alt_umbridge | Upcoming notes

Boys and girls:
Just a reminder that we will be meeting again on Sunday. We do have invited guests, so I will expect you to be particularly attentive to details of dress and deportment, and to be most attentive to each presentation. Please gather as a large group promptly at 2 in the afternoon, and we will be thereafter splitting you into four groups. You will spend three-quarters of an hour with each presenter.

Counsellors: Please come half an hour early to make sure the rooms we are using are arranged appropriately and help with our attendance taking.

Other notes: Several of you will also receive notes for further brief appointments with me in the next few days. I do look forward to your prompt attention.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

alt_umbridge

Gentlemen -

More than one thing of interest at the moment. Shall we meet early next week to discuss further?

First, on Thursday, I had the most tedious talking to from Septima, on matters of discipline. Strongly cautioned not to take matters into my own hands beyond the entirely limited range described to me. Given the current state of affairs, I naturally agreed, but I do wish to discuss it further. A note to follow this is, as you might guess, also a step in what I hope will be new directions for the school.

On that note, I have also had a chance for a word with a few students about that demonstration on Saturday. It has the students worked up in an entirely unproductive way. I had prior plans I’d not change for that kind of reckless demonstration of - what does one call it, brute force? But I gather from what I’ve heard thus far that it impressed students in all the wrong sorts of ways, with flash and show rather than sober discipline and reason. I’d be most curious about what your connections might have to share.

I admit, even knowing some of the goals for the CCF, I had rather hoped we were past the time when that kind of too-physical response was praised and lauded as much as I’ve heard the last few days. There is a time for action, yes, but there is also a time for shared collaborative effort and carefully planned progress, and we could do with more examples of the latter.

I do think it’s most dangerous for students to become too attached, as it were, to a particular staff member, and that demonstrations like Saturday’s only make that easier. Of course, there are times that attachment is entirely desireable, as those in Our Lord’s service all know too well. But one wishes the attachment to be to Our Lord himself, not to his followers.

And there, while I should say that students have been careful not to say so, it is clear that Professor Sinistra had acquired quite the loyal following of her own. I am working, as I may, to disassemble that, or at the very least, direct student energies to other goals. (Without, naturally, affecting her actual teaching: there is little to complain of there. And while Astronomy is a core subject, it is scarcely a particularly politically delicate one, and regardless not worth much attention.) I anticipate that easy enough to handle, especially as she accumulates other distractions of her own.

I await - and appreciate - your thoughts,
Dolores

From:

alt_umbridge

Sir,

I know you’ve a number of other considerations and demands on your attention, but I wondered if we might schedule a meeting in the next week or two. I know how deeply attentive you have been to matters at Hogwarts in your role as Chair of the Board of Governors. I do hope that my fresh perspective - and as an outside observer, not someone whose loyalties must be divided between staff commitments and students - might be of interest to you.

I’d be glad to arrange a visit in New London, and at your convenience. I’d also particularly welcome the chance to discuss your foster son, and learn if I might be of assistance in directing his energies, goals, and opportunities in a way that serve your plans for him.

In service,
Dolores Umbridge

From:

alt_umbridge

Good morning -

I do hope you enjoyed your visit on Saturday - so sorry that other plans had me away from the school for the day.

Listening to the dear children chatter since, though, I am wondering if I might have a word. I know you're a good friend of Antonin's. I certainly appreciate his motivations in wanting to demonstrate the full potency of the Arts and wands at Our Lord's service.

But you - as a governor of the school, never mind a parent - should be aware that the demonstration is not quite having the hoped-for effect. And surely, I thought, you could approach him with a tad more delicacy than I can.

Poor Aurora is so star-struck - as are so many of our students - that she simply doesn't know how to advise him, and well, Rabastan suffers from having being Antonin's student in the past. Always so hard to shift to a new relationship with one's former teachers, I've found.

In particular, I’m concerned that his goals may sooner than later run counter to the balanced, measured, progressive training the CCF is seeking to offer. I am just so terribly worried that students will become reckless, trying to show the same skill and delight in wand work - in fact, we’re seeing some hints of that already, as their enthusiasms lead them astray. And all the complexities of mistaking style for substanance, looking to display skills they have not yet achieved through hard work.

I just know he'll listen to your advice on the best course for the school. Whatever our disagreements in the past, I have always appreciated your dedication and commitment to doing what is necessary for the good of Our Lord’s realm.

Dolores

From:

alt_lucius

Dolores,

Such a shame we were deprived of the pleasure of your company.

Pray accept my excuses for taking several hours to reply to such a simple inquiry. In future should you require a response more promptly, feel free to direct your comments in a separate post to me or to my clerk; he only alerted me to this message as part of his daily sweep for journal entries bearing my name. (As to the timing, surprised you have so quickly lost track of the Ministry's monthly schedule: Was deep in the intricacies of the Wizengamot Executive Session when you apparently committed this to parchment. But then routines are very much a product of one's environment, are they not? Sure that you have adjusted to the hours kept by the other members of staff.)

But on to the matter at hand. Regarding the motives you ascribe, it is true that Antonin Nikolaevich had a few ulterior aims when he proposed the exercise and particularly in extending his invitation to myself and the other Councilwizards present. Had you been there, you should have seen for yourself that primary among his goals was to demonstrate the precautions one must take to put on such a display in safety; a secondary purpose was to assure his charges and yours that when used properly, the Noble Arts turn one into neither monster nor menace. Indeed, the discussion afterward was ideally suited to spark the students' admiration, rather than their fear. Though that seems to be the crux of your dilemma, from the sound of it.

Bereft of you as we were, you were not there to hear Professor Dolohov expressly forbid any experimentation of the sort you describe. Indeed, both he and Professor Lestrange have made it perfectly plain to any and all of their students that attempts to emulate their performance will meet their teachers' great displeasure. Should not need to explain to a woman of your knowledge the sincerity of Antonin's threat: A threat which their actions of the after-noon's demonstration ought to have made undesirable in the extreme.

But thank you, Dolores, for bringing the matter to my attention. Children being what they are, no doubt some one or two are either so awestruck as to have forgotten their instructions or so foolish as to believe those directions need not apply. It would not shock me to learn that Antonin Nikolaevich is already aware of the 'hints' to which you allude. Rest assured that he knows enough to reinforce his prohibition and to remind his students to observe Hogwarts' rules regarding duelling without proper supervision, casting spells in the corridors or otherwise convening in ways that are proscribed by their teachers and other caretakers.

On the other hand, have no particular objection to students who carry the inspiration of the event as a spur to apply themselves in their lessons or in ways that break no school rules. Enthusiasm in teenagers at least conveys that one has their attention, which you no doubt agree can be nearly impossible to capture in the best of circumstances.

In either case, believe the school already had a hierarchy in place for just this sort of course correction, if and when it becomes necessary. Have those methods already failed to reach Professor Dolohov? Find it difficult to believe that in the three days since he and Razzer duelled, every attempt to nip the students' indiscretion in the bud, as it were, has been exhausted. Suggest, Dolores, that you work within the structure you have been given, before involving the Governors. Two of us were there, after all.

But do let me know if you are unable to obtain the results you crave and if not, who stands in your way. Shall of course be happy to provide whatever reasonable assistance is necessary in that case.

Yours most earnestly,

Lucius S. Malfoy, &c.

From:

alt_umbridge

Thank you, of course, for a better way to reach you for an urgent question. Naturally, while this is important, it equally, I am sure, is not the most urgent matter in either of our days. And in fact, apologies for my own delay - I've been meeting with some of the younger students, now I've worked through the CCF corps and counsellors, and that's taken much of my evening.

And you are quite right that it's amazing how quickly the old habits of schedule drop away - but then, I suppose, when in Rome, one follows the local clock.

Now, I am very glad to hear the precautions you mention, and the warnings to the students. I admit my own sources did not emphasise their presence to quite that degree. And I have had quite the reminder and review from Septima Vector, recently, about the traditional methods of ensuring student discipline.

It is not, really, that I think students will run riot in the hallways, precisely - I suppose some will, and will be dealt with. But instead, and this is why I came to you, the larger question of discipline. I would bring it up in a staff meeting, but the staff have been quite clear that as I am not teaching in the same capacity, it would be both unnecessary and apparently tedious for me. And at the moment, I do not wish to press that issue.

However, I do wonder if a great many things about the manner of the school might not deserve new attention. I gather that the current system - house points, detentions from the head of house or appropriate staff member, and so forth - has been in place for decades, more or less without change. And for many students, I admit, it appears to work quite adequately. Some never get in any kind of mischief, some it dissuades (or the pressure from their peers dissuades).

But as I've been here, I've heard more and more stories that concern me: abseiling off towers, that matter with the potions ring a few years ago, that matter with Cassandra Calderwood last year. And I begin to wonder if some truly complete review of the school, methods, and curriculum might not be worthwhile.

Looking at what records I've access to here - which admittedly are only one piece of the conversation - I see that while there were certainly substantial changes once Our Lord reclaimed the Ministry for proper-minded wizardry, other parts of the school (the budgetary assumptions, discipline methods, even some details of food and student care) have not had close review. Or perhaps they have, by the Board, whose records I naturally do not have access to. And of course, outside of the expectations of the O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. examinations, staff set their own curricula, and vary widely in rigor, practicality, and coordination with other staff teaching related topics.

As you can see, it is not that I have any great immediate complaint. Only that I wonder how we might do far better by our future if we had a more streamlined, efficient, and disciplined environment for their learning. I do stand ready to be of service, if I might assist in such a review, even simply gathering information and materials for your consideration.

Yours, in shared service,
Dolores

From:

alt_lucius

If you wish to wring the blood of Galleons from Hogwarts' budget of stone, Dolores, by all means, be our guest.

You'll recall that the Matron has been through extensive review and as a parent whose children have all come under her care at some time or other during their schooling, there can be no complaint of her professionalism or skills.

As for the disciplinary methods, surely Horace has held forth on the age-old traditions. Certainly they have been more lax at times (in my day, for example, when the head of the school had a softer attitude) but for the most part things have not changed since long before that. If you think back to your own experiences at Hogwarts, am sure you appreciate the ... balance of permissiveness with regulation.

Food remains a challenge, of course. There again, would invite you and your knowledge of the camp agricultural efforts to provide ingenuity in the face of short supply.

From:

alt_umbridge

Such a pleasure to see you both on Saturday - and Rupi as always, has her uses, I suppose. No, that’s unkind of me. She’s been so loyal and willing to help through the years, just one does tire a little of her endless stories and insistences.

Now, Aggie, always just so interesting to hear the details of your family. Quite a different thing there. And Rina, that luncheon you arranged was so delicate. I cannot begin to tell you how tiring the school food is. The house-elves do a good enough job, I suppose, given the numbers, but it is - even at the staff table - far heavier than I’d prefer. Quite the challenge.

I did truly miss meeting with you all in September, but of course wth the start of the school year, I could scarcely be away. I do think I can arrange for November. There’s one of those Quidditch matches here on the 3rd, so I shall particularly welcome the chance to be away from the chaos, I’m sure. I suppose the little dears do need something to engage them outside of classes, but really, the fussing about the effect of some of my plans on their practice schedule. Well, I went on long enough Saturday, I’m sure. No need to retread old ground.

Now, Aggie, do remember to let me know what your son-in-law can share, and Rina, your daughter and her husband. I’m most interested.

Oh, goodness. Lunch, already. Must dash, there's someone I want to catch. Do enjoy your visit to Bath, Aggie. Such a treat for you, really. You could use a little relaxation, surely.

D.