Order Only Private Message to Bill Weasley

[alt_charlie]

I think I've finally put my finger on why I've been so upset lately. And so quiet, because it's the kind of thing that never sounds right outside your own head.

I can't get over what Poppy did. For Dolohov. Healing one of them, with a potion I risked my life all of our lives the whole Order, really a lot of things to get her the ingredients for.

I understand why she did it. More than Mum some people in the Order might, really: I know that when you're in the middle of an emergency, you do what you need to do, and you deal with the consequences later. I've done it myself. But when we do it here, it's accepting the risk of injury in order to heal an injured dragon, things like that. Not using an unreplaceable resource to save the life of someone who's chosen to do horrible things. Someone who's trying to coax children into thinking those horrible things are right and just.

I've been reading some of the journals of the Jr Aux lately, to try to get a feel for who they are and who they could be in a few years: did you see what he said to Parkinson tonight? Ugh. I wish I could argue with him in public. I wish I could show them that not everyone falls for his smarmy rationalisations. I wish I could tear off that pleasant mask and show everyone the monster that lives underneath it. For all of them, really, but especially for him, because he makes it all sound so neat and logical and romantic and right, and really it's that he's warping the world around those kids until they might not be able to tell what right even is anymore.

I can't blame Poppy for saving him in the heat of the moment. But I'm upset that he was saved. If that makes any sense. (It probably doesn't.) And I don't want to say anything to her about it, because I know she's probably still in pieces about having done it and I don't want to make it worse for her.

Ugh.

Let's talk about something that doesn't have even a hint of awful in it. Might have to go hunting for a topic, but, yeah. I think I need something nice for a while. I carved a pawn tonight, out of pear wood. It's nowhere near as good as the ones in the set I traded Greg for, for Ron's Christmas gift -- it's lopsided and doesn't sit straight when you set it down -- but Greg says it's a good start, at least.

Chess? Your turn to start us off.

Comments

[alt_bill]

I don't blame you a bit, honestly. I understand that paradox: you can't hate Poppy, exactly, but you wish he hadn't been saved. It stinks, there's no question about it, even if Poppy regrets the hurt her choice caused. That helps a little. But not enough.

I think Mum's managed to mostly put it aside for now, but she managed it only with lots of baby therapy: she's been showing up at Moddey Dhoo in the afternoons and rocking the kids in the nursery.

Too bad it isn't so easy for you to cuddle a dragon. Even the little ones will bite your hands off. I hope that going off to be by yourself and mulling it over helped some at least?

I suppose we can only hope that some good will come of it, somehow. Dunno how, but it isn't entirely impossible, you know. I can imagine several different scenarios where Dolohov might end up standing between our Junior Auxiliary members and something truly dreadful. PARTICULARLY with dear Madam Umbridge looking to hex anything in her way. Say what you will about Dolohov's morals (and I agree that he's scum and a two-faced monster), but he IS politically astute and bloody good with that wand, curse him. I mean, I hope to Merlin that nothing would threaten the kids, but after all, this IS a school where a madman offed a student not so long ago.

I know that's precious little comfort. But I think Terry's right, that there has to be some reason to choose to be on the side of mercy rather than mayhem, other than simply strategic. Anyway, Dad thought so, which certainly counts with me. Maybe we can't see those reasons when things get dark, especially when it feels like our opponents are winning because they're willing to do anything. But that hope is all we have to hang onto--that, and the comfort that we're not letting ourselves become as rotten as our enemies. That way, we might do a better job of living with ourselves afterward, if we ever manage to throw off the yoke of this regime once and for all.

Oh...Fred and George passed on some information about Ginny. They're angling to figure out what's on her mind, and especially why she took that risk of writing to us under the Private Message lock, given that she knew Umbridge was having students read messages like that aloud. So they had Evelyn Longbottom speak to her, figuring that might go over better than trying to strike up a conversation with her themselves, since she seems to be rather hacked off at her brothers now. Evelyn sounded her out on her opinions about blood status. Ginny said that being treated like a half-blood was utterly humiliating (that punishment from Umbridge, you know), but Evelyn extracted an admission from her that blood status is arbitrary. Which is better than where Percy is at, I guess. One other thing: Ginny flared up and became stroppy when Evelyn poked into her trunk. Wouldn't have thought much of that except that Ron reported later that Ginny was spotted taking something that Evelyn had seen in her trunk--a wooden box, about the size of a textbook--and ditching it in a charmed room at Hogwarts. Seemed furtive about it, according to Ron. Mum doesn't have any idea what was in the box, based on the description. Do you?

I have an extra chess board and pieces, if you need me to send it to you. It's a bit battered, but better than nothing. Did Remus show you the set that Terry made and sent him for Christmas? It was bloody marvelous: he made the whole thing out of sea shells. The knights were dried seahorses, mounted on shells, too. Really striking.

Speaking of chess: I'll start off with d4.

[alt_charlie]

That's stuff to hold on to, at least. The bits about being able to live with ourselves after, I mean. I wonder sometimes if Snape and Macnair are right, and we'll lose if we aren't willing to do the necessary but unpleasant things, when it comes down to it, but what good would it do if we overthrew the Lord Pretender in ways that made us just as bad?

On the other hand, though, what if we could save a whole lot of people who'd otherwise die under the Protectorate's policies, by killing a few now? Would that be the right thing to do, instead of waiting and hoping we found a way that wouldn't kill anybody?

I don't know. I really don't. But there's a part of me that thinks we should be doing more now, before the generation that's never known anything but this life starts graduating Hogwarts and moving into power, because if we're not careful, they'll hear "the Council" and think Rabastan Lestrange and Antonin Dolohov instead of Amycus and Alecto Carrow, and we'll have lost them.

It's easier when the monsters look like they're monsters, instead of hiding it so well.

As for Ginny, meanwhile, no, that doesn't sound familiar. Something she got from her modeling? Or -- do you think she might have stolen something, from one of her housemates, and was trying to hide it? I don't want to think that, but, ugh.

I have my chess set still -- the old one I've had since school -- but Greg said that if I wanted to learn to carve wood, I'd better start with something simple, and work my way up. I tried another one tonight, but it fell apart halfway through and I gave up. Greg says I'm not the most hopeless he's ever seen, at least. And no, I hadn't seen Remus's! I'll have to give him a game next time I'm in Laszlo's.

D5, for me.

[alt_bill]

I don't know either. I agree with you about the urgency of doing something before too much time passes. I'm not talking about just us witches and wizards, either. An entire generation of institutional memory may be lost, and how can we reconstruct it? Dad was really worried about that. Do you realise that there hasn't been, for example, any Muggle medical school operating in the Protectorate for the last decade--where the Muggles trained their healers? Right now there are doctors in the camps, treating Muggles who become sick, as best they can. What happens if they cannot train their own successors? There will be no one to treat their sick. Surely we are not arrogant enough to believe we'd be immune to disease just because it comes from a Muggle.

And we lose our humanity entirely if we become immune to their suffering.

Merlin, I don't want to bring you down further. Just--yes, I agree, we need to step up our plans to fix what's wrong and give people a chance to regain their proper sphere. Before we wizards began meddling.

I need to come up with something cheery to talk about instead. Didn't you say you needed to think about something nice?

Um....

Mum's sketching out the garden plans for this year. She's thinking of putting up a small greenhouse.

What else? Oh...this will make you laugh. I went to the beer garden this week and Bea recognised me as one of Those Two Ginger Weasley Blokes and demanded in a voice of great indignation, 'Where's Charlie?' Apparently, I am now your social secretary. I told her you were stuck babysitting some boring dragons, but you would have much preferred to be with her. And then we passed an extremely happy evening watching customers and levitating salt cellars to make them demonstrate quidditch moves.

C4.

[alt_charlie]

Okay, yeah, you're right, that made me laugh. That kid's something else. She's going to be a handful and a half when she's a little more self-propelled, and Merlin help us all once she starts showing her magic!

As for the rest of it, yeah, that's the sort of thing I'm thinking about. And the way that -- well, look at so many of the kids at Hogwarts. There's a lot of them who're probably perfectly pleasant people, except they've been taught that this all is right. And you know how hard it is to change someone's mind rather than teach them in the first place. I mean --

I don't know what I mean, really. Do you really think it'll be possible to put things back the way they were once upon a time? Because I don't think I do. We're never going to be able to go back into hiding once this is all over. And I'm pretty sure they're going to hold one hell of a grudge against us, and I can't say I blame them, really.

Gah. Cheerful. Cheerful. I think a greenhouse is a grand idea. I'll write Mum later and see if she wants some help.

E6.

[alt_bill]

Yeah, Bea is adorable. I've quite lost my heart to her. As much as I have to her Mum

You're right: teaching a kid the right way from the first is so much easier than trying to do reeducation. Which is why I'm so glad we hit upon the scheme for Sanctuary for those Muggleborn kids. On a less happy note, closer to home, it's why I hold out a bit less hope for Percy than for Ginny.

No, we'll never be able to go back to the way we were before. But the Protectorate--or rather the old United Kingdom--HAS come back after going through dreadful times before. Although maybe we're not so aware of them because we wizards are so ignorant about Muggle history. There was that whole fratricidal madness where the elite of Britain did their level best to slaughter each other for close to a hundred years or so. They called it the War of the Roses. And then there was the FIRST Protectorate: the king was murdered, and a Lord Protector was set up. And a generation later, The Lord Protector was gone, his son couldn't keep his grasp on the reins, and the royal family was reinstated.

So. We CAN put ourselves back together as a nation. We've done it before. Yes, I'm sure there will be reprisals, and they may be desperately grim. But perhaps we can blunt them a bit if we're seen to be helpful in tearing down this whole rotten Protectorate edifice in the first place.

Nc3.