Chapter Nine: Lockhart and Skeeter
Gilderoy Lockhart, internationally renowned author, former Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher and a liar of near fatal consequences, had returned to Hogwarts. Harry stared openly at the immaculately dressed wizard as he strode happily down the centre of the Great Hall, following in the footsteps of those who had been Sorted barely an hour before. As he proceeded, he waved happily to one or two pupils who said hello to him.
"Hello there! How are you? So good to be back!"
He stopped in front of the staff table and bowed to Professor Dumbledore.
"So sorry I'm late, Headmaster. Ran into a spot of bother coming by Heathrow. Those low flying jets play havoc with a man's broom."
Professor Dumbledore nodded understandingly, and Lockhart made his way to an empty seat at the side of the staff table. Dumbledore watched him all the way, and then turned to face the school once more.
"I am sure that many of you will know former Professor Lockhart," he said. "Although not returning to the staff this year, Mister Lockhart will be supervising a research project in the library on behalf of the Ministry of Magic. It may be the case that this project may cause certain books you are seeking to be absent when you require them, and for that my apologies. I shall leave it up to the individual members of staff as to whether or not they shall accept that as justification for missing homework, and for how long they shall believe it."
Lockhart waved cheerily to a seventh year Hufflepuff girl who blushed slightly.
"Smarmy sod," Harry heard Ron mutter.
"Now, unless there are to be any more surprises, we shall head off to bed. I wish you all a sound night's sleep, or at the very least that portion of it that you spend in bed. I give full discretion over lights out to our heads of houses."
The school slowly filed out of the Great Hall. Hermione lead the way for the Gryffindors, with Harry and Ron shepherding the crowd all the way up to Gryffindor Tower.
"Bravery and honour," Hermione said to the Fat Lady, who swung open with a regal nod of her head. One by one the Gryffindors clambered through the portrait hole and into the common room.
"Right, first years, boys are up that stairway, girls up that one," Hermione pointed. "Your trunks and other belongings are already up there. If you have any problems, feel free to come find me or one of the other prefects. . ." Hermione tailed off, looking at Dean, who was standing there with his hand up.
"Yes Dean?" she asked cautiously.
"Hermione, I'm not as smart as all you wonderful Prefects are, and I've forgotten where the sixth year boys dormitory is. Is it all right if one of the big, strong Prefects comes and shows me where it is?"
"Of course it is, Dean," Hermione said, smiling. "I'm sure Ron will be happy to show you where to go."
"I'll show him," Seamus volunteered. "I'll show him what the best window for jumping out of is, as well," he added.
"Children," Hermione began, but Dean and Seamus had already begun throwing things at one another. She ducked as a pencil case flew past her head, and gasped as it hit the wall, erupting into a flock of canaries that flew up to the ceiling and found perches in the rafters.
Harry jumped to his left to avoid a spellbook that suddenly stopped, and flew back the way it had come from, catching Seamus unawares and in the stomach. He went flying into an armchair, and Harry recognised one of Fred and George's Boomerang Spellbooks. Ron enthusiastically replaced Seamus, pulling stuff from a paper bag that had WWW monogrammed on it. Harry realised a little too late that Seamus and Dean had spent a great deal of money at Fred and George's shop. A little too late because once again Harry found himself on the wrong end of a Hay Fever Hand Grenade.
Coughing and sneezing, Harry fell into a chair, and watched through streaming eyes as Ron, Dean and Seamus were joined by nearly all of the other Gryffindors. Only Hermione and one or two of the younger students stayed out of the fight, the others all arming themselves from Seamus and Dean's seemingly endless supply of Weasleys Wizard Wheezes.
When the fight concluded, almost half an hour later, the common room looked as though a very strange bomb had been detonated in the middle of the floor. It was coated in powder, slime, feathers, food of various descriptions, water and the sooty, smoking remains of several Birthday Bombs which Harry had appropriated from Dean's bag.
Hermione stood in the centre of the floor, almost unscathed except for where Ginny had managed to blindside her with a cream cake from her Food Fight Four Thousand. She tapped her foot patiently, her wand clasped in her hand.
"If you're quite finished. . . Everyone in first through fourth years," she said in a low, menacing voice, "will go straight to your rooms. Fifth years and above will stay and clean all this up."
The younger pupils trooped towards their dormitories. They grinned at one another, several catching Dean or Seamus' eye as they walked past. Once they had all gone, Dean stood up and opened his mouth, but Hermione held up a hand to stop him.
"While I'm sure there were better, cleaner ways to do it, I'm also sure that this was an excellent way to welcome the younger students to Hogwarts," she said. "Which is why I'm not giving detentions to everyone involved. But at the same time, I'm not leaving all this for the house elves to clear up."
Behind her, Ron rolled his eyes, but drew his wand anyway.
"Now, I know you all know your cleaning spells. This should only take a few minutes, it's barely even a punishment, understood?"
There was a chorus of "Yes, Hermione," and even the seventh years joined in. Harry grinned as he drew his own wand, knowing full well that Hermione was turning into a force to be reckoned with in her own way. She was right about the time it would take as well, as with the combined efforts of the fifth, sixth, and seventh years all casting cleaning charms, tidying up the common room-wide mess took less than five minutes.
As Hermione talked to one of the fifth years, it struck Harry that she reminded him of Mr.s Weasley. She had a similar manner when it came to ordering people around. She simply assumed that people would do what they were told as she had come to the conclusion that that was the best thing for them to do. Mr.s Weasley approached her children and husband in the same way, rarely shouting at them when she wanted them to do things, but instead using a tone of voice that suggested that matters had already been settled. Harry smiled to himself as he wondered whether Ron saw the similarities.
"Knut for your thoughts?" A pair of arms slid around his shoulders and long hair fell across one side of his face as someone lent over him and kissed him on the cheek. He smiled up at Ginny, standing over him as he knelt by the common room's fireplace.
"They're not even worth a Knut," he said. "Just a silly thought."
"I should tell Hermione," Ginny laughed. "I don't think she's letting anyone have silly thoughts right now."
"You're right," Harry replied. "I'd better get to work then." He turned his back on her and made a great show of polishing the brass of the fireplace.
"I'm sure she'd let us have a break," he heard her say.
"No, you're right," he replied, stifling a grin. "Must work hard. Hermione knows all. Scrub scrub scrub, polish polish polish."
"Okay, okay," Ginny objected, pulling the duster from his hands. "How about. . . we go for a walk. I'll never get to sleep unless I get some exercise."
"All right," Harry said. "Where do you want to go?"
"Down by the Quidditch pitch?" Ginny suggested. "I'll leave my broom here," she said quickly.
"That'd be good. I'll get the Invisibility Cloak in a minute," Harry said, smiling at her expression. "But let's get this done first, or Hermione will kill us. Or hex us with fur, and I've got enough hair problems already."
*
Monday morning dawned bright and clear. It was a beautiful late summer day, and Harry felt warm and content as he headed down to breakfast beside Hermione and Ron. They took seats at the table beside Ginny and Lavender, a smile from Ginny bringing colour to Harry's cheeks that had Ron eyeing him suspiciously until the second round of toast.
In truth, Ginny and Harry had done little more than walk the previous night, and Ginny's smile had simply made Harry suffer one of his occasional embarrassment attacks.
That's my girlfriend, he thought. Who cares what house Malfoy ends up in, or if there'll be a decent Quidditch squad when we leave here? Just being around someone as wonderful as she is enough for me.
Harry blushed into his porridge, wondering what Ron would say if he said that aloud.
"Not care about Quidditch? You're sick, Harry. . ."
"Timetables," Hermione said, as Professor McGonagall stepped down from the teachers' table and began circulating through the Great Hall. As she reached the Gryffindor table she fixed Harry, Ron and Hermione with a steely glare.
"The fat lady has informed me that someone was out of the Gryffindor dormitory after lights out last night. I shall ask the three of you and your fellow Prefects to ensure that this doesn't happen again. It is dangerous, and against school rules, and I will tell you now that if anyone should be caught out of bounds late at night then that person will be severely punished. Am I making myself clear?"
The three of them nodded quickly.
"Good," she said. "Now, here are your timetables. Mr. Weasley, may I say how pleased I was to see your name down for six N.E.W.Ts. If I may say so, it is about time that you started to stretch yourself academically, and not just when you are saving goals for the house Quidditch team."
"Good grief!" Ron gasped as McGonagall walked away. "Look at this!"
Harry looked down at his timetable and tried to work out what his friend was so worried about.
"What's wrong?" he asked eventually.
"What's wrong? What's wrong? Look at Wednesday and Friday, that's what's wrong!"
Harry looked at his timetable, really taking in the details for the first time. He winced, and looked at Ron.
"Since when do we work until five o' clock? And it's Potions last thing, both days!"
"At least you have Monday mornings off," Hermione pointed out. "I'll have to be up first thing for Arithmancy."
"Yeah, but you love Arithmancy, Hermione," Ron said. "You love all of your classes. Look, your boyfriend and your best friend are suffering, okay? Can we get some sympathy please?"
"Poor Ron, poor Harry," Hermione said flatly. "Poor Hermione, another year stuck with you two."
Harry chuckled, and even Ron grinned.
"Hey," he grinned. "I can go back to bed. We're not due in Dark Arts for another two hours."
"You see? Every cloud has a silver lining," Hermione said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get my Arithmancy text from my dormitory."
She walked away, stopping to say hello to Professor Skeeter as the older witch came through the doors into the Great Hall. To Harry's surprise, Skeeter made her way around to him and Ron, staring at them balefully.
"I spoke to Professor Lupin last night," she said. "He let me in on a few things he thought I should know once I was committed to working here. No one told me that you two and Miss Granger have started a Duelling Club where you tutor the other students primarily in Defence Against the Dark Arts. No one told me that you, Potter, take on hungry packs of Dementors without much more than your wand and a smile. No-one told me that the three of you have made it through more jinxes, hexes, puzzles and spells than most Aurors face in their first five years on the job. All this and it's Monday morning to boot."
She leant forward so that her mouth was level with Ron and Harry's ears.
"I'll be expecting full information on the Duelling Club from the three of you by the end of the week. I have no problems with you doing what you do, in fact I'd like to help, and I'm assured by Professor Lupin that you won't start to consider yourselves as being above my class."
Ron and Harry shook their heads in mute agreement.
"That's good. And I'm sorry for snapping at you. Like I said, Monday mornings. Never a good way to start the week. There ought to be a law against them."
She straightened up and walked off. Harry and Ron exchanged confused glances, interrupted by Ginny.
"Well, I don't know how good she is against the Dark Arts," she said. "But she's got Ron to shut up. That's pretty impressive."
Ron, predictably, had a different take on things than his sister. "Let me see, Quirrell was possessed, Lockhart a liar, Lupin a werewolf, Moody a fake, Dumbledore is barmy, and now we've got Skeeter, who's, well, she's a woman."
Ginny paused, a slice of toast halfway to her mouth. Her eyes narrowed as she studied Ron.
"You are so lucky Hermione didn't hear you say that," Ginny said.
"Well, she is! Every woman I know is up one minute, down the next. I don't understand them. No-one can. Not even other women."
"Of course you could understand them, Ron, if you just had an ounce of common sense."
"Okay then," Ron challenged. "What's Skeeter's problem?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Ginny asked. "When she was young, her family were attacked by Death Eaters. Because of that, she had to take remedial classes, and she probably still didn't do very well in her classes that year. She couldn't do a thing to stop the attack, and she probably had people making fun of her about getting low marks."
"Why?" Ron asked, interested in Ginny's version of events despite himself. "She got attacked by Death Eaters, for Merlin's sake."
"So did we, Ron, remember? We didn't lose marks."
"Yeah, but we were lucky."
"Anyway, on top of all this, Professor Skeeter is really young to be a teacher. Professor Lupin must have been doing his N.E.W.Ts if he was allowed to help her with her classes, so she's only in her very early thirties. If she went through teacher training, that's four years, time at the Club d'escrime de la Tour d'Auvergne would be several more years. We know that she's not taught here before now, because there hasn't been a female teacher here of her age since Bill was here."
"So?"
"So, Professor Skeeter is our current expert on the Dark Arts, right? But coming back here reminds her that she didn't do too well when she was here. She's spent a lot of her time, maybe all of it, since she finished school learning Dark Arts defence and how to be a teacher. . . This is her first teaching job, her first class has got Harry, you and Hermione in it. Come on, Ron, you can work out the rest."
"You mean, because of all the stuff we've done, she's worried that we're going to be arrogant? She's nutters! We're not bloody Slytherins."
One or two younger pupils looked at Ron as though he'd done something terrible by insulting the Slytherins, but Harry and Ron didn't notice.
"It's not that she thinks you'll be arrogant," Ginny said. "It's that she thinks you probably could be arrogant, that you deserve to be. She's worried that she won't be able to teach you anything because you'll know it already."
Harry and Ron sat silently for a long moment. Ron eventually looked up at the staff table at Professor Skeeter, and scrutinised her closely. Harry looked at Ginny.
"Do you know anything about this Club de la. . ."
"Club d'escrime de la Tour d'Auvergne?" she asked. "A little. It's a school in France where they teach fencing, swordfighting, y'know? Sometimes people commit themselves to learning everything there is to know about fencing. It takes years, but I guess Professor Skeeter did it if she's a graduate."
"She was learning how to defend herself if there was ever another attack. . ." Harry said slowly.
"Not just that," Ginny said quietly. "If she's teaching Dark Arts, she must have been able to do that when she finished here. I think that she wanted an extra edge, and that's why she started learning how to fence. She must be fanatical about it, if she was prepared to spend all those years learning."
Harry thought about Ginny's words all the way back up to Gryffindor Tower. As Ron lay snoring on his bed, Harry sat by the window and leafed through the photo album Hagrid had given him at the end of his first year. It held many pictures of his parents, as well as dozens of photos of his friends that had been taken over the last four years. Harry found himself stopping at one photo in particular, taken by Hermione at the start of the previous year.
In the picture, Harry was sitting at a table staring intently at his Dark Arts essay, but the photo showed more then that as well. On the edge of the picture was Ginny, rocking back in her chair and laughing. The picture Harry let his gaze flicker upwards for the barest fraction of a second as he took in the sight of Ginny laughing, before his eyes dropped back down and refocused on his work. His expression changed slightly, a hint of an upward curve at the corner of his mouth, a slightly different glint in his eye. He started writing frantically.
Harry could just make out the title of the essay that he had been working on, and remembered that he had scored highly on it. The same small smiled flickered across his features now, but it faded as he thought of Professor Skeeter, fanatically working on her fencing in order that she wouldn't be a victim again. Harry hoped that the woman had enjoyed her chosen life, but the thought of a life lived that way baffled him. He couldn't imagine her having time for friends, or playing Quidditch, or taking time to see a film at the cinema, or any of the things that he took for granted.
What good is a life if you don't live it? Harry wondered. Part of him recognised that people could give their lives in the service of others. He thought of priests and nuns, whose lives required constant service to their faith. He knew he could never be that selfless, knew that his life with Ginny, Ron, Hermione and the rest of his friends was too dear to him to give up in pursuit of some intangible goal. Even the prospect of bringing an end to Voldemort's reign of terror seemed remote. No matter what people might choose to believe, he still felt that Dumbledore would be the one to hand Voldemort his final defeat. If he started believing in some grand plan that would see him fighting Voldemort to the finish, then he might as well just give up now and hand his life over to Rita Skeeter to serialise. It would be entertaining, if lacking any serious-
Harry sat bolt upright in his chair, amazed that the connection hadn't been made earlier. He looked over at Ron, wondering if his friend had thought of it, but dismissed the idea. If Ron had connected Rita Skeeter, the scandal seeking reporter for the Daily Prophet, with Professor Maureen Skeeter, their new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, he hadn't said anything. Hermione, on the other hand, must have made the connection. He resolved to grill Hermione as soon as he saw her again.
I need to concentrate more, Harry thought as he remembered Professor Skeeter's introduction of herself the night before. I was just enjoying being back with my friends and going back to school. I need to stay focused or that could really cost me.
Looking down at his watch, Harry realised that Ron and he had ten minutes to get to their first Dark Arts class. After what Ginny had said, it wouldn't do for the two of them to turn up late. Shutting his photo album in his trunk, he prodded Ron in the side until his friend woke up. Together, they hurried out of Gryffindor Tower and down the steps to their first class of the new school year.
To be continued…
Aggiebell: I'm not a poet, but I enjoy writing the Sorting Hat's song. Notice how JKR skipped it in books two and three? I don't think she enjoys writing it :-p
Lee is learning how to coach Quidditch from Madam Hooch, mainly so I can have him around to commentate on the six Quidditch matches in this story.
Dean's line about the hat is one of my favourite lines in the story. Look for Dean to have a much more expanded role in the story, starting in chapter 11.
Eric2: Hey, thanks. I'm trying to post new chapters once a week or so, along with any other stories that I might come up with along the way.
Zahri: I'm glad you enjoyed the Sorting Song, it's been much more popular than I thought it would be. It does rather replicate the piece in OotP, but many of my ideas for this story were planned out in the week just before OotP was released, and a greater sense of house unity was one of them. Maybe me and JKR are on the same wavelength :-p
Josh won't be a Gary Stu, rather he's based on a guy I know who was one of the biggest fans of Dementors' Kiss and got a big kick out of the idea of joining the student body. He only has a small role here, but he'll be there or thereabouts whenever there are a lot of Gryffindors about.
Don't forget that Ron in this story is Quidditch vice-captain, and with the departure of the twins, Alicia and Angelina, there's four spots open on the house team this year. A future chapter will deal with the selection procedure of the new players at length.