Chapter 4) The Unspoken Truth
Selected Listening: Little Bird- The Weepies
Author's Note: Thanks for reading so far! If you're enjoying the story, please consider submitting a review or at least the fav/follow button. I would super appreciate it!
Also, I really love the song I chose for this chapter. Sometimes it takes me a while to find a sound that really fits the story, but I've had this on repeat for weeks now. Check it out!
Anastasia lingered only a few moments more at Florean's, enough to choke down a few more bites of ice cream, before telling Harry she'd be in her room for a while.
She ran down the cobblestone lane, back to the Leaky Cauldron. As she entered through the brick wall entrance, she nearly ran into a woman going the other direction.
The woman was tall with curly blonde hair. She wore red triangular glasses, a green suit, and high-heels. On her right side, a notebook floated under a feather quill that continuously scratched on the paper surface. It was the reporter who had snuck in before.
"What luck!" Skeeter said, grabbing Anastasia's wrist as she tried to go into the tavern. "Anastasia Dumbledore, I've been wanting to speak with you for weeks. Do you have time for an interview?"
"Not right now," Anastasia said, broke away, and ran all the way up to her room where she slammed the door behind her and locked it.
"Is all that racket really necessary?" A prim voice asked from the corner.
Anastasia whirled around and found no one.
"Who's there?" she asked.
"Really, you haven't met a talking mirror before?" it said. The voice indeed, came from a long, standing mirror in the back corner. Anastasia walked over to it and centered herself in view.
Anastasia's eyes were red and blotchy. She pulled out her usual ponytail and let her hair hang down around her face in a frizzy mass. She had a stain from an ice cream drip near the collar of her shirt, right next to the scar she received during the kidnapping incident. Now over two years had passed, and the scar had somewhat grown as she did, extending from the edge of her chin to mid-neck, and it had faded to a taupe that nearly blended into her skin, but not quite.
"Oh, you've been crying! You poor thing. Well, that's quite alright, sadness has its own form of beauty."
"If you don't mind," Anastasia said in a hardened tone, "I'm going to do a bit more of that, privately."
She grabbed a blanket off the end of the bed and tossed it over the mirror, then she climbed under the covers of the four post and sobbed herself to sleep.
Anastasia woke up, overheated and disoriented. The room was dark: the London subway lights cut through the shroud onto the wooden floor planks. She looked around and remembered what happened. The boy she thought was her friend, was not her friend anymore. Anastasia's stomach growled. She pushed herself to a sitting position, and then off the bed and downstairs, where a warm glow had fallen over the tavern.
She found Harry, in a corner, eating a dinner of shepherd's pie. She slumped down on the bench across from him.
"Sorry I ran away earlier," she said, rubbing her temples.
"It's alright." Harry said, wincing. He was waiting for the courage to say something. "Florean told me that Malfoy has been coming to the shop a lot this summer with Crabbe and Goyle, spewing a lot of nasty talk about you from the articles…he also said you were friends with Malfoy once…is it true?"
Anastasia was surprised Florean remembered anything about them, but she couldn't deny it.
"Yeah…it was," she admitted.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Harry asked hesitantly.
Anastasia made a grumble of displeasure.
"How could I? He's awful, isn't he? To you and Hermione, and pretty much anyone else he doesn't like. I don't know why I thought he was my friend, Harry. I must have been imagining it." She covered her face in her hands.
Harry reached across the table and touched her arm gently.
"It's going to be okay. No one needs him. You're better off now."
Anastasia thought of the lifeline spell, and how no matter what, she would always be connected to Draco Malfoy, even if she didn't want to be.
"Thanks, Harry." she smiled slightly.
Inside, she felt wounded.
The next morning, Harry and Anastasia sat downstairs eating breakfast. The Daily Prophet owls flew in from the opening for post near the ceiling and dropped the papers onto everyone's tables. Anastasia tucked a knut in its ankle pouch, and it flew off again. Harry picked up the paper, his eyes glazing over the front page.
"Let's hear it…," Anastasia said, "What are they saying now?"
"It's mostly about Sirius Black," Harry said, flipping through the articles. "He's been sighted in a few villages. Nothing specific."
"Is that it, really?" Anastasia asked.
"Some bloke named Newt Scamander discovered the cure for obscurus?"
Anastasia ripped the paper from his grasp and her eyes settled on the article in question.
NEWT SCAMANDER CURES OBSCURUS
Magizoologist and author, Newt Scamander, has published a new paper on curing witches and wizards from an obscurus possession. His work has revealed not only that there is a reasonable cure for obscurus that avoids killing the victim, but also that obscuri can be prevented in early enough stages of the specter's development. The subject described in his observations formed a full obscurus which was removed. The same subject, years later, began to develop a new obscurus. The new obscurus fled before full formation and possession.
The identity of the subject has been kept confidential, but this person is now the only known living person to have survived an obscurus. More intriguing was that, although obscurus usually form in children who have their magic suppressed by superstitious muggles, the victim in question lived in magical society, indicating that other factors can lead to possession. Scamander described, "the subject had been confined to a small apartment for nearly a decade without frequent contact with the outside world."
It should be noted that the last obscurus Newt Scamander encountered destroyed a large portion of New York City in the 1920s. Considering Scamander's most recent subject had their obscurus removed, and then harbored another, it begs to question whether this person could be possessed again, and what threat would they pose to our world?
Anastasia cringed and placed the article back down on the table. She stared at the bowl of porridge in front of her and stared without much expression.
Harry's eyes glossed over the article, and he looked at Anastasia's expression, and then back down at the page a couple of times before saying.
"It's you. Isn't it?" he asked, green eyes questioning behind his rounded glasses.
"Is it that obvious?" Anastasia asked hopelessly.
"When you look that sad about it…yes," Harry responded. Anastasia picked up her spoon and began picking at her breakfast.
"Well, I can't do anything to change it…it's part of my history now," she said, looking across the room. The blonde woman was there again at the front desk, bothering the clerk.
"Do you think it could come back, like the article said?" Harry asked.
Anastasia turned back to him sadly.
"I don't know."
Realizing she wanted to change the subject, he offered the following.
"Well, the good news is, Florean said he'd be giving us free sundaes for as long as we're here. All we have to do is sit and do homework outside his shop to attract customers. He was a Ravenclaw, you know, so he said he'd help us study."
Anastasia gave him a small smile.
"That is good news."
"I'm going to grab a few things from upstairs and we can go out," Harry told her and left her at what was becoming their regular corner table.
As soon as he left, the tall blonde woman approached with the click of her high heels.
"Why, hello again!" she exclaimed, sliding down in the seat next to Anastasia and leering over her. "I'm Rita Skeeter with the Daily Prophet. I was wondering if we could make that not right now from yesterday a yes today? Huh? How does that sound?"
"Uh…I really don't think I should…" Anastasia said, but the woman's quill was already writing on the pad by itself.
"Really? Because from what I've seen this summer, a lot of people have said a lot of things about you. All. Except. You." Rita nearly poked her in the nose to emphasize her point. "That's not very fair, is it?"
Anastasia looked the woman in the eyes and then on the paper on the table. It sure would be nice to give her side of the story without reporters guessing about who and how and why she was the way she was.
"Alright," Anastasia agreed, "I'll give you the story."
Rita drew a breath, and her smile grew ten times wider.
"Oh, you'll be thanking me by tomorrow, my dear. This will be perfect! Now tell me—"
"Tell you what?"
"Everything!" she gleamed.
Anastasia gave the best overview of her life that she could: growing up in the castle, spending summers with the Flamel's, learning muggle culture, hiding her identity at school, and sneaking back to the headmaster's suite every Sunday for dinner with grandad.
"Grandad?" Rita Skeeter asked. "Who's grandad?"
"Well, it's what I call my father. He didn't tell me that he was my father until a little over a year ago…and he says he's too old to be called dad."
"So, he lied to you about your identity—" Rita clarified.
"No, I mean yes, but it was the easiest thing to do…it would have been much harder to explain how I was born when I was little," Anastasia explained. Flustered, and trying to keep it all straight, she realized everything Rita rephrased sounded ten times worse than it had in her head.
"What did your father do to keep you inside?"
"What?" she asked, completely derailed.
"Well, he probably used magic, didn't he? To keep you in the suite. It was probably a restraining spell, wasn't it?"
"No, no he didn't use anything—" but when Anastasia went to remember, she realized there was only a dark space where that information should be.
"Ah, so he convinced you that you wanted to stay there, eh? Hypnotism? An imperious curse?"
"What? No! My father has always been good to me." Anastasia said loudly.
"Does he? Well, it must have been something. Otherwise, you could have simply left when you wanted," she suggested.
"I…I don't remember," Anastasia drifted off. Her eyes fell on the obscurus article, she zoned out, trying to remember anything about her life before she turned ten. She remembered summers. Going to the beach, going to France. She even went with Minerva to her hometown once. But there was very little to remember about the time in between.
Rita followed the path of her eyes and stared at the article Anastasia had found.
"Oh my," she said, picking up the paper with long fingernails. "Now the participant in Mr. Scamander's research wouldn't happen to be you, would it?"
Anastasia didn't answer at first, her eyes wide as if she had stepped in front of an oncoming vehicle. She wanted to lie, she knew she should, but she couldn't bring the rejection to her lips. She stared out the window at the sunny streets of the alley.
"Well that explains the memory loss, doesn't it?" Rita asked smartly without waiting for an answer. "I think you've given me absolutely everything I need. Thank you so much for your time, Miss Dumbledore. You'll see the article in less than a week."
Rita departed thusly, leaving Anastasia in a state of paralysis.
When Harry came back downstairs, he didn't notice her staunch reaction.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Sure," Anastasia replied. Although, she was certain her life as she knew it was over.
Florean did a good job distracting them. He knew absolutely everything about witch burnings and stomach ailments and counterspells. When they arrived, he promised Anastasia that he would ward off Draco Malfoy if he ever came to bother her again. Although Draco did pass by with Crabbe and Goyle once, he only turned an annoyed glance in their general direction and passed by without saying anything.
By the afternoon, Anastasia had almost forgotten completely about the botched interview with Rita. But when she arrived back at her room, the chaotic events of the morning came back to her, and she drew up a quick letter to Minerva. She was too afraid to tell her father.
Dear Minnie,
I think I've done something so entirely wrong. A reporter showed up from the Daily Prophet wanting to talk to me, that Rita Skeeter woman, and I agreed to give her the interview just to get her off my back. She twisted my words around…and well…I think she might say some horrible things about grandad in the article. Please help.
Love,
Anastasia
Anastasia sent the letter via Crenshaw and prayed that it would get to Minerva in time for her to do something about it.
The following morning, the sound of Crenshaw's tapping woke her up, and she ran to the window to let him in. He extended his leg, and she took the note and unrolled it.
Anastasia,
I showed your note to Albus. He has more connections than I do with that sort of thing. He's sent a couple of owls to people he knows at the prophet, but we cannot guarantee any good will come of it in time for the morning's paper.
That said, you must NOT speak to any more reporters until we know the ramifications of Skeeter's article. In fact, do not speak to ANYONE you don't know, or speak about your circumstances in an area others could hear.
I do wish Albus had organized a more formal interview before all this came out…I think I've finally convinced him that it is necessary for all our sakes.
Minerva
While Minerva's letter was supportive and kind, her efforts could not stymie what appeared in The Daily Prophet:
HEADMASTER'S DAUGHTER REVEALS ALL:
YEARS OF SECRETS, HIDING, AND TORMENT.
The article described everything they talked about the day before, but from a dramatized and gritty point of view. Skeeter made Anastasia sound like a prisoner to be pitied, someone her father kept in captivity than took care of out of the goodness of his heart. It even ended with the last line: "When asked about how her father kept her sequestered in the castle, the young heir could not recall, which evidences the level of severity of her childhood imprisonment, and how she likely is the obscurus host Scamander mentioned in his reports."
As the article ended, Anastasia knew there was no going back in time to change her decision from the past. She would have to deal with the consequences.