Marauders - Always - Part One

CLXVI: The Scoop

"Uh, no, I don't think this can wait until then because, you see, you have to put the paper to bed in... slightly more than an hour... and you don't have a piece written by your athletics correspondent on the biggest athletics challenge in multiple decades," Declan said, snooty tone to his voice. He flapped his arms like a muppet and Rita's eyes glimmered with amusement. "Seems like that's something you don't want to wait on, dunnit???"

Smudgley sighed heavily. "Rita's already handed her copy in."

Rita grinned.

"Impossible," Declan replied, "I only just got back from Hogwarts within the half hour. She hasn't even had time to --"

"Not everyone writes as slowly as you do, Deccy," Rita murmured.

"Real writers don't work with a Quick Quote Quill," he snapped back.

Smudgley glanced at Rita. "We don't accept articles written by a Quick Qu--"

"Spreading rumors about other writers on your own staff, Alectric! Really!" Rita grinned. "Besides, we all know why you were late getting back from the Goblet of Fire ceremony anyway, don't we, Declan? Didn't come right back straight away, did you?"

Declan glowered at her. How did she know everything? he wondered. He had, indeed, gone to see to it that Oliver Kent was set at the Inn in Hogsmeade before disapparating back to the Daily Prophet offices to write his article - but that hadn't delayed him by much.

"I'm not here to play referee between you two," Smudgley said, interupting before Declan could so much as squawk out a retort. "The story's been assigned. Sorry, Alectric. You're our best Quidditch writer, of course, but this isn't strictly an athletics piece. It's also a human interest piece. We really want all our readers on board, not just our quidditch lot. Rita's recent work has been quite exemplary and --"

Declan tuned the rest of the reasoning out. He didn't need or want to hear any more of it. By the time he got back to his desk a bit later and he'd sank into the seat, he just stared at the screen that showed what he'd already written of the piece on the Tournament, frustrated, and he slammed his fingers against the key to delete all his words, watching as the cursor ran backwards over them. They disappeared one by one.

The most infuriating part was that Declan had the ultimate inside scoop on all this, of course, but he couldn't very well tell them that.

Declan, after all, knew already how the Tournament would turn out - it was one of the unchangeable things.

Declan glanced about and opened his desk drawer, rifling about until he found a yellow notepad and flipped through the first few top pages, where he'd scribbled notes and made doodles of George Michael's face until he got to where he kept the real reason he had the notepad handy.

Dates.

Lists of dates without any annotation for why they were listed.

1 November 1994 was midway through, scratched off with pencil - the latest in a long list of dates that had a line drawn through them. The next one was  24 November 1994. The date of the first task in the Triwizard Tournament. 

Declan stared at the date, trying to remember all the details, wishing he'd taken more concise notes... 

How had he let himself get side tracked?

Seen a pretty face and forgotten everything, hadn't he?

Everything he'd been working for all this time?

He ran a finger over the dates, one by one, letting his mind wander over the ones he knew the meaning of all the way through until he found the most important one.