Chapter 10 – An End To Preparations
My final week of preparation for the Quest flew past all too quickly. There was a lot more that should have been done. The pace of activity was gruelling – I had wanted to begin my Quest in a more rested and relaxed condition than I found myself to be in.
Harry was in better mental shape than I had expected. I had thought this last week would be a frenetic exchange of ideas from Harry to push me to consider just one more, one more thing to make me just a little bit safer, by finding a way to deal with some extremely unlikely event. I had dreaded this period, because I had become convinced that the Quest would have to be largely spontaneous, with many challenges that could not possibly be foreseen or planned for. I was both reconciled and willing to trust both my own and my team's skills, judgment, and the truly quite extensive preparation we had all done. I feared this would never be acceptable as safe enough for Harry, or Ron, or Dad.
Happily, those three extreme worriers were fully occupied with Stewart in planning what they must do to contain the inevitable turmoil and damage on the surface. Stewart had fulfilled his purpose in convincing one and all that the struggle on the surface would be every bit as important, daunting, and dangerous as our struggle underground. Stewart had bonded with Harry, Ron, Dad, Wood, Percy, and Neville as a highly effective team, who all trusted each other. I'm quite sure that this inevitably led to Stewart gaining a far more detailed understanding of Wizard society, strengths, and weaknesses than anyone would have deemed acceptable just a week earlier. Stewart was transported to London at the end of each day, so that he could report to Tony.
Harry and I mainly talked in bed, each reviewing the key problems addressed and decisions reached each day. My activities were rather routine, except for making my final choice of assistants – I added a very young Centaur named Cantring and settle upon Cho, Cissy, Adrienne, Jaden, and Mafalda, with Barb, McGonagall or Narcissa as a reserve if I were truly forced by Cotto. My team winnowed down our list of things to take with us, organised and packed them, filled gaps in our briefing papers, trained on everything from wand fighting, to sword fighting, to spirit fighting, to Witch sculpting and circle tuning, to long-distance Apparation, to quickly retrieving information from the Stone, to breathing under water with gillyweed. My days were full and very strenuous, but the days of big decision making had passed. Ellie provided us with a miniature pensieve, reminding us both that Hermione's magical carry-all bag might be huge on the inside, but that it's opening was very finite and that a pensieve might be an excellent tool for explaining ideas to those we encountered on a Quest, as they could simply experience our key memories on the subject. She gave us a mini-monolith "too small to control the Hogwarts or Ministry defences, but probably fine for your needs - I included these 'pebbles' lost from it during a battle, they can communicate with the monolith and act as remote switches up to a kilometre", and a set of Apparation dampers. We had both Snape's anti-eavesdropping device and the 'Snape device', which Ellie understood only a little. We also had lots of George and Lee's creations. Hermione was almost finished packing.
Harry had faced far more difficult and interesting decisions. His team had decided to create an introductory school for newly magical Muggles in a section of Diagon Alley. An additional facility had been identified and equipped in Wales, but everyone hoped that it would not be needed.
The control monoliths were in short supply and that shortage made use of the Wales facility highly questionable. It was equipped only with the standard alarm and defensive and shielding spells that a Wizard could lay down with a wand. It lacked the more elaborate magical barriers and Apparation barriers, which required a monolith to control. There was a very promising hint that Ellie may have just solved this problem. She thought she had learned how to use the same monolith to control both the Apparation barriers and the more intricate magical protections for a site. This could effectively double the magical world's protected areas from eleven to twenty-two. I hoped this was true - I'd hate to think that dozens of future students would be at increased risk, because Ellie had gifted us her mini-monolith.
Harry's team worked with a team of Goblins to plan and train on ways to quickly respond to magical imbalances by tuning, powering down, or totally silencing one of the existing circles. They had a team of volunteers throughout Britain at the ready to report significant changes in magical force strength. Stewart had distributed anonymous, single-day cell phones to the crew, along with a script of innocuous sounding code phrases, which would lead anyone who intercepted a call to think they were dealing with a wholly mundane conversation among British civilians. Still, Harry was worried that they didn't have enough skill to do what might need doing.
All the governments worked on plans to hide the scarier things which might happen from the public and to limit panic as events became public. Dad worried that the French and German governments weren't sufficiently read in on the problems which might occur. Monsieur Delacour bluntly said that he didn't trust President Chirac enough to tell them more. Viktor said much the same, reminding Dad that half his community lived in nations ruled by government much less trustworthy than the self-serving Chancellor Schroder. He had communicated with these governments not at all. If something went horribly wrong in Kiev, or Prague, or Moscow, he would deal with it as best he could. We shouldn't expect more from him. These governments did not know about magic and he certainly did not trust them to know that they counted magical beings among their subjects. Harry and his team considered everything from the cessation of all magic, to a dozen Henrys to a new non-magical Voldemort. A lot of time was spent discussing what could be done if 'our friends across the pond' learned of the Quest.
I did realise one shortcoming in our planning: the possible use of the White Column Stone under Azkaban as an emergency substitute for the Black Stone, should the Black Stone become unavailable for some reason. Hermione and I had each communicated with the White Column, through the mediation of the Black Stone, but had neither established direct communication, nor introduced the other Questers to that Column. The Black Stone told us that this was possible and quickly coached us through the process for autonomous communication. Baby steps, but it would have to do.
I fell asleep believing we had all done as much as was humanly possible. I would be confident when we returned to the Elf/Goblin cave tomorrow.