of Magical Law to receive sentence for your appalling crimes against wizardkind. Have you anything to say in your defence?"
"Need I bother?" said Snape. "You've already heard Professor Dumbledore's testimony that I'd renounced the Death Eaters and joined his side; if he didn't persuade you, I hardly can."
Crouch stared. "Death Eaters?" he said. "What have the Death Eaters to do with anything?"
Snape blinked. "Well… my crimes against wizardkind…"
"Just so," said Crouch. "We have heard the evidence against you; no fewer than seventy people can testify that, on 28 February 1975, while appearing in a Hogwarts student performance of Swan Lake, you made three separate missteps during the Black Swan Pas de Deux, causing your partner to visibly stumble and inspiring the onlookers to muffled giggles."
"Oh," said Snape. "Well… yes, that's true. But…"
"But nothing!" Crouch snapped, leaning red-faced out of his chair and thrusting an accusing finger forward. "They giggled, Snape! At one of the great musical achievements of Western civilisation! Because of you! You foul little verminous greaseball, I ought to blow your brains out your ears right where you stand!"
With a visible effort, he got sufficient control of himself to add, "Unfortunately, the misguided clemency of the jury won't permit me to give you anything worse than five years' community service." He rapped his gavel, his hand still trembling. "It is so ruled. Now get out of my sight before I vomit."
As Snape nodded and hurried out of the courtroom, he heard the bailiff announce behind him, "Next case! Mistress Narcissa Malfoy, née Black, convicted of missing the high F above high C while performing 'Il dolce suono mi colpì di sua voce'!"
*Sorting-Head tip to Renee .Sarah† for locating this passage.
†See third footnote of chapter 22.
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