She worked at a newspaper and punished gossip stories that would sell
Gossip stories that were weapons (used by one side to prosecute two separate wars with thousands of casaulties) and acknowledged as such by all well-informed players; or are we going to claim that Skeeter, investigative reporter par excellence, somehow missed that she was really working for Malfoy despite everyone else knowing?
Whether Lucius hands her a sack of gold or signs a check to the Daily Prophet makes no difference. It would be like asking whether Tokyo Rose was paid on an hourly basis or annual salary.
(Or if the payment method does make a difference, I will remember the particular corporate and moral niceties for if I ever hire an assassin.)
canon!Skeeter was a tool of Fudge. Thus, if Fudge was a tool of Malfoy, then Skeeter was a tool of Malfoy. But I'm not convinced that Fudge knew that he was a Malfoy tool. Certainly, his reactions amount to "doing worse than Neville Chamberlain when confronting an evil tyrant," which was a very advantageous position for the Ministry of Magic to take, from Malfoy's point of view.
Nonetheless, my impression from canon was that Fudge's "la-la-la I'm not listening strategy" was a happy accident from Malfoy's point of view, not a planned s...
The next discussion thread is here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 85. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments. Comment in the 15th thread until you read chapter 85.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: