Over the few weeks following the second task, Ron got another fifteen minutes of fame from a number of students curious about what had happened to the four students who had been taken under the lake.

And as Ron was closer in age to the younger students of the castle and much more happy to brag about it than Sara's boyfriend, and the other two hostages were from foreign schools, he was easier to go to for many of them as opposed to any of the other three hostages. Something that made the redhead extremely happy, as for a short while he was once again more popular than a Fitz who was actively trying his hardest to avoid any kind of attention at all. And the redhead capitalized on the opportunity to the fullest extent by inventing wildly heroic stories about what had happened that didn't need some pathetic loser like Harry Potter to come rescue him — he was a strong, independent man who didn't need no champion to save him.

Of course, given the fact that everyone had seen him be brought up by the mermaids at the end of the task and hadn't rescued himself in any kind of way whatsoever, heroic or otherwise, and by the end of a week his stories were so absurdly ridiculous that there was no possible way that they were even remotely true, people soon stopped asking him anything about it and either went to the other hostages to learn the truth or else simply stopped caring about it. After all, even the legendary Sirius Black wasn't likely to be able to fight single-handedly against fifty heavily armed mermaids who'd had to beat him into submission in order to tie him up, "But I could've taken those mer-idiots any time I wanted". Maybe You-Know-Who could have done that — though why he would be fighting mermaids, they had no idea — but there was no way in hell a mediocre-at-best fourth year had done anything remotely close to what he was claiming.

Meaning that by attempting to make himself look better than he really was, he ended up only bringing his fifteen minutes of fame to an even quicker end than they would have been if he had simply told the truth about what had happened, and not tried to make himself out to be better than Harry Potter and extend his fame by making the lie even bigger every time he told his tall tale. And so by the time the early March Hogsmeade trip rolled around a week and a half after the second task, he was already completely irrelevant again, entirely forgotten by everyone who didn't already know him from before the second task.

But before said Hogsmeade Saturday could actually arrive, FitzSimmons had Friday morning Potions with — you guessed it! — the Slytherins. Because it was completely impossible for the adults to conceive that maybe it wasn't the smartest idea in the world to put the two Houses who loathed each other the most together in a class led by one of their Heads, especially the cruel and abusive one. But the adults of the castle couldn't comprehend this simple idea, or else blatantly ignored it knowing full well what they were doing to their students, and so every year they continued to put Gryffindor and Slytherin in the same Potions class.

And on this particular Friday morning when the normal Slytherin gaggle walked up to where FitzSimmons were already waiting outside the dungeon door like always, they were sniggering up a storm and lead Slytherin girl Tracy Davis was holding a magazine in her hand.

"There they are, there they are!" she giggled as she pointed at FitzSimmons.

FitzSimmons immediately turned as one towards the pack with looks of utter boredom on their faces, ready to get whatever this was out of the way already.

"You might find something to interest you in there, Granger!" Tracy sneered as she threw the magazine at Simmons.

Deftly catching it, Simmons immediately took off her book bag and stuffed the magazine all the way into the very bottom of it to look at after class, before swinging her book bag back over her shoulder and turning towards the dungeon door again to wait for Snape to open it and let them all inside. The Slytherins, meanwhile, were all staring in shock at her and Fitz (who had turned back towards the door as well when his wife had), that the pair hadn't immediately opened the magazine to see what it was that the Slytherins were clearly trying to torture and bully them with.

And after several seconds, in a renewed attempt to bully them into looking right then where Snape could catch them and punish them when he opened the door to let them all into class, Malfoy sneered at the back of Fitz's head, "You'll want to read it too, Potter — see what your girlfriend is really like."

"She is the smartest person you have ever met in your life and most likely ever will, she's beautiful, funny, charming, witty, and can brighten a day just by walking into the room. She is the person whom I want to lie down next to every night when I go to bed and wake up next to every morning, because she is the most amazing, perfect woman in the universe, and I really don't deserve her. But fortunately for me, I am the luckiest man on any planet and do get to be with her. That is who she is, and I don't need any magazine article to tell me that," Fitz said without ever turning around to look at the Slytherin gaggle, or any of the other Slytherin or Gryffindor students who had started to gather by that point as the time for class to start neared.

As Simmons blushed lightly at his compliments of her, everyone else gathered in the dungeon hallway stared at him in shock, whether they had heard any of the conversation leading up to Fitz's statement, or just heard Fitz expounding upon his 'girlfriend'. And before any of the Slytherin gaggle could collect themselves enough to try to respond in some malicious manner, Snape opened the dungeon door and FitzSimmons were the first inside heading back towards their normal rear corner table, and anything that the Slytherins could have wanted to say had to wait for a later time.

Throughout the lesson the Slytherin gaggle occasionally looked over at FitzSimmons in hope that they had made the monumentally stupid decision of looking at a magazine in the middle of Snape's class, but they always had to return to working on their potions disappointed, as the magazine remained firmly buried in the bottom of Simmons' bag well out of sight and FitzSimmons remained dedicated to their task of brewing their perfect potions.

However, midway through the class everyone's attention was drawn to the dungeon door by a sharp knock. The Durmstrang headmaster entered a second later, walking straight up to Snape's desk demanding to talk to him. But Snape insisted that it wait until after class, at which point the Durmstrang headmaster hovered around Snape's desk until the bell rang signifying the end of class. As everyone hurried out of the dungeon as fast as they possibly could in order to get away from Snape and head up to lunch, FitzSimmons included, they briefly saw the two adults put their heads together and start talking in low tones about whatever it was that the foreign headmaster needed to talk to Snape about. But their conversation was easily covered by the bustle of everyone hurrying out of the room as fast as they humanly could, and the Shield couple didn't hear anything that the two conversed about, far more interested in finally being able to look at the magazine article that the Slytherins so desperately wanted them to look at than what two adults had to talk about.

And a few minutes later up in the Great Hall, once they had dished some food out onto their plates to start eating lunch, Simmons finally pulled the magazine out of her book bag and spread it out on the table in front of them between their two plates, quickly finding the article with 'Harry Potter' in the title, that she assumed was the article that the Slytherins were talking about.

~.~

Harry Potter's Secret Heartache

A boy like no other, perhaps — yet a boy suffering all the usual pangs of adolescence, writes Rita Skeeter. Deprived of love since the tragic demise of his parents, for a while fourteen year old Harry Potter found solace in his steady girlfriend at Hogwarts, muggleborn Hermione Granger. Little does he know that he may shortly be suffering yet another emotional blow in a life already littered with personal loss.

Shortly after the second task it was revealed to yours truly by a fellow fourth year Gryffindor classmate of Harry and Miss Granger's, who has known the pair very well ever since their very first train ride up to Hogwarts together before their first year started, that Miss Granger, a plain but ambitious girl, may not actually have any real feelings for the Boy-Who-Lived, but may just be toying with Harry's affections in order to get at his fame and money. All the while Harry Potter is openly smitten with the devious Miss Granger, and insists that he has "never felt this way about any other girl."

However, it might not be Miss Granger's doubtful natural charms that have captured this unfortunate hero's interest and enabled her to worm her way into his life and heart.

"She's really ugly," says Tracy Davis, a pretty and vivacious fellow 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 he wises up to her schemes, and next time he bestows his heart on a worthier candidate.

~.~

"Now that's just funny," Simmons chuckled once she had finished reading the short article. "No one anywhere in this world can possibly have ever seen us out of each other's presence, but there will definitely now be a lot of people who have never met me who believe that I'm magically forcing you to date me just for your money — though I'm not sure whether it's a good or bad thing that they'll only think that, and not think that I'm sexually assaulting and possibly raping you, depending on how far they believe we're going. I mean, it's obviously a bad thing that they don't understand that love potions are date rape drugs and can only be used to sexually assault someone and can easily be used to rape them, all while adding on the extra cruelty of making the victim think that they want it at least while they being violated, but at least the wizarding world at large won't be suffering the mental anguish of thinking that their hero Harry Potter is being sexually assaulted and raped by a muggleborn. Though this article doubtlessly just single-handedly set back wizard/muggleborn relations by several years."

"Odd she went for another Potter sympathy angle, though," Fitz said. "I mean, that's kind of what she already did in her first article she made up about me. And Hermione isn't exactly famous in this world at all, so what's the point of bringing her down?"

"Well, yes and no about it being odd," Simmons answered. "Yes, she did already make you out to be a hero in the first article, but this is still an emotional swing for her sheeple. From hero and rebel with a supportive girlfriend, to the highly sympathetic route of his steady girlfriend actually just being after his money and not caring anything for him — audiences will still eat it up. And then she has an even bigger fall to create by writing her 'Harry Potter is terrible' article at the end of the year. At least, that's how I'd write it in her sociopathic, greedy position. So maybe a bit unexpected, but at the same time, she's still going to accomplish her ultimate goal of selling lots of papers very well."

"Okay, fair enough," Fitz replied. "Support her previous work in a way that still draws out strong emotions, so when she brings it all crumbling to the ground later on, it'll be an even bigger scandal that will sell even more papers than just a single article making me look bad would have. But as far as this second completely made up story goes, how much do you want to bet that her anonymous Gryffindor source was Ron still pissed off about me not rescuing him in the second task, and not trying at all in the tournament?"

"Certainly a strong possibility," Simmons answered with a sage nod of her head. "But it is also always possible that she just completely made up her source, like she made up your quote. And if it was Ron whom she interviewed, I would bet that she asked a lot of very leading questions to get Ron to where he would think of the idea that I could be after your fame and money. Although both of which are things of yours that he personally would love to be able to get from you like he's claiming that I'm actually doing, so it probably wasn't too hard to get him to think that I'm actually doing it. But I would definitely say it's at least in the probable category that he's the source, if not all the way in the highly likely category."

"And I guess he didn't want his name in there because it seems like he's been told by someone to befriend me, and they would be upset if he was out here publicly saying something negative about me?" Fitz asked. "Except it's not negative about me, just about you."

"Most people in this school are completely fine with us as a pair, and are seriously going to doubt the truth of this article since they actually see us every day, so he may just not want everyone in the school turning against him, while still trying to stir up trouble between us and against us," Simmons answered. "Only Slytherins normally say these kinds of things, like Tracy's claim that I'm raping you, and he doesn't want to be painted with that brush no matter how much he hates you right now. And also, somewhere in his mind he probably still wants to become friends with the Boy-Who-Lived again, and he thinks that anonymity will prevent you from ever realizing that he was the one to say those things about me. And he can deny it if you do ever accuse him of it, and we can't actually prove him wrong, we're just guessing that he was probably the source. That, or Ms Skeeter kept it out for her own reasons, either because the social perception of the Weasleys is too lacking to have a quote from one of them be taken seriously by most wizards, or to protect their reputation if something like this would look bad for one of them to say — just some possible ideas."

"Okay, those are all good points," Fitz agreed. "And like you said, it may not have been Ron at all, and just completely made up by Skeeter. And speaking of made up, so lovely of Skeeter to make up a quote for me for this article instead of bothering us by trying to get an interview for the fourth time to get some dialogue from me to actually quote. But since there's no way for the sheeple to verify the truth or falsehood of it, and no way for us to sue her for libel, she can get by with it without consequence, other than the consequence of selling more papers — whoever said that crime doesn't pay really must have sucked at it."

Simmons chuckled at this, before reaching over and rubbing her husband's back lightly. "Well, she at least made up a positive, and in this case completely true comment for you to have said. But I think we've seen enough of this article, and I personally at least have no interest in any of the other articles in a magazine titled 'Witch Weekly'."

"You're the only witch I care about, and I see you a lot more than weekly," Fitz replied with a slightly salacious smirk.

As Simmons rolled her eyes at him and closed the magazine and tossed it onto the table a little ways down from them where nobody was currently sitting, for anyone who did care about the rag to pick up for free as she certainly wasn't about to return it to the Slytherin who had been trying to bully them with it, Fitz looked across the Great Hall at where the Slytherin gaggle was staring at him and Simmons hoping for an angry or at least negative in some kind of way reaction, wanting to see how much Harry Potter and Hermione Granger had been upset by the article. So Fitz decided to give them a reaction if they really wanted one so badly, and turned to his wife and grabbed her face, snogging her soundly. Simmons immediately responded despite having no clue what was going on, as after going to the Yule Ball together and half of their House classmates having seen them snogging in front of the fountain that night, she figured that their characters were old enough and it was out in the open enough that they were together, for real pda to finally be acceptable.

But when they did finally broke apart she asked out of curiosity, "Not that I mind, but what was that for?"

"The Slytherins were eagerly awaiting a reaction from us about the article, so I gave them one."

~FS~

But as it turned out, Fitz wasn't the only person reacting to the article.

The following morning, as FitzSimmons were sitting at the Gryffindor table waiting for the time to arrive to be able to head into Hogsmeade, having already finished eating breakfast a while before, the owl post arrived. And with it, two owls flew down and landed in front of them, and specifically in front of Simmons.

"This is weird — we never get mail except from Ron over the summer," Simmons said, staring at the grey owl and barn owl now standing on the table in front of them, jostling around slightly to have their letter taken first.

"And no return address saying whom they're from, either," Fitz added. "Should we just ignore them? Opening unknown, suspicious-seeming letters is how you get ricin or anthrax or some other kind of poisoning."

"Well, we're wizards — we should be able to open them without ever touching any of the letters or envelopes if it is a bioweapon, and at least see what we're dealing with to determine how we should proceed. After all, the adults aren't going to do jack squat without solid proof that something dangerous is going on, and still probably won't then. And if by some chance it's airborne, it will of course poison at least a substantial portion of the Great Hall, but the sender had to have known that when they sent it, since ninety percent plus of mail in this castle is opened right here and now when the morning owl post delivery occurs at breakfast. So I doubt that would actually be the case, and if it is it will get a response in a hurry when the adults' own lives start being at risk, instead of only a pair of students."

Fitz nodded his agreement, so Simmons pulled out her wand and very gently used a severing charm to cut the strings tying the letters to the owls' legs without hurting the owls' legs at all. Once the owls had flown away, she then used her fork to lift the top edge of each envelope up off of the table so that she could then use the severing charm to slice open the top edge. Then a simple Wingardium Leviosa on the bottom edge of each envelope lifted each into the air in turn, and shaking each lightly had the two letters inside falling out of their respective envelopes and onto the table where they could be read with a little prodding from the tip of her wand.

Both letters were composed from pasted letters that seemed to have been cut out of the Daily Prophet, as opposed to being handwritten, increasing FitzSimmons' suspicions that these were not letters on the up-and-up, and reading what had been 'written' confirmed that fully. The one from the grey owl read, 'YOU ARE A WICKED GIRL. HARRY POTTER DESERVES BETTER. GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM MUGGLE.', while the one from the barn owl said, 'HARRY POTTER CAN DO MUCH BETTER THAN THE LIKES OF YOU.'

"Fan hate mail," Simmons commented boredly as she looked at the two letters. "We were definitely right not to trust these letters."

"So what do we do now?" Fitz asked. "I seriously doubt that two letters is all we're going to get from what I presume is a pretty widely distributed magazine."

"Ignore every future owl we get until it drives one of the professors mad enough that they come ask us what the hell is going on, and then we tell them that we're getting potentially dangerous mail that they need to start screening for," Simmons answered.

A plan that they were able to put into action the very next morning, as on their Sunday morning stroll around the lake after their own breakfast, at the same time that the owl post was arriving in the Great Hall for all of the normal late eaters, three owls this time flew down around FitzSimmons, clearly wanting to deliver letters to them. But FitzSimmons just ignored them, hanging around outside until it was time for lunch, when they walked back into the castle and the Great Hall with three barn owls in tow.

As FitzSimmons sat down in their seats and began dishing food onto their plates, the owls alighted on the table in front of them and began jostling around, impatient to have their letters taken from them. It didn't take ten minutes of owls standing around on the table stepping in food dishes as people were trying to eat for McGonagall to come stalking down from the staff table to demand an answer from her two unruliest students as to why they were causing problems this time.

"Why haven't you taken your letters?" she demanded harshly as soon as she made it down to them.

"It's hate mail because of the article in yesterday's edition of 'Witch Weekly'," Simmons answered politely. "And it is completely possible that one of them could contain a poison or biohazard of some kind in it, so we're not opening them or even touching them, especially since we don't care what they say."

"What?! That's ridiculous, Miss Granger!" McGonagall shouted. "No one would try to harm a student like you, or send you 'hate' mail, whatever that is! Take your letters and open them, and never let me catch you ignoring your post again!"

"Okay, but the blood is on your hands if one of these is poisoned and anything happens to either of us or anyone else because of it," Simmons shrugged. "We warned you that these letters could be dangerous."

Completely ignoring this, and therefore the safety of her students, McGonagall turned and stalked back up to the staff table as FitzSimmons both made the motions of reaching forwards towards an owl like they were complying with her demands, though deliberately making sure not to touch the actual envelopes themselves, only the owls. Then once McGonagall was completely gone, Simmons repeated her process from the morning before of severing the letters off so that the owls could fly away.

"Just throw them away?" Fitz asked once all three letters were lying unopened on the table in front of them.

"Normally I would say yes, but normally I would have told McGonagall where she could shove it as well," Simmons answered her husband. "No, we're going to open every single one of these we get until we find something we can seriously take to the professors. Actual poison, a legitimate death threat that is not covered by free speech unlike the angry opinions expressed in the two letters we opened yesterday — anything that we can shove in their faces and tell them 'I told you so, now pull your heads out of your arses and start doing your bloody job of protecting your students'. Because if this ever happens to any other student in this castle, they're just going to blindly open these letters without thinking twice about the potential dangers, since none of them have ever seen a cop/detective tv show in their lives. So the only way to protect them is to find proof that we're right, and that these letters can pose a real, life-threatening danger."

Proof that would arrive the very next morning. Expecting more hate mail FitzSimmons stuck around in the Great Hall after they had finished breakfast, it nearly as easy for them to study for their classes that day in there as it was in the library or courtyard like they normally would have been doing on a school morning like that one. And sure enough, a brown owl and a tawny flew down to them with letters. Like the three letters the previous morning and the two the morning before that, the letter from the brown owl was just mean, not dangerous. But as soon as Simmons slit open the top of the letter from the tawny, a yellowish-green liquid smelling strongly of petrol gushed out of the envelope and onto the table.

"Bingo," Simmons said quietly. "Now what have we here that is doubtlessly a criminal offense to be sent by royal post?"

She pulled out of her book bag a book on common poisons that she had got from the library the previous day just for such an occasion, and quickly flipped through it.

"Ah — bubotuber pus," she said when she found the appropriate page. "Undiluted from the looks of it. And quite very nasty if touched with bare hands. Looks like we've found our proof, and without having to open several dozen letters, luckily for us."

"So what exactly are you going to do, Jemma?" Fitz asked her warily. There was a glint in her eyes that did not bode well for anyone whom she considered being in the wrong here.

"Remember when I told you about how you severed the heads of three Kree who were chasing us in my first husband's the future? — I'm going to take a play out of your book and make a statement," Simmons answered in a hard tone. "I don't like that this is what we've been forced to become, but drastic times call for drastic measures, and I warned her that these could be dangerous and any blood was on her hands — now it's time to show her, since telling didn't work."

Stowing the library book back into her book bag, she sat back up holding one of her dragon-skin herbology gloves. Slipping it on, she grabbed the letter, scooped most of the bubotuber pus that had gushed out of it onto the table back onto the outside of the envelope, and stood up. Then with Fitz right behind her she stalked up to the staff table, where before McGonagall could more than glance up at a student coming up to her, Simmons slapped the letter and pus against the back of both of her hands, before dropping the letter right onto the middle of McGonagall's half-eaten plate of food.

As McGonagall's hands began to erupt in large yellow boils, Simmons said coldly, "This is one of those 'no one would try to harm a student like you' letters that we warned you about yesterday. But since you refused to listen to our warning, it's now your problem. We told you this could happen, but you said no, that's impossible. Well, here is proof of what you're allowing into your school — maybe now you'll actually do something about it since you're the one being hurt by it, and not some student who doesn't matter to you. And in case you can't figure it out on your own, we're not opening a single other unknown letter sent to us ever again, no matter what you say. You can shove your rules and that pus right up your arse where they belong after trying to make that happen to me."

She pointed at McGonagall's hands that were now so thickly covered in painful sores that it looked as though she were wearing a pair of thick, knobbly gloves, despite her attempts to rub the pus off with a napkin as Simmons had lectured her.

Leaping up, McGonagall gave Simmons a glare that was greatly diminished by the tears starting in her eyes, and the fact that she had been warned and done absolutely nothing about it so it was entirely her own fault that her hands now looked and felt the way that they did, before hurrying out of the Great Hall and up towards the hospital wing to have Madam Pomfrey heal her hands.

Job done and point made bluntly enough for even wizards to understand it, FitzSimmons started to turn around and head out of the Great Hall, when Flitwick exclaimed, "Miss Granger! That was—!"

"Shut it!" Simmons snarled as she whipped her wand out and pointed it directly at Flitwick, cutting him off before he could say that what she had done was dangerous. "You're barely any better than she is, as you haven't done anything to make sure that students can't be sent poisons like that, either, or that one never would have got through to us in the first place for us to force to become her problem. And blame her for not passing on our warning, it's not our responsibility as students to warn every single bloody adult here of any threats that we see. We warned our Head of House, who is also the deputy headmistress by the way, it's her fault for not taking it seriously or passing it on to you or anyone else. But maybe after this, she, and every other adult in this castle including you, won't make that mistake again. Now good day, we have classes to get to."

And with that she turned and strode away from the staff table with her chin held high, her husband right beside her as she headed towards the greenhouses and Herbology class, there being no more suitable class that they could have had first after receiving a poison retrieved from a magical plant studied in said class.

~FS~

After that the professors finally got their arses into gear, and for all future owls that FitzSimmons received and ignored they came over and took the letters themselves so that the owls would fly away and not bother everyone.

And so FitzSimmons thought that everything with Skeeter's 'Witch Weekly' article was over for good, but as it would turn out, it had one last strike to make before it finally disappeared for good into the forgotten mist of the past. Because at the end of Easter holes, 'Harry Potter' received a package from Mrs Weasley. And while at Christmas they always now just threw her package into a fire without opening it, since they had gone through so much trouble earlier in the year and perfected the art of opening letters without touching them, and they received this package in the Great Hall instead of in the privacy of their dorm like on Christmas morning, Simmons decided to go ahead and open it up just to see what exactly it was that they were dealing with.

Carefully severing open the top of the package with their wands, FitzSimmons discovered a chocolate Easter Egg the size of a dragon egg and a short letter. Wingardium Leviosa-ing the letter out of the packaging first, they read; Dear Harry, I was so devastated to read about your breakup with your girlfriend because it turned out she was just after your money and never really loved you. I hope this Easter egg will help you make it through this very difficult time, and if you ever need someone to talk about girls with, feel free to send me an owl — I was one once, you know, and I can help you try to understand them a little better and why they would do such a horrible thing to you, especially since I know you tragically don't have a mother of your own anymore to go to to talk about things like this with. But on the bright side, now at least you can find a girl who actually cares about you, and not just your fame and wealth. Happy Easter, Mrs Weasley.

"And here we thought that Skeeter's article had already done its last damage," Fitz sighed once they had finished reading the letter. "But nope — Ron's mum sends me a giant Easter egg and you nothing at all because she believes what Skeeter wrote. Well, I would offer to share half of it with you, but I don't think that's really applicable when we're just going to throw all of this in a fire like we do her Christmas present every year."

"It's sweet of you to offer anyway," Simmons smirked at her husband as she leaned into his side for a second. "But yeah, we're burning all of this as soon as we leave here in case it's poisoned like at least one of Hermione's hate mail was. Different reasons, obviously, as she doesn't want to kill you and she sent this to you instead of sending something to me — unless of course she was one of those who sent me hate mail, possibly even the bioweapon one, though we obviously have absolutely zero evidence of that — but it is completely possible to send bioweapons through the owl post, so it's not impossible that all of this is laced with something for some devious, malicious purpose."

"I just hope this is finally the last of the damage done by that particular instance of Skeeter's libel," Fitz said. "We still expect a scandal/anti-Harry article right before the third task so that she can capitalize on all the lies she's told her sheeple in her first two articles, before this tournament is over and Harry Potter goes back to being just an abstract hero instead of a much more realistic one competing in an actual tournament, but maybe this article of hers is finally done at least."

And it certainly seemed that way, as Simmons had long since stopped receiving hate mail for it, everyone in the castle had completely forgotten about the article, even the Slytherins since FitzSimmons' only reaction to it had been to start showing pda when they previously hadn't really been, and Mrs Weasley sent nothing more to Harry or Hermione as spring slowly turned into early summer and the third task neared.

~FS~

All the while, FitzSimmons were every so often barging into McGonagall's office demanding an update on the investigation into who had entered Harry Potter's name, and the progress being made on finding and arresting said criminal(s).

With only two months between Harry Potter's name coming out of the Goblet of Fire and the end of the year, and a task and Christmas in that time, the pair hadn't started demanding answers until the start of the new year, by which point they considered the adults to have had enough time to have started making at least a little progress into their catastrophic failure to prevent slavery (and that was assuming the best of the professors, that they hadn't all known from the very beginning that it was possible for a student to become enslaved on their watch). And so throughout the entire spring term, from time to unexpected time, they would randomly show up at McGonagall's office demanding updates.

And every single time they received the exact same shocked look from McGonagall like she had completely forgotten all about the fact that maybe they should be trying to figure out who wanted to murder Harry Potter through the tournament, and instead brushing away FitzSimmons' concern like they were too young to understand the intricate difficulties of finding a culprit when no one was actually looking for a culprit — because half of them still believed that Harry Potter had cheated and entered himself, the other half didn't care about finding who had entered Potter's name because it didn't matter in their minds, Harry was already in the tournament so it was too late to do anything about it anyway, and Dumbledore was positive that it had something to do with Voldemort and wanted to see how it all played out. Not that McGonagall ever actually said so much to them, but for two trained spies as smart as FitzSimmons it was easy to read between the lines.

Not that FitzSimmons burst into McGonagall's office on any of these occasions actually expecting to get any kind of an answer from the adults who had repeatedly shown that they were completely worthless when it came to protecting students. They just wanted to continuously remind said adults that they at least still remembered that enslavement had happened and slavery was still actively going on, and that they still held the adults responsible for whatever bad did happen because Harry Potter had been entered and said adults weren't doing a bloody thing to try to figure out who had done it, arrest them for doing it, and make sure that it could never happen again, be it to another student in this tournament in the future, or to any witch or wizard in any other magically binding contract that was ever written in the wizarding world from that point forwards. Because if it could happen to Harry Potter in this tournament, there was no reason to believe that an adult wizard couldn't also be enslaved in a magical contract that they didn't agree to out in the real magical world — if it could happen here, it could logically happen there as well.

But as the third task approached FitzSimmons were no closer to knowing who had entered Harry Potter's name than they had been when the name had come out way back on Halloween, and it didn't appear as if the adults were either.