Sally-Anne

[stinaleigh]

has had her blinders ripped off.

It will be very interesting to see what happens after they meet again.

Comments

[kiya]

It's interesting that Dolohov has apparently led Barty to believe that he has "taken care of" the kids.

(Which in this case seems to mean "checked to be sure they got away" rather than "finished them all off after interrogating them" as Barty might assume, but ... I wonder if he did anything with Sally-Anne's blood.)

[teceler]

He avoided the subject of the Cinnabris with Barty too. I thought at the time that was interesting. Especially because he mentioned it to Raz. Or, well, not in those terms, but enough that Raz could guess.

(I assume he cleaned it up to remove the evidence, since MLE hasn't turned up. What else he did--I don't know.)

[capericious]

Between his comments to Barty post-death and his involvement with various ISS conspiracies, it does look like Dolohov's views may also be changing (or just clarifying themselves) in response to recent events. Did y'all catch his comment here?
Caveat lector: Yesterday, I conclusively proved that I'm a rotten guesser. But I'm going to keep guessing away!
So, Dolohov seems to be one who views death as a a natural and necessary part of life. If so, Voldemort's refusal to accept death might stick in his craw a bit and account for that last crossed-out bit. I sure hope so, because a seditious Dolohov would be a fun Dolohov.
(Then again, maybe he was going to talk about people desecrating the joy of weddings by smuggling in flasks of firewhiskey, who knows.)

[teceler]

I was thinking earlier that we still haven't had our end-of-book-five casualty, and if the LP kills Lucius--who I would really like to hear from/about, this is stretching out worryingly--with Dolohov's loyalties as strained as they are at the moment, we might get said seditious Dolohov. --and, you know, drive a huge wedge through the DEs, and probably push Raz's character arc into solidifying, and cause other chaos.

That would be interesting. And possibly painful enough to work as said death, I think, especially with how Pansy is likely to react. So, um, I'm kind of worried for Lucius at the moment.

(That said, I wasn't doing the best with guessing earlier either.)

Anyway, back on topic--I've always found that as an interesting trait of Dolohov's, and one that is probably pretty important to his character--remember his discussion with Barty after Seamus' mother's death?

[capericious]

Heh, so I definitely just fell into an alternity-hole as I went and combed through the text for evidence of Dolohov's feelings on death. His talk with Seamus after the rite where he talks about owning what you've done and honoring the life you snuffed out and then his talk with Pansy about the memorial garden are all pretty interesting.
And of course, as kiya noted below, the story of Clarkson was quite chilling and corroborated by Sally-Anne describing his impassive professionalism when cutting her down. Poor Perks, she's going to give herself away by being tense tomorrow.
ETA: And re-reading that made me wonder about the little girl that was in the house with Clarkson! I guess we don't have a precise age on her so she may have already made it through Hogwarts by now.

In other news, looks like LM is OK for now, at least. Perhaps everyone currently standing will make it out unscathed this year?
However, it does look like the private message readers are still reading and Ron's conversation with Arista will probably get noticed, then, won't it? Unless it's Percy doing the reading, maybe?

[teceler]

Sorry about that. --but his discussion with Seamus-- I think that might be relevant to what just happened. And--
...it's complicated, isn't it? It's going to be interesting to watch him over the next few days. (He always manages to stop just short of the place where I'd end up hating him. It's kind of interesting.)
--ooh. I wonder if--do we have any information on her? (You see, now I'm running over characters in my head trying to work out if we've seen her. It's perfectly plausible that she might never show up, but that's the kind of detail that might, too.)

Yeah, I'm starting to hope we've filled out deaths quota for the year. --though, wow, I'm sort of amused to note I wasn't entirely wrong about how much danger Lucius was in. I was thinking--I wouldn't have been nearly so concerned about him if I hadn't thought about the repercussions it would have. --speaking of which, I am anticipating Doholov's reaction to Narcissa's revelation.

Yeah, probably. If Doholov specifically asked about it at some point and told them to keep it to themselves, or he got asked having been there that night, they'll probably be fine. Otherwise that could go... badly. Ron didn't say anything too incriminating there, but combined with the break-in...

[kiya]

Going back and looking at Lucius's comments on V's restoration is really interesting in terms of what he does and does not say, and what words he uses.

[teceler]

Having done that now--wow. It's totally innocent-looking, but when you know--

What he says here stands out in particular.

[capericious]

Oh, no need to apologise. I enjoyed every minute of it!
We might not even know if we've seen her? All we know is her family name was Brodie and she was placed with distant relations. That could mean distant in France or, who knows, maybe she turned out to be a Squib. But it is fun to wonder!

Re: death quotas, I hope for everyone's sake that we're done! It does look like a lot of Council families have lost someone to LV. Drumgoole--that was Maebh's family, right?

On Lucius, I had to laugh at the revelation because it was one of the thousand things that went through my head yesterday but I dismissed it. Good to know he has something in common with Siz now!
At any rate, we're still ending Year 5 with Lucius disgraced. I wonder if ol' Snake-Features will take it out on poor Draco.

Yeah, I mean he technically didn't know that the Selwyns were Undesirables #1-3 but the fact that he promised to help instead of, say, reporting it to Barty Crouch would certainly look bad. And then given Bill's closeness to Selwyn, that might lead to further scrutiny for the family. (This game is really honing my ability to catastrophize.)

ETA: Narcissa sort of wrote her message as if she was only writing to Tosha, addressing him by name, etc. However, can't it be read by both Tosha and Barty since she didn't make it a PM? Or am I interpreting that wrong?

[jenett]

We have had a lot of deaths.

Since I have access to the stats, for the curious, we are currently at 103 named person deaths (that includes people who died before the game started that got mentioned by name - though looking at the list, I'm missing a couple there I need to hunt down) plus thousands and thousands more unnamed ones (the epidemic, Ireland, etc.)

In terms of years, Y4 is currently our most lethal, at 27 named person deaths (ok, the Games helped there.) and Y5 is currently at 19.

Draw whatever conclusions from that you like :)

[teceler]

Well, good then.
Brodie. I'll have to try to remember that. I don't think she's any of our prominent characters (my first wild thought there, not being able to remember much about her, was of Megan Jones), but she might show up at some point.

Yeah, me too. Certainly seems like the have. I can't quite remember Drumgoogle in particular, but, well. We have a large cast.

I remember thinking his worries were a little suspicious yesterday, but I didn't really think about it seriously until Narcissa made that post. --I wonder how many people in those circles having doubts on that level, where they're afraid to remember?
(Though, speaking of Siz--)
I presume Lucius is going to bear the brunt of it, but yeah, Narcissa and Draco may be in trouble. You know, it's kind of funny, Draco is probably in a much better position to deal with that in this universe than he was in canon.

Yeah, it would, and followed by the break-in--his saving grace there is probably that no one is likely to immediately think he would dare try that.
He should probably put a story together for if he's questioned about the messages, though. He could probably get away with saying he was going to ask Harry to see if he could do something, but then what does Harry say?
Hopefully someone thinks of that when they're talking things over.

ETA: And here I hit the hazard of writing long comments and not checking before submitting.
Unless that was player error, yeah, they both should be able to see that. I'm not sure if she was directing parts at T--brain, can we please pick one thing to call him and stick to it?--ahem. --because it was easier to tell it to him, or what.

Also, wow.
Now I rather wish I could see these lists. That's a lot of characters.

[jenett]

On the data: we've mentioned it before, but we are currently in the process of putting it all in a wiki, and will open up the wiki the game's over. (Not before, both because there's a bunch of not-game-surface bits scattered through, and because we reserve the right to come up with better ideas later.)

But yes. Data. (I don't generally share tons of details from there, but in the case of numbers, it saves people trying to count.)

[teceler]

Yeah, I remember that being mentioned. I'm rather excited to get the chance to see all that when the game is over, but, but, well, it doesn't help a lot at the moment. (And the next two years will probably be long and interesting, and I wouldn't want to skip them, and you have quite sensible reasons for wanting to keep it under wraps for them, but still)

I kind of wish I had the time to go back over things and create some kind of character/event index. It would probably be really interesting. As it is, I'm mostly only keeping track of the journal-using people and a few that aren't--mostly the people that get referenced frequently--and I feel like I'm missing a lot because of it. Like Sarah Fawcett's family.
Though you (not you specifically, but the players in general) were very nice about linking us to that, and more generally pointing us at bits of information like that, and you're doing a good job referencing past events when they're (/before they become) relevant, and all.
I just like data. Especially when speculating. (Are we entertaining you? I hope we are. I'm certainly having fun speculating, at least when I'm not being terrified for the characters. --which, admittedly, is a sizable portion of the time recently, but still)

ETA: heh, I write that whole long comment and forget to actually say: thank you for sharing those numbers. And all you players do. --well, no, I can't really thank you for stuff like characters dying, but--I mean--for doing all this work. And marvelous plotting, and fascinating characters, and all. This is an amazing story.

[jenett]

If it helps, the indexing took me about 6 months of free time to do (I did it starting last March through last August, with some bits of cleanup after.) We have an *awful* lot of content. (Shifting it into the wiki is .. ok, I'm hoping it's a 4 month project, not a 6 month one, but yeah.)

One thing that might help you - because it's helping me a lot in tracking down random links when I know about when it happened, but not, say, whose journal it was - is doing a search in the handy PDF files. (Linked from http://hpalternity.com). It doesn't work as well if you can't narrow it down to a few months, but...

(I did a presentation on all of our data wrangling this spring for a library conference: the data wrangling is at a handy confluence of 'I enjoy this kind of stuff' and 'it also makes a handy project for my resume in several ways'. But at that point - as of the end of February, our indexing docs ran 150,000+ words, and we had something like 1500 named NPCs (non played characters) referenced. And there are a lot of places they're seriously imperfect, which is part of why the move to the wiki. One of the things it's giving us is more ways to crosslink data, which I'm finding fascinating.)

As to speculation: I am certainly deeply entertained, and commentary last night while we were watching you all trying to figure out what was going on makes me think that's true for our other players (though I won't speak for them.)

ETA: (because I just saw the previous edit). You're very welcome. And we *love* that y'all are reading along, and so amazingly engaged in what we're doing, and the details, and come up with awesome theories about where we're going. (And okay, we also love riffing on what you think we're going to do and going somewhere else, and setting stuff up three years before we're going to use it, and so on.) But every time we have Big Plot, we're all going "Is there anything in alt-fen yet? Is there now?"

[teceler]

Eeeep. Yeah. Yeah, I figured I didn't have the time, but wow.

Yeah, that might work considerably better than the 'hunting the journals' I was doing a while back trying to sort out--I think I was trying to sort out what we knew about Siz's friend Dai). That was interesting (It's not nearly so bad with the pdfs now, but I kind of wish people had kept tagging their journals. It made things much easier to find) Anyway. --Now I'm thinking about how to wrangle something together to search all of them. I don't think grep would work well on pdfs, but...hm.

(Okay, I am seriously impressed here. --and yeah, I could see how it would be enjoyable, and it's much more important writing something than reading it. --and this description is fascinating, and I am looking forward to eventually getting to see these.)

Good. I won't try to speak for anyone else, but I feel like it's the least I can do when you're providing us with all this. --even if you do occasionally drive me mad by waiting and waiting and waiting on updating us on statuses.
Plus, speculating is fun.

What I said above. --and, well, if you wanted engaged readers etc, you clearly are doing something right. (what precisely you are doing right--well, I would say it starts with, I think, writing such compelling characters and so well.)

Anyway, back on topic, yes, you clearly love setting things up three years ahead of time. ([cough]Brutka[cough]).

And, you know, I wondered last night if someone was trying to get discussion started. --well, if so, it clearly worked!

[stinaleigh]

If some canon events play out similarly, with Lucius, Narcissa, and Draco in disgrace, I wonder if it won't be Barty taking the Vow.

[teceler]

Hm, that's an interesting thought. But to kill who? Most of the possible candidates are in hiding--it's not like Dumbledore is at Hogwarts presenting this huge target, however well defended, like in canon (--well, I mean, he sort of is, but they don't know that.)

[stinaleigh]

I wasn't necessarily thinking that Draco's task would be the same, but that for some reason Narcissa would think he needed protection. Just from what I was reading ftim his comment.

[teceler]

Ah, yeah, that makes more sense. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he gets asked to protect Draco, yes. That is a very good point.

[capericious]

What would be deeply funny is if Narcissa asked Barty to protect Lucius on his task. Poor Barty wouldn't know what to do, then.

[stinaleigh]

I thought about this as I was going to sleep last night. Yes, it could be Lucius that she asks him to protect.

[alt_player]

Yes, the comment is largely addressed to Dolohov but it is not locked to be private only to him, so Barty can also see it.

[teceler]

I figured it probably wasn't a mistake when it didn't get changed within a couple of seconds of her pointing it out, but thanks, that's good to know about it. Especially since Barty hasn't replied to it (yet).

[alt_player]

If it makes you feel better, Tosha's player also can't pick one thing to call him. :)

Also, to address a comment you made more downthread, chalk me up as someone else who loves seeing people commenting, reacting, squeeing, etc, here in alt_fen. You guys have been very, very helpful to me in calibrating how Dolohov is coming across!

[teceler]

Heh. I caught myself switching terms of address for the umpteenth time in the last few days there, and got kind of frustrated. --and thanks, it does. :)

You (I'm assuming you're his player?) are dancing a very delicate balance between him not feeling like a--plausible? real?--threat and him just feeling like a monster. And you are doing a very good job of it, at least in my opinion. --assuming that's what you're intending to do. As I said somewhere else, he keeps stopping just short of making me hate him. And then he goes and is utterly fascinating (and occasionally heart-breaking, as in his message to Selwyn this morning).
I'm looking forward to seeing more of him, and of his interactions with people after recent events. Because it's frustrating not knowing how exactly to feel about him, but he is also absolutely fascinating to watch.

(I'm pretty sure you weren't asking for further stuff there, but I kind of got started. So! Have more Opinions on Dolohov! Or whatever my brain is calling him at the moment!)

[kiya]

It's an interesting thing, the difference between an assassin whose attitude towards death is "It will come for you eventually, why not now?" and one whose attitude is more "YAY I GET TO KILL SOMEONE NOW!"

Going on an awfully big adventure, indeed.

[adeliej]

Yes, it will be.

Considering how much of a help Dolohov could be in helping her become a healer, if it stays that he sees her as one of his 'ducklings', I'm a bit worried as to how the next Noble Arts class will go.
It also depends as to exactly who he knows was there. Some (e.g. Neville) are in more danger than others.

Another (very tenuous) possibility is that he might, in exasperation at their near-complete lack of duelling ability, teach them some combat skills that don't involve Petrificus Totalis.

(Or it might just be incredibly comical watching them all trying to tiptoe around the issue. But I doubt it.)

[alt_player]

Neville was not there. Professor Sinistra invited the kids who are in CCF to her wedding -- so Neville was back at Hogwarts, as was Evelyn.

The people who went to the DoM in Alternity were Ron, Harry, Draco, Hermione, Hydra, Justin, Sally-Anne, Luna, and Pansy.

[adeliej]

Oh, oops! Thanks for that clarification. I'm quite glad he wasn't, really.

[kiya]

It's quite fascinating watching Sally-Anne's process, which appears to be "What pieces of data am I missing here that explain why I'M NOT DEAD? Felix is not sufficient to satisfy me in this case! I am missing something and I must figure out what it is."

[teceler]

...that is a remarkably good description of what she seems to be doing. I hadn't thought about it that way.

I'm kind of curious and kind of worried to see how class will go tomorrow. I'm pretty sure Doholov already knows, so they can't make things much worse by being nervous--but--well.

[aedifica]

I had a mental image of Sally-Anne going up to him after class and asking for pointers based on her performance in the duel. It'll never happen, but I enjoyed my image! :-D

[teceler]

...that is a a very amusing image. Thank you for sharing. :)

[kiya]

Though note that his response to recognising Justin and Sally-Anne is "must train!" and "damn!", respectively. (I'm wondering if the 'damn' was that she was involved or that she was hit with something that could have killed her.)

(Given Justin was one of the few - only? - not-one-shot-KOs, that rather backs up the bit where Dolohov and the Order have separately said he has a particularly good head for combat....)

[teceler]

And Hydra got exclamation points. Because, well. (I'm not sure either. Maybe both? --we'll probably know more after class). --I'm really hoping we'll get detailed report on how that goes-- really wish Doholov had someone he (felt he) could talk to about this so we'd see more of his thoughts on it. (Maybe Raz? He told Raz about the Cinnabris, but-- hm. I don't know.)

(Heh, yeah, the 'must train!' made me chuckle a bit. --and Justin's commented on that a bit himself, too, with that focus thing, remember?
Anyway, I think Justin and Hydra were tag-teaming against Dolohov for a bit there, from what I remember, but yeah, he was doing relatively well. (relatively being the key word in that sentence!) )

[kiya]

THe impression I got was that they may have tried to tag-team, but Hydra went down fast, leaving Justin to defend her.

I am waiting on tenterhooks for commentary after class today, damnit. I suspect the kids will be bewildered that Dolohov isn't all HOW DARE YOU OPPOSE ME about it, as he clearly isn't... :}

[teceler]

Yeah, but then someone said later that she tried to hex Doholov again, so I'm not sure.

Yes. Want. --and, I mean, I think they know he wouldn't be that obvious, or at least Sally-Anne does, but I think at this point anything he does is going to throw them, because they're half-expecting Something Horrible To Happen (or at least that's my read).

I'm kind of wondering whether or not he's going to draw them aside and say something (and if so, what?), or have the lecture go in the direction of dueling technique somehow (in such a way that is 'these are some of the things you were doing wrong', as followup to his remarks re: Justin), or he will just pretend nothing happened at all.

(And yeah, he doesn't seem to be. I get the impression from his dialogue with Barty that he was all WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON ARE THESE MY STUDENTS AND IF SO WHAT THE HELL (probably not in those terms, I can't do his voice at all, but you get the general idea) for a while there, but I think with Arista and Hector as the reason it's more settled.)

[kiya]

Yeah, the "the other shoe, it's coming for me" feeling is pretty clear, particularly from Sally-Anne.

I was joking to someone last night about how it would be hilarious if Dolohov plopped himself down in front of the class and was all, "Okay, let's bounce some ideas around about ... battle strategy! Say you wanted to invade the Department of Mysteries, what would you do?"

Or, more subtly, "You are trying to extract hostages from enemy hands. How do you handle the unexpected arrival of the guards?"

Or something.

(Damnit, waiting for commentary.)

[teceler]

Yeah, well, your comment on Sally-Anne above.

I'll have you know that made me burst into laughter. And then quote it to someone else.

Anyway, the latter would be more subtle, but he would have a perfectly good excuse for the former (he was just in a fight in the DoM, and his mind is on the topic), if he actually wanted to. Probably wouldn't make the best discussion for a class, though, as I think no one's supposed to know what it looks like inside.

(I'm guessing they're in classes at the moment, and thus the silence? Or do I have my time-frames the wrong way around again?)

[kiya]

Sally-Anne has reported in with a very uneventful class. I am not sure I am feeling less anticipatory.

[teceler]

Yeah, you and me both. I mean, I wasn't really expecting anything like the scenario's that have been jokingly proposed, but I expected something, at least.

I don't know maybe it's just the last few days, but I keep feeling like something is about to happen.

(Also, Sally-Anne and Pansy.)

[(Anonymous)]

Suspect Hydra gets exclamation points because as Rod's daughter she counts as family to Dolohov.

[ellemir]

Suspect Hydra gets exclamation points because as Rod's daughter she counts as family to Dolohov.

[teceler]

(You having issues with login cookies?)

Huh, I hadn't thought about it that way. I thought she just got exclamation points because, well, Hydra Lestrange is especially not someone you would expect to find breaking into the DoM. (When you don't know the contents of the ISS lock, that is).
If it has to do with her counting as family... damn it, I want to know what is going on in Dolohov's head at the head at the moment. I'm hoping he'll at least comment again on that message to himself with notes from classes, but he hasn't yet.

[ellemir]

Yes re login issues

And I think your point about Hydra is very true.

[kiya]

If I suddenly realised I'd been duelling Bellatrix LeStrange's daughter, I would certainly want to say '!!'.

[teceler]

...that is also a good point. I mean, I think if Bella knew about that misadventure, she... well, let's not go there. But in entirely another sense...

[adeliej]

I read the 'damn' as worry that she might be seriously injured (and, as far as he knows, not have access to a healer - though that might be reading too much into it).

I thought this mainly because he didn't go 'damn' about Justin, who seems to be the other main ISS member he wants to [insert a word/phrase that isn't "look after" and isn't train but something in the middle].

[teceler]

--yeah, that makes sense. I was thinking he'd know she'd be able to get Poppy to treat her if she could make it back to school--and there were others to help her and no bodies, so. But considering Poppy said Sally-Anne came pretty close to--lemme get the post--being killed or permanently maimed--that's probably a reasonable concern.

And yeah, that makes sense.

('kay, going to take a break from commenting for a bit now. Will hopefully return in time to discuss that latest at least a little)