Order Only: Private Message to Dora and Remus

[alt_sirius]

So, what are the odds that we'll go more than ten minutes today without Bea reminding us that she's three?

I think the hardest part so far has been keeping her out of the cake. (To say nothing of the incongruity of Kreacher even making a cake. I've checked it for razor blades or rat poison or anything equally malicious.)

When are we expecting the Moddey contingent? I've fielded about a million questions about Kevin, Keisha and Sara already. Who else did Alice plan to bring? (I can't quite explain so she'll believe me that Rory's not really interested in a party for a three-year-old.)

Maureen is coming, isn't she? Because if there are about to be a dozen children under six here we might need to set up a few more safety spells.

Comments

[alt_sirius]

How hard can it be?

Spoken by a man who has not spent days and days in a compound crawling with children.

If Maureen doesn't come then maybe we'd better see if Jacinda or Candace will come and help run interference.

I'm going to reinforce the spells barring entry to the private areas of the house, just in case. All we need is a massive game of hide-and-seek and lose track of one of them until sometime Sunday.

[alt_lupin]

There's only going to be twelve of them! Anyway I firecalled to ask about Jacinda or Candace and everyone seemed very surprised that I was worried because OF COURSE Maureen was coming.

But reinforcing the wards on the private areas is a good idea. I think whenever kids are somewhere new they'll suggest hide-and-seek because it gives them an excuse to snoop in the interesting new environment. About the only thing that stopped the Junior Auxiliary from proposing a game of hide-and-seek on their first visit was two years and a little bit of dignity.

[alt_sirius]

Dignity. Do we have any of that left?

Does it ever strike you that there should be far more than only a dozen children between the ages of two and four who were muggleborn? Snape's last report - that all the children recorded in the book were already known to us - well, it was reassuring that we hadn't missed anyone but I somehow think we should have had at least a few born in the camps.

[alt_lupin]

Do you think we missed some, and never realised it? We've relied heavily on the book. Certainly we missed many, among the older children.

[alt_sirius]

I trust the book to know but it's more .... I worry about whatever measures get taken in the camps to prevent magical births. Strangeweale was hoarding all the potential pregnancies for a while but beyond that - are we ever going to uncover everything that was done to keep naturally-occurring magical children from surviving? Or from being born in the first place? Since Bill changed departments we've had less and less information about how they're treated, what policies are being enforced.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just borrowing trouble. But Strangeweale can't have lucked into every single spontaneous magical birth there was for the last year. It's got to be something else at work.

[alt_lupin]

Well, it's basically standard for wizards with work gangs of muggles to use mass contraceptive charms on them, or to keep the sexes separated. That's going to cut down on the births, including the spontaneously magical births.