Title: Rita Skeeter, Time Traveller
Chapter: 01 - Mean
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 10,273
Summary: Really, if Mr. Potter wasn't such a good cook, she'd feed him to a Dementor.

Or:

Harry's Master of Death, Rita's a time traveller, and there's a six-year-old Boy Who Lived to take care of.

(Rita would like her life back. Thanks.)
Notes: Part 6 of 22 of my Speak Now (Taylor's Version) Project, a series of unconnected stories each based around one of the songs off of Taylor Swift's album Speak Now (Taylor's Version). This story was written for the song Mean.
Disclaimer: I don't own HP. It's probs better that way but wouldn't it be fun?


You, with your words like knives
And swords and weapons that you use against me
You have knocked me off my feet again


Rita studies her fingernails–they're long, lime green, and dazzling with rhinestones that shimmer and glimmer in candlelight; perhaps she'll go with purple next time, she hasn't done purple for awhile–and frowns at a chip in the polish while, across from her, a man who shouldn't exist takes his seat.

"Thank you for seeing me," he says.

Rita's smile is like a blade. She'd wield it, except he's passed every detection test she's got smothered around her office for glamours and potions and enchantments. He probably is who he says he is, then, which is fascinating.

"Of course," she says, as politely as he. "The press is always willing to talk to concerned citizens."

The man laughs. It's a good laugh, if a bit rusty. He's easy on the eyes, too, though he's not fully at ease.

If only all impossibilities were so appealing, she laments but, even so, this is worth the fact she'd had to rearrange her schedule abruptly to make room for his appointment. Rita doesn't usually do appointments in the office.

"I have a lot of questions," he says, "but there's one I was told to ask, if I ever got to speak with you alone. Will you answer it?"

"Without knowing the question?" Rita asks. "No."

"Then I'll ask it," Harry James Potter says, the simplicity of him charming all by itself. "Why do you have to be so mean?"

That's it. That's her Question.

It's her turn to laugh despite the chill that runs down her spine. "Darling, the press is in it for itself. Nice stops at the door. Mean–mean sells."

He nods, like that's answer enough for him, and maybe it is, as he leans back in the rickety chair she keeps for informants and coworkers she's not much fond of, crosses his legs, and levels a look at her.

"Let's get down to business," he says.

She spreads her hands. "I'm all yours," she says lightly, "only, aren't you about five or six years old right now?"

"That," Mr. Potter says, green eyes as sharp as her smile is, "is this timeline's me. I'm not that one, obviously, and I wouldn't be here at all except, upon arrival in this timeline, I realized I wasn't the only Traveller active here."

She goes very, very still.

"It took me a bit of time to unravel the signals," he admits, without shame, as he continues talking. "And imagine my surprise at who I found on the other end of the warps in this particular temporal chain."

"Should I apologize for being unexpected?" she drawls the question, but it's a weak attempt. Even though he'd had her Question she hadn't expected him to just... open that door wide. Time travel is usually more hush-hush.

And he's still talking.

"The thing is," he says meditatively, "I've never been great shakes at magic. I'm the Master of Death, I know how I wound up in this timeline."

Rita bites her tongue as she marvels at how matter-of-factly he says something like that.

"But I can't figure out how you, a witch of middling power, an illegal animagus, a reporter… I can't figure out how you managed to travel through time. Or why you'd become a Traveller."

Which, of course, is deliberate. Any idiot can travel through time under the right circumstances but only a handful become Travellers.

Rita sees several ways that this could go. They're deceptively simple choices. He's still fishing, she thinks, though he makes a good game of it being earnest conversation. She could—she could do almost anything, right now.

She could cave, admit it–because, damn him, he's right, she's meddled her way through this timeline more than once–and see what he wants.

She could categorically deny it, pretend he's crazy and get him thrown out of her office.

She could pretend to go along with it, humour him, and then, once he's left, she could ghost him for all she's worth.

The second option wouldn't work, she knows this. He'd just come back and back and back again, and he's stronger than she is. She can feel his magic. If he ever got mad enough, it'd be her and her wits and all the wits in the world aren't enough to save a fly from a flyswatter.

(She's, like, not a fly—but don't ask how she knows about that particular futility. It's a bad story.)

The third option might give her breathing room but then she'd have to go on the run and, well, Rita likes her life of petty lies and twisted words. She likes seeing the by-line with her name on it. She likes the way people look at her when she swans out of her office.

Drat.

Merlin's spotted prick.

That leaves her with being honest.

Rita reminds herself that, if it all goes terribly, she can just dip out of this timeline. One spell, a flash of green light, and off she goes merrily into another timeline, all of her memories intact and leaving the mess of this one behind. It's an incredibly comforting thought.

Rita heaves a sigh, squints against at the chip in her nail polish, and gives in. She can always change her mind later. There's always ways to run away from things and she's used most of them before.

"It's a long and complicated story that involves a mad sprint through the Department of Mysteries in my knickers and naught else," she says, with a moue of distaste.

To his credit, he doesn't laugh. "You worked in the Department of Mysteries?"

"I was an intern," she says dismissively. "It was a long time ago."

"One day," Mr. Potter says, and now there's laughter in his eyes. "I'd like to hear that story."

"Maybe yes, maybe no," Rita says, though it's really a 'hell no, never'. "Why are you in this timeline anyway? Standard protocol is that all Travellers are to conquer and subsume their counterparts when they enter from a different timeline. And yet, you're here, but you're also—sixish years old, elsewhere."

"In Surrey, actually," Mr. Potter says. "Little Whinging, Surrey."

Rita wrinkles her nose.

"I know," he says. "I'm here because I'm trying to change something and working from within isn't, well, working. I think it's got to be from without, instead."

Rita looks at him for a long time, quietly hating the guileless way that his gorgeous green eyes meet hers fearlessly. He seems content to wait for her.

"And what," she asks eventually, if only so the foreboding looming over her will go away, "does that have to do with me?"

He looks at her like she's particularly slow on the uptake-by design, Mr. Potter, by design-and then smiles.

It's a smile full of teeth. Shark-like, even, and unwillingly she concedes that perhaps they have a few things in common. Like the blades of their smiles.

Then he starts speaking and she's glad that, apparently, no matter what timeline it was, the worst she's ever done to him is publish some articles.


It doesn't really have anything to do with her, it turns out, except that he'd been curious and he wanted to do something nefarious and Rita, alive with curiosity had agreed to come along because it wasn't like breaking the law was a problem for her and she wanted to see with her own eyes the way The Boy Who Lived was, well, living.

"They call this a house?" she complains as they approach Number Four Privet Drive in the dead of night.

Her robes are chartreuse. His are black. One of them is obviously more equipped for nefarious deeds.

And it's not her. For once.

Mr. Potter glances back at her with a wariness she's not sure she's done anything to earn. "What's not house-like about it?"

She waves her hands down the street. "They're all the same! How is anyone to know who lives where?"

This makes him laugh for some reason, a low half-snicker. "That's why there's numbers on each house. The Muggles know to look by number."

"Absolutely criminal," she gripes as he casually breaks the lock on the front door. "How is anyone to be themselves if they're not allowed to express themselves?"

Mr. Potter shoves open the door and gestures for her to enter first. "After you," he says sardonically.

Rita enters the Muggle dwelling feeling rather like a Magizoologist on the verge of a great discovery. She chooses not to share that with Mr. Potter. It's not his fault he was raised by Muggles and, equally, it's not her fault she's never had much reason to go around them.

The Muggle house is… well, mostly, dark. She resists the urge to reach for her wand, since Mr. Potter said the less magic she does here, the better, as his traces will be covered by the six year old Harry Potter's existence but hers won't be.

He fiddles with something on the wall, a blob that she sees in shades of pale and deeper darkness, and then, as if he's got the magic touch, overhead lights flicker on.

She pauses.

Blinks watering eyes.

Takes a look around. Mr. Potter says nothing, just waits, as she pokes her head into the still darkened kitchen, peers out the windows into the back yard, and circles back through the dining room to wind up in the parlour.

"It's very, er, clean," she ventures. She doesn't know what to say, unusual for her, but then, this whole circumstance is most peculiar.

She does not ask about the young blonde child shaped like a beach ball in all of the pictures on the mantel.

Nor does she ask about why there's no indication of another child living here. There's also a weird noise coming from up the stairs. She eyeballs them suspiciously.

It's so delicate having to dance around the trauma of wizards more powerful than her. Normally, she's not this close to them.

Alone in a Muggle house.

She'll get over that eventually. (It's just so strange!)

"My aunt," Mr. Potter says dismissively as he–rather than go upstairs, like she thought, he goes straight for a cupboard under the stairs.

"And that dreadful noise–is that your aunt and uncle snoring in tandem?"

He pauses, head cocked and listening. "Their nightly symphony."

"How dreadful."

He snorts. "Try living it."

But he doesn't give her a chance to say anything about that, he just opens the cupboard door and that's a whole different sort of dreadful.

Rita is not unaware that, despite the common belief that wizards and witches don't abuse their children as they're too precious and rare (which they are, both those things) that some children are abused.

She's done her share of dragging such abuse out into the light, she's given scathing indictments. She's blackmailed wizards and witches alike by finding their secrets out and making them dance to her tune.

If that tune involves not hurting their children, well, guilty, but also: she always makes sure that's the smallest part of her ask, though all the promises are magically sworn and enforced. It wouldn't do for someone to think she was soft.

She has zero maternal instinct on her own but, like, only a monster doesn't try and stop kids from being hurt.

So she keeps her mouth shut, aside from a sharp intake of breath, as Mr. Potter helps young Harry out of the closet, his body too small and thin, his clothes too large and dirty, and he's not really conscious, as he says he'll be good.

Mr. Potter murmurs a spell that makes Harry sleep and then picks him up effortlessly before, bonelessly, the child would hit the floor.

"It's you and me now," he murmurs to the child.

Well, really! She's right there!

And, laws of the universe being what they are, she's mildly surprised that Mr. Potter and Harry, together, haven't combusted it. This isn't how it's supposed to work. Timelines are flexible—more flexible than most people realize—but there's a reason most Travellers take over their own selves.

She shifts. Coughs quietly. "I could take the child, if you wanted to go upstairs?"

Mr. Potter's green eyes are deep and wild. He knows what she's saying.

After a moment, he hands her Harry, who doesn't stir, and nods.

"I won't be long," he tells her.

It's only once he's up the stairs that she grimaces, wrinkles her nose, and tells the sleeping child how badly he needs a bath.

"I'm sure you'd agree," she mutters to the child. "After all, it can't be fun to reek like this. I'm not sure how your aunt, who cleans everything else, allows your state but–"

Her robes are going to need to be burned.

She's glad she didn't wear the pink. The pink are new.

"Well," she sighs. "He'll look after you."

Harry doesn't wake.

As the screaming upstairs starts, she tries to decide what spell Mr. Potter had used it to induce sleep.

She's humming a lullaby by the time he comes back down. Rita doesn't actually remember where she picked it up. Maybe from her own childhood, though that's better left unsaid too.

In the ugly light of the Muggle home, she's glad to see Mr. Potter's not covered in blood. Rita doesn't ask what he did.

"Let's go," he says brusquely.

She stands her ground, Harry still asleep in her arms. He's shockingly light.

"Did you do anything to their child?" she demands. "The round one?"

Mr. Potter blinks at her, half turned in his haste to leave.

He swallows hard as he looks at her.

She narrows her eyes.

"No," he admits. "Just a sleeping spell so he wouldn't wake."

Rita eyes him beadily, then nods. "All right," she says.

"Can we go?"

It's almost definitely a poor choice to leave a Muggle child to find out whatever happened to his parents in the morning but Mr. Potter is leaving and she doesn't want to be caught holding the smoking wand.

She hurries after him.

There's one good thing, she supposes, about Muggle housing. There's people all around them.

When the kid finds… whatever there is to find… then it won't be hard for him to find another adult.

She ignores the pinprick of guilt with the ease of long practice. Surely, stopping the child's parents from abusing another child makes up for whatever trauma he's going to endure.

"Where are we going?" Rita asks as they reach the street, leaving the door open behind them.

Her hands are full. She can't shut it. It's not her fault.

If it had been up to her, none of this would have happened. She'd have been safe and happy, spinning tales of other peoples problems for The Daily Prophet's readership.

Rita curses her curiosity.

To her surprise, he stops so abruptly that she nearly crashes right into him.

"Really?!" she complains, adjusting the child in her arms.

"I hadn't thought about it," he says, sounding abashed.

"What."

"About–where I'd stay. With…" He looks at the child. "With myself."

"I should never have cancelled lunch for our meeting," she tells him.

They wind up back at her house because she wasn't just going to leave an impossibility and his abused-child counterpart out in the streets, not when they can't go to Gringotts looking the way they are, being who they are, and not even having their vault key.

The Potters, she knows, everyone knows, are rich. Not, like, Black family rich, but rich enough.

"I want new robes," she tells Mr. Potter as she lights lanterns with her wand, and shows him and the child he's taken back from her to the bathroom. She's not going to have a stinky child in her place. "I mean it, I want them absolutely dripping with pearls and gold."

Mr. Potter laughs. "I'll keep that in mind."

She has the impression he's not taking her very seriously at all. Rude.

"I mean it," she repeats. "Now make you and yourself presentable and I'll figure out food for us. Are you going to wake Harry so he can eat something?"

Mr. Potter considers the child he used to be. "Not tonight," he decides. "Better for him to get a good sleep and we'll deal with that in the morning."

"It is morning," she says, since it's half past midnight, but he just waves that off. She charms a load of towels over to them and then shuts the door.

Rita, figuring their baths will take a bit, goes and, true to her word, strips and changes into an old, comfortable set of robes (lilac and lily patterned) and lights the robes she'd been wearing on fire.

Burn, baby, burn, she thinks, makes sure that the fireplace is secure (burning down her house is not in the plan-not that they have a plan, they just seem to be running from hell and high water) and then, as she turns to head towards her kitchen, she realizes that the child is going to need a place to sleep.

Rita hesitates.

She doesn't exactly have a spare room with an extra bed. She makes decent money but she lives alone and her home reflects that. After thinking about it, she transfigures her living room armchair into a child-sized bed, complete with fluffy blankets and puffy pillows (she always was good at transfiguration) and then, since she's at it, does the same to her couch because Mr. Potter will also need a place to sleep and she's not giving up her bed for anyone.

Then she goes and seeks food to make. She keeps it simple given that it's pushing on one in the morning and, at that time, sandwiches are more than sufficient.

"Thank you," Mr. Impossible says, as she gets cups down for drinks.

Rita blinks at him.

"For the beds," he explains.

Rita shrugs. "I wasn't going to leave you on the floor," she says. "I have sandwiches?"

They sit at her kitchen table-she does not have a dining room, she's not nearly so fancy-and it's only after they've each eaten one that she ventures the question that's been burning in the back of her head:

"So... what's next?"

In the silence that follows then, wreathed in the shroud of midnight mists and their lack of clarity (she has been awake far too long and work in the morning is going to be just awful) Rita comes to the conclusion that Mr. Potter has not planned anything.

It's all winging it. By instinct.

How absolutely dreadful. She eats her sandwich while waiting. The silence is terrible, for him, and horrifying, for her, because Rita may be a journalist with a flair for, how would it be said, ah, taking creative license, but she always has a plan.

I'd eat my quill if he wasn't a Gryffindor, she decides. He's got all the earmarks of it. Poor thing. Though at least he's not afflicted by their incredibly dull need to be on the moral high-ground.

"Let's revisit that in a few days," Mr. Potter says eventually, once her sandwich is long gone. His is still being picked at. "I think, I think that Harry and I ought to lay low and see what certain other parties do."

Rita foresees house guests for the next however long.

She wonders how much children eat. She wonders how long it will take her to start screaming.

"I'll see what I can find out," she says, which is easy since it will make for a good story. "Supreme Mugwump Loses Boy-Who-Lived makes for a good headline, right?"

Mr. Potter looks at her for a long moment and then laughs and laughs and laughs.

He doesn't say she can't, though, so Rita takes that as permission.


House guests, Rita decides, are the worst. She has to be quiet, she can't flop dramatically in her armchair because a child is using it as a bed. She doesn't dare go into her kitchen and make anything because Mr. Potter is a light sleeper-he'd mentioned it after they'd eaten so that she would know not to startle him-and she does not want to face her death on, oh, about four hours sleep. Tops.

If she was so lucky.

So she dresses in her room, as quietly as a mouse, and since it seems the safest thing to do, she flies out her own window as a beetle, landing down on the grass by the side where she's got no nosy neighbours before she disapparates to Diagon Alley. She'll have to get breakfast from the Leaky Cauldron but that cheers her up.

I do love early morning gossip, she thinks brightly. Everyone is drowsy and no one is watching their words quite so carefully.

Maybe she'll linger after eatin-

Focus, Rita. Remember, you've got the best scoop of all time to go after! After eating, get to the office, check what's come in, and then get to the Ministry.

Tea and toast finishes off the vestiges of her bad mood-as does the murmured conversation about someone who the Minister definitely should not be sleeping with (A Ministerial Marital Meltdown! She can see the headlines now! Rita scribbles it down to look into when she's got the time-that's the nice thing about affairs, they generally last until they're blown wide open; it can wait)-and she's all but humming as she wanders into the offices of The Daily Prophet, nods to the other reporters, and locks herself in her office.

Then, she draws her wand, sweeps for any spells or charms or enchantments that are listening or recording in on her (she finds three and takes great pleasure in destroying them) before she brews another cup of tea, with enough sugar in it that the spoon nearly stands upright on it's own, and pulls out the Muggle newspapers.

She rarely goes into the Muggle world. She has very little idea of how their day to day lives go. But she does read their newspapers, mostly to see if there's anything she needs to look into from a magical side of things (magical coverups are shockingly easy to spot if you aren't a Muggle) and, today, she's looking to see if there's anything about their adventure.

But, of course, there's not. Not yet.

Tomorrow, she tells herself. It'll probably be there tomorrow.

She's desperately curious but not curious enough to return to the scene of the crime to see what's going on.

In the end, she drinks her tea, marks down a few things that seem a little odd to her (was it really a power outage in Soho or was it a magical outburst swiftly hidden?) and then raps her nails on the wood of her desk thoughtfully.

She's got a few articles to write, ones that already have pictures done, and she was meant to have them finished by the end of the day. But the thought of that's so dull, it brings her no felicity.

What she wants to do, however, is get over to the Ministry.

If anything's up, then it'll be easiest to find out there, she thinks. It would be absolutely shameful if there had been no watchers or spells on Harry Potter's residence. Someone absolutely must know that there's been a... situation.

Rita, however, knows that running off leaving strings untied behind her is the quickest way to get caught. So though it grates on her, she makes herself finish her articles first. Only once she's handed them over to the editors with a breezy 'ta, darlings, I'm out to find out what the people must know!' does she leave the office.

To Rita's incredible disappointment but also secret glee, if anyone in the Wizarding World has noticed something has happened to Harry Potter, they don't mention it where she can hear it. Given that the Wizengamot is in session and she affixes herself to the hemline of Dumbledore's robes, she hears basically everything.

She even sticks with him when he and Minister Fudge go back to the Minister's office after the session, but nothing about that is out of the ordinary.

When Dumbledore looks like he's heading for the Floo, she falls off of his robes and skulks back to the nearest Ladies powder room and, only once she's safely ensconced in a stall, does she change back.

Well.

That was a wash.

But she got a few other interesting stories, so Rita makes use of the facilities, fixes her hair and make up, and goes out to do her job. Tomorrow, she decides, tomorrow will be more exciting.

Working with a nudiustertian delay, though, is not her favourite thing.

She buys herself ice cream for the way home and, remembering that she has guests and one of those guests is a child, buys enough for all three of them. Young Harry looked like he'd been starved. It would be savagely cruel to eat a treat without making sure he got some too.

To her surprise, she gets home to find dinner already cooking, and Mr. Potter bustling about like he owns her kitchen. Harry is colouring at her kitchen table. Neither of them have heard her come in.

Rita leans against the door frame, just watching them for a moment. "Being a house wizard seems to suit you," she drawls, though she keeps the mockery out of it.

She's glad she had, when Harry drops his colouring pencil and looks up at her like she's going to hit him.

Mr. Potter turns around, wiping his hands on a dishcloth. He places one hand on Harry's shoulder, gently, before he says anything to her.

"Rita," he says, smiling at her, though she's not given him permission to use her first name. "Welcome home."

"I come bearing ice cream," she says, grateful for her celerity of thought in having gotten enough for the whole... house. "For all three of us."

With tiny fingers Harry picks up his colouring pencil. She wonders where Mr. Potter got them.

"Even me?" the child asks her, something shuttered carefully in his eyes.

"Even you," she says. "Though I think we'll have to wait until after dinner to have dessert. That's usually how it goes."

That doesn't stop Harry's eyes from lighting up like a sunrise. He smiles at her.

"And that's going to be how it goes here too," Mr. Potter says. "Give that bag to me and I'll get it in the cold cupboard."

Rita could tell him that it's charmed to stay frozen but he holds out his hand and she passes it over, shrugging. If he wants to be redundant, he can be redundant. He already is, just by existing in the multiple.

"I'm going to go change," she announces, since it seems like everything is under control here.

Once she's safely in her shower, Rita tries to scrub the weird domesticity off of her skin. It doesn't work very well, especially since she knows she's going to have to go back down there and play happy family with Harry and Mr. Potter.

I need to find out what Mr. Potter is going by to Harry. Has he told him he's, what, a cousin? Not his father, I shouldn't think, but a cousin might work... though suspicious that they look so very close to being the same. Harry's young though, so he wouldn't think that's weird...

She has no answers for that by the time she gives up on stalling for time. Instead, she studies her robe collection. She doesn't want to dress up, but she can't really lounge around in some of her house robes either.

No need to be flashing that much leg around a child, she sighs.

After the contents of her closet don't offer her any better suggestions, she pulls on one that she keeps only because it's so very, incredibly soft, and after glowering at the sheer virginal modesty of it in her hanging mirror, Rita huffs.

"Are you feeling alright, darling?" her mirror asks.

"No," Rita says sulkily.

"Well, you know what they say, 'Early to bed and early to rise makes a wizard healthy, wealthy, and wise!' That goes for witches too."

"Yes, thank you," Rita says, because it's really, really not worth being rude to talking mirrors when they've seen literally everything about a person's body. What? It's her bedroom mirror! "I'm just going to go and get something to eat. I promise I'll take it easy."

"That's a good girl," the mirror croons. "Come back and I'll sing you to sleep."

"We'll see if you remember," Rita says, though she doesn't complain about that. Her mirror has the most loveliest of voices-it was why she'd bought it. "Do I look okay, though?"

"Not like yourself, darling, but you always look just fine," her mirror says.

I'm in disguise, Rita decides, as she bids her mirror a farewell for now, and heads down the stairs. I'm disguised as someone's prim and proper cousin or something. The family prude.

How awful.

But it's a benign deception and I'd rather not have Mr. Potter angry or be inappropriate in front of a child barely out of toddlerhood.

She thinks, anyway. It isn't like she really knows much about kids and how they grow.

Everyone's more interesting when they're older!

"Godmother!"

Rita freezes. Hell has frozen over and things have gone terribly wrong as young Harry beams up at her.

"Godmother," the child repeats, like he's savouring the word. "That's who you are, right? Mr. Black says so."

To her surprise, the child comes over to her, obviously hoping for a hug. She kneels and carefully gives him one because she's not a monster.

But the glare she gives Mr. Potter over Harry's shoulder is colder than the depths of hell.

"That's... a title...," she says, and she can see how that goes over Harry's head. It's definitely not agreement, though she doesn't give him time to work that out.

Rita pats Harry on the shoulder and stands. He steps closer to her and she smiles down at him because it's not his fault he'll grow into being a manipulative, lying arsehole with a head full of beans if the other him in the kitchen is anything to judge by.

"Come on," she says, "we'll eat and then there's ice cream."

That's what they do.

It's a weird, stilted affair as both her and the so-called Mr. Black deal with their, ah, difference in opinions in a silent battle of wills while also making sure that Harry is comfortable, eats enough, and feels safe.

Rita hates the fact that Mr. False Black is a good cook. It's hard to maintain indignation when full of delicious food she hadn't had to order in or make herself.

It's an incredible relief once they finish dinner, get Harry through some semblance of a bedtime routine, and once he's out like a light, then finally, finally she turns on him.

"Did you want to explain that?" she demands. "Godmother?!"

"I needed to tell him something!" Mr. Potter protests, holding up his hands to seemingly protest his innocence.

She's having none of it.

"Then you need to find something else to tell him!" she rails. "That's not a title that's taken lightly! That's where someone expects to be in a child's life for the entirety of it! You can't just waltz in here, rope me into your schemes, and then saddle me with a child! There's a reason I'm a single witch! I don't know shite about children!"

She waves her hand at where Harry is sleeping in the parlour on her armchair-turned-bed.

"And now you've saddled me with a kid and you didn't even ask!"

Which. Obviously. The answer would've been hell no, die in a fire.

"Harry's going to hear you," Mr. Potter says, raising his voice over hers.

She sneers at him. "This is my home, Mr. Potter, and I know exactly who can hear what from where. My so-called godchild won't hear a thing."

He stares at her with wide-green eyes behind a pair of hideous glasses.

"You could have said anything," she says. "Even, oh, she's a friend of your mum's from school! Which I was, by the way!"

"You–you weren't even in school with them, I thought," he has the audacity to say.

"Maybe not originally," she snaps, "but you don't even know what I've done to this timeline–you never asked! Which apparently is going to be a reoccurring thing with you! So what do you have to say for yourself?"

But he just gapes at her.

She snarls at him, then whirls, and stomps out of the kitchen, grits her teeth and keeps her steps soft in the parlour so as not to wake Harry, and then storms up the stairs with all the wrath of a righteous witch.

"Feeling better, darling?" her mirror asks.

"No," Rita says, flinging herself at her bed. "I think I feel worse, actually."

"Don't you worry about a thing, darling," her mirror says. "Just close your eyes and I'll sing you into dreamland. You know what they say, 'if at first you don't succeed, give up and take a nap'."

Given that dreamland sounds like a million Galleons better than this reality, Rita closes her eyes and allows her mirror to sing away her rage.


Rita wakes up all at once, in the dark, which baffles her for a moment before a small hand touches her arm.

"Godmum?" Harry says, in a tiny voice that sounds near tears.

He also smells like piss.

Rita considers death. It's looking like a pretty great option except for the fact that Mr. Potter had said he was a master of it.

And there's no need to put myself at his mercy.

Harry pats her arm again anxiously. Rita considers just staying asleep but he starts sniffling and she hates everything.

"I'm awake, Harry," she says, sitting up and fumbling for her wand. One spell later and her lamps are on, allowing her to survey the child who looks at her with both adoration and terror.

Which.

Look.

If it were a crowd of witches and wizards who feared and admired her quill and the sharp, biting wit of her articles, she'd be preening.

In a small child, though, she just feels sad. She doesn't deserve either of these emotions from him. Nor does she want them.

"Did you wet yourself?" she asks and, with misery and embarrassment in every line of his body, he nods.

He curls his fingers around the bottom of his transfigured pyjama shirt and peers at her with huge, sorrowful green eyes. "I'm sorry, Godmum," he says. "I was bad and, and I couldn't find the washing machine."

She doesn't know what a washing masheen is but she can make a guess it's something that can clean up after a child's accident. Probably a Muggle thing.

"It's alright," she says, even though it's not, as she yawns and swings her legs out of bed. She's still dressed in her ugly, prudish robes and that's probably better than how she usually sleeps for dealing with this.

Naked. She usually sleeps naked.

"I'm not mad," she adds, gingerly patting Harry's head. He leans into the touch. She's reminded of a puppy. "Come on, let's get you into the bathroom and all cleaned up. Where's Mr. Black?"

"I didn't see him," Harry says quietly as she herds him into the bathroom. "A-Are you really not mad?"

"Climb in the tub and get out of those wet clothes," she says, cursing Mr. Potter to all the way to the lowest of hells. Maybe she'll feed him to a Dementor. It would serve him right for this. "I'm really not mad. After all, it was an accident, right? You didn't mean to?"

Harry vehemently assures her that it was an accident. She gets him some towels, transfigures a different towel into a new set of pyjamas and a dishcloth into a pair of pants for him.

Her linen closet was never going to be the same.

"This tap is hot water and this one is cold. Can you clean yourself up?" she asks and, when he promises he can, she nods, and makes sure to smile at him. "I'm going to go clean up downstairs."

Then, because he looks like he needs to hear it again, she adds: "I'm not mad, Harry. It's alright."

Because she's not sure if she's supposed to leave a kid alone in a bathroom–at what age does that become appropriate?-she leaves the bathroom door cracked and tells Harry to call for her if he needs her.

Then she has to remember to cast a spell to make sure she actually will hear him.

Rita's descent down the stairs of her small home is no less furious than her assent had been a few hours ago.

She cleans up after Harry with a few aggravated flicks of her wand, remembers to change the colour of the sheets so he'll think she's completely changed the bedding instead of spelling it clean–which, well, is a measure just for the night; they will have to do laundry, for her own peace of mind if nothing else, in the morning but that's a problem Rita will face in the morning, not now–and then goes hunting for Mr. Potter.

He's nowhere to be found.

And she, she sees the dawn come crawling in her windows through bloodshot eyes, Harry snuggled safely against her side.

Mr. Potter remains absent. The sun keeps rising.

Rita's temper stews and seethes and she is incredibly, horribly conscious of the child trustingly sleeping against her. It limits her options a lot.

She eyes the clock on the wall as soon as it gets bright enough to see what time it is.

If Mr. Potter isn't back in half an hour I'm going to have to-no, wait-

Silently, she uses her wand to summon parchment, a quill (not her Quick-Quotes Quill), and some ink. Carefully, so as not to disturb the superior version of Harry Potter that's wandering around this word, she writes a note to her boss.

Hot on the heels of a S-C-O-O-P! Will let you know once I have more details!

She doesn't have an owl of her own but it actually works out better that way. She folds her note over, rolls it, ties it tightly with a ribbon, and then sticks it in an envelope addressed to the post office along with a note for them to mail it ASAP and the requisite knuts for them to do so.

A wave of her wand and the fireplace ignites. Another wave and she drops floo powder into it. It's easy enough for her to say, "Diagon Alley Post Office", wait for the flames to turn green, and then lob her letter through.

Then, since she's now free, Rita does the crossword.

She'll have to come up with a suitably impressive scoop later but, well, the nice part of being a time traveller is she's had literal lifetimes to find all the juiciest secrets. All she needs to do is verify if they're still true in this timeline and tah-dah she's set.

"What's apricot mean?" Harry asks sleepily, looking over at her crossword.

"Apricate," she says. "See? A-P-R-I-C-A-T-E. Apricot ends in C-O-T. Apricate means to bask in a sunbeam like a cat."

Harry nods seriously, his green eyes intent on her crossword. "I won't forget, Godmum," he says. "Is it okay if I watch you?"

"That's fine," she says, and tries not to imagine her skin creeping off her bones at the sustained trauma of all this... family bonding time.

Gross. Speaking of gross, actually... she eyes the way Harry fidgets a little.

"Do you have to go to the bathroom?" Rita asks. "You can go. I'll still be here when you come back."

He turns those huge eyes of his up to look at her. "You promise?"

"I promise," she says, mostly because she's been sitting so long that she's pretty sure both her feet are asleep. Standing is going to be an adventure in painful tingles. "Go on."

"Okay," he says, and after another look at her to make sure she's staying put, he wriggles off the couch (she'd transfigured it back from a bed when it became clear that Mr. Potter was gone and her options were either to stay downstairs or, Merlin forbid, let the child into her bedroom) and up the stairs.

Rita wonders, as he goes, if she should've negotiated a better deal.

I could've gotten tea. Biscuits. Biscuits count as a healthy breakfast, right? What do you feed a child for breakfast anyway? It's not like I can take him anywhere, he's too obviously Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived.

Though...

That idea does have some merit. It'd flush Mr. Potter out of hiding right quick if it looked like Harry was going to have to go back to his... wait, the Muggle newspapers! I need to check them today! How am I going to manage that?

Rita cannot believe it's only been two days.

It feels like it has been decades.

But I'm not cooking. That way lies bloody hands and I'm pretty sure it's frowned on to feed a child human blood.

Rita glances over to the doorway into her kitchen. I'm not even sure what's in there right now.

She's never really worried about it when it came to feeding herself. Going out to eat is both simpler and a practical way to keep up with bits and pieces of news while she's technically off the clock.

I'm not sure a child should be living off take out either...

She's still mulling it over when Harry comes back.

"You're still here!" he says, his tiny face lighting up. "You kept your promise!"

Rita considers that she has probably made a terrible, terrible mistake. Several of them, actually, as Harry comes on over and wriggles his way back into position leaning against her.

At this rate, he's really going to think I'm his godmother. Then what do I do?

The idea of actually having to raise a child makes her feel nauseated. Makes her want to barricade herself in her bedroom in one of her most slaggish robes, with a good bottle of elf-made wine.

"I said I'd be here," she says, then since she has no idea what to do with him, she asks, "Do you want to help me figure out the rest of this crossword?"

Harry looks utterly thrilled to be asked.

Another mistake. If I don't want him, I think I'll have be really, really mean to him.

But she thinks of him, too small, too thin, and the way the Muggles had kept him in a closet under the stairs. She thinks of the way that Mr. Potter had lived that, likely more than once given time travel, and how she'd said he could go upstairs.

How he had.

I wonder if he's got a real godmother anywhere? I can't be his parent. I don't know how. But I also don't-I refuse to abuse the abused child further.

She doesn't have many standards or many lines in the sand but, well, that's one of them.

She and Harry work on her crossword puzzle for awhile. Well, she attempts to do it while Harry attempts to read out the words-his reading is terrible, on top of being abused, was his education also neglected?-until Harry's stomach growls and he sits back with a meepy sort of noise.

Rita squints at him. "Are you hungry?"

He shakes his head. "No, Godmum! I want to work on the puzzle!"

His stomach growls again and he puts his hands over his stomach as if that will make it stop.

Rita considers this. She would like tea. Or something stronger. But, well, child present. She's likely not allowed to get tipsy with a child present. It's probably not done.

"We can finish it later," Rita decides, and watches in amazement as Harry's entire self droops. She sets her crossword and her quill to the side and says, "I'm hungry. Want to help me find food?"

It's so weird, so disturbing, how he looks like he can't quite believe she's offering to keep letting him hang around with her.

I really need to stop that. He's going to get attached and then it's going to be terrible to break his heart. Isn't there that thing of don't break promises to kids or animals? They don't understand?

"We can do the crossword later," she tells him. "But food, then we need to get dressed, and then we need to figure out what else we're doing today. Come on, off the couch."

He slides off the couch but, unlike her hazy memories of being a child, he waits for her and her sleepy shuffle to the kitchen rather than running ahead. Rita thinks he might hold her hand, if she showed any sign of wanting him to.

The food situation turns out to not be so incredibly, horribly dire because Mr. Potter had done one thing right, yesterday while she'd been at work: he'd managed to stock the kitchen with food and, apparently, baked.

"What do you think?" she asks Harry, once they've both bimbled into the kitchen and are peering into the cold cupboard. Harry is standing on a chair, otherwise he'd be too short to look into it. "Muffins, fruit and cheese count as breakfast, right?"

Merlin's beard, it's a healthier breakfast than her usual.

"For me too?" he asks.

Rita looks down at him. There's a lot of ugly stories in that one sentence.

"... Yes," she says. "For you too. In this house, everyone gets to eat."

He looks happy but also kind of overwhelmed and Rita has an absolutely wretched idea that's also absolutely perfect.

And useful! It's a multi-purpose idea! I can't go wrong!

She knows that Mr. Potter would be very unhappy with her idea, but given how unhappy she is with him right now, well.

He can suffer.

"Muffins, cheese, and fruit, it is," Rita says, and pulls out the food she needs for the both of them. "Do you want butter for your muffin?"

He hesitates. Longing is clearly written on his face but he's just as obviously scared to say anything.

I will murder Mr. Potter when he gets back.

"It's just that I want butter on mine," she says, "and it would make me feel better if you did too."

It's a simple, little manipulation. Harry falls for it hook, line, and sinker.

"Yes, please, Godmum," he says.

Rita suppresses the urge to shudder. Instead, she pulls down a few plates and offers them to Harry. "Please put these on the table," she says.

He takes them, his little back straight and proud at being given a chore, and she frowns at the reaction, not sure what to make of it. Is that how kids are supposed to react?

Rita dumps fruit into a bowl.

She glowers at the deep purple of the grapes and wishes she'd never gone along with Mr. Potter's idea.

Except that it had seemed fascinating! A first-hand look at The Boy Who Lived's family! I've never had that before! Not in any timeline! How was I to know it would turn into this?

Rearranging the fruit, mostly just to direct her glare into the bowl some more, then cutting up some cheese and heating up muffins to slather thickly with butter, takes both far too long and not long enough.

Then she's eating breakfast with a child who, unless she misses her guess entirely, is already imprinting on her. Like. Like he's a duckling and she's-

Ugh.

Like she's Mama Duck.

This is the last thing she's ever wanted. It's not that she hasn't had relationships before, she has. It's not that she hasn't been married before, she has. (In a different timeline.) But she's never had children before.

And I don't hate them, for all that they're noisy, little chaos demons. I appreciate a good bit of chaos-how else will they learn? But I... never wanted that. I still don't want that.

She has no idea how she's going to break Harry's heart.

But if I let him stay, think he really has a home, then that's even worse. I don't resent him-yet. But that's because it's been a whole of, what, two days, and none of it's his fault.

Rita watches from the corner of her eye as Harry reaches for another muffin and nods approvingly at him when he takes it. Just because he seems to need that reassurance.

Can I throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Rita watches as 'the baby' dabs a grape in a glob of butter and eats that. She's kind of revolted.

"What are we doing next, Godmum?" he asks.

I'm going to run away to Egypt and lock myself in a pyramid.

Tempting, but no. Rita takes a bite of a muffin-Mr. Potter, damn him, is an excellent cook-and uses that as a way to give her time to find an answer that isn't equal parts sarcastic and hurtful.

"We'll clean up here," she says. "Then clean our hands and get dressed."

Rita considers her bank account-the balance is robust because she's a time traveller and cheats outrageously-and Harry's appearance.

I really ought to buy him some clothes.

She hates the thought of it, as he'll just take it as another sign of her, Merlin forbid, actually caring about him, but she can't keep destroying her towels and other linens for him to have something to wear.

But if I'm going out with him, I'm not going as myself and he's not going as himself either. We can't. I'm an investigative reporter with an unsavory reputation and he's the Boy-Who-Lived.

"Then we're going to go shopping," she decides. "But we're going to have some fun with it."

"Fun with it?" Harry echoes.

Rita smiles sharply at him. "We're going to go in disguise."


It's early evening by the time they get home, Rita with her blonde hair turns to deep brown in long, silky tendrils that spill down her back and eyes the colour of evergreen trees, and Harry (who has been going by 'Larry' all afternoon) with the same silky brown hair, but his eyes are a pale blue.

They're both wearing new clothes.

She also had more new clothes, mostly for Harry, shrunken down and in a bag in the pockets of her robes, but Rita had been damned if she was going to buy clothes for a child without getting something for her too.

Mr. Potter, though, she had left to twist three sheets to the wind. If he came back and if he needed clothes he was going to have to make it up to her before she spent a single knut on him.

"Godmum," Harry says, "why did people talk mean about you?"

Rita looks down at him. He's frowning. "What, Harry?"

"They were reading the paper," he says. "And, and you write for it, right? Mr. Black said so. They said your name and not nice things."

Rita unlocks her front door and gets them inside her home before she answers any questions about that. It feels better, once hidden behind her own four walls. Her own wards. She reaches for her wand and with the work of moments undoes the spells that had changed their appearances.

She always had been good at transfiguration. Having had many lifetimes to get better at it has only helped.

"I hadn't even noticed," Rita says, which is true. She'd notice real invective but the run of the mill grumblings are beneath her interest.

"But they were mean," Harry insists.

She bites the inside of her cheek, wondering if real parents, who actually want the kids they're saddled with, ever have to deal with imposter syndrome of being, like, someone who knows all the answers.

Or who is a good person...

Because Rita is many things, but she knows she's not the best of people.

"Well," Rita says, "because I am mean."

It's probably not the sort of thing she ought to just say out-right to the child but, well, Rita is both reviled and adored by her readership and this is entirely by her own design–and a large part of that is because she's mean.

She says the things other people think and say behind closed doors and she says them on a newspaper that everyone reads.

Harry stares up at her in the front hallway, his green eyes baffled. "But, Godmum, you're the nicest lady I've ever met."

And that says more about your life than anything else, no matter that it's a compliment to me.

One made on incomplete information but he's six, she can't expect him to know how to source his opinions properly or understand the lines between ruthful and ruthless and how she purposefully blurs them.

Before she can even begin to explain why she can be, ugh, nice to him and mean in the papers, Mr. Potter comes thudding down her stairs, his eyes wild behind askew glasses.

Rita heaves a huge, huge sigh. She doesn't even bother to keep it internal.

It's a tragedy that her wards don't think he's a threat, so they hadn't alerted her, and it's her own fault for not revoking his access to her property entirely.

But, honestly, I wanted to see if he'd have the nerve to come back. She takes in the hair, more messy than usual, and the fact that he's still wearing yesterday's clothes. He doesn't have much sense, but he has nerve, I'll give him that.

"Where have the two of you been?" he demands and, oh, there's anger in that voice of his. He's always had a temper.

Being a time traveller or master of death or whatever has apparently not broken him of that.

Harry shuffles closer to her, obviously wary of Mr. Potter's mood and what he might do next.

Rita smirks and savours the way Mr. Potter looks like he's been punched in the gut when he realizes what Harry is doing.

"We went out shopping," she says sweetly, radiating innocence. "After all, I had an unexpected day off of work and Harry needed clothes."

Mr. Potter winces at the honeyed acid in her voice.

He's not entirely an idiot, after all, though Rita remains unconvinced that he's actually any sort of smart after the last two days.

"I see," he says stiffly, straightening. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes for a moment before he continues to talk. It gives her the time to realize that something is cooking in the kitchen, something that has begun to smell amazing.

"I apologize," Mr. Potter says. "My business took longer than I thought it would. I had meant to return before dawn."

She eyeballs him thoughtfully.

Fifty/fifty chance he actually had any business at all.

But she leans towards not, given the state of him. It's a story that doesn't make sense and she refuses to buy it.

He probably got wound up thinking about how I stormed off and so he left in a strop to cool off and lost track of time wandering in a haze.

That sounds way more accurate.

Still, Harry's right there, watching avidly and worriedly, and so she refrains from telling Mr. Potter what she thinks of his bullshite story.

"We managed fine," she says, instead, lightly as she pulls the bag of Harry's new clothes out of her pocket and taps it to restore it to it's true size.

She hands it to Harry, who takes it solemnly.

"Harry, how about you put your clothes over by your bed," she still mourns her armchair but it doesn't look like she's getting it back any time soon; she misses having her own space all to herself, "and go wash up. I think there's something tasty cooking, so once we're both cleaned up, we'll be right on time for dinner."

Mr. Potter apparently cooked when he's under stress. There are worse coping mechanisms and it might be her favourite thing about him.

Harry hesitates, looking between the two of them.

"Go on," Rita says. "Everything is fine, Harry. We're not fighting."

Yet.

Harry looks surprisingly dubious for a six year old.

I hate the likely reasons for that but I can't help but approve of the caution. It will serve him well if he's taught to take advantage of it.

Harry nods, wraps his arms around her waist in what she realizes with some horror is a hug, then he trots off, bag of clothes clutched to his chest.

He avoids Mr. Potter, swerving around him and Rita sees the hurt that flashes in Mr. Potter's eyes. Hurt and... desiderium, perhaps? A longing for something lost that, for all his time travelling, Master of Death abilities, he can never get back?

Good, she thinks, in no mood to be charitable towards him.

They stare at each other in silence until the door to the bathroom upstairs closes.

"You've won him over quickly," Mr. Potter says, his voice exceedingly neutral.

She looks at him haughtily. "You're the one that told him I was his godmother. How did you think he was going to react to having family that doesn't starve him, lock him in a cupboard, and dresses him in rags?"

Mr. Potter looks very, very tired, and a bit… regretful. "You're right," he says. "Can we talk after he's asleep?"

She's tempted to say no but, well, it's the first time he's actually asked and sounded like he might mean to listen to her opinion.

And, so help her, she's terribly curious.

"Alright," she says, though she puts a suspicious twist to the word, just so he doesn't think he's getting one over her. "After Harry's asleep. What name should I be calling you, by-the-by? You never said."

He winces, again, even though she didn't put any venom into that last phrase.

(It was enough of an accusation, even in the most neutral of tones. It didn't need the help.)

His lips twist, something darkly amused in the expression. "Gemini Black."

Rita blinks at him. Then she laughs. After a moment, Mr. Potter starts to laugh too.

That's how Harry finds them, a minute later, both laughing their heads off like loons and, worst of all, the moment they see him, breaking out into a fresh round of laughter that, then, they have to pretend to not have been laughing at him.

Because they weren't.

Rita leaves it to Mr. Potter to explain, hustling herself up the stairs to clean up, and giggling the whole way.

Gemini. The twins.

She freshens up, unshrinks her clothing, and leaves it draped on her bed to be put away later. Then, with one last cackle, she sails back down to join Harry and, ha, Gemini Black.

The truly clever thing about it is that anyone who knows the Blacks would know that name would be all up in their own familial love of starlit legends. It fits, it suits, and it's hilarious for incomprehensible reasons. I love it. It's the most intelligent thing he's done so far.

The evening seems to drag on, probably because both she and Mr. Potter are itching for a conversation that needs to happen.

Harry, the poor lad, seems to pick up on their tension without knowing the reasons why and it takes forever to get him settled.

(Rita, perhaps, winds up hitting him with the very lightest of sleep charms that she knows, one that just sends people into a light doze. Mr. Potter gives her a reproving look but says nothing and doesn't cancel the charm.)

They quietly retreat to the kitchen where they sit around her counter, mugs of tea in front of them.

"So," she prompts.

"I really am sorry," he says. "You're right, I didn't think anything through. I've been in this timeline for three days and the first one was spent untangling the traces to see who the other time traveller was."

"And then we stole yourself on a whim," she says. "Sheer idiocy."

"I'm about to compound it," he says. "And I'll need your help."

Rita takes a long swallow of her tea. "I'm going to need more information before I make any decisions about that, Mr. Gemini Black."

She pauses and then cackles.

He sighs, then grins at her. It's a surprisingly boyish expression.

"You're never letting that go," he says.

"Never," Rita agrees. "Details about your newest idiocy."

"You're right," he repeats. "I didn't think and it was wrong of me to give you a title that's a commitment like that and, while Harry's this young, obtaining his vault key is... complicated."

"Who has it?" she asks.

Mr. Potter raises his eyebrows. "Albus Dumbledore."

Rita grimaces.

"Agreed," Mr. Potter says. "So, if we want to do anything that's not relying on your good will and generosity, both of which you've been free with, which I'm grateful for—"

"Stop buttering me up and tell me what you want now," she demands.

Mr. Potter sets his mug down and stares at her intently.

"I want to break into Azkaban and free Harry's godfather, Sirius Black."


You, with your switching sides
And your wildfire lies and your humiliation
You have pointed out my flaws again