The Beater and Badger
Chapter 14: Rita Skeeter's Scoop
Mafalda was unpleasant and conniving, Aunt Muriel was a miserable bat. It was really no wonder that the two of them were related, Rose realized after sitting through three of Aunt Muriel's monologues. The actual wonder of it was that Mathilde and Mr. and Mrs. Prewett were related to anyone else here.
As Uncle George burst in with Fred, Roxy and Aunt Angelina in tow, they were trumpeting on kazoos that belched and farted. True to form, the kazoos were orange with a triple WWW insignia and Uncle George's ear was upside down. "Freddie, my boy, was the true inspiration to this one," he proclaimed proudly to the Prewett's shocked faces. "Almost an entire semester detention-free with James and Louis too but he has done some fantastic working testing the prototypes for the shops. Kazoos! What will muggles think of next?" He quipped.
There was a moment of silence and then Mathilde piped up. 'Mum, why doesn't my kazoo from Jenny's birthday party do that?"
"It's magic," Mafalda answered back, a tad snootily.
"Your kazoo doesn't?" Uncle George said with an airiness. "Then I'd suppose that you wouldn't say no to a WWW prototype Kalamity Kazoo?" He swooped down and handed Mathilde his kazoo and then pulled another two out of his bag and passed them to Mafalda and Rose. "Be sure to have them on with you at midnight!"
Within the hour, all the Weasleys had arrived except Teddy and Victoire and after half an hour of farts and belches erupting from the toys, Grandmum had berated Uncle George and banned them to outdoors only. But despite the banning of the latest WWW product, the New Year's Party was exuberant. Albus, Hugo and Lily had started playing a board game with her, but Rose lost in the first round. Aunt Ginny had put on some old tune by the Weird Sisters and had the grown-ups dancing. Dad and Mum were probably the worst, doing some move that when it was stiff and awkward, reminded her of a chicken. Grandmum and Granddad took the cake though as they swung and dipped circles around their children. Rose watched for awhile the spectacle, but then decided to get some of Grandmum's pudding in the kitchen while there was still some left.
As the door swung behind her, it blocked out some of the noise as the tune changed to Expelliarmious!'s number 2 hit: Boys and Girls Who Died. She could the noise outside that indicated that James, Fred, Louis and Roxanne were still busy playing tag with their kazoos, but they were far enough away so that she could hear the argument behind the pantry door.
"Barb, please!" Mr. Prewett begged behind the pantry door, suddenly sounding weary and lost. "I'm only trying to think of what's best for our family…"
"Sending Mafalda to a boarding school, Orville? Leaving her with a family she's never known for a month? She'd much rather talk to that old witch than her mother now!"
Orville paused, and then said quietly. "I was keeping her from feeling like an outcast, Barbara." Mrs. Prewett was silent now, but Rose could imagine the harsh stare that she was giving behind the pantry door. "Sally and Felicity were all lies that Mafalda made up for us. It's because they're witches, Barbara—they can't relate to their peers any better than I could."
Another pause and then Mrs. Prewett spoke again evenly. "So why are we here, Orville, brown-nosing that old hag?"
There was a short bark of laughter. "Because, Barbara, I don't want to be forgotten again."
Their voices dropped, whispering and with a flinch, Rose darted out of the kitchen, pudding forgotten.
Hours later, the farts and burps were going off outside where Uncle George had set them to coincide with midnight. Mr. and Mrs. Prewett had returned a few minutes after Rose had, Aunt Audrey quickly striking up a friendly conversation with Mrs. Prewett. Most of the adults had finally stopped sneaking each other kisses when Teddy and Victoire came through the door having finally arrived, grinning sheepishly and radiant.
Teddy leaned down close to Rose's ear and whispered in it. "Don't suppose you would know how to tell everyone that we are engaged, do you?"
"You're engaged?" She echoed loudly as several heads popped up.
"Engaged?" The players announced.
"Who's engaged?" The adults followed up with.
Teddy winked at her and held Victoire's hand, as she slowly raised her left, glinting with a white gold ring.
If the Burrow had been chaos before, it was pandemonium now as Grandmum Molly and Aunt Fleur burst into tears on cue; Granna Anna and Granddad beaming. Uncle Harry and the aunts swarmed the new fiancees as the Weasley brothers started shaking hands and whispering behind the very pale Uncle Bill's back while Rose snuck around to her Dad. "Put me down for ten galleons that Uncle Bill passes out as soon as Teddy calls him 'Dad'," she added her wager to the bets.
The next morning, Rose wriggled out of the old orange bed, Albus no longer still curled up on the spare bed shoved in. It had been too late for any of the mothers to think about dragging everyone home to bed, so Grandmum set the Burrow up with beds, blankets and pillows and some spare cots everywhere. She and Albus were also sharing with Lily, Hugo and Roxanne this year as the Prewetts were all sharing the bedroom on the third floor. The three of them were asleep on the mattress shoved in on the floor between the beds last night but since then, the four of them had woken up and left her behind, presumably to play a snowball fight. But even the sunlight and the loss of their comforting sleeping breaths or the open door hadn't woken her. It was the small shuffling sound coming from the foot of the bed.
Jerking upright, Rose blearily rubbed her eyes until she focused on Mafalda riffling through her knapsack on the floor.
Thankful that she had kept the wand next to her bed, Rose pointed it at her before she could realize Rose was awake. "I'm warning you," she practically snarled as Mafalda jumped and looked up then. "Drop my things or I'll hex—" She broke off as she took in Mafalda's face and realized that this girl was too young to be the Slytherin.
"Matilde," Rose said a little nicer now that she recognized her. "What are you doing?"
Matilde Prewett sniffed a little, dark eyes wide. "I'm sorry." She said in a small voice. "Mafalda wanted me to find something and she said it was in your bag."
Rose was forced to notice the contriteness and she lowered the wand. "Looking for what?"
"She said that you might have a diary," Matilde said softly. "She said if I let her read it then she'd let me read her History of Magic book."
"My diary!" Rose squeaked, turning red. "I don't even have one! Besides, she has no right to read it and even if she did, why would anyone want to read A History of Magic for?"
"I want to know about the Wizarding World!" Mathilde exclaimed. "Mafalda won't tell me anything about Harry Potter—was he at the party last night too?—who she says is really famous and only because he framed someone else, unless I give her something first, she says. And I've never meet wizards before. How did the man turn his ear upside-down last night? Can you do that?"
"Upside down—oh." Rose said as she become more awake. "That was Uncle George and he doesn't have a real ear, just a hole. That ear was just a fake he wears sometimes and occasionally upside down."
"Oh," Mathilde sounded disappointed.
"But what's this about Uncle Harry?" She demanded suspiciously, curiosity peaked.
"I don't know," Mathilde admitted, her eyes growing wide. "But he's your uncle? Is he really the Dark Lord's son and he got mad at his father so he killed—"
"No!" Rose interrupted with a shout. "No, whatever Mafalda said is a lie. Uncle Harry is the bravest person I know and he has never killed anyone, not even a Death Eater."
"That's not what Mafalda's book said," Mathilde said a small voice.
"Book?" Rose asked aghast as Mathilde nodded once. "Tell you what," Rose suggested. "You can borrow my history book if you can give me Mafalda's book to read. That sound fair?" Mathilde nodded and scampered down the stairs then, proudly clutching Rose's rarely-read copy to her chest as Rose slumped backwards in bed.
If she had intended to sleep before, there was no chance now as her head spun with Mathilde's wild theories until her footsteps joined the barrage of noise.
"Here it is," Mathilde said, dropping the book on the bed. "Will you get it back to her? She doesn't know I took it," she added desperately. Rose nodded wearily. "Thanks Rose!" Mathilde called out as she bounded down the stairs again.
It wasn't until Rose was on the train did she dare open her bag and pull out the book. She had manage to hide it inside her makeup case and thinking ahead in case Mafalda went looking in there too or walked into their train compartment, charmed the cover to look like one of Hugo's muggle novels.
"You're reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz? That's a muggle book! One of Hugo's?" Albus guessed when she pulled it out. Rose glanced down, reading the title for the first time. She had picked it because it looked suitably childish enough so Mafalda might snub it, with a scarecrow, a man made of metal, a lion on two legs and a girl in a ridiculous dress with pigtails.
She shrugged, not willing to commit to an answer as she burrowed herself into the corner to read. Luckily, Elora distracted them from Rose's reading muggle storybooks by asking what was Oz and who was the wizard of it, launching Albus into discussion as he tried to remember what Hugo had told them about it before, claiming it to be one of his favorites.
"Oz in the name of a country that's over the rainbow—"
"Over the rainbow?" Elora repeated. "That's absurd! What are muggles thinking?"
Ignoring them, Rose turned the pages to chapter one and skipping the introduction, noting the book title: Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lied.
Until Halloween night of 1981, Harry James Potter was an ordinary child—in hiding. Yes, Harry Potter had been hiding under a Fidelious Charm with his parents, James and Lily Potter, until it was broken and the Dark Lord, referred to here as "You-Know-Who", went after the family.
James was killed instantly, and Lily Potter, standing between her son and You-Know-Who, was offered a chance to live, one she did not take. It was later stated by Harry Potter himself that Death Eater Severus Snape (for more on Severus Snape, see my other work, Severus Snape: Saint or Scoundrel) had previously asked that Lily Potter be spared. But why would a Death Eater ask that a muggleborn witch like the pretty and talented Lily Potter was, to be spared?
Only now is the reasoning revealed. Connected by statements made and recorded by Harry Potter, it is now discovered that Harry Potter, may have not been a Potter at all! Before marrying James Potter, Lily Evans was in fact, linked to Severus Snape since their first year despite their blood and houses. But as Harry (possibly not) Potter has also said, Snape loved Lily!
"Because he loved her nearly all his life, from the time they were children. You should have realized, he asked you to spare her life." Harry quotes.
So, Lily Potter, the woman who spared her life for her son and has been since painted as a Madonna of the Wizarding world, may not be as saintly as she seems. If she was, in fact, dallying with Severus Snape despite her ambitious marriage into the pureblood family of Potter, then who's to say who Harry's father may be? Both men had black hair, as does Harry, but his true identifying feature is that of his mother's eyes. But what if, Lily had a secret child by her lover, passed off to her husband as his? Why should You-Know-Who care so much over a child of one years old?
Further research into Severus Snape (see again, my other work Severus Snape: Saint or Scoundrel) reveals more to the puzzle. Son of Eileen Prince, a pureblood witch and last of the Prince family, ran off with a muggle named Tobias Snape and lived an unhappy life until her mysterious death. Although much of her story had been obscured by her family, certain details remain—such as her pregnancy before graduating Hogwarts and her brother arrested as a Death Eater in the same year. From then on, the Prince family hid away from both scandals, claiming no connection to You-Know-Who or muggles. But was Eileen hiding more than her half-blood pregnancy? Could she have been, in fact, pregnant with You-Know-Who's heir? For if this is true, and Harry is Snape's son, then You-Know-Who's attempted murder of Harry Potter was not to be the death of an innocent child, but the death of his grandson, heir and future dark wizard.
A shadow suddenly fell across Chapter 8: Disturbed and Dangerous. She slammed the book shut, looking up all while inwardly praying that it was not Mafalda.
"Rose? Rose?" Albus repeated, looming over her instead. "We're here at Hogwarts."
"We are?" She exclaimed, glancing at the window to see nothing in the pitch darkness.
"Yeah," Albus said, studying her. "You didn't even look up when the trolley came by. I guess you really liked it then?"
It took a moment of contemplating past the wild thoughts floating through her mind about Harry Snape, the disturbed and dangerous who spoke parseltongue and had strange visions before she understood what "It" was.
"Oh, yeah, the Wizard of…was great." She said lamely. Al shot her a strange look, his brow wrinkled. But he shook his head, silently exiting the compartment after Elora, leaving Rose behind with their trunks and pets. Immediately, she quickly unlatched her trunk as soon as she was certain that Albus's footsteps were faint and far enough away, stashing Rita Skeeter's Harry Potter: The Boy Who Lied beneath her robes.
Rose grimaced all through Professor Sprout's welcoming speech. True, the Headmistress was a Hufflepuff, but so was Rose and she'd never use so many words like "mirth", "jaunty" "merry" "delight" or "encouragement". But the rest of the Hall seemed attentive, even the Slytherin side where Mafalda sat primly instead of holding court with that little Amaryllis. Most surprisingly, James was sitting upright and eyes facing the staff table, seeming to drink in every word with a small shudder. Perhaps he hasn't weaned out all his immaturity yet then, Rose thought crossly.
And all though she was certain that Byme and the house-elves had cooked all day to prepare such a welcoming feast as this, Rose was mentally counting how many courses could they possibly have cooked and that she be expected to eat before they were dismissed. Finally though, Sprout grandly dismissed them and Rose shot up like a racehorse in the starting gate, Duncan jerking and knocking over his goblet in surprise. The rest of the house joined her, Rose towards the head of the line as they passed the fruit still-lifes and a prefect switched the bottles according to the new combination set up. With a small clink, the door swung wide and Rose filtered in with the others.
"Rose!" Mary-Jo Cattermole called out, shaking her dark hair back. "Do you want to hear the Wicked Witches's new song? It's called Ruby—"
"No, I'm going to bed early tonight, goodnight!" Rose called out over her shoulder, positively fleeing into the tunnels to the second year girls dorm. She quickly dressed into her pajamas and crawled into bed before surreptitiously pulling out the book again. The muggle storybook's cover still glinted brightly back at her. But the inside was still the secret past that Rose had never known about before, dog-eared to page 78.
She continued reading the book like it was a horrible nightmare that she wanted to wake up from but couldn't do anything except scream standing still. Chapter 8: Disturbed and Dangerous, suggested that he had the darkest powers since before Herpo the Foul's time, with Seeing, Parseltongue, a mastery of the Dark Arts, necromancy and possessing souls. Chapter 9 discussed Uncle Harry's various romances. "Although it seemed that the Harry and Ginny romance was well-under away; he mysteriously broke up with her at Dumbledore's funeral, leaving Ginny rather heart-broken. It was reported that she cried quite a bit afterwards in the following days and even before, like she knew it was coming. Although, Harry's rumored lover, Dumbledore, was dead, he was in the midst of planning a year long trip, in which he and secret girl-friend, Hermione Granger, since their fourth year (refer to Chapter 7: The Triwizard Tournament for details) would be alone together—
Her reading was cut off by the sound of footsteps and hastily, Rose pushed the book over her pillow and hissed "nox!" as she collapsed against her pillow, faking deep breathing.
The other girls appeared fooled as the quietly got into bed around her. Soon, their deep breaths replaced Rose's as she tossed and turned most of the night.
…it is now discovered that Harry Potter, may have not been a Potter at all!… Harry's rumored lover, Dumbledore…secret girl-friend, Hermione Granger…
It wasn't true, of course. It couldn't be. Mum married Dad, not Uncle Harry. And surely, the Ministry wouldn't make a murderer thier Head Auror? And, Albus's middle name was Severus. But then, James was named after his grandfather (James Potter was Uncle Harry's father, of course). But Albus Severus?
The next morning, Rose overslept so deeply that Molly couldn't wake her and left her there until mid-way through breakfast, Mary Jo came back to find her. She had been up late last night; restlessly tossing and turning herself as her mind turned and tossed over that book all night. And now she was late for Transfiguration as she went running through the halls, occasionally glimpsing a few Slytherins and Hufflepuffs walking through the lower levels of Hogwarts as she passed. But it wasn't until she reached the fifth floor and slid into her seat did she find a particular Slytherin.
"Here," Albus said, pushing two pieces of toast both smuthered in jam at her. Rose didn't need to hear anything else as she jammed the gooey bread into her mouth and swallowed quickly as Professor Delacour strutted in.
"Bonjour, calasse," The part-veela said in her thick and throaty voice that possessed a tongue too clumsy to handle English well. "Zis see-meesour, ve'll start more diffi-cul tranzefigurationuz. Last year, ve focus-sed on ob-ga-ects to ob-ga-ects and zis year, ve vill start animalez to ob-ga-ects." With a wave of her small wand, the parakeet on her desk in it's cage became a goblet in a cage.
"Wicked," Rose breathed, itching to try. Transfiguration was not her best class, her best being in Charms, but she loved it all the same. As Ollivander's assistant, Verity, had mentioned once, Rose and her particular wand had all the power needed in transfiguration, but none of the subletly, making the class a challenge, unlike Charms in which there was nothing subtle about it.
The class became so noisy from the squawks and squeaks of birds, rats, incantations and the croaking toad that Rose didn't hear the door open. But then, when she looked up, there was Neville at Professor Delacour's desk, his mouth moving rapidly before she nodded and he scooted down the aisle. The classroom quieted as they all eyed him nervously wondering what they might have done until he stopped in front of her and Al's desks.
"Rose, you need to get whatever you want to bring from your dorms. I'm sending you home through the floo in my office," he said, looking incredibly grim-faced as Albus glanced at her nervously.
She half-rose before glancing at Professor Delacour. She nodded and Rose instantly began dumping her things into her bag, Albus helping her before she hurried off, impatient to get all their eyes off of her and worry rising like bile in her stomach.
Rose raced back to her dorm and dumped her books for the afternoon classes onto her bed and grabbed items from her trunk to stuff in her school bag; her Quidditch books, wand, trainers...A few minutes later, she burst into Professor Neville's office where he was waiting as a green fire roared.
"Your brother just went through," he said urgently as she hurried over to the floo. Then his face softened as she grasped a handful and stepped into the fireplace. "I'm sorry, Rose." She heard him say before the fire whipped her away and sent her spinning home.
Coughing out soot, she stumbled out, lugging her school bag. "Hugo?" She called out. Her brother was there, still sooty, but his face had clean streaks down his cheeks. Both of her parents were there too, Dad stroking Mum's hair as she sobbed.
I'd like to first offer an apology. My original hope was to finish the series by the end of January. And here we are and I've only uploaded 14/21 chapters-7 more to go! Well, that's not technically true. I've actually written up to Chapter 19 now. But when will I get them uploaded? Honestly, I don't have a clue. This just happens to be bad timing for me. I'm leaving this week to start running around the state going to college auditions and when I get done in March, I'll be focusing on my last school musical, which I am a lead in. So free time is sort of scheduled for April.
This chapter goes out to the readers who asked me to upload another chapter. And I left you on another one of my cliffhangers! Perhaps I'll set your minds at ease if you leave me reviews...But speaking of uploading, for the fans of my Christmas Tales series, it's on hiatus for now. I might not touch again until next Christmas but it will be completed someday.
But, I do have some good news. I've only three more chapters to write and a fan by the name of shmankingowner44 who asked to make a fan video starring my series. (Not only was I highly flattered, but I said yes!) I believe there is currently auditions going on for the voices of my characters. Once it is posted, I'll add a link for the readers.