The mood in the castle as we entered June became excited and tense again. Everyone was looking forward to the third task, which would take place a week before the end of term. I almost always saw Harry with Moody practicing hexes. Breakfast was a very noisy affair at the Gryffindor table on the morning of the third task. The post owls appeared, bringing Harry a good-luck cards. Lucille's black owl arrived with the Daily Prophet which I grabbed from its beak and began reading.
"Hey, Potter! Potter! How's your head? You feeling all right? Sure you're not going to go berserk on us?" Draco was holding a copy of the Daily Prophet too. Slytherins up and down the table were sniggering, twisting in their seats to see Harry's reaction. I looked down at the prophet to see what he was on about.
HARRY POTTER
DISTURBED AND DANGEROUS
The boy who defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is unstable and possibly dangerous, writes Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent. Alarming evidence has recently come to light about Harry Potter's strange behavior, which casts doubts upon his suitability to compete in a demanding competition like the Triwizard Tournament, or even to attend Hogwarts School. Potter, the Daily Prophet can exclusively reveal, regularly collapses at school, and is often heard to complain of pain in the scar on his forehead (relic of the curse with which You-Know-Who attempted to kill him). On Monday last, midway through a Divination lesson, your Daily Prophet reporter witnessed Potter storming from the class, claiming that his scar was hurting too badly to continue studying. It is possible, say top experts at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, that Potters brain was affected by the attack inflicted upon him by You-Know-Who, and that his insistence that the scar is still hurting is an expression of his deep-seated confusion.
"He might even be pretending," said one specialist. "This could be a plea for attention." The Daily Prophet, however, has unearthed worrying facts about Harry Potter that Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, has carefully concealed from the wizarding public.
"Potter can speak Parseltongue," reveals Draco Malfoy, a Hogwarts fourth year. "There were a lot of attacks on students a couple of years ago, and most people thought Potter was behind them after they saw him lose his temper at a dueling club and set a snake on another boy. It was all hushed up, though. But he's made friends with werewolves and giants too. We think he'd do anything for a bit of power." Parseltongue, the ability to converse with snakes, has long been considered a Dark Art. Indeed, the most famous Parselmouth of our times is none other than You-Know-Who himself. A member of the Dark Force Defense League, who wished to remain unnamed, stated that he would regard any wizard who could speak Parseltongue "as worthy of investigation. Personally, I would be highly suspicious of anybody who could converse with snakes, as serpents are often used in the worst kinds of Dark Magic, and are historically associated with evildoers." Similarly,
"anyone who seeks out the company of such vicious creatures as werewolves and giants would appear to have a fondness for violence." Albus Dumbledore should surely consider whether a boy such as this should be allowed to compete in the Triwizard Tournament. Some fear that Potter might resort to the Dark Arts in his desperation to win the tournament, the third task of which takes place this evening.
My mother dropped.
"What?" Astoria said confused I handed her the paper.
"How did she know?" I gasp, "Rita wasn't there but yet everything is there. No one could tell her that much detail exactly like it happened!" Astoria shrugged looking fazed by the article. But what bothered me most was about what Draco had said. He completely hated Parsletongues and the events of second year. Which I was responsible, not to mention I was apparently parsletongue as well. Though I had never tried to speak to snakes. I would hear them whisper from the trees on the school grounds. At the Slytherin table, Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle were laughing at Harry, tapping their heads with their fingers, pulling grotesquely mad faces, and waggling their tongues like snakes. When Draco caught me glances I saw a flicker of something I couldn't place before I looked away trying to focus again.
