Nose to the Wind // tomarry

Chapter 19: Your Love Has Always Been Enough

Will did hunt him down to say goodnight, as Harry had known he would. After saying his goodbyes to both Will and Hermione – and Ginny, who'd come up with Will – Harry found an empty classroom to open a doorway in, rather than walking up to Severus' office and trying to guess the password so he could pretend to use the floo.

Death was waiting for him on the other side of the doorway, bone fingers tapping out a grim tempo against the handle of its scythe.

Harry tensed. "Who needs to die?" he asked, the words sounding more tired than anything else.

"Rita Skeeter observed part of your interaction with Tom in the gardens," Death reported.

Rita Skeeter? Harry frowned, and it took a moment for him to place why that name gave birth to a twinge of concern, because she hadn't really been a concern for him since she'd published that ridiculous book about him in his original reality. "Oh," he said once he'd remembered. "Her. Bollocks."

He rubbed tiredly at his eyes, trying to figure out what to do, because he could certainly kill her, but it was hard not to remember how useful she'd been when Hermione had blackmailed her. Having a reporter in his pocket could never be a terrible thing, especially someone people had a bad habit of believing.

He frowned and glanced up at Death. "I haven't seen her name in the Prophet."

Death inclined its hood. "She mostly writes for gossip magazines; Tom's rule is not kind to those so inclined to embellish the truth on the front page."

Harry snorted. "Look, another thing he did right," he muttered, and Death rattled a laugh. "Fine, so we just unwittingly handed her some of the juiciest gossip she's heard since...I don't know when. Brilliant."

A skeletal hand cupped Harry's cheek and he leant into the touch with a sigh. "Shall I lead you to her, Master?"

Harry nodded. "She's a beetle in this reality, too?" he asked, checking.

"She is."

"Right." Harry straightened and put on his Alpha Lord face. "Let's go disarm this disaster before it explodes in our faces."

Death obediently led him through the Realm of Death and opened a doorway for him. When Harry stepped through it, he found himself standing in a studio flat, the walls and part of the ceiling wallpapered with articles from magical magazines, The Daily Prophet, and a handful of international magical periodicals. The main room was almost completely dark, save for two candles lit on the desk on the far side of the room, which Rita was leaning over, the tail end of a long quill wagging over her shoulder.

"You know," Harry started, and Rita jumped and spun around in her chair, "I should probably be angry, but I think I'm more impressed at your guts. I mean, not many people are willing to go around telling tales about Lord Voldemort." Rita flinched at the name, as Harry had expected she would, then pointed one faintly shaking hand at him. "You're the boy. The eldest Potter boy."

Harry smiled, showing too-sharp teeth.

"You're supposed to be a squib!" Rita insisted.

"Oh, I am," Harry promised, taking a slow step forward just to watch her flinch back. "I've got a squib wand and everything to prove it." He rocked forward on the balls of his feet, amused at the way she was staring at his eyes like she expected them to set her alight, or some such. "You normal wizards and witches are so funny, assuming the magic they teach at Hogwarts and such is all that exists in the world. Which really kind of sucks for you, because it means you don't actually have any wards that can keep me out of your homes." He dropped his smile and she let out a quiet noise of surprise. "It's actually a bit like how you're always getting dirt on people because they never think to ward against animagi."