I Solemnly Swear That I'm Up To No Good Private Message to Harry

[alt_ron]

Say.

Sounds as if you lot did really well today. Well played.

What do you think of Dolohov's offer? To make a third unit if we wanted to cut some people from ours.

I'm thinking it's not as simple as just deciding there are one or two people I might rather not have in my command.

Comments

[alt_harry]

Yeah. I've been thinking about that too.

I mean, it's one thing to trade a person.

But making three teams is different, because the third team could make things complicated. Would they have to be even? If they did, we'd have to trade off more than just one person each, and I'm not sure I'd want to.

I mean, I could if I had to, but it'd be hard.

[alt_harry]

And would it be easier with fewer people? Sometimes, more people means less work, if you do it right.

[alt_ron]

Yeah. I'm thinking both of those things.

I've got one less already, and I can only think of one person I'd really want to cut if I could. So then I'd have to cut people I'd rather keep.

I mean, do we really want smaller units for whatever they're thinking of making us do from Thursday to Saturday? That's a long time to be out on an exercise, for one thing. And if it involves protecting ourselves from MLE all that time, we're going to need to take shifts, yeah? Like, some people will maybe need to sleep while others watch. And if we cut back the teams, that would be loads more difficult to manage.

Also. If there are three teams, then it's possible that two of them would work together against the third. (And then they could go back to fighting each other, of course, if they took out the third team altogether.) And I'm thinking that would be really ugly. Course, I'm also thinking my team's probably the one that would get targeted.

Or. Here's a different possibility: if we both cut people, the third unit will be made up of people who know our strategies. Some of them will probably be people who've been in both of our units already. That would give the new unit a significant advantage over both of ours.

[alt_harry]

Yeah. And if they sort out that they were cut by us, they might try sabotage.

And this way, I know I can talk to you if I really need to, and I know you'll play fair, but whoever we cut probably wouldn't be on the lock, and might not be on the same page, you know?

[alt_ron]

Too right.

I mean, it's possible that we've got a few people who will make trouble inside our units, but I think, really, it's just down to us to figure out how to get them to work for us. Take Thomas, for instance. You know he thinks he's best if he can go off as a lone wolf. And he is good at slipping around unseen. He's used those skills a couple of times pretty successfully, right? Well, so, today we agreed he should try taking the packet on one of the runs and just slipping away while the rest of us played decoy and pretended to be a full unit protecting our packet. It was maybe our third segment. We put disillusionments on him and a really fine muffling spell. And he made it through. The woods were really dense there, and it worked a treat. So he wanted to do it again. And we put him off because the next course was more open, and anywiz we had some other strategies we wanted to try. We had a plan, I mean, and I was going to stick with it. But he kept on about it, and I thought why not, right? So the next time we had a run with good, thick cover, I let Thomas try again.

Only, MLE caught him and took him out.

That's how we lost the one packet. But it wasn't a bad gamble, and I think it was the right call to let him try it. He doesn't seem too bad tonight, either. So, yeah, it was bad that he got killed and it cost us a packet, but I hope maybe he'll work with us a bit better tomorrow.

I could totally be wrong about that, though. It's Thomas, after all.

[alt_harry]

I think that's why you're doing such a good job, though.

Because you know Thomas, and sorted out how to work him in without him going against the plan.

I mean, I think that's part of what makes for a good leader.

I don't know. Maybe if Thomas pulls something utterly mad today, we can talk more about it?