Director Yandle

Ministry of Magic Archives since 1927.

[calleo-bricriu]

It wasn’t cursed when I bought it from the charity shop, but it sure is now.

Honestly, it probably wasn’t even necessary, it just looks cursed as is.

Kind of want to put it on my desk at work.

Kind of don’t want to deal with @directoryandle​ or @awizardmademedoit​ complaining about it if I do.

[directoryandle]

Absolutely not.

[calleo-bricriu]

Easter according to Calleo & Aldig.

[directoryandle]

(( I guess we know which version Director Yandle thinks it is! ))

[directoryandle]

They’re really doing that Triwizard thing again?

Personally, I’m just happy none of my grandchildren are old enough to even think of participating.

[calleo-bricriu]

@directoryandle @lamenthope @tmvoldemort & @absintheabsence in that order.

[directoryandle]

Oh, I realise it.

[directoryandle]

NOT LIKE I FORGOT WHICH EMAIL ADDRESS I USED FOR THIS ACCOUNT OR ANYTHING.

[awizardmademedoit]

@directoryandle​ is really out there at 1:30 in the morning starting something he’s in no way prepared to finish.

[directoryandle]

Are we finished here?

[directoryandle]

I can...somewhat play this game too.

[calleo-bricriu]

Time for the padding that makes it a research paper instead of just a set of quick instructions.

Honestly, about 100% of every paper I write starts down with my own mental shorthand which, nearly 100% of the time is just–the series of spells required to produce the end result.

In this case: Venari-Sagitta Debilitatem-Expandi Manus-Venari triggered on the first split of Sagitta Debilitatem and cascading down to each successive split until all targets down-Venari-Expandi Manus-Avada Kedavra-Venari targeted to Avada Kedavra-Fiendfyre on the path of Avada Kedavra.

I can even condense the end result: Targeted arrows, targeted obnoxious green light, followed by fire–and you’re not even going to notice the first two things if it’s done fast enough, you’re just going to see a whole hell of a lot of fire.

I still don’t entirely understand why it has to be that much of a light show @directoryandle when I can easily enough wrap it all in enough concealment, as all three non-prefix spells are very visual in nature, that you won’t see anything beyond a crowd dropping then being reduced to ash.

That’d look much more impressively terrifying than a set of visuals over so quickly anyone that wasn’t hit wouldn’t have even remotely had enough time to process it. It’s not nearly as psychologically scarring when you can see what’s doing it; it’s also a great deal harder to counter or avoid.

Before anyone starts speculating where I came up with that particular combination, I’ll just give you the incredibly mundane source material: Muggles.

Specifically, the Vickers .303 inch Class C machine gun and flamethrowers.

This is, roughly, the magical equivalent with better aim and slightly less noise.

Killing curse makes a bit of a noise, and Fiendfyre is loud, but neither are close to the noise level of even one of those guns.

[directoryandle]

All right, all right, I understand that you’re a bit cross with me over the comment I made to @awizardmademedoit earlier.

A comment that was entirely harmless, as an aside.

That’s a very rough draft, as I’m sure you realise.

Clean it up, leave the sniping at me out of it, and include the additions to make it silent and as cloaked visually as you think you can manage.

[calleo-bricriu]

(( This was originally posted to the FB era IC Twitter that myself and @directoryandle both write on but it fits equally well here. Text makes it sound a lot more aggressive than it really was, especially since the Director’s response was to ask Calleo if he wanted to test the theory of him being able to drop Calleo in five seconds flat, which makes it funnier.

They’re both exactly the type of person to type LOL while sitting there straight faced and looking bored anyway.))

Why are you so damned flighty anyway?

You’re powerful enough that acting that way is just embarrassing.

To me, I mean, on account of having to keep stepping in front of someone we both know could drop me in five seconds flat.

That’s it.

That’s the reading.

[directoryandle]

It’s nearly three in the morning.

Go to sleep.

[calleo-bricriu]

directoryandle​:

“Hm. It seems, based on what you’ve not said that he wouldn’t be in the mood for that sort of thing. Even so, it’s not right to be stuck there only with you, and please don’t take this the wrong way, with you. People need a variety of others for interaction.” Director Yandle managed not to visibly wince at the statement, though it was evident what he’d said was something he’d very likely never imagined, in his wildest, most abstract, strange dreams that he’d say. Awful, awful little bleeding heart that his Senior Archivist turned out to be seemed to be rubbing off on him  a bit and it was not a sensation he appreciated in the slightest.

“I’m not planning on going there,” he added hastily, easily spotting Calleo’s objection forming, “just writing. Nothing horrible, nothing needling, nothing accusatory, that’s lost its entertainment, to be perfectly frank, in light of the last few correspondences.”

“I don’t know that I told you,” Director Yandle finally stepped into Calleo’s office, closing the door behind him, “the last time I wrote to him, I asked very explicitly why he hadn’t taken full control of you, because you know he could. I know he could. He knows he could. Anyone who believes what you’ve told them knows he could–he could turn you into a weaponised puppet on a whim and more than likely cause a great deal of damage as you’re not exactly unskilled and you’d have a conductor that once brought the world to its knees.”

He shrugged and stretched out on the sofa on the other side of the room. “Curiosity got the better of me, and I was expecting to hear that he was simply waiting for the right moment. I know, I know,” the Director waved off the almost irritated huff from his Archivist, “you don’t have to give me the argument on it. His answer held far too much confused but concrete thought to it: ‘I don’t want to’.”

“It took him some time to answer, and seemed confused that his own answer was a legitimately honest, ‘I don’t want to’. That is…significant,” Director Yandle had to concede that point.

Happy as well to skip over the other topic, the old badger easily caught the pact stone tossed in his direction, looking it over closely. “Interesting. I’ve only ever seen them with one…” he trailed off. 

“Of course, I’ve never seen more than two people enter into a single blood pact, especially when another already exists.” He turned it in his hands a few times, stopping when Calleo mentioned the theory they’d had on the second stone.

“You’ve told him, right? He knows, yes?” Something in the Director’s questions had a subtle, but dangerous undercurrent to it.

About all that stopped Calleo from nearly snapping any variant of, “I know, that’s what I’ve been telling you for over a year,” was the fact that it wasn’t exactly something to start an argument about again, especially since the Director had come to the same conclusion despite it taking him longer.

“Yeah, of course, who’d you think I mentioned it to before doing it to make sure it wasn’t going to damage, break, or adversely affect the existing one? My mother?” Calleo added with a laugh as he swivelled his desk chair enough to both be facing the sofa and still at a good enough angle to put his feet up on the desk itself.

“You reckon if I just kept adding to them, the newest one would be a variant on the one prior or would they start splitting into manageable sizes after a while? Oh!” He clapped his hands together, “Maybe they’d form combinations based on how well people knew each other just in general!”

“And the first one’s a lot less–” Calleo paused for the right word and evidently couldn’t find it, “–that,” he gestured to the physical manifestation of a blood pact that Director Yandle was looking over. “Not in a bad way just in a–you remember being a student, presumably. You ever get a look at the assignment of a classmate who didn’t quite know what was going on until right up to the deadline then had to rework what they’d done before the professor came around to collect it? And it was technically correct but pretty obvious whoever wrote it completely misunderstood what they were supposed to be doing?”

“Because I think that’s what happened, the original wording wasn’t even supposed to make anything physical, it was only meant to keep me from pulling semantics over a verbal contract and I didn’t think all that much of it at the time as it’s not really–definitely wasn’t, still isn’t--a school of magic I’m all that well versed in and I’d just presumed someone famously known for it wouldn’t word anything in a way that let the magic pull that amount of interpretation.”

Calleo missed, and missed entirely, the fact that Director Yandle’s expression had changed from idle curiosity and passively listening to watching Calleo intently as Calleo still found the whole situation that lead to it amusing as it had been entirely unintentional–unintentional to the point that Gindelwald ( @absintheabsence​ ) had been mortified about it.

“HA! Considering it was somehow an entirely vague and also specific six words maybe that’s why he told you he didn’t want to,” Calleo grinned sharply. Despite that (likely) not being the case, the fact that it could possibly have been the case, at least, at some point, was something he found inappropriately amusing either way.

“I mean really, my first reaction was along the lines of it means you can’t kill me directly or indirectly and can’t even really put me in the path of getting severely injured, how is that a bad thing anyway and he did often gloss over that or outright ignore it.” The sharp edge faded, but the smile remained, “But, it really doesn’t matter, because he could’ve broken it despite my telling him I wasn’t at all interested in that route and there were any number of times prior to it that he could have done any of what that sort of thing prevents and still didn’t.”

“I’m clever, but I’m nowhere near that clever, even if I might feign it when everything manages to work out!”

[directoryandle]

“First of all Calleo, don’t test that theory, stop bonding with things like you’re a bottle of Muggle glue, it’ll get weird after awhile. It’s already weird.” Director Yandle did not toss the object back to Calleo, instead standing to take the few steps across the room to drop it neatly into its, well, one of its keepers hands.

“Six words and your immense and entirely confusing level of luck; if I hadn’t seen you talk that Muggle out of wanting to curse their partner or worse, control her mind, I’d ask you what they were but, as I recall, you mentioned them there.” He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead as he laid back down on the sofa, “I sometimes think if you had any concept of just how many times you’ve narrowly skirted disaster and come out of it with a tangible, quantifiable success instead of the smouldering ruins it should been and would have been had anyone else done the same thing, you’d be all but paralysed with fear.”

Director Yandle rubbed his eyes, as though that was going to help whatever combination of exhaustion and headache talking to Calleo at length often caused. “You should be, you know. Half the time it’s only those around you that end up feeling that way. I would love to know how you manage that and that’s not a sarcastic suggestion, it’s so completely and utterly baffling and you do it consistently and don’t tell me you plan it.”

“I know you plan nearly everything you do to the point of it being frustrating to watch. It takes so long, it still shouldn’t work, and the way you readjust without missing a beat. You burn out, you get up again as though nothing happened, you have people continually trying to swat you down and often succeeding and you shrug it off and only make yourself more difficult to hit--”

“What’s stopping you from doing any of it yourself, Director? Apart from the bits that’d get you divorced, I mean. It’s certainly not me, and I doubt it’s anyone at the Ministry either. Don’t rant at me because you tethered yourself to a desk job sixty years ago.” 

Interrupting Director Yandle wasn’t anything Calleo had qualms about doing either it seemed, but it had the desired effect on both of them. Calleo got to interrupt an old Wizard masking feeling sorry for himself in lecturing someone who routinely acted with the sort of impunity he clearly missed doing himself.

And Director Yandle had to stop and think about what he’d just been asked, even if it had been clearly rhetorical because all he kept coming back to was either an answer of nothing that would hold water or himself which also, technically speaking, also didn’t hold water for more than several hours at a time, thought that was simply by design of the human body.

[directoryandle]

calleo-bricriu​:

Calleo had been timing it by the sharp ticks of the metronome on his desk: Director Yandle had been standing silently in the doorway for nearly five minutes before he spoke.

The question had been jarring enough that, for a moment, all Calleo could manage to do was stare at the other Wizard. He also noted, to some amusement, that the Director’s expression was less accusatory and had drifted more into the realm of the sort of half-embarrassed look one gets when responding to a waiter who’s told you to enjoy your meal with, “Thanks, you too!”

Regardless, he’d worked for Director Yandle for close to ten years now and knew what he meant or, rather, knew what he’d intended to say–or at least knew the implication behind the exasperated question that was what made it to the audible realm. Calleo couldn’t help but have little bit of fun with it and offered a confused laugh and a short glance around the office, “At the moment, nothing, apart from having been interrupted!” He set his quill down and spun the chair at his desk around to face Director Yandle rather than simply keep his head turned.

“You meant the past month though, yes? Very little I can tell you about and what I cannot tell you about, you cannot go writing owls about,” that came out as significantly more of a snapped order than Calleo had intended; enough so to startle him back into silence and blink at nothing for a moment. “I know what your concern is, it’s the same concern it’s always been, and it’s nothing that’s going to harm me or anything you can do a single thing about; anything you’d do would make it worse. Not for me, mind you–well, by proxy it would, I reckon–if you’ve ever felt inclined to do me a favour, leave it alone.”

As Calleo watched the Director shift in the doorway he knew full well that ‘leave it alone’ was going to be a tall-to-impossible order without some other outlet, “Right, look, if you can’t, if it’d stop you sleeping at night and occupy your every waking thought, write about theory and ask his ( @absintheabsence​ ) input, but only do that if you want it as he’s not stupid and will know if you’re patronising him.”

“Everything else is running itself rather well with very little intervention from me, which is nice because I really don’t want to be doing any of that,” Calleo brushed that topic aside quickly enough and dug around in one of his robe pockets to hold up an ornately copper wrapped piece of labradorite and, below that, a larger black and brilliantly green piece of chrome diopside. His expression changed from a relatively tired neutral to a brilliant, genuine smile as he held it up to show the Director.

“We–sorry, I probably should specify which we, shouldn’t I? Lazarus ( @pocketsfullofspiders​ ) , Gan ( @rashkah​ ), and I; that’s what the bottom stone is, and the second one is–it was there before, not that exact one, an approximation, separated by the copper!” The smile turned into a grin, “Near as any of us can figure based on any of the books that mention it is that it’s an acknowledgement of the unbroken one that existed first! Neat, isn’t it?”

Calleo laughed and gently tossed the set of copper wrapped stones to Director Yandle; no concern at all that they’d shatter on the floor if the Director missed or stepped back. It’d take a hell of a lot more than that to shatter pact stones.

“Hm. It seems, based on what you’ve not said that he wouldn’t be in the mood for that sort of thing. Even so, it’s not right to be stuck there only with you, and please don’t take this the wrong way, with you. People need a variety of others for interaction.” Director Yandle managed not to visibly wince at the statement, though it was evident what he’d said was something he’d very likely never imagined, in his wildest, most abstract, strange dreams that he’d say. Awful, awful little bleeding heart that his Senior Archivist turned out to be seemed to be rubbing off on him  a bit and it was not a sensation he appreciated in the slightest.

“I’m not planning on going there,” he added hastily, easily spotting Calleo’s objection forming, “just writing. Nothing horrible, nothing needling, nothing accusatory, that’s lost its entertainment, to be perfectly frank, in light of the last few correspondences.”

“I don’t know that I told you,” Director Yandle finally stepped into Calleo’s office, closing the door behind him, “the last time I wrote to him, I asked very explicitly why he hadn’t taken full control of you, because you know he could. I know he could. He knows he could. Anyone who believes what you’ve told them knows he could--he could turn you into a weaponised puppet on a whim and more than likely cause a great deal of damage as you’re not exactly unskilled and you’d have a conductor that once brought the world to its knees.”

He shrugged and stretched out on the sofa on the other side of the room. “Curiosity got the better of me, and I was expecting to hear that he was simply waiting for the right moment. I know, I know,” the Director waved off the almost irritated huff from his Archivist, “you don’t have to give me the argument on it. His answer held far too much confused but concrete thought to it: ‘I don’t want to’.”

“It took him some time to answer, and seemed confused that his own answer was a legitimately honest, ‘I don’t want to’. That is...significant,” Director Yandle had to concede that point.

Happy as well to skip over the other topic, the old badger easily caught the pact stone tossed in his direction, looking it over closely. “Interesting. I’ve only ever seen them with one…” he trailed off. 

“Of course, I’ve never seen more than two people enter into a single blood pact, especially when another already exists.” He turned it in his hands a few times, stopping when Calleo mentioned the theory they’d had on the second stone.

“You’ve told him, right? He knows, yes?” Something in the Director’s questions had a subtle, but dangerous undercurrent to it.

[directoryandle]

Autumn 1992.

(( Semi plotted starter for @calleo-bricriu​  .

Please note that Calleo’s player and I have been friends for over 30 years and have been writing together nearly as long; anything that looks like godmoding or metgaming, we can both guarantee you is not. We plan and we both know what the other person would and would not accept being written without discussion. :) 

))

Part of Director Yandle’s job entailed keeping an eye on the other Archivists, including the Senior Archivist. Statistically, anyone who made it to that position was less likely to die but more likely to go at least slightly off the rails and the Director knew full well that Calleo had the bad habit of constantly (if not consistently) spreading himself far too thin and insisting everything was perfectly all right until it wasn’t.

Since spring, he’d noticed a distinct, but not alarming, series of peaks and valleys, neither of which were out of the ordinary when he stopped to consider the types of people Calleo counted among his friends, partners, and business associates.

However, as Summer began to wind down the valley it was in didn’t seem to be working its way back up; they weren’t what the Director would call “mood swings” as they were never sudden or violent, and often did coincide with normal patterns of emotions normal people would have based on the circumstances surrounding them.

Still, Calleo showed up on the inconsistently consistent schedule that he’d worked out with the Director the previous autumn and, like everything else Calleo did where his work was related, he was reliable enough you could set your watch to it. Often, he found himself wondering if the people at the other job, as Calleo termed it, either noticed or appreciated that. 

And now? Now it was nearly October and Calleo, apart from a few brief times his usual personality shone through at the worst possible times, was still...quiet. Not silent, he’d talk. He’d talk about work, about projects, make small talk, and nothing seemed inherently off about it yet it felt off.

There were a thousand ways Director Yandle had thought of asking the very simple question of, “Is everything all right?” and, unfortunately, what made it from his brain to his mouth as he stood in the doorway of Calleo’s office was, “What’s the matter with you lately?”

[calleo-bricriu]

I’m not running myself into the ground for this, @directoryandle

The best you’ll get, and I strongly suggest not moving forward with it and letting the victim of that curse die as a mercy, is a permanent halting of its progression.

That’s all good and well for any future victims who know what hit them within 3 or so hours, but past that it’s much kinder to let them die rather than keep them in the state they’d be stuck in. You and I both know it’s not a painless curse after the first few hours.

Not that it matters in this case as the one in question died yesterday and, yes, I absolutely did refuse to put that partial counter on him in that state as it would have been massively cruel to do so.

The hospital staff and his family can stay mad and think of me whatever they wish; I won’t lose any sleep over it.

[directoryandle]

I'd agree that it's pointless to continue that research as a priority with the only known victim is the last couple of centuries dead. Personally, I'd have thrown what you had to arrest the process. That'd leave all the time in the world to figure the rest out.

[directoryandle]

You know that guy's going to be dead long before I figure out a counter, IF I figure out a counter, yeah?

Well aware, thank you, Calleo.

[directoryandle]

calleo-bricriu​:

It isn’t as if the one that got backhanded with that curse–which, I’ll remind you, was his own fault because that’s sometimes what happens when your reach exceeds your grasp–has any idea what’s going on around him anyway.  

The problem I have with your “be tactful” advice here is that your two correct answers give a distinct sense of false hope where none exists.

They both leave a tiny sliver of a window that there might be a counter and we just have to scurry back to the basement and check a couple of books when you know that’s not the case.

There isn’t a counter and you know that as well as I do.

Make one, then.

Or are you only capable of modifying spells to either render them uselessly benign or worse than they ever had any business being?

[calleo-bricriu]

Would you prefer I give up eating, sleeping, bathing, or the stranglehold I have on my sanity, or was your assumption that giving up that last one would lead to the other three for that absurd request?

[directoryandle]

What I expect is that you’ll do what you always do when you, voluntarily or otherwise, choose to burn the midnight oil: Leave the valium in the tower and make good use of caffeine, nicotine, and amphetamines in whichever order you prefer.

Grant me enough credit to know better than to suggest a small batch of Wideye Potions as you claim they “make you jittery” whereas that near lethal combination above somehow doesn’t.

[directoryandle]

calleo-bricriu​:

It isn’t as if the one that got backhanded with that curse–which, I’ll remind you, was his own fault because that’s sometimes what happens when your reach exceeds your grasp–has any idea what’s going on around him anyway.  

The problem I have with your “be tactful” advice here is that your two correct answers give a distinct sense of false hope where none exists.

They both leave a tiny sliver of a window that there might be a counter and we just have to scurry back to the basement and check a couple of books when you know that’s not the case.

There isn’t a counter and you know that as well as I do.

Make one, then.

Or are you only capable of modifying spells to either render them uselessly benign or worse than they ever had any business being?

[calleo-bricriu]

I like it when the Director gets in trouble along with me.

In both my and @directoryandle ‘s defence, it was an extremely rare curse to see outside of a text book and you can’t really blame either of us for finding it exciting to see it in practice.

Or, rather, you can if you work on the 4th floor of St. Mungo’s and think it’s going to temper that excitement by pointing out that it was applied to a person.

Of course it was.

That’s where it was designed to be applied.

[directoryandle]

It wouldn’t do to point out that neither one of us would have been given a dressing down by two Mediwziards, one Mediwitch and the floor shift supervisor if you hadn’t answered the question as to whether there was a counter with, “Yeah, a new body.”

The correct answer is, “Unfortunately, there isn’t,” or, at the very least, “We’ll have to look into it further.”

You know that, right?