Inked Dragons

The Words of a Politician

When Rita Skeeter pushed open the door to the all-night Muggle café on Tottenham Court Road at just gone 10pm, she failed to comprehend the huge black motorbike parked on the pavement outside. Not that she would have recognised who it belonged to anyway. The small and shabby café was called the Luchino Caffe and was conveniently close to the headquarters of the Daily Prophet. Many of the Prophet's reporters used it, though none quite so regularly as Rita Skeeter as she geared herself up for writing up her next mundane report with a strong dose of caffeine. As usual, Rita wasn't exactly in a hurry to get back to the office to write up her space-filler, hence stopping in at the café for a quick expresso to get her through the night before the editing deadline in the early hours of the morning.

The café was nearly empty, bar two men sitting at separate tables under the glare of the yellow fluorescent lighting. They sat with their backs to each other at their neighbouring tables, almost chair back against chair back. She couldn't see the face of the man facing the door, he wore a black t-shirt and a black beanie and had tattoos up both arms. His head was bent as he appeared to be writing something in a notebook. There was something vaguely familiar about the barely-visible pale features but she didn't take the time to bother with an irrelevant Muggle. The other Muggle, with his back to her, had short tousled raven-black hair and was wearing a long gunmetal-grey military-style coat. It was slightly intimidating, although the way he slouched and was nursing a cup of tea seemed to lessen the threat. Neither men paid any mind to her and she didn't want to draw attention to herself so Rita slid onto a seat at a booth on the opposite side of the café from the two men, hopeful that neither of them would take a fancy to talking to her, or worse.

A light layer of grease lay on all the Formica-topped tables but she didn't care as she patted the underside of her set blond curls and smoothed out the jacket of her lime-green jacket. The gum-chewing waitress shuffled over and Rita ordered her expresso.

'Ms Skeeter,' a familiar voice said from across the café.

Rita looked up, surprised.

'Would you care to join me?' Harry Potter said, a small smile playing on his lips, as if he were very entertained by the turn in events. He was no longer hunching over his mug, instead he had sat back and looked remarkably amused, his green-eyes twinkling slightly behind his glasses.

His hair, she noticed, was still an abominable mess, worse from the front and verging on insulting.

Harry was amused; only because Ms Skeeter looked so shell-shocked and was utterly speechless. He thought that must be a first.

'Mr P-Potter,' she stuttered. 'What are you doing here?'

'Oh, being nostalgic. How are things with you these days? I understand you're now a fully registered Animagus.'

'Er, yes,' she said warily, moving across the small room, her heart beating surprisingly fast. She feeling unsettled.

Rita studied the young man in front of her. He looked surprisingly relaxed with the situation. It was far more usual for the Assistant-Head Auror and Leader of the Auror's Elite Force to lose his temper when in the vicinity of anyone from the Press, and he certainly never invited them to join him for a coffee with anything like sociability in his temperament. Harry Potter looked different but she wasn't quite able to put her finger on why, until she realised he looked older than she always imagined him and, dare Rita think it, more content.

In contrast, Harry thought Rita Skeeter looked wearied by life. Despite wearing a similar lime-green twin-piece, it wasn't looking quite so sharp these days and the feather collars and cuffs had certainly moulted. She seemed to be squinting through her glasses as if she hadn't renewed the subscription of late, her nails were chipped, and her roots were showing despite the carefully set curls. She looked like she needed a break and Harry was well aware that he was about to provide it.