wasn't like he'd planned to; during the early part of the battle Sauron stayed home, presumably to watch the soaps. Unfortunately for him, those pesky Elves and Men showed up on the doorstep of the Barad-dur and refused to go away: "...Gil-galad and Elendil passed into Mordor and encompassed the stronghold of Sauron; and they laid siege to it for seven
"It's not like that in the magical world, 'Arry," Hagrid said, voice lowered in concern. "Y'see, when Vol... well, when You-Know-Who set up a trust deposit insurance scheme, 'e didn't account for rising interest rates. And 'e didn't give codflakes about whether it would influence currency issues abroad, or take into account nominal seasonal fluctuations in the GNP as accounted for in Dumbledore's rules. See, that's what makes him so evil, Harry; by doin' this he unpinned meaningful values from real estate an' just left 'em floatin', an' so the loss in equity was inevitable
and so even after wrestling the alligator, I still had to recover the DNA sample he had stolen. I knew he had already reached semiintelligence, and I had to find a way to trick him fast before he became any smarter than I was. "You're leaning a little too the left," I pointed out easily. "I think you may have lost one of your shoes." "Qhich one?" he asked, looking down. Ah-HA! Just the stroke of luck I was waiting for. I grabbed the vial and
sIQ must be well over two thousand by now; I imagine he must spend a lot of irate evenings in the swamp reflecting upon how easily he was duped
"Woo woo woo! Look at them legs!" the fresh maple leaves shouted. The cloth catnip mouse was offended, but said nothing. She had long been exposed to that kind of behaviour from deciduous plants. "I'll be glad to get home," she thought to herself. "I'm hungry, and at least Finky will treat me with some respect." She reached 44th Street and entered her building where Adolfo, the bumble-ball doorman, was on duty. He rose unsteadily and nodded to her. Next to his chair was a nearly-empty bottle of kaopectate. "'S' nothin'," he lisped drunkenly. "Jus' a little shot t' hold me until I getta break." She said nothing and, avoiding his gaze, quickly went inside. The elevator arrived at her floor and she dashed into their small apartment. To her surprise she saw the familiar large plastic penguin standing in the doorway to the kitchen, naked, holding a dozen roofing nails in one flipper and a birthday cake, with candles, in the other. "Finky!" she laughed. "You remembered!" "Happy birthday, Sheiloo, my favorite little cloth catnip mouse," Finky replied. After a leisurely candlelit dinner of cake and roofing nails, the two giggled and retired to the bedroom