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"Thank you, Mr. Diggory," Snape said quietly, amidst the snores of the other paintings. "Feel free to accompany them back to their dormitories. Or not. I don't much care."
Cedric nodded to Snape. Snape knew the ghost didn't like to talk to him. Something about a ghost talking to a painting seemed to disturb the boy. Nothing technically human on either end, Snape figured. Cedric dismissed himself and walked through the locked wooden door.
One of the paintings near Snape stopped snoring.
"He isn't precisely like his father, is he?" a thoughtful, older voice said.
Snape settled back into his portrait. "He's only like him in the worst of ways. He's a Potter."
"Now who's passing easy judgments?" the other voice said with a hint of teasing.
"It's not an easy judgment. I've watched him. He's as arrogant and foolish as the others that bore his last name. Don't pretend you don't see it."
"I see that he came to ask for your help."
Snape nodded grudgingly. "One can only hope that that instinct has a chance to mature. He asked for help only when he ran out of other options. And he didn't, you'll notice, actually take any of my advice."
The older voice was silent for a moment, and then asked, "Will you tell Minerva?"
"Perhaps," Snape said, considering. "Perhaps not. For now, I will do as I've done all along. I will watch."
"You believe there is a chance he and his friends might succeed, then?"
Snape didn't answer. A minute later, the older voice spoke again. "He is being manipulated. He doesn't know it."
Snape nodded. "I assumed there was no point in telling him."
"You're probably right, Severus. You have an instinct for such things."
Snape replied pointedly, "I learned when not to talk from the master, Albus."
"Indeed you did, Severus. Indeed you did."
15. The Muggle Spy
Martin J. Prescott was a Reporter. He always thought of the word as if it was capitalized. For Martin, being a Reporter was more than a job. It was his identity. He wasn't just another face reading from a teleprompter or another name next to a dateline. He was what the producers in the age of the twenty-fourhour news cycle called 'a personality'. He accented the news. He framed it. He colored it. Not in any negative way, or so he firmly believed. He simply added that subtle dash of flair that made news into News, in other words, something people might want to watch or read. For one thing, Martin J. Prescott had the look. He wore white button-down shirts with jeans, and he usually had his shirt sleeves rolled up a bit. If he wore a tie, it was invariably of an impeccable style, but loosened just a tad: enough to say yes, I've been wor king extremely hard, but I respect my viewers enough to maintain a degree of professionalism.Martin was thin, youngish, with sharp, handsome features and very dark hair that always looked windblown and fabulous. But, as Martin was proud of saying to the attendees at the occasional Press Club breakfast, his appearance wasn't what made him a Reporter. It was his sense of people, and of news. He knew how to plug the one into the other in a way that produced the biggest emotional jolt.
But the last thing that made Martin J. Prescott a Reporter was that he loved the story. Where the other high-paid and high-profile news faces had long since assembled a team of lackeys to tramp far and wide, collecting footage and filming interviews while they themselves huddled in their dressing rooms reading about their ratings, Martin prided himself in doing all his own travel and research. The truth of it was that Martin enjoyed the reporting, but what he absolutely loved was the chase. Being a member of the press was like being a hunter, except that the former aimed with a camera rather than a gun. Martin liked to stalk his prey himself. He delighted in the pursuit, in the blurry jostle of handheld camera footage, the shouted, perfectlytimed question, the long stakeout of a courtroom back door or a suspicious hotel room. Martin did it all himself, often alone, often filming himself in the act, providing his viewers breathless moments of high tension and confrontation. No one else did it like him, and this had made him famous.
Martin had, as they say of the very best Reporters, a nose for news. His nose told him that the story he was chasing right now, if it pa
But no, he told himself. One mustn't think of such things now. He had a job to do. A difficult and outrageously demanding job, but Martin took pleasure in the sense that the hardest part was behind him. After months of plotting and arranging, pla
Still crouched at the perimeter of the forest, Martin checked the co