Suspension of disbelief -Idiots of War

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182458

 Magpie:
> There's no indication this idea is stopping anybody from doing 
anything. Nobody is afraid that the rain in the office is going to get
anyone killed that we see. It's handled pretty much the way the 
> pranks against Umbridge are. 

> So somebody pranked this one guy because they thought they could 
keep it off Voldemort's radar <snip>

Carol responds:

I know that you're arguing against certain points that Pippin made
here, so please forgive me for ignoring those points and focusing only
on the "rain" in Yaxley's office. Admittedly, such pranks are not on
the scale of resistance that you're looking for, but they *are*
resistance of the same sort that the weasley Twins and Lee Jordan
practiced against the Umbridge regime at Hogwarts. If it's raining in
Yaxley's office, Yaxley can't use his office and can't do whatever
DE-oriented work he usually does there. Admittedly, it doesn't deter
him from attending the "hearings" for Mrs. Cattermole and other
Muggle-borns, but he isn't doing whatever he normally does as Head of
Magical Law Enforcement--Madam Bones's old job. The laws he's
enforcing seem to be related to the "theft" of magic by Muggle-borns.
(Yaxley isn't just any DE; he's striving for LV's favor, and he seems
to have been rewarded for Imperiusing Pius Thicknesse with an
important Ministry position. The Ministry employees are clearly afraid
of him; he's "the brutal-faced Death Eater" from HBP.)

Also, Yaxley is not the only DE or LV loyalist whose office has been
sabotaged by "rain": Mr. Weasley tells "Cattermole" (Ron) that "a lot
of offices have been raining lately" and that "Meteolojinx Recanto
worked for Bletchley" (DH Am. ed. 255). I thought at first that
Bletchley was another DE whose office had been rained on (given that
Miles Bletchley is a former Slytherin Keeper, but on a more careful
reading, it seems that Bletchley is another Magical Maintenance worker
who's had to deal with "raining" offices. My point, however, is that
it's not a lone incident; someone is sabotaging "a lot" of MoM offices
(apparently not including Mr. Weasley's), and at least one target,
Yaxley, is a DE in a very high position in the new LV administration.

Meanwhile, Mr. Weasley is standing up to the likes of Runcorn, voicing
his opposition to his tactics, such as tracking down the Wizard who
faked Dirk Cresswell's family tree. (Mr. Weasley, as "Runcorn" informs
him, is being watched, but apparently he's protected for the moment by
his Pure-Blood status.)

Granted, all this is low-level opposition, but it's better than no
opposition at all. At least not everyone is intimidated, or worse,
going along with the Death Eaters' agenda, like the "bushily whiskered
man" who hopes to get Dirk Cresswell's job now that Runcorn has outed
Cresswell as a Muggle-born, or actively supporting it like Umbridge
and Runcorn.

Carol, who thinks that such references to sabotage and faked family
trees suggest that at least a few people other than Lee Jordan and his
friends are doing what they can to subvert the new administration in
whatever small way is available to them