Private message to Antonin Dolohov

[alt_sally_anne]

There were several of your fellow Councilwizards who fell in battle whose bodies are still at the school. Savitha Desai, Nisha Desai, Ned Pennifold, Xerxes Glozeman, and Maximus Truncheon. There are also the children of several Councilwizards who fell in battle whose bodies are still at the school, including Isabella Rowle. I assume her body is unclaimed because neither of the Rowles wishes to come here to get it, and not because she is believed to have fought for our side against her parents.

We will be burying our own dead sometime soon on the Hogwarts grounds. We will bury your dead with ours, if that's your choice. They'll be treated respectfully and their graves will be marked so that their families can re-inter them somewhere else later, if they want.

If you would prefer, however, we could send the Hogwarts elves with their bodies to the location of your choosing.

By the same token, if it is within your power to return the bodies of Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom to our keeping, we would appreciate it.

Comments

[alt_antonin]

Yes, I was asking if that was the reasoning for your line of questioning, as I'm somehow certain your lot would frown upon my former students doing the textual equivalent of dropping in for a cup of coffee and a spot of conversation, and then I stopped myself because if you had any other motive, it would not have been a kindness to draw the conversation back in that direction.

You will see him again, someday when you make your own passage, may it be many years from now. Until them, remember him well.

[alt_sally_anne]

I don't think anyone much cares if I write to you. Well, they'd tell me I should go to bed, I haven't got much sleep in the last ... I guess it's been a week?

Anyway

Thank you.

I know you'll have to kill me if you have a chance, so hopefully that won't happen. I imagine that you didn't much enjoy having to help kill Harry.

[alt_antonin]

No. No, I did not, but he asked me to help him, and by the point at which I realised what he had done, it was too late for me to do anything other than honour the choices he had made. If you are willing to say -- was it, in fact, Hydra who cast the curse?

There are, indeed, many things I will have to do if I have the chance, ranging from the distasteful to the banal. Fighting my students is not something I ever wanted to do. But I will honour your choices, as well -- wherever they may lead us.

[alt_sally_anne]

Why do you want to know who cast it? Who are you going to tell?

[alt_antonin]

A teacher's idle curiousity, nothing more. And a desire to know to whom else we are all indebted, I suppose.

[alt_sally_anne]

If you get me the wands back I'll tell you who cast the curse.

[alt_antonin]

Very well, then.

Now, I must also advise that you sleep. If you are to be part of this, the faster you learn that one ought never pass up a chance to eat or sleep when the chance is offered, the better.

[alt_sally_anne]

I'm sure you are correct. Good night.

[alt_sally_anne]

I'd forgotten this last night, but the person who cast the curse actually said so publicly.

It was Draco Malfoy.

I hope you'll still return the wands, if you're able.

[alt_antonin]

I see. I had missed him saying so in the aftermath somehow, I don't find it a surprise; I am glad Harry had someone who loved him so well as to he could trust enough for that task.

My agreement was not contingent; I cannot make any promises, but I will try.