Part One:
Part Two:
Part Three:
Part Four:
“Oh, Rita hasn’t written anything at all since the third task,” said Hermione in an oddly constrained voice. “As a matter of fact,” she added, her voice now trembling, “Rita Skeeter isn’t going to be writing anything at all for a while. Not unless she wants me to spill the beans on her.”
“What are you talking about?” said Ron.
"You see . . . Rita Skeeter,” — Hermione’s voice trembled with quiet triumph — “is an unregistered Animagus. She can turn —” Hermione pulled a small sealed glass jar out of her bag. “— into a beetle.”
“You’re kidding,” said Ron. “You haven’t . . . she’s not . . .”
“Oh yes she is,” said Hermione happily, brandishing the jar at them. Inside were a few twigs and leaves and one large, fat beetle.
“That’s never — you’re kidding —” Ron whispered, lifting the jar to his eyes.
“No, I’m not,” said Hermione, beaming. “I caught her on the windowsill in the hospital wing. Look very closely, and you’ll notice the markings around her antennae are exactly like those foul glasses she wears.”
Harry looked and saw that she was quite right. He also remembered something. “There was a beetle on the statue the night we heard Hagrid telling Madame Maxime about his mum!”
“Exactly,” said Hermione. “And Viktor pulled a beetle out of my hair after we’d had our conversation by the lake. And unless I’m very much mistaken, Rita was perched on the windowsill of the Divination class the day your scar hurt. She’s been buzzing around for stories all year.”
Hermione took the glass jar back from Ron and smiled at the beetle, which buzzed angrily against the glass.
“I’ve told her I’ll let her out when we get back to London,” said Hermione. “I’ve put an Unbreakable Charm on the jar, you see, so she can’t transform. And I’ve told her she’s to keep her quill to herself for a whole year. See if she can’t break the habit of writing horrible lies about people.”
Smiling serenely, Hermione placed the beetle back inside her schoolbag.