Chapter 38 Skeeter's Lies

The next day I was moping. I wanted to go and see my dad, I wanted to be able to write to him and not have to worry about anyone wondering if I was in contact with him. There were so many questions I wanted to ask him.

Like what happened to him and Remus and my mom? It was a weird situation and I couldn't wrap my head around how I could have come out of it.

Hermione was dragging me around because she knew I was moping.

"What's wrong, Cassie?" Harry bumped his shoulder against mine.

"I'll tell you in a minute." I gestured with my head towards the students around us.

Harry nodded while Ron opened his mouth. Hermione realized something was up because she put her elbow in his ribcage.

Once we got to the Owlery and we saw no one was there I spoke up again.

"I just want to be able to talk to him. Not in a cave, on the ground, or in a letter. But at a real table and just be able to talk freely with the only time limit being bedtime." I admitted truthfully.

Harry nodded in understanding, Ron looked like he understood, but Hermione looked uncomfortable.

Harry lived with his uncle and aunt. He didn't talk much about them, but something was going on when he hated the thought of going back for a few months of the year.

Ron feels overshadowed with all of his siblings and just doesn't know how to get his parents attention.

Hermione is an only child, it's easy for her to get her parents attention.

I live with the Malfoys. Draco has been an amazing help with explaining how the Wizarding World works, but he can't explain to me how my family could have been.

Harry put his letter on Hedwig, since it's been so long since she's had a job. Barnabas went with her. I think it was mostly to get away from Pig.

Once we watched them disappear into the horizon, we went down to the kitchens to give Dobby his new socks.

The house-elves were happy to see us again. Mindy especially was happy to see me.

"Harry Potter is too good to Dobby!" Dobby squeaked, wiping tears out of his eyes.

"You saved my life with the gillyweed, Dobby, you really did," Harry said.

"No chance of more of those eclairs, is there?" Ron asked hopefully.

"You've just had breakfast!" Hermione said irritably.

A large silver platter was already on its way with four elves carrying it.

"We should get some stuff to send up to Snuffles," Harry muttered.

"Good idea, give Pig something to do." Ron nodded.

"Could we have some extra food, Mindy? We have a friend who isn't eating a whole lot at meal times." I asked her.

"Right away, miss!" She nodded.

She took four other elves with her and started to put some food together for us.

"Dobby, where's Winky?" Hermione asked, looking around.

"Winky is over there by the fire, miss," Dobby's ears dropped sadly.

"Oh dear," Hermione and I said.

I just spotted the poor elf.

Winky was sitting on a stool, but it was hard to see her. She had allowed herself to get so filthy, she was almost a part of the smoke-blackened brick behind her. Her clothes were looking loose and unwashed. She had an enormous bottle of butterbeer in her hand and she was swaying on her stool.

She gave a little hiccup.

"Winky is getting through six bottles a day now." Dobby whispered.

"Well, it's not strong, that stuff," Harry said.

"Tis strong for a house-elf, sir." Dobby said.

"They're so much smaller than us." I pointed out to Harry.

Winky hiccuped again.

The elves that had brought Ron his eclairs were giving her disapproving looks.

"Winky is pining, Harry Potter," Dobby whispered sadly. "Winky wants to go home. Winky thinks Mr. Crouch is her master, sir, and nothing Dobby says will persuade her that Professor Dumbledore is her master now."

"Hey, Winky," Harry said and knelt down to her level. "You don't know what Mr. Crouch might be up to, do you? Because he's stopped turning up to judge the Triwizard Tournament."

Winky's eyes flickered. She swayed in her seat as she looked up at Harry.

"M - master is stopped - hic - coming?" She asked.

"Yeah, we haven't seen him since the first task. The Daily Prophet's saying he's ill." I told her.

She blinked at me.

The poor thing could barely focus on me.

"Master - hic - ill?" Her bottom lip trembled.

"But we're not sure if that's true," Hermione said quickly.

"Master is needing his - hic - Winky!" Winky started to whimper. "Master cannot - hic - manage - hic - all by himself…"

"Other people manage to do their housework, you know, Winky," Hermione said severely.

"Winky - hic - is not only - hic - doing housework for Mr. Crouch!" Winky squeaked indignantly, swaying so much that she started to spill butterbeer on herself. "Master is - hic - trusting Winky with - hic - the most important - hic - the most secret -"

"What?" Harry asked.

Winky shook her head and waggled her finger at Harry.

"Winky keeps - hic - her master's secrets," she said mutinously. "You is - hic - nosing, you is!"

"Winky must not talk like that to Harry Potter!" Dobby spoke up angrily. "Harry Potter is brave and noble and Harry Potter is not nosy!"

"He is nosing - hic - into my master's - hic - private and secret - hic - Winky is a good house-elf - hic - Winky keeps her silence - hic - people trying to - hic - pry and poke - hic -"

Winky's drinking finally hit her. She slid off her stool and onto the hearth, snoring loudly.

Half a dozen house-elves came forward, looking disgusted. One of them picked up the bottle and went to throw it away. The rest covered Winky with a large checked tablecloth and tucked the end under Winky, hiding her from view.

"We is sorry you had to see that, sirs and missus!" Mindy squeaked.

"We is hoping you will not judge us all by Winky, sirs and missus!" Another elf squeaked.

"She's unhappy!" Hermione was exasperated. "Why don't you try and cheer her up instead of covering her up?"

"Begging your pardon, miss," the house elf who just spoke bowed to us, "but house-elves has no right to be unhappy when there is work to be done and masters to be served."

"Oh for heaven's sake!" Hermione cried out. "Listen to me, all of you! You've got just as much right as wizards to be unhappy! You've got the right to wages and holidays and proper clothes, you don't have to do everything you're told - look at Dobby!"

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

"Miss will please keep Dobby out of this," Dobby mumbled.

Looking around, all the cheery smiles were dropping and the elves were looking at Hermione like she was mad and dangerous.

"We has your extra food!" A house-elf squeaked at Harry's elbow.

He shoved a large ham, a dozen cakes, and some fruit into Harry's arms.

"Good-bye!"

We were being shoved towards the door.

"Thank you for the socks, Harry Potter!" Dobby said miserably from the hearth.

"Bye Mindy!" I called out to the house-elf just as the door closed behind us.

"You couldn't keep your mouth shut, could you, Hermione?" Ron said angrily.

I took some of the food from Harry so that he wasn't carrying it all.

"They won't want us visiting them now! We could've tried to get more stuff out of Winky about Crouch!" Ron continued.

"Oh as if you care about that! You only like coming down here for the food!" Hermione scoffed.

I rolled my eyes at Harry as we went up to the common room. I helped him hide the food in his room while Ron and Hermione stayed in the common room to throw insults at each other.

"Would you two knock it off?" I finally snapped at them.

That made them both start to make insults at me. So I went with Harry to take the food up to the Owlery for Sirius.

Pig was too small to carry the ham by himself so Harry and I managed to get two other school owls to carry the ham with him.

Harry and I stayed in the Owlery, just enjoying the silence even if it smelled mostly of bird poop.

The sun was beautiful as it started to set. I felt a tugging on my hair and turned to see Harry just pulling on my hair.

I decided to change the blonde hair to the colors of the sunset.

One of the things that I loved about mine and Harry's relationship is that we didn't always have to talk. We can enjoy each other's company in silence.

"When do you think he can be proven innocent?" Harry asked innocently.

I felt my muscle spasm in the center of my forehead.

I rubbed it and thought carefully.

'Next year.'

"What is it?" Harry asked.

"I just got a thing." I told him.

"Can you tell me?" He asked.

I nodded slowly.

"But you cannot tell anyone else." I warned him sternly.

"I swear I won't." He nodded.

"There's a possibility of him being proven innocent next year." I told him.

He processed that information slowly and then his face lit up.

"Really? How?" He asked me.

"I don't know." I told him truthfully.

Harry nodded and put his arm around my shoulder.

"What are you going to do when that happens?" He asked.

"I don't know." I answered.


The next day, Hermione and Ron had finally stopped squabbling. And Ron's predictions about the house-elves sending up the gross food proved false. The food was just as delicious as ever.

When the owls arrived, I was surprised to see Hermione looking up eagerly.

"Percy won't've had time to answer yet," Ron noticed her head movement. "We only sent Hedwig yesterday."

"No, it's not that. I've taken out a subscription to the Daily Prophet. I'm sick of finding everything out from the Slytherins."

"Good thinking!" Harry and I said together.

He looked up while I looked over at Draco who was walking over to us.

"Hey there!" I greeted him.

"Hello." He huffed as he sat down.

"Hey Hermione, you're in luck." Harry said.

"It doesn't have a newspaper. What is it?" I asked, confused at the letter.

Suddenly, there were four barn owls, a brown owl, and a tawny owl landing in front of her.

"How many subscriptions did you take out?" Harry asked.

He grabbed Hermione's goblet. Draco and I started working on getting the letters off of the owls. More owls were dropping by.

"What on earth -?" Hermione opened up one of the letters and suddenly started to go red.

"What's up?" Ron asked.

"It's - oh how ridiculous -"

She thrusted the letter to me, and I quickly read it.

It wasn't a handwritten note, the pasted letter had been cut out of a newspaper.

'You are a wicked girl. Harry Potter deserves better. Go back where you came from muggle.'

"That's rude." I said and handed it off to Harry.

"They're all like it!" Hermione said desperately, opening one letter after another. "'Harry Potter can do much better than the likes of you…' 'You deserve to be boiled in frog spawn…' Ouch!"

She opened the last envelope and yellowish-green liquid smelling strongly of petrol oozed onto her hands, which began to erupt in large yellow boils.

"I can't believe they're bullying a fourteen year old girl!" I said in disappointment.

"That's undiluted bubotuber pus." Draco said, looking at the yellow ooze.

"Ow!" Hermione's eyes had started to tear up.

"Go to Madam Pomfrey, she'll need to put something on it." I told her.

Her hands had swelled up and were starting to look like flesh colored gloves.

"We'll tell Professor Sprout where you've gone…" Harry told her.

She nodded and got up from the table.

"I warned her!" Ron said as she walked out of the Great Hall. "I warned her not to annoy Rita Skeeter! Look at this one," Ron started to read from another letter, " 'I read in Witch Weekly about how you are playing Harry Potter false and that boy has had enough hardship and I will be sending you a curse by next post as soon as I can find a big enough envelope.' Blimey, she'd better watch out for herself."

"We better show that letter to Minnie, or even Dumbledore. They're going to have to start screening the mail to make sure she doesn't get that curse or anything else that can cause harm." I started to gather all of the letters.

"That's a good idea." Draco started to gather up what I couldn't hold.

Ron held the bubotuber letter carefully as we carried the letters up to the teacher's table.

"What is it, Miss Zwart?" McGonagall asked when we approached her.

"Hermione got on the wrong side of Rita Skeeter. She just got sent a threat of a curse in the future." I pulled out that letter and held it to McGonagall.

"She also opened up this letter," I gestured to the letter Ron was holding, "and it was filled with undiluted bubotober puss. She's headed the Hospital Wing now," I added when McGonagall looked up at that.

"But I was hoping that you could start screening her mail first? Make sure she's only getting the Daily Prophet, her parents, and the Weasley's mail?" I asked.

"I'm sure we can make something work." Dumbledore had carefully taken the envelope of puss from Ron.

"Thank you, sir." I smiled up at him.

"Thank you for bringing this to us. Sadly, we cannot stop Ms. Skeeter from writing her articles." Dumbledore said as he passed the envelope to Snape.

"No, no we cannot." I sighed in agreement.

Line break

Hermione didn't show up to Herbology. Neville walked with us out of the greenhouses as we headed towards Hagrid's hut. Draco descended the stairs in front of Parkinson and her group.

Parkinson caught sight of Harry and called out, "Potter, have you split up with your girlfriend? Why was she so upset at breakfast?"

No one answered her, thankfully.

Hagrid, who had told us that we had finished up unicorns, was standing around with several crates at his feet.

"Not more skrewts." Draco muttered.

Before I could answer, a cute fluffy black creature popped up.

"Oh my gosh." I said.

I was in love with them.

"These're nifflers." Hagrid said when the class gathered around him. "Yeh find 'em down mines mostly. They like sparkly stuff… There ya go, look."

As luck would have it, one of the nifflers leapt up and attempted to steal Parkinson's watch off her wrist.

She shrieked and jumped backward.

"Useful little treasure detectors," Hagrid said happily.

I moved away from the class and knelt down by the crates, careful not to get my nose too close. I didn't want them taking out my nose ring.

They had long snouts and their little paws were spade shaped to help them dig.

"Thought we'd have some fun with 'em today. See over there?" Hagrid pointed at the mound of dirt a little ways away. "I buried some gold coins. I've got a prize fer whoever picks the niffler that digs up most. Jus' take off all yer valuables, an' choose a niffer, an' get ready ter set 'em loose."

I took off my nose ring and dropped it down my shirt. I just hoped I would remember it was there.

I put my hand in the crate and whichever niffler touched my hand I grabbed it.

I put it against my chest and it started trying to get into my shirt.

"Oh no you don't." I laughed as I pulled it away from me.

"Hang on, there's a spare niffler here… who's missin'? Where's Hermione?" Hagrid asked, looking around.

"She had to go to the hospital wing." Ron and I answered together.

"We'll explain later," Harry said.

I glared at Parkinson, who took the hint and looked away from me.

The lesson with the nifflers was the most fun I ever had. My niffler kept going to the other piles rather than digging in the dirt. She was playing it smarter rather than harder. I was giving coins back to everyone rather than keeping them because that would be cheating.

Ron's niffler was doing the best, he was diving into the dirt and waddling as fast as he could back Ron.

"Can you buy these as pets, Hagrid?" Ron asked excitedly as his niffler splattered his robes with dirt.

"Yer mum wouldn' be happy, Ron," Hagrid grinned. "They wreck houses, nifflers. I reckon they've nearly got the whole lot now." Hagrid paced the length of dirt he made. "I on'y buried a hundred coins. Oh there y'are Hermione!"

I turned around and Hermione looked miserable with hands heavily bandaged.

"Well, let's check out how yeh've done!" Hagrid said.

I tried to help Hermione sit down but she still struggled.

"Count yer coins! An' there's no point tryin' ter steal any, Crabbe," He added when he saw Crabbe starting to stuff his pockets. "It's leprechaun gold. Vanishes after a few hours.

Crabbe emptied his pockets with a sulky look. Ron turned out to have the most successful niffler, and I definitely had the laziest of the nifflers. Hagrid gave Ron an enormous slab of Honeydukes chocolate for a prize.

When the bell rang across the ground, Draco stayed behind with us to help put the niffler's away in their boxes.

"What yeh done ter your hands, Hermione?" Hagrid asked.

Hermione told him about the hate mail she had received that morning.

"Aaah, don' worry," Hagrid said gently as he looked down at her. "I got some o' those letters an' all, after Rita Skeeter wrote abou' me mum. 'Yeh're a monster an' yeh should be put down.' 'Yer mother killed innocent people an' if you had any decency you'd jump in a lake."

"They didn't'!" I said.

"No!" Hermione said shocked.

Draco looked ashamed.

"Yeah," Hagrid nodded and started to heave the niffler crates over to his hut wall.

I swished and flicked my wand, with an incantation, and floated what was left over there and stacked them neatly.

"Thank yeh, Cassie." Hagrid told me. "They're jus' nutters, Hermione. Don' open 'em if yeh get any more. Chuck 'em straigh' into the fire." Hagrid turned back to Hermione.

Draco was flushing in embarrassment as we walked away from Hagrid's hut.

"Did you send him one of those letters?" I asked Draco quietly.

"No, but I thought about it. Thought about asking father if he could send something or do something." Draco answered just as quietly.

"And what did you think after?" I asked him.

"What?" He asked.

I wasn't paying attention to what Ron and Harry were saying, but it was obvious they were both getting irritated with each other.

"What was your thought after?" I repeated myself.

"I… I thought that was a terrible thing to think." He told me.

"That's good! It means that you're trying to change how you think. You have fourteen years worth of one way of thinking. It's not going to go away in just a few months. You have to work through it and catch yourself. You didn't act on those thoughts, and that's amazing!" I praised him.

He flushed a little bit more, but did look pleased with himself.

We sat down at the Gryffindor table and started to fill up our plates.

"I hate being poor." Ron suddenly said.

I looked up at him, completely lost as to what led to that comment.

"It's rubbish, I don't blame Fred and George for trying to make some extra money. Wish I could. Wish I had a niffler." Ron said.

"Well, we know what to get you next Christmas," Hermione said brightly.

I watched as she struggled with her bandaged hands while Ron continued to pout.

"Come on, Ron, it could be worse. At least your fingers aren't full of pus." Hermione said.

I grabbed her plate with her fork and knife and started to cut up her food for her.

"Thank you, Cassie. I hate that Skeeter woman! I'll get her back for this if it's the last thing I do!" Hermione spat out.


The next few chapters are not going to have names mostly because I don't know what to name them so I apologize! Also! I am applying for a job, so I will be getting a whole new schedule to work around so I apologize now if my posts are a day early or late.

Shout out to Phatomkzocker for following this story!

Shout out to Pamela Hutchins and LunaChasefoster for leaving a review!

Pamela Hutchins: I adore every scene I get to write with Sirius, Cassie, and Harry. I am so excited for the next book!

LunaChaseFoster: I am still trying to figure out the Drarry scene, I would love to do them, but I just don't know if I can make a whole lot of growth happen there. And thank you!