FicWad

The Harry Potter universe is the creation of J.K. Rowling. This is fanfiction. The standard disclaimers apply.


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Chapter 29: The Fourth Estate Comes to Little Whinging


Friday, November 16, 1990


The playground in Little Whinging was small. It had a set of four swings, a slide, and a fairly simple climbing gym built out of splinter-prone wood. Parents rarely brought their children there, which left it to be dominated by Dudley and his friends. Harry had rarely played here, both because of the potential need to run from his cousin at a moment's notice, and because wandering around the neighborhood was slightly more interesting than playground equipment.

Dudley liked the swings well enough, although he didn't like going too high on them. This afternoon he was alone, his friends off doing things with their families. He had homework, but it would get put off until Sunday night when he would remember it and make his parents do most of it.

As he was swinging, he watched a woman coming around the corner towards the playground. She was neatly dressed, although something seemed off about it, and was looking at a piece of paper. When she saw him she smiled, then started walking towards the playground.

"Would you be Dudley Dursley? Yes? Excellent. I've been looking forward to meeting you for some time. Let me introduce myself—I'm Rita Skeeter, and I'm a newspaper reporter. I was hoping you would be willing to talk to me about your cousin Harry Potter."

"What, the freak? We haven't seen him since the summer, when he went off to live somewhere else."

She smiled sweetly. "Dudley, your cousin has made the news elsewhere, and I'm trying to write a story about him. It would help me so much if you could tell me more about Harry—his quirks, personality, little habits—things only a family member would know?"

Dudley considered this. In the past, anyone showing an unusual interest in Harry usually resulted in his parents getting upset and dragging him away. As spoiled as he was, he didn't really want to get his father mad at him. On the other hand, he wouldn't stay in trouble long, so what harm could it do?

"Um, are you one of his people—the ones he went to live with?" Dudley didn't know what that meant; it was just what his parents said.

"Hm? I prefer to think of myself first and foremost as a member of the press, but if you're asking who would read the paper I work for, yes, for the kinds of people who know who Harry is, it has the widest circulation in Britain. Really, Dudley, please think of me the way you would any other news reporter looking for a story. I'm here to bring the truth to my readers, and that has a magic all its own, does it not?"

Dudley just raised his eyebrows, confused.

"So, what was it like living with the famous Harry Potter? Did he get lots of mail? Were you chasing visitors away? Were you jealous of him?"

"Uh, he never got any mail. There was only that one visitor—this girl with pink hair—who showed up the day before we last saw him. Sometimes people tried to talk to him in stores and stuff, but my parents tried to keep them away."

"Ah, protecting him from the perils of celebrity, or keeping him from his fans?"

"They said they didn't want him . . . associating with other freaks."

"Would you say they are prejudiced, then?"

"What does that mean?"

Rita sighed. This was going to be a rewarding day, but very long and frustrating nevertheless. She hated interviewing kids.

"Would you say they hate magic?"

"I guess . . . what does that have to do with Harry?"

"Surely you know, don't you?"

"Know what?"

Rita now grasped that no one had ever explained to Dudley that Harry was a wizard, or that magic existed. Of course, since he was a close enough blood relative, the Statute of Secrecy didn't apply. He was also a muggle, so no one would fuss at her too much about what she did with him. Rita decided she was free to have fun with this.

"What do you know about magic, Dudley?"

"What do you mean?"

"About, you know, witches and wizards. As your parents would say, 'Harry's people'."

Dudley laughed. "Harry can't do magic! What are you talking about?"

"You never saw anything happen around him that you couldn't explain?"

"Sure, all the time . . ." Dudley stopped short, thinking of all the inexplicable things Harry had gotten in trouble for. "Can you do magic?"

"Of course! But really, please think of me as just a reporter."

"Will you show me?" He was all eagerness. It was really unpleasant-looking.

She sighed dramatically. "Well, I can't do it here, you know, someone might see. You're only allowed to know about it because you're related to Harry." She waited for that to sink in—she really could get in trouble if she was reckless with the Statute of Secrecy. "How about this," she leaned in conspiratorially, "if you give me an interview—a good, detailed interview about Harry, where you don't hold aaaanything back—aaand, if you agree to keep your mouth shut and behave yourself, you can come back with me to my office afterwards, and you can see all sorts of magic." And, she mentally added, we'll get your photo, too.

Dudley might have once been taught something about how he was supposed to act around strangers, but he never really payed any attention to it. "All right!" he shouted.


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Miss Tonks looked absolutely terrified to be called into the Headmaster's office. He wondered whether she had done something that might get her in trouble. His eyes twinkled. "Ah, Miss Tonks, I think I've seen you in here a few times over the years. Do have a seat." Occlumency barriers! A few students always had paranoid parents, but he couldn't imagine what Ted and Andromeda were scared of. Oh well, whatever she thought she was in trouble for was unlikely to be too bad, since he hadn't discovered it on his own yet, and anyway students panicked over the littlest things.

"Now, if you didn't look so scared, I'd draw out the reason for calling you here, just to tease you. But I'm very careful about teasing students! So you should know you're not in trouble." He gave a slightly grandfatherly smile, and made a gesture of dismissal. "Do you recall your question to various professors a few weeks ago?" Tonks nodded, clearly relieved. "You know, I don't think I have seen Severus that embarrassed since I hired him."

"Professor McGonagall put me up to it!"

"Oh, yes, I know, she was very proud of that. Good job, too, on your part, whatever it was you said to him!"

"Thanks, I think?"

"Nevertheless, I have two reasons for calling you in here, both related to that question. The first is that Severus tried to send you on to both your head of house and to me." He paused, just enough to worry her a little. "Yet I never saw you in here! Miss Tonks,"

"I thought you would be really busy, and I knew Snape wasn't serious!"

"Yes, but you clearly grasped that you had run across a truly interesting question which at least some of your professors would enjoy being asked. I know Pomona had great fun imparting her knowledge of the subject to us at the faculty table." Tonks was trying not to laugh. That was good, he supposed, for her to hide it—he needed to be at least slightly intimidating to the average student. "Now, I realize that students might find me somewhat intimidating. Why that should be, I certainly don't know . . ." He pointedly looked at his purple robes with the pink polka dots on them. "But I would still have enjoyed having you come to me in the first place, and I'm sorry that I haven't made myself as approachable as I might hope to be." Apologizing for things like that was always good for making students feel guilty; almost no one actually wanted to hurt the feelings of the grandfatherly old Headmaster.

"So, next time you have such a good excuse to come see me, young lady, I expect you to do it." He peered over his glasses. "Is that clear?"

"Yes, Headmaster! I'm sorry. I just didn't want to bother you, is all."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of whether I'm too busy to see you or not?"

"I can do that." She looked sheepish.

"Well, that's settled, then. On to the really interesting bit, which is to say, what I discovered when I pretended you had actually come to see me the way you should have. And the answer to your question, as best as I am able to tell, is that there is no safe way for a witch to permanently alter the size of her breasts, but there are in fact many extremely dangerous methods which you should dissuade your friends from considering."

He proceeded to describe five different rituals he had found, in just enough detail for Tonks to recognize them should she hear about someone attempting them. At least two fell clearly into the 'Dark Arts' category and the other three were definitely borderline.

(As to the temporary-effect potions Professor Sprout mentioned, wizards had no real concept of 'long term safety', or if they did, it wasn't something they worried much about; the fact that you could take a potion a few times without persistent side effects was usually good enough, even if the Madam Pomfreys of the world disapproved vigorously.)


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When Dumbledore suggested it was time to head to dinner, he didn't bother looking around his office. He would have discovered, had he not been engrossed in describing his research, that a whirling silver rod on his windowsill had reversed direction, the glowing fluid in a glass ball had changed from blue to orange, and a clockwork turtle had poked its head out of its shell and was moving it back and forth.

Dumbledore was very fond of using little devices to convey information from various wards and monitoring charms, and had he been a professor at a muggle design school and not at a school for wizards, he could probably have written a nice series of books about what he had learned. Unfortunately, one of the things he had not quite learned was that once your information is coming from hundreds of sources, and is getting conveyed through sixty or so different methods, even brilliant wizards have trouble keeping track of everything.

The rod, the ball, and the turtle represented information from the wards on Privet Drive, and, had he been paying attention, would have told him that at least two wizards had come onto the street, were now in the Dursleys' house, and had used magic there within the past twenty minutes. He would later blame his failure to notice all this on the lack of adequate sound effects in his various contraptions, and would spend several hours going around the room upgrading them with bells, chimes, whistles, clicks, honks, grunts, and screeches. For now, he escorted Tonks to dinner, still talking animatedly about dark rituals for cosmetic body modification.


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For all that his occasional errors embarrassed him, ordinarily Albus Dumbledore deserved his reputation as one of the most competent wizards in history. He noticed the changed devices immediately upon returning to his office two hours later. This is why, at 8 PM, Vernon Dursley answered the door to find an old, worried man with a long white beard, wearing purple robes with pink polka dots and a tall, pointy, bright orange hat.

Vernon narrowed his eyes. "You're the one from before. When that boy left. What do you want?"

"Ah, Mr. Dursley. Good. Did you have any unusual visitors today?"

"Why should I tell you?"

Albus was not used to getting this response. "Well, I suppose because it might be important for your own safety."

"Hmph. If that's all, then we're all fine. Nothing to see here!"

Vernon moved to close the door, but the old man stepped forward surprisingly quickly to stop him. "I really do wish to know who visited you and why. You might not understand what kinds of threats you could be facing."

"Look, I don't want your help. I don't know you, but from the way you're dressed I don't see where you get off deciding which of your kind I ought to be worried about."

They went on in this vein, Dumbledore's eyes twinkling. He kept Vernon talking for a few minutes and was able to learn all he needed to before disappearing into the night. What he learned worried him.

The entire Dursley family had spoken with Rita Skeeter and one of her photographers for a multi-hour interview. Skeeter, who had paid them £2000 for their information about Harry, had made a very good impression. Vernon and Petunia had even invited both Skeeter and the photographer to stay for dinner—the two hadn't left until shortly before Dumbledore got there.

As far as Dumbledore could tell, Skeeter had mostly gotten the truth from them, too, with Vernon only bothering to hide the cupboard-under-the-stairs business. He had to admit—Skeeter was good at her job, sitting there cheerfully transcribing Vernon's vitriol regarding magic, encouraging him to go on, reassuring him that she was "just a journalist, like any other". Money and a good first impression were worth an awful lot of veritaserum, it seemed.

Wizards rarely got worked up about specific muggles, and Albus didn't remember the Prophet ever running a large expose on one. It would certainly be nice if all of wizarding Britain were to say 'tsk tsk, poor Harry' over their morning papers and forget about them by noon. It might happen.

There would probably be some calls to put the Dursleys on trial for child abuse. Amelia had shown little interest in prosecuting them so far, but political pressure could force her to act. A trial, though—especially a highly publicised one—was not an acceptable option for Dumbledore, not only because of the spectre of throwing muggles into Azkaban, but because it would draw too much attention to his own role in things. As to Harry, the article itself would cause long-term problems for the boy as it was—a trial had the potential to make things much worse.

Even assuming a trial was avoided, the options in the event of a hostile public reaction looked bleak—the fidelius charm isn't useful for hiding an address once it has been printed twenty thousand times in the lead artical of a major newspaper. Harry might have been safe here from Death Eaters while the blood wards were up, but it was not so simple to protect the Dursleys from everything wizards might try once they read the article. All but the strongest conventional wards would eventually fall to a determined attacker, but normally the occupants would have plenty of time to prepare for a fight or get help. The Dursleys were in no position to fight, so that meant making sure they could get help.

Dumbledore was pretty sure Amelia wouldn't want to spare an auror to deal with a steady stream of lunatics and vigilantes, especially given the problems with letting the Dursleys go anywhere outside of the house. Heck, there was no reason to think most aurors wouldn't just turn a blind eye, when it came down to it.

Back in his office, sitting in front of the fire, he toyed with the idea of just making the Dursleys disappear somehow—give them new identities, move them to America, obliviate the neighbors, that sort of thing. Everyone would assume he had been the one to do it, though. In the end he flooed Amelia to tip her off about the article, then went to bed. He probably had a few days to think about it, before it came out. Maybe he would think of something brilliant in the morning.