//------------------------------// // Chapter 59 // Story: The Gate // by computerneek //------------------------------// Celebrity Nearly Kills Foreign Envoy After Unprecedented Quidditch Match! Just yesterday, at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Gryffindor student Lyra Heartstrings managed to score a hundred and fifty point lead against Slytherin, before being struck off her broom not by a bludger but by a vicious swing from Slytherin beater Lucian Bole.  Unaware of her fate, Slytherin seeker Draco Malfoy caught the Snitch moments after the foul occurred. Mostly unnoticed in the confusion, Heartstrings fell fifty feet to the ground, where her right arm was crushed under her.  She didn’t go unnoticed for long; while referee Rolanda Hooch discussed the foul with headmaster Albus Dumbledore, Gilderoy Lockhart approached Lyra.  This five-time winner of Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile award, with an Order of Merlin, Third Class, is the school’s Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher this year.  He was permitted to mend Heartstrings’ damaged arm immediately, rather than sending her to the school nurse. Unfortunately, it would seem our Gilderoy Lockhart, despite coming out victorious on all his adventures, could not mend a simple broken bone.  His failed spell didn’t only vanish her bones completely, but the resultant blast also threw him fifteen feet away, burnt to a crisp. Heartstrings was mortally wounded in the process. As it so happens, Heartstrings isn’t just a student at Hogwarts, but an international student, visiting from an alternate universe to study magic at Hogwarts with just under twenty-six thousand of her peers.  She, and the rest of the Equestrians, have been working not just to study what we know, but to pass on what they know, and expand both our knowledge and their own with muggle works. And Heartstrings is perhaps the driving force of that effort, the one making it possible. Together with Gryffindor seeker Harry Potter, Slytherin seeker Draco Malfoy, and Gryffindor backup seeker Hermione Granger, their liaison, a British first-year by the name of Ginnerva Weasley (Pictured), was able to move Heartstrings to the school infirmary in time to save her life. “Equestrian magic is capable of so much more than British magic, and so much more resilient,” Weasley stated, in an interview with our own Rita Skeeter.  “There’s a few things we’re capable of that they aren’t, like animagi- but for the most part, they’ve got the advantage. And Lyra has been using her unique perspective on magic to develop a process to enable a British witch or wizard to perform some of the feats that they take for granted in Equestria.” “She’s been most grievously injured,” Heartstrings’ friend Bonbon told us.  “I don’t think anyone, in either world, has managed to vanish an entire limb and the bones out of another, and fracture the magical core, all without killing the target.  Any British witch or wizard would have been killed outright, but she’s an Equestrian, and our magical cores are so resilient we’re actually immune to the Killing Curse. He nearly managed to kill her anyways; it’ll take many months, possibly even years, of recovery before she’s able to work her magic like she used to.” Rita Skeeter Princess Celestia smiles at the moving photo on the newsprint, all four smiling meekly up at her.  Three of them are holding brooms; one is wearing green, two scarlet, and the last one black. She recognizes Agent Index Eye, in scarlet, standing next to Agent Math Head- who joined the Agency just the day before yesterday.  “Haven’t even started training and already saving my ponies, are you?” She chuckles softly, and turns the page. “Now, what happened to this ‘Lockhart’ after he got burned?” Unfortunately, though she knows most wizarding photos can talk and are affected by gravity, the newspapers are an exception on both counts. Lucius Malfoy glares at his newspaper.  He’d been genuinely unsurprised, and simultaneously not overly concerned, to find out that Lockhart is doing his level best to kill off all the students in the castle before the Chamber of Secrets can even get started.  About three out of every five Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers do that- and, more recently, the Board has been worried because the place has been a few years overdue for another genocidal DADA teacher. Last time they got three non-genocidal teachers in a row, the next one had seen fit to demonstrate Fiendfyre not once but twice before he was fired.  Each time, it was only thanks to the timely intervention of Professor Dumbledore that nobody was killed- but even the Headmaster couldn’t stop such a terrible force from severely injuring a couple dozen students each time.  At least half had to be sent to St. Mungo’s- and of course, those incidents are the reason why the school infirmary is now so well equipped. What he had been surprised- even alarmed- by, was the part his Draco had played. He’s more than a little conflicted about that. His Draco, smiling evenly out of the page at him, is pictured as a part of a group with not one but three Gryffindors- including both a Weasley and a mudblood! Offsetting that, that group also includes Potter- and Draco was noted for helping save a foreign envoy’s life…  making him somewhat of a public hero. He wasn’t aware Lyra was a foreign envoy…  but whatever. “They grow up so fast,” Mr. Weasley comments suddenly, reading his newspaper. Mrs. Weasley raises her eyebrows at him.  “What do you mean?” He waves the paper at her.  “Oh, it’s just Ginny. Not even halfway through her first year, and she’s already saving lives.”  He snorts at the page. “And working as a liaison for the Equestrians. Alongside Lucius Malfoy’s son.” Mrs. Weasley marches over, intrigued.  “Really? She’s already making friends both internationally and amongst the ‘noble’ families?  And what did she save who from…?”  Her voice peters out as she spots the headline, and starts to read. By the time she reaches the end of the story, she’s leaning in close to the page, eyes wide.  “... Oh. But-!” She glances at the stack of Lockhart books on the mantlepiece. “But-!” She looks back at the article.  “But-!” The mantlepiece. “But-!” The article. “But that can’t be possible!” Arthur. “He’s better than that!” Arthur shrugs.  “Rita wrote the article,” he states.  “It’s probably embellished in at least one way.  We could send Ginny a letter.”  He rubs his chin with one hand. A sudden rattling noise against the kitchen window catches their attention.  An owl, carrying a letter that bears the Hogwarts coat of arms, has just landed outside. Mrs. Weasley, still standing, goes to let it in, and opens the letter as she returns to the table. The two read it together. …  If anything, Rita missed details.  According to Dumbledore’s letter, written just this morning, their daughter hasn’t only saved an important foreign life and taken up a liaison duty between the two nations, but she’s also playing a key role in the magical research effort on both sides- not to mention helping knit the wizarding community back together once again by befriending Malfoy! All in hardly two days’ time. “She’s going down in the history books after that,” Arthur comments softly. Molly nods.  “... Yeah. Yeah, she is.” Professor Dumbledore smiles as he reads the front page of the Daily Prophet.  “Interesting,” he chuckles, before tilting his head, looking up at Fawks.  “I wonder how they got interviews with Rita so fast?” At the same time, he casually discards a half-written letter originally intended to get Rita to the castle to write the very story he had just read. Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge arrives at the Ministry half an hour early, sends a letter to Dumbledore, and taps his foot impatiently until enough of his staff shows up for work. Then he nods.  It’s still two minutes before the scheduled start of his shift when the first few start trickling in; most of them show up within a couple minutes of the bell.  The first one had arrived a full minute before, taken one look at him, and gone to her desk; now, as more people start flowing in, he straightens up. “We need a meeting,” he announces. The people walking in pause, some confused, some not so much. The one that had come in a minute early stands up from her desk, before using a sticking charm to attach a flattened piece of parchment to the wall, in clear view of the entrance, and heading for the conference room. Fudge glances sideways at the parchment, smiles slightly, nods, and heads for the conference room, still carrying his morning newspaper.  He makes his way to his seat, waits a few seconds for everyone else immediately present to reach their seats, and tosses his paper to the middle of the table.  “Has everyone seen this?” Heads nod.  One person reaches for the paper.  “What is it?” Everyone watches in silence as the boy reads the story and, wide-eyed, returns it to the middle of the table.  “... Oh.” The last person enters the conference room, takes a seat, and looks knowingly at the paper. “So then,” Fudge begins, placing his hands on the table in front of him with an audible thump.  “What do we do about it?” “It may be possible Lockhart isn’t as good as he says he is,” one man suggests. Fudge shakes his head.  “I’m not worried about that.  What I am worried about, though, is how to keep this from becoming a first-class diplomatic disaster.”  He lets out a small sigh.  “And if it has already, how to clean it up.”