Rita Skeeter: Loose Cannon

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 51069

Wait a minute. Wait just a darn minute. We've overlooking something 
potentially very important.

Rita's "secret" is *already* known. 

Pretty *widely* known, in fact.

By *every fourth year in Slytherin House*! And do you really think she 
approached them and volunteered that information, merely trusting to their 
charitable natures not to blow the whistle? I don't think so! 

There was either a considerable degree of mutual negotiation between Rita and 
the [current] Slytherins to set up that little sweetheart deal, or they were 
instructed (or Draco was instructed) to cooperate with her by someone else, 
or she managed to obliviate the lot of them after her stint covering the 
Triwizard Tournement was over.

In the last case; she got pretty lucky, because we are talking about at least 
six kids who needed to be tracked down and neutralized before they did her 
any damage. Crabbe and Goyle may not have been bright enough to figure out 
what the "bug' actually was, but Draco is, and I suspect so is Pansy. (Zabini 
and Bulstrode are still wild cards along with any other unnamed Slytherins, 
if any.)

In the first case; they may very well have approached her. But how did they 
know to? And is her desire to do mischief on Dumbledore's turf so great that 
she would just hand that lot as potentially damaging a piece of information 
as the fact that she is an illegal Animagus?

And if it is the second case; just what does she have on [Lucius Malfoy?] in 
return that has kept him from hanging her out to dry? Or is Rita another of 
his hired hands? I am developing a strong suspicion that Rita and Lucius (and 
Arthur Weasley) go back a long way. All the way to Hogwarts, in fact. And she 
was no Gryffandor.

It is looking like Hermione doesn't have as big a barganing chip as she 
thought. Unless she's *really* sharp and thinks to offer Rita something she 
hasn't already got. And is willing to risk her neck on the gamble that, for 
all her unpleasantness, Rita is no Death Eater. (I tend toward that oppinion 
myself, but I could be wrong)

Something like a story that will make parts of the Ministry look particularly 
bad. Like a cause celebre about a gross miscarriage of justice. 

Something that only a handful of people and the Death Eaters know.

Something like the fact that Peter Pettigrew, Order of Merlin (poshumous) 
faked his death and lived in hiding for over a dozen years, and is now 
standing at Voldemort's right hand.

Hell, if Rita keeps Voldemort's current status out of it, Lucius would 
probably pay her to print it! 

(And by this time exonerating Sirius Black is the sort of mass misdirection 
of public attention that Fudge would leap at. Particularly since the man who 
had Black carted off to Azkaban without trial is so conveniently dead.)

Maybe, just maybe, the Marauders' unfinished business *isn't* going to be 
shoved to the back burner until book six.

But I still believe that the central conflict of book five is between 
Dumbledore and the Ministry rather than between Dumbledore and the Death 
Eaters.

-JOdel


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