Order Only
Dec. 8th, 2013 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_cedricI've done so much reading this weekend, much of it hard, much of it revealing.
Given how the Prophet and others have covered me in the past, I shouldn't need any additional reminders, but the holes in the public explanations for nearly everything are staggering. The holes in my recent conversations with some of you are also substantial, for far better reasons. I hope to fill some of those holes in the near future. I'm also going to have to think hard about what my public face will be after this year. Even if it would not be the most useful job to have, whether or not I am physically fit enough I have to keep working toward and eventually trying out for professional Quidditch. Too many questions would be asked otherwise. If that doesn't work out I need to figure out what to do. I've talked with several of you about some of my other potential ideas.
Thank you all for bringing me in.
Given how the Prophet and others have covered me in the past, I shouldn't need any additional reminders, but the holes in the public explanations for nearly everything are staggering. The holes in my recent conversations with some of you are also substantial, for far better reasons. I hope to fill some of those holes in the near future. I'm also going to have to think hard about what my public face will be after this year. Even if it would not be the most useful job to have, whether or not I am physically fit enough I have to keep working toward and eventually trying out for professional Quidditch. Too many questions would be asked otherwise. If that doesn't work out I need to figure out what to do. I've talked with several of you about some of my other potential ideas.
Thank you all for bringing me in.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 05:00 am (UTC)Too right about the holes in the public explanations, mate. Finding out what was really happening... well. Right.
That's why we're here then, isn't it?
no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 05:25 am (UTC)Sleep is not one of my problems these days. The dreams on the other hand...
private message to Ced
Date: 2013-12-09 05:56 am (UTC)Look, there was this girl. Woman. You know what I mean. Thing is, she's muggleborn. And I have feelings for her. Serious feelings. But you know this if you've read what Sally-Anne wrote about when I cornered her desperate to know if M
if she was safe, or dead, or what.
So glad she's safe.
But now I'm here in the Order and Alice has been talking to me and I'm thinking. I haven't gone and talked to Maureen because she deserves some peace without one Stretton or another asking her things. Telling her things, telling her what to do. Because I can't. I don't own her.
Problem is, I sort of did, or my family did anyway. And even though I felt how I felt about her, I didn't make sense of the important thing before those talks with Alice, and reading what Terry wrote, and Hermione. Which is that Maureen owns herself.
And if the only thing I can do to show I realise she owns herself is to NOT go make her talk to me about how she's feeling and what she wants, then that's the pattern I'm flying.
She knows where I am. If she ever wants toWell, sorry to go wittering on like this, mate. Just, wrongs to be righted. Yeah. But the right way. For everybody.
Re: private message to Ced
Date: 2013-12-10 05:57 am (UTC)We didn't have her when I was at home, so I didn't grow up around that. They acquired her after Shelley was born. It was last spring, after I'd been talking with Harry about blood status and how slippery it is. After the Fleets. After Sarah Fawcett.
I was sitting outside watching Jaspar and Shelley play. Jenni came out and Shelley went screaming up to her "JENNI!!!!!!" slamming into her legs, laughing and hugging her knees. Five minutes later Mum came out and she went screaming up to her "MUMMY!!!!!" slamming into her legs, laughing and hugging her knees.
It hit me like a screaming thundering toddler, the littles treated Jenni and Mum exactly the same. Everything I'd been thinking so hard about trapped under Umbridge took this crashing, wrenching expansion. Then I had to go hide by myself for awhile and pretend to revise. Because the crushing realization that 'mudbloods' were people too, then their definition and status was just as arbitrary just as slippery and illusionary as 'half-blood' or 'pure-blood'. I'd been given ample evidence over last year that those concepts were manipulated at whim by those in power. And I had no one to talk to about it. As scary things go that tops throwing yourself under a dying giant spider.
Private Message to Mrs Longbottom
Date: 2013-12-09 05:21 am (UTC)I don't see how useful playing Quidditch would be. Inflexible schedule, large amounts of mandated group travel, physically demanding and in the public eye. But as I said above, if I don't try people would ask questions that would be hard to answer.
The primary thing I had been considering if I didn't make pro, before I was cursed, was going into business making non-broom quidditch supplies for the casual market. I need something that has me doing things, not numbers and paperwork. The idea of a permanent job as someone's clerk or for the Ministry ... well it makes me want to fall off a broom.
Re: Private Message to Mrs Longbottom
Date: 2013-12-09 07:09 am (UTC)We might sit down and chat properly about what sort of skill sets you have that you might consider to be of use -- and those don't necessarily have to fit in to your everyday job, I just like to know what I've got to work with.
There are many different ways one can be useful. Sometimes, it's a job that allows us access to information, or gives us a certain degree of control -- like the ability to alter records, or move people around the chessboard a bit. Sometimes, it's a job that serves as cover (and pays the bills), but provides enough flexibility so that you can be on-hand should specific needs arise.
So yes, we ought to put our heads together to come up with a few options for you. I'm willing to think creatively about how a possible Quidditch position might work, and also sort out other potential avenues, perhaps with greater flexibility of schedule.
And Cedric, I know this is a bit of a shock all round -- a rather large amount of information to manage, a new way of thinking about your future and what you might do with it, and seeing first-hand the additional pressures that we sometimes encounter (as you saw with Bill's recent incident). It's something that anyone would find overwhelming. Please don't hesitate to ask questions of any of us. I'm also glad to see you talking with Jeremy and the twins -- now that you can discuss things more openly, I hope you'll get to know them better, as well as Lee and our other members still at Hogwarts. This is a shared responsibility, after all, and it's far easier to face a struggle when you know you're not in it alone.
Re: Private Message to Mrs Longbottom
Date: 2013-12-10 05:34 am (UTC)I'm taking my NEWTS in all the core classes, plus Runes. I ought to do well in all of them. I'm flat out terrible in arithmancy, so much so that it greatly limits my chances with Astronomy. I failed to earn a high enough grade to continue, not that I would have even if I'd earned it. I've loved defense class and dueling has always been of interest. I was not involved in that bloody foolish 'dueling club' last year though.
I was, and hope to be again, an excellent flier. I believe that while my team's record might not show it, I was a pretty good captain, I just ran into the twin cutters of Harry as a seeker and the Weasley clan, which doomed nearly everyone else.
If I decide I don't want to seek a quidditch career, I'm more inclined to throw my tryouts than claim lingering issues. Too many Healers are aware of my progress. I've learned my case is 'of interest' and that it gets talked about amongst their professional colleagues.
It is a huge amount of information and I'm still reading. The sorts of additional pressures you mention, I've been living many of those already. Choices I had to make as Head Boy and working for the YPL were not the choices I would have made on my own. And the Triwizard. At the root of it the Triwizard Cup, what happened around it, the kinds of social pressures put on me during it and the final decision I made are why I'm here today. I wouldn't have started talking seriously and secretly about dangerous, treasonous thoughts with Harry Marvolo, of all people, if not for the Triwizard. I don't know if I'd have been in a place to start noticing the stuff about my family that really pushed me over the edge without it.
Private Message to Fred and George
Date: 2013-12-09 05:52 am (UTC)How much is your business a front for the Order? If quidditch doesn't work out, would adding someone working on casual quidditch supplies be helpful or get in the way? Maybe as someone else in your mother's building development thing?
I look forward to talking to you more now that we can do so honestly.
I just realised something. Was I the only one in the room that didn't know Hermoine had a wand when we were working on the masks? Merlin, I hope I wasn't too much the pureblooded idiot to her.
Re: Private Message to Fred and George
Date: 2013-12-10 03:03 am (UTC)1) Have fun. We're in favour of running a business that allows us to experiment with setting off explosives and counting it as serious product development.
2) make pots of Galleons. Partly because we need to support ourselves, of course, and we could develop a taste for little luxuries like dragonhide boots and so on, but more seriously, our Mum needs extra income, since Dad passed away. The four of us, Bill, Charlie and us are chipping in to help. All but Percy, the git.
3) do Order R&D, developing products that can help stick a finger in the eye to the Protectorate. (Rather like our Punching Telescope, come to think of it)
4) serve as a front for moving supplies around, some of which may be rather dodgy.
5) other purposes, as we come up with them.
It dovetails rather nicely with our Mum's goals, too, in opening her building. She hopes to act as a front that will allow half-bloods, muggleborns and muggles to move their own products in a real marketplace. If we're successful enough, it could be a significant source of income for the Order, too (Merlin knows they could use it), or maybe employment for other Order-sympathetic students leaving Hogwarts, especially the half-bloods, who have a harder time finding jobs.
Sure, we'd be open to starting a sideline for quidditch supplies, although we'd have to talk with Parkinson first, of course. Quidditch always draws traffic, which can only help. Or yeah, it could be a corner of the Emporium. Depends on what you're thinking of including, what the market will bear, and so on. We'd have to do some research.
We're dead chuffed you've joined the Order, Ced. We've been pushing for it for awhile: you always treated folks right decently, even before you had all the facts. (And yeah, you probably were the only one in the mask workroom who wasn't in the know, but no, you weren't a snob or anything. Hermione, at least, has always spoken well of you, and Parkinson doesn't suffer fools gladly, either.)
Re: Private Message to Fred and George
Date: 2013-12-10 04:57 am (UTC)Money... yeah it is an issue for me as well. Even if I don't feel so much like I need support my parents, I feel the need to not be dependent on them. Indeed, given some of the financial reading I've been doing, it might only make things worse if I was giving them money.
I'd been looking at non-broom quidditch supplies. Protective padding for kids, the balls with extra enchantments on them, preventing loss and damage and such like. Now being a member here I think about several different extra benefits. Namingly the base materials for much of that would be the same base materials for proper armour. If I'm doing research, some quantity of the exotic leather I buy is going to be destroyed and tossed in the rubish bin, so even if someone went over my books it would just be normal loss.
I'm a little scared of some of the ideas I've come up with for what we could do with bludgers. Two words blokes. Flaming. Bludgers.
If this looks like the direction I want to go, we can talk more about details then. If I end up doing something else, I'd be happy to come by some and help out and share ideas.
I'm glad to be in as well. I'm also glad that you don't remember me being an idiot about this stuff. I'm embarassed to admit, I only started really thinking about the status of muggleborns last spring. I'd been thinking about how unbelievably important and slippery status is in our realm for "proper" wizards for a good while longer.
Re: Private Message to Fred and George
Date: 2013-12-11 12:49 am (UTC)Hogsmeade's this weekend. Maybe we can meet up for some discussions?
Re: Private Message to Fred and George
Date: 2013-12-11 04:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 04:22 pm (UTC)As I said when we met, I find your physical recovery rather promising, though I'm sure to you it sometimes seems otherwise when you count the months and the treatments and the rehabilitation chores. Don't lose hope. I rather think that aiming for the professional Quidditch tryouts is both a reasonable and a beneficial goal.
And I'm inclined to think that someone in such a public and mobile profession might serve our collective needs in ways we've not previously imagined. At any rate, I see no reason to think the two things outright incompatible.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-10 05:07 am (UTC)That's an interesting take. I'll try to think about it some more. Quidditch, while great fun and one of my burning passions, seems a bit, well, frivolous when there are people out there saving babies from slavery and death.