
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/169610.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_J._K._Rowling
  Relationship:
      Rita_Skeeter/Severus_Snape
  Character:
      Rita_Skeeter, Severus_Snape
  Collections:
      Smutty_Claus_Exchange
  Stats:
      Published: 2008-12-02 Words: 5591
****** A Chronicle of a Selection of Rita Skeeter's Conquests, or, Confessions
of a Quick Quotes Quill ******
by el_em_en_oh_pee
Summary
     She and Severus have a history, though, and while he probably doesn't
     exactly hate her, she's pretty sure he wouldn't take too kindly to
     her slipping into his room, beetle-shaped, and transforming back into
     herself in his bed and slipping her clothes off and pushing them
     under a pillow and waiting for him to come and fuck her.
Notes
     Happy holidays,
     [[info]]
featherxquill! I hope you enjoy this fic. I tried to keep to your request as
closely as possible ♥
                                                                          1994.
Rita Skeeter, whose age certainly does not show in the slightest
Rita Skeeter, an attractive woman with big eyes and a bigger mouth
Rita Skeeter, ably assisted by her most highly prized Quick Quotes Quill
Rita balls up the test parchment that she's been using for her new Quick Quotes
Quill and shoves it into a hidden pocket in her bag. She takes out a less-tatty
roll and, licking the tip of the quill, sets them down: first the parchment,
horizontal; then the quill, vertical. She clears her throat, taps the tip of
her tongue to the back of her teeth and her lavender nails to the front of
them, and starts speaking in hushed tones.
Rita has a secret. It isn't that the Daily Prophet would pretty much not stand
up to its weight without her, which she figures is a given but which not many
people seem to realize, and it isn't that sometimes she gets ridiculously tired
of always having to keep her nails in perfect condition (because, of course,
everyone expects her to), though both of those probably could qualify as
secrets. No, her secret is Jasmine Katarina Roebling – the same Jasmine
Katarina Roebling who supplies the wizarding world with most of its classy
erotic literature. Except some critics don't seem to believe it's literature,
but she's okay with it being called trashy because it's still page-turning and
it's still sex, and that's what sells. Rita is all about what sells. Except if
anyone knew that she and JKR, sex writer extraordinaire, were the same person…
well, then her career would be pretty much over, because, hello, mortifying,
and also there are a good number of witches who wouldn't be able to handle
knowing that their favourite newspaper columnist also wrote the stories that
show up in the dirty magazines that their husbands jerk off to when they think
their wives aren't looking. Which would mean her newspaper career would be
over, which would essentially mean that her life would be over.
But that doesn't mean that she's going to stop writing these, and the fact of
the matter is that she's coming up on a deadline for her next book and even
though she's in Hogwarts right now (against Dumbledore's requests, but that's
neither here nor there) and it seems sort of wrong to be writing erotica in her
old school, time constraints do not allow for her to pansy about the task
(also, it's highly probable that the majority of the professors and possibly
most of the students, too, read the erotica she writes, so it's not that
sacrilege, her doing this, is it?).
So here she is, sitting in some broom closet waiting for an interview with some
students about the Triwizard Tournament and writing about the exploits of
Maeve, the buxom secretary to a Quidditch team manager and Roger, the svelte
star player of the team, and how they're about to have hot sex – starting with
oral, because not enough erotica writers these days cover oral, which Rita
finds a pity mostly because oral is what generally gets her off most
effectively – when she realises she has no fodder for this current story. The
thing about Rita is that she believes in truth in words, which is to say she
only writes about sex acts that she is intimately familiar with, which is a
lot. Unfortunately, she's in the middle of this ridiculous annoying dry spell
and is feeling decidedly uninspired. The cure for this is to have large amounts
of sex as soon as possible, but (if she is to be entirely honest with herself,
which does happen on occasion but only very occasionally), there haven't been
men lining up at her door in order to take care of this particular problem for,
well. A while, and that's all she's going to admit on this subject.
She considers going out to seduce the first person she sees, but that could
quite possibly be a first-year and although she likes them young, that's just
this side of disgusting. So she can't do that. She makes a quick list of the
highly attractive people she knows of who work here, which amounts to exactly
three (Arithmancy professor; Joseph who technically works in Hogsmeade; her
married-with-children photographer), none of which is a very viable option.
That won't work, either, which leaves her back at square one. For a moment, she
considers experimenting with women again, which was fun the month she did that,
but that's not really the experience she's looking for right now, so she
discards the notion. She picks up her Quick Quotes Quill, which stopped writing
two paragraphs in earlier – very good; that's when she stopped talking. Clearly
this quill is worth the money it cost – and puts it back into her bag, stuffs
the parchment in after it. It's time to go wander about and make some plans.
                                      ~~~
Rita has long since decided that being an Animagus isn't as fun as people make
it out to be. It's pretty neat, being able to become something completely
different and distinctly animalistic, but that's just the marketing for the
product. No one ever mentions the act of the transformation when they talk
about Animagism. The act of transformation is painful as hell, what with the
whole organs compressing (or decompressing, as the case may be) and rearranging
and reshaping and the growth (or discarding) of the exoskeleton and all of
that. But it's ridiculously efficient, all problems aside, and Rita is
(uniquely, she supposes) skilled at getting her belongings to become parts of
her antennae and wings when she's a beetle so that she has them with her when
she transfigures back. This makes it particularly handy for scurrying to the
Great Hall, perching on a wall, and observing all of the students without being
observed in return, which is what Rita does. There's a blonde boy who looks
rather peaked but who has potential, and a gorgeous man-boy with hair that
makes her ache to run her fingers through it, and that famous Quidditch player,
Victor Krum, who would probably let secrets of his team and his sport slip
during sex (handy for her current story!), and Harry Potter who would no doubt
be impossible to take aside, but also a challenge (and Rita loves challenges)
so that's a consideration, and from a distance Severus actually looks really
decent and not terribly greasy.
She and Severus have a history, though, and while he probably doesn't exactly
hate her, she's pretty sure he wouldn't take too kindly to her slipping into
his room, beetle-shaped, and transforming back into herself in his bed and
slipping her clothes off and pushing them under a pillow and waiting for him to
come and fuck her. He was actually pretty good in bed, the one time they hooked
up twenty-one years ago and that other time they hooked up fourteen years ago,
but that was before she got crows-feet (covered up though they might be) and
before he started cutting his hair in this particular style and before the
years worked them apart.
                                      ~♥~

                                                                          1980.
Because of the events of this morning, Severus Snape loves a dead girl. Loves
every aspect of her except for the fact of her death (or maybe it is just her
death as a Potter rather than a Snape).
Rita Skeeter doesn't know that. Rita Skeeter doesn't know much of anything. She
has just been hired on as a reporter (her job at the Ministry failed) and, thus
far, all she has going for her is big hair and big breasts. And her trusty
Quick Quotes Quill. She's on a throwaway assignment, researching the suspected
love life of Dumbledore (a page-20 story, if that, unless something
particularly scandalous is uncovered) when suddenly, boom, the Potters are dead
(except the baby boy) and You-Know-Who is gone, and because she is conveniently
staking out Hogwarts – the home to the widest variety of some of the most
visible reactions to this news – on assignment, she decides to do a little
snooping of her own.
                                      ~~~
"Rumours tell that you and James Potter had a certain… animosity," Rita says,
adjusting her neckline, and Severus Snape snarls at her. One of his 'none of
your business' snarls, she supposes, though it could be a 'if you don't shut
the hell up right now I will quite likely kill you' sort of noise, too. Or
maybe it's because she knows perfectly well why he hates James Potter and he
knows that she knows. She promptly ignores it. "Perhaps due to multiple
altercations between the two of you in your tenure here as students?"
Severus looks as if he is going to answer despite her already knowing, likely
to the (honest) affirmative – he inclines his head slightly – but he does not
say the expected. "Here's a hint: using bigger words does not always equate to
bigger success in the journalism world."
Rita fluffs her hair fussily, and sniffs a bit before smirking at him. "Like
you would know the first thing about the journalism world," she says in the
simperingly-sweet voice she learned from her auntie Dolores, then realises that
by speaking as she had she broke one of the first rules in proper interviewing
technique. Oops. "Or perhaps you would," she adds hastily. "I'm not one to
presume. Er, Mister Snape—"
"Professor," he corrects.
"Professor Snape," she amends. "Why, if you hated James Potter so thoroughly,
did you react so strongly in an unexpected way at his death?"
"What do you want, Miss Skeeter?" Severus asks. "You know I'm not going to
answer these inane questions."
Rita opens her mouth. Closes it again. Feels her tongue work and opens again.
Closes. Opens.
"There is not going to be a reprise of seven years ago," he says, simply, and
she stutters that that isn't what she was on about at all.
And Snape turns and walks away.
                                      ~♥~

                                                                          1973.
Rita is filing paperwork, a task which she despises. She feels that after three
years of work at the Ministry, she should clearly have a better job than this,
but unfortunately that is not the case. Three years, and she's still stuck
forging the Minister's signature on letters and pretending like she doesn't,
three years spent filing because the Ministry is too cheap to go for those
special new magical auto-filing systems. Three years hating her job and hating
her life. Even school was better than this.
Rita has days where she dreams of being a writer. On the scraps of paper at her
desk, the beginnings of a hundred different novels can be found. One day, she
tells herself, I will be published and highly celebrated as the best writer in
wizarding history.
One day.
In the meantime, she is stuck filing official reports from Hogwarts. Pros: she
gets to visit Hogwarts three times in the span of two weeks for the purposes of
completing this particular nasty part of her job. Cons: everything else. Plus,
she kind of hates Hogwarts. Her time there was not a happy time. She spent her
days in dreaming of getting out, and her days out dreaming of getting in, and
altogether that entire time was so unspeakable that she tries to avoid thinking
of Hogwarts at all anymore.
But at least Hogwarts isn't this tiny grimy office.
                                      ~~~
When Rita is at Hogwarts, she can't help but observe the students. They fit
exactly the same moulds they did five years ago: there are the clearly popular
boys with their dashing good looks and sporty prowess, the girls hiking their
robes up on the grass to catch sun and to catch boys, the others.
So many of the others.
There is one that catches her attention. He was a second year when she left
Hogwarts, which she knows because she vaguely remembers him spilling a bowl of
soup on her at some point. There is something about him, something that reminds
her of herself. She takes out her quill (it's a Quick Quotes Quill, which is an
entirely new invention. She loved the idea of it so much that she bought one
even though it cost her half her salary) and quickly writes a note. Drops it on
his book as she walks by, flouncing.
After she finishes her business, she stops by the place where he was before.
For a moment, she can't find him, but she hears a commotion and turns around.
He's righting himself, and from the comments she hears he's been hung upside
down from a tree by one of the sporty types. She waits for some of the students
to disperse, then goes up to him. "I'm Rita Skeeter."
"I'm Severus Snape," he says, sniffling a bit and wiping his hand off on his
robes, then extending it to shake.
She takes it and smiles, a predatory sort of smile she's been practising in her
mirror. "Fancy going for a drink?" she asks, and he says, "Yes."
                                      ~~~
Three whiskeys each in, and Rita is reasonably drunk. She's letting Severus
talk and it isn't very interesting but she can tell that he is relishing
someone being there to listen. And she does listen – it wouldn't count if she
didn't. He may be prattling about some poncy James character who she really
knows nothing about, but it's always obvious when someone is just pretending to
listen. There's something about being seventeen, lost in the world and in your
school, with no one who will listen to you talk that makes you open up to
complete strangers, she realises, and wishes there'd been someone to take her
aside when she was in the same situation.
Four whiskeys in and she knows she should probably stop soon. Four and a half,
and she leans forward to kiss Severus because she's tired of listening.
He makes a funny noise and she realises he's probably never kissed anyone else
before. So she kisses him again, slower and deeper, and pulls away only when he
makes a low noise in the back of his throat.
"D'you want go get a room?" she asks, and his eyes light up. He looks so
pathetically eager, and she feels a sort of misplaced affection for him. "Come
on, then."
The room is dirty, but that's to be expected with the Hogs Head. The sheets
seem to be relatively clean, but that's never certain and for a moment Rita
cringes to herself. But that moment is gone, and she kisses Severus again and
tries to show him with her tongue what he should do with his tongue and it
works, a little bit, and then he's fumbling with her clothes and she's pulling
his robes off and she touches him and he shudders a bit, and she slowly reaches
down to grip his cock and after one, two, three pulls he comes and looks
suitably embarrassed but then he pushes her skirt up and pulls her underwear
down and for someone who probably hasn't done anything of the sort before he's
surprisingly good at working her clit with his fingers, but when he starts to
use his tongue he scrapes her with his teeth and she hisses and he seems to be
spooked because he pulls back and she imagines that he's probably blushing
fiercely but he's touching her again so she closes her eyes and lets her head
fall back against the bed instead of trying to watch and then she's coming
coming coming. They don't fuck properly, but they do kiss once more and then
she falls asleep and when she wakes up there's a note that says "thanks for
everything" by her head and he is gone.
                                      ~♥~

                                                                          1980.
When Snape gets back to his rooms that night, Rita has snuck in and is sitting
on his bed. She says, "Hi," and he either isn't surprised or manages to hide it
because surprise does not register on his face.
"I'm not giving you any answers," he tells her.
"I'm not expecting any." Rita adjusts her neckline again and is pleased to note
that his eyes follow her hand. She licks her lips, slowly. She's been having a
lot of sex lately – 'researching,' she calls it. She wants a book deal. She
wants Snape. He doesn't seem to be doing much of anything, so she breathes,
"Severus."
"It didn't change anything for me," he says, quietly, unbuttoning his
shirtsleeves underneath his robe. "Even though I was less virginal than James
and everyone after, it didn't change everything. They still hated me and made
my life hell. I was constantly relieved that Lily kept stopping them even after
she defected and started dating him."
Rita mentally rolls her eyes. Is he going to want to talk again? That was fine
back when he was seventeen and she was twenty-one and still very unsatisfied
with life, but things are better for her now and she's used to getting sex
without hearing angst first. "I'm sorry," she says, and adjusts her breasts in
her shirt again, which is more low-cut than she's used to which is awkward but
also nice because it showcases her cleavage quite nicely.
"You're not," he replies, and she gives him a sharp glance – she's usually
better at feigning interest. Oh well. She's a fan of reasonable amounts of
honesty in journalism (and life, which she's resolved to live like journalism
now), though, so she gives a sort of affirmative shrug and although he looks
pained at this, he nods.
"Do you want to..." she asks, and he hesitates.
"Yes," he says, finally, after raking his eyes over her silhouette. "Yes, I
believe that sex would be really good right now."
Rita grins at him, pretending like he didn't sound sort of sad, and slowly
unbuttons her shirt, takes a deep breath as some of the tightness on her
breasts is released. He runs a hand through his hair – it's shorter than it was
seven years ago – watching her hungrily. She decides to put on a bit of a show,
slowly unbuttoning and unzipping her skirt, taking off her shoes (making sure
to bend over in a way that kept her hair from obscuring her cleavage) and
stockings, standing up to let the skirt fall down, running her fingers along
the tops of her breasts and dipping them down between them before reaching
behind herself to unfasten her brassiere, letting it fall off as she pushes her
underpants down. She stands there for a moment, only posing a bit, and letting
him take in the sight of her. She knows that she's pretty attractive. Sometimes
she minds the pudge on her stomach that she can't get rid of, but her thighs
are nice and strong and shapely and her breasts are large, sensitive, and rest
nicely in her hands when she cups them, which she does for a moment. She
reaches up and takes the few pins she has in her hair out and shakes her head
slightly to let it all hang, loose and curly. After this is accomplished, she
runs her hands through it and then down her body, over her breasts, down to the
vee of her crotch and her legs.
Snape – Severus – looks at her for a while longer without doing anything, so
Rita walks jauntily up to him and slowly undoes the buttons at the neck of his
robe, pulls it off, kisses him. She tells herself that having naked woman cling
to your front, warm and curvy, is enough to make a man forget about the deaths
of the Potters for a little while. It probably isn't true, especially
considering the magnitude of the situation, but.
But it's a nice thing to think, so she kisses Severus more insistently, and is
pleased enough when he returns the kiss that she bites his lower lip. He
hisses, pulls her closer, kisses her harder, and she compliments herself on a
job well done before stepping back long enough to take off the shirt he was
wearing under his robe. Reaching forward, he covers her breasts with his hands
momentarily, then moves his hands to the side and moves his thumbs roughly over
her nipples. She inhales sharply, and starts slowly taking off his belt, but
pauses when he leans down a bit to kiss the side of her neck, then bite it
gently.
"Feels good," she murmurs, tilting her head to give him better access, and
shivers a bit at the low rumble of an almost-chuckle. This is accompanied by
one of his hands travelling down her back to squeeze her bum, and she twitches
a bit so he pulls away.
Rita looks at Snape for a long moment, and he looks back at her, and then
suddenly everything is that much more fevered. She pulls his belt off, drops it
to one side, and pulls his trousers and underpants down in one go. And then
he's kissing her again, picking her up and moving her to his bed, and Rita is
not okay with the way that he seems so sure of what exactly he's going to do
with her so she pushes him off of her and climbs on top of him and kisses him
again while sitting on his chest. It's sort of an awkward position to hold, but
his hands are in her hair and she can't pull away and she doesn't really want
to pull away but she does, lowers herself slightly and suddenly his hands are
on her hips, gripping her tight, and then one of those hands has moved forward
and she remembers this and it feels so good.
This time she doesn't let him make her come, yet, and she doesn't touch him but
she does slide carefully down on him and fuck him, slowly at first, twisting
her hips and just feeling, but then he pulls her down for a rough kiss and she
goes faster.
When he comes, he says "Lily," and although she is so close, she stops and lets
him slip out of her, sits down next to him and draws her knees up against
herself, props her chin on them. For a while, she doesn't let herself think –
it isn't terribly hard, because her brain is still lust-fogged – but slowly,
the thought comes to her: Severus Snape is in love with a dead girl.
She is proud of herself for not confronting him directly with this theory, and
happy when he rolls over to bring her off.
                                      ~♥~

                                                                          1994.
Unable to find anyone suitable in the Great Hall (Rita did try and catch the
eye of Cedric, but all he was looking at was Viktor Krum, and she felt suddenly
disenchanted with the whole seducing-a-student thing. She's done it before and,
when she thinks about it, she doesn't really feel the need to face a teenager's
totally involved and entirely inconsequential problems in order to finish her
book), Rita sits, beetle-form, at the top of a banister and takes stock.
If she's to be honest with herself, what she really wants to do is to sneak
into Severus's room as she'd briefly considered earlier. As she thinks about it
in more depth, she realises that, despite all the excuses she has (he wouldn't
want to, she hasn't seen him in years, this is such a bad idea especially as
she isn't technically supposed to be in the castle anymore (which she feels is
an overreaction on Dumbledore's part because, really, the article she wrote on
his romantic life wasn't that incendiary), it is inevitable that she will wind
up going. So she does go. He's pretty good, if he does fuck her, and even if he
doesn't... well. No harm, no foul, right?
She waits for him in his workroom, naked and leisurely stroking her clit to
pass time. She isn't masturbating to get off, she's just maintaining a low
stage of arousal until he gets there.
When he gets there, he notices her sitting in his desk chair right off. His
mouth falls open, works a bit, and she smiles smugly. He is so going to fuck
her.
"No," he says when he finds his voice, and she is surprised.
She tries to think of something, anything to say to convince him, and settles
for, "It will feel like a private victory against Dumbledore."
He stares at her for a moment, and then: "You know nothing about me," Snape
states, flatly, and seriously, his voice makes her shiver inside.
Rita licks her finger, raises her eyebrows at him, teases her clit and then
dips it into herself and rubs the moisture she draws out into one of her
nipples. "Really."
Snape stares at her for a moment as she repeats the action, then sucks on the
finger, swirling her tongue around it and giving him the hottest look she can.
She's forty-two years old and knows that she looks it, but her crow's feet are
mostly delicate behind her makeup and her breasts are still relatively firm and
her stomach was soft even before she aged. So she inhales, brings one leg up on
top of the desk, and silently urges him on.
"Really," he tells her, but his voice is slightly strained and she can tell she
has him. She's scarcely able to tell him that she disagrees before suddenly
he's murmuring an incantation and then he's naked, too, and half hard and kind
of sallow and his hair is greasier up close and although he was never
particularly muscular he's got a softer body, and his nose is as long as ever,
but she doesn't particularly care. She beckons him closer.
There isn't any finesse, this time. He doesn't kiss her and she doesn't try and
kiss him and she tells herself that it is better this way. He strides over to
the desk and she slips out of the chair, to her knees, and wordlessly takes his
cock into her mouth, sucking on the head until he's totally hard. She licks
around the base, grips it with her hand, gives it one or two experimental
pulls, then licks her hand. She wraps her mouth around the tip and her hand
around the base and twists with her hand and sucks with her mouth, then licks
with her tongue until she finds a rhythm that suits her. She feels his hands in
her hair and speeds up, then slows down again when he pulls her hair, continues
on for a moment longer, then pulls away. She glances up at him and he hauls her
up, presses her against the desk with one hand and pinches her nipples with the
other, but she pushes his hand away.
He gives her a look that asks if she's ready, so she says, "I've been ready
since before you got here," because really, that's why she'd been touching
herself so languidly. He nods, once and pushes roughly into her in a way that
makes her cry out more because it's uncomfortable than because it feels good.
He picks her up, with difficulty (she's gained weight; he's lost muscle) and
sits her on top of his desk, then leans over her and she wraps her legs around
him and scratches his back and he starts moving inside her and it's still
slightly uncomfortable and for a moment she's worried about getting splinters
but then she manages to work her hand between their bodies and works her clit
again, sharper and stronger than before. He's hitting her in a way that she
hasn't gotten much of in a few years, even back before the dry spell, and it
feels weird but it's mostly a good kind of weird and she lets her head loll
back with the hope that he'll start kissing and biting her neck again but those
hopes are mostly unfounded and when she looks at him his eyes are screwed shut
and he's got an almost offensive look of concentration on his face so she
closes her eyes so that she doesn't have to see. Tightening the grip her legs
have on him, she pulls him closer and this feels more like she's used to but it
obstructs her hand so she pulls that away and uses it to prop herself up (her
other hand is around his back). She squeezes some muscles around him and
suddenly it's feeling really really good but then his rhythm falters and her
muscles relax and then he comes, slumping against her and she has to push him
off in order to get herself the rest of the way off.
Maybe not so brilliant as she remembers.
Rita feels entirely unsatisfied even though she did eventually come, almost as
if she needs to have sex again, but she ignores it. "I know you maybe better
than you think," she tells him, remembering twenty-one years ago and the fact
that he used to be in love with Lily Potter and the fact that he doesn't know
that she knows this.
Snape stares at her, breathing heavily, before going to pull his robes over his
head without putting clothes on underneath first. He starts listing off reasons
why she definitely does not and, through it, reveals even more about himself
and she thinks, show a seventeen year old boy probably the only kindness he's
known in seven years and twenty-one years later he's still reacting to that and
tells herself that if she were a better reporter, she'd be writing this down.
She gives him a meaningful look, and he stops mid-sentence. "You really do know
too much about me," he says, as if this is the first time the thought has
occurred to him.
Rita nods. "I know," she says and then, feeling a little daring and more than a
little ridiculous, follows that with, "Maybe it's fate."
"I don't believe in fate."
"Neither do I," she says, and she has another flashback to when he was
seventeen. He is still so dour, and for the second time in her life she
experiences wave of misplaced affection towards him, so she decides to try and
make him laugh. She reveals: "That's why I only slept with Sybil Trelawney
once."
This startles a chuckle out of him, and she is proud. "That is both
attractive," he says, and she can hear him breathe in through his nose, "and
disgusting." He pauses, thinking, and then asks, "Did she try and read your
fortune in your breasts?"
Rita laughs, brightly. "I kind of wish she did, actually," she tells him,
thinking about this. "That would have been hilarious."
She falls silent then, and so does he, and they give each other long,
contemplative looks. The seventeen-year-old charm is still present after
twenty-one years, because Snape looks away first and says, "I've regretted so
many things."
Rita is ridiculously tempted to say, like never telling Lily that you loved
her? but he doesn't know that she knows about that, for one, and for two, she
doesn't feel like being cruel. Plus, on the off-chance that he actually did
tell Lily, Rita would look stupid. Instead, she says, "I never did regret you."
They fall silent again, and Snape touches her hand, so she accuses him of being
a sentimentalist at heart.
"No, I'm not," he tells her, very firmly and almost intimidating.
She sighs. "I really do know too much about you"
"Maybe."
"Definitely," she says, and doesn't mention her showing-kindness-at-seventeen
theory.
"Seriously," he says, slowly, and she isn't sure whether he's agreeing with her
or disagreeing with her.
Rita sighs a little bit again, and so does Snape, and they sit in silence for a
while longer except this time the silence is pretty awkward. Finally, she tells
him, "Even though I'm kind of loose with words, I will never sell your
secrets," and she's talking about Lily again but he doesn't know that.
"Why not?" he asks, and she wonders at the fact that he sounds almost bitter.
"Nothing seems sacred to you."
"Yeah," she says, slightly angrily, and because he sort of offended her, she
follows that with, "But I don't want to offend the dead."
He looks at her for a long moment and there isn't an instance of realisation
dawning on his face so much as resignation. "Lily."
"She never caused me complications in paperwork," Rita tells him, referring to
her old job at the Ministry and not explaining at all how she knows about her.
Snape looks at her for a while longer before nodding, and she half-smiles,
half-smirks back at him.
                                      ~~~

Rita puts Maeve and Roger and their buxom bouncing sex aside after two hours of
staring at the page and not writing. Decides, now is the time to be less
trashy, more classy and puts down the Quick Quotes Quill, pulls out a new piece
of parchment and a regular quill and inkpot. She sighs a bit, licks the tip of
the quill and inks it, and stares off in the distance for awhile before
starting to write. Jasmine Katarina Roebling is about to make a foray into the
world of non-smutty literature.
                                      ~~~
It turns out that, while the market for compelling erotic reads is rather
large, there is almost no market for Jasmine Katarina to write a regular book.
After she gets the news from her agent, Rita puts the manuscript away, sighs a
little, takes out her trusty Quick Quotes Quill, and goes off to interview
Draco Malfoy about Harry Potter once more.
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