AN: Still writing. Really, really love the reviews. And the reviewers too!
Disclaimer: Yes, Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. If you didn't know that, you shouldn't be reading this. And the opening song was written and performed by Sum 41. Yay!
Dedicated to: GooseFeathers, who had written for me the best character dissection of Fata that I have ever read (go you!), and to The Carina, my chronic email buddy, and close friend. She's also been leaving reviews at every one of my literary antics here on ff.net, and well, I appreciated that. You rock. :)
Chapter 16: Suspicion
It's not in what you do, but in what you say...
- Song by Sum 41
She sat at her desk, claw-like hands steepled in front of her. There was a soft knock at her door, and without inquiring who it was, she nodded. The door swung open, and two women walked in.
The woman at the desk looked at them over her jeweled glasses, and gestured to the two chairs in front of her desk. "Have a seat."
They did.
Rita Skeeter smiled predatorily at her two guests, leaned back, and Summoned a bright green quill from the corner of the room. She licked it, never taking her eyes of the younger one's tear-stained face, to the older one's cold grey eyes.
"Now, how may I help you?"
The quill hovered over the parchment, ready to mangle every single word spoken in that room.
However, the older woman reached out a beautiful hand, and laid it on the quill. "I don't think you'll be needing that, Skeeter." Rita looked mortally insulted.
The woman smiled, flipped her long, ice-blond hair back. "The story I have to tell is far, far greater that anything a substandard Quick Quotes Quill can ever dream up..." Her pale pink lips curved in a smile.
Rita sat back up, one eyebrow quirked high. "Okay," she said thoughtfully, taking out an ordinary quill and setting it to parchment. "Start talking."
The younger woman raised her beautiful blue eyes, dulled with tears, and took a breath. "It all started when he told me he loved me..."
***
Hermione looked up at the sound of the door opening. In walked Harry, and Hermione knew that he was in another one of his moods. Maybe now's not the time to discuss the wedding. she thought wisely. Instead, she asked about his day as she walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek.
He nodded to her questions, mentioned that Moody wanted to arrange a meeting in the next few days, and sat down in front of the fire, brooding. Hermione looked outside at the clear, spring night, wondering what to do now.
Finally, she walked over to the fire, and Harry took no notice of her. Putting her hand in the jar beside the fire, she pulled out some green powder, which she threw onto the fire.
"Alastor Moody!" she called, the heat from the fire warming her more than she would have liked. "Hermione Granger here."
A few minutes, and Moody's head appeared in the fire, his normal eye looking up at her, and his magical eye staring somewhere beyond the fire.
"Good evening, Ms. Granger." he sounded brisk. "You too, Potter." Harry nodded, eyes blank. Hermione turned back to Moody. "You wanted to talk to me, Alastor?" Moody looked thoughtfully at her.
"Yes, I did. I would like you to return to your Auror duties."
Hermione was silent.
Moody sounded business-like as he continued. "It's been four years since your marriage to - ah - Mr. Malfoy..."
Hermione heard a silent scream inside her rip through her heart. Don't call him that! It reminds him too much of his bastard father...
Moody's voice seemed to be coming from far away. "four years since your marriage... and two years since the incarceration. I strongly suggest that you start over with your life, Hermione."
He fixed both eyes on her, magical and normal. "Yes, start over. Your life is too impressive to waste on lazing around the house and doing nothing more tedious than mending Potter's socks. You deserve honor, and to achieve that honor, you should work for it."
Moody looked over at Harry, who had sunk deep into the armchair and was glaring blankly at the bricks above the fireplace.
"Besides, Potter might want you beside him. He's doing quite well, Hermione. I've noticed his extreme skill in the Counteracting Dark spells field, and I've transferred him there. I'm sure it will lighten the load on his back. He's been a great help, and I'm sure you will be too. Come back, Hermione."
Hermione sat back onto the carpet, murmuring a vague 'I'll think about it.', and a vaguer farewell as Moody faded from the fire.
Silence filled the room once more, punctuated only by the crackling of the fire and Harry's breathing. Finally, Hermione spoke.
"You never told me you were transferred. All this time I thought you were still in paperwork."
Harry looked down at the back of her tousled head. "What? Oh, well. You always did underestimate my abilities." His voice sounded cold.
Hermione replied, in a shaking voice: "You kept that tiny secret from me for a year." She turned to face him, and he could see tears glinting in her eyes. "How many more secrets are you keeping from me, Harry? How many more? For how long?"
Harry glared at her as she stood in front of him, and he sat up in the armchair. "I have no secrets, Hermione! Don't you dare accuse me of things I don't do."
She felt the tears overflow. "You never told me that you were transferred to the Dark field... so why have you been coming home late every night?! I would understand if you were still in paperwork, because I know that Moody keeps his paperwork apprentices after dark... but the Dark field?" her voice cracked. "Dark Aurors are dismissed at noon, Harry, and called back for missions... missions that come once a month."
She held out her hands to him, imploringly, beseechingly. "So, please... tell me... why have you been coming home so late all these years?"
Harry looked up at her. "That," he drawled coldly. "is none of your business, woman."
Hermione felt her temper snap. "Yes it is! It damn well is, Harry Potter! If you're coming home past ten every night, when I know very well you're dismissed at noon, it is too my fucking business!" she yelled, angrily rubbing the tears away from her face with an impatient hand.
Harry stood up from the chair, slowly, dangerously. "Don't answer me back, woman." he whispered, and the there was a chill in the room. Hermione backed away slowly, staring at him apprehensively. "Harry..."
He seized her wrist and walked closer to her, bending it backwards. She winced, eyes closed, her tears spilling onto her modest white blouse. "Harry... please, you're hurting me."
Something flickered, and the chill was gone, replaced by the crackling of the fire and Hermione's sobs.
Harry let of her hand, looking stunned. Hermione touched her skin carefully, looked up at him with blurry eyes. He looked back at her, eyes suddenly sadder than ever. "Hermione," he breathed. "I'm sorry. I'm so-"
He tried to hold her, but she twisted away from him and with a last glare over her shoulder, she ran up the stairs.
He dropped back to the armchair, Summoned a bottle of scotch from the cabinet, and stayed there, until the stars had faded and the fire had died.
***
She wrote as the girl talked, faster and faster, pausing only to dip her quill in the bright red inkwell on her gaudy green desk.
Finally, the girl stopped, her hands balled into white-knuckled fists in her lap and her head bent, her soft brown hair hiding her face and her tears from the rest of the world. The woman at the desk, however, took no notice of her misery.
"This," Rita Skeeter declared delightfully, holding up the scroll, "has to be the most sensational story ever written in this section of magical history!" Narcissa Malfoy looked at her, from where she was standing, which was by the window.
"Yes, it is, isn't it? And the best part is," she glided over to the desk, one hand clutching her silky shawl around her. "It's all true. None of those falsehoods and drivel that you normally write." Her voice was cold. "I am just making it perfectly clear, Miss Skeeter, that I did not appreciate that article you wrote on my husband's..."
Her voice failed. "... disappearance."
Rita stared at her incredulously. "Disappearance?! Madam Malfoy, the man has been missing for years now! Are you still in denial that your beloved husband is now dead and rotting somewhere in the corners of our world?"
Narcissa drew back as if she had been struck. Her face paled to the point of skeletal white. Berna looked up from where she was sitting, hastily brushing her tears away in shock.
Rita, however, having recorded the story and having tucked it away safely in her desk, was relishing her verbal torment. "And your son! How pitiful, to be thrown into Azkaban for crimes his father committed and left to him in place of the legendary Malfoy fortune. What happened to the money your son was supposed to inherit, Madam Malfoy?" Rita sneered. "You're living off it, I presume, comfortably? So, your son, instead of receiving what was rightfully his, instead of the vaults of Galleons and Sickles, received instead sweet, comfortable lodging in the strongest wizard prison on this planet?"
"I'm sure he's having fun there, Madam. It's free, isn't it, to have your own son thrown into prison?"
Rita sat down, a cold smirk on her face. She had obviously been waiting years to say this to Narcissa's face.
Narcissa's eyes narrowed dangerously, and she glared down at Rita with a venom fearful to behold.
"My husband..." she hissed, "is still alive. And he will return, stronger than ever, and we, hand in hand, will personally see to your painful disposal, Skeeter."
One thin hand curled possessively around the black amulet at her throat.
"And as for my son? I don't have one!"
Rita nodded nonchalantly, eyes focused on the article Berna had dictated out to her. "Mmhm. No son, right. So do I just cross your name off this article?"
With that, Narcissa seemed close to cursing Rita's nose off her face, if Berna hadn't stood up and with a hushed whisper to Narcissa, ran out the door. Narcissa stared after her, then whispering one last word to Skeeter, she walked out after the girl.
Skeeter looked down at the article. "Very well, Madam Malfoy. Very well."
Narcissa's last words echoed around the garishly decorated room that was Rita Skeeter's office.
Lie for me. Lie for me well.