Easy - The Girl who Lived Forever (Harry Potter's Sister)

The Third Task

"You'd better get up to the hospital wing," said Harry, as the owls around Hermione took flight, "we'll tell Professor Sprout where you've gone ..."

Hate mail continued to arrive for Hermione over the following week. Although she stopped opening it, several of her ill-wishers sent Howlers, which exploded at the Gryffindor table and shrieked insults at her for the whole Hall to hear.

Even those people who didn't read Witch Weekly knew all about the supposed Harry-Krum-Hermione triangle now. Hermione and Kella were both desperate to learn how she was getting onto the grounds for interviews when she was banned.

Harry got his own hate article the day of the final task. It was received with glee from another Slytherin fourth year Draco Malfoy. "Hey, Potter! Potter! How's your head? You feeling all right? Sure you're not going to go berserk on us?" Malfoy shouted across the Great Hall, clutching a copy of the Prophet.

Slytherins up and down the table were sniggering, twisting in their seats to see Harry's reaction. The girls in my year simply rolled their eyes and continued eating.

"Let me see it," Harry said to Ron. "Give it here."

Very reluctantly, Ron handed over the newspaper. Harry read through it, and then threw it aside. I grabbed it, looking at my brother's photo on the front cover.

HARRY POTTER "DISTURBED AND DANGEROUS

The boy who defeated He Who Must Not Be Named is unstable and possibly dangerous, writes Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent. Alarming evidence has recently come to light about Harry Potter's strange behaviour, which cast doubts upon his suitability to compete in a demanding competition like the Triwizard Tournament, or even to attend Hogwarts school.

Potter, the Daily Prophet can exclusively reveal, regularly collapses at school, and is often heard to complain of pain in the scar on his forehead (relic of the curse with which You-Know-Who attempted to hill him). On Monday last, midway through a Divination lesson, your Daily Prophet reporter witnessed Potter storming from the class, claiming that his scar was hurting too badly to continue studying.

It is possible, say top experts at St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, that Potter's brain was affected by the attack inflicted upon him by You-Know-Who, and that his insistence that the scar is still hurting is an expression of his deep-seated confusion.

"He might even be pretending," said one specialist, "this could be a plea for attention."

The Daily Prophet, however, has unearthed worrying facts about Harry Potter that Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, has carefully concealed from the wizarding public.

"Potter can speak Parseltongue," reveals Draco Malfoy, a Hogwarts fourth-year. "There were a lot of attacks on students a couple of years ago, and most people thought Potter was behind them after they saw him lose his temper at a Duelling Club and set a snake on another boy. It was all hushed up, though. But he's made friends with werewolves and giants too. We think he'd do anything for a bit of power."

Parseltongue, the ability to converse with snakes, has long been considered a Dark Art. Indeed, the most famous Parselmouth of our times is none other than You-Know-Who himself. A member of the Dark Force Defence League, who wished to remain unnamed, stated that he would regard any wizard who could speak Parseltongue "as worthy of investigation. Personally, I would be highly suspicious of anybody who could converse with snakes, as serpents are often used in the worst kinds of Dark Magic, and are historically associated with evil-doers". Similarly, "anyone who seeks out the company of such vicious creatures as werewolves and giants would appear to have a fondness for violence".