cclxxiii. the boy who lied
The morning had ventured dangerously close to the afternoon by the time Harriet woke to a rapid knocking on her door.
She rolled out of bed, her head feeling as if it weighed half a ton, and grumbled to her knobby knees. She sat at the edge of the mattress.
"S'too early," she complained. Against her heels, she felt Livius' impatient nose inspecting her feet, and the smaller golems on her nightstand hissed a displeased chorus.
"Breakfassst time!"
"Eat! Eat!"
"Sssnack! Sssnack!"
"You don't even need to eat," Harriet retorted, reaching among them to grab her spectacles, shooing away Kevin before he could bite her questing fingers. "Where's—where's Winky? D'you ask her?"
Livi freed his head from under the bed's skirt, knocking his horns against the rail. "The elf left usss."
Harriet figured she'd gone to help the others with breakfast—or, judging by the cold winter sun at the window—lunch. Harriet had gone back to bed after Mr. Flamel took Snape upstairs, but she'd laid awake listening to the footsteps overhead for hours. It'd nearly been dawn before she finally dropped off into sleep.
The knock sounded again on the door.
"I'm coming," she called, swallowing a yawn. Turning the knob, she jerked the door open, finding Hermione at the threshold. Her irritation faded. "What's wrong?"
"You're not awake?" the other witch asked, eying her mussed pajamas. Harriet noted Hermione had on a lovely pair of robes in a pale magenta. She looked nice and well put together. "Why aren't you awake?"
"Am I supposed to be awake?" Harriet hadn't been aware of any plans for the day. They hadn't planned anything for after the election, having been…unsure of how it would go. She wondered if anything had happened overnight, but she guessed someone would have woken her earlier if it had.
"Yes," Hermione told her, her tone just short of exasperated. "Oh, get in here." She shooed Harriet back into her room, then went to the wardrobe, opening it. She spoke as she searched her robes. "We have to leave soon, or we'll be late, and we've only a brief window of opportunity to get out of the house without someone protesting."
"Wh—?" Harriet broke off when one of her apprenticeship cloak whacked her in the face. "Blimey, Hermione. I don't even know where we're supposed to be going."
Rather than answering, Hermione selected a pair of Harriet's best shoes and set them out on the bed with her white cords. Harriet wrinkled her nose.
"I don't want to wear that anywhere."
"It's important," Hermione told her. "We're going to want to set the right impression."
"Are you going to tell me what's happening?"
Hermione fidgeted as she selected a pair of socks—and Harriet swatted her hands away before she could choose her knickers as well.
"Well. You'll see when we get there…."
She left to allow Harriet to get dressed, and she did so with begrudging stiffness, trying to figure out what Hermione was up to. She considered dressing scruffy just to be spiteful, wanting nothing more than to fall back into bed, but she did as Hermione bid and dressed well, taming her hair and using a spell to ensure her robes were pressed and lint free.
What is she planning? I have a bad feeling about this.
Once dressed, she stepped out into the corridor and quietly shut the door behind her. Downstairs, she could hear Hermione and Elara talking, their voices soft and muffled by the distance. Harriet glanced toward the stairs leading to the floor above—the stairwell sat dark, silent, no sign of the man who'd struggled up those steps the night before. Harriet stared for a long while, heart heavy, then turned away.
xXx
Harriet shivered as she stepped from the Floo's heat, and the soot fell away from her cloak, Charmed to repel it. A heavy chill clung to the Tarland Tavern, seeping in from the snow-clad street beyond the fogged windows, unchallenged by the candles or dim fire churning in the hearth. The pub's occupants looked around when she arrived, but their gazes didn't linger. Harriet guessed there was something foreboding about her appearance, dressed as she was in her tailored robes and fitted cloak. The clasp at her throat gleamed like an animal's lurid, feral eye in the dark.
The others arrived after her. Elara took a surreptitious sip of potion to cure her nausea and secreted the vial away into her sleeve. Hermione looked grim and pained. Sirius rounded off their intrepid party, and he was quick to inspect the uncrowded tavern. Finding nothing suspicious, he shoved his hands into his trousers' pockets and grunted.
From a booth in the corner where the winter sunlight shone best, a familiar blonde woman with poison-red nails waved.
"Hermione," Harriet muttered in disbelief. "What in the fuck is Rita Skeeter doing here?"
Hermione had the grace to flush a rather blotchy red as she cleared her throat, and her answer came out as a question. "You're going to give her an interview?"
Harriet balked. "Give her an interview—?!"
"It is a good idea. I agreed with her," Elara interrupted. "The public likes Skeeter, for all that she's a lying, manipulative troglodyte, and they read what she publishes. There wasn't time to convince you of our idea. Now, while Gaunt hasn't retaliated, is the best time to push the real narrative. Give her an interview, and she'll get it into the Prophet."
"The narrative—?"
"Voldemort," Sirius supplied, loud enough a few of the patrons flinched in their seats and glanced at him. "It's a good time to repeat what you've said since the beginning: he's back, we're in danger, and the public needs to know. But—." He held up a finger and shot Hermione and Elara a look. "If you want to leave, we can leave. That's the deal."
Harriet did want to leave—she wanted to go back to Grimmauld, crawl into her bed, and not emerge for several hours or days. This was a terrible idea!
"You can tell her what happened after the vote," Hermione added. "When Gaunt attacked you."
"They didn't make that information public," Harriet retorted. "They didn't even stop him before he left."
"But you can make it public."
Reluctant, Harriet listened to their quiet inveigling, and she finally gave her head a single, short nod.
Sirius patted her shoulder, then tipped his head toward the bar. "I'll be having a pint if you need me."
Elara didn't roll her eyes, but Harriet sensed it was a near thing.
Hermione led the way across the pub to Skeeter's booth, Harriet grumbling until she was in earshot, at which point she shot the older witch a cool, unfriendly look. She slid onto the opposite bench next to Elara.
"Well, I must say it was quite a surprise to get your owl, Miss Granger," Skeeter said to Hermione with a sharp, biting smile. "And at such an inopportune time, too. You do realize I've an article to write covering the election, yes? It should have been out this morning, but I had to make time for this meeting at your insistence—."
"We want you to write something else," Hermione said, cutting across her. Her tone came out crisp and no-nonsense. "Something that will not only benefit you, but the whole of Wizarding society. For once."
Skeeter's keen eyes flicked toward Harriet, then away, the look almost hungry, eager. "Your letter mentioned an interview?"
"I'll give you one," Harriet told the witch, not quite able to unstick her clenched jaw. She would be giving Hermione an earful later, but at least she hadn't let Harriet embarrass herself by showing up in her tatty Muggle clothes. Hermione's insistence upon the apprenticeship robes and cloak made sense. "I'll tell you about the Dark Lord's return. Now that Gaunt's out of office, your editor shouldn't have a problem printing that truth, right? But I have conditions."
Skeeter sucked on her teeth and reached for her tea. Despite the hour, Harriet could smell the pungent, cloying scent of alcohol rising off the surface. "Of course. What is it, Miss Potter?"
"I won't have you making me sound like an incompetent child," she snapped, thinking back on Skeeter's articles covering the Triwizard Tournament. The stuff she'd written about Longbottom had been bloody embarrassing, even for the Prat Who Lived. "Or making Terry Boot into a spectacle. Don't make this out to be a ruddy fairy tale—it's important."
Skeeter waved an irritated hand. "You don't need to tell me how to do my job, little girl." From her clutch purse, she removed a scroll and a simple black Self-Inking Quill. She licked the pad of her taloned thumb before unfurling the blank scroll and urging it to lay flat. "I agree to your silly conditions—and Granger needn't threaten me."
Harriet glanced at Hermione and found her watching Skeeter with a raised brow.
"Now," the witch began, ink already gleaming on the parchment in the weak winter sunlight. The sight of it made Harriet feel nauseous, her empty stomach twisting in her middle. Skeeter smiled again. "Why don't we start at the beginning….?"
When she began speaking, Harriet found the retelling of the story didn't hurt as much as it had months prior, that time and repetition had dulled the sting of recounting Terry's death and Voldemort's rebirth. She steered away from the elements Mr. Dirigible had told her were sensational at her trial—the dueling, the high-stakes escape, the miraculous rescue. She painted the scene in broad strokes and didn't linger on the details or names. Skeeter pointed this out, and Harriet simply told her she hadn't recognized anyone. She'd land back in court if she libeled a Death Eater, no matter if it was true or not.
The scroll grew with the writing, though if Skeeter noticed or cared about it or the smudged ink on her fingers, she said nothing. They broke once for the loo, and Harriet had to get a cup of the worst brewed tea she'd ever suffered through to soothe the ache in her throat. Hermione and Elara stayed mostly quiet aside from a few points they wished to have clarified, and Elara once demanded Skeeter show how she'd recorded a particular section.
Once the topic came to a close, Skeeter started to stray—she asked about the election, Harriet's view on it, and she practically salivated when Harriet told her about the former Minister's brief but violent reaction. She wanted to know about her life as an apprentice, but Harriet would only give her brief, acerbic responses she knew would meet Slytherin's approval. Honestly, she didn't know how he'd react to this interview, but she'd already decided it aligned well with his wish for Voldemort to be outed.
She did, however, make it a point to add a little extra.
"I believe You-Know-Who has agents among us," she said, watching Skeeter's quill, reading her shorthand, wary of her extra flavor. "And I believe they've been here since his first downfall. They have been at our ears, guiding our hands, and they're just as dangerous as the Dark Lord, if not more so."
Skeeter continued writing. "Bold words, Miss Potter. Especially considering you won't name names."
Harriet shrugged, fidgeting with her cord's tassel under the edge of the table. She wished one of her golems had snuck into her pocket, but they'd been miffed at her by the time she left, knowing Winky would see to them for her.
Outside, the afternoon had darkened, a storm threatening. Muggles rushed by on their way home.
"Why you?"
Harriet blinked, looking at Skeeter again. "I beg your pardon?"
"It's rather curious. All of this happening, so much attention focused upon you. Why not Mr. Longbottom? He was available for You-Know-Who's scheme, was he not?"
Harriet fidgeted but said nothing. She could feel Skeeter watching every shift in her expression.
"I don't know Voldemort's mind, Rita," she settled on saying, savoring how Skeeter flinched, dragging her quill on the parchment. "I can't speculate on why he does what he does. That way lies madness, as the Muggles say."
"I don't set store by what Muggles say." Rita scrawled a final line on her scroll, and when she lifted the quill, the long roll snapped closed with a flourish. "It's madness to listen to the mundane in a world of magic." The scroll disappeared into her clutch. "Thank you for the illuminating interview, Miss Potter."
Harriet took this to mean they could leave at last, and she urged her friends out of the booth, grunting at the soreness in her arm. The cold had been affecting it more ever since Madam Pomfrey had to remove and regrow the limb after her first botched Animagus attempt, and her left arm burned where Crouch had stabbed it with the dagger. She wanted to get home and put the salve Snape had made on it.
"Say, Potter," Skeeter said as Harriet stood. "Off the record—your parents. They died in eighty-one, didn't they?"
Harriet's hands froze on the lapels of her cloak as she straightened it. She narrowed her eyes at the reporter. Why on earth would she be asking that?
"Yes. Why?"
"Oh, no reason." Skeeter smiled. She reached out and patted Harriet's shoulder with her taloned hand. "No reason at all…."
xXx
THE DARK LORD RETURNS: IS THE BOY WHO LIVED ACTUALLY THE BOY WHO LIED?
"Merlin's arsehole," Harriet mumbled as she unfolded the Prophet that night. She knew that, elsewhere in the house, most everyone would be doing the same. Most everyone in the Wizarding would be settling down to read the evening edition. "That cow!"
Rite Skeeter had kept her word. She wrote an article extolling the need for safety, exposed the Dark Lord's return, and threw suspicion upon the Ministry's efforts to cover the incident up. She made a brief but thoughtful mention of Terry's death, and didn't malign Harriet's character. If anything, the madwoman had made her sound competent and wise beyond her years, a victim whose selfless message was for others to take precautions and protect their own families.
And then…the bullshite began.
"Potter's words are a clarion call to arms, but they also ignite a flurry of questions. Questions that, if answered, could alter the very fabric of our understanding of the past. For, as Potter's tale unfolds, a shadow of doubt is cast over one of our most cherished beliefs: the identity of the Boy Who Lived."
Skeeter trotted out old articles and stories and pictures from the past, lining up little details that challenged the reader to question what really happened on that awful Hallowe'en in 1981. She had excerpts from the incident reports, photos of Harriet's ruined childhood home before it was torn down, pictures of a young Frank Longbottom holding his infant son. There were reports out of Hogwarts, commentary scrounged from the society at large. She cast aspersions on Longbottom's magical prowess, bringing up his ignominious losses during the Triwizard Tournament, while she highlighted Harriet's attainment of a coveted apprenticeship at such a young age, and her record of school service.
The worst were the images of Harriet from her trial, her head turned and her chin up, her scar like a brilliant flash of white lightning on her throat.
"'That is a curse scar,' says a notable researcher at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. 'A very old one, from a very Dark curse. Yes, I would say it's entirely possible it came from You-Know-Who. I would urge Miss Potter to have it examined at the hospital.'"
"Notable researcher," Harriet seethed, the paper crinkling in her hands. "More like a great, nosy tosser who shouldn't be looking at ruddy pictures of me!"
"So, dear readers, as we light our wands and stand vigilant against the gathering darkness, let us also open our minds to the possibility that we may have been misled. Could it be that the true savior of our world has been living in the shadows all along, waiting for her moment to step into the light?
Only time will tell. But one thing is certain: the story of Harriet Potter is far from over."
Harriet thought she might be ill.
"I think I'd rather be accused of murder again, honestly…."
A/N:
Gaunt: "I've received a letter."
Gaunt: "It's from Potter!"
Gaunt: "…"
Gaunt: "All it says is 'bitch.'"