I'm Not A Liar

So I probably shouldn't do it - yes, even I know that. I shouldn't write these words, shouldn't splash all these peoples' lives on the front page of the Daily Prophet, shouldn't take their stories and twist them. They aren't lies, exactly - no, not lies. I never lie. I just make things more, you see, and sometimes less. I'm not a sadist, you know. I don't write my stories out of cruelty; there's just so much more inside the plain facts. Oh, all right. The truth, if you want to be biased about it. And - oh, don't look at me like that! I'm not a liar. I never lie! Well, not more than the next person, anyway. But that's beside the point.

The thing about lying... Oh, I hate that word. It's always so misleading. And insulting. It always makes me sound like such a terrible person, and I'm not a terrible person. Really. At least, I think I'm not. But that's a misleading term, too. It makes me sound like... oh, I don't know. Some sort of gargantuan lying machine. And I'm not a liar. Really, I'm not. But it's like an addiction, you see, the way you suck in the truth and... and... unravel it, and when it comes back out it's so much more than what it was, don't you see? The plain truth is too direct to comprehend, so I have to shape it and shred it and distill it; otherwise, nobody would read it. So I'm doing a public service, really. I'm encouraging literacy by changing the truth just a little bit. And I'm not a liar.

It's so much easier, so much better to break down than to build up. So much more honest, too - see, I told you that I'm not a liar. When you build things up, it's literally buildup, sort of like the nasty hybrid of hair and shampoo that clogs the drain of the shower after awhile, or the ring around the bathtub. But I'm not here to talk about soap. Or shampoo. No, I'm definitely not here to talk about shampoo. Or bathtubs. And I'm not a liar. But when you have a... I don't know, a something, you have to cut it up, don't you see? You have to figure out how it works. What makes it... What's that Muggle phrase again? Oh, yes. What makes it tick. And then, once you see how it works, you know how to make it better - and then you put it back together so that it can be better. So I'm not a liar, because I don't lie. I just break things down, and then reconstruct them. And that's a good thing. Really. Really, it's a good thing. Because I'm not a liar, and I'm not cruel, and I'm not evil, so what I do isn't evil. It's just... reconstructing things. Reconstructing the truth. And really, why can't you have a more liberal view of truth? I'm not a liar, you know. Stop insulting me like that. I'm not a liar. Because what I do is good - an act of creation, you know. And I'm good. And I'm not a liar. And I'm right, aren't I?