After only a moment, the beetle burst into a greenish rainbow of dense, swirling smoke, which condensed into the unmistakable shape of a woman. She was seated coquettishly on the edge of the table in a natty green jacket and skirt, peering at James through tortoiseshell spectacles, her red lips formed into a sardonic little smile.
“I hope you’ll forgive me, Mr. Potter,” she offered, dropping her eyes slightly. “Old habits die hard. But I do find that what a subject does in the thoughtful moments before an interview can be highly illuminating. I’m Rita Skeeter.”
She extended her hand, which was very thin and pale, palm down. Almost reflexively, James shook it, but briefly. Her fingers were cool but strong, despite the looseness of her grip. James guessed that she was in her late fifties, but had clearly invested much effort and money to appear much younger. Her probably falsely blonde hair was done in flouncy waves that framed her narrow, immaculate face.
She brightened and turned toward the notebook. “I also apologize for this…” Without reading it, she tore the topmost page out and balled it in her hands, throwing James a conspiratorial little wink.
“The Quill is still set to Tabloid mode. Embarrassing, but a necessary evil when one also freelances for publications like Witch Weekly and the Crafty Conjurer. Just one moment…”
She withdrew a sleek wand from her sleeve and daintily tapped the Quill, which lofted briefly into the air, pirouetted, and then tapped back down onto a new blank page in the notebook, apparently reset to a less sensational recording mode, although James knew he couldn’t be sure.
Returning her wand to her sleeve, Skeeter turned back to James, relaxed comfortably on her perch on the desk, and narrowed her eyes at him. For what felt like half a minute she merely studied him, her gaze ticking slightly over his face, as if reading his mind, or at least giving a very practiced suggestion of it. James blinked at her, and then around the room, growing exquisitely uncomfortable in the stuffy quiet. He could see the door over the woman’s left shoulder and heartily wished he was already on the other side of it.
“You’ll have heard about me,” she finally stated, her voice quietly musing. “From your family.” She nodded, as if resigned and slightly penitent. “I understand, of course. But I want you to know that I am not the journalist I was then. I’m not the Rita Skeeter your Aunt and uncle and father met those many years ago, James. May I call you James?”
James gave a small shrug and nodded.
“I was young then, James,” she went on with a wistful sigh.
“Young, and eager, and perhaps a bit too ambitious. But I’m different now. I need you to know that before we start. You can trust me.” She leaned even closer, waiting for him to make eye contact with her. Her gaze was huge and somber behind her stylish glasses. “I’m on your side, James.”
Slightly nonplussed, James shrugged and bobbed his head again, not knowing if he actually believed her. The intensity of her stare was like being probed with purple-eye-shadowed spotlights.
But then Skeeter relaxed again. She blew out a sigh and nodded to herself. “That’s a relief, James. Because for the sake of my readers, I need to know the real you. The unguarded you. Shall we begin?”
James merely nodded a third time. He pushed himself back into the upholstery of the chair, trying to extract himself from Skeeter’s perfumed aura.
“This is your seventh year at Hogwarts, then, yes?” She asked lightly. “And despite the turmoil elsewhere in the world, your last two years have been remarkably uneventful. Something that was never true for your famous father.” She smiled at him observantly, looking for a response. James couldn’t tell if there was congratulation or reproach in her gaze. When he offered no comment she went on briskly. “So, are you looking forward to graduation?”
James drew a deep breath, relieved to finally confront a question he could answer. “I guess I am. I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do with myself afterward. I was thinking of becoming an Auror. Like my dad. But my grades are…” He shrugged and bobbed his head noncommittally.
Behind Skeeter, the Quill commenced writing again, scratching busily over the notebook. It was minutely distracting.
“Ah, yes. Harry Potter, the Auror,” Skeeter nodded lightly, and then turned serious. “But these are difficult times in which to be an Auror, are they not? Three years since the Night of the Unveiling. The Vow of Secrecy erodes more every day. It must be extremely frustrating, even hopeless work, trying to patch together the wall that divides the magical world from its Muggle counterpart, while still chasing down the occasional flying carpet smuggler and dabbler in dark magic. Wouldn’t you agree?”
James did agree, having heard his father say virtually the exact same thing over the past few years, but he felt uncomfortable saying so.
He merely shrugged.
Beneath the steady shimmy and clatter of the train, the Quill scritched and capered.
“You were there on the night that it happened, weren’t you?”
Skeeter asked quietly, cocking her head. “The Night of the Unveiling?
You were right there in the middle of it all, isn’t that correct, James?
What do you remember of it?”
James pressed his lips together, thinking furiously. What could he say? There was no way to answer the question easily, or even safely.
The Lady of the Lake, the mastermind behind the whole nefarious affair, was virtually unknown, considered a myth by most of the people who had heard of her, and this despite her potentially disastrous appearance at the so-called Hogwarts “Quidditch Summit” two years earlier. Petra had battled and ultimately defeated her there, with some unlikely help from an Alma Aleron student named Nastasia Hendricks. And yet it was Petra who had borne the blame for the plot of the Morrigan Web, adding to the guilt already heaped upon her for the Night of the Unveiling, when she had indeed deliberately fractured the veil of secrecy between the Muggle and magical worlds.
“I was there,” James foundered uneasily, “It was all kind of a blur. I don’t remember a lot.”
“But you remember your friend, Petra Morganstern?” Skeeter probed, raising her eyebrows. “She was your friend, yes?”
James nodded faintly, thinking back to that night. He could still see Petra in his memory, walking down the centre of the broad New York avenue, hand in hand with her young sister Izzy, lofting parade floats into the air with the sheer power of her mind. He could still hear the toll of her voice as she called out to the Statue, the guardian of the magical city of New Amsterdam, caster of the greatest secrecy spell ever conjured, asking her to lower her torch, to break the spell.