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[alt_severus]

As you may have seen, Rookwood has just written to me. He apparently believes it is just after my induction and I am slacking on my duties to participate in potions development — apparently there is an "anti-Fidelius" potion in the works, though from what he said it does not sound as though there has been much progress.

I shall attempt to get as much information as possible out of him until someone inevitably realises what he has done.

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[alt_severus]

He has not replied yet. I told him that I have been in the library researching ingredient substitutions and suggested that he let me know what the most promising lines of discovery were so that I could direct my research appropriately; with luck he will give me a state of the art summary and I can evaluate further.

I will confess I cannot think of any immediate methods of attacking the problem — it is not a class of spell that lends itself to potion-based countermeasures, and to my knowledge no one has ever succeeded in breaking a Fidelius, once set, through any means other than the cooperation of the secret-keeper. But for all that he is clearly diminished from what he once was, Rookwood's mind works in twisty ways I cannot always predict. Ninety percent of the time it results in nonsense; the other ten percent of the time, genius. Let us hope this instance is the former rather than the latter.

As to the other project with which I am engaged, Miss Granger and I may have news soon. I do not mean to raise hopes, but I am cautiously optimistic about our prospects in a way I have not been in quite some time.

[alt_alice]

That is very good to hear.

[alt_severus]

He's raving, alas. Unmoored from time in more than one way — apparently 'Dominic', by whom he means Selwyn, was making suggestions for this project — and nothing of what he names as the current thrusts of research would have any chance of working. (One suspects his underlings have been telling him what he wants to hear.)

I attempted to prompt him toward the topic of the Sleepers in hope he would have something useful to say.

[alt_alice]

Just tread lightly on that one, Severus. You know that everything you say will be under a high degree of scrutiny. A few false seeds would not go amiss, I'm sure.