Of Badly Hidden Lies (and figuring out cool magic shit)

Time grabs you by your wrist

"Why is everyone so crazy today?" Harry mumbled. Neville just shrugged, eating his food happily. Harry had stayed up late reading over his Transfiguration essay that he had put off for three days. Neville had already done his, and was happy enough basking in his friend's pain.

"Haven't you heard?" Dean said from across the table. "There's a new newspaper out. It's apparently challenging the Daily Prophet."

"Really?" Neville asked. "Is it blatantly filled with lies like the Daily is?"

"I've got no clue. Apparently, it's run by parents, both muggle and magical. It's called The Letter." Dean took a bite of his eggs. "I think Hermione has a copy, if you wanna ask her about it."

"I just might, actually. I mean, what's the worst that could have been said? Oh! Do you know if it's from this year?"

"Yes and no." Dean said suspiciously.

"What the bloody hell does that mean?" Harry responded, annoyed. He had a bit of a headache going on, and he really didn't want to deal with a second Daily Prophet.

"Well, it has letters from people in first year."

"And? First year's write home all the time. Plus, what do they even know?"

"No, our first year."

"Oh." Harry was quiet. He returned his head to the table, trying to block out the chatter from those around him. Really, a headache this early. Well, if he was able to sleep they'd probably go away. Plus, he was a bit dehydrated. Where was any damn water in this school? Well, besides the chamber of course. Eugh.

"Here, Harry." Neville said, handing him some sort of paper. When his eyes focused, he saw the bright Orange words calling it The Letter. "I got it from Hermione."

THE LETTER

Hello parents and guardians, muggle and magical alike. Today is a bit of a shorter, special edition. In this issue, we're going to be talking about what happened during the Hogwarts Championship. Now, some of you won't know what I'm talking about, so I'll explain.

Harry skimmed over it for a bit. Having experienced the Tri-wizard championship himself, he had no wish to reread about it. That's when a certain excerpt stopped him in his tracks.

No one ever believes me, mom. I tried to tell my friends that Potter wasn't lying, but no one believed it! I saw the way he was crying over Cedric. There's just no way he did it himself, or faked Cedric's death. I just don't believe it. I don't know if it's You-Know-Who, but something's out there.

This filled Harry's heart with a little bit of warmth. However it did nothing to ease his pounding headache, so he just passed it back to Neville with a grunt. His head hurt too much to deal with all of this at the moment. Honestly, He just wanted to go back to bed. If he had charms, or even transfiguration, he would have skipped and gone straight to the infirmary. Potions was his first class of the day, and he felt like he would be running away from his problems if he didn't show up. Especially with the awkward, horrid conversation they all had with the Headmaster.

Harry was incredibly grateful for Sirius. Harry had thought the man would be incredibly immature about it, and Harry suspected that Sirius wanted to lash out and curse everything in sight. But, he didn't. He held back for Harry's sake, not that he minded that dungeon bat being cursed. Still, it was nice to have an adult looking out for him, even if he couldn't legally have them as his guardian. Harry wanted to write to Sirius today, but he didn't know if he would actually get too. After potions he was going straight to madam and getting some sort of potion to cure his headache, and knocking himself out. Plus, he and Neville had something planned for tomorrow. Halloween. Something that usually filled him with fear and anguish from the loss of his parents, now filled him with trepidation. The constant thought of not being caught filled his head.