"What would you do if it looked like it was someone anti-repeal?"

"Find the Swedes who feel the strongest about that, I suppose."

"And if it's a supporter?"

"I'm not really sure. Talk to Elio. Unless it seemed like it was him. I don't think it was him. He's vaguely uncanny but he's not lying to me, I'd notice, and he's not a murderer."

"What does uncanny even mean."

" - I don't really know. I might be being unfair because I'm jealous. Like - imagine the difference in Slytherinness between me and the average person, and then take that difference again, and you get Elio, except utterly gifted at a very Slytherin skillset -"

"...so he's good at Slytherin stuff but not for Slytherin reasons?"

"Not for any reasons! But particularly not for Slytherin reasons!"

"Not for any reasons doesn't make sense."

"I know."

"Who were the foreigners there?"

"Elio's assistant, couple observers from France - from France's conservatives - couple from China whose internal politics I don't think I know how to categorize - fellow from Persia with a Swedish wife, she was maybe tentatively in favor but I don't know anything about him - and some Russians. Anti."

"Huh. How does Elio and his office get around all the language barriers -"

"Has a pretty big staff and hires for it specifically, I think. And Italian will get you reasonably far - at least on this continent -"

"How does he pay all these people, does he take donations or something -"

"I think so. And has moneyed friends."

"Huh."

"Giving him money might be valuable. Though - not if this happens again -"

"- that having what effect on his budget -"

"Sweden is pretty relaxed. There are lots of countries that would have devolved into a war over something smaller than an entire governing session getting untraceably eaten."

"With who? And it's already an issue, now, if Elio's entire office were defunded or for that matter also eaten how would that help anything -"

"Internally. And if it happens again then we need to reprioritize on stopping it, a Statute repeal isn't the sort of thing we can hope to push through a world dealing with multiple civil wars and an unknown politician vanishing problem."

"Are we sure it was even about the Statute and not just a collective assassination."

"No. But if it happened again then we could probably be pretty sure."

"Yeah."