Work Text:
Tournament Hijacked!
A Blatant Murder Plot... Or A Cruel Publicity Stunt?
Hermione read slowly over the article for the third time. Her breakfast sat barely touched and going cold on the far side of her newspaper, and she was oblivious to the unnerved glances being darted at her from most of the students in the Great Hall.
She snapped her paper shut, making half the crowd flinch, and tapped the thick corner thoughtfully against her mouth as she stared up into the rafters. Then, after a long moment, she nodded sharply.
"I believe," she mused aloud, "that I want to talk to this Rita Skeeter."
To either side, the Weasley twins mocked diving for cover.
-0-0-0
The witch was painfully bottle-blonde, her hair fixed in iron-stiff curls piled high on her head, with a heavy jaw and rhinestone-studded glasses. She had on tight magenta robes that clashed terribly with bright red, talon-like nails, and when she smiled warmly at Hermione, three sharpened gold teeth glinted in her mouth.
An acid-green quill floated with a notepad at her side, already scribbling even as she held out one strong hand to Hermione. "Miss Granger, I presume?"
"Ms. Skeeter," Hermione replied, mustering up as much false warmth as Rita herself. "Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. Your articles are," horrifying sensationalist tripe, "... stunning. I understand the entire Wizarding world... oh, how did I hear it? ... 'hangs breathless upon the tip of your quill'."
Rita beamed. "Naturally. Now, then... you promised me an exclusive interview about Harry Potter?"
Hermione had done no such thing, and she flatly said so. "I," she went on, "promised you the biggest scandal of your career, plus an exclusive interview later with Harry." Much to Harry's dismay. "But nothing comes for free, Ms. Skeeter."
A fleeting expression of... was that respect?... crossed Rita's face. "On the contrary, I find that much of my best work comes priceless. What did you want, a flattering," her nose wrinkled, "description in my article?"
Hermione scoffed. "I've heard it all. No. What I want, Ms. Skeeter, is Sirius Black's trial records." The woman's beady little eyes widened. "He was the most dangerous man in Britain at the time of his arrest," Hermione pressed on. "A psychotic Death Eater who lay hidden for years in the very heart of the fight against You-Know-Who, a man who betrayed his best friends and infant godson, who literally held the Boy-Who-Lived in his hands and could have done anything had Hagrid not arrived and seen him. A man who wouldn't have even been caught without Peter Pettigrew sacrificing his life just to shout his crimes loudly enough for there to be Muggle witnesses!" She leaned forward, close enough to smell the rancid Butterbeer on Rita's breath. "He must've been interrogated so throughly his brain was left in pieces before he ever saw Azkaban. I want those records. I want every scrap of information that exists about That Man. I want to know the way his mind works, to be able to predict every twisted thought that makes it out of his head-- I want to be able to predict him, and waylay him, and put him down, before he can murder my best friend.
"Get me that information, Ms. Skeeter," Hermione finished, leaning back out of the reporter's personal space. "Get me that information, and I will get you the article series to rock the Wizarding world.
"Do we have a deal?"
-0-0-0
The girl didn't look like much, more frizzy hair than person, but a savage intelligence gleamed in her eyes, and she wore her Gryffindor colors like a frumpy poison dart frog. Little was I to know this unpromising meeting would lead me to the journalistic apex of my career!
I returned to her less than a week later, the very day before the First Task...
-0-0-0
When Rita opened her purse, she pulled out a stack of parchment nearly three feet deep, with the arrest report of Sirius Black right on top.
Somehow, I am completely unsurprised, Hermione thought, as she paged through the stack -- all done in telltale fuzzy photocopy-blue ink -- under Rita's expectant stare. Birth certificate, Hogwarts report cards, OWL and NEWT scores, application for the Auror Corps complete with essay, godparent registry, notification of Headship of the House of Black... and then the interrogation reports began. She quickly leafed through the rest, finding nothing but interrogation reports, then divided that two-and-a-half feet of papers from the top pages and threw them into the nearby fire.
Rita choked on a screech. "What are you doing?!"
"Nice try, Ms. Skeeter." Hermione set the real documents onto the table for later. "You have an excellent forger. However, I happen to know there are no interrogation or trial records for Sirius Black. Please, have a seat, and I'll give you your first exclusive article... the events of the night of June 6th, 1993, when Sirius Black escaped capture on the grounds of Hogwarts."