How the Dark Lord Got His Groove Back

"An honorable good morning to you, oh most kind and generous patron. How may I humbly prepare your repast this morning?"

Ginny prodded the curious device with the tip of her wand. From the moment she and Draco had arrived in Japan on this undercover mission for the Ministry, she had regretted accepting the task. It would be bad enough attempting the Muggle life at home in Britain, but the technology-laden lifestyle of Japan was almost too much to bear.

"Silencio," Ginny told the toaster, hoping against hope that it could manage the simple task of lightly crisping her breakfast without a running commentary about how much it appreciated the gift of her presence.

There was a moment of blessed silence, and Ginny released a sigh of relief. Quiet was a rare commodity in her home, and the prospect of a solitary breakfast- Draco and the children were still abed- was thrilling.

"If you wanted me to be quiet, you could have just said something," the toaster blurted all of a sudden, as if it had been holding back for some time, but now the floodgates were opened. "I mean, all I try to do is provide you and your family with a warm and nutritious meal, and you have to poke me with that, that thing and tell me to be quiet..." The toaster made a sound that was distrubingly similar to the sniffly wail Ginny's daughter Iphigenia made just before she burst into a splotchy round of tears.

Ginny groaned. She should have known better than to tamper with a talking foreign Muggle object.

"Migi ni magarimasu. Gochuui kudasai," said a simpering female voice in the distance.

Ginny clapped her hands over ears. As if the talking toaster hadn't been bad enough, now the neighborhood garbage truck had to share the fact that it was "turning right, please be careful." For a country renowned for politeness, Japan was awfully loud.

Feeling particularly irritated by the fact that her husband and children hadn't been awakened by the racket, Ginny marched over to the foot of the stairwell. "Draco! Iphigenia! Eustice! Imogene! Alcomb! Bingham! Tom! Up and at 'em, George McFaddom, it's daylight in the swamp!"

Her only response was a chorus of groans, followed by the sound of feet running in the upstairs hall as everyone raced to be the first to the ofuro. The house only had one bath, and it was an understandably popular place in the morning.

There was a racket, followed by some muttered cursing and the sizzle of a hex being cast. "Hey! I'm only half an inch tall!" cried one of the boys.

"Mummy!" one of the girls squealed. "Daddy cast the Full Body-Bind on Bingham and a Shrinking Hex on Eustice, and now he's barricaded himself in the bathroom!"

Ginny just rolled her eyes. She knew her husband would stoop to any level to be the first to hog the bath in the morning, and hexing one of his own children was hardly a surprise. "Don't worry, darling," she called up the stairs. "Mummy left a little surprise for him in his hair gel."

A furious battle ensued between the children as to who would get to watch through the keyhole while Draco discovered his new hair product. Ginny couldn't tell who was the winner, but her eldest son had clearly lost, as he now flounced down the stairs trying to maintain his last shreds of dignity.

"Didn't want to see it anyway," Alcomb muttered as he flopped down at the kotatsu table. "What's for breakfast?"

Ginny surveyed her ten-year-old with no small amount of amusement. The children were starting Muggle school today, which meant they were dressed in the standard Japanese school uniforms. For boys, this included a pair of very short shorts- supposedly this torment would toughen them, making them more manly. Noting that her son had inherited his father's pale chicken legs, Ginny hoped the adage was true.

She pointed to the toaster, which had been quietly ranting in the corner the entire time. "...not to mention the fact that you often cover me with that wretched toaster cozy, and then I can't see or hear; must be so convenient for you, being able to pretend I'm not here...."

Alcomb blinked silently for a moment; Ginny was sure he'd picked that up from watching too much of that Muggle anime nonsense. "What happened to 'ohayou gozaimasu, okyakusama, kyou nani o meshiagarimashouka?'" he asked. "And when did it learn to speak English?"

Ginny scuffed her foot against the tatami, reveling in the fact that that was a very naughty thing to do. "Tom taught it English," she said defensively. "It certainly wasn't me."

"Tom," Alcomb muttered huffily. "Why does he have to live with us, anyways?"

"Because the entire point of this mission is to reintroduce him to civil society," Ginny reminded her son for the millionth time. He had his father's selective memory, too. "He needs to live somewhere now that his memory's been wiped, and with the bizarre aftereffects of the Obliviator Charms, Japan seemed like the best place..."

As if on cue Tom grooved his way into the room, doing the Hustle to a beat that existed only in his head. Ginny and Alcomb both stared. "Uh, Tom?" the ten-year-old politely asked the former Dark Lord, "where did you find lime-green bell-bottoms?"

"Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' aliiiiiaeeeiiiive," Tom replied.

"Tom!" Ginny shrieked. "No platform shoes on the tatami!" She remembered the Japanese superstition that one's children would become criminals if one wore shoes in the house, then decided that wouldn't be much of a deterrent for a man who had occasionally murdered wizards, often tortured Muggles, and regularly caused minor discomfort to Harry Potter.

"Kawaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii risu-chan!" cried a shrill voice from the neighboring balcony. Ginny and Alcomb, the only ones in the house who had bothered to cast a Translation Charm, groaned simultaneously.

"Not Kiko and the squirrel again," they said in unison.

Ginny and Draco, looking for a posh but friendly-to-foreigners neighborhood in Tokyo, had ended up in the ambassadorial district. Two weeks ago, the children, in an effort to befriend their Muggle neighbors, had gone over to play with the son of the ambassador from Zimbabwe. It had been a positive Anglo-Zimbabwe interaction overall, until Imogene got it into her head to cast a few spells on a squirrel in the yard.

The end result had been... odd. The formerly fluffy and white, none-too-bright, acorn-munching risu had been transformed into a feral, sharp-toothed genius with a penchant for linguistics. It was already fluent in Japanese and Zulu, and had picked up the Malfoy children's accents, though it had yet to master the finer subtleties of British English- it still thought football was called soccer, and no one could convince it to think otherwise. It had nearly bitten through Iphigenia's hand when she'd tried to correct it.

For reasons unknown, the neighbor girl, Kiko Sasaki, had fallen utterly in love with the evil little razor-toothed beast. But in a nation where a bear with a plunger stuck to its head is considered positively adorable, Ginny reflected, perhaps it wasn't so surprising after all.

Recently, Kiko-chan had taken to trying to sneak up on the beast, but she usually failed due to the fact that she was unable to resist screeching "Squirrel-cutie!!" before every attempted pounce.

An outburst of roaring laughter distracted Ginny from her musings on their strange little neighbor. The rest of her children tumbled down the stairs, unbathed but dressed for school, all of them jabbering at the tops of their lungs.

"SILENCE!" Ginny roared over the din. Her request worked better on the children than it had on the toaster, and even the toaster paused in its mini-rant and took notice. Ginny smirked, causing her children to note that Mummy could look startlingly like Daddy when she wanted to. The toaster muttered briefly about the rights of overworked, underpaid appliances, then subsided into silence.

"Thank the maker," Ginny murmered softly.

"You never thank the maker of your toast!" the toaster shrilled. None of the Malfoy children even batted a sparkly mascara-laden eyelash; they were accustomed to the madness.

"Are all of you ready for your first day of school?" Ginny asked her neatly-dressed row of pink-haired offspring.

Weary nods.

Ginny's stern expression disappeared, replaced by a conspiratorial grin. "How was Daddy's reaction?" she asked.

All five of the kids brightened. "Sugoku wicked, Mum!" Iffie squealed.

"And he can't get it to wash out!" Imogene added.

"Marvelous," Ginny replied, her grin broadening evilly. "Alright, all of you off to school, now. Imogene, keep Eustice in your pocket so he doesn't get stepped on. And, Alcomb, Iphigenia, help your brother hop to the train station, it'll be at least twenty minutes before that Body-Bind wears off." Obediently, the children trooped out the door, sliding it closed behind them.

Still smiling to herself, Ginny went upstairs to the bathroom, where Draco had closeted himself for a battle royale with the tampered-with hair gel.

"Don't you even think about coming in here, Malfoy," Draco called threateningly through the door when he heard Ginny's footsteps on the stairs.

"I'll go wherever I please in my own house, Malfoy," Ginny replied, casting a simple unlocking charm on the bathroom door. "Now, what could be so bad about your hair that you can't even come downstairs for some burnt toast?"

"It wouldn't be burnt if you placed more value on fostering my sense of self-worth!" the toaster screamed from the kitchen. Ginny sighed. She'd forgotten that their walls were paper-thin; of course the toaster could still hear her.

"What was that?" Draco asked curiously, momentarily forgetting that he was supposed to be fighting an epic battle with his hair.

"The toaster," Ginny said. "Don't ask." She sat on the edge of the sink, ignoring the small, neat sign that plainly said in Japanese, Kindly do not place any sort of heavy object on the sink. "How's your hair?"

"That's not funny, evil wench," Draco muttered, turning back to the mirror. "This hair gel is evil! EVIL, I tell you!"

Ginny beamed. "Isn't it though?" she said proudly, watching as the gel hissed, causing a lock of Draco's hair to attempt to bite his hand. He yelped and dropped the comb. "Oh, poor baby, is the hair gel being meanie-weanie?" she mock-cooed.

"Our first day alone together in weeks, and you have to go and ruin it with this stuff," Draco complained, cursing so colorfully that the hair gel actually blushed, making Draco's hair as pink as his children's.

Ginny frowned. He was right- who knows when they might have this kind of chance again? In a split-second decision, she whipped out her wand and cast the gel-counterspell. Draco grinned, a come-hither look lighting in his eyes as soon as he realized his wife's intentions might be as wickedly kinky as his own. "I smuggled some Cheese Whiz in through customs," he began.

Ginny nearly melted at the thought. "Five minutes in the kitchen," she said breathlessly. "I'll be right back."

Draco just wiggled his eyebrows suggestively in response.

True to her word, Ginny was back in five minutes. She was not, however, covered in Cheese Whiz, much to Draco's disappointment. "What were you doing in the kitchen?" he demanded sulkily.

"Had to get rid of Tom and the squirrel," Ginny panted, clutching at a stitch in her side with her left hand- her right was hidden behind her back.

Curiousity holding his libido in check, Draco couldn't help but ask. "What did you do?"

Ginny grinned. "Convinced the squirrel that a full Beegees repertoire is an essential complement to his budding English skills. Tom's teaching him everything he knows."

Draco nodded, impressed by Ginny's growing skills in the Dark Arts. "And what's in your hand?" he demanded.

A huge grin stretched across Ginny's face as she pulled the Holy Grail of incredible, inedible, spreadable processed cheese out from behind her back. "Why, the Cheese Whiz, of course," she purred.

Draco's grin grew to match Ginny's. "And here I thought you were delicious already."

Ginny's eyes sparkled viciously. "Just wait 'til I start with the natto, dear."

***