A week and a half after the second task, on Friday afternoon, FitzSkimmons were standing outside the dungeon first in line for Potions like normal, when Malfoy and his crew sauntered up looking like the cats that got the cream.
"Oh, yay — something negative about me," Fitz greeted them boredly before Malfoy, or any of the other Snakes, could even open their mouths.
But that didn't stop them from opening their mouths anyway.
"There they are, there they are!" giggled Pansy, stepping up beside Malfoy, a magazine in her hand, presumably the latest issue of Witch Weekly by the title on the front, and the fact that it hadn't been brought out any earlier.
"You might find something to interest you in there, Granger!" sneered Pansy loudly, tossing the magazine at Simmons, who deftly stepped out of the way of it, letting it continue flying though the air and land on the stone floor several feet behind her.
Simmons casually stepped back into her spot.
"Why would I care about anything in a fashion magazine?" she asked. "Do I look like the kind of ditzy girl who wears make up, or excessive jewelry and fancy clothes outside of the rare black tie gala? Even when Ronna here went emo goth chick for a while, and did the whole black eyeshadow thing, it was a combination of disguise and deliberately trying to make herself look like what she felt like inside, not who she knew she really was. And the blue hair streak was just for fun, not any fashion purpose — and possibly to look appealing to Harry when we finally saw him again."
As expected, the Snakelets just stared back at Simmons for several long seconds (a few glancing over at Daisy's definitely eyeshadow-less eyes and blue streak-less hair, as well), clueless as to how they were supposed to respond to that, before Fitz finally looked at Pansy and Malfoy and said, "Use your words. If you want us to give a shit about whatever article you clearly think is demeaning to Hermione, use your words and tell us what the article is about."
"Read the article — it's page 13," drawled Malfoy.
"Oh, what a shame, can't reach it," Daisy replied dryly, as she half-heartedly stuck her arm behindbher, not even really in the direction where the magazine lay on the floor, and certainly nowhere near reaching it. "Guess you'll just have to tell us what it says.
"You're mentioned in there, too," sneered Malfoy. "All three of you are, in fact."
"Wow, I can really feel my level of shit-giving rising here — not," replied Fitz as boredly as before. "Care to actually tell us what it says, yet?"
"Read it — you'll find out," sneered Malfoy.
Simmons pointed backwards over her shoulder with her wand, and casually said, "Incendio." The magazine immediately burst into magical flames, quickly burning to ashes. A nifty little wind spell later, and the remains of the magazine and article inside were a thin layer of dust scattered across the dungeon hallway's already dirty stone floor. Simmons re-holstered her wand. "Oops. It's gone. Guess you'll just have to tell us what it says now."
But at that exact moment the dungeon door swung open, and with his normal glare at FitzSkimmons for existing, and always arriving first at the class he did everything in his pretty vast power if he did say so himself to make them hate the most out of all of their classes, ushered them all in. So Malfoy was saved from having to reply as everyone found their normal tables, which meant the very back corner table for FitzSkimmons.
Class plodded along at it's normal mundane, boring pace for two lab nerds and their spunky wife — broken only by relative frequent glares shot at them mostly by Malfoy and Pansy for having the nerve to not only not be highly offended and outraged and embarrassed at the Witch Weekly article, but also for having destroyed it before even reading it — until about half-way through the class, when there was a sharp knock on the dungeon door.
Once bid entrance by Snape, the Durmstrang headmaster opened the door and walked in, straight up to Snape's desk. Upon reaching Snape, Karkaroff said something quietly to the Snake that they couldn't hear from their table in the back, something Snape muttered an equally unintelligible reply to. After something else by Karkaroff, they easily heard Snape snap back, "After the lesson!"
Clearly not wanting Snape to run off after class was over, Karkaroff hovered behind Snape's desk for the remainder of the lesson, during which Snape spent the entire time moving between desks, sneering at and ridiculing Gryffindors and lauding Slytherins, in clear avoidance of his desk and Karkaroff right behind it.
Keen to be nowhere near an even more irate than normal Snape, FitzSkimmons were within the first few out the door when the bell rung signifying the end of another Gryffindor prison sentence.
"Wonder what Karkaroff was so urgent to talk to Snape about?" said Daisy a minute later as they walked up the stairs towards the Great Hall. "Looked like they knew each other, too."
"Well, they both seem like slimy gits, so are we really surprised there?" replied Fitz.
Simmons and Daisy both laughed.
"No, I suppose we really shouldn't be — peas in a black, moldy, rotten pod and all," said Daisy as they entered the Great Hall for supper.
But instead of heading towards their normal seats at the end of the table, Simmons said, "Follow me," before leading them to where Lavender and Parvati were sitting.
"Hi Lavender," greeted Simmons as they sat down across from them. "You wouldn't happen to get Witch Weekly, would you?"
"Uh, yeah — you want to read it?" replied the fellow Gryffindor fourth year in surprise.
"No, but according to the Slytherins, there's an article about the three of us in there," answered Simmons. "Malfoy and Pansy wouldn't tell us what it said, and while we really don't really care what it says, we do like to keep abreast of whatever's going to be the school's rumor mill's next main event when it's us — and we feel like whatever this is, it probably will be, or Malfoy wouldn't have looked so happy."
"Oh — yeah, of course," said Lavender. "Came out this morning, haven't had a chance to read past page five yet, so I don't know what Malfoy found."
She reached down into her school bag, and pulled out the latest issue of Witch Weekly. "Enjoy."
~.~
Harry Potter's Dark Secret
A boy like no other, perhaps — yet a boy suffering all the usual pangs of adolescence. Deprived of love since the tragic demise of his parents, fourteen-year-old Harry Potter thought he had found solace in his steady girlfriends at Hogwarts, muggleborn Hermione Granger and pureblood Ronna Weasley, both friends of his since his very first train ride to Hogwarts. Little did he know that he would shortly be suffering yet another emotional blow in a life already littered with personal loss.
Both Miss Granger, a plain but ambitious muggleborn, and Ronna Weasley, a pureblood of the well-known Weasley family, seem to have a taste for romance that Harry alone cannot satisfy. But what may hurt Harry the most when he finds out about these betrayals, is that they are with each other. Hermione Granger and Ronna Weasley were caught snogging behind Harry's back at the Yule Ball on Christmas night, out in the shadowy gardens where they thought no one would be able to catch them. Apparently a wizard alone, Harry Potter though it may be, isn't enough to satisfy these two girls' appetites.
However, it might not be Miss Granger's doubtful natural charms that have captured Harry or Ronna's interests.
"She's really ugly," says Pansy Parkinson, a pretty and vivacious fourth-year student, "but she'd be well up to making a Love Potion, she's quite brainy. I think that's how she's doing it."
Love Potions are, of course, banned at Hogwarts, and no doubt Albus Dumbledore will want to investigate these claims. In the meantime, Harry Potter's well-wishers must hope that, next time, he bestows his heart on worthier candidates.
~.~
"Wait — so is it both of you who are sneaking around behind my back, or is it just Hermione mentally kidnapping and subsequently assaulting and/or raping both me and Ronna with love potions, aka date rape drugs? Because Skeeter makes both accusations at the exact same time in this article, despite the fact that they're completely contradictory," said Fitz once he had finished reading the article. "I'm flummoxed."
"Ohh, 'flummoxed' — I like it," replied Simmons. "We need to use that word more often. Flummoxed."
"Well, while you two are over there being flummoxed" — "Yay! We're all flummoxed!" exclaimed Simmons far too cheerfully for the word 'flummoxed' — "what I want to know is when and where she saw us in the garden," said Daisy. "We were careful not to let anyone see us since no one would approve, so how did she? I mean, the part about it being behind Harry's back is clearly a lie she knows no one can call her out on, since if she did see us snogging, there's no way she didn't see both of us snogging Harry as well, but how did she see any of it to begin with?"
"And more importantly, is something like this how she found out that Hagrid is half-giant, something everyone's apparently too stupid to have figured out on their own despite Hermione knowing it first year as a muggleborn?" added Fitz. "Has she been routinely spying inside the grounds?"
"Also, how many people has she personally raped with love potions to immediately jump to that conclusion?" growled Simmons. "Anyone throwing out unfounded accusations like that has usually committed themselves whatever they're accusing other people of without any evidence. Also possibly Pansy, though given the fact she's with Malfoy who I'm sure would be happy to take anything with a pulse, I think it's more likely Skeeter led Pansy into saying that — something along the lines of, 'Think Miss Granger could be using love potions?' 'Oh yes, of course that's what she must being doing!' A pretty good sociopath like Skeeter clearly is, wouldn't be hard at all to manipulate that quote out Pansy, who's clearly jealous of Hermione — of me."
"Well, unfortunately there's absolutely nothing we can do about that, and it would just disappear at the end of the year, anyway," said Fitz. "But is there anything else in the article that is useful?"
"Don't see anything," answered Daisy, skimming the article again. "Other than that someone needs to give Pansy an ass-whooping for calling the most stunning girl on the planet 'really ugly'."
"The article says she called me really ugly, not you," teased Simmons.
"And here I thought I was the prettiest girl," said Fitz in mock offense.
"Oh, you definitely are," replied Simmons and Daisy at the same time with matching smirks. "You definitely are."
The following day, FitzSkimmons headed into Hogsmeade with all the other third year and older students.
After milling about the village and visiting all the shops, as it neared 14:00, they headed out to the end of the road out of Hogsmeade to meet Sirius. Two days before the second task, he had sent them a letter asking when the next Hogsmeade weekend was, which they had quickly jotted down on the back of his note and sent the owl off again. They assumed that he wanted to see Harry (and Hermione and Ronna) again, and probably warn him some more about whoever put Harry's name in the Goblet and was possibly trying to kill him, and thought it impolite to refuse. Sirius had then sent one more letter the previous morning, before Witch Weekly article fiasco with Malfoy, telling them when and where to meet, along with requesting they bring him some sustenance with them.
Arriving at the stile, FitzSkimmons found dog-Sirius waiting for them, where he quickly led them up to a cave he was clearly living in with Buckbeak.
"So what brings you to our quaint little corner of Scotland?" Simmons asked amicably once they'd given Sirius his food and he'd started eating.
"I wanted to be on the spot — let's just say things are getting even fishier. I've been stealing the paper every time someone throws one out, and by the looks of things, I'm not the only one who's getting worried," answered Sirius, before pointing out two issues of the Daily Prophet that lay scattered on the floor of the cave.
The first bore the headline 'Mystery Illness of Bartemius Crouch', while the second read, 'Ministry Witch Still Missing — Minister of Magic Now Personally Involved'.
FitzSkimmons quickly read the story about Crouch first. It sounded as though he hadn't been seen in public since November; his house appeared deserted; someone was either worried enough or nosey enough to ask St. Mungo's about it, but they had unsurprisingly declined to comment; and even less surprisingly, the Ministry had refused to confirm rumors that one of their Heads was dying a slow, painful death.
"So do they think he's ill or kidnapped?" asked Daisy once she'd finished reading. "Because there's several comments about illness and hospitals, but there's also the bit about his house being empty which doesn't fit with him being ill and house-ridden, and the not being seen in public could go either way."
"Thinking back on it, I would say he looked rather ill the night my name came out, wouldn't you ladies?" said Fitz. "I can't remember at the Wand Weighing Ceremony, and we were never close to him at the first task."
"He pretty much stayed hid in the shadows at the Wand Weighing Ceremony," answered Simmons. "But he didn't look great on Halloween."
"Think we could send a letter to Percy and ask if he knows anything?" asked Daisy. "He works for him, and has been filling in for him at the Ball and the Second Task."
"Him being kidnapped without his kidnappers making any demands in four months seems unlikely, but on the other hand, if Barty Crouch has ever taken a day off work because of illness before this, I'll eat Buckbeak," Sirius said slowly. "He works very hard to reinstate the Triwizard Tournament, and then stops coming to it — none of this is like him. But if he's kidnapped, what are they waiting on?"
"So you knew Crouch?" asked Simmons.
"Oh, I know Crouch, all right," Sirius answered darkly. "He was the one who sent me to Azkaban without a trial."
"Oh. Sorry, dude," Daisy replied sympathetically.
"Yeah, Crouch used to be Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement — or did you not know that?"
"No, we didn't," answered Simmons. "Actually, we know nothing about Crouch except that he's the Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, and is now missing."
"Well, he was tipped for the next Minister of Magic at one point," said Sirius. "He's a great wizard, Barty Crouch, powerfully magical — and power-hungry. Never a Voldemort supporter or anything, he was always very outspoken against the Dark Side, but a lot of people who were against the Dark Side...well, you wouldn't understand...you're too young…."
"He became a tyrant in his own right in his fervor to destroy the tyranny that Riddle was?" suggested Daisy. At Sirius's surprised look, she said with a wry smirk, "Oh, I think you'll find that we understand things far better than almost anyone."
Sirius grinned. "Alright, then. Well, you're right. People didn't know who Voldemort's supporters were, who was working for him and who wasn't, and everyone knew he could control people. So, obviously, everyone was terrified. And the Ministry of Magic was in complete disarray, clueless or at least looking like it on what to do, more concerned with keeping muggles from finding out that we exist than actually protecting them from Voldemort.
"Well, in that time of panic, Crouch rose quickly through the Ministry by ordering very harsh measures against Voldemort's supporters, handing them straight to the dementors without trial. I would say he became as ruthless and cruel as many on the Dark Side. He had his supporters, mind you — plenty of people thought he was going about things the right way, clamoring for him to take over as Minister of Magic. And when Voldemort disappeared, it looked like it was only a matter of time until he got the job. But then his own son was caught with a group of Death Eaters who'd managed to talk their way out of Azkaban. Apparently they were trying to find Voldemort and return him to power."
"Huh. Wow," said Fitz. "Guess Junior took a slightly different career path than his father. Then again, from the sounds of it, the apple actually didn't fall too far from the tree in terms of what they actually did."
"Well, from what I've heard since I got out, Crouch's fatherly affection stretched just far enough to give his son a trial, and by all accounts, it wasn't much more than an excuse for Crouch to show how much he hated the boy...then he sent him straight to Azkaban. I saw the dementors bringing him in, watched them through the bars in my cell door. He can't have been more than nineteen. They took him into a cell near mine. He was screaming for his mother by nightfall. He went quiet after a few days, though...they all went quiet in the end...except when they shrieked in their sleep…."
"So was he still there when you left?" asked Fitz.
"No," Sirius answered dully. "No, he's not in there anymore. He looked pretty sickly when he arrived, and he died about a year later. Crouch still being an important Ministry member despite his son getting caught, he and his wife were allowed a deathbed visit. That was the last time I saw Barty Crouch, half carrying his wife past my cell. She died herself, apparently, shortly afterward. Grief. Wasted away just like the boy. Crouch never came for his son's body. The dementors buried him outside the fortress; I watched them do it.
"So old Crouch lost it all, just when he thought he had it made. One moment, a hero, poised to become Minister of Magic...next, his son dead, his wife dead, the family name dishonored, and, so I've heard since I escaped, a big drop in popularity. Once the boy had died, people started feeling a bit more sympathetic toward the son and started asking how a nice young lad from a good family had gone so badly astray. The conclusion was that his father never cared much for him. So Cornelius Fudge got the top job, and Crouch was shunted sideways into the Department of International Magical Cooperation."
Everyone was silent for a while, thinking, until Sirius finally said, "You said you know someone who works for him and has been filling in for him at the tournament? Could you ask him if he's seen Crouch lately?"
"Of course," answered Daisy.
"And you might try and find out whether they've got any leads on Bertha Jorkins while you're at it," added Sirius, motioning at the second copy of the Daily Prophet they hadn't looked at yet.
"You got it."
Everyone lapsed back into silence again for a while, until Sirius finally said, "It's getting late, you should be heading back up to castle. But before you go...I don't want you lot sneaking out of school to see me, all right? Just send notes to me here. I still want to hear about anything odd. But you're not to go leaving Hogwarts without permission; it would be an ideal opportunity for someone to attack you."
"Wouldn't dream of it," answered Fitz, completely honestly.
Monday morning, FitzSkimmons were eating breakfast when a gray owl suddenly landed in front of Simmons' plate, followed closely by four barn owls, two brown owls, a tawny, and another grey.
"Uh…this is odd," said Simmons, staring at all the owls sitting in front of them jostling each other to be in front.
"And is it just me, or does this not feel right, either?" asked Daisy, as two of them pushed up to her instead of Simmons.
"Even if it was just you, it would still be a feeling worth acting on, Daisy-Girl — you're a spy, after all, you have a highly trained gut-feeling," answered Fitz. "But no, I'm not getting good vibes off of this, either."
"So what are we going to do? Just leave them all here?" asked Simmons.
"Can we use our wands to poke at them, and see who they're all addressed to, and if we recognize any of the handwritings?" suggested Daisy.
They quickly put their plan into motion, all three of them poking through the nine letters without actually touching any of them with their hands, or taking any of them off their delivery owls. In the end, they found that the seven crowding around Simmons were in fact all addressed to Hermione or Granger, while the two in front of Daisy were for Ronna or Weasley, and none were addressed to Harry Potter, and more importantly, none had recognizable handwriting. So FitzSkimmons returned to eating, letting the owls impatiently shuffle around on the table in front of them.
But just as they'd finished up eating, and were debating whether it was too early to head out to the greenhouses for class or not, they heard Professor McGonagall's stern voice behind them.
"Potter. Weasley. Granger. What is the meaning of this? Why are there so many owls standing on the table in front of you, and why haven't you taken their letters so they can fly away instead of trampling all the food?"
All three of them turned to face her, but it was Fitz who answered.
"There are seven letters addressed to Hermione, and two to Ronna, but we don't know anyone who would be sending us letters, we don't recognize any of the handwritings on the outside, and it's quite simply put highly unusual to get this many letters at once. So to be honest Ma'am, we have a bad feeling about them. Like they could be laced with poison or something — well, I guess maybe cursed in this world."
"A bad feeling?! Poisoned?! Cursed?! Who would try to harm students like you?!" exclaimed McGonagall in disbelief. "What on earth are you talking about?"
But something she'd said made Fitz think. Turning to his wives, he asked, "Is there something that's happened recently that could have anyone sending us letters, prank or genuinely harmful? Be it people outside the castle, or Malfoy being a git."
Both girls thought for a moment, before Simmons said, "Well, I was just accused of raping you and Ronna, and we were both accused of going behind your back, so that might have upset a few people. Especially since you're something of a celebrity. So more likely the hate mail for cheating on you, unfortunately not the rape accusation part."
When McGonagall just stared at them in her normal confusion, Daisy explained, "Skeeter wrote what one might call a slightly negative article about Hermione and I. In muggle law we'd call it libel, but you clearly don't have such protections here, so we'll facetiously go with 'slightly negative'. But point being, given how obsessed people are with Harry Potter, and the fact that all the letters are to Hermione and myself, they may very well be hate mail. Which could reasonably be assumed to possibly be poisoned or cursed."
"So we would like someone skilled in opening potentially dangerous mail to open all these letters for us — and more, if we continue to get letters from unknown senders," added Simmons.
"What?! That's not—! We can't—! We're not putting anyone to open your mail for you!" exclaimed McGonagall.
"Then we're not taking any letters we don't recognize," Fitz replied calmly. "And you can deal with the owls doing whatever they do when no one accepts their letter."
"You're being completely ridiculous!" shouted McGonagall. "No one would want to harm children like you over some magazine article!"
FitzSkimmons simply shrugged, standing up with their book bags, leaving the owls jostling around on the table.
But as they headed out of the Great Hall towards the greenhouses, the owls followed them, some of them lighting on their shoulders, while the rest hopped and flew from banister to statue to railing to suit of armor around them, waiting impatiently for their recipients to take the first letters, so they could deliver theirs. So FitzSkimmons made for a very odd-looking scene walking to the greenhouse, and then waiting outside for everyone else to arrive.
When the rest of their fellow students did start straggling up, several of them asked why they were covered in owls, to which Simmons simply replied, "It's not our mail, but they refuse to leave," not wanting to have to explain to everyone what was really going on.
But when Madam Sprout opened the greenhouse door and asked the same question, since she was a professor who theoretically had at least some amount of sway around there, Daisy said, "We think we may be getting hate mail because of an article published recently about us by Ms Skeeter, and we have too much knowledge of the muggle world where such things can be poisoned, that we won't even touch any of them until someone more magically skilled than us has checked over them to make sure they aren't poisoned or cursed. But McGonagall thinks we're being ridiculous, and refuses to do anything, so we're stuck with owls constantly flying around us until one of you gets fed up enough with it to check our mail — squeaky wheel getting grease and all that jive."
Unfortunately, Sprout apparently felt much the same way as McGonagall did about the whole situation, as she simply told them to keep their owls out of her greenhouse, or she was going to kick them all out of her greenhouse herself and give them detention. So waiting for everyone else in the class to enter the greenhouse first, FitzSkimmons one at a time shooed away the birds sitting on them before dashing into the greenhouse and closing the door back behind them, until all three were inside, and all nine birds were still outside.
That of course didn't stop the owls from spending the entire class period pecking on the windows, but as there was nothing Madam Sprout could do about that without kicking FitzSkimmons out of her class, which she was loathe to do to three of her four best students, and they had technically obeyed her instructions, she merely spent the entire class scowling at the windows when she wasn't instructing them on something.
Leaving the greenhouse when the bell rung, the owls immediately took their places back on FitzSkimmons' shoulders and flying all around them as they walked down to Hagrid's hut for Care of Magical Creatures class.
But they hadn't been walking long when they passed near the steps of the castle, and heard Parkinson, who was descending said steps with the rest of the Slytherins, shout, "Potter, what was McGonagall doing at your table this morning? Giving your girlfriends detention for cheating behind your back?"
"Oh, no, not all," answered Daisy cheerfully. "In fact, I still don't think she actually has a clue what the article said, or I'm pretty sure she would have mentioned it, and probably rather vociferously at that. No, we were just getting a bunch of adoring fan mail presumably because of the article you're doubtlessly referencing, but aren't so stupid as to actually open any of it, and she was complaining about all the owls. Oh — and Parkinson, Malfoy?"
Then before either of them could say anything, she turned to Fitz and planted a sound kiss on his lips, before moving on to Simmons and doing likewise, and then stepping slightly back and pulling FitzSimmons to each other, where they obliged her silent demand and kissed soundly as well.
"There — guess you can't say it's behind my back anymore," Fitz said nonchalantly, before all three of them turned their backs on the Slytherins and began strolling down the lawn towards Hagrid's hut, leaving a flabbergasted and flummoxed Snake nest behind them, too stunned to even ask why there was a parliament of owls flocking around the Gryffindor trio.
But as Hagrid hadn't seen them smooch, he wasn't too speechless to ask why the hell there were nine owls following FitzSkimmons around.
"We're pretty sure it's hate mail from a particularly enchanting story by our dear friend Ms Skeeter, and we refuse to open it," Fitz answered boredly. "So the owls keep following us around."
"Aaah, don' worry," replied Hagrid. "I got some o' those letters an all, after Rita Skeeter wrote about 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'. Yeah, they're jus' nutters. Chuck 'em straigh' in the fire."
"We would, but we aren't even willing to take the risk of touching them without someone more magical than us making sure they aren't cursed, first," said Daisy. "We've asked McGonagall, and mentioned it to Sprout, but they refuse to do anything yet. So we'll just keep waiting, until someone gets irritated enough with all the owls to check our mail for us."
By this point everyone else in the class had arrived, so Hagrid couldn't say anything more to them about the letters, having to start their lesson on nifflers.
~FSK~
The owls continued following them around all day, until finally at supper McGonagall stormed up to them again.
"Why haven't you taken your letters and got rid of those owls yet?!" she demanded angrily.
"Because you haven't sent anyone to check them for us first," Daisy retorted boredly. "Which you eventually will, because let's be honest here — what else are you going to do? Expel us for not opening mail? Because we'll justly refuse to do detention for defending our lives, which refusing to open potentially poisoned mail is, and we don't give two shits about House points, so take all of those motherloving things away that you want to. And speaking of which, is there even a House Cup this year, what with the tourney going on and all?"
Apparently having expected continued refusal on their part to open their letters, Professor McGonagall waved Professor Flitwick down from the staff table.
"Will you at the very least take them off of the owls if Filius scans them for you to prove that there is absolutely nothing wrong with them?" she asked irritably.
"Of course," answered Simmons. "It's all we ever asked."
Professor McGonagall nodded at Professor Flitwick, who waved his wands over all the letters. Most of them glowed a light blue for a second before returning to normal, but the one on the tawny owl glowed a bright red and stayed glowing. McGonagall stared at it in shock.
"Apparently you were right, Miss Granger," said Professor Flitwick, looking at Simmons. "There is something harmful in that letter, though I cannot say what without further investigation."
"Can you do that, please?" asked Simmons politely.
Daisy, however, turned to glare at McGonagall, and said coldly, "Believe us now when we said we had a bad feeling?"
Professor McGonagall collected herself and replied weakly, "I apologize, Weasley. And to you too, Potter and Granger. I will personally scan all your mail for you from now on until this stops. And Filius? — please let me know how someone tried to harm one of our students."