Author's Note:  The world of Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, and to the publishing houses of Bloomsbury and Scholastic.  I do not have, or pretend to have, any rights to her characters.

Thanks go to my beta-reader, Dr. Cornelius, for his infinite patience and comma-wrangling.   Also, cheers to StereoM for being a great cheerleader just when I needed it.

"3.27am - Woke from nightmare. Voldemort trying to kill me again. Very unsettling.

8.11am - Hedwig flies off in disgust after Pigwidgeon lands in Ron’s cornflakes. Wish she’d given me my letter first."

    Edwin Proof, editor-in-chief at the Daily Prophet, slowly unrolled the parchment. It was rather lengthy.  He began to skim down the page, searching for something to catch his eye. Eventually, he came to "…10.30am - Care of Magical Creatures. Hagrid appears to have new project for us. Hope this is better than the Blast-Ended Skrewts from last year.

10.35am - I miss the Blast-Ended Skrewts."

        Proof looked up from the parchment.  He sighed heavily as he removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of one ink-stained hand.
        "I’m sorry, Ms. Skeeter, but there’s no way I can use this."
        "What?!" she roared. "I’m your best contributor.  You’ve never turned down my work!"
        "Correction: you were my best contributor.  Ever since you took that little holiday last summer, your work has been lackluster at best.  And this," he shook the parchment, "is not your best.  It lacks the zing and relish of your previous work.  It’s boring.   It reads like the diary of a Muggle lobotomy patient.  I might as well put a Soporific Spell on all my papers, because this piece will put my readers straight to sleep."
        "You wanted me to get into the head of Harry Potter, and that’s exactly what I’ve done." She leaned forward and tapped the parchment with a long, lacquered fingernail. "These are his very thoughts! I used the Scrivenus charm to record everything that went through his mind for twelve hours, and—"
        "Merlin’s beard, Rita!  You used his exact thoughts?  The thoughts of a fifteen-year-old wizard aren’t worth the ink they’re written with, if you take my meaning, even if he did destroy You-Know-Who.  Do you know how many post-adolescent subscribers are going to find this even remotely interesting?"  Rita opened her mouth to reply, but Edwin cut her off. "None. Nil. Zero. A giant goose egg." He held his hand up in a giant ‘O’.  "Now, if you want this piece of tripe to get printed, I suggest you send it to Young & Magical.  Come back to me when you’ve written something worth publishing."
        Rita Skeeter sprung to her feet, gathering her things and ripping the parchment out of her editor’s hand. "Perhaps I will, then. This human interest story deserves more than to be fwooper-cage liner."   With that, she turned on one spiked heel and stormed out of the office, trying to look as though this hadn’t been her tenth rejection this week, that she didn’t know her career was at an end.
        Out in the street, in front of the Daily Prophet office building, Rita dug her favourite acid green quill out of her bag and snapped it in half.

*****