This is what’s known as operational flexibility, and definitely not making it up as you go along. - Ben Aaronovitch

Do you feel guilty?"
"No," I said. "I didn't do it to them and I did my best to stop it. But I feel guilty that I don't feel guilty, if that helps.

“How about this then, Peter,” she said. “You’ve been part of something that no wizard has ever been part of before. You know something that’s not in their books.”
I wanted to say that lots of things weren’t in the libraries of the wise, including plate tectonics, molecular biology and the complete works of J. K. Rowling. But she’d probably say that I was missing the point.

“Of course now I realize it was a telepathic compulsion.”
I was afraid to ask from who—but I had to know.
“From aliens,” she told me.
“Aliens?”
“I’m not mad, you know,” she said. “I’ve been sectioned. They put me in for four weeks’ ‘evaluation’ and at the end the top shrink calls me into her office and looks me in the eye and says, ‘you’re saner than I am—go away.’”
“Did you tell them about the aliens?” I asked.
“I may have glossed over some of the details,” she said.