Nine Lives and Bad Luck

27:

       "Tiamat, how could you,"

       "Oh so cruelly leave us out of these,"

       "Absolutely fascinating details?"

        Their savior came in the form to the Weasley twins, "But seeing you now,"

        "It really must be true!"

       "You're a werewolf!" The two cried in unison. 

        "George can you believe this?" The twin who had been originally introduced twice declared.

         "Behold!" Possibly-George cried out just as loudly, "Hogwart's most fearsome,"

          "And terrifying werewolf!" Fred swooped him up, carefully, in both hands and held him high.

          "He even is capable of disguising himself into other forms!"  By now it seemed to have gotten around that he was stuck as a chameleon animagus, word had spread very quickly after his herbology class had seen him writing answers to the professor's questions instead of participating with the best penmanship he could manage with his lack of opposing thumbs.

          "Even when it is not during the full moon!"

          "Like this monstrous chameleon of doom!"

           "Bow before the vicious pink beast!"  The shade was actually called blush red, although he doubted that made it any less of an unintimidating colour, which he supposed unintentionally helped his case a little. Though he was beginning to regret changing colors based on his friend's suggestions a little as they began bemoaning how he ruled with an iron fist through clashing colors and summoned a tiny Gryffindor necktie for him in order to spread his primitive reign of werewolf terror.

     He got the feeling some of their words was quoting from whichever article a reporter called "Skeeter" had written about him suffering from werewolfism.

      Still, reluctantly he submitted to their manhandling, it didn't hurt him any, although it was a little rude, and it definitely helped dispel the other students' belief in this Skeeter person's article.

       Harry squeaked as he returned to a human form as the twin he had taken to calling Fred lifted him up again sending them both falling down.

        Fred groaned, "Give a guy warning before you change like that, would y'a?"

         Harry groaned as well feeling his only recently healed wounds throb at the fall. "Yeah, will do."  With his animagus secret out the window now with this new chameleon form becoming discovered, thankfully he was only stuck for the mercifully brief period of time of only a few hours, he scrambled onto his feet and helped Fred up, transforming into a chameleon again once at the table at the insistance of the twins and other Gryffindor first years and then transforming back and suffering through the lengthy interrogation about how it was like from his friends, including Percy.   Already he could feel the curious eyes on him.

Above it all, unseen by most, a green beetle watched the mockery of her unfold and seethed. Fine, if that was how it was going to be, they would feel her wrath. Nothing sold papers better than some good old fashioned drama, except perhaps worried parents who had been whipped up into a frenzy.

So either way she won.

       Struggling to decide between rage and glee at this new turn of events she fluttered her wings and took flight.

      She despised those who just wrote her off as if she was nothing. She poured heart and soul into every article, carefully selecting the verbiage and evidences to be used, what to use in the article and what to save for potential later ones, she risked everything to gather some of her information and put everything she earned into pushing forward sources for the next article. In most ways, truthful or not, her articles were more involved than those that her peers wrote.

       But then there were some people who ignored her journalism, treating the effort as garbage and the effect as worth even less. She could tolerate it from some, the likes of Malfoy grated on her every nerve, but she could appreciate it in him. Game recognize game, she saw how he played the Wizengamot members' thoughts and opinions just like how she influenced her readers'.  Her articles could only do so much against his power and money when he also knew how to choose his words and his allies. So, she tolerated him, barely.

      But even the minister himself, tool that he was, feared falling prey to a wrathful article from her honeyed quill, and yet this boy, this nobody, shrugged it off as if her work was nothing. This...

       This unregistered animagus.

       Well, there was a start, she only had to keep him distracted  for the ninety days that he was given to register before she used that.

        Distracted, in a school full of her readers... that was as easily said as it was done for Rita Skeeter.

She was the best there was after all.