TBAY: The REAL Rita

[dicentra63]

No: HPFGUIDX 38817

Dicentra sits on the beach as the sun sets, sipping the last of the 
Kool-Aid in her Dixie cup.  She can't remember which theory she just 
drank--Snape Is Ever So Evil?---but figures she'll buy anything Cindy 
offers.  It's the paddle, you know...

As she drains the last drop, a gentle breeze kicks up, and some 
scraps of paper drift by.  Dicentra picks up the closest one and 
recognizes it as a page from canon.  She grabs the rest of the pieces 
and tries to put them together.  But it's too dark; she looks around 
and sees a flickering light approaching.  As it draws nearer, she can 
see that someone is carrying a flashlight, waving it around randomly 
like a six-year-old with a toy.  Finally, she recognizes the bearer: 
it's Stoned!Harry, goofing around with his lighted wand.  As he draws 
level with her position, he trips and does a face-plant in the sand.  
Dicentra grabs his wand.

"Lemmee see that," she says, aiming the wand at the scraps of paper.  
Stoned!Harry picks himself up and comes over to watch.  She 
rearranges the papers until they form three pages.  Hmmm.  They 
appears to be pages 303, 304, and 307 from Goblet of Fire, Scholastic 
edition.

Stoned!Harry brightens.  "Oh yeah, that's the part where they're 
doing the weighing of the wands and I meet that stupid reporter 
woman."

Indeed, it's the first time we meet Rita Skeeter.  Dicentra reads, 
"Her hair was set in elaborate and curiously rigid curls that 
contrasted oddly with her heavy-jawed face. She wore jeweled 
spectacles. The thick fingers clutching her crocodile-skin handbag 
ended in two-inch nails, painted crimson."

Dicentra thinks there's something odd about this, but she's not sure 
what it is.  She continues reading "...and in a second, her scarlet-
taloned fingers had Harry's upper arm in a surprisingly strong 
grip..."

She carefully flips the paper scraps over to read the next page.  
"Rita Skeeter's smile widened.  Harry counted three gold teeth."

Still not able to put her finger on it, Dicentra aims the wand at the 
third page.  "'How are you?' she said, standing up and holding out 
one of her mannish hands to Dumbledore."

"What does it say?" asks Stoned!Harry.  "No, Harry, this isn't about 
you," Dicentra murmurs, lost in thought.  Stoned!Harry sighs heavily, 
thrusts his hand in his pocket, and produces the golden snitch.  He 
holds it in front of Dicentra's face.

"Oh! No, I didn't mean that," Dicentra laughs, pushing the snitch 
back toward Stoned!Harry. "I'm not going to toss the snitch over the 
bay to get rid of you."  Stoned!Harry shrugs and puts the snitch back 
into his pocket.  "It's not something you aren't supposed to hear.  
It's just..." her voice trails off as she dives back into deep 
thought.

But even after one-half hour, she can't figure out what it is about 
those passages that strikes her funny.  So she stands, gathers the 
paper scraps, and stuffs them into the empty Dixie cup.  No sooner 
has she done so when the Dixie cup begins to shake, and sparks start 
to fly out of it.  She screams and drops the cup; cat-like, it lands 
right-side up.

A moment later the cup belches out a scrap of parchment with slightly 
singed edges.  She catches it, tries to read it, and snatches the 
wand back from Stoned!Harry, who had been waving it around idly.

"Look, knucklehead, can't you see it?" says the paper.  "The 'heavy-
jawed face,' the 'surprisingly strong grip,' the 'mannish hands...'"  

Dicentra scratches her head.  The parchment vanishes and the Dixie 
cup belches another.  She catches it and reads, "Duh!  Rita Skeeter 
is a man in drag!"

Dicentra is so surprised she drops the parchment and the wand and 
sits down hard on the sand.  Of course!  Not only is she an 
unregistered animagus, she's the clever and convincing disguise of a 
man who Doesn't Want To Be Found.  (Or he just LIKES being a woman, 
but that's not nearly Bangy enough.)  Someone with three gold teeth.  
Someone who took Harry into a *closet* to be interviewed...

"Hey Harry, have you met anyone else with three gold teeth, like 
Rita's?" she asks Stoned!Harry, who has retrieved the wand and is 
shining it directly into one of his eyes.  He shakes his head no and 
switches to the other eye.  Dicentra sets to thinking again: who 
could be hiding as a woman?  It has to be someone we know is missing, 
and it has to be someone who has not been seen with her.  Ludo Bagman 
would be a funny answer, but he was with her during the Weighing of 
the Wands, and she was at his trial.  Maybe it's someone we haven't 
met yet.  But for it to be sufficiently Bangy, it's got to be a DE in 
hiding.  Someone we know to have been at large for some time.  At 
least since Voldemort's fall...

As Dicentra ponders this, the cup belches out a third bit of 
parchment.  She catches it, grabs the tip of Stoned!Harry's wand and 
points it at the parchment.  What she sees makes her gasp audibly: 
"Avery."

But... but... Avery's the Fourth Man!  How can he also be Rita 
Skeeter?  Dicentra racks her brains.  Let's see...  Do we ever see 
them together?  No. Harry sees her at Bagman's trial, but there's no 
mention of her at the Fourth Man's trial.  And she certainly wasn't 
in Voldemort's Circle.  And Sirius says Avery's been at large ever 
since he wrangled his way out of Azkaban.

Dicentra ponders the irony of this.  As a man, he's a SYCOPHANT, and 
as a woman he's Tough as a FEATHERBOA.  She looks to the Dixie cup 
for another answer, but the cup's fire has gone out.  She stands and 
grabs Stoned!Harry by the arm (in a not-so-surprisingly wimpy grip) 
and leads him toward the dock where the Big Bang is moored.

--Dicentra, who wonders what the sam hill Cindy put in that Kool-Aid

Glossary: Kool-Aid - Brand name of a powdered drink mix in the U.S.  
Dixie - Brand name of a paper cup maker (especially little 4 oz 
cups).  For acronyms, visit Inish Alley by clicking on "Databases" in 
the upper-left hand menu in Web view, then opening the last database 
on the list.