Order Only: Private Message to Alice and Charlie

[alt_sirius]

Charlie, take extreme caution when you go speak to the centaurs again. As you may have gleaned from other journals at Hogwarts, one of the young women in Voldemort's ridiculous competition went and ran afoul of them over the weekend.

Pansy, Draco, Hydra, Ron and I went into the forest shortly after the Quidditch match (as soon as Draco and Ron were ready, that is). We found Hagrid without too much incident. (Allie, he says he's willing to take on jobs for us, if we want him. He can leave the forest without being noticed and I trust his ability to travel overland undiscovered, as well. I'm just not certain what you might want him to do.)

Hagrid knew of a spider that had recently met with an accident and took us to the spot. Luckily, the rest of the creature's clan hadn't finished devouring him, so there were pieces left for us to harvest. We'd just finished there and were collecting some less impressive findings for Ron and Pansy when two 7th-year Slytherins came crashing through the trees. They seemed to be in the middle of an urgent discussion. I changed back to Padfoot as soon as we heard them, so they never saw me as anything but a dog - but beyond that, they were far too preoccupied to worry much about proper introductions. As soon as they saw Hydra, they begged her to help find where their friend had gone. Between Draco and Hagrid, they were able to get the young wizard to start at the beginning and tell them what had happened: They were looking for creatures and found the centaurs. Three of them - two girls, one boy - but this is the couple who are expecting. The young witch's pregnancy is starting to show a bit. The centaurs must have seen that, as well, or smelled it. They let her alone and abducted the other young woman. It seems they spared the bloke because of his bravery in protecting the pregnant girl - Lizzie Stevens, I think that is.

Anyway, they escaped with only minor harm done but their friend was in the hands of the centaurs. They asked Hydra to find her 'by tracking her thoughts' - as if that's possible, but that's neither here nor there. Hagrid said he knew where they'd likely have taken her and led us in that direction. When we got there, he told everyone else to stay well out of the way and went in alone. He even left Fang behind, leaving me to stay close to the big girls' blouse. (He took a lot of convincing to stay put and protect the others but I got him to understand eventually.)

Well. We waited for probably twenty minutes. It was getting quite dark. Then Hagrid came out of the grove, crossbow on his back and Miss Montgomery in his arms, in quite bad shape. He carried her to the edge of the forest and then Vaisey and Ron took her from there, though she was well nervous of males, but she bore up in order to get to Poppy.

In the hospital wing, Poppy removed the memory of Hagrid, Fang and the other black dog who was with them, so all they'll remember is that they ran into Pansy, Draco, Hydra and Ron, and together they convinced the centaurs to get her back.

I don't know how long she was in their possession but she was clearly the worse for it. I can't imagine your negotiations will be any easier as a result. Hagrid did tell me that it's better to go sooner rather than late, however, since the longer we wait to tender our regrets over the incident, the more the centaurs will misinterpret our silence. You know how they get.

And I highly recommend that you take Hagrid with you when you do go. He has better luck with them than anyone I've known and he'll be able to straighten out any selective memory they might have over this encounter.

Comments

[alt_alice]

I see.

Thank you.

This is most disheartening news, but for what it's worth, I am excessively glad that you and Hagrid were both there.

[alt_charlie]

Oh, bloody bugger and blast, what a cock-up. This is why I told Malfoy to warn people. (Probably should have asked someone else to do it, I suppose.)

Yes, I'll go up today and meet up with Hagrid, and we can go have a word.

Is the girl going to be all right?

[alt_sirius]

He thought you meant our people, not anyone who might be blundering into the forest. It's that Slytherin self-interest thing, I think. Maybe use smaller words next time.

Poppy said the girl's been removed to St M's for further support than Hogwarts can provide. She's not anticipated to return soon. This idiotic game has just seen its first casualty, which I'm not so sure hasn't been the Death Eaters' expectation all along. The only thing surprising me is that they've been at this for nearly three months and it's taken this long for someone to sustain grievous harm.

[alt_charlie]

Ha. He is a right tosser sometimes, isn't he? I'm trying not to hold it against him, but some days are harder than others.

Hagrid and I made it past the initial contact without them taking it out on us, at least -- we're sitting here waiting for them to decide if they'll talk to us long enough for us to apologise or if the stars aren't suitable today. (I swear, half the time they do that just to yank our chains.)

You really think the newer Council might have done all this to get rid of some of their potential competition? Wouldn't Voldemort notice? "Sorry, the challenges we came up with killed off half your candidates." Ugh, I shouldn't even say that. Not with so many of our lot in

Whups, here they come, back later.

[alt_sirius]

I think it's more that they didn't even consider this sort of trauma to be consequential - which is its own brand of horror. I stayed back to discuss it with Poppy, without the children (okay, they're not children but you know what I mean) and she had a deal to say about it.

Actually, it might help you to have details handy with the centaurs. She said that the physical damage required some delicate reconstructive magic, but the trauma was another matter. Apparently in these cases (if you're a pureblood, that is), the family have the opportunity to decide whether to elect Obliviation or to allow the mind a more organic path to healing.

Poppy didn't much like either option, from what she said. I mean to say, in cases like this the impression of what she experienced will have embedded itself deeply and in across the terrain of her mind. Poppy indicated that a complete Obliviation would be needed to remove all chance of being surprised at odd moments by images, sensations, and auditory echoes of what occurred. She said the other option is a series of treatments aimed at erasing the specific shadows of the event - I can only imagine that must be an even longer and more difficult course. Poppy was quick to point out that the Vale of Health is full of people--victims of all sorts of trauma--for whom that hasn't been an adequate help.

But. She reminded me that all sufferers are different and said that Sam might elect to have nothing beyond a basic Obliviation, and then treatment with Tincture of Time. Not all minds make the same thing of events, even ones as distressing as this. The type of mind that thinks it would make a good Death Eater? Probably thinks it can handle something like this.

Until it can't.

[alt_charlie]

Right, after a lot of talking we've left it at they agree that it wasn't us who sent people into their territory so they won't hold it against us, and we agree to do what we can to prevent future intrusions. I said that we don't have the authority to keep people out of the forest, they said we better well try and if it happens again we'll have shown we don't have the power to follow through on any of the things we've been offering, I said we never claimed to have that power yet, and we went round about in circles for the next four hours.

I didn't dare bring up what they did to Sam. There's nothing we could have asked them for that would help to ease what happened to her, especially if Poppy thinks things are that bad, and there's no way we could have got them to concede that future accidental incursions should be dealt with more gently. Although, Firenze did say it was a group of the young hotheads who found them, and that "they did not consider certain interactions of Mars and Venus before acting", which I interpreted as, even centaurs have young adults who do idiotic and impulsive things. It wasn't an apology, or a promise to act differently in the future, but I got the feeling Firenze was just as irritated with them as we are with the ISS when they do something stupid and impulsive even though he was trying to (was forced to?) justify their actions.

Which, you know, is not really worth much, not held up against what they did to Sam, but still. I guess I'll have to hope that you're right, and she does have the kind of ruthlessness that can bounce back from something like this without too much long-term trauma. Which is a weird thing to hope for, really.

Merlin's manky underpants, my head hurts now. What a day.