Alice Longbottom

Kingsley and Severus are currently preparing for the Department of Mysteries. They've been talking rather extensively with Timothy about how to pass as Strangeweale and poring over maps of the layout, and I brought along a hair sample from one of our children at Moddey to use for the victim-apparent.

Sirius, Tonks, Mac, Dorcas, and Caradoc will be going to the site where the prisoners are being held. Once everything is secure, we'll need help Apparating everyone to the London safehouse -- Laszlo's storage rooms. Everyone who can Apparate and who is not expected at St Mungo's events or otherwise needs to maintain their covers should meet at Grimmauld within the hour to go over our plan and safety protocols, and then we'll be preparing the safehouse for arrivals. Poppy, we might need you on call in case we have any complications -- I know you have professional obligations today, but side-alonging so many expectant mothers is less than ideal to say the least.

Justin, you have a good point -- anyone at St Mungo's events today can certainly keep their eyes open for unusual behaviour or sudden absences of Council members, especially MLE and Corax Mulciber. We're also going to try and get our hands on Otto Strangeweale, as he'll be at the event. Cedric, Justin, if you have the opportunity, discreetly take him somewhere private, stun him, and bring him to the London safehouse. We'll take it from there. (Justin, I might show you the location if you can slip away from your preparations and come briefly by Grimmauld.) The rest of you can help by providing cover and serving as lookouts.

Remus, please let us know if you and Timothy run into any difficulties while going through Strangeweale's house.

Charlie, I'd like you to keep a sharp eye out tomorrow.

I'm wondering if some of us might be free to do ley-flying as well, to keep an eye on the magical fields? I know that Charlie will be otherwise occupied, as will the rest of the Weasleys and our ISS members. Kingsley, might you and the Players head out to the Walsingham site to monitor things from there?

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.

Now that we've got a better idea of the state of Saltash, we can act accordingly.

I'd like to send a contingent over to Bedford and Saltash that includes Regina and Lisa as well as some of the Aldrich community leaders. They can talk trade, as well as to work through their process of setting up a system of governance, sustainable living, and radio communication. I'd imagine the people from Aldrich would be quite useful here, as they've had a few months to adjust.

Lee, Jeremy, I'd like you both to work on coordinating the trip to Bedford. Remember, the people from Aldrich and Regina are going to be the experts here -- your job would be to bring them together, record the proceedings, and make note of any way we could be of use. And Lee, our Danny and Victor have come up with several prototypes of how to convert radios from electrick to hand-powered -- if you could pass along those samples to both Aldrich and Bedford, they might be able to help in making more so that we can then send them on to the camps.

Kingsley, Dorcas, if you could continue to work with Saltash, pass along medical supplies and see if you can dig up a docter who can be useful, that would be very helpful. I figure that you can organise a similar meeting to the one at Bedford once we address their more immediate needs.

We've still got several cauldrons on the fire that we need to keep our eyes on. The camps who are on reduced rations -- Ashford, Chipstead, Maidstone, Sevenoaks, Swale -- we can't leave them without continued support. Sherwood has committed to funneling some extra supplies to them as they can, and have also been able to help distribute nutritional supplements. Frank had been working with the handful of wand holders in the camps to show them how to cast glamours so that the residents appear more thin and unhealthy -- they might need some further assistance, and in a few weeks, we might take advantage of an expected increase in deaths and get some people out of there. Tonks, while Frank recovers, you might lend a hand there.

Cecelia is still working on the additional information regarding the magical fields from Sirius, Tonks, and Charlie. I'll let you know once she comes up with anything definitive. Evie, she got your maps. Thank you for passing them along.

Sirius, where do we stand in terms of Strangeweale? What is the next step for that mission?

We've also got to stay on top of the black wands. We're spread fairly thin as it is, so I think the best thing we can do is to continue to work on our recent magical births, keep the button network informed, and take care of Strangeweale as soon as we have enough intel to proceed. Molly, Remus, I'll most certainly be asking you for your continued help when it comes to getting the latest crop of babies to Moddey.

Sirius and Caradoc look far better this evening than they did when they first arrived, and we're still patching up some of the Sherwood group, but they appear to be in good spirits on the whole. Frank is unchanged for the time being.

Albus spent some time with me this afternoon, working through what exactly happened this morning to Frank and Saltash.

When he was first learning about whether we could ward an area as large as Moddey Dhoo, Albus did a great deal of reading up on the early development of the spell. Apparently, in a rather obscure source, he found that one early attempt at creating a magical field of protection went oddly awry -- the caster died, and the effort caused a temporary field where magic was not effective. From what I've been made to understand, the precautionary steps we use in Fidelius today -- the salt barrier, for instance, and walking the perimeter in bare feet -- are to prevent that magical feedback from occurring, which could otherwise hurt the caster and create odd or unpredictable magical fields within the area.

Albus got the idea that this early attempt could be studied and modified in order to deliberately create and sustain a magical nullification field for defensive purposes, and developed a technique that he believed would be safer for the caster, as the field would be self-sustaining after the initial magical surge rather than continue to deplete the energy of the person who cast it. There were concerns, however, that were the area too large, the caster wouldn't be able to handle the surge.

Frank cast the spell with full knowledge of the risks involved. He does not appear to be losing energy or declining in any of his vital signs. Albus seemed to be hopeful that as he has survived thus far, his chances were good. However, we do not know how long he'll be like this, or how he might have otherwise been impacted by the spell.

We'll have to explore the area some later -- clearly, the secret-keeping mechanism has largely been effective so far, and the field has maintained. It is most likely very dangerous to attempt to Apparate to an area inside or around the field, however.

There are all sorts of considerations for how we might proceed -- there are several hundred people inside the field, and we must assess their immediate needs and attempt to provide them. Being unable to appear directly in the protected area will be a challenge for supplies. We can anticipate that the surrounding area will be heavily patrolled as well. John, Remus and I have been talking through what that might look like, and sorting out who will be best able to go out there tomorrow to re-establish contact.

I'll also be extensively assessing what went well today, and what we'll need to improve upon. As always, I appreciate any insights you can give so that we will be better prepared in the future.

We have bled for the ground we won today, and the costs have been dear. I am humbled by your sacrifices, and proud of all of us for what we've accomplished today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but we're facing it together. Thank you.

Kingsley. Tonks.

Check in.

What's happened?

Molly, I wanted to know if you'd be up for coming over to Moddey for a birthday tea or dinner on Wednesday. Victor can make his famous apple cake, and Bill and the twins and Charlie would be more than welcome too if you want to make a proper party out of it. (If Charlie can make his way down for an hour or two, that is!)

It feels like ages since we put up our feet and visited, and there's so much flying around at such a quick pace these days, I'd really love just having you over to have a cuppa and a celebration.

We're working through some logistics today at Grimmauld. You both have a knack for finding structural weaknesses, and would find it difficult to get away and join us.

I'm hoping you'll be able to share some additional thoughts you have now that you've had time to chew it over a bit, so we can consider them during our planning phase. And Sally-Anne, feel free to ask your fellows at school to weigh in too -- this message is not meant to be exclusionary, it's meant to narrow our focus a bit.

There are a few things to put on the table:

First of all, Minerva, were you able to add the New London babies back to the false book?

I've read through the report, and have talked things over with Frank regarding New London. Thank you to everyone who contributed, it was very thorough.

It's difficult to determine how much your ease of entry and lack of Unspeakables working at the time of your arrival was due to the Felix and how much was due to their usual procedures, but it's fairly clear that Barty Crouch was notified of your arrival in Mysteries through some sort of alarm. Nevertheless, we've got a working idea of the layout of the interior (we're currently trying to sort out if it shifts in predictable ways or completely at random), and a basic idea as to where they might be held based on Arista's report.

The way I see it, we've got a few different goals, some of which would be far more difficult to pull off successfully than others. All of them hold a very high degree of risk, and possibly extensive collateral damage for Ministry workers and the young women and children we'd be trying to rescue.

The first goal is to rescue as many of the muggleborn women and children as we can. We know there are three babies, we can assume most of the rest of the women will be pregnant. There also might be older children there -- ages nine to thirteen -- as we missed a few during those early years, and they would qualify for Strangweale's machine.

The second goal is to actively prevent this programme from continuing by destroying the machine, and preventing the people who have knowledge of how to build it from continuing their work by any means necessary. I believe at this moment this ability is limited to one person, Strangeweale himself, but that might not necessarily be the case.

I've gone through several different scenarios as to how we might accomplish these things, and there is no easy way to approach it.

One potential plan would be to capture Strangeweale, and either use him for polyjuice, or Imperius him so that he'll direct the captives to a safe location and then destroy his own machine (and himself in the process). The latter would be rather tricky to do, but if we had someone alongside of him posing as an assistant or potential victim, it might be possible to maintain the Imperius. If we were to use polyjuice, I'm unsure as to whether it would set off security measures at the Department of Mysteries. We'd also have to question Strangweale very closely for potential security information he'd be expected to know, and be absolutely certain that he was revealing what he knew in full. Given that he's associated with the Department of Mysteries, I'm not assuming this will be easy.

Accessing the victims, even with the layout provided by Arista and the ISS, will be difficult. Bringing them to a location where they can be extracted without raising an alarm will be likewise risky. Destroying the machine will be the simplest of all of these things, and it's still something that will present a great many obstacles in terms of being able to enter the facilities, destroy it, and then exit.

I'm inclined to attempt Imperius on Strangeweale, only because there are so many unknown factors that could come along with polyjuice. Does anyone have any other ideas in terms of which direction we might take this?

We've also got seven babies who aren't of New London that we need to target, not including Kathleen Byrne of Killarney, who is still in Moody's court. Although we have more pressing concerns with New London, I'd like to start the process for at least a few of these, so as to not let them build to something unmanageable. Bill, please let me know once the paperwork is ready. Molly, Tonks, Remus, Sirius, I might ask you to team up and help bring them in once we're ready.

I feel awful.

I want to slap him silly and then give him a cuppa and an enormous hug.

He's hurting and tired and heartsore and I took away something that made it feel a bit better and I'm just so worried that he might be crumbling while I stand there and watch. Oh, there's a potion that we're pinning all our hopes on but hasn't actually been used in Merlin knows how long. Or we could always assassinate Mulciber, which might actually help a great deal on several fronts, but would be massively difficult to pull off and impossible to do safely.

I don't know if I'm making it worse or stopping a disaster, and I never thought in a million years I'd have to tell Bill sodding Weasley not to sleep with an Auror. And when I told him that I was starting to seriously question his judgement, I could see Arthur's face in my mind's eye and it broke my heart two times over.

I wish he was here to help Bill. And me. And all of us. Merlin, I miss him.

What I do know is that I'm in charge of this good person, this person I know and love who's already sacrificed so much of his happiness, and I'm pushing him to keep doing something he loathes because we need him there. I might push him so hard that he'll break. And I hate it.