Voldemort's ultimate downfall (long)

[pigwidgeon37]

Hi all,
as I suppose I would be flamed and howler-ed to death if I posted 
this on te main list, I'll just put it here, hopefully for your 
amusement. It ties in very well with Tabouli's colourful theories 
about Featherless Phoenixes etc. (It's a piece of a small ficlet I 
just finished, but never fear, it's neither slash nor OOC, just fun).
And, of course, dedicated to Tabouli.
The person who speaks is Snape, the other one is a Muggle called 
Charlotte who has just given him some veritaserum diluted in orange 
juice:

Leaning back comfortably in his chair, Snape said: "Voldemort's 
downfall? Oh that wasn't as difficult as it seemed." 
He paused, swallowed, and looked at Charlotte. "I didn't want to say 
that. How on earth
?" Then the coin dropped. "You went through my 
pockets? How dare you, you
 How much did you give me?"
"Five drops", Charlotte said, grinning like mad, "How long will the 
effect last?"
"About an hour, I think.- You goddamned hag, I'll jinx you for this!" 
She put a soothing hand on his arm. "Later, later. Don't worry, I'm 
not going to ask you any embarrassing questions- if you behave, that 
is", she added wickedly. "Now just tell me about Voldemort. What was 
the mission Dumbledore entrusted to you? Was it dangerous?"
"Not dangerous, no, just a bit iffy. There's this mad scientist type, 
Jeroboam Twiggle, who back in the old days used to work for the Dark 
Lord. After Voldemort's first downfall, he got caught and was taken 
to Azkaban. For once, the ministry was smart enough to see a little 
further than the tips of their noses, and so they didn't throw him to 
the Dementors, but instead let him continue his research, under close 
observation, of course, but anyway. For Twiggle, the only thing that 
counted was his work- he didn't mind whether it was for Voldemort or 
for the ministry. He had invented the first time turner, which was 
already brilliant, but now he was working on an updated version that 
would allow to travel not only into the past, but into the future as 
well. Rumours had it that Twiggle had achieved his goal just a few 
days before Voldemort came back. Of course, both sides were more than 
interested in this device and so, in order to get it before hell 
broke loose, I had to go to Azkaban and retrieve it, before either 
the ministry people or the Death Eaters did. I leave it to your 
imagination that this wasn't exactly an easy thing to do."
Charlotte was listening breathlessly. She was so concentrated on 
Snape's narrative that she blindly grabbed for her coffee cup and 
didn't realize that she had taken the honey pot instead. Snape 
sniggered when she put it back with a disgusted look, after she had 
taken a large gulp of honey. Wiping her mouth and washing down the 
honey with some coffee- this time for real- she said: "And what 
happened then? Did you use it?"
"Of course we did. Black and I-"
"Black? Did you really have to work with him?"
"Yes, and I didn't enjoy a single second of it. As I was saying, 
Black and I went ten years ahead and did a bit of reading."
"That was all?"
"What do you mean by `That was all'? It wasn't without risks, you 
know! After all we didn't know what we would encounter there, which 
included the possibility of Voldemort having taken over Hogwarts, so 
we would have materialized straight into his headquarters."
"Which obviously didn't happen."
"Fortunately not. May I have some scrambled eggs, please?" He should 
have known better than to be so polite, for Charlotte immediately 
recognized it was a mere strategy to gain time. 
"You'll get them when you'll have finished telling me", she said 
therefore, "No use trying to eat yourself out of trouble. So, you did 
a bit of reading. What did you find out?"
"Well, we came upon an updated tome of "The Rise and Fall Of the Dark 
Arts", where everything was described in minute detail. To make it 
short: After Voldemort had reigned for five years, sowing death and 
destruction, a small resistance group finally found a clue in 
Nostradamus's prophecies. It said: /Serpent terrible tiendra Albion/ 
Flammes vertes de ses clercs font hecatombe/ Le chien avec son ennemi 
en union/ et doulce grenouille le mettront en tombe/. Fortunately, 
they had already worked it out for us- we only had to copy what it 
meant: The dog and his enemy were Sirius and myself, and the `doulce 
grenouille' was a chocolate frog. The problem was giving it to him. 
We knew that we would have to use Polyjuice Potion, but who should we 
turn into? I mean, even if we had turned into Death Eaters, it would 
have been quite out of the question to go to one of their meetings 
and hand round a box of Chocolate frogs. And then it was Potter to 
have the brilliant idea- although it was him, I have to admit that it 
was really, really good: He remembered that Sirius had been a first 
rate Quidditch Chaser who had never missed his target. So I changed 
into Lucius Malfoy, Sirius simply remained Sirius, I pretended to 
have captured him and brought him to Voldemort. He had stuffed as 
many chocolate frogs as possible into his sleeve and when we stood 
before the Dark Lord, he started to wince and to plead in the most 
tiresome manner, falling on his knees and begging for his life. Very 
good piece of acting, indeed. I exchanged a look with Voldemort and, 
without breaking the eye contact, pretended to stifle a huge yawn. 
Now the residue of human characteristics left inside that disgusting 
body is certainly minimal, but he still has reflexes, and so he, too, 
had to yawn. Fortunately, Sirius hit his aim once again and popped a 
chocolate frog into Voldemort's mouth. He gasped, coughed, spluttered 
and made a lot of other  revolting noises and then, after a few 
minutes of that horrid display of dying sounds, he was finally dead."

You see- not to wonder that book 5 isn't yet ready, or do you think 
JKR could write THAT?

Susanna/pigwidgeon37