Dinner for hungry Order Members

Khaat did her best to keep her thoughts to herself. She watched Michael make a move with his backgammon pieces. Michael seemed to know her and was tolerant of her. Khaat, however, was not in such an accommodating mood and was feeling a small amount of irritation. Not enough to make her unsociable, but she knew she did clearly need to keep her thoughts to herself.

"I can hear your thoughts, my dear," Michael said to her, with a slight smile.

"You cannot. You're not a seer," she replied, studying the backgammon board.

"I don't have to be. I know you. Let it go, Khaat. You remember what it was like. Hogwarts kept you sheltered, made you believe that the entire world revolved around it. That's the problem with sheltered environments like that. Her concern for the school is created by the fact that she is so sheltered there. She has not been a part of Order history and function. And her age gives her much youthful enthusiasm. Our age gives us patience and teaches us the virtue of waiting and planning. Young Sirius can deal with it. For now, all you and I need to do is to decide who is going to win this game."

"That will be me," Khaat said.

"We shall see," Michael grinned. Khaat moved two of her pieces and looked at Michael who frowned.

"In trouble already, are you?" Robert laughed at Michael.

Kingsley entered the kitchen, already in a much lighter mood then he when he was in the meeting room. He got a little irritable there, but with the prospect of good food to enjoy he was already in a much better mood. As he entered, he noticed Jess and a little girl leaving the room, but paid them no attention. They were probably just fooling around as they youth usually did. He instead paid more attention to the people sitting at the table, which included the Lupin family and a rather young man he had spoken with at the table. He took a seat next to Khaat.

"You know, I haven't had proper food for over a year," he said matter of factly to nobody in particular. James Wake used to send him food via owl every other week but the food was usually cold and less in quantity. So it was natural for him to be looking forward to a nice hot meal. Shacklebolt turned to the house elf first and gave his order before turning to the minister. "So, how is it going with the ministry? Enjoying your new job?" Shacklebolt asked casually. Besides making small talk, Shacklebolt also wanted to know obout the happenings at the ministry, as that was a front he cared for a lot, having once been the minister himself.

"You won't be disappointed," she smiled at Shacklebolt. "Jess's house elf does a fine job. Except that I did not place my own order."

"I placed it for you," Brian told her. "I knew you forgot once you saw the backgammon table."

"I did. Thank you," Khaat said.

Robert looked now at Shacklebolt, "Well, some things are the same as they have always been. Some things are different. I have been working on making Azkaban a bit less friendly. I did get sick and tired of our convicted lot being able to use the prison as a revolving door, walk in, live the life of Riley, and then waltz back out whenever they bloody well pleased. So, yes, I have returned it to at least as 'reforming' as it used to be." He wasn't sure how Kingsley Shacklebolt might take that news, but Robert had returned dementors to the prison and much stronger 'rehabilitative" methods in order to correct behaviors that caused convicts to be sentenced there in the first place.

"The crime rate, at least on the surface, has gone down just a tad for now," Robert said. "I don't rely much on statistics, though. Too many variables in that stuff. The ministry informants are telling me that our criminal element is none too happy with the changes at the prison. That does give me just a tiny bit of satisfaction for a brief moment. The job, though, is far from caught up. It is good to see you back at the Order meetings, though. You do realize Khaat was quite beside herself when she believed you were gone." he saw Khaat flash him a dirty look that warned him to leave that subject alone.

Robert laughed, "She'd like to think I'm afraid of her."

((Shacklebolt, so you know. The Meeting Room is the Kitchen, and we went to the drawing room, while the house elf prepares dinner. So right now it's just some pre-dinner stuff. Doesn't really affect your post that much, other than location, so I'm sure it would be forgivable for you to leave it as it is, if you prefer))

Well, the good thing was she certainly wasn't a lost cause, Jess could tell at least that much from the way she traipsed up the stairs. If Jack had lost all interest in the Order, and in the future of it altogether, she would have walked straight upstairs, not pausing whatsoever. Actually, she probably would have gone straight back to the castle, but either worked. Her stopping to look around showed Jess that she was not completely fed up with the Order already, she was merely discouraged by the way the meeting had proceeded, assuming there was a problem at all (Which he did)

When she entered the room Jess was already sitting at his desk, fiddling through it trying to retrieve a few scrap pieces of parchment, while pulling out a quill and a pot of ink. "This isn't about what I need, or what I want. This is actually more about you. In order for our two organisations to work effectively together we need to communicate better than we are, that much is already quite obvious," he told her, before pulling out a long roll of parchment which he then proceeded to unfurl. "Jack, I'm going to be honest, other than what I'm told by Wilson and McCoy, I know nothing about what is happening at Hogwarts. I think that things are happening, which despite our wanting it not to, manage to slip past the two of them. In order to get a proper look at the school's goings on, and I remember this from my own school days, I need to get a proper report from someone who is seeing these events with the straightforward and to the point eyes of a student," he said, purposely not using the word child to conclude what he was saying, though it was a more commonly used ending for such types of descriptions, Jess knew that there was a massive difference between a child, and between the girl who stood before him.

"What do you need, is a better question," he said, turning the parchment around to show her a list of names printed on it. "This is how many members are in the Order, this is what I have to work with. It's a small team, yes, but we're lacking something far more important than numbers, and that something is a purpose, the Death Eaters have not been doing anything in the open recently, and despite knowing that something is happening, we don't know what. If we knew, we would have an aim and a goal. Defence is not a true goal, particularly on such a level of something so broad as a hospital or a government building, or even a school. The Order operates far more efficiently with a goal they can actively carry out, not just sit around looking after," he explained, hoping she would see what he was trying to say. "So I ask again, what do you need, because I'm certain that we can find some way to fulfill that need, and in doing so fulfill our own," he told her, trying to keep it as straightforward as possible, adding a smile at the end to show that he was not grousing on her.

Jack listened silently, and revealed nothing though her mind was already scouring through what she knew to try and trying to figure out exactly what she needed, what PA needed. Nothing could be done about the terrible and insane professors, she knew that, and she did not know what sending a guard to Hogwarts would do. The teachers would just legally torture their students then.

"Honestly." she said, going slowly, "We just need you guys telling us what to prepare for. I feel stupid, providing a list of spells to PA and saying 'practice.' I was hoping I could figure out what was happening with the Death Eaters. but all I learned tonight is what might be happening. I mean, I know at least a little of what goes on with the Dark Followers. All we really need, well all we really want, is information, so that when something does happen, we're at least a little prepared."

Jess nodded thoughtfully, that was exactly what he'd been wanting to hear, not so much the request itself, but a firm piece of leadership from Jack, one which illustrated to him exactly what she wanted from the alliance of both groups, and what she wanted specifically from himself.

"It's something we're both striving for then," he said quietly, his mind still running loose with hundreds of thoughts. "It's true, and I want you to be honest with your people about this. It's true that we know little about the Death Eaters right now, and it's also true that that's not a good thing, but it's also true that it's something we're trying to rectify right now," he told her, deciding to lay all his cards on the table.

"However that's not to say that we're completely helpless, we're keeping ourselves busy temporarily with protection duty, though that can't run for long, we all know that," he told her, "But we're also working with a new set of plans, ones that we've not tried in years, ones which could work," he told her, deciding that one idea could be kept to himself. It was nothing against Jack, but he was keeping it solely to himself, not even the Order knew what he was thinking.

"If you want something to do though, ingratiate yourselves with the staff, attend your classes, don't act out, you're dealing with very volatile staff, I believe," he told her, "But most importantly just keep the flame alive, what was said in that room earlier was it down to a nutshell, sometime, most probably sometime soon, lines will be drawn, and the more people we have on our side of the line, the more likely we are to succeed in fighting for all we stand for," he told her.

"If you'd like a spell though, and I know you said that just throwing spells wasn't good enough, but trust me, teach them this one," he told her, turning back to his desk and rummaging for a second, before pulling out another scrap of parchment with the words Muffliato written on the top. "It's very little known, I found it here in the house a few years ago, I have reason to believe that no one who's not read this parchment would know about this spell, it's certainly not a part of the Hogwarts curriculum," he added with a wink.

Robert Lupin wrote:"
Robert looked now at Shacklebolt, "Well, some things are the same as they have always been. Some things are different. I have been working on making Azkaban a bit less friendly. I did get sick and tired of our convicted lot being able to use the prison as a revolving door, walk in, live the life of Riley, and then waltz back out whenever they bloody well pleased. So, yes, I have returned it to at least as 'reforming' as it used to be." He wasn't sure how Kingsley Shacklebolt might take that news, but Robert had returned dementors to the prison and much stronger 'rehabilitative" methods in order to correct behaviors that caused convicts to be sentenced there in the first place.

"The crime rate, at least on the surface, has gone down just a tad for now," Robert said. "I don't rely much on statistics, though. Too many variables in that stuff. The ministry informants are telling me that our criminal element is none too happy with the changes at the prison. That does give me just a tiny bit of satisfaction for a brief moment. The job, though, is far from caught up. It is good to see you back at the Order meetings, though. You do realize Khaat was quite beside herself when she believed you were gone." he saw Khaat flash him a dirty look that warned him to leave that subject alone.

Robert laughed, "She'd like to think I'm afraid of her."

Kingsley regarded Robert Lupin with a frown as he talked about the Azkaban issue. "Reform? You mean bringing back the dementors," he said, knowing already what Robert meant. He wasn't happy about that. It had been Kingsley who had removed them from Azkaban during his time as minister. He had exiled them to a secret room at the ministry of magic and kept patronuses to keep them there at all time, until Voldemort had removed them that is. "If you fight evil with evil for the sake of good, what does that make you?" he asked Robert sternly. "There are other ways to make Azkaban safe, besides using evil creatures like dementors. Dementors, they'll turn on you as soon as they find a master who can give them more humans to torment. Keeping a man in misery for all his life due to a crime is not my idea of justice. Get rid of them Lupin, the world will be a much better place without them."

As Robert mentioned Khaat, he looked at her smiled slightly. "Well, I did contact her as soon as possible, but giving her a message without owls was quite hard," he said. Eventually, he had sent a patronus to Wilson, who had then sent an owl to Khaat. Call Kingsley paranoid, but if someone had caught that letter then he would be doomed, and Shacklebolt considered all posibilites in his plans.

"Some of the people we've sent there do not deserve mercy or justice either one," Khaat said very softly when Shacklebolt mentioned not liking the dementors there. "Some of them deserve more than just one lifetime at the hands of the dementors. Be glad my father made that choice and not me. You might not agree with my father, but you would have agreed with my ideas far less."

There was much Shacklebolt did not know about what had happened in his absence. And she was not about to recite it for him here. She had battlescars now that she did not have even the last time she had seen Shacklebolt in the Shrieking Shack not all that long ago. She did trust, however, that he would hear what she had not said, and probably would hear much of what she did not want him to hear in her unspoken words. If there was one thing she did know about Kingsley Shacklebolt, it was that the man was incredibly brilliant and intuitive. He had earned her reespect long ago at Hogwarts, and she still felt that respect and utter loyalty--even if she did not agree entirely with him. As the Chief Warlock, she was entrusted with making sure those brought before her were given justice as best as the court could provide. However, that did not mean it was always easy or personally painless. For her, she now was glad the dementors had already been put in place well before she found herself grateful for their presence behind Azkaban walls.

"In the time when you were minister, the choice to oust the dementors was an excellent one," she said. "And it was one that, hopefully, I might have made myself. I have learned, though, that times have changed and our world is utterly brutal now. I see little other choice. I am, as always, interested in your suggestions, though. And I would like to hear them."

And that was true. She valued Shacklebolt's opinions beyond a lot of people's. She had learned a great deal from him, and she wanted to continue to learn from him. She had hoped to avoid betraying to anyone at the Order that she still had some deep emotional wounds of her own. Ones that made his concepts of forgiveness and mercy quite a bitter pill to swallow. If he knew of a way for her to do that, she would gladly take up Shacklebolt's case with her father.

Jack listened to all he said, trying to look respectful, but it was not an expression that she was exactly expert with. She respected troublemakers more than anything; troublemakers made history. Jess had done a lot and there was reason to appreciate and respect him. It was hard to look enthusiastic when he was telling her to sit back and be a good girl.

She had never been that to begin with.

But one part caught her attention. Keep the flame alive... If that meant leaving anonymous spray-painted messages of 'PA Pwns' and 'Potter's Army kicks DF tail' then, so be it. If it meant, at graduation, screaming her ideals at the crowd, so be it. He had told her to be a good kid while simultaneously telling her to take risks. She wouldn't ask her members to, but as they say.. lead by example.

The spell was a bit of a let down (she did know it after all) but she had always thought it'd be nice to keep it quiet (pun very much intended.) "I know that one. I'll teach it to them. Thanks." She pocketed the paper. "Oh and... Y'know, we're kind of expected as students to suck up... So if we happened to play spy, would that count as minding our teachers?" She smiled hopefully at Jess. "I know I'm grasping at straws, but I need to give PA some sort of task, some mission."

Kingsley shook his head as Khaat tried to justify her fathers actions. She had some good points, but she was missing the bigger picture. "Trust me, when I became minister, things were far worse then they are now," he replied shortly. She wouldn't have been old enough to remember what had happened back then, or if she had been, she wouldn't have understood the danger they had been in. Even if the dark lord had disappeared, most had not believed him to be dead, and the Death Eaters had still been quite powerful then. "Consider their history for a second," Shacklebolt began. He didn't want to start a lecture, but thought that it was necessary. "They purposefully allowed members of the death eaters to escape the prison in 1997, and then joined Voldemort the following year. How can you be sure they won't join the death eaters again? Evil beings will stick together, and dementors are the very worst of them. There are other ways to keep them in Azkaban without using dementors Khaat."