Chapter 78: Chapter 74: Instigating the investigation of past tragedies
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When the time arrived for Harry to leave, all good things came to an end eventually, neither of the pair really wanted to separate. However, sitting in the car parked at the train station wasn't something they could sustain indefinitely even with their top-tier banter, and thus eventually they had to let go.
"It was a nice weekend," Harry commented.
"Just nice?" Tonks asked with a cheeky smile, causing the boy to roll his eyes.
"It was amazing, Tonks. I'm looking forward to Hogwarts already," he said. He really enjoyed having a weekend where he could shoot the shit, drive a car, smoke some weed and hang out with some students.
"Don't go back on your promise about the Mind Arts, I'll start badgering my mom but I don't know if she'll relent," Tonks said.
"All in due time, bro," Harry chuckled. "First got a duelling championship to win."
Tonks rolled her eyes but leaned in to give him a hug. "Good luck, Harry. Learn as much as you can from your inevitable loss and knock 'em dead next year."
It wasn't easy to walk away, take his trunk and leave for the train back to London, but Harry was mature enough to manage. He'd see her again soon, in Hogwarts. He suddenly felt less lonely, not even having realised previously that he'd been feeling so.
He returned home with a heavy heart, knowing that he was leaving behind a fun get-away with a friend for the responsibility of dealing with a Horcrux, trying to win a duelling championship he didn't stand a chance in, learning legillimency and preparing for his O.W.L in Arithmancy. Now that he suddenly had someone to spend meaningful time with, Harry found his schedule cumbersome.
Hopefully, that wouldn't last, or else he would never get done with all the shit he had to do.
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There was a particular reason why Harry took the train back to London, despite now having a house-elf he could call on to teleport him around. Firstly, this was because he had a lot of things to consider, for which he needed some solitude, and secondly, because in all the excitement of the weekend, he'd forgotten that he had a house-elf which could bring him back faster. Of course, objectively a train wasn't necessarily the most peaceful place to ponder, but already in his last life, when he'd had to commute to university via train, and had used the time to study, he'd always considered it somewhat calming. People on public transport generally didn't give a single shit about anyone else, and thus it became the perfect place to reflect in the anonymity of the crowd. Also, he liked trains, the Hogwarts Express had been taking him home when he wanted to go home, and to school when he wanted to go to school. In other words, it was pretty great.
Also, it was sort of funny, to be sitting in a compartment with what seemed to be a professor reading a book on diachronic linguistic development and a younger woman absorbed in chatting on the phone, about her latest beau. It provided an ironic background to the things going on inside Harry's head.
Dumbledore had presumably broken into Gringotts to get to the Horcrux there and had presumably destroyed it. The diadem was similarly gone. This left the locket and the ring of which Harry did not know the fate. Maybe Neville Longbottom was also a Horcrux, but that was a bit hard to verify.
Of course, Harry wasn't particularly worried about any of those, as their fate was out of his control. He'd simply have to trust in the fact that Dumbledore wasn't making a complete fool out of himself out there, with the information Harry had given him.
Harry himself, would be responsible for the destruction of the diary, hidden as it was under the ground at his hide-out. Destroying it was the obvious solution, no matter how tempting plumbing the mind of a burgeoning dark lord on all things magic and hidden passages would likely be. For that task, he could learn either the killing curse or Fiendfyre, the former of which would probably be less destructive if cast incorrectly. The latter would maybe be something he'd have to experiment with in the Room of Requirement, as long as it could offer him a safe space to do so in.
Anyway, getting rid of the diary Horcrux was an immense task indeed, but not something Harry could control beyond getting the blasted thing and casting curses at it until it broke.
What he was much more worried about was his impending teaching of Draco Malfoy and Nymphadora Tonks in the fine art of Occlumency. The hat had recently described his defences as adequate, so the hopes were that this would translate decently enough into the offensive aspect of the Mind Arts, once Harry talked to his mentor about starting that part of his tutelage.
An additional problem was Dobby, now bound to him, and not having nearly enough work to distract himself. Hopefully, the clearing wouldn't be in chaos when he came back, although maybe the fact that the house-elf had not sought him out since he'd left for Manchester was a good sign.
In comparison to dark lords, mind arts and house-elves the duelling championship coming up actually seemed relatively easy. He just had to show up and either win or lose.
Even his next appointment would potentially be more complex than that, which was why he was going to London to finish it as quickly as possible. He needed to start checking things off his list, or else he was going to go insane from the pull he was experiencing in different directions.
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Getting off at the Grand Central and slipping into a nearby café of no particular importance was easy. Waiting for half an hour was a bit more annoying, but it was his own fault. He'd scheduled the meeting a bit later due to the possibility of missing one train, in which case he would have had to have taken the next one.
He slowly sipped at the shitty tea he'd ordered, and gotten, so as to justify sitting there. He probably looked weird, a lone 12-year-old at the biggest train station in the country. But, with his recent growth spurt, it looked more natural. His cheekbones protruded a bit more and he'd grown taller, and leaner. If this change could be attributed to age or to his now regular sword training remained in the air, but Harry appreciated the lack of clumsiness that his recent athletic endeavours had granted him. He still remembered how in his last life, his teenage years had involved a lot of falling down stairs and hitting his head on things.
It was good to train for that to not happen because if he fell down one of the moving staircases at Hogwarts, he might just never get back up again.
It was into that morbid atmosphere that the blonde reporter entered, looking perfectly at home in the muggle surroundings, dressed in a pair of washed-out jeans and a white shirt. She seemed to have not applied any of the severe make-up other than her violently red lipstick, and her hair was at the least curly that Harry had ever seen. She looked around inquisitively for a few seconds before her gaze zeroed in on Harry and she strode over.
"Success suits you, Rita," Harry joked as she sat down. "As does the new look, has anyone told you that you look effortlessly beautiful when you're not trying to look professional?"
The reporter threw him a withering glare. "That's the point. I don't want to be beautiful in the workplace. Then they'll just treat me like a woman, not a reporter." She paused. "Well, regardless, thank you for the compliment." A twitch of her wand, hidden in the sleeve of her shirt made a waitress that had been approaching them suddenly stop in her tracks and look around confusedly, before going to another table, at which two men in suits were loudly arguing over the success of Stratton Oakmont in America and if they should invest.
"A notice-me-not," the reporter said at Harry's inquisitive gaze.
The boy rubbed his chin contemplatively, it really was a useful spell, wasn't it? He already knew how to cast it, but maybe it deserved further exploration. Rita's use seemed more natural than his and he couldn't help but notice how decisively no one even glanced at them anymore.
"Anyway, I don't appreciate being stood up last week, so you better have something good," she said with a scowl.
Harry shrugged, he'd actually had a meeting planned with Skeeter when he'd gotten derailed by Narcissa Malfoy and the Horcrux, but it wasn't like there was anything one could do about that. It was his fault of course, but he was here to negotiate, and that meant not taking any shit, especially well-deserved shit. "You know how it is for those of us leading successful careers and lives full of ambition. There are so many forces desiring our attention and pulling it ragged in all directions. Thankfully people like you are more flexible."
Skeeter raised a blonde eyebrow. "Did I come here to be disrespected by a child?" she asked.
"Rita," Harry said sardonically. "We don't have to pretend that we're friends. I needed that article last year as much as you did, it was mutually beneficial. You've been actually publishing stuff in the Daily Prophet these days, you have a career to speak of now. Me, I got all the idiots off my ass who believed the ministry bullshit. But," he raised a finger. "Let's not commit to this secondary education level banter. I had something come up and I had to reschedule, it must have been alright with you if you came to meet me today, so stop trying to leverage and talk to me, half-blood to half-blood."
The woman huffed and crossed her arms. "What MBA program did you escape from," she muttered, before shaking her head. "You talk about me having a career? People just noticed that I exist so I get some stories, but it's none of the big stuff. Just exposés and letter of the week columns."
"Well, that's what being a reporter is like sometimes until you've built your network, or figured out a way how to legally access non-public information and reveal it for the shock factor," Harry said. He didn't really understand the job, to be honest. Who wanted to be out there writing about how Helen, 49, had broken a hip flying the newest Nimbus while drunk and was demanding restitution? Sounded like some circle of hell.
Investigative journalism, maybe? Everything one had to do before that, to get there? Hell no.
"What do you want?" Skeeter asked, getting to the point.
Harry tutted and shook his head. "That's the wrong question, Rita. Rather than asking what you can do for Harry, you should ask what Harry can do for you."
The woman mulled it over. "Did you try to quote Kennedy at me?" she asked. "Badly?"
"Well, Rita, you're still not asking the right questions. I thought that was the point of being a reporter."
The woman sighed and rubbed her temples with her overly manicured fingers. "What can you do, for me? Harry."
"Well, I've always lived by the motto, "Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.""
An exasperated groan from the woman.
"To this purpose, I have, over the last year at Hogwarts, been seeking out personal tutoring from Professor Flitwick in all manners regarding duelling. That is because I shall be participating in this year's U17 Internation duelling championship," he explained.
"Flitwick was the last wizard to bring the trophy to England," Rita mused.
"Well, there is also Dolohov," Harry amended.
"Let's not talk about him," the reporter retorted, seemingly lost in thought. "You don't stand a chance, you know. Fail miserably indeed."
"Define failure, in this context," Harry prompted. "A thirteen-year-old signing up is the height of arrogance. I'm a modern-day Icarus, baby; fly too close to the sun then crash and burn. But, I don't have to escape the labyrinth, I just have to stay in the air long enough to exceed people's expectations. When I get those tongues wagging, and I still have four more tournaments ahead of me? I'm gonna get eyes."
"Everyone will expect you to lose out in the first round," Skeeter agreed. "If you manage to make it beyond that…"
"Then it's already a contextual win. Sure, people may laugh at the idiot who signed up and only lasted two rounds, but they'll all know deep down that if they'd done the same at age thirteen they wouldn't have even managed to leave the country without crying for their mothers."
"I assume you're dangling an article in front of me?"
Harry nodded. "Yeah, you'll be my personal liaison, no matter how it goes. If I lose miserably I'll take an interview and you can take me for a fool, if I get far enough to not be considered a fraud, you can show me as a glowing bastion of Hogwarts, and the British education system."
"Britain's largest contributions to the circuit in recent times have been a half-goblin and a Death Eater, people aren't that excited about the sport at the moment," Rita argued.
"Maybe it's time to add a half-blood to the list. People are already interested in me due to the class advancement. Britain needs a win after the last decade of sheer embarrassment. They'll love me, or love to hate me. Either one indicates a good reader response to your article."
"You'd be alright with being embarrassed in front of the whole country? I thought avoiding that was the whole point of the damage control you had me do with the Patronus." Skeeter queried sceptically.
"Who cares if I don't win next year, I have five tries. Most people don't even sign up until they're sixteen, they're missing out on valuable experience. I know I won't win now, and I probably also won't win next year. But… in four years? When I'll be sixteen, I think I'll have a good chance. One win will be enough for people to forget three losses, especially if they're justifiable by such a large age difference."
Rita seemed to contemplate his words, before reluctantly agreeing. "No matter the result, it will be a good story." She looked at him analytically. "What do you want in return?" she asked.
Harry leaned back. "Well, I know you have ambitions of being an investigative reporter one day. So I thought I'd give you a task to start with. You can publish it or not, I'm not just using you as a private detective. It could even be a great build-up article after I finish competing in the tournament."
"Out with it," Rita said with a roll of her eyes.
"You know, for the longest time, I didn't know if I wanted to find out. But it's something that's been bugging me for a while now. Do you think you can find out who raped my mother?" Harry asked
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AN: A lot of new plot points being set up as we start the next year of Hogwarts, just like with the Werewolf last time :)
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