Private Message to Cedric

[alt_linus]

I do not know if someone has told you aught of this already, but it seems that you certainly should be informed, as you knew him.

It is reliably reported, I am informed, that Antonin Dolohov is dead.

I

Pardon, I am at a loss for words appropriate to such a

well, bloody complicated situation is what it is. The death of an enemy who once was

In any case, there it is, and you have a right to be told.

Comments

[alt_cedric]

Yes. He died was killed last night attacking Fradswell, one of our centres for waking the Sleepers.

Do you recall last year, when he started vanishing every Friday for his special project? He was working with Voldemort's Inferi. I, and I suspect you, could tell he was not happy about what he was doing, even at the time without knowing what it was he was doing. Given his beliefs it must have been a terrible think to harm the dead like that. But something changed because he did it voluntarily to raise a new army. Not under oathbound orders, but because it looks easiest. What changed that a betrayal of his beliefs was easiest?

He was a great teacher. He saved my life. He repeatedly gave kids the tools to be the best witches and wizards they could be. He murdered more people than I can count. As Headmaster, he betrayed some of those same kids and others he was honourbound to protect. He tortured people. He corrupted others's souls.

I'm actually sleeping at the castle tonight. I'll be in the gardens at dawn if you wish to join me. If his beliefs are true for his soul, maybe we can help him be those better parts and purify away his many horrors. We can't forget those horrors, or we risk falling down his path, but he changed Hogwarts in many good ways. I'll be inviting a some others who saw this side of him as well, not just the murderous, dark magic twisted assassin.

[alt_linus]

I keep thinking of a conversation he and I had, early on, after that unfortunate unauthorised duelling society and so forth. He went out of his way to impart to me what seemed like the greatest of wisdom, with solicitous care about my future. I cannot recall his words exactly, but he remarked that there were two sorts of Ravenclaws, one of which went through life amassing information for information's sake alone, and was thus vulnerable to anyone who dangled a shiny bit of knowledge before them as a lure to get them to do one's bidding, and the other of which knew what was behind the information they were collecting and collating and correlating, and therefore was aware of currents in the wider world and was not at the mercy of any man who would use them to his own ends.

He told me to think about which sort I would be.

It seemed at the time

Well. It seemed that he was offering to mentor me and guide my development that I might attain the latter. And yet, I think now that I was always and only the former to him.

If he were alive I would send by owl a perfectly chilly letter of thanks for the lesson in the perils of being a trusting fool.


... And yet.

He did mentor and mould me, not entirely in dreadful ways, and he kept me from peril when he could.

So.


Dawn, then. I shall be there.