"The truth is not always the most important thing, and there are many truths that ordinary people are better off not knowing. Your reporting is good. It holds attention, it feels real, and it moves people in useful directions."
He continued in the same conversational register.
"Write about whoever you like, however you like. I won't restrict your work. I can even provide funding. But when I have a need, you provide a small service. That's the whole of it. Are we clear?"
Skeeter blinked rapidly, the only movement available to her, as many times as she could manage. Yes. Understood. Completely understood. She wanted to be in any room other than this one.
Tom withdrew whatever he had been doing. His wand touched her right hand lightly, and sensation flooded back into her limbs all at once, a tingling rush from fingertips to shoulder.
She had not drawn a full breath of relief before her right hand rose on its own, closed around her own throat, and squeezed.
The pressure was complete and immediate. She clawed at the hand with her left and found she could not move that one either.
"Still having thoughts?" Tom watched with the expression of someone mildly curious about how an experiment resolves. He made no move toward her.
The blackout was very close when Skeeter's internal resistance finally, fully, and without any remaining reservation, collapsed. The hand released. She hit the floor and stayed there, breathing in ragged pulls.
Now she understood the full structure of the arrangement. Any thought directed against Tom's interests would be enforced against herself. By herself.
Her own hand.
"Off you go," Tom said. "I'll be in touch when there's something to discuss. Nothing about today goes into print."
He waved once. The sealed door swung open.
Skeeter hauled herself out of the basement and moved through the house at something between a walk and a controlled fall, not stopping until she was outside the grounds entirely, and not Apparating until the worst of the shaking had passed.
If she had known this was where the evening ended, she would not have attended the funeral for any story in the world. She had traded access to actual news for the privilege of being grateful she was still alive. The two things were not comparable.
She looked at her right hand for a long time.
Whatever was in it now, she did not dare to feel resentment toward it. She redirected every feeling inward, toward herself, the only safe target available.
...
"Astoria? What are you doing in here?"
Acquiring one journalist had taken Tom perhaps twenty minutes and would cost him almost no ongoing effort. Skeeter lacked the nerve to betray anyone and he had made certain she also lacked the option. A basic mental ward would handle the security from here.
He had spent some time with the Lilys afterward, then gone upstairs to wash and sleep. He pushed open his bedroom door and found the duvet occupied, a small shape under the covers with a head emerging from one end.
Astoria looked at him and offered a smile, which then gave way to something more like complaint. "Daphne was being impossible. She wanted to watch something loud and kept making comments through all of it, and I just couldn't anymore, so I used a Stunning Spell. She's very quiet now. But then I couldn't sleep either, so."
Tom's eye twitched once.
She had Stunned her own sister.
He had always thought Astoria's disposition was fundamentally too gentle for Slytherin, that she belonged somewhere kinder and less strategic. He was revising that assessment.
"Did you want company, or just the room?"
"Just don't mind me." Astoria shook her head. "Rest normally. I'll sleep when I'm tired."
He nodded, went through to wash up, and came back to find she had not moved. He settled in, and they talked about the coming term, the things they were looking forward to, and the things Tom was not, chief among them the underage duelling tournament that was going to consume more of his attention than he wanted to give it. Astoria had reservations about one particular aspect of it, but agreed eventually to help manage Daphne once Fleur arrived, to keep the two of them from sharpening themselves against each other constantly.
The conversation drifted and slowed. Astoria pulled the duvet closer around her shoulders, and something in the gesture made a thought surface in Tom's mind.
"By the way," he said, as if it had just occurred to him, "when did you last take the strengthening tonic?"
Astoria tilted her head. "Late November, I think. Why?"
"No reason. I just didn't want you to forget. The temperature's been irregular, easier to catch something this time of year. Take another dose in a couple of days."
"Alright, I will."
A few more exchanges, and her voice began to lose its edge, quieter with each response, until she had gone entirely still. She had turned at some point and was holding his arm with both of hers, breathing steadily.
Tom lay on his back looking at the ceiling. He did not move for a long time.
After about half an hour, he carefully extracted his arm and began examining Astoria without waking her. A systematic check, thorough and unhurried, nothing improper in intent. He had done this kind of diagnostic work before, for patients in the Flamel house, for himself.
Gradually, his expression changed.
His brow came together in a way it rarely did.
The picture was considerably worse than his estimates had prepared him for.
How had it come to this already?