Zixinus wrote:Bond seems to be handling the Outside Context problem. If he can't kill Voldemort, he can undercut his support. The issue is that he isn't handling is working in the blind. With an actual blindfold and mufflers on his ears. In a straightjacket. On an alien planet. Tonks should be his lifeline that he would grab with desperate hands and he isn't. Why not? Either he doesn't trust everything Tonks says or is unwilling to push for more information for some reason. Or better, because Tonks would supply him with contacts and other key information.
He will be independently verifying at least some of what Tonks tells him.
All I can say without getting into details is that I am considering the issue, and will be likely exploring it next chapter.
I have thought a little about what the next step would be and I actually came up with a good idea if Bond is introduced to Diagon alley: he would simply stop a helpful looking person on the street and ask where he can convert his quid to gallons then to the nearest public library. He'd have all the information he'd need there, from newspapers and books. Once with a solid grounding of how things work, he'd put on a disguise, do a pub thrawl and listen to people's opinions, do hands-on and low-risk information gathering about how the world operates and what's going on. Preferably from fellow squibs and muggle wizards for a start. Basic spycraft.
Similar ideas occurred to me as well, but perhaps I will elaborate further on them now.
I definitely see Bond as someone who is comfortable in a bar/pub, as well, obviously.
Eternal_Freedom wrote:You are of course assuming such a public library even exists. I do not recall any mention of such a place. There is the Hogwarts Library, the Library at Grimmauld Place (and presumably other pureblood homes) and that's about it.
Yeah, the Wizarding World is...
small.
That said, they do have bookstores (there's at least one in Diagon Alley), and Gringotts can exchange Muggle money (I presume- I don't recall off the top of my head weather its discussed in the books, but if they didn't, Muggleborns would be kind of screwed, even more than they canonically are). Bond can get into Diagon Ally as long as he has a wizard/witch with him (or, hell, just lounge around the Cauldron waiting for someone else to go through and follow them, or ask the pub's owner to let him through on the pretext that he's a Squib- probably not an unheard of thing), and he'll have money, so there's nothing stopping him from buying books (and possibly back-issues of papers) and reading up.
Also, pub crawl means the Leaky Cauldron, the Three Broomsticks or the Hog's Head, the latter two of which are in Hogsmeade and inaccessible to Bond for the present. No other pubs are named.
I'm going to operate on the assumption, I think, that Hogwarts'/Hogsmede's anti-Muggle spells work the same way Diagon Alley's do, at least insofar as they can be revealed to a Muggle by a witch or wizard.
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