The Life and Lies of Rita Skeeter

March/April/May/June/July

2009-01-27T08:36:19Z

March 2 - Lunch with Sybill

March 12 - Owl from Gawain
Owl from Shelby

March 16 - Runs into Millie while buying jewellery for the Benefit.
Cultural Centre Benefit Dance.

March 20 - Runs into Cormac in Hogsmeade.

March 28 - Owl to Shelby Fawcett.

April 1 - Runs into Pansy Parkinson in Diagon.

April 15 - Owl from Rosmerta.

April 24 - Taste testing dinner party at the 3Bs.

May 16 - Owl from Fleur and Bill Weasley.

May 18 - Owl to Aneglina Johnson.

May 19 - Owl from Draco Malfoy.
Lights a candle to remember the war.
A drink at the 3Bs

May 21 - Rita sends out invitations.

June 1 - Rita's party at the Sweet Shop.

June 9 - Draco's birthday party.

July 6 - Owl from Lucius.

July 7 - Rita and Lucius meet for tea.

July 14 - Owl from Gawan

July 21 - Visiting the Isle of Skye with Gawain.

(Why do I always want to refer to the 3Bs as the 'Five Alarm'? *snerk*)

Ron and Susan, lol

2008-08-12T16:21:35Z

I was watching SVU yesterday when I noticed something amusing.

Sprung! :P

January/February

2008-08-08T05:03:14Z

Jan 9 - Rita sorts out her desk and her brain.

Jan 14 - Lunch with Andromeda.

Feb 6 - Daily Prophet, Sunday Roast
Studying at Hogwarts, Rita chats with Snape's portrait.

Feb 9 - Owl from Gawain Robards

Tuesday, late Feb - Owl to Sybill.

November/December

2008-06-01T15:56:18Z

5 November - Rita attends bonfire night in Hogsmeade

8 November - Owl from Guy

November 13 - Guy's 50th

November 17 - Owl from Hermione

November 19 - Meeting with Hermione

November 25 - Owl from Stella

November 26 - In Hogsmeade with Allan and meeting RB

December 28 - Owl to various about NYE bash

December 31 - Party!

Rita's October

2008-04-06T04:55:48Z

Oct 1 - Rita attends Narcissa's birthday party, escorted by Cormac.

Oct 8 - Lunch with Guy.

Oct 15 - Attends the Autumn Ball and hangs about after the ceremony.
Post-ball, post-coital conversation with Cormac.

Oct 22 - Chat with Minerva about the Hogwarts rebuilding etc

September 1998

2008-03-01T15:37:25Z

Sept 4 - Meets the Prophet's new intern, Padma Patil

Sept 8 - Lunch and then some with Cormac

Sept 17 - Owls to Irma Pince and Fleur Weasley

Sept 18 - Owl from Hermione

Sept 20 - Meeting with Fleur to discuss Magical Equity

Sept 22 - Lunch with Irma Pince
Owl from Narcissa

Sept 23 - Lunch with Hermione

Sept 24 - Owl to Cormac

Sept 29 - Visiting Stella in Southport.

Notes to Self

2008-02-06T07:40:31Z

Or things that have been written in my threads that I or others may need later.

- The editor of the Prophet is named Lysander Madley.
- There is a bar in Diagon, close to Gringotts, called the Pheonix Bar. It caters to the business/upmarket crowd.

August Threads

2008-02-06T07:35:42Z

August 4 - Owl from Sybill

August 7 - Runs into Andromeda in Knockturn Alley

August 12 - Rita attends the Quidditch match

August 13 - Gives Millicent Bullstrode some fashion advice.

August 27 - Owl from Cormac

lol superhero meme

2008-01-05T16:33:39Z

LMAO!

Superhero Team Quiz

LiveJournal Username

Your Primary Super Power

Cape?

Identitiy

Origin

Location of Head Quarters

Primary Costume/Uniform Colors

Why are you a Superhero?

Your Superheroic Codename

The veteran grim member of the team

rar_michael

The sexist and crass but annoyingly effective one

rar_andromeda

The bright-eyed novice or sidekick

rar_hannah

The teammate that will eventually go evil or insan

rar_morag

The inept yet determined/reoccurring supervillain

rar_avery

The sinister Arch-Villain and team's greatest foe

rar_gawain

The perky civilian that keeps getting kidnapped

rar_penelope

How often does your team actually 'save the day'?

This Fun Quiz created by Shannon at BlogQuiz.Net

Capricorn Horoscope at DailyHoroscopes.Biz

July Threads

2008-01-01T15:55:25Z

July 2 - Rita visits Lucius in St Mungos.

July 4 - Lucius' trial.

July 7 - Owl from Sybill.

July 8 - Tea and gossip with Sybill
Finds out that Severus has a portrait. Has a conversation with it... er, him. Or something..

July 18- Interview with Draco.

July 19 - Owl to Neville.

July 22 - Interview with Neville.

July 30 - Interview with Luna.

July 31 - Owl from Sybill.

Rita's June

2007-12-02T12:57:53Z

June 14 - Owls to Luna, Neville and Draco
Owl from Narcissa.

June 19 - Chat with Draco.

June 20 - Chat with Neville

June 24 - Tea with Narcissa.

June 29 - Chat with Luna.

May Threads

2007-11-04T12:43:29Z

May 19 - Morning after the battle. Rita visits Hogwarts.

May 21 - Rita wa;ks to work, and stops for a short conversation with Ollivander.

May 29 - Runs into Aurora Sinistra in Hogsmeade.

May 30 - Attends Severus Snape's funeral.

Rita's Character Sheet

2007-10-23T12:55:49Z

Copied from authors for my own reference.

Player Info

Name: Angie
Personal LJ: featherxquill
YM Contact Name: goat_with_a_breadknife (yes, really)
Email: featherxquill@gmail.com
Time Zone/Location: Sydney, AU (GMT +10)
Availability for Playing: Beginning of the week is better for me at the moment, but that will change when uni finishes. Sometimes time zones means threads take a while, but I hate leaving things unfinished, so 99% of the time, they'll get finished :)

Basics

Name: Marguerite Ann Skeeter
Nicknames: Everyone calls her Rita. She signs her name with an 'R'. Very few people would even be aware of what her full name is.
Age: 47
Birthday: May 27, 1951 (Gemini)
Blood: Muggleborn
Gender: Female
Wand Type: Hawthorne and dragon heartstring
Patronus: A snake that may or may not be a real species. In her mind, at least, it's colourful, fast and deadly.
Boggarts: Ever since she became an animagus, it's been a giant pin. She hasn't seen one since well before the war, though, so she's not sure if her greatest fear is still so irrational and superficial.
Affiliations: The Daily Prophet, if that could be called one.

Health

Disabilities/Handicaps: Years of flying have taken their toll on her shoulder muscles. She has trouble lifting anything heavy.
Physical Health: Apart from the aforementioned, fine.

Psychology

Extrovert/Introvert: She's certainly not shy, and has always been more of an extrovert that plays at being an introvert. She's always loved people, and loved attention, but knows that the best way to find things out is to stay quiet. She calls attention to herself with her dress, and will turn on the charm when needed, but just as often stays quiet and observes. This last year, her tendency to remain quiet and observe has become more prominent than in the past - especially in public places.
Phobias/Fears: Coleopterists with their magnifying glasses and their big, shiny pins. Even when she's not transformed, pins make her slightly uncomfortable, as do birds. This last year, being followed. She formed a habit of stopping to look in shop windows for long periods of time, often giving into paranoia that she'd been caught out and someone was tailing her.
Mental Health: Could be better. A muggleborn who escaped capture by having someone speak for her, she's been constantly afraid of being caught out. Every day she had to walk through Diagon Alley past the beggars and watch other muggleborns herded into the Ministry and carted off to Azkaban, and know she could (or maybe should) have been one of them. While articles about the might of magic and Undesirable Number One were printed under her byline.

Personality

Goals/Dreams: Before Rita even made it to Hogwarts, she learned what certain wizards thought of witches with muggle parents. She invented a wizarding relative that day, and decided she could be whatever she wished as long as people never really knew her heritage. Her goal has always been success, and she's never really cared what it took to get there. With everything she's had to do this last year, though, she'll be rethinking her definition of success.
Quirks/Habits: Toying with spoons/straws/etc in her drinks, tapping her nails when bored, being distracted by pretty lights and shiny things, glancing in every mirror she passes. Lately, checking her lipstick charms in a handheld compact, more to make sure there is no one behind her than anything else (as if her cosmetic charms would be any less than perfect).
Likes: Gossip, history, reading, salads, power, film noir, cocktails, shopping, sex, flowers, shiny fabric.
Dislikes: Censorship, being contradicted, being ignored when she doesn't want to be, not getting her way, hypocrisy (though she is often hypocritical herself).
First Impression: It depends on the context of the meeting. Very few people have their first impression of Rita from meeting her in person. Most know her articles, whether they love her or hate her, and react to her accordingly. If someone were to meet her not knowing who she was (or recognising her name), they'd be greeted by a charming, flirtatious woman with a sharp, quick wit.
Philosophy of Life: Knowledge is power.
Phrases they use often: 'Darling', 'Oh?'. She swears a lot, but it's mostly in her head ~~except when she's getting off~~, and with friends she'll sometimes go on about herself/things she's heard/etc without much pause for breath, or without needing much encouragement.

Background

Role During the War: When the muggleborns were rounded up for the registry, Rita found a pureblood wizard to speak for her and say they were related in some way (probably Lucius Malfoy, based on a theory discussed in this essay, but which I still need to work out the details of with Lucius' muggle). She spent the last year working for the Prophet after the successful release of her book. The paper was heavily censored by the puppet Ministry, and churning out news that was little more than propaganda made her almost physically sick, but there wasn’t much she could do about it if she wanted to stay alive.
Thoughts of the future: At first, Rita will be reeling, exhausted, simply trying to get her work done (a reporter's job doesn't go away with the end of the war) and adjusting to the thought that she doesn't have to live in fear any more. In the future, she will decide that she wants to dig deeper into history, and write about it - not just trash but fact. This desire will come from her experiences this last year. She spent quite a few months working on her biography of Dumbledore, having started the groundwork before his death. She read a lot of recent wizarding history in her groundwork, and was surprised by how much she hadn’t already known (for example, the fact that British wizards don’t seem to know much at all about Grindelwald, including Hermione, which would suggest that there are very few history books in English dedicated to him). As the year progressed, she watched her home become more and more like Nazi Germany, and came to wonder if it’s partly this lack of knowledge - this idea of history as something dead and unimportant (she, along with many others, was taught magical history by a ghost, after all, who droned on and on endlessly and put everyone to sleep and emphasised the idea of history being completely boring) - that has caused wizards to make the same mistakes over and over again, and live with the same prejudices. She thinks if people were only a bit more educated, things might not have happened the way they did.
General Plans: She has no desire to leave the Prophet, but she wants to make sure that the press' status as the Fourth Estate is restored.

Family

Parents: Patricia and Alistair Skeeter (both muggles, still alive but very much retired).
Sibling(s): One sister, Stella. Younger, also a witch, married to and living as a muggle.
Children: None.
Family History: Rita grew up in York, the elder daughter of rather academic parents. Her father became a lecturer with the Centre for Medieval Studies at York University, an expert in medieval literature, her mother a school teacher. They met and began dating shortly after Patricia finished high school. Alistair was studying at university. His education was cut short by the onset of World War 2, in which he fought, the pair marrying in a quick, quiet ceremony before he left. Patricia was a volunteer in the Women's Land Army during the war years, thankfully working in the countryside when the worst of the German air raids hit, because their home was severely damaged by the bombing. Rita and Stella were born in 51 and 55 respectively, as rationing was beginning to end and the couple could afford to rebuild their life. Alistair went on to finish his education, supplementing Patricia's teaching wage with part-time work of his own. Rita's childhood memories are full of her mother saying no, of hiding food away and refusing to buy the dresses with frills and bows, something that only made her more extravagant and determined to do well for herself in adulthood. Her childhood was also full of stories of the recent and distant past, and her taste for any sort of human tale was developed at an early age.

Appearance

Height: 5'3
Weight Average
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Blonde, usually styled in ringlets
Face & Complexion: Pale, always made up. She has a fondness for crimson lipstick.
Build: Slight
Defining Marks: Glasses, long nails, an abstract tattoo of a beetle on her left hip, rather like this.
Dress Style: Rather femme fatale. She is fond of satin and lace and feathers, stockings and high heels. Her image is very important to her, and she's incredibly vain. She doesn't own a pair of pants.
Possessions always on this person: Her acid-green quill, her wand.
Manner of Speech: It depends on where she is and who she's with. Usually light, subtle, amused, but occasionally passionate and sometimes angry. When she's mad, she tends to swear a lot.
Manner of Movement: Fairly direct, quick, and somewhat expressive with her hands.

Romantic/ Sexual

Marital Status: Single
Sexual Preference: Bisexual
Ever had sex: Of course. Rita is a very sexual person.
Believes that a person shouldn't have sex before marriage: What century are these people living in?
Believe in casual sex: That's the best kind.
Turn ons: Intelligence, subtlety, seduction, power and power games, ink kink, talking dirty, the smell of a person.
Turn offs: Stupid or dull people, too much sentimentality, expecting too much of her emotionally.
Past Relationships: Rita doesn't do relationships. She's had plenty of flings with wizards, witches and muggles, but she is always discreet with her private affairs. She emphatically denies ever having been in love.
Current Relationship: None.
General: Rita is quite hedonistic and very much loves power. She's quite a Dominant, though not in a way that enjoys inflicting physical pain. She likes to drive people crazy, likes to mess with their heads. She can be nurturing in a certain way - she enjoys teaching, enjoys coaxing desire out of people or pushing them until they snap and give in to the animal. At least, she thinks this is nurturing. Often, it turns out being rather emotionally destructive, but she's good at not noticing that until she's in far too deep and doesn't know how to change it.

School

House: Ravenclaw, class of '69.
Friends: Nothing set, yet. Anyone who was at school with her interested in developing some backstory? Has some sort of history with Lucius Malfoy (to be established), but I don't know that he would count as a 'friend'.
Enemies: Ditto.
Favourite subjects: Transfiguration, charms, history of magic (she enjoyed the research and essay writing for it, at least, if not the lectures). She would also have been good at DADA, though it wasn't one of her favourites. Rather gifted at transfiguration, she did well in any class heavily focussed on wandwork, and anything theoretical that involved lots of writing.
Least favourite subjects: Care of Magical Creatures, Potions. She wouldn't have taken Arithmancy, but if she had she'd have been exceptionally bad at it (she has no head for figures, she says, unless they're the muscular or curvaceous kind).
Favourite Professor: McGonagall, most definitely. There was nothing more satisfying than getting one of those rare smiles from the Professor after a particularly good piece of wandwork.
Least favourite professor: Always thought Slughorn a bit creepy.
Clubs/organizations (if any): Nothing that's been established in canon as a school club, though if something took her interest she'd have been part of it.
Favourite school moment: Being the first student to successfully transfigure her match into a needle in her first lesson.
Most embarassing moment: In her third year, Rita unthinkingly mentioned her parents’ occupations to a fourth year Gryffindor she was helping with transfiguration homework, without the benefit of the invented relative. Two days later, she’d been teased mercilessly for being a ‘bookish little mudblood’. She took off to one of the bathrooms to cry, and Moaning Myrtle popped out of the faucet, all sympathy, taking a liking to her fellow bespectacled Ravenclaw, saying they were just like each other. The following day, Rita started a vicious rumour about the Gryffindor boy and transfigured herself a more fashionable pair of frames. She never cried in a Hogwarts bathroom again.

10 Facts about Rita Skeeter

2007-10-07T13:15:39Z

1. Rita’s earliest memory is of eating a banana. She remembers the colour vividly, the peeling, the sweet creamy taste. She can’t have been much older than two. Born in 1951, she’s too young to have experienced the worst of post World War II rationing, but she knows now that restrictions on bananas ended last of all. Her childhood memories are full of her mother saying no, of hiding food away, of refusing to buy the dresses with the frills and bows. Those memories have only made her more extravagant.

2. She met Bellatrix Black on the Hogwarts Express. She’d seen her on the train platform, all black hair and head held high, wearing perfect new robes, and wanted to be her. Covering her own muggle gear hastily with the robe she’d been fitted for, she’d managed to seat herself in the same compartment. After Bella’s first three mentions of ‘filthy muggle scum’, Rita invented a wizard relative from France. When they were sorted into different houses, Rita didn’t think they’d ever get to be friends, but her desire to be like Bellatrix never really went away.

3. Just before her thirtieth birthday, Rita found out she was pregnant. She’d slept with a high-ranking Ministry official with well-known Deatheater sympathies. With Voldemort on the rampage and the blood of the child hers, there was no question but to get rid of it. A few months later, the Dark Lord was defeated by year-old Harry Potter and the world became less frightening overnight. Rita thinks it was probably a good thing - she’s about the least maternal woman who ever lived - but every now and then (like when she watched little second years running up and down the halls of Hogwarts during the triwizard tournament) she wonders who the child could have been.

4. Rita’s main issue with Albus Dumbledore, even before writing the biography, was his hypocrisy. She’d always thought his quiet campaign for the rights of muggleborns and halfbreeds admirable, but she despised his lack of protest against the idea that all Slytherins were muggle-haters, blood-purists and Deatheaters. She’s never seen how labelling people those things before they even opened their mouths would help prevent them from becoming so.

5. She hates censorship. People have always presumed that because she writes gossip, she doesn’t really care what restrictions the Ministry have put on the press’ freedoms, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Gossip, she thinks, can be every bit as damaging as fact, and is a powerful tool in bringing down people who deserve it. And Ministry censorship has never done anything but get in the way of the various arrangements she’s had with people about what to write.

6. Rita loves to walk almost as much as she loves to fly (with wings, of course - she’s hopeless on a broomstick). Over the years, she’s made a point of walking to and from work every day, a habit she wasn’t game to break in the last year, thinking changes in her behaviour might make people suspicious. Every day since the Muggleborn Register was created, the walk felt like death. One morning she was approached by a woman with three children under ten, and asked for a spare galleon. The woman’s husband had been Kissed right in front of her for making a fuss at his trial, and now she needed money to pay someone to watch the children while she worked at the Ministry to put food on the table. Rita parted with the money, but didn’t go to work that day. Instead she spent it curled in a ball on her couch, stripped naked to rid herself of all her Things, trying to freeze, trying to starve, trying to imagine herself in a cell at Azkaban to rid herself of the guilt that came from being warm and safe.

7. She loves vegetables. Like her obsession with pretty lights and shiny things, this is probably a beetle thing. Sometimes, she’ll subsist for days on nothing but salads, or celery and cucumber sticks with cream cheese. When she does eat meat, she tends to stick to fish and chicken. Occasionally, she’ll eat red meat, but not often.

8. She doesn’t own a pair of trousers. For Rita, it’s always skirts, stockings and heels. She’s a woman, and she wants to feel like one every moment of the day. Her getting-ready rituals are very important to her. She always wears her best underwear. She loves the feel of satin against her skin, and couldn’t bear to have chipped nails or windblown hair. Whenever she passes a mirror, she can’t help but glance at herself and admire her own reflection.

9. In her third year, Rita met Moaning Myrtle. In a long library session with one of the Gryffindor fourth years who needed help with his transfiguration homework, Rita had unthinkingly mentioned her parents’ occupations without the benefit of the ‘but Mum only chose to give up magic when she married Dad - she’s related to the Dubois family.’ Gryffindors didn’t care about that sort of thing, after all. Two days later, she’d been teased mercilessly for being a ‘bookish little mudblood’ and she’d taken off to one of the bathrooms to claw angry tears from her eyes. Myrtle had popped out of the faucet, all sympathy, and taken a liking to her fellow bespectacled Ravenclaw, saying they were just like each other. The following day, Rita started a vicious rumour about the Gryffindor boy and transfigured herself a more fashionable pair of frames. She never cried in a Hogwarts bathroom again.

10. These days, no matter what she writes or who she tears apart with words, she tells herself she is nothing like Bellatrix Black.