Harry Potter and the Winters After the War

Chapter 59 - Harry's Explanation

Early the next morning following the AMASS meeting, Ron descended on Harry’s desk in the Auror Department with a violet interoffice memo clutched in his hand.

“What do you think you’re doing Harry!” he exclaimed.

“I don’t know what you mean Ron,” Harry answered mildly, though in truth he thought he probably did.

“Sending me away for training right away. I mean really, after that meeting last night I thought you’d want me around!”

“Me too, Harry,” Dean said as he appeared beside Ron. Harry looked up and sure enough Justin was there too, right behind him and all three had their violet inter-office memos with their travel instructions in their hands.

“Come on, all three of you, in the small conference room. Now!” Harry ordered.

He led them without preamble, closing the door with a snap after that last of the Auror trainees entered, starting in with his explanation before any of them even sat down.

“Alright, to begin with and as I said last night, officially the meeting last evening never happened. We’re all running surveillance same as always. Nothing new has happened. Second, that’s why I’m sending all three of you to France for memory training now. You’re all key members of the AMASS, and as such it will be up to us to help balance what the muggles know with what is allowed. Memory management is key to that, not only in eliminating or modifying memories of things we don’t want them to know, but also in bringing back any we do. We’re going to be spending the next month at least setting those sensors. Smith, Wendy, and I are teaming up with the muggles Dudley and Rupert recruit to do it, just like we practiced, with a new position for the sensors every three days,” Harry began.

“But we thought you wanted us to help with that,” Ron said.

“I do Ron. I want you to go with me to set the first one tonight. We need a better idea of what we’re doing before we make arrangements to send the rest of the teams in. As for helping beyond that, I’ll leave that up to you three. We have to move the sensors every three days, and we’ll probably be doing some of them on the weekends to accommodate the muggles, so you can help then. But if you don’t, Wendy, Smith and I can handle it. That’s a minimal amount of overtime for the amount of information we’re going to get out of it, and the three of us can do it. But it’s also going to take us weeks to get that cavern plotted, and I for one want to know where I’m going before I send people in there,” Harry told them.

“But all that data is electronic, Harry. How are we going to make use of that?” Dean asked.

“Rupert’s working with Hermione on that particular problem. If you have any ideas, I’m sure they’d welcome the help. They’re trying to come up with a way to make the three-dimensional data plots produced by the sensory equipment accessible to us, since any computer we get near seems to go haywire if there’s more than one of us. So they’re trying to figure out another way. With any luck they’ll be able to do it and we’ll be able to get a usable plot of nearly the whole thing, but that’s also likely to take them a month to do.”

“And by then all three of us will be trained,” Justin commented as the realization hit him. “We’ll be able to help manage the muggles.”

“You’ll have the plots and the data both by then,” Dean added.

“Yes. We don’t start posting the muggles until you lot get back. So learn what you can, and good luck. Any further questions?” Harry asked.

Ron’s irate expression faded to understanding along with the other two. Harry was preparing the three of them for what lay ahead. He was making sure they received the training he’d already seen Harry use repeatedly, and even earlier in the course of his career than Harry himself had received it.