Harry Potter and Daphne Greengrass: The Love Contract

Chapter 11

"Speaking"

'Thinking'

"Parseltongue"

Writing/Reading

"YELLING"

Daily Prophet, Barnabas Cuffe's Office

Barnabas Cuffe sat in his reclining chair in his office, relaxing as he looked around his office. Since becoming the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Prophet, he had enjoyed many successful journalistic articles that were published in the newspaper. However, he did have to swallow a hard pill in the form of one Rita Skeeter; Barnabas hated that woman, as he believed that Skeeter was the kind of reporter (if she could truly be called that), that gave journalists a bad name. The truth of it was, where Cuffe was a legitimate and objective journalist and reporter in his articles, Skeeter was nothing more but a gossipmonger, with her ridiculous article, Me, myself, and I. Another reason that Cuffe hated the woman, was because many of her so-called "interviews" were either mishandled, or more specifically exaggerated with the use of a Quick-Quotes Quill instead of a proper Dicta-Quill, to make her articles more enjoyable to read (at least according to her), and then she would go and completely tarnish the reputations of many respectable witches and wizards with her articles, making a lot of people upset at the Daily Prophet. There were many times when Cuffe wanted to sack the woman and remove her gossip article from the Daily Prophet, as well as Witch Weekly, which was a subsidiary of the Daily Prophet, to appease the people who were humiliated by Skeeter.

Unfortunately for Cuffe, Skeeter had found some considerable allies in the Ministry, particularly the Minister and his Senior Undersecretary, as well as a few wealthy individuals in the Magical community, especially one Lucius Malfoy. Cuffe often suspected that Skeeter may have at some point, worked up some sort of business arrangement with the Minister, and the others. Specifically, one where as long as they kept her safe and working in the Daily Prophet, she would write articles about anyone they wanted to humiliate and would refrain from writing bad articles about them. Although he couldn't prove it, Cuffe had no choice but to keep her on, unless someone else came along and gave him the power to override the Minister's assistance that Skeeter remains at the Prophet, and finally get rid of the woman.

Cuffe was taken out of his thoughts, as he heard a knock on his door, before granting entrance to the knocker. The door then opened, before the head of his secretary Barbara came out from around it.

"Excuse the interruption, Mister Cuffe, but an owl from Lord Cyrus Greengrass just arrived requesting an immediate meeting with you, right now!" Barbara stated, holding up a letter to validate her words.

Cuffe's eyebrows rose in interest, as he mentally wondered what Cyrus Greengrass wanted with him. In the back of his mind, he hoped that it had nothing to do with Rita Skeeter, though as far as he knew, Skeeter had not written any recent articles about the Greengrasses. In the end, his curiosity won out and decided to see what it was about. After all, the Greengrass family was one of the Daily Prophet's four major investors, and thus were permitted a meeting, regardless if it was short notice.

"Very well, Barbara, I'll let Lord Greengrass in via my office Floo, thank you," Cuffe responded, eliciting a nod from the girl. "Alright, I'd best get ready to receive Lord Greengrass, so you're dismissed, Barbara."

After Barbara closed the door, Cuffe got up and walked to his fireplace, before opening it up, and throwing some Floo powder into it, bringing forth the green flames, and shouted the Floo of Greengrass manor. After sticking his head through the flames, and notifying one of Lord Greengrass' House-Elves that the Floo was available for Lord Greengrass to come through, Cuffe removed his head, and brushed off the soot, making himself look presentable to a respected member of the Magical society of Magical Britain. To his surprise, however, Lord Greengrass didn't come alone, in fact, he arrived through the flames in the company of his wife, his eldest daughter, and surprisingly Harry Potter. This was a surprise to Cuffe because not only was the Potter family another one of the four major investors of the Daily Prophet (if not its number one investor), but as far as he was aware, the Potter and Greengrass families showed no indications of knowing one another, though there were always indications of a huge alliance that had existed between the two, as well as the Longbottom family.