Champions

Epilogue

Sebastian and Arienne Delacour were absolutely thrilled to welcome Harry into their home, and treated him as beloved family right from the beginning. It was hard to watch as he struggled through counseling sessions to undo the damage wrought by the Dursleys, but it was also immensely rewarding to see him overcome it. They never once regretted their decision to get involved, even discounting his impact on their daughter.

As the years went by and Harry continued opening up, he and Sebastian became very close. Harry learned a great deal from the older man. More importantly, they had what was undeniably a healthy father/son relationship, and neither of them was complaining.

Arienne was likewise close, and loved gently mothering him whenever he was around. And unlike Molly Weasley, she knew when to back off — and she never questioned his character, either. That Molly had done so would always boggle her mind, even after mere months of knowing the young man.

When they eventually passed on many decades later, their loss was felt keenly by the entire family, and that very much included Harry Potter.

===[~]===

It would turn out that Sebastian had indeed read Rita Skeeter's article the morning of the Third Task. A single floo call was all it took to set the ball rolling. He had been waiting for this ever since he heard that Rita was allowed to interview Harry alone.

She just could not help herself, and he felt strongly that this would be where she finally screwed up — and he was right.

Contrary to Remus Lupin's belief, the majority owner of the Daily Prophet was actually also the editor, a man named Barnabus Cuffe (though Fudge did own most of the rest). He was served with a lawsuit the very next morning, and it was quite the doozy. He nearly had a heart attack just reading the documents he was served with. The Potter family, via Sebastian Delacour's legal team, was suing for damages in more than sufficient amount that they would end up owning the Prophet outright.

Even worse, it looked to Cuffe like they had a very good chance of winning; Rita had well and truly hacked off the wrong people this time.

Firstly, they were suing over Rita's all-too-obvious libel of Harry Potter over the course of the year. This, Cuffe expected, and certainly could have weathered. But then they added that they were suing over every single Harry Potter quote that had ever been published over the years — and there were hundreds of them — none of which had actually been uttered by Harry Potter in any way, shape, or form.

And finally, Sebastian Delacour, as agent of House Potter, had declared Hermione Granger a protectee of the House. They were also suing on her behalf, over Rita's libel of her earlier during the Tournament. And given how easily disproven those accusations were on top of everything else, the lawyers now had Cuffe over the proverbial barrel.

Cuffe contacted Sebastian Delacour the very same day with every intention of settling out of court. He wasn't sure what that would involve, but he was sure it would be expensive, albeit less so than letting them win the court case.

In the end, the Potter family walked away with twenty percent ownership in the Daily Prophet, a guarantee that full-page apologies would be printed for the Potters and Granger in a week's time, and possession of a nice juicy tidbit about a now forcibly-retired Rita Skeeter.

The woman was arrested the following day on suspicion of being an unregistered animagus. While that would have merely meant a fine normally, she was not a pureblood, and they were able to question her under veritaserum about her activities as a beetle. And those activities — many of which translated to 'espionage' — saw her receive a five year prison sentence at the Azkaban resort.

While she survived it with her sanity intact — barely — she was not so foolish as to remain in the country. She fled to Germany, never to be heard from in Britain again.