Chapter 4: Cover Story
After everyone had been thoroughly hugged, the Weasleys, now joined by Harry, Ron and Hermione, resumed their seats in the Gryffindor common room.
"So, Harry," said Charlie with a grin, "are you going to fill us in on what you three have being doing for the last year, apart from knocking off You Know Who that is, we saw that part."
"Yeah, you all deserve that, but not now, not here. Later, OK."
"Sure." Charlie didn't press the issue. They all started explaining to the trio the plans for the next day and the return to the Burrow. Arthur and Molly reassured both Harry and Hermione that not only were they welcome and expected at the Burrow, but that they should consider it their home, too, for as long as they chose.
"You two are part of our family, and I want you both to understand that," said Arthur.
This was enthusiastically endorsed by all the Weasleys. Both Harry and Hermione, each in their own way, already felt part of this family, but to have it so openly expressed and endorsed moved them deeply.
"Thank you," they both said quietly, both unable to convey in words what they were feeling, the warmth and sense of belonging that came from acceptance into this messy family where love had always been the first rule.
Fleur felt a moment's resentment when she remembered the struggle she had had to win acceptance as part of this family. She understood, though, that Harry and Hermione's place in the family had nothing to do with them being the apparent partners of Ginny and Ron. They were more like adopted children. Harry was literally an orphan and Hermione, although she still had her own parents, was, in many ways, an orphan in the wizarding world. Molly and Arthur were her wizarding parents. Harry and Hermione had been members of this family long before Fleur had come on the scene. Her resentment quickly faded. She nestled into Bill, glad that she, too, had finally won a place in the heart of this extraordinary family.
After a while, Arthur whispered in Harry's ear "I wonder if I may have a word with you in private, Harry?"
"Sure, Mr Weasley," said Harry and they both got up to find a spot in the crowded room where they could have a private conversation.
"Harry, I wasn't aware that your relationship with my daughter had progressed quite so far."
Harry looked stricken and opened his mouth to speak. Mr Weasley stopped him.
"Harry, you don't have to say anything. You're not in trouble. I am happy for both of you, and Merlin knows we could all do with a little happiness at the moment. It's just that, at the moment, emotions are running very high; we've all been under enormous stress. Great elation and deep grief are both appropriate emotions to be feeling at the moment and it's bound to leave us all a little confused and erratic. I just want you to promise me you won't do anything rash. I know I can trust you."
"OK, Mr Weasley," said Harry, still panic stricken.
"Good," said Mr Weasley, "we can have a more relaxed conversation about this when things settle down." This did nothing to calm Harry's rapidly beating heart.
They both returned to the family and sat down again, Arthur with Molly, Harry with Ginny.
Arthur told Molly what he had said. Molly whispered in reply, "the poor boy looks like he'd prefer to face Voldemort again." They both tried to hide their amusement.
Harry briefed Ginny. She was angry and turned to her father to glare at him. Her parents were giggling to each other and this just left Ginny confused.
"Hi everyone," said the warm voice of the Minister of Magic as he approached the Weasleys. He threw a stack of newspapers down on the table. "You may be interested in these; the Evening Prophet has brought out a special war edition, reporting on the battle."
"Harry, Hermione, Ron can I have a word?" They all went up to the dormitory so that they could be truly private.
"I'd like to set up a time to continue our conversation and to go into the detail about what you have been doing and the things you have learnt. Do you think we can do that tonight?"
"OK, Kingsley," replied Harry, "but I'd like to include the Weasleys in the briefing. They deserve to know what we have been doing. We'll go through the whole story with you. The fewer times we have to go through this the better."
"OK, is there anyone else you think should be there?"
"Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom should both be there," piped up Hermione. "They led the resistance here at Hogwarts this last year, along with Ginny, and they have both fought Death Eaters with us in the past. Also, Neville definitely deserves to know how important his killing the Snake was."
Harry nodded his agreement. Ron, however, was beginning to look a little sick.
"Now, about the press," said Kingsley.
Harry developed a deep scowl. Kingsley raised his arm, trying to forestall Harry's protests.
"I know you've had bad run-ins with them before, Harry. You are going to have to learn how to deal with them. If you thought you were famous before, it is nothing to how famous you are going to be now. That goes for all three of you. You can't stop the press writing about you. All you can do is help make the reporting a little less fanciful. I encourage you to read the papers I left downstairs. They are a salutary lesson on what the press does in an information vacuum."
Harry didn't look convinced but Kingsley continued regardless. "I would like to release a press statement based on what you tell us tonight. You'll get to approve it before it goes out. Only the things you want will be included. I have also tentatively scheduled a press conference for the three of you tomorrow morning at 11:00 am. It was_"
"No!" Harry stood up angrily "I will not _"
"It was the price I had to pay to keep the press from harassing you and the Weasleys. Believe me, Harry, if I hadn't they would have barged into this room this morning, dragged you all out of bed and demanded answers." Kingsley paused as Harry continued to glare at him.
"You three have already done more for our society than most will ever do in a lifetime," Kingsley continued, "but if I'm right about the kind of people you are, you will want to do more in the future. You will find that the press can be an ally, but you have to learn how to use it. That should start now."
No one spoke for a moment. Finally, Harry spoke up, "All right, but no Rita Skeeter, then."
"Harry, I can't exclude Skeeter. She is the senior correspondent of our major, if less reliable, newspaper. You have to learn to deal with the Rita Skeeters of this world."
"Well, we do have our own means of controlling Rita, don't we, Harry," contributed Hermione. All three smirked.
Kingsley looked at Hermione in amazement. What means did an eighteen year old girl have of controlling someone like Skeeter? These kids scared him at times.
"Do I want to know about this?" asked Kingsley warily.
"Probably not," replied Ron, "but if she gives you a lot of trouble, you may want to let us know."
"And I'm supposed to be telling you about how to use the press," chuckled Kingsley, shaking his head. "OK, I'll leave you to it. How about 8:00 tonight? I'll get Minerva to organize a room."
When Kingsley had left, Harry turned to his friends and said "OK, we need to decide what we are going to tell them and what we are going to keep to ourselves."
Ron turned green and was feeling sick in the stomach. His friends quickly guessed the reason.
"OK," said Harry, "let's deal with the hard one first. What do we say about our separation before Christmas?"
"Separation," grunted Ron, "that's a nice way of putting it. I left you guys."
"Yeah, well, I've been thinking about that. As I recall, we were both shouting at one another. We said some very nasty things and then I pretty well told you to leave."
"Yes you did," agreed Hermione in a sharp voice. She hadn't completely forgiven Harry for his role in this.
Harry ignored her. "Do you know why I was saying those things, Ron?"
"Well, I was being a prat."
"Yeah you were, but you were a prat who was telling me all the awful things I was thinking myself. That's what made me so angry. I was telling myself that I had let you two down, that I was out of my depth, that I was a fool to think we could succeed, that I was putting my friends lives in terrible danger for no good reason and that Dumbledore was playing me for a fool and there you were saying the same things."
"Harry, it was the locket that was saying these things to you. They weren't true," said Hermione.
"There was some truth in them, Hermione, and that was why it was able to make me believe them. From the moment we got the locket it started to work on us. It worked on our doubts and our worst fears. It tried to drive us apart. You must have felt it too, Hermione."
Hermione hesitated and then took a deep breath and spoke quietly, almost inaudibly. "It told me I was a silly little girl playing adult. It told me that, in my arrogance, I had used magic that was beyond me and that I had permanently damaged my parents' minds, that they would eventually wander back to England not knowing the danger and would be tortured and killed. It told me that you two didn't need a girl holding you back and that I would get you both killed as well."
"That's insane, Hermione, we needed you, we wouldn't have lasted a day without you," said Ron.
"Thanks, Ron," said Hermione, gently reaching out and touching Ron's hand, "and I knew it was crazy, but it still made me feel that way."
"What the locket was telling you, Ron, was just as insane. It still made you believe it."
"What was the locket telling you, Ron? How does Harry know? Did you tell him?" rattled off Hermione.
"He saw it."
"Saw it?" said Hermione, raising an eyebrow.
"Later," said Ron.
"Anyway, that is why I am calling it a separation. The cursed thing worked on us, got us to argue violently and hurtfully. It succeeded in separating us. It won a round, but it lost in the end. You came back, Ron, you stopped it drowning me and then you killed it. We won."
"It sounds cool when you say it like that."
"It was cool. I don't blame you for leaving, Ron. I did, but I don't anymore. I know what that locket was doing to your mind, your feelings and to me as well. If I blame anyone, I blame myself for insisting we wear it. In hindsight, that was an awful decision."
"What do you think, Hermione?" asked Ron, dreading her response.
"Well, I can see what Harry is saying and I sort of agree with him. All the same, you hurt me deeply when you left, Ron, and that hurt hasn't completely gone away. I think it is something we need to talk about privately, alright?" Her eyes were pleading with him to agree.
"Alright," said Ron, looking at her without any great degree of enthusiasm.
Hermione was relieved. "As for tonight, if we tell people what really happened, then we should explain it in the way Harry has been describing. In the end though, I think it's up to you, Ron, what we tell people. I'll go along with whatever you decide."
"Same here, Ron," added Harry.
Ron was grateful for his friends support but he was still uncomfortable. His friends waited as a debate raged in Ron's mind and in the pit of his churning stomach.
"Well Bill and Fleur already know I left," he said finally, "and I don't think that I'd be comfortable with keeping something like this from the rest of my family. I'd feel like a fraud every time they told me they were proud of what I had done. It wouldn't be fair on Bill and Fleur either, asking them to keep on lying. So yeah, I think we should tell them."
Ron studied the floor and then took a deep breath before continuing. "As for the rest of the people there tonight, yeah, they should be told the full story, too. I think I can live with that. I am sure we can trust them not to spread it around. I wouldn't want it to go any further than them, though. However you explain it, most people wouldn't understand. I'd become known as 'the boy who left the boy who lived'. I don't think I could handle that. I still feel really bad about all this."
"OK," said Harry, "why don't we say to everyone else that we sent you back to Bill to get information on what was going on in the rest of the world. Hermione and I had to move unexpectedly and so we couldn't rendezvous. You finally found your way back using the deluminator. As a story it has the virtue of being almost completely true, which means it's much less likely that we will slip up."
"Sounds good to me," said Hermione.
"Yeah, thanks guys."
"Good, we're agreed," concluded Harry.
"You know," said Ron, visibly relieved, "I really can't wait to hear Luna's take on horcruxes. I'm sure she'll tell us that it's well known that wrackspurts congregate in the vicinity of horcruxes and befuddle the mind." Letting themselves relax after a difficult conversation, they began to laugh.
"Well, now for the easy stuff. What do we say about horcruxes and hallows?" asked Harry. But they couldn't continue. They all broke out in laughter again.
Eventually, Hermione got serious. "You know, Harry, you let the cat out of the bag about horcruxes and the Elder Wand when you were duelling Voldemort and I don't think we can put it back in again. There were over a two hundred witnesses hanging on every word you said. I don't think we should tell anyone about the other hallows, though."
"I want to tell Ginny. I don't want any secrets between us, but I agree we shouldn't tell anyone else," Harry replied.
After a further twenty minutes discussion they agreed on what they'd say and went back down to the common room.
When they re-joined the Weasleys, the boys were rolling with laughter, including George, which was good to see. Ginny, though, looked thunderous.
George was holding a copy of the "Evening Prophet". He called out "Hermione, you really need to tell us how you did it. I think Ginny is going to need to know."
"Did what, George?"
George slid the paper over to her, pointing to a small article in one of the centre pages.
All's Fair in Love and War
Reports have been received that Harry Potter, together with his companions Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger spent three weeks in a Veela colony in Italy last November. It is believed that Mr Potter was recruiting Veelas to seduce Death Eaters and extract their secrets. It is not known how many were recruited or how successful they were in the field. We are told that it was with great difficulty that Miss Granger extracted her companions from the colony and refocused them on their still secret activities.
"Oh, this is ridiculous!" laughed Hermione. Both she and Ron cracked up along with the rest of the Weasley boys. Harry, though, studying Ginny, was worried. Fleur put her arm around Ginny reassuringly and smiled. "Ginny, there is no such thing as a Veela colony and certainly not in Italy. In any case I think 'Arry is immune, no? 'e only has eyes for you."
Ginny looked up at Harry. "No Veelas?"
"No Veelas."
"OK," said Ginny and she smiled weakly, looking somewhat embarrassed.
George continued. "Harry, where are you going to get the blood from? Are you three going to raid a muggle blood bank now? Should be a cinch after Gringotts." George couldn't suppress his smile.
"What on Earth are you talking about, George?" asked Harry.
George simply pointed to another article on the same page.
Blood Debt
A small army of vampires is now camped in Glenn Ardath, not far from Hogwarts. They were recruited by Mr Harry Potter to take part in the final battle. They didn't participate in the battle due to communication failures, according to their leader Vladimir Berescu. However, Mr Berescu claims that their contract, signed by Mr Potter, specified they be paid whether they fought or not. Mr Berescu is now demanding full payment in blood.
"Oh for Merlin's sake," said Harry, "isn't there anything but rubbish in this paper?"
"Actually," said Bill, looking Harry directly in the eye, "it's a mixture of rubbish, half-truths and some deadly accurate reporting. Trouble is, apart from the obvious nonsense, no one is going to know which is which."
Harry began to realise that perhaps Kingsley was right.
"There's a really cool picture of Neville and Luna," said Ginny as she leapt up and turned the paper to a new page. There was a picture of Neville, standing tall, with a fierce expression on his scarred face. He was holding the Sword of Gryffindor in both hands, with its tip resting on the ground and he had his right foot on the severed head of Nagini. Luna was on his left. Every few seconds, she would turn to Neville, grab his arm and look up into his eyes, lost in admiration.
"Well there's one for the photo album," said Ron, half serious half joking.
oOo
In the corner of the Gryffindor common room, Oliver Grantham continued to observe the Weasleys. He noted with wry amusement that these people had the Minister of Magic playing paper boy for them. Yes, this family was certainly in the ascendancy.
Grantham rejoiced in the fall of Voldemort and was grateful to those who were instrumental in bringing it about.
He despised Death Eaters. To him they were nothing more than thugs, the worst sort of scum. Like so many tyrants before him Voldemort had surrounded himself with weak people with deeply flawed characters. These people had been easily flattered by their apparently close connection to a great man and were easily manipulated. Voldemort had given them license to indulge in the worst kind of cruelty and degradation and then had given them legitimacy. He had encouraged them to see themselves as the new elite, a sort of pure-blood aristocracy. It was an obscene jest.
Voldemort himself was a monster. There was no other word for it. He was a creature totally devoid of any human sensibility or compassion. He was brilliant of course and very powerful, but that just made him so much the worse. The foulness of his regime had polluted every aspect of British wizarding society and had even spread into the muggle world.
Grantham also detested the wizard supremacy ideology promoted by the new regime just as much as he despised the Death Eaters. He didn't believe wizards should rule muggles or that muggles were unworthy of respect. To Grantham the belief that muggle ancestry made someone less worthy as a witch or a wizard was the mark of a feeble mind or a shrunken spirit. In the case of a creature like Umbridge, it was the mark of both. He had had the misfortune of having dealings with Umbridge as part of his role in the Wizengamot and had been repelled by her malevolence.
Grantham considered the treatment of the Muggle-born under Voldemort's regime as nothing short of a monstrous crime. It was cruel, pointless and arbitrary. He had had advanced notice of the new laws and had promptly organised the transfer of his Muggle-born staff and their families to his Paris office where they would be out of reach of the Muggle-born Registration Commission. At significant personal risk, he had helped many more Muggle-born escape from England.
What had happened here at Hogwarts this year was especially painful to him. He both loved and revered Hogwarts as one of the great traditional wizarding institutions. Grantham was, if anything, a traditionalist. Animals like the Carrows were not worthy of a place in any decent institution, wizard or muggle, but at Hogwarts it was an absolute outrage. He had feared for his eldest son who was a second year Ravenclaw. He had told his son to keep his head down and stay out of trouble and, as a pure-blood, he had escaped the worse of it. It still pained him, though, that what should have been a wondrous part of his son's life had been so full of darkness and fear.
He had heard of the battle underway at Hogwarts when his son had been evacuated and had rushed to join the fight. He had participated in the second half of the battle, though he would never claim to have played a significant part.
Grantham was genuinely grateful to those who had played the major role in destroying Voldemort, but he feared for what we would be coming next. Good intentions and courage weren't enough. Grantham believed in the steadying influence of the great families of the Wizarding World, not the psychopaths, the malcontents and blood chauvinists that flocked to the Dark Lord, but those steeped in the great traditions and values of wizarding society. It wasn't a matter of blood. Fresh blood was good, even necessary. No, it was a matter of upbringing and time tested values passed from father to son.
The ascendancy of the Weasleys, of Potter and his allies and friends was a direct threat to the old ways and the hard won wisdom that safeguarded wizarding society. He admired their achievements, their courage and their sacrifices but he would act to undermine them, to weaken their influence and to thwart the radical reforms he was confident they would pursue. It wasn't personal, it was political.