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[alt_alice]

I've been thinking about Ridley's question -- and I'm sure it needs a great deal more thought from all of us before coming to a final decision.

Sally-Anne has a good point in that we should see what she'd be willing to offer us in exchange, just to see what we'd have on the table to negotiate with.

I don't trust that she'd follow any guidelines we would ask her to abide by. We have to anticipate that she would use this for her own purposes, which would potentially be useful to us as well if she continues to target MLE and the Council, but we must anticipate that she would do so without consideration for loss of life when it comes to others caught in the cross-fire.

I agree with Poppy in that its use is fairly limited -- all one would have to do would be to walk out of the field in order to restore use of magic -- but as established in Saltash, wizards are vulnerable within the field, and if there is a large enough concentration of motivated and trained people to stop them, it could prove a challenge.

One thing to consider is that unlike her tactics at Saltash, this field makes Muggles much more capable of defending themselves, so they're less likely to be used by her as mere fodder and more likely to be seen as potentially valuable assets, which is a distinct improvement from her previous mindset.

That is one area where we have a potential advantage -- we have far greater connections within the non-magical community, and will eventually have the capacity to potentially be able to wake up Sleepers who would have military training and capabilities -- something I doubt she has spent much energy or thought on, as Muggles have not been her primary focus. Perhaps she would be willing to coordinate with us more directly in order to help muster people with hand-to-hand training who would be able to be of great use in such a situation, which gives us a little more control over how and when she uses it.

I have the impression that her lack of consideration for safety and loss of life also makes her more likely to attempt to cast this spell with a much greater frequency than I ever would. To a certain extent, this places the burden of cost on her people instead of ours -- something worth considering if we are to think through the possible value and use of such a spell.

Does anyone have any additional thoughts? I'm sure several of you have been chewing it over all night, as I have, and I'd appreciate your insights.

On a side-note, Frank and I have been talking about what his new responsibilities might be, and what we can do to help him be more mobile and communicate more directly with all of you. One of the ideas we tossed around would be to have Colin Creevey assigned to act as Frank's secretary and to assist with his and Fu Lee's Apparation so they could both be a bit more independent. We haven't approached Colin yet with the idea, but I'm sure he'd be eager to help however he could. He's been considering going to Sherwood with Terry and the rest, but this could be a way he could be quite useful to all of us. It would entail swearing him into the Order, something I'm very willing to do, but I wanted to run this past everyone first.

Comments

[alt_sirius]

Well, first off, it was obvious to more than Miss Perks that the only appropriate way to open negotiation with Ridley, if we were going to do, was to ask what she's prepared to offer in exchange, and what she has in mind to do if we strike a bargain. I'd be interested in doing that even if we have no intention of telling her about the spell, for a number of reasons:
-It tells us what she thinks she has that's valuable - or that she thinks we would find of value;
-It tells us how desperate she is (or isn't) to get her hands on a new spell;
-It tells us how valuable she thinks the effect would be to her group if she gets her hands on it;
-It tells us what she thinks she might be able to do with it.

As for what she could or couldn't do, we clearly need to hold our cards close to the vest to find out what she thinks it is. (There were already clues in her message, such as whether it was a variant of the Sleeper spell itself. I think she might be hinting that she thinks it's a combination of Sleeper spell and Fidelius.) The less we can tell her early on, the more she'll tell us. That will help us determine if she's planning something we couldn't condone - though as you say, Allie, there's no guarantee she'd keep any promise she made, even if we asked her to make one. All I'm saying is that if she's trying to guess its uses, she's more likely to say things that will betray her plans.

With that in mind, it also makes sense not to let on that anything has happened to Frank, not at first. I can simply tell her he's delegated the task to me, if she even asks. She might assume he's dead, which would not necessarily be a disadvantage in negotiating with her. Element of surprise, and all that.


Now. As for our own applications, I think we all agree that the cost is too high to risk casting it again, unless we're assured that doing so would end this conflict completely. Even then, I'm not sure who among us who is capable of casting the spell would be willing - I mean, sorry, not that we wouldn't be willing in order to end the war and free the camps, put an end to Voldemort. Merlin, I'd think rendering Voldemort helpless would be a fair trade. But. If we can somehow convince one of Ridley's people to do it, well, I'm not going to argue. The real trick, far as I'm concerned, would be making sure that the wizard or witch who's undertaking that kamikaze mission is doing so completely voluntarily, without any coercion. I'm not sure we'd have any way to know that, unless we did try to work with Ridley to affect some scenario in which the spell's deployed in conjunction with a coordinated strike against Voldemort, before he could leave the zone and regain his powers.

If we're not going to come up with that sort of scenario, and unless someone can think of an equally compelling reason for one of us to undertake the spell .... I think the best possible 'use' for it is to try to draw Ridley out in conversation and then tell her the, er, 'hidden cost' of what she's trying to buy.

[alt_alice]

I agree that it may be worth while to see what she'd be willing to trade for it, and that we can hold our cards close in the meantime. We have a distinct advantage here, and I'm willing to test the extent of it.

Holding her to some sort of coordination or shared effort would be difficult, but if we can bring to the table a significant number of people who would be incredibly effective at fighting in a null zone, that might make her more likely to work with us and make it possible for us to have a larger say in how and when it is used.

Private Message to Alice and Frank

[alt_sirius]

The plan with Colin helping you to Apparate sounds like a good one. Do you good, Frank, to get off your arse before it's as big as your thick head.

Fu's going to teach you how to fire cannons or what?

The only thing about Colin as a clerk is it would make addressing private messages difficult. But we'd manage if we had to do it.

Re: Private Message to Alice and Frank

[alt_alice]

We were thinking it might work if one addressed private messages to both Frank and Colin, for instance. Or if it was something that someone didn't want Colin to read, it could be only to Frank, who could read it but couldn't write an answer.

Which is complicated, but a better system than what we have at the moment.

Re: Private Message to Alice and Frank

[alt_sirius]

Yes, I assumed that's how you meant the messages to work. I was thinking it's back to the days when we had to include Harry on any message to Hermione. Not quite the same reason, but the same restriction.

Re: Private Message to Alice and Frank

[alt_alice]

Frank says that his arse is getting rather shapely now that he can't up and Apparate everywhere, thank you very much, and that he's learning about crossbows and axes at the moment, but a cannon would be 'pretty ace.'

Re: Private Message to Alice and Frank

[alt_sirius]

Oh, so that means he'll be back in his kilts soon? I can't wait.

[alt_alice]

I also agree that it isn't inevitable that we must ultimately share this fully with Dogstar -- not by any means. If we do know more about how she'd think about using it, we might be better able to make that decision, though.

[alt_terry]

I think having Colin in that role is rather a brilliant idea. We use to tease him about how neat his penmanship is. Finally it's good for something. I know he'd do anything to help Mr Longbottom and the Order, too.

[alt_evelyn]

Dad used this spell for a particular reason. And it's a reason I think a lot of people could see the value in.

I mean, not every wizard sees Muggle people as worth saving, but there's enough of them out there who would, I think.

But this is harder all around, isn't it? Because people can look at Saltash and think that it might not have been wrong, but something like the Quidditch World Cup bombing is another thing altogether, because a lot of people got hurt and scared and felt unsafe, and there's only a small number of magical people who'd see that as a good thing.

And if Dogstar used this spell like it was a weapon, and a lot of normal everyday magical people got hurt by it, or got really scared about something bad happening like they did after the bomb went off at the World Cup

I could just see how it'd be hard for them to see the good in it.

I guess I thought part of what we're trying to do is to show people that our way is better, and I'm not sure this is the way to do it. It'd help us do other things, but I can see how it'd make it a lot harder for magical people to want to help us, or to see what we're doing as helping them.

And I know they're not the only people we have to think about. And that it could be really helpful for non-magical people.

I don't know. We're trying to get people at school to think about the Protectorate as wrong. I think we'd have a harder time of it if Dogstar were using this to hurt people. That's all.

[alt_evelyn]

They're going to hurt people no matter what. I know that. But we'd certainly be making it easier for them.

And I can see a lot of magical people being really frightened by knowing we can make places where magic doesn't work. And that they could get stuck in one.

[alt_sirius]

It's a fair point, except that if I understand the spell correctly, no one's 'stuck' in the zone. If the people in Saltash were to walk outside its boundary, they'd recover their magic. Tonks and Kingsley have been in and out of the null zone a few times with no ill effects. The thing about it is that they need to know how to get back inside, which is the responsibility of the Secret Keeper. If they don't know it, then it's more likely they'd get 'stuck' outside of the area, do you see.

The way I think it would work as a weapon is if one deployed it around, say, Marlborough House, on a night when we knew Voldemort and all his friends would be visiting; then before they could leave, storm in with Muggle weapons at the ready and capture all their wands. We'd have to have a plan beyond that, but you see my meaning. Otherwise they'd leave the house and we'd be no better off than we were - in fact, worse, in a number of ways.

Which is precisely why I don't think it makes much sense to weaponise the spell - and why it would be next to impossible to devise a plan that DogStar would agree to enact.

[alt_evelyn]

Yes. I see. Unless they plan on using guns or bombs to make sure no-one can get out.

I suppose I was thinking about their using it at St Mungos or the Ministry or a Quidditch match, because they don't seem to have the same idea of what's reasonable. Where we might think about using it to surround a house of people who are dangerous, they might think of something like the Cup all over again, where the way they'd go about things would hurt a lot of people.

They didn't care about those people at Saltash. I don't see that sort of thing changing.

[alt_sirius]

Well, as far as that goes, you're entirely right. We've no idea what they think would be a reasonable amount of collateral damage.

Mind you, we've been the cause of some destruction here and there, as well - but mostly unintentional, or unavoidable. We won't always be able to be so picky about it, though. Eventually, one way or another, there's always fighting. And where there's fighting, people get hurt.

Not that we'd set off a bomb at St M's, of course. But there are a lot of things I know I'd do if it meant we could save far more people than we'd lose.

[alt_evelyn]

Yes.

I know.

And we can't keep everyone safe every time. I'm not that much of a Lilah. But I trust your judgment any day over Ridley's. And I'd rather we had something really powerful and didn't ever use it again than give it to her.

[alt_sally_anne]

We could tell them what it does, and we could tell them the cost of casting it. And, we could tell them that if they have an idea for how it ought to be used, they can let us know, and tell us if they have any members willing to be the caster, and IN THAT CASE we will cooperate with them and show that person how to do it.

But it has to be a joint operation.

[alt_evelyn]

Do you think we could keep it so that the person we teach how to cast it can't teach someone else?

Like part of it is they have to agree to be obliviated after?

[alt_sally_anne]

How are they going to stop us?

[alt_sally_anne]

(Okay, there will probably be more than one of them, and their friends could stop us.)

[alt_kingsley]

Alice, Caradoc and I are planning on stopping by tomorrow to discuss further the idea of contacting Ridley. I think you've laid out the key issues, but I should have some further thoughts by then.

Swearing in Colin for the purposes you've described is a good idea. I like the idea of Fu as well as Frank having someone assigned to assist with apparition. He's eager to get out into the field, and although I was wary at first, I think his strategic thinking could be enormously helpful. I was very much struck by some of the ideas he came up with during our Saltash post-mortem.