"Yeah, if you really were a dark lord you'd have recruited us to be your lieutenants of chaos!" added George.
"By the way, are you hiring?"
"It's never too early to start recruitment, you know."
"What's going on, guys?" Harry was still confused. Hermione arrived just then, as the twins made room for her to sit down beside Harry.
"Ah, the Dark Lady has arrived!"
Hermione shook her head in amusement as she sat. "I forgot to tell you about it yesterday in all the excitement," she said. "Rita's written another article."
"Really? And, by the twins' reaction, I'm supposed to be some dark lord or something? But that's making everyone else friendlier to me?"
"Well, she did say a few outlandish things, as usual... but most of the students know it's wrong. I can't say the same about their parents, or the general public, though..."
"Well, are you going to show it to me, or not?" Harry was getting impatient. Hermione handed him a copy of yesterday's paper.
Dark Lord Slayer or Competitor?
By Rita Skeeter
Everybody knows the story of the Boy-Who-Lived, defeater of the Dark Lord. Has anyone ever figured out how he managed to do it, though? The official story is that he survived a killing curse, which reflected back on the Dark Lord. Remarkable, you may say, since no human has ever survived, and even more so as a baby. But wait! What else can survive this darkest of dark curses? Even a unicorn, one of the purest of light creatures will fall to the glowing green light. However, the darkest of creatures- Dementors- can survive it. Did we defeat fire with fire, a dark lord with another dark lord?
Why did You-Know-Who choose to personally attack a mere baby, when he had scores of Death Eaters to do it for him? Harry Potter was no mere baby, as we all know now in hindsight. He did, however, bare his fangs yesterday in the Trial of Champions. What most people thought was a good Confundus charm to turn the conjured snakes onto his competitor, this clever reporter discovered was a far more sinister ability: Harry Potter is a Parselmouth!
"Yeah, Harry Potter's a Parselmouth. We found out about two years ago," explains Mr. Finch-Fletchley, who had a close, personal encounter with a snake that Harry Potter commanded in his second year. Even a young girl of the Weasley clan was kidnapped that year, but she refused to comment about her experience. When the name Harry Potter was mentioned, she ran away in fear. Why was she so afraid to answer a few questions? It could very well be that she has nowhere else to turn to. The highest authority in Hogwarts is, of course, Albus Dumbledore- but can we trust him to rein in Harry Potter?
"Dumbledore's daft, I tell you. He hired a werewolf last year to teach us! I was so afraid I would be bitten every time I sat in that class," Miss Parkinson had to say about her experience. Mr. Lupin, as some of you may remember, was sacked at the end of last year after his dark nature was publicly revealed.
"I was almost killed by this evil creature in our Magical Creatures class, and Dumbledore just lets it fly away! My father tried to make sure justice was done, but the old goat kept getting in his way at every turn," the young Mr. Malfoy told us. "He's rarely on our side. He certainly likes Potter, though." As the Triwizard Tournament continues, Dumbledore appears to continue giving Mr. Potter free reign in the school, ignoring his blatant wrongdoing or even disqualifying him from the tournament. Without any proper discipline, we could very well be looking at another dark wizard within the decade.
"You have got to be kidding me," Harry said in dismay.
"Nope, that was written in the Sunday Prophet for everyone to see," Hermione told him.
"Don't worry, Harry, almost everyone else sees it's just trying to be sensational," Neville reassured him. "Nobody here really believes it- I mean, Lupin was the best Defense teacher we had! Better than Lockhart, for sure."
"Oh, if you thought Lockhart was bad, you should have seen Professor Dimplewit. At least Lockhart knew which end of his wand the spells came out of, even if he couldn't actually cast any," Alicia commented from across the table.
"And everyone's already heard the story of how Malfoy got scratched by a Hippogriff and went crying to his daddy," snapped Ginny, angrily. "I can't believe she'd still put me in the article when I tried to ignore her!"
"Still, I think we need to keep an eye out for this woman. She gets inside with the press pass, doesn't she? We'll have to watch out for her in the next event," Harry said with his teeth clenched. "I swear, I'm going to drown her in ink if I ever meet her."
.
.
.
.
🎉The novel is available in PDF, visit us in our Ko-Fi store🎉
🎉ko-fi.com/madarasama125🎉