[center][b]1st December, 1999 - Aldenberg Manor
Eric Friedman[/b][/center]

As Eric walked into the manor, he looked at the sky and sighed. He knew the meeting had already begun - he spent too much time talking to his Ministry insiders. He entered the meeting room ready to apologize for his tardiness, and he heard Kyle saying something about drinking Polyjuice and doing recon; for what, he didn’t know. “Sorry I’m late, I was meeting with my insiders,” he apologized to Ronan. Turning to Kyle, he added, “Care to fill me in?” as he walked to his seat and sat down next to him.

After he was brought up to speed, Eric looked down at the table for a moment as he thought it over. Albert [i]did[/i] have a point. We have no idea who this person is, and we would be meeting him at a location of his choosing. It is very reasonable to suspect that this is a trap, and if it were to be one, we’d be walking right into it - Jia was beyond persuading otherwise on the matter, and both Kyle and Siobhan would be going as long as the other was. However, Jia is right. There is no doubt that if we don’t meet this man, we won’t get another chance to gain an agent so close to the Dark Lord. And Siobhan was right even more so than Jia. The man invited us to conversation, not to force him to comply with us, or else be killed. He’d likely appreciate the fact that we are open to having a conversation with him, as opposed to just dragging him off to some secret location where we can interrogate him. Eric nodded to himself, his decision made.

“I agree with Siobhan,” he said slowly, looking up. “He must be high up the ranks if he’s concerned about his identity being revealed. The Death Eaters don’t even [i]know[/i] the names of the low-ranking members, so he’d have no reason to be afraid to give his name… not that he’d be any use to us in that case, anyways.” Eric paused, looking around at everyone in attendance, before continuing: “I will go with Jia to talk to this supposed ‘friend’. He says he wishes to have a chat, so a chat we shall have. Not only will I be able to offer a friendly chat to him more so than Jia - no offense, Ms. Shang - but I can Obliviate all the Muggles in the cafe. Nobody will ever know about our meeting besides us.”