The Phantom Librarian

Two words to my much-beloved hometown: Sidewalk plows.

Seriously, guys. You tout yourself as America's walking city, and you know how many people take public transit or just walk to work altogether. It's not a brilliant idea to entrust sidewalk shoveling to homeowners who may be old or sick (and waiting for the kid next door to get home from school to hire her to shovel), oversleeping, or vacationing in the Caribbean.

Grrr. Sorry, just had to get to work this morning, and making my way to the bus stop along a street where maybe five houses had their front sidewalks shoveled was nervewracking, as I had to walk in the street. One of my favorite high school teachers died that way--walking along the side of a street whose sidewalks hadn't been shoveled, she had nowhere to retreat when a truck came, and the side rearview window crushed her skull. So all the way to the bus stop, I'm just thinking about poor Miss Mazur. I was not in a good place by the time I actually got safely onto the bus.

Snagged from fionaphoenix, who appears to be my age. Yay.

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Okay, I'm re-reading "The Centaur and the Sneak" as I'm running up toward that section of the calendar in Shifts and McGonagall asks Dumbledore if he's going to Grimmauld Place. Dumbledore responds:

"Oh, no," said Dumbledore, with a grim smile, "I am not leaving to go into hiding. Fudge will soon wish he'd never dislodged me from Hogwarts, I promise you."

So, er... what exactly did Dumbledore do over the next couple of months? Things could be easily hidden from Harry, since the Prophet is in Fudge's pocket and it's the only newspaper that comes (if even that comes), but if he doesn't go to the Order, where does he go?

For myself, I'm going to have him check in with the Order, then go off and start dealing face to face with foreign governments, discrediting Fudge and telling the truth to as many people as possible, while disappearing with Fawkes as soon as anyone from the Ministry appeared. I may also suggest (though not show) that he goes to speak to the Muggle government (I'd guess to the Queen, since the PM would only have access through the official Ministry channels, while the monarchy as an institution might have ties to the magical world going back to Merlin and Arthur, though of course the families have changed). But what do other people think? I never gave the slightest thought to it before today's re-read.