Principal Lupin on Playground Duty

The call had come in the middle of the night. Robert was accustomed to getting emergency calls in the wee hours. It wasn't even unusual anymore. However, the message from the Ministry was more unusual than most. This strongly felt like a school principal or a headmaster being summoned back to his office for some sort of juvenile ridiculousness. The dastardly duo had been apparently brought to the Ministry after some nonsense in a bar. It wasn't that he didn't see that either of them, independently, weren't possibly capable of going over the line of decorum spelled out in Ministry conduct codes. Hell, everyone honestly was fully capable of it. There was, however, something that seemed like a no brainer match up for mischief when the two participants paired up together over alcohol.

Robert's own love for mischief was something he kept well hidden even from most of the people who believed they were close to him. Perhaps it was why he had been a bit reluctant to want to go deal with this. In then end, though, he rose from bed, dressed in a pair of jeans and a denim shirt, and apparated into his office. He tried hard not to listen to Big Ben chiming the ungodly hour because it felt like it was teasing him about the sleep he might have been otherwise getting.

He waved his hands at the lights in the outer office and in his own office and conjured a cup of Earl Grey and proceeded back to his office. The incident report was already on his desk. He heard one of the overnight staff members come in and report to duty in order to tend the outer office. He sat down at the desk,, took a sip of his tea, and began to read the incident report, trying to decide how he would approach Dennis the Menace and his sister when they arrived.

(we may need a few posts to get our giggles in, Khaat)

Jack was being very careful to step on Martin Chance's toes, the Auror who was gripping her all too tightly. Every time she did, he would suck in a breath and she would say, "So sorry, dearest, won't happen again." They stepped off the elevator and she glanced down, finding his foot and carefully placing her own right where his toes ought to be. "Could you knock it off?!" he roared in her ears. She shrugged. "I am a fugitive. I have rights to face my accusers. This is my way of doing it."

Jack was really worried about her job right now. She had a fierce passion for what she did and it would be a shame for her to lose her title. In all fairness, she had been doing the Ministry a favor. Hadn't this all started to try to stabilize Poe? He showed up after a suicide attempt and Jack had tried to give him something to keep him accountable. A weekly get together at the bar had sounded smart... But Jack had never claimed to be a Ravenclaw.

They approached the waiting room outside of Robert Lupin's office and Martin shoved her into a chair that was backed against the wall outside his office. She sneered up at Martin. "Is this because I told you to bugger off when you asked me out? Because it's not my fault you couldn't read the giant 'sod off' I had painted on my forehead."

*

To be clutched closely to Nikolai Eldon's chest was a similar sensation to being smothered by a porcupine that had been bathed in cologne. Every rattle of the elevator and stumbled step on Nemo's part as a result of his partial intoxication was prickly and smelt of a cheap dollar bill.

"You know, I'm flattered that you would go to so much trouble, scrubbing yourself through to your guts with Red Spice for me and all, but my nose hairs don't agree. In fact, I think you may have singed a couple," Nemo rambled. He began to figit against Nikolai until he had retrieved his ability to slide a finger inside one of his nostrils. "Yeah, there is definitely something burning in there - " but Nikolai was growing increasingly aggravated, and with a forceful pull of his fingers around Nemo's wrist, he removed Nemo's hand from his face and pinned it to his side once more. "Disgusting piece of..." Nikolai muttered, but with the perking of Nemo's ears he grumpily concluded his complaint.

"Sit down!" The auror demanded as they crossed the threshold of the room in which Jack and Nemo would await their untimely demise. "Sure thing," Nemo sighed and with a heavy plop, fell into the nearest chair. He had begun to recline against his outstretched arms, when he erupted in a giggling fit that reduced him to a doubled position on the chair's edge. "You - you - you," He panted in an attempt to speak through his hearty laughter, swatting at his knee as he did so. Evidently, Nemo found it immensely amusing, the concept of Martin - with whom Nemo was well acquainted - had believed himself capable of wooing The Savior.

"Oho," Nemo breathed, calming at last as he wiped a giddy tear from his left eye.

*

Jack rolled her head over to Poe as he burst into laughter. It seemed that this was the typical reaction when people found out that there were those who did try to get Jack back to their apartment. On one hand, it had always amused her to see who knew her best and who knew that romance had never been one of Jack's concerns. But since Ari, Jack had noticed she must have been missing on a form of happiness everyone else eventually earned. When people laughed, it seemed as though they were enjoying the fact that they thought Jack was one of those people opposed to that particular brand of happiness and were proud of her. But she was not so sure she was.

She burst into laughter too, though, sympathizing with Poe's laughter, though her own chuckles subsided much earlier. "Careful," she warned. "That means he is single, and Nikolai and Martin have similar tastes. He could be after you next." She nodded at him and cleared her throat, looking at the Aurors. "You guys should probably let the secretary know we're here, don't you think?" They glared at her and slowly walked away, standing up straighter as they approached the young, pretty receptionist.

Jack turned to Poe, who was still recovering. "Get it together. My brain is still half fried, so we need to calm it down when we talk to Robert. He's sure to be pissed and if you want those free drinks again, I need my job to buy them." She hated being the voice of reason, and it was painful to say, but she knew it was true. She needed the job- she barely made end's meet as it was. She could not take a pay cut or anything of that sort, but they had risked the Ministry's reputation. There would be consequences.

Bloody politics.

Robert heard his 'unruly children' arrive. He leaned back in his chair with his tea mug, and sat calmly drinking his tea and thinking. He was turning over the aurors reports in his mind and deciding what to do. After a long, careful moment, he got out a parchment, and wrote a message with his quill. He sealed it and then sent it out in across the night sky by owl. He sat back with a bit of an amused smile. It didn't exactly qualify as "Checkmate" or even "Check," but it certainly was going to prove to be amusing, if even for a moment.

And, he figured, it would drive his point home with at least one of them. He figured Dyllan might be the one to get the lesson quicker than Omara. Perhaps. It wasn't that Omara was missing IQ points. Quite the contrary. From all he'd learned and read of Omara and his work, the young seer was exceptionally intelligent. Robert just believed that there were times when he believed Omara's IQ points were, perhaps, a bit well marinated. Sober minds, he found, were generally, quicker on the draw than those who were sometimes a bit, well, soggy?

Moments later, the green flame flared up in his floo, and out of it came tumbling, through the air, a cigarette butt. Robert caught it, and laughed. Nice. Very nice. It was definitely not even near illegal, wasn't against their operating procedures, and was merely, well, some creative instruction?

"... Half a fried brain?" Nemo's voice quivered with the echoes of his laughter as he readjusted his posture in his chair. He shifted a hand beneath his jacket, which, until presently had been folded over him in a protective and rather unnatural manner when compared to his usual, casual stance. And out from beneath his outerwear he produced the small, yet concentrated bottle of hard liquor that he'd pinched from the Leaky Cauldron and presented it to Jack. "Hey McDonald," Nemo snorted, poorly stifling his laughter, "Want a drink with that Happy Meal?" he proposed.

Jack nodded as he inquired about her word choice. She nodded and glanced around her shoulder at the closed door that led to their inevitable punishment. Man. Jack had become very accostomed to freedom and they were surely going to be given a ton of restrictions. Jack had never minded detentions because she understood that she was not being productive in school with her pranks, but she had had a purprose after all. Right?

Poe called to her and she turned over. He withdrew a bottle and her eyes widened. The proof of Jack's intoxication was in her reaction to the words that followed. Her mouth bulged as it held back the laughter and a small snort released from her as she flopped her head into her knees, biting one of them as her shoulders and sides wracked with laughter. Oh, Merlin! Ohhhh, Merlin!

Feeling it far less necessary that he remain silent than his companion evidently did, Nemo's pending giggles wracked his body at the sight of Jack's attempt. In a particularly adventurous act, he slung an arm around Jack's folded form as he too crumbled beneath the supposed hilarity of his words, and his warm howls rattled throughout the room.

Poe collapsed to, putting an arm around her as their giggles rebounded in the pace between their faces and their knees. She could hear the recptionist calling their names and she would have responded, but she needed to get a grip first. She curled her toes inwardly and sucked in a breath. "Sh, sh," she breathed towards Poe, rather breathless in the first place. The second she could get herself quiet, though, there was a poignet pause as she tried to straighten up. Then the comment hit her again and duubled over again, banging her knee with her fist as shesmother her face against her other knee laughing.

Well, perhaps he'd kept them in suspense long enough. He got up and walked over to the door, opened it, gave a whistle in their direction and motioned, with his index finger, for them to come in. He never said a word.

He stood to the side and held the door open for them. The overnight receptionist looked to him for instructions about interruptions or calls, expecting him to give instructions he had not intended to have to give.

"Oh, do be serious," Robert said dryly to her. "Who's going to call at this hour?" She didn't respond. She looked away and returned to her paperwork.

"I would offer you tea," Robert said to the detainees, "but it seems you brought your own beverages. Let's have a word, shall we?"