Put Your Curse In Reverse [Part 2]

Chapter 8 - Corruption

INSIDE AZKABAN'S WALLS: RITA SKEETER SPEAKS OUT

Azkaban is hardly fit for the rats that join my slumber—and yet I am one of the hundreds of humans imprisoned inside of its ghastly walls. I sit today in a damp and dingy prison cell that harbors the unrelenting stench of human urine and fear. I have been given a scantly ten fluid ounce bowl of lukewarm broth; a roll of something that was once, in its prime, brown bread; and one slender grapefruit slice (without sugar). The pains of hunger wrack my body nearly as much as the pains of exhaustion. All around me, people weep.

One week ago, I was sitting in my sunny cottage kitchen, listening to my parrot Pear-Pear sing his customary good morning song. I was dipping homemade breadsticks into a lovely honey-cheese spread (a Skeeter family recipe—my late grandmother taught me in her last few months on earth). I was envisioning my future, planning the corners of the earth I might visit, planning what well-deserved people I might gift the limelight to in my next article. I did not envision that I would not have a future.

And so it happens for me as it has happened for many. I woke, I lived, I crossed Harry Potter and his cult, Dumbledore's Army. And now I am sitting on a bedframe without a mattress beside a woman named Crucio Cathy who has discovered a few very troubling and unhygienic ways to conceal stolen food from the patrolling guards. As of this draft, I have not been offered a shower once. Judging by the scent of my unique cellmate, she has never been offered a shower or even a quick Cleaning Charm in the decades she has been here.

To get myself landed here, I spoke. Readers, throughout my long and industrious career I have covered matters ranging from minor Ministry disputes to the suspicious death of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named himself. I have never wavered from my own convictions despite the unjust and immoral pressures placed upon me by our current Minister for Magic, Hermione Jean Granger. Despite this pressure, despite the violent antagonism from my colleague, Ginevra Potter, and despite the prejudicial judgment from some of my readers, I have always prided myself on my courage to deliver the truth in whole as best as I know it. Readers can attest to the fact that I have often put myself in mortal danger in my tireless efforts to acquire information, information that I use to keep everybody in the light— despite those who wish to keep you in the dark. Of all these threats to knowledge, free speech, and truth, the worst is Harry Potter. From my prison cell, I will start from the beginning and I will not be afraid to dismantle our current corrupt government's darkest secrets.

According to the story we have been sold by the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore's Army, and Harry Potter, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named split his soul into 'six pieces' (pieces allegedly named 'Horcruxes') with an unknowing seventh residing in Harry Potter himself, and the final piece residing, of course, in He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. These pieces ensured virtual immortality for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named; as long as they remained intact, nothing could kill him. And yet, according to what we have been told, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named chose to place these highly important pieces of his own soul into cherished and obvious artifacts. We must ask ourselves: if these 'Horcruxes' were real, why would the most infamous genius of our time choose to place them in known and valuable objects that could be found by three vagabond teenagers, instead of choosing to place them within, say, a stale biscuit in an elderly woman's biscuit tin? Heavy emphasis placed on if these Horcruxes even exist. Readers, everyone must remember the cycle of events that happened quickly after the 'fall' of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named: in the resulting chaos, Harry Potter made a thirteen-hour-long statement to Aurors and the press, detailing everything from the Horcruxes to the final moments of some of his allies' lives, and directly after this statement went public, Kingsley Shacklebolt—who assumed acting role of Prime Minster even before he was actually given it—demanded every book on the subject of Horcruxes destroyed and everybody found in possession of one to be arrested.