บท 59: Chapter 56: The safest place in the world
Harry had been standing disillusioned in the corner of the room in Hogwarts that had been used to teach ballroom dancing centuries ago for approximately fifteen minutes when a beetle finally flew in through a window that he'd opened and transformed into Rita Skeeter. The reporter stumbled in her high heels from the transformation, likely encumbered by the large camera she was carrying. By her method of infiltration, she'd removed the possibility of using an actual photographer, so the pictures would depend on her.
Tilting his head Harry observed Skeeter look around confusedly, looking for him, and only bothered to disillusion himself when she was about to pull out her wand, likely to cast homenum revelio.
"Interesting," he remarked, Skeeter startling and clutching her heart with the hand not holding the camera. "I didn't know you could bring such a big object with you when transforming. Impressive," he complimented, while the woman took deep and calming breaths.
"Shit, you scared me," she said, before sauntering over to him. "My animagus form is a secret," she warned with narrow eyes as she stabbed at him with her pointer finger.
"Alright," Harry said with a shrug. "It was a question, by the way, a genuine one," he stated.
Skeeter furrowed his brows. "Ah, right. I forgot I'm here to interview an academic overachiever. Anyway, it would be quite stupid if an animagus left all their clothes behind every time they transformed. Very dangerous if they did so with their wands," she explained, "most people can instinctively bring these things with them, everything else takes a bit of practice. I think the most anyone has ever transported was a carriage."
"A carriage," Harry clarified.
"Yes, a carriage," Skeeter said with a roll of her eyes.
"I assume you learned the transformation in hopes that it would help set you apart from your peers. Help prop up your failing career with some eavesdropping. It would only help if you didn't register, right?" Harry asked curiously, already knowing the answer, but enjoying the way the woman froze up.
"Remember that I'm doing you a favour here, kid," she angrily retorted. "It stays between us."
"We're doing each other a favour. I get some positive media representation, and you get an article people will want to read, and which the editor won't be able to reject unless he wants to harm his own bottom line. Me not black-mailing you is not something you have to barter for. It is just naturally not something I do to someone whom I have a productive work relationship with," the focus was on productive working relationship. If Skeeter tried to screw him over somehow, well, he could yank her chain a bit. "I'm not a Slytherin, you know, unlike a certain someone," he said with a roll of his eyes.
"Alright, alright, whatever," the woman said in an annoyed tone of voice, adjusting her lime-green dress. It had slipped a bit during her transformation, revealing a bit of her lacy black bra. Harry had noticed, as any boy in puberty would have. "Just don't try the transformation yourself. It's hellishly complicated and you need a high understanding of human transfiguration."
"Would be an easy way to get an O+ on my transfiguration NEWT," Harry remarked.
"Sure, whatever you tell yourself at night. Now, show me the patronus, come on," she said, urging him now.
"You don't want to interview me first?" Harry asked curiously.
"I want to see you can actually do it, so I don't waste any time if you're a liar," Skeeter retorted, causing Harry to shrug.
"You know, you should be nice to me, make me feel good and relaxed. The spell only works if I can bring up the correct state of mind," Harry joked. He looked around the dark dusty room. "The environment doesn't necessarily help."
Skeeter simply held up her camera. "Cast it at me already. I think we can make a good shot of you standing with your wand pointed at the reader, and then the spell coming out at them," she ordered.
Harry shrugged and followed her commands, as she positioned him in front of the windows so that he was cast in a halo of light.
"Alright, that looks fine. Now, tell me when you're about to start waving your wand, and I'll press the button," she said.
Harry closed his eyes for a minute, to make absolutely sure that he was bringing up a sufficient amount of happiness from within himself. "Now," he said and heard a click. He started waving his wand in the pattern, as he incanted, "expecto patronum!"
His trusty racoon did not disappoint, bursting out his wand in a flying Superman pose, stopping in mid-air to puff out its chest for the camera, before flying directly at the lens and stopping in front of it, letting Skeeter get a good view of its spectral nose hairs.
"Impressive," the woman complimented in a sugary voice. Her tone completely shifted now that he'd proven that he could provide his end of the deal. "How many times can you do that, so we have some pictures to choose from."
"Let's find out," Harry said with a grin and cast the spell again, and again, and again.
It turned out, after a few minutes, that using the spell eleven times was his limit, after that, his first failure had occurred.
"I just can't seem to hold the mental state for that long," Harry explained later as part of the interview, it seems that the requisite emotions are a more difficult part than the actual magical energy needed.
Skeeter nodded, as she scribbled down some notes, by hand, thankfully.
"What spells do you think helped you pass the test for advancing in Charms? You said one needed to master all the next-year material, but then also show-case some things beyond that," she asked professionally.
Harry considered his answer and decided that he didn't want to reveal to the world that he could disillusion himself so blatantly. "Aguamenti, I would say. It's a sixth-year charm, partially a conjuration. It's what I show-cased and what the examiners seemed the most impressed by," he said, receiving a nod from Skeeter.
"Would you mind showing that spell as well?" she asked and went for the camera.
"Alright," Harry quickly agreed. The more footage of him throwing around spell-work beyond his years, the better.
The interview continued for another hour, Skeeter extracting all the information from him that he was willing to give. Just as she was about to fly off again with her camera and stack of notes, Harry stopped her by taking hold of her hand.
"By the way," he started, "I'll be participating in a high-profile event this summer. It's going to come as quite a shock to a lot of people. I'm talking about international significance. If I like this article, you can have an interview for that as well," he said, adding one last incentive for Skeeter to report on him positively.
Although, he wasn't that worried. The Rita Skeeter he knew was just a woman trying to break into a field which rejected her. Her building bitterness would have eventually turned her into the person she'd been in the original books, but she didn't seem to exhibit those traits quite yet.
The reporter looked at him calculatingly, shaking off his hand. "A deal is a deal," she said, before transforming into a beetle and flying out the window.
Harry was left alone in the room and decided that he was going to turn in early for the day. Play a game with Cedric and the boys. He'd done enough work for the moment. Everything he'd been doing had been giving him great returns, the interview, Tonks, duelling. He'd finally unloaded his burdensome knowledge on Dumbledore's doorstep for the man to deal with, which he'd hopefully been doing if one considered his now permanent lack of presence at dinner. Something that the headmaster had made sure to attend at least a few times a week previously, despite all his other pressing responsibilities.
Perhaps it was kind of the world that let him enjoy a few more days of peace and quiet. Or perhaps it was unfair that he'd been lulled into a sense of security and thus felt the lack of safety all the more harshly when the next horrible event occurred. One that shook the entirety of magical Britain.
A few days after the interview, when he and the rest of the Hufflepuff second-year boys had all gone to bed, they were awoken very abruptly a few hours later by Professor Sprout, who ushered the entirety of the house towards the Great Hall.
She didn't tell them what had occurred, but considering that it was the night of the full moon, it wasn't too hard to guess. No amount of secrecy from the side of the professors could keep it quiet either.
Soon everyone knew that a werewolf attack had occurred at Hogsmeade and that alongside an entire family of four, Charlie Weasley had been killed.
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