A Hop Skip And A Jump Away

Interview take 2

Before Harry knew it they were sitting in that same sitting room across from a very pleased Rita Skeeter who had carte blanche to ask all three of them questions about their lives.

"I still want an oath of absolute truthfulness whenever she's writing about us," Harry grumbled, seated on the black leather couch next to both Voldemort and Severus.

"Truth doesn't sell papers, darling," Rita said sweetly, batting her overlong eyelashes at him and earning glowers from his fiances in the process.
Nagini hissed a chuckle from near their feet as she enjoyed the discomfort that her humans were letting themselves be put through.

"Ask," Voldemort ordered, resisting the urge to rip her eyes out for looking at Harry like a prime side of meat. Rita straightened with a nod suddenly a professional doing her job. Tapping her wand to a special quill that would record everything word for word she started the interview.

"Hello gentlemen. I am, as you know, Rita Skeeter and you have graciously agreed to an interview with me to be printed in the Daily Prophet," Rita said, explaining the situation for the quill to record. "Just for the record would the three of you please introduce yourselves?"

"Potions Master Severus Snape," Snape said curtly.

"Harry Potter," Harry said unhappily, not bothering to list the various titles he now held and honestly not wanting most of them to be known.

"Tom Riddle but the public knows me better as Lord Voldemort. That said no one has to worry about saying my name anymore I've removed the taboo magic," Voldemort admitted, trying to get some of the more ridiculous reactions out of the way. "Frankly its insulting the alternatives that everyone has come up with and I can't simply use Dark Lord anymore after the events on June 24 since I'm not the only one with a claim to that title."

"Hey! I have no idea how I've got either Lord of Magic title!" Harry protested, successfully easing the tension a bit as he pouted cutely and earning a chuckle of amusement and fondness from his fiances.

"How did the two of you end up being declared both as a Dark Lord and as a Light Lord, sharing the two titles?" Rita asked quickly, avarice gleaming in her eyes.

"I'm not entirely sure but it could have had something to do with the magical deal we made with Death, Magic, and Fate," Harry said carefully in a thoughtful tone of voice. "Though the Centaurs said that Voldemort earned the Dark Lord title the hard way, which sort of makes sense and explains why the deal had to put his mind back together."

"Mind and soul, imp, mind and soul," Voldemort reminded him, mirth dancing in his eyes as amusement bubbled in his voice.

"I wasn't sure if you wanted to tell everyone that," Harry said with a shrug. "I know you've got most of your soul back but I always wondered how much is missing now that its just.. you know?"

"From my calculations, now that I know the ritual takes half rather than a sliver, I have roughly 125 parts out of 128. You have two of them and my familiar has the third. You need just over half a soul to remain sane and the first time I performed that ritual I split my soul evenly in two, which is one of the reasons I bargained to try and fix the mess I made over the years. Its my own fault for not specifying talking to my teenage self rather than simply my past self. They could have sent me back 5 minutes and it would have qualified though it wouldn't have done much good with the state I was in," Voldemort explained. "I have no idea why they picked the end of the triwizard tournament but it could have been the magics I was using to regain my body at the time."

"Do you have anything to say about the many people you have killed, tortured, and ordered horrendous things done to over the years?" Rita asked carefully, trying to stay in her aggressive reporter persona yet not wanting to get crucioed.