Chapter 54

Arthur Weasley held in his hands the detailed report on everything Skeeter had learned from her investigation of the Muggle who went missing from Whittington hospital. Skeeter had not been able to meet the deadline Weasley had set, and several weeks had passed since she had begun her inquiries. But she had kept Weasley apprised of her progress, and there was no doubt that the report was worth the wait. Weasley had been hoping for a reasonably literate pro forma exercise that would satisfy the Danish Ministry of Magic that its British counterpart had done everything it could to account for the disappearance of their citizen. Instead, Skeeter had given him what amounted almost to a novella, a crime story complete but for its final chapter in which the culprit is identified and all the loose ends tied up.

Familiar with the ministry's practices, Skeeter had also prepared a briefing note for the deputy minister, in which her lengthy report was summarized. The report itself was too lengthy for a busy person like us deputy minister to digest, and by reading the briefing note, the deputy minister would know the essential facts and, if necessary, be able to answer questions in a reasonably intelligent way. Weasely read the note again, admiring its elegent simplicity.

"Dia Holmgaard was working as a volunteer at Whittington Hospital when she disappeared in January of this year. Holmgaard, fifteen, was the youngest student ever admitted to the UCL Medical School, earning entrance through her triple A grades at A-level. She is fascinated by the Human Genome Project and plans to devote her career to finding the genetic cause of cancer.

In December of last year, a patient was admitted to Whittington with severe head injuries. The patient carried no identification, and no Muggle missing person report matched his description. The patient, like Holmgaard, is missing. Almost no records of this patient's treatment are to be found at Whittington, the only sign of his stay being the notes of the ambulance attendants who brought him from King's Cross Station. The hospital computers have no entries concerning him. The head injury specialists whose responsibility it would have been to treat him had no recollection of the patient, and when questioned closely, one of these became catatonic. Yet the very absence of records left a trace. In this busy hospital every room is needed, yet there was one room which, according to hospital records, was apparently unoccupied for almost two weeks, and investigators suspect that it was in this room that the unidentified patient was placed. A drug audit concluded that the occupant of the room might have received the post-operative medications one would expect in light of the injuries reported by the ambulance crew.

"The coordination between the Muggle and magical communities is rather poor in Britain in comparison with the continent, and for some time, the Muggle investigation into the disappearance of Holmgaard proceeded independently from and indeed in complete ignorance of a separate investigation run by the Ministry of Magic into the disappearance of Draco Malfoy, a student at Hogwarts. Malfoy, a fifth-year coming home by train for the Christmas holidays, never made it to his parents' residence. His disappearance was widely publicized in the magical community, but not in the Muggle world. Draco reappeared at Hogwarts two weeks into the term, and has given no explanation for his absence.

Draco's physical appearance is consistent with the sketchy description given by the ambulance attendants of the young man they picked up at King's Cross Station and took to Whittington for emergency treatment. The ministry suspects that Draco might have knowledge about the circumstances surrounding Holmgaard's disappearance, but until it is able to interview the boy, the ministry will not be able to act on its suspicions. The boy cannot be recalled home by his family, for his parents disowned him shortly after he reappeared. The reason for Draco's disownment is unknown, but the effect of it is clear enough: Draco is under the direct guardianship of the school's headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, who stands in loco parentis. The ministry's attempts to interview the boy were blocked at first by Dumbledore, and now by his temporary replacement, Minerva McGonagall. The ministry at present lacks the jurisdiction to compel the headmaster of Hogwarts to give them access to a student in such circumstances. Unless and until Draco leaves the environs of Hogwarts, the ministry will be unable to ask him any questions. Thus the investigation into the disappearance of an exceptional medical student was at first hampered by the lack of co-ordination between the muggle and magical investigators, and now is stymied by legal issues flowing from Draco's disownment and attendance at Hogwarts. There is good reason to think that there may be a magical component to Holmgaard's disappearance (see schedule "A" for a list of unauthorized spells used in and about Whittington at the relevant time).

"Once the ministry made the connection between Draco's disappearance and that of Holmgaard, further progress was made. Several medical staff at Whittington appeared to have had had their memories modified. The lack of skill exhibited by the modifier caused damage which, fortunately, appears reversible. In addition, ministry investigators hold out hope that memories might be restored once treatment of these unfortunates has been completed at St. Mungo's."

Thus in less than 1,000 words Skeeter accurately summarized her 100 page report. But Weasley knew that Skeeter's work, in its present form, would never be shared with the Danes. The report made it too obvious that the Ministry had bungled the investigation, and that had it moved more quickly to work with the Muggle police, it would have made much more rapid progress. But editing the report would not be Weasley's job. That would be handled by the Deputy Minster's political staff.

Skeeter hardly stepped out of her home in the two weeks that passed after she submitted to Weasley her report on the Whittington incident. Since then, Skeeter had been hard at work in the basement room that was her home. The room was muggle in all respects, containing numerous objects that had no place in a magical home, indelibly marking the residence as one in which no magical person would live - that is, of course, unless the resident was wandless at the order of the Wizengamot. The one magical object in the room was the pensieve sitting on the coffee table. The shallow stone basin was a valuable item in the wizarding world, functioning as a repository for the owner's thoughts. Not that Skeeter would be depositing any of her memories into the hollow dish; to do this required a wand. There had been doubt in Skeeter's mind as to whether she was permitted even to posses the pensieve let alone use it, but her concerns were allayed by a letter she had obtained from the Wizengamot's registrar, stating that there was no objection to her use of the device so long she did nothing to it that required the use of a wand. Thus Skeeter was free to delve into the pensieve's contents. And it was treasure trove, for contained nothing less then the memories of Grindelwald from earliest childhood until recent times.

Skeeter had come into possession of the pensieve as a result of her visit to Grindelwald's prison some months before. The former dark lord had, to her astonishment, given up his pensieve in exchange for the empty one she had brought with her. He did so without her even asking him, he having read in her thoughts her desire to possess his pensieve. The prison guards were none the wiser for the exchange. Skeeter had been with child to plunge into the pensieve's contents, but was forced to restrain herself, for she had promised Dumbledore that she would read none of its contents until she had delivered the pensieve to the headmaster first. To her relief, the pensieve had been returned to her within a couple of days, leaving her free to explore the secrets of the greatest wizarding enigma in history. At first the contents seemed so vast that she was unsure of how to make use of it. After a few days, she'd learned to read the markers Grindelwald had attached to his memories, uncovering those recollections which he consider the more important.

Now her biography of the dark lord was as complete as Skeeter could make it. She could never truly finish the book, for there was a period which Skeeter estimated lasted approximately two to three months, in Grindelwald's late teens, where he had deposited no memories whatsoever, and there was no record anywhere of where the man was or what he did during this time. Yet later memories from the Pensieve showed that Grindelwald often looked back upon the unrecorded summer, and that it had been a life-changing event for him. This, she realized, must be the reason that Dumbeldore had required her to surrender the pensieve to him prior to her delving into its contents. For reasons of his own, the headmaster had wanted to delete from the pensieve a section of Grindelwald's past.

It was just past dinner when Skeeter finished printing her manuscript, a massive job that had taken the Granger's small printer hours to complete. She would submit the manuscript the next day for editing and publication. Skeeter put the finishing touches on an email and clicked 'send', thereby emailing a copy of the manuscript to a muggle publisher with whom she'd made contact, for it had occurred to her that to Muggles, the book might be perceived as an interesting work of fiction.

The next morning Skeeter would rise at six o'clock to get breakfast ready for her employers and their lunches ready for them to take to work. Skeeter had mastered the morning routine, just as she had all other aspects of her domestic duties. The five months that had passed since her close encounter with Azkaban had transformed Skeeter. It had been a long time since she had reflexively reached for a wand that was not there. No longer when washing dishes, cooking dinner or ironing clothes did the magical part of her mind summon to the fore the words of a charm which, if accompanied by a wave of a wand, would have saved all her labours. At one level Skeeter was conscious of her status as an ex-witch; she could not but be reminded of what she had lost whenever she explored the Grindelwald's pensieve, or visited the enormous library at the ministry. But when not engaged in these activities and instead immersed in the daily routine of her life as a maid servant, it was almost as if a different part of her mind controlled her, a different Rita Skeeter that had never been to Hogwarts, had never possessed a wand and knew nothing of magic. The Rita Skeeter that peeled potatoes and washed floors for not much more than minimum wage was, surprisingly, a happy creature, content with her place in the world. In fact, this new, other Rita Skeeter could be summarized in one simple word: Muggle. Skeeter did not think of herself as a Muggle, but of course Muggles never did.