With the end of the final exams came the quiet announcement that the school year itself was over.
It had been a year full of surprises, but as the students rolled back from Hogsmeade toward King's Cross Station, they were still buzzing, already tasting summer.
The sky was a clear, solid blue. The weather had decided to be kind for the send-off.
As Harry Potter stepped up into the Hogwarts Express, he kept catching people looking his way, whispering as if they'd just read something and were lining him up with the headline.
He, Ron, and Ginny spent a good while squeezing past trunks and elbows to find a compartment. When they finally slid into an empty one, Hedwig, who'd been dozing with her head tucked under her wing, startled awake at the clatter of her cage going up on the rack and let out a piercing screech. Ginny reached up and calmed her with soft strokes until the ruffled feathers settled.
"Feels like everyone's staring at you, mate," Ron said, dropping into his seat, curious more than bothered.
"Probably the interview," Harry said after a beat, thinking it through.
The day after Ginny Weasley's O.W.L.s began, Rita Skeeter had appeared at Hogwarts again—this time with the Headmaster's permission.
Skeeter was on a tear lately. Her recent series of interviews with members of the Order of the Phoenix had been runaway hits in the Daily Prophet. For better or worse, she'd become the hottest quill in the British wizarding world.
The Ministry had grumbled at first. But after that feature on the late Edgar Bones—an Order member and the Minister's own brother—ran in the Prophet, the grumbling dropped to a murmur. If the Minister's brother had worn that phoenix, it was hard to keep calling the Order an "illegal organization."
Harry hadn't wanted to sit down with Rita Skeeter at all. His memories of her from the Triwizard year were enough to sour milk, and his opinion of her hadn't improved.
He changed his mind when she said what she wanted to write.
She was planning a Prophet feature on Sirius Black—Harry's godfather.
Since Voldemort had shown himself at the Ministry a year ago and the whole world had been forced to admit he was back, the old charges slapped on Sirius Black had collapsed of their own weight. Albus Dumbledore had provided the Ministry with a thorough packet of evidence—more than enough to clear Sirius entirely.
The trouble was, while the Ministry had admitted he was no longer a fugitive and had dropped every warrant, they'd never explained, never apologized for the years they'd locked him away and hunted him.
And with Voldemort and the Death Eaters still very much a threat, neither Sirius nor the Order had spent time chasing that apology.
Harry had. To most people around him, his godfather was still a murderer, still a wanted man. He couldn't stand it.
So he'd gone to the Hog's Head and given Rita Skeeter the interview. He told her how he'd met Sirius, and how Sirius had been wronged in Azkaban.
"If you mean the interview," Ginny said, fishing in her bag. She pulled out that morning's Prophet. "Here—let me find her column."
She skimmed, the pages crinkling under her thumb, then stopped short. "This is… really long."
"And the headline is—"
"My Godfather, Sirius?"
…
At that same hour in the Headmaster's Office, Jon Hart had a copy of the Prophet open to the same page.
"Quickly, read it to me!" crowed Phineas Nigellus from his frame. The old Headmaster's face was about as close to beaming as it ever got. "Disgrace to the family he may have been, that boy did make a name for himself. Better by far than his mediocre parents!"
"Read it yourself," Jon said mildly. He set the paper where Phineas could see every line.
Jon had already worked through it. Under his threat, Rita Skeeter had abandoned the old swaggering sensationalism and written it straight.
In its way, readers liked that even more.
Told from Harry Potter's point of view, the long piece sketched Sirius Black's youth and his closeness with James Potter; then the plan to switch the Secret Keeper under the Fidelius Charm for his friends' safety; Peter Pettigrew's sudden betrayal, the murder of the Potters by You-Know-Who, and a one-year-old Harry left behind.
It went on to the Ministry's decision to send Sirius to Azkaban without trial and without evidence. After twelve years under Dementors, an accident had revealed to Sirius that Peter Pettigrew still lived and might threaten Harry at any time—so he'd broken out and come to Hogwarts.
And after You-Know-Who's return, Sirius had done his part for the Order of the Phoenix.
"Deeply moving!" Phineas Nigellus muttered, dabbing dramatically at his eye as he read.
"It is rather," Everard said from his neighbouring frame, interest bright in his voice. "I've just passed by the Ministry. It's in an uproar."
"Oh?" Jon looked up.
"That interview," Everard said. "Quite a few readers, very moved, have written demanding that the one who sent Black to Azkaban without so much as a hearing be held to account."
"I see," Jon said, the corner of his mouth lifting.
"To the point," Everard added, amused, "that Rufus Scrimgeour has had to keep repeating himself: the man responsible—Barty Crouch Sr., then Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement—has been dead nearly two years."