The night had fallen when Harry Potter walked around the Black Lake to give his first real interview.
He thought about how dumb he had been. The Lake was huge, all he had said was "near the Black Lake". With the tip of his wand lighted, he kept walking, looking for that reporter.
"Harry, dear, is that you?" Asked Skeeter, not very happy to be out there at those hours.
"Rita, hello there. Sorry about the time and the place, but trust me, I can make it all worth your while" Harry had thought a while about what to do with her. The opportunities were endless.
"I'm sure you will" she replied, a greedy smile on her face. She set up her quick notes quill and started: "So, Harry… what made you decide to enter the Triwizard Tournament?"
"Wait, you think I did it?"
"It doesn't matter what I think dear" she replied, "It matters what the readers want to read."
"Yeah, this is not going to work like that Rita. I'll tell you what we are going to do: I'll give you hints, point you at things to investigate, sometimes even give you the full story, but you have to promise you'll never go against me, write something about me that I haven't approved. I can provide a lot of good stories, but I want you on my side."
"Sure, I can do that" She was quick to reply, probably thinking she could turn her back on him if she needed to.
"Rita, I don't think you're understanding what I'm asking. I'm the Boy-Who-Lived, there's a target on my back since the day I was born. I can't risk trusting people without absolute confidence they will stand by me. If you want to do this… I want an unbreakable vow."
"Uh- un unbreakable vow? Those are very rare, very dangerous. You know you die if you break it, right?
"That's exactly the point. And you technically don't die, you just lose your magic. Small children can survive it, even though adults rarely can. Those are my conditions, take it or leave it. I just can't take any risks.
"I'm sorry Harry, but what you're asking is too much for me."
"Well, how disappointing. I really thought I could count on your help. I could give you Dumbledore, you know? Maybe, together we could even get Minister Fudge. Too bad you are too much of a coward Rita. I guess I shouldn't be surprised after all. Sorry to waste your time, have a good night."
Harry knew exactly what he was doing. Greedy people were easily manipulated. He'd been doing it to his cousin Dudley since he was a small child, so teasing her with what they could accomplish together and insulting her courage a little should do the trick. No one liked being called a coward after all.
Turning away, he was still able to manage a few steps when he heard Rita calling.
"Harry, wait! I'll do it. But I want the information on Dumbledore first. I'll have to check for myself if it's enough or not. We can see what to do from there." She tried.
"No Rita, you don't get to dictate the terms of the agreement. It's all or nothing."
"Fine, what would the terms of the vow be?" the temptation of taking down one of the most powerful wizards alive was just too good to resist.
"Great. Now, first of all, you're going to swear to never go against me magically or physically. Then, you'll never write anything that would make me look bad, even if only a little, unless you have my explicit permission. You will not write about my family or my closest friends either. Then, you will swear to never write lies about the information I tell you. Its going to be all truthful, you won't even need to make things up."
"Are we clear?"
"Those are pretty big terms. I'll accept it with one condition. You'll have to swear as well, that you'll never act against my physical well-being or my reputation in public, is that acceptable?"
"Of course, Rita. Why would I ever want to harm you?" He asked, a cynical smile briefly crossing his face.
The exact wording of the vow was debated a little between the two and the vow was made.
"So, now that we have that out the way" he said, moments after they concluded the vow, "What do you want to know?"
"Well, you promised you could bring Dumbledore down, prove it!" she responded, still a bit shaken from having to make a vow that could cost her her life.
"All right then, so much to say, where do I begin?" he wondered "Why not from the beginning? As you know, Voldemort killed my parents when I was a baby. Dumbledore apparently became my magical guardian at that moment, even though my parents wanted me to stay with their longtime friend, Sirius Black."
"Wait" interrupted Rita, "didn't Sirius Black deliver your parents to You-Know-Who? Wasn't he a death eater?"
"Oh dear Rita, there's so much you don't know. Sirius Black, along with being my father's best friend, was also my Godfather. He was supposed to be the one to take care of me if something happened to my parents, and as everyone knows, they died. Sirius was put in Azkaban without a trial, and the evidence was circumstantial at best. He was innocent, and his imprisonment was one of the great injustices that happened after the war ended."
"Do you have proof about those claims? Were you in contact with him?" she asked, eager to know more.
"I can get in touch if I want to, yes." actually, now that he thought about it, Sirius was due a letter from him "But the only evidence of Sirius innocence is Peter Pettigrew, he was the real death eater. The one who got my parents killed."
"Peter is dead, Sirius Black killed him!"
"No, Peter is alive, I've seen it myself, only a few months back. But we are getting far from the point Rita."
"Yes, right, Dumbledore."
"Don't forget, you can't publish anything on Sirius or Pettigrew without my permission. Don't you worry though, I'm starting to put things in motion to have Sirius released, and you can have the exclusive later."
"I know, I know" The Vow was still fresh in her mind. "Now, continue with Dumbledore."
"So, Dumbledore, in some weird way, probably illegal, got my magical guardianship. And he decided to put me with my mother's sister, her husband and son. They are all Muggles, and with an extreme hatred for everything magical. They told me my parents died in a car crash, and that they were drunks. They made me a slave, I had to cook, clean, do all the chores for them. Sometimes they didn't feed me enough. Or feed me at all, if something weird had happened, like a burst of accidental magic. They had me living in a cupboard under the stairs. They- they-…"
At this point Harry had to stop to control his anger. Taking the break, Rita used it to apply warming charms on herself and Harry, as it was freezing, and she had a very uncomfortable look on her face.
"They beat me." he continued "They beat me a lot. If I did anything wrong, my uncle would slap, kick and once or twice he even burned me. If I wasn't magical, I doubt I would have survived. My magic kept healing me, so they were able to avoid taking me to a hospital, if they would even consider it. I lived through more hardship than most of the wizards in Britain can even dream of. And you know the worst? Dumbledore knew. He had to know, I was there for ten years. And he knew exactly where to find me. If he didn't know, it's because he didn't even care to check up on me for an entire decade, and to be honest, I don't even know what's worse.
Rita had a shocked look on her face. She wasn't famous for her empathy, but even she couldn't help but feel bad for the poor boy in front of her.
"That's- That's horrible" she ended up saying "Why would he do it? How do we prove it?"
"I have a lot of theories, some more unlikely than others. The proving part of the job falls to you, Rita. You're the reporter, you need to do the investigation. I know my word carries weight, but Dumbledore's carries way more. If it's just me against him, he will win. But if you could come up with evidence of that… May I suggest you start with my uncle and aunt? Check for memory alterations, imperius curses, stuff like that. Maybe you can come up with something. Then we can see how we go from there."
"Sure, I can do that. Thanks for sharing this with me, I know it certainly wasn't easy."
"Oh, do you think I'm finished? No dear Rita, I have more. Much more."
Her eyes light up with the perspective, but at the same time she was afraid of what more could come after that.
"Then, it was my first year. Dumbledore decided, for some reason, to hide the only known Philosopher's stone in a castle full of young children. At the same time, he hired Quirrell, he was the defense teacher who also lived with Voldemort on the back of his head."
"He what? You're saying You-Know-Who is back?" she interrupted once again.
"Calm down Rita. And please, You-Know-Who? Are you that scared of a name? Anyway, he never left, he is some sort of spirit or something, and was possessing Quirrell. Dumbledore hired him anyway, even though I recognize he probably didn't know about that part. Me and two friends, who shall remain nameless, learned about the stone during our first year here, where it was located and all. And in the end of the year, we leaned about a probable attempt to steal the stone. We tried to warn Dumbledore, but he had left the school and Professor McGonagall, the Deputy Headmistress, ignored us."
"your saying V- You-Know-Who has the stone?" She asked, completely incredulous of what she was hearing.
"No, we, three eleven years old, when after the stone. We managed to stop Quirrell from taking the stone, and he eventually ended up dead. Dumbledore arrived right after everything was done, almost like he knew."
"You killed a dark wizard at eleven?" She asked, this time not even managing to keep her mouth from being wide open.
"I did, but I'd rather that part to stay off the record. I don't want to be seen as a killer by the public, even if he was a dark wizard."
"That's… that's a lot of stuff, no doubt. Dumbledore can even end up in Azkaban if we can prove he knew about the violence."
"That what I'm counting on you to resolve, Rita."
"Is there anything else?"
"Yes, but that is going to have to stay for another meeting. Is getting very late and I still have a lot to do tonight. Focus on that for now, write your articles and investigate, but don't publish anything without running it by me first, understood? Remember the Vow!"
"Yes Harry, don't worry. We are friends after all, right?"
Harry was coming back from his meeting with Rita when he heard two different laughs, both feminine. He was still by the lake, so he decided to see what was happening.
A few yards ahead, he found Fleur and Luna sitting by the shore of the Lake, with what looked like a conjured flame coming from Fleur's wand keeping them warm.
Still feeling bad about what Malfoy had done, he decided to approach them and sit besides Luna.
"Hi, what are you girls doing here? Look, I wanted to apologize for what Malfoy did back at dinner. He's an idiot, but we have to put up with him because he was put in our house. He doesn't represent or speak for us all, please believe that."
Harry expected Fleur to answer, so he was surprised when it was Luna who turned to him, smiled and said "I know it wasn't your fault. After all there were no Gulping Plimpy's on your head. Malfoy's on the other hand was swarming with them."
"Gulping Plimpy?" He asked, confused "What are those?"
Fleur was looking at him weirdly, but Luna responded.
"They are very small, almost invisible little demons that get into your head and make you want to hurt others. They appear a lot in Hogwarts and start a lot of the fights between the students."
Never having heard of such thing but having little faith in his own knowledge of magical creatures, Harry didn't push it "Well, let's hope we manage to stay away from those Gilping Plimpy's" he joked, Fleur was now smiling at him, enjoying seeing him being so kind to the girl.
"We don't have any more bread to throw to the giant squid" Fleur informed him "otherwise we would invite you to feed her with us."
"It's okay, I have to be on my way anyway, I still have a lot to do tonight. Goodnight Luna, goodnight Fleur."
With both girls saying their goodnights to him, he got up and left.
"Harry, wait a second!"
Fleur had gotten up as well and was running after him.
"Yes?" he asked
She got closer and hugged him, also giving him a kiss on the cheek.
"Thank you for being so kind to Luna." She said, turning around and going back to the smaller girl.
Harry stayed there for a few minutes, blushing madly, with a very warm feeling radiating from the place she had kissed him.
Shaking a few inappropriate thoughts out of his mind, he made his way to the chamber of secrets. He still had a ritual to perform.
Harry finished telling his plan with Rita to Salazar. The founder sounded impressed.
"That reporter can be of much importance to our plans" he agreed "and making her perform an unbreakable vow was a very Slytherin idea of you. I'm proud."
A feeling of joy overwhelmed Harry, his subconscious need for approval kicking in.
"That's the first time you have ever said you were proud of me!" he told Salazar.
"Was it? Oh well, if you're going to be all soapy about it, I have to remember not to do it again"
"Pleasant as always" noted Harry. "Everything is ready for the ritual, you absolutely sure it's a good idea to do this so close to the task?"
"Don't you trust me, child?" was the reply.
Not bothering to respond, Harry cut himself and started to spread the blood around the Gaelic symbols.
As soon as he finished, he stood in the center, but before saying the magic that would start the ritual, he remembered .
"Salazar, have you ever heard of Gilping Plimpys?"
"No, I can't say that I have. What are those supposed to be?"
"Nevermind" he replied "Just something I heard today."
Focusing and reaching for his magic, he focused his intent and chanted.
"MAE'R BYD O'M CWMPAS YN LLAWN HUD A LLEDRITH. GADEWCH IDDI SIARAD Â MI A'M LLENWI."
And everything went dark.
AN: Chapter 9 is finished now, the magical number 10 coming out next.
Just want to clarify a few things. Domestic abuse is a very serious issue, one I don't want to go too deep in a fanfiction. But, with the physical violence so implied in J.K.'s books, I decided to put it in this story.
Also, I know Rita is usually portraited as a bad, mean women. But I see her more as just a very greedy human who wants to be recognized most than anything. So I've decided to do something a bit different with her.
F13rc3D3ity: Harry had 3 weeks of training with Salazar, the others have 3 years of advantage in magical education. Still a bit of an edge, I'd say. Oh, and who ever said Salazar was a portrait?
PacMan99: thank you for the feedback. I'll try to keep updating quite regularly, but this rhythm of posting everyday won't be eternal. I spend around 6h with each chapter, and I have other commitments in my life. I'll eventually try to establish a schedule of like an update each two or three days.
I also have the pleasure to announce that noam62004 has agreed to Beta for me in this story, with this chapter already benefitting from his work. If you notice an decrease in grammar mistakes, you have him to thank for.
Thanks for the follows, reviews and Kudos. The dimension this story is taking is really overwhelming me. Thank you all.