Happy Birthday, Mr. Dark Lord

Happy Birthday, Mr. Dark Lord; or, They Think I've Lost My Mind

I take a swig from my hip flask and gaze at my face in the mirror. It is a pale and terrible face, with red eyes and slitted nostrils and the look of the grave.

"I am Lord Voldemort," I murmur.

"I am Lord Voldemort," I intone.

"I am Lord Voldemort," I proclaim.

I am Lord Voldemort and this is my birthday. I'm going to celebrate it in style. I've been preparing for a whole month.

I hide the hula skirt under my robes, set a party hat on my head, and stagger drunkenly out of the bedroom, almost tripping over the plump, inert body lying in front of the door. I pull the door closed behind me and greet the ranks of assembled Death Eaters.

"It is my birthday today," I announce in my highest and coldest voice. "Why have none of you sent me presents or wished me happy returns of the day?"

"We ... we did not know, my Lord," mumbles Crabbe. "Please accept our humblest apologies."

"It appears that you know very little, Crabbe. But I will overlook your ignorance for once. Bellatrix!"

"Yes, Master?"

"I want you to put on this hula skirt and sing 'Happy Birthday, Lord Voldemort'! Like that American actress, Marilyn Monroe, did for Abraham Lincoln ... or whoever that president was."

Jephthah Nott frowns. "Isn't that Muggle music, my Lord?"

"Yes, it is, Nott. Do you have a problem with that?"

"No. No, your Lordship. No problem at all."

"Very well, then. Bella, sing for me!"

Even Bellatrix doesn't really like saying Voldemort. "Could I ... could I just sing 'Happy Birthday, Mr. Dark Lord' instead?"

"Well," I say, with the air of one granting a great concession, "if you must. But I'm only letting you do this because I'm really a warm and fuzzy person."

"Oh, thank you, Master! I always knew you were a merciful man, deep down!" She steps forward, her ruined face alight with zeal, and begins to sing reverently:

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday Mr. Dark Lord

Happy birthday to you.

"You're not dancing, Bellatrix! I want to see you shake your booty!"

"Yes, my Lord." She wiggles her hips rather stiffly, making the hula skirt swish.

Thanks, Mr. Dark Lord

For all the evil you've done

The battles that you've won

The way you kill, it's such a thrill

And torture Muggles by the ton

We thank you so much.

Everybody, happy birthday.

"You never took dancing lessons, did you, Bella? The Malfoys are supposed to be good dancers, are they not? Give Lucius the skirt!"

Lucius stares at me in horror, but does his best to play it off. "Ha, ha ... very funny ... you have always had an excellent sense of humor, my Lord."

"PUT ON THE SKIRT, LUCIUS!"

"You are not well, Master," Lucius says, turning paler than usual. "Please allow me to brew you a brain-cooling potion and put you to bed."

"I'm feeling perfectly well, Malfoy, and may I remind you that it is not prudent to disobey the Dark Lord." I reach for my wand. "Felistransfiguro!"

With a loud pop, Lucius transforms into a Siamese cat that is every bit as aristocratic and inbred-looking as his human form. "Meowaster!" he pleads. "Have meowercy!"

I restore him to his human shape, and he puts on the skirt and does a shaky hula.

"Now for my presents!" I shout. "What have you brought me, Goyle?"

Goyle reaches into his pocket with shaking hands and removes a dirty-looking Sugar Quill. "I ... I am sorry, my Lord. This is all I have."

"Well, I suppose it will have to do." He's lucky I can't resist Sugar Quills. "Haven't you forgotten to say something, Goyle?"

"M-many happy returns of the day, sir."

"Thank you, Goyle." I suck on the end of the quill, take another swallow from my flask for good measure, and survey my army of Death Eaters, who are all making a desperate effort to pretend my behavior is normal. "Now. Thus far you have made an absolutely pathetic showing, but there is still time for you to redeem yourselves. I demand that you throw me a surprise party."

"S-sir?" asks Rabastan Lestrange. "How can it be a surprise if you were the one who ordered us to throw it?"

"That is your problem, not mine. Now, get on with it! I want balloons! And streamers! And Pin-the-Beak-on-the-Hippogriff! Go into Little Hangleton and buy all these things!"

"Why can't Wormtail run your errands for you?" grumbles Lucius. "I thought we were supposed to be the elite."

I open the bedroom door and show them the snoring figure of Peter Pettigrew. "Because the lazy, useless sod is asleep again, that's why. But don't bother about Wormtail. He's celebrating too." I remove the party hat from my own head and tie the elastic band under the sleeping man's chin.

The other Death Eaters drift off in twos and threes, muttering under their breath that the Dark Lord has gone insane, until only Bardolph Avery is left. Avery's an alcoholic. He can't resist a drink, and he's far gone enough to try to beg one from the Dark Lord's hip flask. "Psst ... c'n I just have a quick nip ... to celebrate your birthday, m'Lord? I'll get right down to the village afterward, honest, I will."

Avery's also the closest thing to a friend I have, these days. "You'd better stay right here," I advise him, "and let the others catch it."

"But I want to help with your party, m'Lord! Really, I do ... just thought I might have a little drink with you first."

"Avery, are you mad? He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is going to be furious when everybody turns up with balloons and streamers!"

"But ... but you're He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!" He gapes as I start to laugh. If there's one thing the Dark Lord never does, it's laugh. "Wormtail?"

"Peter. My name is Peter. And you don't want a drink of this stuff. It's Polyjuice potion. Nasty."

"But if you're ... you ... then who's that?" he says, gesturing toward the party-hatted figure.

"That's the Dark Lord. I mixed some more Polyjuice potion and a sleeping draught into his morning glass of snake venom."

Together we tug the hula skirt over Lord Voldemort's hips. I suck on the last of the Sugar Quill, savoring the nearly forgotten taste of childhood, and Avery laughs until the tears are streaming down his cheeks. It's genuine laughter, a sound that seems to belong to another lifetime, maybe another universe. "That was brilliant, Wor... Peter. Sheer genius." He shakes his head, and the cloud of perpetual fear begins to settle on his face again. "But why did you do it? What's the point, really?"

I shrug. "Because he was there. Did we ever need a reason back when we were in school?"

But of course I have reasons now. One doesn't risk one's life for a prank without a really excellent reason.

I did it because if they suspect their master is losing his mind, Lucius the pragmatist and Bellatrix the fanatic are going to have very different ideas about what to do about it. And while they're fighting it out amongst themselves, people like Avery and me - the foot soldiers, the lackeys, the flunkeys, the hapless and resentful and terrified ones who would rather be anywhere but here - might have a chance of getting out alive.

We won't.

I did it because somewhere, on a bright and distant shore, James Potter and Sirius Black are laughing. And that means they might forgive me after the first few eternities.

They won't.

I did it to feel human again, if only for an hour.