Astra || H. Potter [1]

[35] Family Visits

[Outfit Above]

Breakfast was very noisy at the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables, it was the morning of the third task and everyone was ecstatic.  The post owls appeared, bringing Harry a good-luck card from Sirius and Hermione's copy of the Daily Prophet. The thick-haired brunette unfolded the paper as both she and Ophelia looked at it. Hermione spat out a mouthful of her pumpkin juice at the sight of the front page. "She didn't!" Ophelia hissed

"What?" said Harry and Ron together, staring at the two of them. Ophelia grabbed the paper and folded it closed again. "Nothing." They both replied quickly. Hermione took the paper from Ophelia and tried to hide it out of sight but Ron grabbed it. Ro stared at the headline and he instantly understood why Ophelia and Hermione reacted the way they did. "No way. Not today. That old cow."

"What?" Harry asked as his eyes flickered between his friends. "Rita Skeeter again?" Ron shook his head. "No." He shot down quickly and like both Hermione and Ophelia he attempted to push the paper out of sight. "It's about me, isn't it?" Harry asked. "No." said Ron, in an entirely unconvincing tone. Harry's lips parted and he was ready to demand the paper just as Draco shouted from across the Great Hall. "Hey, Potter! Potter! How's your head? You feeling all right? Sure you're not going to go berserk on us?"

Draco held up a copy of the Daily Prophet, the Slytherins up and down the table were sniggering and twisting in their seat to see Harry's reaction. "Shove off you wanker!" Ophelia shouted back at him, thankful Snape was no longer there. Draco sat back down in his seat in anger when he found none of the other professors reprimanded her. McGonagall only gave her a stern look but had a glint in her eye showing she was amused. "Let me see it," Harry demanded with his hand out to Ron. "Give it here." Very reluctantly, Ron handed over the newspaper. Harry turned it over and found himself staring at his own picture, beneath the banner headline:

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 Potter's 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.