Order only - private message to Cedric

[alt_sinistra]

Part of me wishes I were at Hogwarts. Part of me is so very glad I'm not. And it's not like I could really do anything that'd be all that helpful. Probably.

Realised you might be feeling the same way.

Harry came this afternoon. He was hoping to see you too, and thought he might try to get to Dover sooner than later.

I've been trying to prep for a complicated thing tomorrow, and I'm utterly failing to keep my head sorted for more than five minutes at a time. (Five minutes is generous, actually.)

Is Dover horribly frustrating?

Comments

[alt_cedric]

Not flying every day is hard, but otherwise no more frustrating than working for Antonin was.

In many ways it reminds me of the preparation for some the Board of Governor's meetings. Factions are pushing and pulling with different agendas. Gabriel Poingdestre was the one saying 'Non' to everything on Friday, but he wasn't there today and no one mentioned his name. Of the people from Alice's notes half have not shown their face in the fire. Fortunately it seems to be the most hardline proprotectorate half. The new faces are all saying some variation on 'we can work it out' but it all looks like delaying tactics to me. The only thing that it looks like we may be able to get are some 'humanitarian' potioneering supplies... in meager quantities. Nowhere near enough for the anti-sleeper potion. Only one from Snape 'must have' list and two from the backup list of 'if we can't get A get B' list. In both cases a tiny fraction of the quantity we'll need. Having those will help with burn, bite and nerve recovery poultices. Several of the ingredients Snape and Hermoine need are unusual and rarely used, which makes pressing for them, without giving a full explanation, difficult. And we obviously don't want to give them a full explanation when they might, somehow, leak it back to Mysteries or his-noselessness.

All that boils down to, I think there was a beaurocratic shift over the weekend from the hardliners to those who would like to look reasonable, but can't actually be arsed to help us in case we fail. If the faces all shift again later this week and I have to explain everything to another new crop of people, it'll be an obvious stall tactic by the hardliners hoping the Protectorate Security forces 'deal' with the problem that is us. If not, and this crop sticks around, we should start getting a trickle of essential supplies 'bientôt'.

Do you have someone to talk through the problem with? I always found that helped with the tricky problems at Hogwarts.

[alt_sinistra]

You've rather a lot of experience with that kind of thing, really. And yes, I did find with the YPL version of that that if you let people wrangle themselves and wear themselves out, they'll eventually give you something slightly more reasonable to work with. Usually.

The ingredients, though, that must be tricky. Because of course, you don't want to tip anyone off.

The problem, oh. It's partly technical and partly other things.

The basic bit is that I think I've sorted a fair bit of the first wards, what they did. Only it's really complicated and technical (I've been having Evelyn run the models, and Jeremy when he's got a chance, the arithmancy's that dire). And I'm trying to work out an explanation that won't take hours.

Because Alice gave me permission to go talk to Georg, my guild master, about it, if I'm careful. I've set things up, and Severus said polyuice would be safer, and I've actually got some hair that will do nicely. But I keep feeling like I'm forgetting things, and it's not like I can just pop round on Wednesday with anything I forget, you know? Even setting this up's been so complicated.

[alt_cedric]

Ah. That kind of problem. I'll still say that sounds like the perfect thing to talk through with someone. Snape or someone else direly academic. Normally I'd say bring a note with all the key points, but obviously that's a terribly bad idea in this situation.

Speaking of direly academic, I'm not the person to try work through the wards and arithmancy bits, unless you want to try the speech on someone who's completely not an arithmancer, but knows the words.

On the ingredients, the hope is we'll normalize relations and win here (that makes it sound so simple) then we can present it as a done deal that we have control of the Sleepers and want to wake them, but This List is what we need. The real devil is that I can't even ask about the Sleepers at all as we don't know if the French Wizards know about them or if they think the Protectorate committed full scale genocide. Let alone the muggle governments.

[alt_sinistra]

Well, the trick is that Georg's not actually overmuch on the arithmancy himself - well, except for the bit about orbital mechanics. Which this isn't.

If you forget about the part where it's messing with the magical fabric of the world, and possibly lining us up for earthquakes, tidal waves, worse weather than England usually has, and a half-dozen other things, it's actually exceedingly clever magic.

Let me try this on you, though. If I say the following, can you follow it - the effects, if not the method?

"What they did in 83 was, roughly, was stick a pin in at Dover and rotate the entire country within the original wards around that point, causing more disruption the further north and west you go, roughly. The original wards were designed with some failsafes, to release pressure, those are not longer in play. What we'd like to do is first figure out if we can restore some of those failsafes - that's a different process - and eventually undo the displacement entirely."

(I may or may not explain the Octoboros stones to Georg. Much less his field, that.)

Looking at your problem, is there a reason you can't ask what they know about the Protectorate? You couldn't trust they'd tell you everything. (Well, you could trust that they weren't, because of course they won't.) But you might get some tidbits that would help, and if it's public knowledge there, they might not mind telling you.

[alt_cedric]

What do you want him to do, or take away, from the conversation? That's a perfectly understandable description of what's going on. I assume that the Ireland wards and Octoboros are the reason the failsafes are no longer working?

On the Sleepers, the short answer is I'm playing owl in the middle. At more length, we have to work with the people on the other end of the line, pretty much no matter who they are. If they believe that the Protectorate committed wholesale genocide and they are okay with that... well we need to find new contacts, but that's not happening anytime soon, so we have to work with them. If they know about the Sleepers and have anyway what-so-ever to get information into the Protectorate other than through Dover, telling them we can wake them up, could cause Rookwood and his cronies to alter the current potion to make our solution kill them rather than wake them and we still have to talk to them. If we talk about the Sleepers this early in negotiations we tip our hand that they are important and of immediate, rather than eventual, interest to us. Basically, until we think we can truly trust the people we're talking to, we don't at this point, AND we've taken over and are at least somewhat stable on our end, it's easier to say as little as possible about controversial topics. So I shutup and listen, occassionally asking open ended questions to see what they'll blab and offer. Alice or someone else can probe further, not my job.

Also most of them think I'm terribly terribly young. Madam Trevere went so far as to call me 'bébé mignon Diggory'. She appears to be into her second century, so I don't entirely blame her, but none of them take me seriously.

[alt_sinistra]

More fool them, if they don't take you seriously.

Though I suppose they don't know that. Even if they should have some guesses, from the Triwizard. It's not like you were incompetent then.

Elderly witches, though. They do that to me, too. Or did.

Right. What I want from Georg is fairly straightforward, actually, and I think he'll be inclined to help as long as it doesn't risk him too much. Two books in particular that I know he has, another half dozen that I think he can get easily. Ideally some specific chart copies from the Guild - I have my notes from Wales, but I'd really like the measurements from England and Scotland and Ireland, too.

And yes, quite right, that it's the other sets of wards that are causing the problem. I think it was the Dark Rite that's the worse bit, but the Octoboros stones muddy things up no end.

You're likely quite right about not saying anything. I was thinking more the general sort of thing, of "We have no idea what you think has been going on over here, and it'd help us to communicate better if we had some idea what you've heard." Which, in a nutshell, is likely why I'm an astronmer and not a highly skilled whatever your title ought to be.

[alt_cedric]

Ah but all those accomplishments are 'Sport' and for those of a more serious negotiator bent, probably count against their estimation of me in their realm.

You'll probably need to get a touch more technical to explain why you need those books, but I expect you're better at negotiating that than I. Are they providing you back up to make sure he's not being followed?

If we trusted them enough to display ignorance, that's exactly where we'd start. In someways we've both got the same problem, one shared by conspirators and revolutionaries everywhere, 'who do you trust, with what, when?' What's enough proof to trust someone with the knowledge that you are a revolutionary, which, if they wish, they could use to damn you and everyone you care about to a dark dank dungeon followed by horrific tortures and a bloody end?

I revealed over the Galleons that I'm alive and voluntarily in hiding.

[alt_sinistra]

More fool them, about sport. I've come to think Quidditch can encourage a certain flexibility of thought, and that makes such a difference.

My meeting went well enough. He was very glad to see me, though it was much less odd after the polyjuice wore off and I stopped looking like Gilly. He's willing to help with the parts I most needed, and maybe some other things, and that was all good.

Only, he had such Weltschmerz. One of those German words that's hard to translate, about being so sad at the state of the world, and yet so sure that it can't change for the better. Very fatalistic.

He asked all sorts of things, trying to understand why I had any hope we might do something worthwhile. About Harry. About Raz. About why I threw in with the Order. Why we think we stand a better chance than Dogstar or the Crimson Company or Selwyn or too many others over the years.

None of that has tidy answers. The more so since I couldn't really talk about Moddey Dhoo or what they've managed, or anything else that might risk people.

[alt_sinistra]

How'd it feel to tell the galleon?

I keep wishing I could say something more in public, but far too much risk for my family.

(New baby nephew, don't think I told you in all the chaos the past few weeks. Storm's been good about making the occaisional 'to my family' post in the journals with that kind of thing. He and Dittany named him Basil, for Raz, I knew they were planning to, and it does go well with Dittany and Hyssop.)

More reason to try and make things change, that.