Part Seven: Who's Your Daddy?

HerMany Loves
Part 7
Who’s Your Daddy?

Voldebby sat up in the porta-crib. She hadn’t slept much last night, and she was tired, cranky and needed a diaper change.

She raised one of her matchstick legs and attempted to lift it over the edge of her padded prison. The crib was just too tall. Voldebby huffed in frustration and tried again with her opposite leg. She could only manage to get one of her elongated pale gray toes over the precipice.

Voldebby was only one year old, but she knew more about magic than any of her brothers. She was part house-elf, and house-elves boasted unexplored wizardly ability. The house-elf blood gave her keen eyesight, great hearing and annoyingly skinny legs.

She never heard the name of her other possible dad; her mother never mentioned him. However, Voldebby was often told her she had her unmentionable father’s nose. Almost everyone she met told her such; Fathers nose this, fathers nose that… yadda yadda yadda… It was really quite annoying, to be told you had someone’s nose; a someone that no one would mention.

Her youngest brother, Dra-ville, was the only one of the clan that showed magical talents, and she had taught him all he knew. Unfortunately, her penchant for speaking did not equal her intellect. Every spell she tried to cast verbally went awry; so at six months she had taught herself non-verbal incantations, allowing her to survive the dysfunctional life into which she had been born.

She peered through the polyester mesh and surveyed her surroundings. The room was spartan, furnished only by a queen sized bed and a peeling chest of drawers. On the bed lay a tall thin man still in his cloak. He was snoring loudly.

Her orb-like green eyes focused on the chest of drawers. There was a half empty glass of water, a semi-chewed pack of Juicy Fruit gum, a fork, a tankard of frog spawn and a wand.

Voldebby looked at the man sleeping in the bed, then looked back at the dresser. The man rolled over, snorting uncomfortably, and nuzzled deep into the pillow. The man’s hood shifted, partially revealing his face. Voldebby stared at the man, her expression a frozen mask of discovery.

His skin was pallid gray.

His nose… was two slits plastered against his horribly disfigured face.

Fabrico speculum! she chanted telepathically. A mirror materialized in her knobby hand. She peered into the reflective surface, running her hands over her face in wonder. She touched her slit-like nostrils, comparing them to the nose holes of the sleeping man. They were the same.

The man on the bed shifted again, grinding his face into the pillow, curling into a fetal position. He mumbled incoherently to himself as the thin polyester sheet fell from his body, and he shivered slightly.

He was gruesome, possibly the most evil wizard in the world, and he smelled bad.

Voldebby could not help herself. She felt a violent surge of love for the prone man, and with a wave of her misshapen hand, placed the sheet back over his shivering form.

She peered over the top of the porta-crib and stared at the wand on the peeling chest of drawers. Accio wand! she thought. The wand flew off the bureau and into her grip.

Voldebby examined the wand, which vibrated slightly in her pallid fist. A pale green glow emanated from the wand and enveloped her fingers, creeping up her arm until it surrounded her whole body. Voldebby felt light headed as she elevated out of the baby confinement unit and floated gently to the floor.

Voldebby felt a powerful urge to make something for the repugnant snoring man that may be her other father. She toddled silently to the kitchen and saw a paper grocery bag on a table littered with debris. She climbed on a chair and dragged the bag to the edge, scattering several objects off the table. They tumbled to the floor with a mighty noise. She sucked in her breath, hoping she hadn’t awakened the monstrous entity in the other room. A loud snoring grunt was the answer to her worries, and she let out her breath in relief.

Luckily for her, one of the things that fell off the table was a 65 count box of Crayola Crayons. They lay on the floor spread in a rainbow of disorganization. She also found a pair of bright pink safety scissors. She wondered briefly why an evil Dark Lord would have pink safety scissors, then pushed the thought out of her mind as she started creating her masterpiece.

In no time at all, she had constructed a perfect replica of a pirate ship out of the grocery bag, complete with flags and crows nest. She made several miniature Death Eaters, all wearing cloaks, and scattered them around the deck of the ship. She thought this would please her daddy. For a finishing touch, she constructed a dark mark out of the twist ties that fell off the table. She colored her dark mark with green crayons, and twisted it to the highest sail of the ship, giving it an illusion of hanging in mid-air.

She sat back to admire her handiwork, when she heard a key turning in the front door. Panicking, she ran under the coffee table. A very handsome blond young man came through the door, sighing heavily as he emptied his pockets onto the cluttered table. He removed his cloak and draped it over an exposed roofing nail that jutted out from the paneled wall.
Sighing again, he opened the refrigerator, extracting a fierce grape Gatorade with a twist top, and plopped down on a worn out recliner.

He groped around the cushions of the chair, as if searching for something. “Where is that remote?” he grumbled.

Voldebby covered her large bat-like ears as the young man spewed profanities and walked purposefully toward the bedroom down the hall.

“Oh Tommmmyyyy!” the blond hunk sang angrily as he approached the master bedroom.

“AUUUGGGGHHHHHHHH!” came an anguished cry from the bedroom. The blond guy looked worried.

“Tommy, what’s wrong?”

“SHE’S GONE! SHE WAS JUST IN HER CRIB, AND NOW SHE’S GONE!” bellowed the man who’s name was apparently Tommy. “And do not call me Tommy!” ordered the man, in a calmer tone.

“Is Tommykins okay?” the blond man snickered, “How ‘bout Voldiekins or Voldy-woldy!”

“AAARRRGGggggh!” screamed Tommy Tommykins Voldy-woldy. “Draco Malfoy, if you were not so dead sexy, I would Crucio your buttocks!”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Draco swore sibilantly under his breath.

“WHAT did you say?”

“Oh nothing…” Draco simpered. “Any way, what am I doing standing on this side of the door when we both should be looking for that smelly gray weird looking kid.”

“DO NOT TALK ABOUT MY DAUGHTER THAT WAY!” shouted the Dark Lord, reaching for his wand to curse the infuriating man, realizing the wand was missing.

“She MIGHT be your daughter Voldiekins, (snicker) you can not be sure yet, you still need to do the paternity test.”

Draco tried to sound assuring, but only succeeded in further infuriating His Evilship.

Voldy-poo let out the breath he had been holding and opened the door. “You are right, let us look for her. She must be somewhere near, I can smell her. By the way, did you succeed in finding her dragon?”

“Um…” Draco hesitated.

“Um… WHAT?” Voldemort drilled.

“Um… Sir?” Draco asked in a hopeful tone, cowering slightly.

“AARRRrrggghhhh!” Tommykins screamed in frustration.

Voldebbys’ ears perked. The stinky man said “AARRRrrggghhh!” and AARRRrrggghhh! is what pirates say! He HAD to be her other unmentionable daddy! She extricated herself from under the table and thrust the brown paper bag pirate ship towards him, beaming with pride.

Tommy the stinky man looked down at her. Draco looked down at her. Both men blinked.

Suddenly, Voldemort’s chin began to tremble. He scooped up Voldebby and hugged her tight to his chest, crushing the paper pirate ship between them. Through choked sobs he scolded; “NEVER… *sniff*… scare…*hiccup*… me…*snort*… like… *nose blowing sound*… that!”

Voldemort’s wand lay under the table. It felt very lonely. It was the wand of a dark wizard, and this particular dark wizard was known for his inability to love. Well now, thought the wand sarcastically to itself, Looks like mister ‘I can’t love anything or anybody’ has finally learned to love… Anger bubbled up in the wand like a neglected pot of chicken noodle soup festering on the stove, and it began vibrating with fury. Every vile unforgivable curse it could think of erupted from its tip and ricocheted around the room.

Voldemort sheltered the pallid child with his body and dove behind the la-z-boy, which subsequently exploded in a shower of shredded foam and pseudo- velvet upholstery. A sinister jet of bright orange light grazed Draco’s ear, instantly turning it into a potato. The potato began to sprout. Draco collapsed to the floor, rolling in agony.

Unfortunately for the wand, Voldebby’s conjured mirror lay close by. The tell-tale green jet of the Avada Kedavra curse flew straight towards the reflective surface and rebounded on the wand, which instantly disintegrated.

Silence enveloped the room. Voldebby picked up the tick tock of a clock somewhere, the strangled gasps of Draco as he tried to extract the potato from his ear and the buzz of a fly as it tried desperately to exit the house through a solid pane of glass. She turned around and saw her tall, stinky otherdaddy sprawled behind what remained of the la-z-boy, unconscious.