Stubborn people were hard to persuade. So were rational people.
But both had one advantage: once persuaded, they changed from the heart.
Professor McGonagall did want to make a change, but the few good chances she had to broach the subject were deftly avoided by Hermione.
The little girl seemed to have seen through McGonagall's intentions. After McGonagall had fixed her with her first penetrating gaze, she began deliberately avoiding her.
This left McGonagall with no choice but to carry out her other plans first, such as visiting Hogsmeade Village to ask the students' parents there about what had happened that day.
But it was not a pleasant home visit. The other party was clearly hiding something.
She had even been quite blunt, but they still chose to keep it hidden.
Then, the day after her visit, the Daily Prophet finally changed its tune:
The Ministry of Magic's Champion of Justice: Rita Skeeter!!!
The article, whose headline was enough to catch anyone's eye, had been written by Barnabas Cuffe, editor-in-chief of the Daily Prophet.
In words heavy with grief and indignation, he described the recent turmoil within the Daily Prophet.
He accused the Ministry of Magic of putting pressure on the paper, causing its chief reporter, Rita Skeeter, to suffer repeated setbacks and preventing her articles from being published.
In response, the editor-in-chief had called on his connections and sought help from his colleagues, asking The Quibbler magazine for assistance in an attempt to use outside pressure to break through this ugly suppression.
But he had failed.
With no other choice, he had bypassed the Ministry of Magic's surveillance of the paper and hurriedly replaced the contents just before that day's edition went to print, inserting this article written in anguish.
In its tearful, impassioned prose, Rita Skeeter was portrayed