Another Dursley

Hungarian Horn Tail

The prospect of talking face-to-face with Sirius was all that sustained Harry and I over the next fortnight, the only bright spot on a horizon that had never looked darker as the full moon came closer.

I hardly got any sleep, I stayed awake till 4 in the morning; doing homework, studying, writing down ideas on what the first task could be and how to get past them, and then I would get distracted by the fish and the weird noises coming from within the lake that I couldn't place so I would waste hours staring outside the window at the lake.

Harry was freaking out.

Admittedly, I didn't see how Sirius was going to make him feel any better about having to perform an unknown piece of difficult and dangerous magic in front of hundreds of people, but I think the mere sight of a friendly face would be something at the moment.

Harry told me he wrote back to Sirius saying that we would be beside the common room fire at the time Sirius had suggested; and Hermione and Harry spent a long time going over plans for forcing any stragglers out of the common room on the night in question.

I just kept suggesting dropping a bag of Dungbombs if anything, but they said it would be our last resort..and hoped we wouldn't have to resort to that - saying Filch would skin us alive...though I begged to differ seeing as filch's fain focus was on getting Mrs.Norris back to her true color.

In the meantime, life became even worse within the confines of the castle, Rita Skeeter, A rubbish journalist, had published her piece about the Triwizard Tournament, and it had turned out to be not so much a report on the tournament as a highly colored life story of Harry.

Much of the front page had been given over to a picture of Harry; (which, mind you, I framed) the article (continuing on pages two, six, and seven) had been all about Harry, the names of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang champions (misspelled) had been squashed into the last line of the article, and Cedric hadn't been mentioned at all, boy did Cedric go on about that during one of our sessions.

The article had appeared ten days ago, and I already had ten copies of it in my bag, none of which I bought, mostly ripped them off some first years hands. Harry was receiving some backlash due to what Rita Skeeter had reported about him saying an awful lot of things that I couldn't ever imagine harry saying in his life.

'I suppose I get my strength from my parents. I know they'd be very proud of me if they could see me now....Yes, sometimes at night I still cry about them, I'm not ashamed to admit it....I know nothing will hurt me during the tournament, because they're watching over me...'

But Rita Skeeter had gone even further than transforming his "er's" into long, sickly sentences: She had interviewed other people about him too- Hell, she snuck into the hospital wing one night and tried to interview me, told her where she can stick her bloody quill, and kicked her out of the hospital wing for getting in my way.

'Harry has at last found love at Hogwarts. His close friend, Colin Creevey, says that Harry is rarely seen out of the company of one Hermenie Granger, a stunningly pretty Muggle-born girl who, like Harry, is one of the top students in the school, with the help of his last living family member, Elizabeth Dursley. 'Harry undoubtedly looks up to and takes after his only family figure,' says Close friend Colin Creevey.

From the moment the article had appeared, Harry had had to endure people -Slytherins, mainly - quoting it at him as he passed and making sneering comments...shamefully I took part of that too.

"Want a hanky, Potter, in case you start crying in Transfiguration?"

"You should be the one crying after those marks you got, love."