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ix. floo powder
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The first task was drawing steadily nearer, and Matilda could see that the fear what was facing Harry was starting to sink in. Matilda never seen Harry suffer nerves like these; they were much beyond anything he had shown before a Quidditch match. Matilda and the prospect of talking face to face with Sirius was all that could sustain Harry over the next fortnight, the only bright spot on a horizon that had never looked darker.
Admittedly, Matilda didn't see how Sirius was going to make Harry feel any better about having to perform an unknown piece of difficult and dangerous magic in front of hundreds of people. Harry wrote back to Sirius with Matilda the next morning, saying that he would be beside the common room fire at the time Sirius had suggested, and he, Hermione, and Matilda spent a long time going over plans for forcing any stragglers out of the common room on the night in question. If worst came to worst, they were going to have Matilda threaten to hex them, but they hoped they wouldn't have to resort to that – well, Harry and Hermione hoped it wouldn't, Matilda was happy to hex someone if need be, claiming that it's great practice.
In the meantime, life became even worse for Harry within the confines of the castle, for Rita Skeeter, who Matilda wished to hex into a different dimension, had published her piece about the Triwizard Tournament, and it had turned out to be not so much a report in the Tournament, as a highly colored life story of Harry. Much of the front page had been given over to a picture of Harry; the article, continuing all the way to page six and seven, had been all about Harry, the names of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang champions, misspelled, had been squashed to the last line of the article, and the worst part, Cedric Diggory hadn't been mentioned at all, and Matilda was sure she'd be hearing about that from Harper.
The article had appeared ten days ago, and Matilda still got a hot, burning feeling of anger in her stomach every time she thought about it. Rita Skeeter had reported Harry saying an awful lot of things that she didn't believe Harry would ever say 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.
