"Harry Dresden, what a surprise meeting you here!" Rita Skeeter announced from the bar at the Three Broomsticks, where she was sipping some elaborate mixed drink while dressed in her party finest.
"I knew I should have booked at the last second," I grumbled, and Rosmerta gave me an apologizing look after handing me my room key. I'd decided to go down to the inn in the afternoon of New Year's Eve, travel from there to Malfoy Manor, and plan to stay there until the morning rather than prevailing on Dumbledore to use his fireplace at three in the morning. He already wasn't super happy about me going to the ball, except as a potential information-gathering exercise.
I was honestly hoping to learn as little as possible. Mathilda had a really good time the previous year and wanted to go again. I could do with less politics.
"So," Rita said, getting up and chivvying me over to a table in the sparsely-populated tavern area. I could have resisted, but I did still kind of owe her for not siding with Dawlish, and it didn't hurt to have muckraking journalists pretend to like you instead of hate you. "That's a nice suit, Harry. Can I call you Harry? Are you taking the youngest Miss Grimblehawk out on another date, Harry? I heard about your birthday luncheon. Seems serious?"
"Is this for the Prophet or Teen Witch?" I asked. After mentioning my previous run-in with Rita to Mathilda, we'd worked out what she was okay with me telling the reporter if I ran into her again.
"Let's just see where the story takes us, shall we?" she suggested, setting up her poison-green dicta-quill and parchment. I'd found out that it was a "quick quotes quill," which a lot of people were suspicious of since it tended to elaborate and editorialize on the fly, rather than being a simple record of speech like normal dicta-quills. But, given that Rita was just going to rewrite the interview in her own style anyway, I didn't see that it was scandalous to let her skip a step to get to press faster.
"Fair enough. Yes, I've been dating Mathilda Grimblehawk for over a year now, and we were friends for several months before that. She's a year behind me, also in Gryffindor."
"Serious?"
"I had dinner with her family the other night," I allowed.
"Oh, very nice. Congratulations! Other than the slight scandal of Mr. Grimblehawk's divorce and remarriage to a much-younger witch, they're a fine family. So sad that she can't have the same experience meeting your family," she said, abruptly switching topics. "Is it true that your mother was a Death Eater?"
Ugh, right to the stuff I would rather not talk about. I tried to deflect a little and suggested, "The last time I confronted Voldemort," there was the twitch I was getting so fond of seeing from the fearful locals, "he seemed to think he had some kind of control over her, at least enough that he was mad that she kept doing the opposite of what he wanted. She did marry a muggle, my father, so may have just felt trapped until she could get out? I hear there was a lot of that going around."
Paralyzed for a second deciding which of those topics to follow up on, Rita seemed to go with her gut and look for interpersonal drama rather than arguably-defeated dark lords. "Tell me about your father?"
I nodded, feeling a little safer about the subject. "Malcolm Dresden was a muggle magician. You know, they use mechanical devices and sleight of hand to make it look like they're doing magic to entertain audiences? I remember him being a very kind man, but he unfortunately died suddenly when I was five. I know he had loved my mother very much, and I think she must have loved him back."
"And how did your grandmother feel about her daughter leaving Hogwarts early, disappearing into You-Know-Who's camp, and then eventually marrying a muggle and continuing the family half-blood tradition?"
I honestly had no idea. No one seemed to want to tell me anything about my mother's family. "No clue," I shrugged.
"Surely you've talked to her about it?"
"How would I have talked to her about it?" I asked, then probably made a mistake of revealing, "I don't actually know who my mother's parents were."
Rita's eyes got wide behind her spectacles and her mouth set in a very predatory smile before she said, "Well, then, readers, perhaps it is time to talk about some background information I've learned to edify both Harry and interested former Hogwarts students. Margaret McGregor was the daughter of a muggle man named Dougal McGregor, who grew up in a small village in Scotland called Caithness. While it was a muggle town, a half-blood family lived on the outskirts, and young Dougal met and fell in love with a young witch—just graduated from Hogwarts and about to start on her career. She was perhaps less-than-diligent with her anti-pregnancy potions, and her career in the Ministry was complicated by having a young daughter.
"I couldn't find out if Dougal ever even realized that he was a father. He later married a muggle woman, had a family, and they died in the war. Some wondered if, perhaps, it was Margaret McGregor trying to purge her muggle heritage to gain favor with her dark lord." I must have looked angry, because she amended, "But, as you say, if she was truly egalitarian enough to marry a muggle of her own, perhaps it was unrelated, or perhaps You-Know-Who trying to punish her for disobedience."
"Caithness, you said?" I asked, reeling from learning about my grandfather only to immediately hear that he and his family had been murdered by Death Eaters. Something about that village name seemed familiar.
"Indeed. It seems that, as appears to be the way of the witches in the family, Isobel Ross, of the Inverness Rosses, fell in love with a muggle man to the great shame of her wizarding family. She may not have even told the man, a minister in the muggle church, that she was a witch until their daughter received her Hogwarts letter.
"But, in fact, the witch who would go on to eventually end her Ministry career due to the difficulty of being a single mother will be familiar to many of our readers, because she went on to teach at Hogwarts.
"Her name, of course, is Minerva McGonagall."
Rita may have been disappointed that I couldn't give a response, as shocked as I was. I heard the dicta-quill still scratching away, so perhaps she was willing it to describe my discomfiture. It all made sense. Why hadn't she told me? I wanted to run back up to the castle and confront her. I wanted to go hide in my room at the inn. I wanted someone to explain to me why I'd had family after all, right with me for over two years, and no one had ever said anything. "I'm sorry. I didn't know," I managed to say. "Can we pick this up later?"
"Of course, Harry. I look forward to hearing more once you've had a chance to check my facts," she smiled, obvious trying to be soothing but looking much more like a shark that had scented blood. "Perhaps your next Hogsmeade weekend?"
I think I agreed. I think I went and hid in my room at the inn for a while. The next hour or so was a bit of a blur. Apparently, I decided to go to the ball after all. I spaced on the Malfoy receiving line, and barely realized where I was until I found myself in a small private room sitting across from Bellatrix Lestrange. "Harry? Harry! Are you okay?" she asked, the look on her face less concern and more like a car owner wondering why an unexpected light came on in the dashboard. Interestingly, she wasn't polyjuiced this year, looking like herself in a very nice dark blue dress.
"Don't you need a disguise?" I asked.
"This year, I need to have a few meetings as myself. Hopefully no one will know I'm here who isn't supposed to," she shrugged, but the implicit command to my geas was felt. "So what's bothering you?"
"Just found out who my grandmother is," I admitted.
Suddenly, a look that was more human than I'd ever seen crossed her face, a strangely protective, righteous rage. "That old bitch! She never told you? Of course she wouldn't! Can't show favoritism! Can't be a damned mother to her daughter, except when she disapproves. I thought, since you were in her house, unlike Margaret, maybe it would be easier. Maybe she'd realized the mistakes she made, or at least be proud you turned out a lion instead of a serpent like her daughter." The madness in her eyes calmed somewhat and she regarded me almost like the godmother she was meant to have been, tentatively patting my hand like she'd never had to console another living being before and didn't know how it worked, "I'm sorry, Harry. That woman drove Margaret further and further away. I didn't realize she'd do the same to you."
I nodded, pulling myself together. The sheer ridiculousness of being consoled by my mad faerie godmother allowed me to compartmentalize and push it off for later. This wasn't the place to have a breakdown, and I still needed to make sure Mathilda wasn't alone here. Almost on cue, there was a knock at the door to announce one of the secret conspiratorial meetings that I wasn't allowed to talk about.
The young man that slipped in had curly black hair and impossibly pale skin. Fairly tall and slim, he seemed to be carved of porcelain by a master craftsman to be perfectly symmetrical and handsome. My first thought was sidhe, but he felt different, somehow. "Apologies for interrupting!" he said in an American accent, but didn't actually seem sorry, "And apologies that my father or sisters couldn't make it."
"Ah, yes," my godmother said, some strange humor entering her eyes as she took him in, "We didn't actually expect your father to make the trip, though it's pleasing that he sent an envoy. This is my godson, Harry Dresden," she introduced me, surprising me that she'd name the relationship. "And this is one of the very distant Malfoy cousins, whose family we've had dealings with in the past. I'm sorry, dear, I don't recall your name."
He held out a hand to me, and I shook, wondering what backroom politics I was getting involved with. He had a firm grip, though his hand was cold, and he was regarding me with almost the same humor that my godmother was, somehow recognizing me? "Pleased to meet you, Dresden. I'm Thomas Raith."