Chapter Twenty of 'A More Worldly Man'- The Decline and Fall of Charlemagne Diggory

[lomonaaeren]

Thanks again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty—The Decline and Fall of Charlemagne Diggory

“Can someone tell me why there are chains on Mr. Potter’s wrists?” Kingsley demanded, stepping forwards. “Surely no one in this room could seriously think the hero of the wizarding world would wish to hurt him—“ his eyes flickered to Diggory for the barest second “—and if he were to use wandless magic, then mere bonds would not stop him.”

No one moved for a moment, as though everyone on the courtroom floor were hoping that someone else would volunteer for the responsibility. Rather like the Wizengamot members wanting someone to speak up for them, Harry mused. He was no longer going to think that the wizarding world had changed substantially since Fudge’s term in office. Clearly much remained to be done.

Then one of the Aurors who had stood to guard him stepped forwards hesitantly and undid the chains with a pass of her wand. Harry sighed and rubbed his wrists, pulling them into his lap at last. Skeeter had been frozen on the back of his neck, as though there were so many things to run in circles about that she couldn’t choose a direction, but Harry felt her crawl forwards to the edge of his hair now to look down at his wrists. He obligingly tilted them back and stopped rubbing them for a moment, so she could get a good glimpse of the raw, red patches of skin around them. He was sure they would appear in her article tomorrow under a suitably inflammatory description.

Draco was beside him then.

He shifted the Pensieve he was carrying to his right arm and hugged Harry fiercely with the left, bending down so that Harry’s head was tucked into his neck. “I didn’t know this was happening,” he whispered, “or I would have been here much earlier to stop it. Please believe me.”

Harry smiled and raised a hand to touch the small of his back. He suffered a brief spasm of regret that Draco was wearing robes and cloak instead of merely shirt and trousers, which meant he couldn’t stroke the band of skin between the clothes in promise. “Nonsense,” he whispered back. “It wasn’t your fault, and I refuse to listen to any protestations that it was. Haven’t we already got enough enemies in the same room?”

Draco laughed quietly, then pulled away and turned to face Diggory. He had fallen back to the side of Harry’s chair, and Harry was astonished at how the simple gesture seemed to transform the symbol of his humiliation before the Wizengamot into a throne. “Now,” Draco said, in a carrying voice Harry knew he had perfected for talking about merchandise to an entire shop at once, “we shall have a proper trial, with all the evidence needed.” He lifted his arm so everyone could catch a glimpse of the silvery Pensieve. “And all the witnesses.” He nodded at the man behind Hermione, whom Harry knew was probably Littlesmith.

“Only the Wizengamot has the authority to call for a trial,” Prunella began, speaking with immense dignity.

“The Wizengamot, acting with the Minister,” Kingsley snapped, and took a step towards the gallery. Though he was far beneath Prunella and could not possibly have hurt her, the woman flinched and drew herself up as though he’d cast a Stinging Hex. Harry arched an eyebrow. “So far as I can see, this has been an illegitimate farce of a trial, called for the sole purpose of embarrassing a man to whom you lot were embarrassed for owing so much.” He looked hard at Diggory then.

So did Harry, for the first time since Kingsley had taken command of the room. (Harry didn’t know what had happened to put such fire into him, but he suspected it was Hermione). Diggory stood quite still and looked at them with calm patience, like an elder Olympian god bored with the antics of the younger ones.

“If you feel this trial has been conducted in an incorrect manner, Minister,” he said, “of course that should be put right as soon as possible. Your word is law—for as long as you hold the office.” He bowed.

Kingsley hesitated once. Then he nodded briskly and extended his wand, speaking three muffled words that Harry suspected they weren’t meant to understand. At once a silvery staircase extended from the top of the gallery and to the floor. Kingsley stepped onto it and turned to face the rest of them.

“If you intend to be here as a witness,” he said, “then the proper place is the floor. If you are only here to observe, then come to the gallery.” He nodded at Diggory and began to climb the stairs, as much to say that he was assured of Diggory following him.

“I do have testimony,” said Diggory. “As one of the witnesses to Mr. Potter’s disgusting crimes could not be here today, he entrusted me with his evidence.”

“Who is this person?” Kingsley asked, voice dry.

“Mr. Lucius Malfoy.”

Hermione snorted and then covered her mouth. Harry grinned at her as Diggory’s eyes momentarily became sharp and darted in her direction. He doubted she had anything special to say; she just wanted to make a sound of amusement to disconcert Diggory. It had succeeded. He looked back and forth between Hermione and Draco for a moment, as if trying to decide what they could have planned.

“Excuse me,” Hermione said gravely, and put her hand down. “It was very wrong of me to interrupt. You were saying, Mr. Diggory?”

“I have evidence to give,” said Diggory. “And therefore I will stay on the floor and present it.” He flicked his wand in a brief summoning gesture, and the Pensieve with the memories in it that he’d been handing around the Wizengamot flew out of the hands of the witch holding it and towards the floor.

“As you will,” said Kingsley, with a shrug, and continued climbing until he had settled into the Minister’s central position. Harry didn’t miss the nervous glances that Prunella and Williams, in particular, gave him. Kingsley stared back without seeming to see them, but he had probably memorized their faces.

“Now,” Kingsley said, facing the floor, “the trial can begin. As I suspect a great deal of ‘evidence’ against Mr. Potter has been presented before now, I call his witnesses first.”

*

Draco grinned. He wished Diggory was looking at him at the moment so he might get the full force of the grin, but he was staring up at Shacklebolt without expression instead. Ah, well. It was good enough that their trap should be sprung almost as they had planned.

“I have the most extensive story to tell,” he said, stepping forwards, exactly as though he and Granger had planned he would go first all along. He caught her eye, but she simply inclined her head, and he knew she did not object. “Harry Potter is indeed my lover, and he did break into Daphne Greengrass’s home to rescue me. She was torturing me.”

Draco closed his eyes for a moment so he could continue, feeling Harry’s hand reach up and grip his. He had known this was coming; he had prepared himself for it in the back of his head over the last few days, because he and Harry had agreed during the discussion in hospital that his memories would have to come out. But it was still horrible to talk about.

And he did not think demonstrating his memories to the Wizengamot would be the most effective way of showing the horror, though he and Harry had talked about that as well. After all, so much of what he had suffered was mental, and the Pensieve would demonstrate only the state of his body.

“I would like Veritaserum,” he said suddenly.

“I have some,” Kingsley’s voice announced at the same time as a tramp of footsteps sounded, and Draco turned to see more Aurors entering the courtroom. One of them was Willowberry. One of them also held a glittering vial of clear liquid. Draco had never been so glad to see it.

He accepted the vial from the Auror’s hand and twisted it back and forth, squinting thoughtfully at the potion. When he was satisfied with the state of the potion and that it held no impurities, he uncorked it.

“A moment,” Diggory said. “Should we not have the potion tested by a Potions expert, so that we know it is not doctored? I mean no disrespect to Mr. Malfoy,” he added, as Draco turned and stared at him. “But the Ministry has been less than reliable in this affair, and—“

“You do not have a right to request such things, Mr. Diggory,” Shacklebolt said, sounding almost idle. “You are, after all, only a witness.”

Draco wished badly that he could look at Diggory’s face, but he didn’t dare, because he knew he would burst out laughing if he did. Instead, he glanced at the Auror who had given him the Veritaserum and asked, “Is this pure?”

“It is,” said the Auror, a young woman with hair as red as a Weasley’s and brilliant dark eyes that suggested this was the first severe excitement she’d seen in her training. “I brewed it myself, and I took an Outstanding in my Potions NEWT.”

Draco nodded at her as one artist to another, and then placed three drops ceremoniously on his tongue. He grimaced when they began to work and he felt his mind drift softly away from most of the people around him; he had to wait a moment before he could hand the vial of Veritaserum back to the Auror without dropping it.

But throughout the drifting, Harry’s hand remained on his, a steadying grip. Draco had never had someone touch him like this, as though they believed in him, and only him. He hoped it would be enough.

“Daphne Greengrass told me that she would lend me money if I became her lover,” he began mechanically, grateful now for the distance the Veritaserum afforded him. “I had a great need to raise money quickly because some debts I had owed for some years had been bought up all at once by Cordelia Nott, who worked with Mr. Diggory here. They believed they could thus deprive me of my shop and the means of brewing Desire potion, which Mr. Diggory feared for some reason as a threat to his campaign for the Minister’s office.”

He did look at Diggory now, and again Diggory gave him the look of a bored god. But he had spent too much time around Lucius, enough time to pick up one of his mannerisms. A muscle in the corner of his eye was twitching wildly, the way it often did in Lucius’s when he was agitated about something and dared not show it. Draco gave him an abstracted smile and continued speaking.

“She used Memory Charms and Legilimency on me, so that, whilst I knew she had done something to me, I could not remember what it was. My mind as well as my body was raped. She had a great fetish for uncertainty, and she put on me spells that would affect my heart or cause me pain if I performed certain activities—and then did not tell me about them, so it was clear I could die at any moment.”

“If she used Memory Charms and did not tell you about these spells, how is it that you remember them?” demanded a witch with a face like an old apple.

Draco eyed her with quiet scorn. “She returned all my memories to me at once when she kidnapped me, whilst Harry was dealing with the threat of Cordelia Nott,” he replied. “I suddenly learned I had been raped with a knife—“ He paused. His voice shook, and the grip of Harry’s hand on his tightened. Harry leaned into his field of vision, and Draco saw that he was shaking his head slightly. He didn’t want Draco to speak of these memories, even to save him, if doing so would hurt him.

But Draco had lived long enough with this poison lying in the back of his mind, emerging in nightmares the past few days when he had not had Harry around to soothe him. He had barely had time to focus on healing, given the busyness of Harry’s trial and the preparations to counter Diggory, but he knew the memories would return with a vengeance the moment he relaxed. He didn’t want that. This was hardly the arena for confession he would have chosen—he had imagined murmuring the truth to Harry as they lay in bed together, with Harry still inside him and his body still tingling from pleasant sex—but it was the one he had.

“I suddenly learned I had been raped with a knife,” he continued, “and that she had been inside my head, deleting some of my memories.” Not even the distance the Veritaserum imposed between the truth and the speaker could help him now, and he realized he was trembling in every limb like a colt forced away from its mother’s side too soon. Harry stroked his arm. Draco closed his eyes and concentrated on the thought of Harry as he had looked when he broke into Daphne’s house, strong and fierce and utterly devoted to Draco. “I will never be rid of the taint of her, anymore than someone who is raped can simply overcome the rape. She used pain spells that should have left me wrecked and out of my senses, drooling—but she caught my falling mind each time, brought me back to consciousness, healed me, and then began the pain once more. She broke my fingers by bending them backwards and then warped the bones so they would set wrong, then broke them again and set them again. My hands are my livelihood, and I could have suffered permanent effects from that. She left a few gaping holes in the middle of my memories, so that in the middle of recalling a conversation or party I was part of some years ago, suddenly there are faces I would not know if I saw them today and words I cannot remember. She ransacked my life, inside and out. And she would not have stopped her torture no matter what. Harry was right to take her magic. She tortured me with magic, made hers into an instrument of harm that could not be surmounted any other way.”

There was silence when he finished. Draco did not care to open his eyes and look at the expressions of pity or disgust on their faces. He concentrated instead on the calluses on the inside of Harry’s fingers, running his own fingers up and down them. Strange calluses, he thought. Harry’s work had been making wizarding cameras and film, not flying, for the past seven years. Could he really have retained calluses from flying a broom all this time?

“And you expect us to believe that the Veritaserum was untainted after all?” one of the Wizengamot members demanded.

Draco flinched, but Shacklebolt said at once, “If you believe that, Eleanor, your quarrel is with the Ministry’s brewing team and not with Mr. Malfoy. Do you believe that Veritaserum did not work? What reason do you have for doing so?”

Draco opened his eyes in time to see the insufferable woman with the apple face flush bright pink. At the same moment, another woman leaned forwards and said in a voice like the peacock Patronus’s, “Oh, dear, Eleanor. I think your nephew works for the Ministry’s Potions committee, or the one of the sub-committees. I never thought I would see the day when you chose political loyalty before family loyalty.”

Eleanor began to splutter. Draco gave an iron smile, and then stepped aside, letting Granger gesture Littlesmith forwards.

Harry took the moment of confusion whilst Littlesmith was moving to lean up and whisper into Draco’s ear, “There is no braver thing you could have done, and I know it.”

The depth of love in those few words was one that Draco had never heard in his parents’ brief compliments to him, which had once been his standard for intense emotion packed into a small space. He felt a sharp thrill travel through him, and he leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder for the brief time he felt he could.

He was in love, and it was not the terrifying experience his father had always told him it would be.

*

Harry didn’t listen to much of Hunter Littlesmith’s testimony, though if he had to he could have recited the most important part of it back. The man was only confirming that Daphne Greengrass had been abusive to her lovers, in any case. The spells she had used on him had been different from most of the specific ones she used on Draco, but the wider range was a good thing; it would confirm the picture of Daphne as cruel and ruthless, or so Hermione had explained it to him.

But he was more concerned with Draco just at the moment.

Harry knew he could not have stood up in front of a group of strangers and talked about the most humiliating moments of his life. A few months ago, his potion might have given him the courage to do it, but even that would not have increased his willingness. Draco had brought himself here by his own will and determined to do what he thought was the right thing even before he took the Veritaserum.

Harry wanted to take him from the courtroom in his arms and make love to him slowly, gently, and then hide him in a curtained bed away from the world, which they would never have to leave again if Draco didn’t want to.

And since they were in public and still in front of that group of hostile strangers, there was so little he could do. He stroked Draco’s arm and hair and kissed his knuckles once when Littlesmith came to a particularly dramatic part of his story and Harry thought everyone’s attention was on him instead of Draco. Draco gave a trembling little sigh and leaned nearer, seeking comfort.

Littlesmith’s testimony ended at last, and Kingsley spoke without a pause for breath. “Mr. Potter, do you agree that these witnesses have spoken the truth? Was Daphne Greengrass violent enough that she needed to have her magic removed in order to force her to stop hurting others?”

“I believe she was,” Harry said. “Certainly I never believed that she would stop. I offered her the chance because I am, at heart, someone who wishes to believe good of everyone—even my enemies.” He glanced at Diggory, who regarded him with heavily-lidded cat-eyes. Harry wondered if he had no tricks left and was simply trying to endure the inevitable fall with dignity. “But she would not, and she had just tortured—as you heard described—the man I’m in love with.” Draco’s fingers tightened on his briefly, convulsively. “So I swallowed her magic.”

“What conditions are necessary for you to swallow magic?” demanded Prunella. “Could you do it to anyone in this room?”

“Not likely,” said Harry, “except one man, and even then he would have to make a move threatening Draco.” He looked at Diggory, and didn’t care who watched him doing it. This was a day of bold gestures. He would make what he could of them whilst he held the Wizengamot’s attention. “I need intense rage to drive my desire to take magic in the first place; I cannot simply strike out with wandless magic. I need the conviction that someone I love is in immediate danger, which means that I would not lash out because someone made a threatening gesture towards Draco in jest.”

Hermione drew her wand and took a little step towards Draco. Harry watched her calmly. They hadn’t discussed that, but he knew Hermione and understood what she was about at once. Hermione put away her wand and bowed to the Wizengamot.

“And I need intense emotions of other kinds,” Harry finished. “Lust, for example—“

“An incubus!” said Williams loudly. “Just as Mr. Diggory suggested.”

“The lust is useless without the rage,” Harry said patiently. “Or I would have taken my lovers’ magic. You can ask Susan Bones and many other women I dated whether they ceased to be witches once they lived with me.”

“There was some talk, as I understand it,” said a wizard further back in the ranks of the Wizengamot, “about your nearly having drained the magic of someone else. A Miss Ginny Weasley?”

“I nearly did, to my shame,” Harry said. If they produced Ginny now, he didn’t know if he would be able to look her in the eye, but he knew he would speak on to the end. There could be no other fitting return to Draco’s bravery and his sacrifice. “I was again feeling the combination of lust, jealousy, and rage, on a night when I thought it extremely probable that I should lose Miss Weasley to another lover.”

“That is also a trait of an incubus,” Diggory murmured.

“As you’ve utterly failed to prove my incubus blood despite having several chances without the Minister in the room, I don’t think that I need to listen to you,” Harry told him, as pleasantly as possible, and then resumed his story. “I nearly did take her magic. I was so horrified I brewed a potion that would keep me from feeling those emotions again, so it would not happen once more.”

“And why did the potion not hold you back?” demanded Williams.

“Because the potion is a variant of Desire,” Harry said. “When my greatest desire changed, the effect of the potion changed as well. I began to desire to protect Draco instead of to suppress my emotions, and so that strengthened my wandless magic. That is another reason that Daphne Greengrass lost her power. I entered with my rage and my magic strengthened because of what she had done to Draco. And if you are about to object that I should have managed to restrain myself even then, I beg you to think again of Draco’s testimony. Would you have stood by when someone was torturing your husband or your lover in such a way?”

Williams subsided, looking sulky. Someone else asked, “And are you still on the potion, Mr. Potter?”

Harry shook his head. “I considered that I had achieved my desires. Draco was safe, and I had no need of extraordinary magic to protect him. Besides, it was his desire that I get rid of the potion and see if I could live without it. I did so.” He looked up at Draco, who was looking down at him with brilliant eyes. “There is nothing I would not do for him, as I believe I’ve already made clear.”

They threw a few more questions at him, but nothing else hard to answer, and no one had thought to go for Ginny. Then Willowberry stepped forwards and spoke a few simple sentences about his conviction that Harry had no creature heritage at all. He said he had “tested” him, but not how, and everyone else assumed he had used Veritaserum, since he also spoke of feeling a need to distance himself from the case after he made a mistake. Harry smiled at his back. He had no problem sharing a secret with the man.

Diggory began to speak. “Of course that is all very interesting, but I can provide irrefutable evidence of Mr. Potter’s incubus heritage—“

“And why should the Wizengamot accept that, when we have Pensieve memories of your attacking Draco Malfoy, and thus of your mindless enmity towards both Harry and his lover?” Hermione asked, stepping forwards with the Pensieve Draco had surrendered to her. “Appearing with a group of wizards, no less, and ordering them to curse him because he took a step towards you?”

Harry was watching Diggory this time. He saw the man’s eyes close, as if, for just a moment, the lids had become too heavy to lift.

I hope he saw his defeat, Harry thought viciously, as Hermione began to hand the memories around to those of the Wizengamot who wanted to see them.

Chapter 21.

Comments

[xelloss-poo.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Totally awesome!! ^___^ *now off for work!*

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I hope you had a good day at work.

[cheshyre]

Pride goeth before the fall, and Diggory's comeuppance is much appreciated.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Good. I sometimes worry about writing scenes like this, because I don't really believe in poetic justice. But at this point, he really has trapped himself; he risked everything on breaking Harry's confidence and not letting Kingsley find out about the trial.

AMWM 20 (aka Another One Bites the Dust)

[inviticus1.livejournal.com]

I so want to read Rita's exposé soon. The cruel treatment of our beloved hero by corrupt and power hungry Ministry wonks when the rescuers appeared ... Too much joy will be had!

Kingsley's taking charge was excellent to see. The staircase wasn't subtle at all and it's very nature was quite symbolic. Diggory has earned nothing yet (and I hope he never will, except to be Lucius's toadstool). Slamming Diggory down to size when he questioned the purity of the Veritaserum was perfect (showed what a twerp he was).

I really felt for Draco when he thought he: "... had lived long enough with this poison lying in the back of his mind, emerging in nightmares the past few days when he had not had Harry around to soothe him." Testifying about his torture was probably one of the hardest things he has had to do in a long while and his pride (as a man and a Malfoy) is still intact, but perhaps the Veritaserum was a necessary catalyst for the catharsis he needed?! It was hard to read the testimony regarding the torture, but I understand the necessity. I hope Ron would have been proud of what he did for Harry (8sigh*)

I absolutely love how you brought up back to some of the origins of this novel with the short glimpse of the calluses and how Harry had been in the cameras and film business before this whole trilogy began. It was short and sweet and a complete circle with just a touch of mystery ;-}

"I never thought I would see the day when you chose political loyalty before family loyalty." It wasn't mentioned, but I'm guessing that had to be Fristfuits, right? Classic!

And then Draco after Harry's compliment about his bravery, "He was in love, and it was not the terrifying experience his father had always told him it would be." That made me swoon in delight!

I was concerned, yet glad, to hear someone bring up Ginny. It was a central reason behind Harry's potion and an important part of the back story. I wonder what her testimony might have been? I think Harry answered the question candidly and with great remorse and dignity. I do wonder how anyone on the Wizengamot knew about it? I thought it was a tightly held secret between Harry and Ginny (and perhaps a very few others).

And then Harry confesses: “There is nothing I would not do for him, as I believe I’ve already made clear.” ... and I can just hear the fanladies in the Wizengamot going Awwww ;-}

And Hermione providing the piece-de-resistance in so few words and all Diggory's dreams start circulating the porcelain (*snort*), simply wonderful. I do wonder what Diggory's supposed "irrefutable evidence of Mr. Potter’s incubus heritage," actually was?

Thank you so very much for making this trilogy one for the ages! I have cherished every update! I will be on vacation for the next 10 days so my comments will be few (to possibly virtually non-existent) though I will try and keep track at intermittent points!

Re: AMWM 20 (aka Another One Bites the Dust)

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Oh, believe me, you'll be reading the whole article! I think I couldn't fairly skip it after building up so much anticipation. :)

Kingsley is finally gaining some confidence to deal with Diggory. It helps to see that Diggory isn't invincible, and didn't manage to break down Harry's confidence and convince the Wizengamot before rescue arrived.

Draco couldn't have done it without the Veritaserum. I don't think that's a bad thing; it's temporary help, and he can't heal fully in front of the Wizengamot, anyway.

I don't know about Ron, but I like to think he would have appreciated it, yes.

I actually meant to involve Harry's film business more in the story at the beginning, but the story didn't go in the direction I'd planned for it to go in.

That line is indeed Firstfruits.

The news leaked to the Wizengamot from one of Diggory's corrupt Aurors (or simply from Diggory putting together the circumstances surrounding Harry and Ginny's breakup with the similar secrecy surrounding the way he had attacked Daphne. He might have visited Ginny himself).

Diggory believes that Harry's feeding off lust to drain magic is proof of incubus blood- or he wants to make others believe that.

I hope you have a good vacation, and I'm glad you've enjoyed the series.

[thrnbrooke.livejournal.com]

Oh I sooo hope Diggory loses to Shacklebolt in the election!!!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

We'll see! The results of the election will be at least mentioned in this story, if not actually covered by it.

[firedraygon97.livejournal.com]

Diggory's sorry attempts at poking holes in the argument -- or rather, avoiding the argument entirely and jumping at a different issue -- make me shake my head. So pathetic. I'm looking forward to a last ditch effort to redeem himself and/or get revenge on Harry and Draco.

Poor Draco, having to say all that out loud. I'm glad Harry was able to hold his hand through it though.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

He'd already lost most of his confidence by that point, or he might have done better. Lucius did him no favors by sending him in alone.

And thank you!

[jenndr.livejournal.com]

I just love all your stories. Diggory and that Incubus theory... My goodness anyone with half a brain already knows it's hogwash. He'd be more likely to convince people of his lie if he would just shut up about it for a minute.

I'm just so happy Draco is facing his horrible reality and coming through the other side with the help of Harry & Hermione too. Hermione who got through with the help of the boys and the Desire potion. And, of course, Harry who has managed to get off the Desire potion and face his life head on because of Draco (and Hermione too somewhat). It's sad Ron's gone, but it's so nice to see these frienships come about.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

To be fair, he thought he would have the chance to use the memories in the Pensieve, and not words, to convince the Wizengamot.

Harry and Hermione will always miss Ron, but I wanted to show that his loss doesn't leave a permanent hole of angst in their lives. If they'd lost him right after Hogwarts, it probably would have.

[neji-chan.livejournal.com]

Great chapter!!! Though I liked the last one more, because Harry was amazing there.

I loved Hermione, and Draco... Clearly he's in love with Harry, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to recount his most horrible and humiliating experiences in front of an audience.

Looking forward to Skeeter's article and Diggory's fall :)

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Aw, now, everyone has to have their day in the sun. :)

Draco knew that terrible experience was coming, so he managed to build up a bit of tolerance for the idea. But I don't think he could have done it if Harry wasn't there and didn't desperately need it from him.

And thanks!

[bobpotter.livejournal.com]

Hermione closes the trap. Bravo!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[beatnikspinster.livejournal.com]

Draco was so brave. It was hard watching him go through that.

Hermione with the smackdown. *cheers*

Rita Skeeter must be losing her mind with happiness.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That scene upset me more than I expected when writing it, especially since I didn't really go into the details of the memories.

Skeeter has so many things to put into the article she doesn't know what to do with them all.

[valkyrie17.livejournal.com]

Very brave of Draco!
(also I'm amazed that Harry has managed to remember that the beetle on the back of his neck is a human being...I'm sure I'd have forgotten and swatted her)

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

The danger the courtroom presents to Skeeter keeps Harry thinking of her.

[ravenqueen55.livejournal.com]

Oh, this was very satisfying.

And this image here cracked me up:

Skeeter had been frozen on the back of his neck, as though there were so many things to run in circles about that she couldn’t choose a direction...

Go, Rita, go!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

If there is anything that really amazes me about this story, it's the amount of people it's got cheering for Rita Skeeter.

[ravenqueen55.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed at the fact I like her! But in this she's just delightful...still very much Rita, but having all her energy and enthusiasm working together with Harry's cause is a pleasant change!

[agr8fae.livejournal.com]

This was amazing! Diggory is finally defeated! Yes! I am very proud of Draco, and quite pleased that people seem to believe Him and Harry. I'm also glad that Hermione brought the memories. I'm also very excited to read Rita's article.

[star-faerie.livejournal.com]

Oh wow!!!