Strictly Professional

Jack was finding that she was very glad she had decided to come down to the dungeons and bother Amelia, even though it did not appear she was actually bothering her the way Jack had thought she would end up doing. When Amelia laughed, Jack felt like there was maybe someone on her side who understood, someone who might just... get it.

That was what was difficult about being in the Order, which was so wrapped up in trust and loyalty and... things Jack did not give easily. Jack didn't warm to people. She did not trust them, nor open up, nor let anyone help her. She was loyal, but never unquestioningly. She always doubted any ties, any sort of mutual relationship, because she knew people were never exactly what they claimed to be.

At Amelia's words, Jack felt a real smile spread onto her face and she nodded. "I think so." It was much nicer, to know someone was more alike to her than different. It was always, Andrew was her opposite, Chase was her opposite, this was why they got along. Never was it that someone had similiarities to her, and that was what made them agreeable.

She liked this new realization.

Jack laughed at Amelia's words. "I know what you mean. People used to practically run when Ithey were paired with me in class." The mention of the mother was too much for Jack to not comment on. "Same here. She sort of gave up awhile ago. Never did give up on nagging though." She shuddered to illustrate her point.

Amelia was surprised to see Jack agreeing with her on the subject of them being so similar, because in Amelia’s mind, this was more of an insult to Jack. Her Gryffindor counterpart had always been better liked among their peers, for a multitude of reasons. Jack was more outgoing, and was much more capable of being social when the need arose. She had also played quidditch, which garnered a lot of respect among the student population. Amelia hadn’t been very good at any of those things, and Jack knew it.

But still, when Amelia made the comparison, Jack not only agreed with her in words, which could easily have been produced for the young professor’s benefit, but she was actually smiling. It was surprising how much that smile lit up Jack’s face, made her look younger and… prettier, than Amelia had ever seen her. Usually Jack looked so tough, sometimes to the point of looking perpetually angry, but the smile softened her. Amelia found herself smiling back, a genuine smile that didn’t disappear as she responded to Jack’s comment.

“Well, your partnerships were always much more… exciting than others,” Amelia said, her words injected with lighthearted laughter that implied she meant no offense by her words, “I think sometimes Doyle put us together just to watch the results.”

“And if you have any suggestions as to how to make my mother give up her quest for my socialization, I’d be glad to take notes,” the redhead added, “But you’ll have to do your worst to make Antoinette give up her quest. She’s still sending me daily owls about someone’s son or second cousin twice removed that would be very interested in meeting me… Probably because my mother really has a way with false advertising,” Amelia concluded, laughing at the truth and irony in her words.

Are you actually… having fun? Amelia’s subconscious interjected through the sound of her sporadic laughter, confusion bubbling from behind her conscious thought. She had never had a real… friend, before, and definitely never a female friend. Was Jack her friend? Is this what friendship felt like?

Do you have to label everything? Amelia's subconscious asked, exasperated.

This was actually a rather funny, almost ironic, situation. Amelia had always seemed so removed from the people around her, and had always had a serious look on her face. Jack, on the other hand, had always had an expression on her face as though she were close to murdering the next person who looked at her wrong. And these two girls sat in each other's company, laughing.

She'd like to see all those kids who used to intentionally piss off Jack or Amelia see them now.

At Amelia's words Jack smirked and did a fake little bow from where she was sitting. "My mission was not in vain, then." Jack had found in her time at Hogwarts that, typically, if you did not make classes fun, then you would not have fun. Amelia suggested Doyle's reasons and Jack nodded, "Oh! Definitely. Although I like to think he just paired us together since we weren't idiots like the rest of the class." She nodded. Jack knew Amelia could beat her in any class probably, but Jack was resourceful enough to figure things out on her own too.

At Amelia's words, Jack felt a mischevious smile unfurl on her mouth. "Well, just bring home a werewolf, and tell her that's your choice." She laughed. "Worked for me." She had not told anyone about showing up with Ari back to her old home, but she figured Amelia would benefit from scraps of the story. "My mom was just relieved I was playing for the right team, I think." Jack grinned. "You can't really get away from the nagging ever, though. Not unless you just sort of cut them from your life." She kept out the added phrase of like me. Jack might have been confident, but she was not the arrogant kind that stayed focused on her own life. "I've never had her arrange anything for me, though. If you get your mother to be partially afraid of you, she just nags from afar, rather than get directly involved." She shrugged.

Jack sort of mentally laughed at herself. Who knew a casual drop in would turn into an actual conversation, something she had not had in... well, Jack's memory was not strong enough to figure out the exact last time, but it had been long ago. It was nice...

Always the performer, Jack gave a theatrical bow from her chair and Amelia realized as she watched the girl’s head dip down that she had forgotten all about the furry little thing at Jack’s feet. The niffler was dozing next to Jack’s chair, immobile save for the intermittent rise and fall of its tiny chest. The fact that Amelia’s consciousness hadn’t been focused on the creature for all this time was a further testament to how much she had been enjoying her conversation with Jack, and how true that feeling was. For once, Amelia wasn’t weighing every word or calculating which emotion she ought to be experiencing. And Jack Dylan was to thank for it.

Who would have thought?

Amelia laughed along with Jack as she testified to Doyle’s reasons for pairing the two of them together, and she nodded a bit self-consciously at her assertion that Amelia had known much more than the rest of the class. Although she worked hard to be at the top of her class, Amelia didn’t like the attention or definitions given to her by her peers because of it. Being smart meant she could please her parents and her professors, meet the expectations of a Ravenclaw, and it also was a point of pride for Amelia. But the assumptions of her peers that came with those O’s could be frustrating – it was as though nothing else about her mattered, and that those grades put her in a category she couldn’t escape.

“Well for all the moments of terror when you were lighting something on fire,” Amelia said as her brief stint of laughter concluded, “I’ll admit it was helpful to have a partner who knew the difference between Knotgrass and Hellebore.”

Jack’s perceptiveness of their classroom situation was not limited, though, and she also had ideas for how to make Antoinette stop her quest to see Amelia happily dating. And her ideas, well… they had Jack written all over them, which is why to Amelia’s sensibilities they were altogether shocking.

“I want her to stop nagging, not stop breathing,” Amelia said with incredulous laughter at Jack’s proposition that she bring home a werewolf. Clearly, Jack had been referring to her relationship with Ari, which she was surprisingly candid about considering what she had told Amelia earlier about it ended abruptly. But when Jack mentioned bringing home a werewolf, Amelia’s subconscious brought a memory of her own to the surface, one involving a tall, dark and handsome werewolf that Amelia had shared… well, shared a lot with one night in a storage closet.

Amelia could feel herself getting warmer and knew the blush must be rising to her cheeks and chest just as the thought of Marcus, though she hadn’t seen him since that day. To be honest, she hadn’t known what to do with the realization that she had behaved so… out of character. Her hormones had surely gotten the better of her, but thinking back on it, she found it difficult to actually regret what had happened. Especially with the tightening in her lower abdomen…

“But, you know…” Amelia said aloud, to keep her mind and body from getting too far into that particular distraction, “… it might not be a bad last resort. There are only a few things left on the list of things to try – I’ve gone through all the others,” she added with a smile.

“But I don’t think I would want my mother to actually fear me,” Amelia continued contemplatively, thinking of how much she valued her mother’s respect and her father’s approval. It was what had kept Amelia so firmly in the realm of perfect behavior of the last few years, it is what dictated her decision-making.

“And I don’t think my parents could handle another one of their children cutting them completely out of their life,” Amelia added as an afterthought, quieter and almost uncertain, because Amelia hadn’t mentioned Raoul out loud since she talked to Marcus, and even that had been slightly easier because Marcus remembered Raoul, remembered him as a friend. I really can’t be thinking any more about Marcus… Raoul really would kill me…

“You know, after my brother…” Amelia muttered uncertainly, her hand rising to the back of her neck as it always did was she was nervous. She was beginning to question her instinctual decision to spill this secret to Jack. I knew these friendship feelings were too good to be true…

Laughter used to be like a relatively persistent ghost to Jack, haunting her throughout the hallways for different reasons. Either because she had pulled off a successful prank, and either she or an audience was amused, or because she was being given detention, and her victim was amused. And then, of course, people found themselves and their little comments about her old clothing and lack of real friends hilarious. So there was this laughter.

Ever since the battle of Hogwarts... yes, ever since then and the news she had found that night, that ghost had been mysteriously absent. Perhaps her withdrawal from the pranking business and the envelopment in the world of bureacracy had done that. Or perhaps all of the ghosts of guilt and shame and remorse had crowded her too thoroughly to allow that ghost more than a moment or two with her.

But it had returned and had, thus far, been left relatively alone to do its thing. And with Amelia, who had usually frowned so deeply over Jack's ideas of impractical amusement- ironic, since it was called a practical joke. But maybe it was not so strange as Jack thought. She had, after all, grown to be a very different person. And, from the sounds of it, Amelia had changed in ways too.

Tragedy did that.

Jack grinned at Amelia's admission, saying, "I didn't use those books just to throw at annoying first years, I used them once in awhile." She grinned, because in truth, she had read a lot of her books throughly. It was one way to pass the summers. And as a muggleborn, magic was new and special. How could she ignore it like so many pure- and halfbloods had done?

Amelia burst that she didn't want her mother to die and Jack burst into laughter. Jack had supposed that the shock of a werewolf would be greater on her mother, but her own mother had already decided she was crazy enough to do just about everything, so maybe Amelia's mother might be taken more aback. After all, Amelia was a parent's dream, and bringing home a werewolf could turn that easily into a nightmare.

As their laughter abated, Amelia admitted there was stock in the idea. Jack grinned, nodding and saying, "As long as he's not, you know, transformed or bloodthirsty. If he looks like the sort of guy your mother would approve of, it's perfect. My mother was so torn. I think... I think my dad actually approved," Jack said, sounding as though she didn't believe it for herself. "Riley hadn't.."

At Amelia's thought, Jack said, "Well, my mom has been afraid since I got my Hogwarts letter, I just sort of let her think they might all wake up as toads. Kept them from keeping me from going to Hogwarts." She added another thought and Jack realized that Amelia was opening up to her a bit. Jack did not like when people asked for her to offer up private thoughts, and she doubted Amelia did. So she said, "You have a brother too?"

((Sorry about the significant delay in response time. I just started up again at school and work, so things have been a little hectic.))

“If he was transformed and bloodthirsty, I wouldn’t be likely to get him all the way home,” Amelia admitted with a laugh, remembering how Marcus had tried to show her how dangerous he could be, while simultaneously trying to explain that he was really still the same as her deep down. It had been a confusion conversation, following by an even more confusing situation involving absolutely no talking at all…

You really do need to sort out your feelings regarding that, Amelia’s subconscious piped up, tired of the same old running in circles that Amelia did about any situation that made her feel an emotion that didn’t rate somewhere between three and six on a 1-10 scale.

“I don’t think my mother could get used to the idea, no matter how attractive he was,” Amelia added seriously, knowing Antoinette would rather Amelia be perpetually single than dating a half-breed. But then again, Amelia had never tested that assumption… but she had a strong inkling.

As Jack added her own bit of personal detail, Amelia let her hand fall away from the back of her neck, relaxing slightly. She was still confused about the feeling of comfort that had allowed her to reveal something personal to Jack, but now that Jack was sharing too, it didn’t seem quite so intimidating. At least they would be on roughly equal ground, and if Jack decided to run around with Amelia’s secrets, the young professor wouldn’t be left without any ammunition for return fire.

You really are that paranoid, aren’t you? Her subconscious again, annoyed as usual.

Amelia realized as Jack spoke that she had nearly forgotten that Jack was muggleborn. She knew it subconsciously, of course, because the information had come up many times in their years at Hogwarts, but without a constant reminder, it had sort of slipped into the background. Amelia wondered if her parents ever forgot details like that about a person’s background. Her father was busy worrying about other things, so it was possible he would. Antoinette was another story entirely. That was the type of information she prioritized above even people’s first names.

“Yes, an older brother. He was at Hogwarts for a few years when we were first starting,” Amelia said, failing to mention that the reason he had only been around for a few years was that he dropped out and ran away from home, disappearing into the world that was still his playground. Jack had either heard the stories or she hadn’t.

“You might remember him. Raoul?” Amelia said her brother’s name like a question, wondering if the name would spark Jack’s memory for the gossip that had circulated when he left.

Jack smirked, briefly considering how it would have been to bring home a great white wolf, informing her mother that the great beast was in fact an attractive male that she found herself spending more and more time with. The pup was actually rather tame, it was not completely out of the question. However, had her mother tried to treat him like any old dog and banish him to outside, or upset Jack in any sort of way... Well, that could have been bad. Jack nodded as Amelia continued on. "Mine either. I think it just sort of... sunned her almost permanently speechless. I'm sure my father is a little grateful."

She was speaking with little animosity to her parents, almost as if a visit was in the question, but she knew there was pretty much zero chance of returning. Jack and her mother did not get along. Jack did not even call her mother by her real name, because Jack could not being herself to consider her any more than the tempermental matriarch that dominated Jack's unhappiness. Riley could be easily forgiven, if he just spoke to her. And her father. She was not sure how to feel there.

It was just easier to crack the jokes.

Talking about brothers was different with the girls, though. Jack wondered if Amelia's older brother had been what Riley had been. A best and, in most cases, only friend. Jack had really looked to Riley to see the way to deal with authority and how to take things with grace. Obviously, not much had stuck, but he was always a constant source of support. He was always willing to listen and to tell her off when she needed as well as tell her, in secret, he did disagree with Mum and that he thought Jack was right. Too bad it had stopped.

Amelia went in to it a little bit and then gave the name. Jack's face opened with recognition. "Raoul! Man, he was awesome! One of the more rebellious ones it seemed. I always recognized him as troublemaker kin." She stopped, realizing Amelia had been brought up in a way that made her obviously very restrained. Raoul had not been. That meant trouble. Jack was probably not helping. "He left early," she stated, trying to control herself. "I imagine that was crazy."

Just as crazy as when she returned home, took all her things, and left her life behind.

As soon as she said the name – his name – Jack’s face immediately changed from one of curiosity to one of instant recognition. Raoul had had that effect on people; everyone in the school knew who he was by winter holiday of his first year. He just had that type of personality that everyone was attracted to, and the type of innate confidence that Amelia had never had in social situations. Not that Raoul hadn’t tried to bring her into his ever-growing fold of friends, socialize her on a peer-to-peer level instead of the lessons Antoinette was always giving the pair of them. But although Raoul’s friends had always been good to Amelia because her older brother demanded it, they had never thought of her as anything more than his younger sister. A quiet younger sister at that.

“Yes, Raoul definitely got all the rebellious genes,” Amelia concurred, forcing a smile in response to Jack’s happiness at the memory of her brother. Like so many others, she still remembered him the way he had been while he was in school – throwing caution to the wind, always ready with a joke, friends with everyone. Amelia still thought of him that way too, sometimes, but she also knew he was becoming a lot more introspective and interested in the politics of what was going on right now. He was still refusing to come home or tell Amelia where he was staying – she had stopped asking at this point – but Amelia was beginning to notice some subtle changes in his letters.

Despite Amelia’s attempt at keeping things light, Jack must have recognized the hesitation in Amelia’s voice when she initially brought up the subject of Raoul, because she backtracked slightly after Amelia’s comment and summed up one of the biggest events in Amelia’s life in two short sentences. Summed it up adequately, too, despite the lack of detail.

“Crazy is about the best word for it I can come up with,” Amelia agreed, though she could think of several others – devastating, debilitating, reckless, wild, empty, lonely – “He was only 16, but he knew what he wanted. And you knew Raoul… he always went after what he wanted.”

“I miss that about him,” Amelia said softly, narrowly avoiding saying out loud the phrase she thought all the time, but never said to anyone. I miss him.

Jack knew t was better that she had slowed down and taken the subject in a more tactful manner, because she could sense a slight change in Amelia. Not because she was perceptive, but because of this Empathy thing she had developed. She could feel this weird feeling in her chest that was rther foreign but almost familiar. It made her think of Riley. But this feeling made her feel abandoned by Riley, and she could not help but think it was she who had done the leaving.

But had it not been him who abandoned her? She had asked him for help, pleaded for him to side with her, begged him to at least admit that nothing she could do would be enough for him to hate her. And she had recieved nothing but a cold, blank stare. Looking right through her. Hell, he could not even look at her. She had been reduced to nothing in his mind. She may have done the leaving, but she definitely felt like the one that had been left behind.

At Amelia's words, Jack was drawn back to the world of here and now. She blinked once or twice, trying to recover her thoughts. The Niffler at her feet twitched and she reached down, stroking his back, her fingers untangling his fluffed fur, and a little shiver went down the creatures spine and he relaxed. At least she could control this fellow.

Jack nodded. "At some point, everyone does. It's too difficult to ignore it," she said, regarding the thing Raoul wanted. She knew she had wanted freedom, and she had gone after it. And now... what did she want? "I guess I'm impressed he was able to figure it out so early," she commented, her eyebrows high on her forehead. "Yeah, I miss the stupid things my brother did too," she said, grinning a little to try and lift Amelia's spirits a bit.

Jack, Amelia was finding, was a woman of many layers. The former Ravenclaw should have realized this, she knew, because she herself was layered more than anyone cared to notice. At their first meeting, Amelia had falsely assumed she had gotten a complete read on Jack. She had been slightly dirty, bold in her language, and unabashed about her personality. She was what Antoinette would have referred to as unrefined – if she was feeling particularly nice that day. Otherwise, her mother knew plenty of more insulting terms for the impression Jack had given that first day.

But over the years of sharing the same classrooms, Jack had turned out to be a lot more than what met the eye. She was smart, but in a different way than Amelia was. They were both witty, but Jack was verbally witty, whereas Amelia only spoke on her wit when she wanted to push someone away – her wit was too barbed for joking around. And now, with the small brown creature in her arms, Amelia was seeing a tenderness in Jack that she hadn’t observed before. For the whirlwind that Jack had always been while they were at school, she was surprisingly gentle with the creature on her lap, who looked altogether happy to be there.

He’s kind of cute when you really look at him… Amelia’s subconscious commented.

Only from a distance, her rationale added, careful not to let the subconscious make any rash decisions regarding closing that gap between herself and the small fluff ball of an animal.

“You and I both,” Amelia concurred when Jack mentioned her bafflement at 16-year-old Raoul knowing exactly what he wanted. Amelia was still trying to figure out what it was that she wanted, and if she could possibly balance the multiple things she sometimes found herself wanting. The problem was, her body and mind were often at odds with one another over which desires to fulfill, and at other times, Amelia couldn’t even figure out what her options were.

Perhaps what had made it easier for Raoul was that he didn’t so much have to know what exactly it was that he wanted… just what he didn’t want to deal with anymore.

But while Amelia was having a moment of private introspection about her brother’s decisions, Jack seemed to be focusing on her reaction, and realized yet again what Amelia needed to hear to be pulled out of her reverie. For all the similarities Amelia and Jack had discovered between the pair of them during this surprisingly engaging conversation, there was still that difference: Amelia was constantly looking inside herself, while Jack, at least part of the time, remembered to look out.

This might have something to do with your dismal social skills… Amelia’s subconscious commented passingly.

“Oh, Raoul did plenty of stupid things while he was around. I don’t think too many of the professors were overly sad to see him go,” Amelia said with a smirk, remembering all of Raoul’s antics while he had been a student. He had given Peeves a good run for his money as far as pranks were concerned, which made him very popular with his peers, and not so popular with the staff.

“How much older is your brother?” Amelia asked after a moment to laugh at the memory, realizing belatedly that Amelia had never known before this conversation that Jack even had a brother. She had gathered from the conversation and the fact that Jack had never had a younger sibling while at Hogwarts that her brother must have been older, but she really knew… well, nothing about Jack’s family. She talked about it as little as Amelia did.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Amelia added, realizing that it might have been an intentional decision on Jack’s part not to reveal things about her family. It certainly was for Amelia.