Thanks so much for the awesome reviews!
Sakura Lisel, I hope my PM made sense!
NicoleR85, ThingsCanBeTwoThings, Sparky She-Demon, & AquaEclipse - I'm so glad you enjoyed the new chapter!
Silverleone - I've been waiting for someone to comment on that line! It was a momentary stroke of genius, & I'm ecstatic that you liked it!
There's a part in this chapter that was inspired by Kristen Bell's Facebook series called "Momsplaining" - it describes situations that new moms need to know about with 100% honesty & more than a little bit of the classic awkwardness that makes us love Kristen Bell so much! If you have a chance, please check it out!
As always, my lovelies - read, enjoy, & review!
- Owlix
Chapter Forty-Six: The Quibbler
The next few days were tense on several fronts. We didn't know when Rita's article about Harry would be printed; we didn't know if Umbridge would find out before it even happened; Cho wasn't speaking to Harry or me, even if the situation required her to do so; & personally, Angelina was upping her previous levels of weekly Quidditch practice. The day after Valentine's Day, we were out on the pitch from five o'clock in the evening to ten o'clock at night. We actually had to have Madame Hooch escort our muddy asses back to the castle so we wouldn't get detention for being out so late!
Despite everyone else on the team doing alright together, Ron kept having issues with nerves that were driving Angelina insane! Every time he had a bad practice (which was generally twice a month), the whole team had to beg Fred & George to pep him back up again, & even they were getting fed up with it by this point! The worst part was that his bad attitude was spreading through the team & lowering morale past its already record lows! If he wasn't Harry's best friend & the only option we had for a Keeper at the moment, I'd knock him out with my Beater's bat & save the team the torment!
On the day of the match against the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, the game lasted for a horrifying twenty-two minutes. In that time, Ron missed a whopping twenty-three saves compared to the Hufflepuff Keeper's acceptable nine; my fellow Beater, Sloper, missed the Bludger & hit Angelina in the mouth instead; & one of the other Chasers shrieked & fell off of his broom as good ol' PuffSnot, a.k.a. Zacharias Smith, zoomed straight at him while carrying the Quaffle. Thankfully, I tried to keep the Bludger as far away from our players as possible, Angelina lasted through the whole game with a busted lip & cracked teeth, & the incomparable Ginny Weasley managed to snatch the Snitch right from under the Hufflepuff Seeker's nose, bringing the final score to two hundred forty versus two hundred thirty.
The party was particularly depressing, so I just focused on finishing homework while accepting halfhearted congratulations from other Gryffindors & snacking on smuggled Honeyduke's sweets. Admittedly, Angelina's compliments toward my playing were definitely genuine, so if she sounded a bit defeated, I didn't let it bother me. I knew I was a good player, even if I was a bit inexperienced, & if Angelina knew that too, I would be fine!
The next day, all of the tension we'd been feeling was ramped up to a hundred.
Almost twenty owls showed up & placed themselves in front of Harry, each with an envelope in its beak. One of them had a long, cylindrical package, which Hermione insisted that he open first. I scooted over next to Harry as he opened the package to reveal March's edition of The Quibbler, his own sheepishly-grinning face looking up at us from underneath large red letters reading:
HARRY POTTER SPEAKS OUT AT LAST:
THE TRUTH ABOUT HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED
AND THE NIGHT I SAW HIM RETURN
"It's good, isn't it?" Luna asked breezily from my other side. "It came out yesterday. I asked Daddy to send you a free copy! I expect all these," she added, waving a hand at the other owls, "are letters from readers."
"Harry!" Hermione asked, pointing excitedly at the owls. "D'you mind if we - ?"
"Help yourself," Harry said, sounding like someone hit him over the head with a two-by-four.
Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, & I all started ripping envelopes open & reading their contents. About two-thirds were from people who thought Harry was bonkers, half of the remaining third were of two minds, & the final half of one-third were convinced that Harry was telling the truth. Thankfully we didn't have any curses or nasty contents inside any of the envelopes, but we had enough of that waddling up to our spot at the Gryffindor table.
"What is going on here?"
Having figured this might happen, I spun around in my seat & plastered a charming smile on my face as I faced the rancid wedding cake that is Dolores Umbridge.
"It's called mail, Dolores," I said innocently. "Is it against the rules to get so much mail at once?"
"Be careful, Miss Dolan," she replied, peering at me through narrowed eyes, "or I shall have to put you in detention. Well, Mr. Potter?"
Harry hesitated for only a moment before speaking.
"People have written to me because I gave an interview," he said softly but firmly. "About what happened to me last June."
"An interview?" Umbridge asked, her eyes thin & high as she tried to keep hold of her temper. "What do you mean?"
"He means, Dolores," I replied, knowing what she would do & wanting to spread the punishment around if I could, "that a reporter asked him questions & he answered them honestly. Here, you can read all about it here! I mean, you can read, can't you?"
I finished by snatching the copy of The Quibbler from Harry & throwing it into Umbridge's face contemptuously. She caught it as it smacked her face & peered down at the cover, her face turning an ugly violet color that clashed marvelously with her acid pink outfit.
"When did you …?" she started.
"Valentine's Day," I smirked. "I was there, watched & listened to the whole thing. And to think, it all happened under your nearly nonexistent nose & you couldn't do a thing about it."
"... How dare you …" she croaked, her eyes switching between Harry & me. "How you could … I have tried again & again to teach you not to tell lies. The message, apparently, has still not sunk in. Fifty points from Gryffindor each, & another week's worth of detentions."
"Torture dates, you mean," I said firmly, hoping my voice carried to the teachers. "We all know those Blood Quills are Dark magic, Dolores, & it's not just Harry & me you've used them on, unfortunately."
I slowly turned around in my seat, still smirking & making sure to make eye contact with a guilty-looking McGonagall as I did so.
By the time our first class was over, new signs were plastered on almost every wall in the school.
- BY ORDER OF -
THE HIGH INQUISITOR OF HOGWARTS
Any student found in possession of the magazine The Quibbler will be expelled.
The above is in accordance with
Educational Decree Number Twenty-seven.
The problem for Dolores Umbridge, unfortunately, is that when the students of Hogwarts are told they can't have something, then somehow every single student in the school gets hold of it. By the end of the day, I started hearing snippets of the article being quoted by random groups of students during lunch, outside classrooms, & in the back of lessons during the teachers' lectures.
And speaking of the teachers, while they weren't able to talk about anything that wasn't their subject because of Umbridge, there were other ways they could voice their support for Harry's interview. Professor Sprout awarded Harry twenty points for simply passing her a watering can; Professor Flitwick beamed as he slipped Harry a box of squeaking sugar mice at the end of Charms; and according to Harry, Professor Trelawney tearfully announced to the whole Divination class that, instead of dying tragically young, Harry would live to a ripe old age, become Minister of Magic, & have a whopping twelve children!
"I hope your future wife's OK with bearing & birthing those twelve kids!" I gasped when Harry laughingly told me about it at dinner.
"Is it that bad?" Harry asked, seemingly a bit confused.
Knowing that he wasn't exactly educated about things like that, I wasn't angry that he was so clueless. I immediately stood up & looked around the table to see if there was something I could use as an object lesson. Thankfully, Hermione saw what I was doing & spotted an uncut watermelon halfway down the table. While she grabbed that, I asked the ladies at the Ravenclaw table if any of them had a hair tie they were willing to sacrifice for an educational cause. I was blessed with literally ten hair ties being offered, so I picked what I thought was the newest one & invited everyone to watch the lesson.
I sat down in front of a bemused Harry, straddling the bench we were sitting on & holding the watermelon that Hermione delivered on my lap.
"OK," I said in a business-like tone, "so the only reason I know all this is because a neighbor of mine in New York had to give birth to her first kid on my living room floor while she was visiting. I had to help the EMTs that showed up & ended up learning a TON of stuff all at once.
"So! This," I held up the hair tie, which was new enough to be uncomfortable tight around my wrist, "is the woman's vagina, where the baby comes out. It's stretchy but it has limits. This," I patted the watermelon in my lap, "is a … massive baby. What would you say this weighs, Hermione? Twenty pounds?"
"About, yes," Hermione said primly.
"So this is about the weight of three average-sized babies," I said, "but the width of the watermelon is about the width of an average baby's head."
"Hang on," Harry said, sounding confused as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Y'mean, women have to get something the size of that," he pointed at the watermelon, "out of a hole the size of that?!" The pitch of his voice raised sharply as he pointed at the hair tie.
"Yeah, basically," I said, nodding with a smirk. "And that's not the best part! Watch this!"
Using my fingers to spread the hair tie as wide as I could, I tried to stretch the hair tie over the skinny end of the watermelon & get the entire melon through it. As I figured might happen, though, about a third of the way down the watermelon, the hair tie broke; all of the boys (& more than a few of the girls) that were watching cried out at the loud snap that echoed across the Great Hall.
"Bloody hell …" Ron gasped, his eyes bugging out of his head as he stared at the remains of the hair tie as I held it up.
"Does that … happen to the woman, too?" Harry asked, looking more than a little horrified.
"It happened to my neighbor," I said with a shrug. "She had to push out a nine-pounder & ended up splitting open from front to back! Don't worry," I rushed to add when Harry & Ron's faces turned white, "I freaked out too, but the EMTs said it happened a lot & that the hospital could sew her back up with no problem. She just couldn't … y'know, do the deed for, I think, two or three months. Otherwise, everything could rip back open again."
I heard gasps & murmurs from the crowd around me.
"Why would women give birth anyway?" I heard a guy ask in the crowd.
"Because their husbands want sons," I said bluntly, turning around to glare at him. I smiled when I saw him blush a little & turn away. "Besides," I continued, "holding babies actually releases chemicals in women's brains that kinda makes them feel high & helps them forget the pain. Plus, the babies' skin feels SOOOO soft, it's absolutely incredible!"
"But who can do that twelve times?!" Harry asked, pointing at the snapped hair tie that was still in my hand.
"I think there was a Queen of England who did that seventeen times!" I said, shuddering slightly when Hermione nodded with a murmur of "Queen Anne". "Before birth control was a thing, really fertile women could expect to at least get pregnant once a year from when they're about thirteen to when they're in their mid-thirties. Granted, at least half their babies ended up dying before they were a year old, but yeah, women were having babies all the time!"
"Most women these days have two children, at the most," Hermione said, sounding more than a little disapproving at the idea of having more than two kids. "Even for the Wizarding World, twelve children is too much."
There were many murmurs of agreement & approval, mainly from the girls.
"So … ask my wife how many kids she wants to have?" Harry asked, thankfully seeming to sense the mood.
I grinned & chuckled at the remaining horror on his face.
"That would generally be the best idea," I said through chuckles, "especially since she'll be doing the heavy lifting!"
With a small wave of laughter, the various girls began escorting the decidedly woozy-looking boys back to their tables to try & finish their dinners.
As Harry, Ron, Hermione, & I got up to leave about thirty minutes later, we were surprised to see Seamus (or Mickie, as I insisted on calling him due to his bad attitude regarding Harry) standing in the aisle in front of us.
"I just wanted to say," he mumbled, staring at Harry's left shoulder, "I believe you. And I've sent a copy of that magazine to me mam."
I saw Harry swallow a bit before smiling slightly & simply saying, "Thanks, Seamus." He also extended his hand & shook Seamus's hand firmly.
I took that as a sign to stop calling Seamus's name & treating him with more respect. I knew more than most that it took a lot of balls to publicly admit when you're wrong, especially to someone you know & respect. As we started walking past, I tapped Seamus on the shoulder & held out my hand when he turned around.
"I don't think I've met you yet," I said with a genuine smile. "I'm Reggie Dolan!"
He blinked at me for a moment then smiled broadly & shook my hand with a strong grip.
"Seamus Finnigan," he said in naked delight. "Pleasure to meet ya!"
"You too!" I said before pointing back towards the Trio. "I'd better get going, see you round!"
"Yeah, see ya!"
I was delighted at the grins I saw on the Trio's faces, knowing that they wouldn't have to worry about me biting Seamus's head off for no reason now that he & Harry were friends again.
As we headed down the hallway to Gryffindor Tower, I felt Harry grab my hand again & squeeze firmly before letting go. I glanced over at him & saw him watching me out of the corner of his eye. I smiled at him & shrugged, reaching over to squeeze his hand back.
As we passed the library, we saw Theo talking with Malfoy, Crabbe, & Goyle. The other three were definitely pretty angry as they whispered urgently to Theo. When they saw us, all dialogue immediately stopped & all four Slytherins gave us rather nasty looks. I knew that Theo's was fake due to Malfoy's presence, but the other three looked ready to snap our necks right there. Harry & I quickly began pushing Ron & Hermione from behind in order to get them moving; the last thing we needed was to get in a fight in the middle of the hallway.
"Buncha Death Eater spawn," Ron grumbled once we were out of earshot.
"Hey, watch it!" I whispered, reaching up to flick him in the ear. "Malfoy & his toadies, I can understand, but Theo's part of the D.A., remember?"
"Doesn't mean I have to like him," Ron retorted.
"But the best bit," Hermione whispered gleefully, "is that they can't contradict us about their fathers being Death Eaters, because they can't admit they've read the article!"
She & I giggled at the idea of any Slytherin reading the Quibbler, while the boys looked fondly exasperated by our weirdness as we started doing a small happy dance right in front of them.
"We won, we won, we won!" I chanted in delight as Hermione & I spun circles around each other. "Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh!"
"They're bloody mad," I heard Ron say to Harry.
"Would you want them any other way, though?" Harry asked.
"Nah, not really," Ron admitted.
