Brighter Than the Sun

Chapter Fifty-Six

"The antidotes," Ron said. "Oh, and Harry had a press call. They were taking photographs and all. So I was the only one who had to stay in class."

I felt a little guilty for not including Ron. "Next time we'll make sure you and Harry get to skip class with us." Ron's eyes narrowed at Harry's name, and I sighed. "Do you really have to go on like this?

"It's obvious that just talking things out will help," Hermione said, "but neither of you are willing to try."

"I'm not going to him. He has to come to me."

"But wouldn't it be nice to be the bigger person for once and go to him first?" I asked. "It's not his fault."

Ron shrugged and started heading towards the boys' dorm. He stopped and turned around. "You missed dinner, by the way."

"Oh," I groaned. "That's why I was so hungry."

The next day Harry told me about the press call — about how Rita Skeeter had turned every word he spoke into a lie, how she'd acted all shady about interviewing him. I found it a little freaky that she'd dragged him into a broom cupboard to do it.

"You should probably avoid her from now on," I suggested. "As best as you can, anyway."

Harry also told me about the letter he'd received from Sirius last night, telling him to meet him in the Gryffindor Common Room at one in the morning on November 22nd.

"He said he was actually coming?" I demanded.

"No, he just said to meet him."

"How?"

"I dunno, but he said he'd be there, and that he wanted you and I to be there."

I felt extremely excited about just the idea of seeing Sirius again, so I decided I didn't care how he was doing it. As long as he didn't get caught, I was excited to see him. Harry wrote back to Sirius saying that we would be beside the common room fire at the time Sirius had suggested. He, Hermione, and I spent a long time going over plans for forcing any stragglers out of the common room on the night in question. If the worst came to the worst, we were going to drop a bag of Dungbombs, but we hoped they wouldn't have to resort to that - Filch would skin us alive.

In the meantime, life became even worse for Harry within the confines of the castle. Rita Skeeter had published her piece about the Triwizard Tournament, and it had turned out to be not so much a report on the tournament as a highly colored life story of Harry. Much of the front page had been given over to a picture of Harry; the article (continuing on pages two, six, and seven) had been all about Harry, the names of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang champions
(misspelled) had been squashed into the last line of the article, and Cedric hadn't been mentioned at all.

"Rita Skeeter reported me saying an awful lot of things I can't remember ever saying in his life, let alone in that broom cupboard," Harry complained. "Listen... 'I suppose I get my strength from my parents. I know they'd be very proud of me if they could see me now... Yes, sometimes at night I still cry about them, I'm not ashamed to admit it... I know nothing will hurt me during the tournament, because they're watching over me...' "

"I'm literally done with this," I muttered.

"No, wait, there's more. She didn't stop there. 'Harry has at last found love at Hogwarts. His close friend, Colin Creevey, says that Harry is rarely seen out of the company of one Hermione Granger, a stunningly pretty Muggle-born girl who, like Harry, is one of the top students in the school.' "

"Ooooh," I cooed, making my voice sound like Pansy Parkinson's. "Harry, you didn't tell me you and Hermione were a thing!"

Harry groaned.