Nine Lives and Bad Luck

31:

It ended up being a surprisingly good day. The house elves greeted them happily, and at Hermione's polite request whipped them up a nice, healthy breakfast which was absolutely delicious. They managed to keep each other's spirits lifted and minds distracted through the walk to herbology, but all their dread ended up being for nothing as the students seemed to be more awkward and unsure around the group where before they had been hostile.

It was then Hermione realized that something new must have been printed in the Daily Prophet and the race began to find themselves a copy of the day's paper. It was Lavender and Neville who came rushing back to join them later that afternoon with that morning's paper, Hermione was still bemoaning her cancellation of her Daily Prophet subscription- it had been done in a huff when Skeeter first had started printing untruths about Asphodel although she often wavered in certainty from that initial decision she'd never actually gotten a subscription again.

        "Look, Skeeter wrote a retraction!" Lavender said excitedly.

        "She did?" Parvati asked, eyes wide, at the same time as Hermione exclaimed, "That's great!"

       "I've never seen the Prophet do that before." Neville agreed, just as excited.

       "Is it really that unusual?" Hermione asked, suddenly not as enthusiastic.

       "I haven't seen it either," Asphodel agreed, "Usually the paper doesn't print anything that the people who have any power of it wouldn't want to see, or at least that's what I've been told."

        "Yes, Gran says something like that too." Neville agreed, "I wonder who it was that forced the Prophet to retract it?"

         "They might have realized how ridiculous Skeeter's articles were getting by themselves and did it?" Hermione half heartedly suggested.

         Lavender scoffed, "As if she didn't run it by at least one editor before it was printed. If there's two things to know about Rita Skeeter it's that she's proud of her work and vicious, she doesn't really print things that are easily disproven, for example she found the damage done to the troll to back that Asp is more than he seems and uses it to paint him as dangerous. And for the werewolf article, she didn't claim he was a werewolf, she claimed there were rumors about it and he often went missing at night according to some sources.  She's not 'saying anything'," here Lavender rolled her eyes, "She's just saying what 'everyone else' is and then insinuating that it might be true, even if she was the one to stoke those rumors, and where there's smoke, there's usually fire."

Hermione had been reading the newspaper and then she gasped suddenly sounding heartbroken, "Oh, but look!"

And there they found, in just a few short lines Skeeter's next attack, because for whatever reason, she had decided to focus in on him and attack. Unreliable witnesses. She had placed in a handful of sly lines blaming Neville and Asp's roommates for the article's falseness in a way that also suggested it was Asphodel's fault that they had given her bad information.

They entered the dining hall, to test the waters of how well the retraction would work in getting the school to back off. When no snide marks were made at their initial interest, and the stares being more covert than usual they went and quickly took a seat. Feeling a little more secure, in that the other houses would back off, but also to three sets of eyes unhappily watching them. And that Quirrell still sat at the staff table.

Adley, the Slytherin boy who he had saved from the troll, was watching the group as they entered, a lot of the Slytherins were actually and Asphodel got the vague feeling that it was them who had gotten it retracted from the paper. If not Adley, then one of the other Slytherin's their families' certainly seemed to hold a lot of power over British Wizarding society from what his friends had claimed.

        He nodded at them slightly and a handful of the Slytherin students nodded back in acknowledgment, although a handful just returned to their food.

        It seemed that night he had gained himself at least a few allies, at the very least to a small extent, by helping them find their missing student.  Sighing in relief, he turned to his food and began carefully eating. The three glares, many watchful eyes, and Quirrell's heavy presence smothered most of their conversation, but it still felt nice eating in the great hall for a change, more... normal.

    From her out of the way perch on a tiny ledge of the stone walls, Skeeter narrowed her eyes. The sight of the notice that she had received dancing before her eyes; an official letter demanding a retraction.  It was one of three other notices that had come to her and her head editor during the past few days and each one had made her fingers twitch in carefully contained rage. It had been awhile since she'd gotten this type of blow back on one of her little fluff pieces.  With the first article she had gained quite a bit of attention from the International crowd that she hadn't expected as well as an influx of buyers in Britain that she had expected. Concerned parents made for very loyal readers so, despite the risks, she made it her goal to do one or two smaller fluff articles from Hogwarts from time to time. So, of course she had done another, especially when her pride had been pricked at like that. It had been some time since she'd really gone on attack though, that hadn't been since five years into her career writing, before she had truly taken off, and in part it had been a risk that she had taken that had brought her fully into the spotlight, when she had crushed Monsieur Wriggly and his story in Diagon Alley into an embarrassing history and then dust.  But that had been long ago. Just over a decade in fact.

    Perhaps it was time she reminded the Ministry and all it's jesters who was the reporting queen of their court.  She controlled all of their influence on the top of her acid green pen, and they knew it, but sometimes they needed to be reminded why.

   Her fingers, or rather limbs considering her current form, twitched slightly, itching for a quill to rest between them, as she prepared to begin the next front page article. These wouldn't be smaller fluff articles or third page fillers made to draw in whoever didn't particularly care for the front piece anymore. Since this was how they wanted to play it, she knew how to deal with this type of problem; you drive a wedge to prevent them from closing ranks, kept them from creating a united front. How much of what was going on had Adley and the others told their parents? For a scene as big and drawn out as this one had created, the details they would be given would be scant and parents would be well aware pieces were missing.

    If they suspected it anything more than just ignorance or it bot being crucial information.... Well.  The parents would want to know.  They would begin to wonder. And as their friends and the people around them began to speculate a little less carelessly, a little more loudly. They would begin to demand answers. What else had caused this unusual behavior in their children?  In the precious future of their lines and wizarding world.

    Both her readers and worried parents alike would be hungry for more. They would turn to the news, to the professors, to the students, and headmasters for more information.

       But, with all the various rules about speaking with reporters about students involved, only she, Rita Skeeter, Queen of the Quill, would be able to deliver. After all, in matters regarding student body secrets, who in their right minds would trust the students? And she would deliver. Deliver all sorts of unlikely, but fear- and therefore attention and more importantly thought- grabbing answers. Oh she would deliver alright.