Ask me anything!

[alt_rachel]

I am Rachel Brodie, former head of Albion MLE, Order of the Phoenix member, Dogstar member, and general troublemaker. Ask me anything!

Several of my old Aurors promised to come by and answer questions as well -- Ron Weasley, Hydra Finch-Fletchley, Draco Malfoy, Jason Montague -- and they can answer questions, too. And hey, some of our old friends promised to read along so WHO KNOWS what sorts of questions you might be able to get answered (ALICE) (#nopromises)

(If you have questions about the Battle of Penzance, which ended the Albion wizarding war 17 years ago this week, you'll want to ask someone other than me -- I was badly injured the night before it happened, and sat that battle out. But Lee Jordan talked me into this, he seemed to think people would have some questions.)

I actually have to step out for a bit but I promise I'll come back and answer questions later.

Comments

[elisem]

What skills and experiences did Dogstar and the Order, respectively, give you personally? Any comments on the strengths and weaknesses of both organizational models?

[alt_rachel]

Both Dogstar and the Order gave me hope. Dogstar gave me hope that I wasn't alone in my convictions. The Order gave me hope that we could actually change things. In terms of skills -- I arrived at both organisations with a fairly extensive skillset, but of course after the May Battle, when Alice put me in charge of Albion's MLE, I had to learn how to be an administrator, a manager, and a recruiter. I'd supervised a few people in MEU, like Jason and the occasional trainee, but to a significant extent I had no damn idea what I was doing. The relatively low number of deaths during that summer should be credited to my recruits' skills as Aurors, and not my ability to do appropriate risk assessment.

As far as the two organisational models -- well. The Order's idea of operational security was like a Gryffindor's idea of a clever plan. (You know that one, right? "All together, on three!") The Order lock was both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. We had the ability to communicate securely, which was a huge advantage at times. But this also meant that every Order member knew every other Order member. Even with a cell structure, Dogstar was nearly wiped out at one point. I think the Order could have been completely eliminated, if they'd captured and successfully interrogated even a single person who was on the Lock.

[ursamajor]

I have a question for Jason, actually: what did you know about the McLaggens and their involvement with seditious organizations to make you steer Seamus away from trying to recruit Cormac for DEMLE? Were you, in fact, also Dogstar? Was Bronwyn actually your cat, or another one of your contacts?

[alt_jason]

Met the McLaggens through Rufus, who was in Auror Training with me before he was expelled. We both took the Mark at the same time, too, as you may or may not recall.

But then that was years ago, wasn't it?

Anyway, Cormac wasn't a good fit for Lady Lestrange's outfit because he wasn't a strong occluder. I could see that he'd tried to learn, but it was more than clear he wouldn't be able stand up to Lady L's scrutiny.

I also didn't think he'd have the patience or temperament to mole for Dogstar at Buckingham and not make a meal of things.

As for me, I was as much a member of Dogstar as I was the Order. Which is to say: a bit.

If you know no one can read your mind, no reason not to have contacts everywhere you can, so long as they're made carefully. Don't you agree?

Bronwen is my sister. Deceased.

[jenett]

What do you think makes for a really excellent Auror?

And how do you think the Aurors you're training today are different than those who grew up during the war?

[alt_rachel]

Quick reflexes and steady nerves are helpful, but the thing I find most critical in a really excellent Auror is intelligence. Well, a certain sort of intelligence -- the kind that spots connections between things, that can suss out a lie or something that really needs to be double-checked. Fighting skills, you can train. Teaching someone to spot the detail that doesn't fit, and working out what it means without tipping their hand? That's a lot harder.

The Aurors from that very first 'class' -- Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy, and Hydra and Justin Finch-Fletchley -- it's frankly unfair to compare later recruits to any of them. They were (and are) some of the bravest, most committed people I've ever known. They arrived with the sort of skills that are rarely found in Aurors today, simply because they'd trained so hard, with so much focus and dedication. It was an honour to work with them. Today's Aurors aren't ever going to come close, and it's not really fair to expect them to -- they grew up in a completely different world, they didn't decide at twelve or thirteen that they were willing to die to make things better, because thanks to the Order, they didn't have to.

[stormyhearted]

Which has been the bigger challenge: being married to a monogamous man, or being a single mother?

Does Emma have a relationship with her father?

[alt_rachel]

You've been reading the gossip tabloids, I see!

It's the conventional thing to say something like, 'single motherhood is the hardest, and the best, thing I've ever done,' but I think most of the people who say that sort of thing didn't serve undercover in Bellatrix Lestrange's MLE and help bring it down. Serving as a single mother has been challenging at times, entertaining quite frequently, and thoroughly satisfying.

Emma does indeed have a relationship with her father, though she sees me a great deal more often.

Bill Weasley and I loved each other deeply, but in the end found that we were too different to make our marriage work.

[alt_bill]

Yeah, we did. Love each other deeply, despite everything that followed.

Which is why we're still pretty good as mates meeting for an occasional beer.

(Which reminds me, it's about that time again. Sometime soon, maybe? Send me an owl or a patronus or something.)

[alt_rachel]

Will do.

[kiya]

What made you suspect Jason would be amenable to being recruited?

[alt_rachel]

This one's easy. First off, there was no point in trying to recruit anyone who couldn't occlude extremely well, and Hydra had said she couldn't read him.

Second, he'd reported to me for a couple of years at that point in MEU. I thought there was a good chance he'd switch sides, if only because he thought our side was more likely to win.

Ironically, I had no idea he was involved with Dogstar, even though I'd been a member.

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

What are some challenges you faced in rebuilding the new MLE and making it into a law enforcement department people could trust again? How did you deal with them?

[alt_rachel]

I ought to tell you something about trying to recruit wizards who didn't harbour anti-muggle views and how complicated that was ('completely free from prejudice' was not realistic; we had to seek out people with open minds and try to go from ther) but I think our biggest challenge was when we decided to get all the records, wizard and muggle, onto a computer system. I think the theory was that we could share data on our fugitives with INTERPOL or some such, although I've blocked a lot of it out.

That was a complete disaster, ongoing for about five years.

The good news in the end was that at least the wizards and the muggles in the department were able to unite against a common enemy.

[synecdochic]

For all of you, really: What's your greatest regret about how things went during the War?

[alt_rachel]

Justin Finch-Fletchley's death. Because it was preventable.

I'm not thrilled that Antonin Dolohov got away, mind you. He's apparently living in Cairo, and still corrupting young people with Dark Arts, but at least he hasn't returned to Albion to stir up trouble here.

[worthywords]

You've said that if your parents had survived, they might have gone on the run, like Frank and Alice did. Maybe your aunt would have raised you, then, like Neville and Evelyn's Gran raised them.

Have you ever thought about how you would have been different had your parents lived, or what different choices you would have made?

[alt_rachel]

There are about a dozen ways that could have ended in just as much heartache, I think. They'd have had to know they could trust me in order to make contact, and I was doing my absolute damnedest to make sure everyone thought I was loyal, since I was trying to join MLE. So they might have been out there, but convinced I was the person I pretended to be. My contact with the Order came just a little over a year before the end of the war, and by that time, nearly all the pre-war Aurors who'd gone on the run had died in action. Imagine how that would have felt, if I'd found the Order only to discover that my parents had died a year earlier.

If I'd known they were alive, and if they'd made contact with me ... I don't know. I might have joined the Order years earlier, but I'm not sure I'd have had the stomach in that case to join MLE, and I think I was useful there.

For Ron, Draco, or Hydra if they wish...

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

What was it like mentoring your first class of ducklings?

How did you help them make a clear distinction between working for the Protectorate and working for Albion?

Hydra, now that you're practically an empty-nester, do your friends/relatives who are just starting out come to you for parenting advice?

Re: For Ron, Draco, or Hydra if they wish...

[alt_hydra]

We were already helping to train a group during that last summer at Hogwarts, just before the war ended. But it was quite haphazard and not terribly organised. We were still focused on winning the war.

The first official class - we had to train them in much the same way we were trained. In other words: lots of emphasis on offensive skills, in addition to defensive protocols. Many of our biggest threats (like the Council) were eliminated, but there were still people out there who practised the dark arts and did not take kindly to the whole concept of Albion. So, we had to be prepared for anything.

But it wasn't long before we walked back our use of Unforgivables and other dark magic in favour of improved strategy and defense. It was important to us that the public recognise Albion's security and intelligence Units as a peace-keeping organisation utterly different from the brutal forces represented by the Protectorate's MLE.

Charlotte's just left Hogwarts but I wouldn't say that I'm an empty-nester. Nathaniel is 10 and Lachlan is 12, and they both live with us nearly full time now that Gaia's moved to Italy with no intention of coming back. But Draco and Hermione had Abigail about a year ago, so it's been fun to help out with a baby. I'm in the relatively unusual position of having raised one to adulthood despite being younger than my cousins. They helped me out back in those days, and now I'm able to enjoy returning the favour.

Re: For Ron, Draco, or Hydra if they wish...

[alt_ron]

Hullo, there!

Constant vigilance. That's what we taught them, innit?

Loads of work on the sparring floor and lots of supervised hours in the field. There's always been a lot of surveillance to this job, so patience and alertness matter. For the ones that aren't naturals (or animagi), the hard part's getting so they know what's around them at all times, so they notice the slightest movement at the edge of the field of vision or the subtlest changes in temperature, sound, light source, shadow, scent.

Hydra's right, though, we took in it steps, changing the fundamental methods we used, but from the start we made sure the general public knew that we weren't their mum's and dad's MLE. (We weren't so gentle with the closet Dark practitioners and the hidden DE sympathisers.)

Re: For Ron, Draco, or Hydra if they wish...

[alt_draco]

Too right. Remember tracking those anonymous Owls sent by the two wizards who were offering top galleon for the secret to casting the Black Curse?

Which, for those reading, was classified as a fourth Unforgivable.

Re: For Ron, Draco, or Hydra if they wish...

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention the Unforgivables, because I was just coming here to ask if that classification was still in use. I know several of you had to cast these spells in the war, and all of your generation grew up with them being used as commonplaces. How did you, hah, *recast* them as atrocities after they had become ordinary to so many people? In the years after the war, did the Dark Arts continue to have a place in society, or was there a violent reaction against it, or something in between? Do any of you still think there is a place for that kind of magic...maybe not the Unforgivables, but dark spells in general?

Re: For Ron, Draco, or Hydra if they wish...

[alt_draco]

Cruciatus, AK, and the Black Curse are at the top of the list of similarly illegal dark curses that carry with them stiff penalties, including imprisonment and, upon release, undertaking an Unbreakable Vow to never practise them again. Imperius is also on that list, but situated quite a bit below those three. There have been occasions where individuals have successfully petitioned that they had Just Cause for using the Imperius curse (in cases of self-defense, for example).

From a purely legal standpoint, they are neither referred to as "Cardinal" or "Unforgivable," as we believe that such classifications present an aura of allure.

Colloquially, however, the terms are still used. The majority of Albion remembers the atrocities of the Protectorate well-enough to consider dark magic and the so-called Unforgivables extremely dangerous, but there are always those who can't resist temptation, or believe that they can keep their study of the dark arts to the purely theoretical realm.

For Hydra Finch-Fletchley

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

I'm actually interested in something that was only mentioned in the last couple of posts: legilimency as a therapeutic tool. Can you share with us a bit about how you developed this? As a survivor of abuse yourself, has it been healing for you to help others with something that was used against you to cause you pain?

Re: For Hydra Finch-Fletchley

[alt_hydra]

I'm glad you asked.

Mental health isn't addressed as much by wizards and witches as it is by muggles, so I had to consult a number of experts in the field before embarking on my experiments. I underwent a number of EMDR psychotherapy sessions myself, in addition to taking quite a few of workshops. (If you don't know what EMDR is, then I suggest you... "google it?" That's the phrase, right?) After being trained in the EMDR techniques, I theorised that a combination of bilaterial stimulation and legilimency would aid patients in better processing negative emotions, cognitions, and physical sensations. My preliminary research and experimentation indicated positive results.

But then, I didn't really have time for a side-career as a therapist, so I wrote the book in hopes that this approach to legilimency would be further explored by properly-trained healers. And it has been.

Absolutely it's been healing. I feared legilimency my whole life, and became doubly afraid of it when I developed the skill myself. To know that it can be used to help others work through traumatic memories and experiences makes me feel I've put that skill to good use. It's much better than being a human lie detector test.

Re: For Hydra Finch-Fletchley

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

I am so very glad to read this.

Re: For Hydra Finch-Fletchley

[alt_sally_anne]

Legilimency is an extremely rare skill, which is a shame, because the study we did showed that legilimency-assisted EMDR particularly effective in treating people suffering from Complex PTSD. There's some new research in the works on legilimency-assisted treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder, although I'm not involved in that one -- I think my colleague is currently in the process of recruiting patients for it.

Anyway, even if you can't arrange to have it with a legilimens, EMDR is quite effect for PTSD treatment. (I tried it both ways, and the main thing about adding legilimency to the mix for PTSD like mine was that it sped the process up considerably.)