256 Interview with a beetle(2)

Rita noticed this and could only drop the subject to get back on track as while she might be able to get away with offending one of these hegemons slightly both at once was political suicide. "Very well then can you tell us how you resurrected the ghosts?" she asked with a small amount of bite to show her displeasure at his manipulation. "I need to correct this misunderstanding , the ghosts haven't been resurrected at all. All I have done is allowed them to have a corporeal form. So while they appear alive the truth could not be further away." he said with a smile ignoring her displeasure.-

Dumbledore didn't seem surprised at this correction but both Fudge and Rita were stunned. "Wouldn't it be easier to fully resurrect them instead?" she asked curiously. Nick shook his head "To resurrect a ghost nothing short of creating a whole new living body perfectly suited to the spirit would work and even then you would need to somehow anchor the soul to the body correctly which is borderline dark magic like necromancy. All I have done instead was turn water into ice effectively." he explained seriously.-

"How so?" she asked while writing on her clipboard. "Ghosts while incorporeal have an inclination towards being solid as is shown when they move through fire or smoke and it disturbs them. What I did was pushed this inclination to actually turning solid instead. This let them eat , touch things and actually interact with their surroundings which makes them appear to be alive when they are still just ghosts." Nick explained calmly. "How did you accomplish this feat?" Rita asked and Nick shook his head "That is a proprietary piece of knowledge unfortunately and can't be shared." he said and she frowned but left it alone.-

"Why did you decide to create this ghost solidification enchantment to begin with?" Rita asked moving the topic away from the how and over to the why. "It is no secret that I spend a lot of time with my deceased relative Helena Ravenclaw or better known as the grey lady. As such I was aware of how miserable being a ghost was and most of that misery came from not being able to taste or touch anything. I then paid attention to the state of her existence and carefully put a theory of mine into practice and well the result is obvious." he explained calmly.-

Rita was writing furiously in her clipboard and he had a suspicion on the sort of bullshit she was writing. Probably some disgusting thing about how he did it due to some sort of romantic connection. He didn't care however as slandering people was her modus operandi and everyone knew it. After Rita kept trying to change the subject to other things such as his magical talents , future plans and other such useless stuff that Nick left purposefully lacking in any flavor or way she could twist that got under her skin.-

"Oh right how silly of me to forget! This handsome fellow on my shoulder is Dusk , a ho-ho that was living in my ancestral home. His favorite thing to do is to burn away any bugs that happened to find their way in here. His favorite is of course beetles , I've seen him slowly burn away their legs and then the rest of their bodies. Thankfully they were just normal bugs since I doubt I could stop him if it was something like an animagi instead." Nick said while looking at Rita especially who was sweating and had a fearful look on her face.-

Fudge didn't seem to understand how that was important information but Dumbledore was far from stupid and quickly figured out what was going on. 'So that's how she gets her information , It would appear she has chosen the wrong target for slander this time.' the old goat thought with a small smile as he watched Nick basically threaten the reporter. Rita herself was also not stupid and had figured out that Nick was aware of her illegal Animagus status and was not so subtly telling her to not try and twist his words or straight up lie about him in her article.-

She could only grit her teeth and accept this as she drew a line through all the false stuff she had written down. She wanted to obliviate him so that her secret was safe but all the information she had gathered about Nick said that she would have a better chance fighting off a group of death eaters instead. Not only was she aware that he had on eight protective rings that automatically activated but also that his reactions to being attacked or wronged in some way are extremely cruel.