Horace Slughorn

If anyone asks, I'm inquiring about your health, Antosha (and of course I am) and our Poppy's position as your personal Healer.

In reality, I wonder if you might both be interested in a quick, quiet get-together over the holidays. An impromptu staff meeting, if you will.

That infernal woman. Tosha, you know my plan had been to stay on her good side and mitigate the damage she has wrought, to uphold Hogwarts' traditions and cultivate myself as her voice of experience and thus guide her toward decisions that will have the appearance of achieving the changes she wishes without enabling her to fully and completely transform the school.

So much for my success. I must be slipping into infirmity: I am accustomed to better results than this.

Poppy, since she sacked you, things here have been going downhill with the rapidity of a snowball descending a ski slope. Tosha, do you know I believe she actually threatened to dismiss me this evening, just because I suggested that she reconsider the harshness of Miss Perks' punishment, given the nature of the fib she told Capper.

I am sojourning at my home this holiday, in Ely. If you're free and able, I'd be glad to host a supper for my colleagues some evening, perhaps next Wednesday? Or another night if that is more acceptable. Septima's already agreed (this business over Capper's brother has her fuming) and I wonder if you'd ask Pomona, Poppy--I know you two frequently take treks together so Dolores might not suspect anything further if you contacted her through other means. Razzer and Aurora, bless them, may have too much to be going on with but Tosha, do feel free to extend my invitation to them, as I know you are fast friends and she cannot think to trace it to your weekly conversations.

I believe it goes without saying that Carpenter, Hooch and Acton cannot be trusted. They have been wholly hers for some time. Bathsheba might be turned but I think it best to leave her out for now. Irma...I am not sure but she, too, can be recruited if needed.

Rest assured I in no way intend to allow Dolores to railroad one of our best O.W.L. candidates simply because she believes the girl to be 'uppity'--I simply do not understand her intractability on this point.

I am certain we can, together, overcome whatever hold she has on whomever she has it. If not.... Well. I wasn't lying to her when I said I'd sooner retire than endure another year of this falderal. Hogwarts? Hogwash, more like it.