Entry tags:

beholder_2011, femslash, fic, mrs zabini, rating:r, rita skeeter, rita skeeter/mrs zabini

FIC: "Between Prospects" for woldy
Recipient: woldy
Author/Artist: miramiraficfic
Title: Between Prospects
Rating: R
Pairings: Rita Skeeter/Mrs. Zabini; background mentions of Mrs. Zabini/Mr. Zabini and Rita/others
Word Count: 6,331
Warnings/Content Information (Highlight to View): *Sexual situations; non-graphic minor character deaths*.
Summary: Rita Skeeter and Thérèsa (Thea) Zabini are the sole constants in each others' lives. No matter how much Rita sometimes wishes things were otherwise.
Author's/Artist's Notes: woldy, you certainly know how to spoil a writer with plot bunnies. I started out wanting to write a serious Rita/Amelia fic. Then I tried a lighthearted take on Andromeda/Mrs. Zabini. Somehow, I ended up with this cross-product of the two. As a result, I'm afraid a touch of melodrama may have crept in along the way, despite my best efforts. Please, please forgive me. My intentions were good.

Please click here to read Mira's story!

---

“Do you think your intended’s having this much fun on his last night of freedom?” Rita asks the woman beside her. They lie together in bed, blankets tangled about their feet, conversation and heavy breathing muffled by the Silencing Charms that serve as their only cover. The floor is strewn with clothing, wands, and a large, glittering engagement ring. Rita’s glasses lie safely on a nearby dresser. She reaches for them now, the better to behold her lover.

Thérèsa Moreau, soon to be Thérèsa Burke, but forever Thea to Rita and Rita alone, lets out a noise as close to snorting as her regal bearing will allow. Unlike Rita, whose profuse sweating is making a sodden mess of the silk sheets, her skin glistens under the sliver of moonlight creeping through the curtains. “I’m sure he thinks he is. Of course, for dear Chad, a tumbler of Old Ogden’s and a cigar with his father’s friends constitute the height of sybaritic luxury.”

Rita does snort at this, sans qualifiers. “Remind me again why you’re throwing yourself away on a man incapable of understanding the word ‘sybaritic’ in any sense?”

“I’ve told you. I’m not my own to throw.” Thea props herself up on one arm, her long black hair sweeping across her breast. Rita resists the urge to brush it away. “In Côte d’Ivoire, my family’s lineage is unquestioned. Here, fair-haired Malfoys, pale-skinned Blacks and their like regard us as interlopers. Not that they’ll say so; they’re far too proper for that. But you’ll note that none of their sons made a point of courting me.”

“Depends on your definition of courting,” Rita mutters, as she recalls orchestrating more than a few subtle rescues from wandering male hands at Hogwarts.

Thea dismisses the interruption with a graceful wave of her own hand. “You know what I mean. Chadwick Burke may be a bore, but he is the closest I can hope to come to the heights of proper British society. And through him, one day my heirs may hope for better.” Her smile is half-sad, half-wry. “Sometimes I almost envy you, getting to avoid all this nonsense.”

Rita dismisses the sometimes, as she has learned to dismiss any irritation at the curious pureblood tendency to regard her as an object of pity and faint disgust for having known her Muggleborn grandmother, while simultaneously bemoaning their own circumscribed lot in life. Once, she might have argued – or worse, acknowledged affection for her namesake – but Slytherins who do not learn when to conceal their rattles are soon deprived of their fangs. And Rita is determined to make the most of her own natural gifts. “Save that for when I’ve worked my way off the obituary desk.”

“You will.” Thea strokes Rita’s arm. The gesture is as reassuring in the familiar thrill it provides as the expression of comfort behind it. “You started with the Prophet…what, three months ago?”

“Five.”

A tiny frown appears, then vanishes. “Still not that long. Nonetheless…” She lifts her hand from Rita’s shoulder and sweeps it in the direction of the floor, where Rita’s drab robes lie like rags amid Thea’s jewel-toned finery. “Perhaps if you dressed to be noticed a bit more. Something to set off those lovely chestnut curls, not blend with them.”

Rita laughs. “Is fashion your solution to everything?”

“Fashion is the only thing, darling,” Thea trills in response, before sighing. “Oh, I only wish I’d thought sooner. We could have gone shopping.”

“We still could.”

Thea pulls back, all traces of laughter gone. “Rita, love, no. We’ve discussed this.”

“I know, I know.” The lightness of Rita’s voice carries a touch too much effort to be truly convincing. “Society calls, and I’m too much of a temptation for any proper housewife.”

“You are, and never forget it.” Thea reaches out and tweaks Rita’s nipple playfully, then turns somber, tracing the curve of the other woman’s cheek. “I don’t want you pining after me, understand? Go. Break some hearts. Make some news. Live the scandalous life that I can only dream about.”

“I will.” Rita mirrors the gesture. “On one condition. Be happy. Try, at least. And make sure those heirs of yours are damn worth it.”

In lieu of an answer, Thea pulls Rita in for a slow, lingering kiss. There are tears on her cheeks by the time she withdraws; whose, Rita cannot say. “I’d suggest one last hurrah, but I couldn’t risk slipping my chaperone too much Dreamless Sleep. You’d better go before she wakes up and starts banging on the door to make sure I’m in here.”

Rita nods, not trusting herself to say anything. As she gathers her clothes and begins dressing, though, she feels neither crippling sorrow nor wistful acceptance: merely a curious blankness. Denial, she suspects. Although Thea has done her best to prepare her for this day since their first hesitant fumblings in fifth year, the idea of never again still seems far-off and unreal. She wonders when it will truly sink in, and shies away from the thought almost immediately. Perhaps by the time it does, she will have found the strength to bear it.

Five months later, she is still waiting. As a result, she may be the only person not surprised when Chadwick Burke takes a nasty fall off one of his father’s prize Abraxans, lingers for a day, and then dies.

***

For the first time in her career, Rita is grateful to be stuck with the obituary beat. She sits in the back row at the funeral, curls tamped down under an appropriately sober hat, and spends the service fighting to keep any observations on how well the Widow Burke’s mourning robes become her out of her notes.

Her circumspection is well rewarded. Thea spots her in the receiving line and contrives to faint. Rita, the “old school chum,” babbles assurances to concerned family members and escorts her to an empty waiting room to recuperate. Five minutes later, having located the artfully concealed slit in Thea’s robes, she has the widow squirming against the wall.

“Darling, you have no idea what a nightmare it’s been,” Thea moans once she is capable of speech again, throwing her arms about Rita’s neck. Before Rita can offer up any comforting platitudes, she continues. “I knew he was dull, but I swear, the man hadn’t room in his head for anything other than sport. And the sex! Good God! Never lasted more than a minute, and yet it was all I could do to drag myself to bed with him once a week.”

The part of Rita that thinks she should feel guilty for reacting to this outburst with relief is quickly overruled. “Pity. I suppose you’ll have to find a more appealing route into society this time.”

“Already working on it.” Thea grins at Rita’s visible surprise, or possibly her own cleverness. “The Burkes are doubly anxious to preserve their line now, and Chad’s dear cousin Algernon has been quite the comfort through this tragedy. You’d like him. He’s an older gentleman, but cultured: well-read, follows current events…Fabulous taste in jewelry, too.” She tilts her head to show off a pair of onyx drop earrings that Rita had, in fact, been admiring only a few moments before.

“Well.” Rita swallows. “Congratulations.”

Thea wags a finger. “Let’s not risk jinxing it, love.” She smoothes down her robes and loops her other arm around Rita’s back, pulling her just a bit closer than necessary. “Now, I believe you promised you’d see me safely to the gravesite?”

***

Algernon Burke wastes as little time as propriety will allow, proposing six months later and arranging the ceremony in three. By this time, Rita has cajoled her superiors into allowing her to add weddings to her portfolio. Thea is a vision in silver-grey: Rita cannot bring herself to begrudge the groom his adoring expression. She does, however, confine her interviews to the other guests and leaves before she can no longer avoid the bar if she wants to get through the rest of the event.

Instead, she gets plastered at home and has the brilliant idea to charm her hair platinum blonde. Surprisingly, the effect works even through the next day’s hangover, and nets her a few complimentary stares at work. She decides to keep it.

A year passes, then two. Rita’s coverage slowly expands to include high society events. She spots Thea once or twice, though always from a safe distance across the room, and never waits to check whether the recognition has been mutual. Besides, her focus is reserved for any potential contacts who might be able to aid her in her goal of shifting over to investigative reporting. Crouch’s newest deputy strikes her as particularly promising; Amelia Bones has the look of a woman whose flinty exterior might yield under the right approach.

The obituaries still dog her, though, inexorable as their theme. Which is how Rita learns of Algernon Burke’s passing from a heart attack, at the untimely age of 62.

When she returns to her flat late that night, she finds she has a visitor waiting in the hall. “Love the hair,” says Thea. Only the slightest languorousness between syllables and an extra sway as she eases her hip off the door hint that she has been drinking.

“What…?” is all Rita can muster.

But Thea already has a finger pressed against Rita’s lips and her other hand in Rita’s pocketbook, fumbling for the keys. “No talking. Not yet.”

There is no talking for another hour, though more than once, Rita files away a comment on Thea’s unusual forcefulness. Spent at last, Thea turns to Rita and asks, as though remarking on the weather, “I assume you’ve heard about Algie?”

This time, Rita makes no assumptions regarding expressions of sympathy. “I did.”

“Very sad,” says Thea, in the same detached tone. “Heart attack. Sadder for Quentin Smith, though. Imagine your lover dying on you like that in the throes of passion.”

A myriad of reactions flash through Rita’s head: shock at the revelation, horror at the thought of finding herself in such a scenario, frustration that her quill lies halfway across the room in her pocketbook, shame at her eagerness to betray Thea’s confidence. Only one filters through verbally. “What?”

“I should have known. Why else would a man his age still be a bachelor? The family was finally threatening to disinherit him over it. When Chadwick died, he saw an opportunity to get them off his back.” Thea is as close to ranting as Rita has ever heard her. “All of which would have been fine, except he waited until after the wedding to reveal that he never had any intention of consummating the marriage, and then proceeded to blame the ‘infertility’ on me.”

An accusation, which, even unverified, would doom Thea’s hope of any future respectable marriages in the event of divorce. Rita settles at last on a combination of horror and sympathy. “That’s…”

Thea smirks. “Quite the story?”

Suddenly, the quill no longer seems so far away. “You want me to…?”

“Darling, would I have told you if I didn’t?” Rita would point out that Thea has told her many things not meant for public consumption over the years, but Thea is already preoccupied with getting dressed. “I trust you to give it a good spin, of course. The naïve wife, unable to bear another love lost, hoping against hope to change his mind and heart right until the bitter end. Or something like that. You’re the writer.”

She is, which makes irony part of her stock in trade. “I could leave you out entirely and focus on the evil of couplings outside the sacred bonds between man and woman.”

Thea fastens her boot on with such zeal, Rita’s surprised the laces don’t snap. “Precisely my point. I sacrifice everything for my reputation, and he gets to indulge? No. No, he doesn’t get away with that. Not even in death.” She stands. “Besides, I’m done with it. With the Burkes, with Britain, with the whole stupid game. After the funeral, I’m off to the Continent, and I don’t care what my family has to say about it.”

The sentence hangs in the air, final in its decisiveness, and yet somehow incomplete. Rita realizes she is waiting for Thea to ask, “Come with me.” She also realizes that waiting forever won’t make it any more likely to happen. “I’ll send you a copy of the article.”

“I knew I could count on you, darling.” Thea kisses the corner of her mouth and makes for the door. “I’ll write as soon as I’m settled.”

Rita tries not to read too much into that promise.

***

The Burke scandal cements Rita’s place on the society pages, but at least she now commands the first page and a prominent byline. Besides, with the so-called “pureblood movement” growing bolder, she knows it’s only a matter of time before the right opportunity presents itself. In the interim, she begins freelancing for the more prominent witches’ magazines. Her extra earnings go toward laying in a new wardrobe. Remembering Thea’s advice, she chooses vivid colors: the kind no interview subject can pretend to ignore.

If only capturing Thea’s attention were so easy. Her letters are bright and breezy, full of sightseeing descriptions and amusing if superficial anecdotes. But the owls come few and far between, even long after the general public has forgotten the name “Algernon” and Rita no longer risks accusations of ulterior motives. The ones Rita sends in reply return weeks later, gaunt and exhausted, as though they’ve been chasing the message’s recipient all across Europe. Perhaps they have.

One morning, Rita awakes to something nibbling at her hair. The note the owl leaves behind when she shoos it off is short: Big news. Expect Fire-call. It then lists a date and time. Despite her bleariness, Rita is able to complete the calculations: two minutes from now. She races to do her hair and makeup, douses the fireplace in Floo powder, and shoves her head into the flames with barely a second to spare.

“Rita!” In one of her letters, Thea mentioned a haircut, but this is the first opportunity Rita has had to view the short bob. While she’ll miss the long hair, she decides she can adjust, especially if the change has anything to do with Thea’s relaxed, happy expression. “What do you say to a trip to Naples in, oh, one month?”

“I’ll pack my bags,” says Rita, deciding she’ll worry about how to turn it into a business expense when her heart isn’t pounding so hard. “Why in a month?”

“Oh…I should make you guess, but I’m just too excited.” Thea laughs. “It’s for my wedding! And no silly press pass needed this time. Marco insists on treating you as an honored guest.”
Thankfully, Rita’s smile seems to have frozen along with the rest of her. “Decided to play the game again after all, then?”

“No. This one’s different, Rita.” Thea smiles in a way Rita hasn’t seen since second year: an unguarded flash of innocent, uncontrollable delight. Rita finds it profoundly disturbing. “I think I’m in love.”

***

Marco Zabini is different. In appearance, he is a living portrait of the ageless Italian lover: tall, athletic, sun-bronzed, dark eyes sparkling with a knowing laughter. He speaks adorably accented yet fluent English, and alludes to knowledge of several other languages. His pride in his homeland and its culture is apparent without being boastful and provincial, as demonstrated by his admission that it has no wonders to equal Thea.

Above all, he takes notice of Rita. When she arrives through the International Floo Network, it is he who is waiting to meet her, with profuse apologies for Thea (or Teresa, as he calls her)’s indisposal; his mother, it seems, is taking her for a wedding dress fitting. He insists on treating her to lunch at a local café which forever redefines Rita’s expectations of pasta, then spiriting her about on a tour of town. Throughout, he is a veritable font of local history, self-deprecating humor, and questions that demonstrate a sincere interest in her without being nosy.

In short order, Rita goes from refusing to be won over to wanting to desperately. She very nearly is. But her reporter instinct is whispering in her ear: Beware the charming ones. Just when you think you have their measure, they have a way of springing the trap on you.

Marco springs his trap as the afternoon winds to a close, in a beautiful private garden. A man in a dapper pinstripe suit – not the gardener, though judging by his physique, no stranger to manual labor either – opens the gate for them. Once inside, the flood of Marco’s conversation abruptly ceases. Rita walks beside him in apprehensive silence, keeping a hand close by her wand, until they reach a park bench. He motions for her to sit.

“Signorina Skeeter,” he says, once she has hesitantly complied. “I wanted to meet you, because I understand you and…Thea? Is that your name for her? That you and Thea are…very good friends.”

His emphasis leaves no doubt what he means. Rita sees no point in denial; obviously, Thea keeps no secrets from this man. “Yes.”

Marco smiles. “Ah, I feared you would not be honest. Grazie. I appreciate this.” He plucks a rose and spins it idly between his fingers, avoiding the thorns. “You want what is best for her, sí?”

“Always.”

“Good.” The smile fades, leaving his face unreadable. “You are an honored guest to our wedding, Signorina Skeeter. This I have said, and this I mean. But after the wedding…you go. Live your life, and let Teresa live hers. No more letters, no more visits, no more…” He waves his hand. “Basta. It has been a marvelous dream, I know, but it is over.”

His conditions are no different from the ones Thea set down before her first wedding: the ones to which Rita has held religiously. And Thea, no doubt, has told him this. Which makes his need to reiterate them personally very, very alarming. “I have…I would never interfere in any of Thea’s relationships,” she manages.

Marco’s smile returns, this time without mirth. “Good. Remember that promise, Signorina Skeeter. Believe in it. Because I am not Teresa’s other husbands. I am not going anywhere.” He snaps the rose stem, sending it tumbling to the ground. “And I am not letting her go.”

***

Rita spends a sleepless night debating whether or not to go straight back to England, and if so, whether to wake Thea and demand she come with her, or storm into Marco’s room and tell him what she thinks of his possessiveness by way of a few well-chosen hexes, or both. But then she also wants to hex Thea for being so thoroughly taken in by a handsome face and a few sweet words…or is it give Thea the chance to prove Marco wrong and hex him herself once she finds out what lies underneath?

She is still trying to resolve the issue when her door creaks open at the break of dawn. Immediately, she grabs her wand and brandishes it in the intruder’s face, only to lower it at the sight of a somber Thea. “I’m sorry, Rita,” she whispers. “I told him there was no reason to scare you.”

So much for the thought of an escape partner. “I’m not scared,” Rita mutters. “You just seem to have told him rather a lot.”

Thea winces, and Rita is startled by the intense flash of vindictive pleasure she feels at having gained the upper hand in one of their conversations for the first time in years, however briefly. “I know. I shouldn’t have. It was stupid of me. Only…he makes me happy, Rita. Please believe that.”

Rita studies Thea for a long time. “You know, I do,” she says at last, in a voice that seems to come from somewhere else. “But that’s not the same as being happy for you.”

Thea’s own expression goes distant. She turns on her heel and leaves without another word.
The wedding is a blur punctuated by moments of intense clarity for Rita: Thea taking her first steps down the aisle, resplendent in airy white robes; Thea gliding past her row, head held high; Marco’s look of triumph as Thea turns to face him. “Marito e moglie” have barely passed the priest’s lips before Rita takes her leave.

***

Back in England, Rita throws herself into both her work and the task of keeping her first promise to Thea: at long last, she is ready to move on.

Or so she thinks. The opportunities are certainly there; Rita meets all sorts of interesting women in the course of conducting interviews, and many turn out to be interested right back. Gwenog Jones gives her a personal tour of the Harpies’ locker room, concluding in the showers. Rita goes back for enough “fact-checking” that her editor asks with a raised eyebrow whether she’s considering transferring to sports, until she realizes that between Gwen’s looks and the constant travel, she’s only repeating bad habits and breaks it off. Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank, who she meets while researching a piece on unicorns, proves quite knowledgeable on the subject of human anatomy as well. Then Willi takes a temporary post at Hogwarts, and her letters become so “Minerva”-centric that Rita is almost relieved when they finally stop arriving. (As a consolation prize, she decides to keep the books on Animagus transformation for her own personal edification.) And while Amelia Bones turns out to be far from Rita’s easiest source of information, prying what she can out of the Auror-turned-administrator becomes a most delightful challenge. That is, until Edgar Bones is murdered, and Rita makes the mistake of playing reporter at precisely the wrong moment.

From then on, she confines herself to one-night stands and casual affairs, which none of her partners seem to mind. With the war going on, why build anything permanent when it could all be gone tomorrow?

During this time, she receives precisely one communication from Thea: a birth announcement. Initially, she sets it aside, not without a certain amount of self-satisfaction. Then, months later, she catches herself mulling over it in the back of her head, wondering whether it was sent with Marco’s consent and how or even if to acknowledge it. She finally decides to anonymously transfer a small sum to a savings account for the child. Her confusion over whether “Blaise” is meant to be a boy or a girl’s name helps her justify the impersonality of the gesture.
For all intents and purposes, though, Thea belongs to the past, which Rita recalls when she bothers to think of it as a silly, romantic time when being pureblood meant invitations to parties, not the difference between life and death. Rita is a creature of the present, moving onward and upward, never stopping to look back in case something catches her.

Seven months after He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s defeat, while Rita is busy attending Death Eater trials and hitting dead end after dead end in her attempts to track the whereabouts of Harry Potter, Marco Zabini dies.

Thea’s tearstained note arrives the same very day, though Rita doesn’t discover this until later. Curiously, it is dated nearly two weeks before Marco’s death. It consists of two words. Please come.

Rita disregards it.

***

By the time Rita learns of Thea’s fourth husband, he is already dead. Her editor, Barnabas Cuffe, fills her in on the details.

“Juergen Amacher. Top official at the Swiss branch of Gringotts. Fifty-five years old. Died Sunday of blood to the brain.” Cuffe throws down a photo of a pale, portly man in pinstripe robes. “But he’s not the story. His wife is.” He throws down another photo, grinning when Rita takes only a second to register the subject. “You know her, don’t you? Thérèsa Zabini. Fourth dead husband in fifteen years. Didn’t even bother to change her name for this one. No clear-cut evidence of foul play in any of the cases, but a run of bad luck like that, and…well, people draw their own conclusions. Some of the Continental papers have started calling her the Black Widow.”

“Really?” Rita frowns as she picks up the photograph. Thea looks lovely as ever, even under the unflattering exposure, but dead-eyed. “Seems a trifle…insensitive.”

Cuffe shrugs. “If you come up with something better, we’ll run with it. But I want you to get the exclusive.”

Rita tosses the photograph back onto the table, hoping the casual gesture will hide her shaking fingers. “I don’t know, Barney. We’ve fallen out of touch in recent years.”

“Shame. Still, nothing like tragedy to turn one’s thoughts to old friends, is there?” Cuffe places the photographs back in his file, and thrusts the file into Rita’s hands. “Get the story, Skeeter. I know you can.”

***

Cuffe may be on to something, because landing the interview proves disgustingly easy. At least, she is careful to call it an interview, even offering to bring “Madam Zabini” out to the Daily Prophet’s offices at the paper’s expense. (If Cuffe is going to put her through this, she figures the least he can do is pay.) Thea appears to have something different in mind. She proposes that Rita come visit the summer cottage in the Alps for a week, calling her presence “just the thing under these trying circumstances.” Her tone is all noble high spirits, bolstered mainly by the prospect of “a sympathetic ear from the dear companion of a simpler time.” Except for the signature at the bottom of the letter, it is as though Marco and Italy never happened.

Rita agrees to three days, with the understanding she may stay longer if she so chooses. She prepares a hundred different questions, strategizes dozens of different angles and approaches, and rejects them all. By the time she grabs hold of the final Portkey to the nearest village, her thoughts are consumed only with the first few seconds of reunion. She puts the odds of either running straight back to England or falling into Thea’s arms at even.

Thea’s weariness, it turns out, is not merely the result of bad lighting. Her typically flawless complexion appears ashen in places, the circles under her eyes are too deep for Concealing Charms, and she verges on painfully thin. She is still the most beautiful woman Rita has ever seen.

“Darling,” she says, and Rita very nearly does fall into her arms. But Thea’s attention is already turned toward the slopes. “Shall we go?”

Back at the cottage – mansion, rather – they exchange pleasantries as a house elf prepares tea. Blaise, Thea explains, is in England with his grandmother, saving Rita from some deeply awkward sentence constructions.

“At the end of the season, I think I’ll sell my properties here and join them,” Thea continues. She looks down into her teacup as though trying to read the leaves. Perhaps she is; after all, she has always taken the notion of destiny more seriously than Rita. “Assuming I can find a broker who’ll list them anonymously.” A tiny tremor creeps into her tone. “The things they’re saying, Rita.”

“I’ve heard.” Rita hesitates for a moment, then adds, as gently as she can, “That is why I’m here.”

Thea nods once, tightly. “But not today. Today, you must go on a walk with me and see the wildflowers. Or we could go back into town; there are some charming boutiques. Unless…are you tired from your journey? The guest room is all made up --” Here, her voice, which has been regaining strength, falters.

Rita finds her own. “A walk would be lovely.”

She stays only the first night in the guest room. Thea’s body has changed in more than its gauntness: her breasts hang lower, and her stomach bears the faint silvery traces of stretch marks. It is also apparent she has gone for some time without a woman’s touch – or a competent man, she reveals; the late Juergen, it seems, was Chadwick thirty years on, only with a head too full of numbers for any tangible pleasures. She recovers her old skills quickly, though, and responds to Rita’s tutelage eagerly. Two evenings become three, then four.

And while Thea sleeps, sated, Rita investigates.

She cannot say what she hopes to find. Thea is not stupid enough to keep anything resembling incriminating evidence lying about, and Rita is not stupid enough to hope that she can prove a negative. That is, if she even wants Thea to be innocent. Because that would mean Thea loved Marco until the very end, keeping his name for more than just the son he gave her. Rita somehow finds that notion less comforting than the alternative.

Ultimately, Rita supposes, she is looking for who Thea is when she is not with Rita. The woman her husbands saw; the woman (or women) she became for them. Or is it presumptuous of her to assume that Thea can only be her true self with Rita? Maybe the Thea she is looking for is Thea when she has no one at all.

Whatever her goal, she has not made any progress toward it when Thea finds her. She hears the soft tread on the stairs and shifts to Animagus form, hoping to make a break for the loo before Thea grows too suspicious regarding her whereabouts, but Thea’s eagle eyes spot her and her spectacle markings.

“What a marvelous trick,” she murmurs as she walks over, stroking Rita’s back before pulling away. “Are you registered?”

Rita flutters to the ground and changes back. “No,” she admits. “I find it more…useful that way.”

“I imagine.” Thea’s voice remains soft, almost dangerously so. “What must I do to persuade you, of all people, Rita? There is no story. Only unhappy coincidence.”

But there is a story, albeit one Thea is even more reluctant to tell than the one she thinks Rita wants. “Just answer a few questions for me. Nothing will leave this room, I promise.”

After a moment, Thea nods assent.

“Was Juergen your last husband?”

“Perhaps.” Thea toys with the sleeve of her robe. “I would like some measure of continued security for Blaise, as well as a proper father figure. And of course, I haven’t ruled out my own happiness.”

“Do you even know what that means?”

Thea rolls her eyes. “Don’t be childish, Rita.”

“Serious subjects it is, then.” Rita has a right to be irritated, too, and she insists on exercising it by throwing out the most incendiary question she can imagine. “The day Marco died, I got a letter from you. If I had got it in time, or come to Italy as soon as I did, what would have happened?”

Thea’s expression shifts from startled to contemplative, then slowly crumples. “I don’t know,” she whimpers.

“What made you write it in the first place?”

“I don’t know!” Thea howls. “What does it matter at this point? Must I have a reason for everything?”

Rita suddenly feels very tired. “I don’t know, either. I’m starting to think you’ve never had a real reason for anything in your life, Thea. Just excuses.”

If Thea was on the verge of collapse before, this statement more than reverses it. Her eyes harden, glittering like the onyx earrings she still cherishes. One hand curls into a fist; the other grips her wand with enough force to extract it from her pocket a few inches.

Rita, the memory of Amelia Bones’s reaction to her last blunder of this magnitude pervading her with icy terror more effectively than any threat of curses, scrambles to undo the damage. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…Forget I said that.”

“I will try,” Thea says, in a voice that indicates she has no intention of doing any such thing. “In the morning, though, I think perhaps you should take the Portkey back to England.” She pauses on her way up the stairs. “Send me a copy of the article when it’s done, won’t you?”

Less than twelve hours later, Rita walks into Cuffe’s office and tells him she doesn’t have any useful material. She accepts the resultant chewing-out with aplomb. Then she sits down to compose the first of many letters to Thea.

There is no response to any of them. Nor does Rita expect one.

***

Rita attends Thea’s fifth wedding as a member of the press. She has been seated for a grand total of three minutes when a pair of security guards in ushers’ garb lift her by the elbows and frog-march her to the door. She protests more for formality’s sake than anything, puts on a show of stomping off in a huff, then sneaks back inside a few minutes later on one of the guard’s lapels.

At the sixth wedding, she isn’t even allowed past the door, and the venue has been liberally doused in insect repellent of both the spell and potion variety. She doesn’t bother giving the seventh a go, dispatching one of the interns instead.

In short, the closest she comes to interacting with Thea for over a decade is at the ill-fated Triwizard Tournament. Rita is stalking the grounds, fuming at Dumbledore’s restrictions, when a tall, dark young man in Slytherin robes approaches her. Although Rita has never met him, she recognizes him instantly from the curve of his cheekbones and the sparkle in his eyes.

“My mother says you can turn yourself into a beetle,” Blaise Zabini tells her by way of introduction.

He has his father’s subtlety, this one. “Young man, I’m sure you realize unregistered Animagi transformations are illegal,” she announces for the benefit of the general public, before casting a Silencing Charm. “What’s your point?”

His smile makes her heart twinge. “If you want the real dirt on the tournament – especially Potter and his friends – I can help you. So can the rest of Slytherin.”

An indirect peace offering of sorts? It seems unlikely. Still, even a faint hope is better than nothing. Rita decides she will take what she can get. “I’m listening.”

***

Three years after this gamble nearly costs her all that she has worked for in her career, Rita sits alone in her flat, rereading her collection of readers’ letters on The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore by wandlight. They are neither an exhaustive nor a representative sample: though it has taken her some time to notice the pattern, she has developed a perverse fondness for the ones whose misspellings belie an incisive grasp of subtext (“Allus new that Muggle-luver wuz kweer.”) as well as the merely incisive (“Building your reputation on the back of a dead man and his secret affair again, I see. You never cease to astound, Rita. – W. Grubbly-Plank”).

Though she has memorized most of their contents by now, she finds herself returning to them over and over again, while her quill and parchment lie idle on her desk. It hardly matters whether the Dark Lord triumphs over the Boy Who Lived, or vice versa; any hopes she might have retained of reestablishing herself as a serious journalist are dead, and she remains at a loss for what to do next. Perhaps fiction, if she can rid herself of the mental image of that Granger chit sneering she has never been capable of anything else.

A pounding at the door startles her out of her self-pity. She douses the light from her wand and draws it instead. “Who’s there?”

The only reply is a muffled sob.

“Who’s there?” Rita repeats. “If you’ve come to kill me, the least you can do is announce yourself properly.”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake, Pans. Out of the way if you’re going to have hysterics,” a male voice grouses. “Ms. Skeeter? It’s Blaise Zabini. I don’t know that you remember me, but…”

“I do.” She makes no move toward the door. Even if the claim is true… “Just what are you and your friend doing here, Blaise? How did you get this address? Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“Pot—Undesirable Number One’s turned up, ma’am. They’re preparing for battle. The battle, maybe. Pansy threatened their hero—” The background sniffling gives way to an indignant yelp. “—and McGonagall sent all the Slytherins away. Which suits me fine; I don’t fancy dying. But Mother said at the beginning of the year when they forced all the students to come back that if I was in danger and didn’t know exactly where she was, I should go to you as soon as I could.”

That answers the last question, but raises a hundred more. “Your mother seems to have quite a lot to say about me,” Rita manages at last.

“She said you’d probably say something like that. She also said to tell you that you should do a better job of warning your publisher about handling inquiries from old friends who want to catch up directly. And then she said…” Blaise takes a deep breath, as though preparing for a recital. “She said that she does, in fact, know her own happiness. And that while she doesn’t dare owl you in these present circumstances, if you’ll pay attention to the message this time, things can still be different.” Having relayed the message, Blaise exhales. “Pardon my language, ma’am, but I hope you know what she’s talking about, because I don’t have a bloody clue and I’d like to get out of this hallway.”

The door opens, then closes behind Rita, leaving her stranded in the hall along with the two Slytherins. She observes their bewildered expressions with amusement.

“You’re welcome to stay here if you like,” she tells Pansy. “Or tag along. I don’t care, so long as you’re not difficult about it.”

Then she turns to Blaise. “Your mother’s in Italy. Let’s go find her.”