Voldemort woke bright and early the next day, at about three o’clock in the morning, having temporarily forgotten about Alanna Black’s visit the night before. He quickly went through his morning routine:

He took a shower without using any soap. He did, however, use lots and lots of shampoo, making sure his scalp was carefully and thoroughly cleaned, in case of any stray hairs that he hoped might be growing there. He was quite jealous of Lucius’s silky blond tresses, which the man was constantly flipping back or brushing or doing something just as disgustingly pretty with. Voldemort had the feeling that Lucius knew exactly how this made him feel, so every morning he would inspect his bald head hopefully, praying that some lone hair would have sprung up in the night.

Next, Voldemort put on a new pair of robes, the ones with the blood-red cuffs. He would have been the first to say that he was not a vain man, but a person had to look his best to inspire followers. Especially when that person happened to be completely bald.

He called for Wormtail, who lived in the closet, to get him his three cups of coffee. He normally had bitter black coffee, but on this particular day, he found the taste revolting. Not even Mr. Tibbins would like that rubbish! He made a mental note to get a better flavor of coffee soon �” French vanilla, perhaps.

Voldemort quickly scanned through the Morning Prophet, occasionally blasting a hole through the paper wherever he read the words “Harry Potter,” “happy,” “bunnies,” “Department of Mysteries,” or “hair.”

Finally, just before setting off out the door, he shouted into Wormtail’s ear, “You had better not be late this time, Wormtail; I’m holding a conference at two and there will be hell to pay if you’re even one second late!”

Wormtail cringed visibly, rubbing his ears, and earned himself a Cruciatus Curse from his master.

Voldemort was not a morning person.

He left Wormtail whimpering on the floor and impatiently hurried out of the cave.

Well, it wasn’t really a cave, technically. Voldemort had chosen the darkest alley in London, found the darkest and gloomiest house there, and set up his lair inside the house. Since there was no real cave in the vicinity, he’d decided to redecorate to make the house’s interior look like the slimiest, most cavelike cave that had ever existed. Of course, the electric lights did detract somewhat from the overall effect, but it was either that or sunlight, and Voldemort hated sunlight just as much as a bat.

So the lair was a bit isolated from his followers, true, but he had Wormtail to wait on him hand and foot. It was such a pleasure having a sniveling coward like him always around to bully. Voldemort didn’t know what he’d do without him.

Voldemort walked through the alley and reached another connecting alley that was slightly disjointed from the main street. There he reached his transportation to work: a forbidding black carriage pulled by two hooded Dementors. It had been quite a hassle negotiating with the creatures, but in the end they’d agreed to serve as his personal horses. He did pay them very handsomely, after all; one soul a day was a feast compared to what they’d gotten in Azkaban. It was an enormous task for Voldemort, though. It was getting harder and harder to find disloyal Death Eaters among his staff to sacrifice to the carriage-pullers, and lately he’d had to resort to making a list of the less loyal ones and randomly choosing one every day. But the cost was worth it. Voldemort refused to go to work in anything less than style.

Too bad Lucius isn’t on the list, that bloody mass of hair gel, Voldemort thought sourly, staring out the tinted glass windows of the carriage.

They reached the Ministry of Magic within ten minutes. Voldemort stopped the Dementors on a dark street, just a little ways away from the dilapidated telephone booth that served as the Ministry entrance, and stepped out of the carriage. He glanced about shiftily as he used his wand to lift a large block of stone out of the pavement, revealing a deep, dark tunnel leading straight down. Voldemort quickly climbed in and began to climb down the wet, slippery rungs of the ladder that was built into the side of the tunnel.

He reached the bottom easily. He stopped there, in a small, round chamber, to catch his breath for a moment. As he leaned against the wall, he happened to notice a small, yellow rubber duck sitting in a pool of slimy water. Stupid Snape... How many times have I told him not to leave his bath toys down here once he’s finished? He bad-temperedly kicked the duck into a corner, where it gave off a loud squeak, then fell silent. Voldemort scowled at it.

He quickly left the chamber and entered the Ministry building by means of a series of hidden passageways twisting through the walls, finally exiting one tunnel �” covered by a life-size portrait of the first Obliviator, Mnemone Radford �” in front of a small supply closet.

It had been a stroke of genius on his part, placing Death Eater headquarters in the very core of the Ministry. Nobody would have suspected that behind the closet door lay a network of cubicles and office rooms, at least not by looking at the outside. So far they hadn’t been discovered, although there had been that one incident with the janitor...

Voldemort entered the “closet” and was immediately met by Bellatrix Lestrange, whom he had made his secretary. “Good morning, my lord!” she said brightly. “I have your schedule all made up. It had a little accident, but now it’s alright... I put it on your desk...”

“Ah. Thank you, Bella,” Voldemort said, allowing himself a moment of apprehension of what exactly the “little accident” was. Bellatrix tended to be too accident-prone for her own good, like that whole thing with the Order of the Phoenix two years ago. If it weren’t for the fact that she baked the best Dark Lord’s Dark Chocolate Cookies this side of the tunnel, she would have been fed to the Dementors long ago. “Remind everyone that I have a conference at two o’clock, just after lunch,” he continued. “Let them know that any stragglers will be the next to give my Dementors their paychecks.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Voldemort smirked to himself and, walking through several deserted corridors, reached his office. The nameplate on the door read simply “Dark Lord HQ.” He had decorated the interior very lavishly, however, covering both the ceiling and walls with a glossy black paint that was so shiny he could see his reflection in it. He didn’t polish it himself, of course; he had Wormtail do that, six times a week. It made Voldemort giggle when he watched Wormtail polish it. He was not built for such work, and was always falling off the ladder, or dropping the polish, or stubbing his toes on various objects that seemed to appear out of nowhere. This made Voldemort giggle even more, even as he pointed his wand from under the table.

The office’s desk was black. The chairs were made of a luxurious black leather, and the snake basket on the floor was dyed black. Nagini was absent at the moment, but Voldemort was sure she was off eating some mouse, or a smelly sock, or an Animagus rat or something. She was very handy for exterminating vermin.

A few posters were stretched across the walls. The two largest were of The Weird Brothers and Simon Cowell, Voldemort’s hero. Most of the Dark Lord’s favorite insults �” like “That was terrible” and “I think you're possibly the worst singer in the world,” which often confused his minions �” had been gleaned from the Pop Idol judge, whom he’d first seen the time he’d used his Time-Turner to see what the twenty-first century was like. But the other posters... the other posters were all of Harry Potter. Harry Potter fighting, Harry Potter playing Quidditch, Harry Potter posing... and each and every one of them sported a markered mustache and beard.

The wall behind the desk, however, was completely covered by a huge portrait of Lord Voldemort himself. His big scarlet eyes were positioned perfectly so as to glare at anyone who came in the door. The portrait was Voldemort’s pride and joy �” he’d been so happy with it that he’d refrained from killing the painter, and even paid him for it.

Voldemort went around his desk and sat down in his black leather armchair. He flicked on his polished Evil-I Wizarding computer (which he had gotten at thirty percent off from a computer salesman). Looking down at the desktop, he quickly noticed a severely burned piece of parchment that was ripped in two places. Someone had even tried to tape it back together, but the damage was painfully obvious.

“I’m surrounded by idiots,” Voldemort muttered. What a wonderful line! he thought excitedly, straightening up. It sounds like it should be in a film! Just the right line for an evil villain to say about his pathetic henchmen! I’d better write that down so I don’t forget it...

After writing down the fantastically great quote, Voldemort turned back to the slightly smoking parchment. After looking it over a few times, he realized that this was all that remained of his schedule for the day. “‘A little accident’?” he said sourly, wrinkling the flat piece of skin he called his nose. “A little accident is someone dipping an edge of it in coffee or running over it with a muddy bulldozer... But this! What did she do, feed it to a dragon?”

He picked it up with four fingers and squinted at it, trying to make out the singed words. After a few minutes of turning it this way and that, he could finally read through Bella’s “little accident.”

Wednesday Schedule
Come up with at least one new method of torturing Potter
Pep talk to Death Eaters at eight
Choose wizard home for next week’s raid
Lunch
Conference meeting in the Green Room at two
Walk Nagini
Inspirational reading of ‘Magick Moste Evile’
Assorted torturing, killing, terrorizing, etc.

Voldemort had made up his own schedules, so, naturally, they included his favorite things to do. Villainous overlords often had a lot of time on their pale, spider-like hands.

He blew on the smoking parchment, and it immediately crumbled into ash. Then, with an exasperated sigh at Bella’s incompetence, he set to work on the first item of his incinerated schedule.

By eight o’clock, he had invented a completely new sort of torture: whipping Potter with a giant tagliatelle noodle. After making a diagram and several charts of his brilliant idea, Voldemort gathered all his Death Eaters for their weekly pep talk. He told them how stupid they were, how a snail could work ten times faster than they could, and how they would never learn to kill someone properly. He soon demonstrated by killing a front-row Death Eater unlucky enough to be caught dozing during his rant.

When the “pep talk” was over, Voldemort decided to skip the next order of business and instead go fiddle around with his computer, which he hadn’t quite gotten the hang of yet. He ended up playing Tetris until lunch, which turned out to be one of Bella’s large Dark Lord cookies, baked in the shape of Harry Potter’s head. He enjoyed demolishing it.

At last it was two o’clock. Voldemort went to the green conference room and sat waiting for the elite of his Death Eaters to arrive. After three minutes and twenty-nine seconds he grew bored. Where are they? They’d better hurry up, or I’m going to have to dole out some Crucios... he thought irritably.

At last they entered the large room, and true to form they all came in a big clump of black robes and silver masks, assuring that there would be no stragglers. The Death Eaters, of whom there were about a dozen, silently assembled around the long table. The only ones missing were Bellatrix, who was out killing a Muggle who had spoken to her on the street, and Wormtail. A moment later, just when Voldemort was considering feeding Wormtail’s favorite teddy bear to Nagini when he got home, the man himself dashed into the room in a flurry of papers.

Voldemort watched impassively as the short man raced to his master and knelt at his feet. “I am so sorry, my lord, I had a bit of trouble with the hairdryer and lost track of the time...”

Voldemort stared down his absent nose at Wormtail, who fell silent. “You’re very late,” the Dark Lord said coldly. He stood suddenly and towered above the sniveling henchman. The other Death Eaters watched apprehensively.

“A hairdryer,” said Voldemort quietly, “is no good reason to miss work, Wormtail.” At least you get to use a hairdryer... “I have no choice... but to punish you...”

Wormtail cowered at his feet, waiting for the Unforgivable Curse that was sure to come. And he wasn’t disappointed. Voldemort sent a quick Cruciatus at him, then coolly sat down as if nothing were wrong. All the other Death Eaters watched expressionlessly as Wormtail shivered on the floor �” at least, all except Lucius Malfoy, who was filing his fingernails in a slightly bored manner. Voldemort scowled at him, thinking, I REALLY hate that guy. He’s only doing that because he knows he’s too important for me to feed to the Dementors! I oughta �”

Voldemort silently steamed in his tall armchair at the head of the table. The watching Death Eaters seemed to grow more and more nervous, until one of them finally, tentatively, raised one hand.

“What?” Voldemort snapped.

“I �” I need to go to the men’s room,” the man mumbled.

Voldemort thought derisively that it was lucky the Death Eater were able to go to the men’s room, as he’d had a few last week accidentally stammer that they had to go to the ladies’ room, and he dismissed the man with a careless wave of his hand. But then, as the henchman nearly ran out the door, at least half a dozen more hands went up, and without waiting to be excused most of the assembled Death Eaters rushed out the door.

Within seconds, the only ones left in the room were Voldemort, Wormtail, and Lucius. The blond man shook back his long hair and asked lethargically, “So, I suppose the conference is over, my lord?”

Voldemort snorted and, standing, quickly left the green room.

His mood was officially spoiled for the rest of the day; so, after taking Nagini out on her walk, he decided to skip the rest of his burnt schedule and go home. As he headed out the door, he thought of something else, and told the somewhat bloodied Bella that he would be spending the next day at home.

“Alright, my Dark Lord,” she said cheerfully, wiping her hands off on her robes. “I’m sure we’ll all miss you!”

Voldemort very much doubted this, and darkly wondered whether Wormtail would even come back to the “cave” that night.