Hogwarts: My Grandmother is the Queen

Chapter 345 Gossip News

Soon they arrived at the church.

A man in a dark gray trench coat stood on the stone steps at the church entrance. He wasn't holding a camera, but he kept his eyes on the direction from which Henry and Miss Farley had come.

He took half a step forward and stopped at the edge of the stone steps, blocking their path into the church.

He wasn't standing right in the middle, but his position was just right, forcing them to either pass by him or stop to talk to him.

"Your Highness Henry, Merry Christmas," he said. "I'm a reporter from The Daily Telegraph. I apologize for bothering you at the church door, but I'd like to ask a brief question."

Henry stopped and stood to Miss Farley's left, turning slightly to block her from view in the angle between his body and the church door frame: "Excuse me."

"Is the lady next to you your friend?"

"She's a guest I invited," Henry said. "She's here for the Christmas event."

"May I ask who this guest is? Is she a member of the royal family?"

"She's my private guest," Henry said, his tone unchanged. "Her privacy needs to be respected."

"Your Highness, the public is very interested in the person around you. Do you think she could become a new face in the royal family?" The reporter seemed completely unfazed, as if he had asked the same question countless times before.

Being Western journalists, they were quick to respond and asked tricky questions.

Henry paused for a moment, as if giving him some time to finish his question.

The pause was brief, just enough for the wind to sway the ivy on the side wall of the church.

"She's someone who deserves to be taken seriously," Henry said. "I'm not going to put her in the headlines."

The reporter stood on the stone steps for a moment, his gaze briefly sweeping over Miss Farley beside Henry, pausing slightly when he saw the outline of her profile.

He looked away and nodded to Henry. "Thank you for your time, Your Highness. Merry Christmas."

He stepped back, making way for the church entrance, and took two steps down the stone steps, stopping beside a holly tree. He then whispered a few words to someone holding a telephoto lens.

The voice was very low, but Miss Farley vaguely heard a short, sharp sentence: "Did you get the picture?"

The response from the other end was equally brief: "We got the picture."

Miss Farley did not turn around; she followed Henry into the church and sat down on a pew.

The service lasted about forty-five minutes, and she sat there, absorbing most of what was said.

She knew those people were giving thanks, offering blessings, and making wishes.

She could feel the weight of those words, even though they belonged to a language she wasn't yet fully accustomed to.

When the hymns were sung, she did not open her mouth to sing, but her mouth was slightly open, as if she was feeling the vibrations of the syllables in the air, but no sound came out.

The organ's final notes lingered under the dome for a moment before slowly fading away.

When I walked out of the church, there was no one on the stone steps at the entrance.

The reporters have left, as if they had quietly departed after completing their mission.

But Miss Farley noticed that in one of the cars parked on the side of the road, the edge of a camera lens was sticking out of the passenger seat, pointing directly at the church entrance—not directly at her, but at the church door itself, as if waiting for the next person to walk out.

She got into the car and sat in the back seat. Henry sat next to her, and the scenery outside the window began to move.

When we returned to Sandringham House, there was a chill in the foyer than before we left.

The door had just been pushed open, bringing with it the chill of the frosty ground outside, which met the warmth emanating from the fireplace in the middle of the hallway, forming an invisible boundary in the air.

The housekeeper was tidying up today's newspapers by the door. When he saw them come in, he gave a slight bow.

He was holding several folded newspapers, one of which had a corner of a photograph showing a row of holly trees and the hems of several dark coats.

Miss Farley didn't notice the newspaper; she was looking down, untying her scarf, loosening the two loops, her fingers resting on the knot.

The butler placed the newspaper on a low table to the side of the foyer, deliberately making sure his movements were quiet. Then he straightened up and walked towards the corridor.

Henry followed the butler's gaze to the newspaper on the low table, then looked away: "You saw them?"

'

"Who did you see?"

"Reporters with cameras," Henry said. "Behind the row of holly trees on the left side of the church entrance. There were three people, two men and a woman, all with telephoto lenses. They took at least twenty pictures when you came out arm in arm with me."

"No," Miss Farley said, shaking her head.

“You’re not used to getting noticed by them,” Henry said. “They’re used to not getting noticed.”

"So how would they write it?"

“They’ll write down the facts,” Henry said, “and then draw inferences from those facts. A young woman, wearing a dark coat, arm in arm with a member of the royal family, walking out of a church for Christmas service. They don’t know who you are; they’ll deduce everything they can from the photograph.”

Miss Farley took the scarf off completely and draped it over her arm. "Will their deductions be accurate?"

Henry glanced at her: "They'll make irresponsible guesses, but the distance between guessing and being right is sometimes far, sometimes very close."

When they entered the living room, the fire in the fireplace was still burning, the flames licking at the newly added firewood, making a slight popping sound, as if someone had just adjusted the vents to make the flame burn more steadily.

Diana sat on the sofa with a cup of tea in front of her, but she didn't drink it.

Charles stood by the window, also looking at a magazine. His brow twitched slightly, but he didn't say anything.

Diana put down her magazine and turned to Miss Farley: "Did you see the newspaper by the door?"

"Not yet," Miss Farley said.

Diana glanced towards the foyer: "If you look now, you'll see your picture printed on page two of the morning paper. The caption reads, 'His Highness Henry attended Christmas service with a mysterious female companion; her identity is still unclear.'"

Miss Farley paused slightly: "So fast?"

"The photo shoot was instantaneous, but printing takes several hours," Diana said. "But the Christmas morning paper was finalized the night before. They took the photos and immediately sent them back to the newspaper office to expedite the replacement of the original front page."

"So what did they write?"

“There wasn’t much substance,” Diana said. “They didn’t know your name, they didn’t know where you came from, they only knew that you were a young woman, wearing a dark coat, walking out of the church arm in arm with Henry. They guessed you might be Henry’s classmate, some guessed you were an Oxford student, and one newspaper even guessed you were a distant relative of the royal family.”

Miss Farley stood there, as if processing the information.

Her expression didn't change much, but her fingers lightly twirled the edge of her scarf: "Will they continue investigating?"

“Of course they will,” Diana said. “They will check the Oxford University student list, and all the young women who have had contact with Henry. They won’t stop until they get the answers they want.”

Charles walked over from the window and placed the magazine on the coffee table: "I saw a really good photo on the website, the lighting and composition are great. It looks like it was taken by a professional photographer."

Henry walked over, turned on the computer, and took a look.

On the screen was the photograph—Miss Farley walking beside him, her profile slightly turned toward him, speaking, or about to speak, a smile about to appear on her lips.

"It's really well done," Henry said.

Miss Farley also went over and glanced at the photograph.

She looked at it for a little longer than Henry, as if trying to figure out if the profile in the photo was her: "What was I saying back then?"

"You're talking about the church windows," Henry said. "You said there's a green color in those stained glass windows that you've only ever seen before in the Hogwarts greenhouses."

Miss Farley looked up from the computer screen: "Do you remember what I said?"

"Of course I remember," Henry said. "The wind was blowing from the holly bushes when you said that."

.

Diana listened quietly to the entire conversation: "If you don't want the media to keep investigating, we can issue a brief statement saying you're a private friend who was invited to Christmas. No further information is needed; just one sentence will stop the media from speculating."

"What if they continue their investigation?" Miss Farley asked.

"They certainly won't stop investigating," Diana said. "But after the statement, their speculations are no longer news, but a repetition, and the media doesn't like repetition."

"What if we don't issue a statement?"

Diana glanced at her: "Then they'll keep speculating aimlessly until you reveal your identity, or until they find the next, more interesting story."

Henry, standing nearby, asked, "Which way do you think is better?"

"If I issue a statement, the media will think I'm hiding something. If I don't issue a statement, they'll continue investigating. The result is the same. The only difference is that a statement will turn their speculation into a search," Ms. Farley said. "Speculation makes them write headlines about speculation, and searching makes them write about the process of searching."

The difference is that the search process may be more detailed and in-depth.

Henry looked at her: "So you're inclined not to issue it?"

"I prefer not to provide information proactively," Miss Farley said. "If they find it, they'll write down what they found. Until then, I don't need to reduce their workload."

Later that afternoon, newspapers began to arrive at the government office.

Besides the morning evening paper, several other newspapers had mostly the same headlines and photos, with only minor differences in wording.

One newspaper's headline was more eye-catching than the others, with a larger font and a line printed in bold: "The identity of the mysterious female companion remains to be seen; His Highness Henry makes his first public appearance with a companion at church on Christmas Day."

The accompanying photo was of Miss Farley in profile, the late winter light falling on her cheekbones, enlarged to a quarter of the page size, every detail so clear it was as if she were standing there.

Harry spotted the newspaper first. He was sitting in an armchair in the corner of the living room. As soon as he picked up the newspaper, his eyes were fixed on the headline, and then his gaze slid down to the photograph.

"This photo is quite clear."

"Indeed," William said, taking the newspaper from his hand.

"Where did they take the picture from? Behind those holly trees on the left side of the church?"

"The row of holly trees was about 120 meters away. I used a telephoto lens, which was enough to capture facial details without being detected."

"Did they capture any other people's faces?"

"Yes," William said. "They took a picture of my profile and a picture of the back of Harry's head—but he had his hat pulled down so low that only the collar of his coat and the edge of his hat were visible."

Henry walked in from the corridor, carrying another newspaper, smaller in size, like a supplement to a local newspaper.

He placed it on the coffee table without opening it: "There's also a tabloid with the headline 'Kensington Palace welcomes a mysterious female guest this Christmas season, suspected to be the prince's girlfriend.'"

"Girlfriend?" Miss Farley turned around, a hint of surprise in her expression. "They used that word?"

“They used that word,” Henry said, “because they needed a word to define the photo, to define the fact that you were standing next to me. They wouldn’t use words like ‘friend,’ ‘classmate,’ or ‘acquaintance,’ which are closer to the truth, because those words aren’t eye-catching enough.”

Miss Farley paused for a moment, then asked, "What word do you think is more accurate?"

Henry looked at her: "I don't need to define it yet."

Diana picked up the newspaper, glanced at it, then flipped to the back cover and chuckled. "This tabloid is just the print version of the original weekly. Their editing style hasn't changed at all—"

First, choose a good-looking photo, then write a caption that sounds like the truth, and finally put the caption below the title. This time they chose a good photo, but the caption was terribly empty.

"Because they've written everything they could," Charles said. "What's left is what they don't know."

"If I look at those newspapers now, what will I see?" Miss Farley asked.

“You’ll see a clear photograph,” Diana said, “and then a description—saying you’re arm in arm with Henry at the church entrance, that you’re between seventeen and twenty years old, that you’re wearing a black coat, and they’ll use these details to prove they’ve observed very carefully.”

"Can these details they observed constitute convincing facts for the reader?"

"Of course," Diana said, "but there's a long way to go between facts and conclusions."

"How much further do they need to go before they reach the conclusion they want?"

“They can’t see the whole thing,” Diana said. “Because they don’t have enough information. All they have is that photo and those details, how you look when you walk out of the church. That’s all they can see.”

"What if they continue tomorrow?" Miss Farley asked hesitantly.

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