–Couldn’t believe it when I heard it. Inside of Hogwarts! We thought it wasn’t possible!â€
–Yes, Rosmerta, the Ministry was shocked to hear it, too,†said a male voice. –We’ve been sent here to represent the Ministry at a meeting with the school board.â€
–Oh, yes, it’ll be quite a meeting, too,†said the other Ministry official. –Dumbledore didn’t even want dementors there, but we’re going to have to do something.â€
–Shit,†she muttered. She was in the back of the Three Broomsticks. She had snooped around the back hallway after watching the Ministry officials enter the front door, hoping to find a good place to transform before they met in the back room. Their footsteps and voices were getting louder. With no time to transform, she slid into the nearest room and hastily shut the door behind her.
When she turned around, she saw Sirius Black.
He had a loaf of bread in his hand and stood frozen, staring right back at Rita. Evidently they were in a pantry, because Sirius dropped a sack of potatoes back onto its stack. They stared in unmoving silence.
Finally, Rita tried to say something, a little more intelligent than, –Uh…uh… Sirius Black!†but that’s the only thing that came out of her mouth. An even bigger shock came when the door swung open and Madame Rosmerta’s backside appeared in the doorway; she was shouting to the others about teacups.
Rita transformed on instinct and immediately looked over to see what Sirius Black would do. Would he hide? Kill them both?
As she looked away from Madame Rosmerta, she was surprised to see a great black dog, rather like a grim, hiding behind a sack of flour. Her fear disappeared momentarily as realization came over her. He isn’t getting caught because he’s an animagus!
Rita felt as though she might soil herself. She just uncovered the juiciest and most dangerous secret in all of Britain. This explains everything about Black… how he escaped Azkaban, how he’s hiding now, how he helped the Order during the last war…
He’s an Animagus! An Animagus! He’s lethal! He’s clever! He’s capable of anything!
Madame Rosmerta shifted several boxes around, digging deeper in the messy shelves.
But, if he’s so powerful, why has he been lying low? Why did his face look scared when Rita saw him? Didn’t she expect him to destroy her on the spot?
–Here we go!†said Madame Rosmerta to nobody in particular. She disappeared from the room.
Without a backward glance to Black, Rita transformed, yanked on the door handle, and ran. She knocked over a barstool and a pair of goblins on the way out, but didn’t stop running until she was in front of Madam Puddifoot’s. After a minute of recovery in which she leaned against the café window, much to the dismay of the couple nearest it, Rita Apparated back to Diagon Alley.
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Rita’s legs shook as she lowered herself into her desk chair. Her thoughts raced: No one has ever seen me as a beetle before…no one knows Black is an Animagus…what would happen if the world knew?
She leaned down to tap her bottom desk drawer with her wand. It squeaked and jiggled, but did not open. She tapped it again, softer this time, and a small silver key appeared in the drawer’s lock. Rita removed the key and examined it. With a jab of her wand toward the door, the blinds shut and an acid-green deadbolt lock materialized on the door frame.
Her attention back on the key, she whirled her wand around it and it grew larger and darker until the heavy iron key made Rita’s arm sag down to her lap. The key fit easily into the drawer’s lock and Rita began spreading the contents of the drawer on her desk.
A yellowing folder labelled –OFFICIAL MINISTRY REGISTRY: APPLICATION FOR ANIMAGI†sat beside torn pages of a textbook with complex diagrams of human-to-animal transformations. Next she pulled out a pile of clipped articles with headlines like –Illegal Animagus Man Discovered in London, Now on the Run†and –Confession From Illegal Animagus Woman, Ten Years in Azkaban.â€
Her secret and Black’s secret were one in the same. She became a beetle to uncover juicy stories and he became a dog to… steal bread, apparently. Now that she was back in the safety of the Daily Prophet headquarters, she could remember the fear in Black’s eyes. His expression revealed no hatred, no madness. He could have squished her or eaten her when they were both transformed, yet he did not.
Rita rested her elbows on the desk and stared at the old papers. It would be easy to whip up a sensational piece with the rumours from Bertha. Black had hardly seemed a real person to her—he was simply a story. After seeing him face to face and sharing a dangerous secret…she wasn’t so sure anymore.
Her career needed a piece on Black. Her reputation would be renewed, her readers would beg for more—
Then Rita imagined the whispers, the looks, the disgust from her readers if the Daily Prophet featured an article titled –NO QUILLS IN AZKABAN: RITA SKEETER SENTENCED FOR ILLEGAL ANIMAGI STATUS.â€
She did not like her options. An article about a secret Animagus was much too dangerous. It would cause a ministry crackdown, an investigation about other suspected Animagi. Forget saving her career, she would have to make a run for it to escape an inquiry.
Rita put away the contents of her drawer with two quick flicks of her wand. As she watched the tiny silver key vanish in the lock, she bit her lip and thought. Several prominent Ministry officials floated through her head—her usual targets for a last-minute story. Then she thought of Dumbledore. Dumbledore, the man who refuses to become Minister. Dumbledore, who fights Azkaban officials over the Dementors at Hogwarts.
A smile crept over Rita’s face, and soon her quill was out and furiously scribbling. The piece got nastier as she wrote, and the end result was a full-scale attack on Dumbledore. She went back over it with her wand and took out some of the worst name-calling, but decided to leave –obsolete dingbat†in the final paragraph. She framed the story as a report on the International Confederation of Wizards’ Conference, and threw in brief mentions of other prominent wizards in attendance.
Satisfied, she grabbed the scroll off of her desk, threw open her door, and dropped the scroll on Gary’s desk. She was in such a good mood that she ignored Gary as he yelled at her back, –Oh, you’ll be wanting me to fact-check this? Shall I break out my encyclopaedia?â€
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The next morning, a small and well-groomed owl rapped smartly at her window. Rita welcomed it into her bedroom, and it deposited today’s Prophet neatly onto her nightstand. There it was. Second page. Full-color photograph of Dumbledore, tipping a striped purple hat and winking at the camera.
Rita hummed a little tune and filled the owl’s pouch with knuts. She leaned against the windowsill as it flew away, and suddenly a black dog chased the owl across the yard, barking playfully and wagging its tail. It looked directly at Rita, gave a final bark, and bounded away, the receding owl forgotten.