Year Three - Chapter Twenty

What determines the worth of a man? What decides the greatness of a wizard? Is it the number of spells, the speed they are cast, the wisdom behind their actions? It is simple. It is the decisions of one's peers that determine one's worth in the eyes of the masses. No one is inherently worth more than another, nor should they believe themselves anything less than what they are; but it is the mass that delivers the verdict of worthiness to someone, and just as easily takes it away.

Worth meant nothing if one decided to ignore its value.

My eyes stared at the far off back of the wall as the photos were taken of me shaking the Minister of Magic's hand, then receiving my award for the service rendered. It was actually an Order of Merlin, if Third Class, for the service rendered in the capture of a dangerous criminal and in the solving of a gross misuse of the justice department. It was the kind of thing I didn't expect, but then I reckoned it was one of those things that would just be scribbled in a corner of someone's curriculum and forgotten.

It wasn't a First Class Order of Merlin, after all.

After the pictures had been taken, a few Christmas carols sang, and a few questions answered quite politely using the least amount of words possible, I finally got around to eating.

Thus, since I could not have nice things, I ended up actually meeting face to face with Rita Skeeter. The reporter neared like a wolf smelling blood, and I actually slipped away at least three times, disappearing amidst other wizards with the guile and the skill of a man running from a Basilisk, but in the end she hounded me into a corner from which there was no escape.

"Ah, the boy of the hour!" Miss Skeeter said, smiling like a rabid, feral werewolf chewing on the tender skin of the newborn lamb. "What hides behind the sour facade? The furrowed brows? The questioning-"

"Someone who likes beetles," I answered with a bright smile. Then, I winked at her. "Don't you like beetles too, Miss Skeeter? They skitter about so nicely."

She looked at me. Her smile remained fixed as if someone had just broken her brain. I quietly walked towards her, taking a small sip of my grape juice and glancing around, happy to find that the spot I had run to was also the most secluded one. "I can't help but enjoy the insect that the beetle is. So tiny, so indistinct, and yet it can crawl anywhere, can it not?" I hummed, throatily.

"That's well, an entomologist in the making-"

"Miss Skitter," I said, blinked, "I mean, Miss Skeeter," I continued, smoothly. "Don't." I shook my head. "Freedom of the press is a wonderful thing. I like it when the press remains free, and out of cold, frozen rooms with soul-sucking, happiness depriving monsters. Don't you like a free press too, Miss Skitter?"

The woman's smile remained brittle. "I like my freed-I mean, the press' freedom very much," she took a step back. "I have to go interview your wise teacher, Mister Umbrus," and with that, she hurried off. Ironically, she hurried off in the opposite direction of where Dumbledore was, and instead aimed straight at Harry Potter.

Sorry Harry, at least think positive, you won't be pulled into a small cramped spot with her next year. I hummed, happily, as I went about munching on this or that delicacy. The roasted turkey slices were made with a sort of delicious gravy that made it all taste ever better than normal, and I absolutely had to find out which house elf had cooked it, and then get a copy of their recipe book.

My thoughts thus busied, I came to reach the buffet just as the Headmaster's figure came into view. "Mister Umbrus," he said gently, "I am sorry to say that I will have to leave this festivity shortly," he added, slightly chagrined. "You may stay a bit longer if that is your wish," he said, "Sirius Black has offered a guest room at his house for you to spend the night, if you wish to leave together with him."

I glanced over to where Sirius was entertaining both Harry and Nymphadora with some wild tale, while Andromeda and Ted both looked on with a bit of wonder.

"No," I said with a slight shake of the head. "I'll be leaving with you Headmaster," I added, my lips twitching ever so slightly upwards. "Have you managed to have a pleasant night?" I asked as I began to walk by his side, heading towards the floo chimney while giving our farewells. The medal around my neck had a white ribbon. Apparently the first class had a green one, since Merlin was said to belong to the house of snakes and ambitious ones, who then took a plunge into two-dimensional cardboard cookie-evil selves somewhere before the start of Harry Potter's school year.

I doubted someone like Merlin would ever care about the houses to begin with, but then again, such was the tale told.

"That I had, Mister Umbrus," he said with an amiable smile, "That indeed I had." He grabbed a pinch of floo powder, pronounced firmly, "Headmaster Dumbledore's Office, Hogwarts," and then he was gone through the fire, which blazed in front of my eyes for the briefest of moments before returning to its normal hue.

I did the same, and that was the end of my ministry-approved Christmas holiday.

The next morning's Quibbler came out with an interview I had actually given to Luna's father, something quite simple in which nothing untoward was asked, and nothing interesting was mentioned. The Daily Prophet's own literally involved only two lines about me, one about Dumbledore, and twenty-seven about how Harry Potter's jealousy and fears were the show that he would need the helping hand of pureblood families to familiarize himself with the Wizard world, and that anyone so barbarous as to have a werewolf friend shouldn't be allowed to adopt anyone, let alone the famous, yet misguided, Harry Potter.

I sighed and thumped my head against the wall of my room in the early morning. My gifts were beneath my tree, and yet I ignored those in favor of thumping my head some more against the tree.

I had expected vitriol. It was Rita Skeeter, after all. I hadn't expected her to drag Remus Lupin's name into the mud. My thoughts drifted to Voldemort's jinx, and as it did, a dim cold feeling tugged at my heart. I hadn't broken the jinx. I had merely ensured it would work in the middle of the year, rather than at its end.

Glorious be I, the jinx-shifter, but at the very least, this hadn't been that bad of a thing. It by far beat the idea of being pursued by a Werewolf-Remus in the middle of the countryside while trying to avoid a death by monster.

Even with the parents clamoring to get Remus out of school, they wouldn't manage until the end of the year. The jinx could cry its heart out, but it wouldn't work until the new school year came into prospect. Perhaps that would break the jinx for the following year all the same, or maybe the curse would get meaner. I hoped it wouldn't; if Remus transformed in the middle of the class, the most I could do was Petrify him where he stood and hope someone had a need for a Werewolf statue.

It wouldn't come to that.

The new amendment to the Anti-Werewolf legislation, which passed with a majority vote in the Wizengamot not two days after it reopened after the Christmas holidays, told me that the jinx would not be denied its fresh blood. It prohibited werewolves from working near children, in proximity of students, or in schools. It was specifically designed to get someone fired, no questions asked.

It also told me another thing, as I clutched the newspaper quite tightly in my hands.

Clearly, most of the Wizengamot needed to be beaten with a stick, a really big, flaming stick made of steel. They were wizards for fucks' sake. One just had to trap a werewolf in a room with magic for a whole night during the full moon and be done with it, or maybe petrify them when it got out of hand. It wasn't that hard. It wasn't that difficult. Anyone with a wand and a brain could do it, though I reckoned wizards lacked the latter part.

Yet, it just went to show how the most dangerous enemy of wizards wasn't the monster itself...

...but the fear that made them do the unthinkable, immoral acts they believed righteous under its aegis.