Breaking Point (open)

((OOC: Aw, thanks! I really love the way you RP too, beautifully detailed. ))

It was strange standing there, so silent, under the faint whispering caress of the winter sun and the cold, crisp air. Both of them had come to a standstill, none talked. There was too much weighing on their minds for light conversation. The side-alley they had come to was quiet, too quiet, eerily so. From somewhere far, far away, the sound of laughter, of bustling Diagon Alley trailed through the air and filtered through the silence to reach Albus's ears. But somehow, those sounds of life in the winter, of people and happiness, only seemed to emphasize their quiet, the heavy quiet, all the more.

Ever since Albus had begun study of Legilimency as a part of mind arts, he had become more proficient in sensing people's thought processes, even without magic. But never before had emotions been so.....tangible. He didn't need to look at Jack. He could feel the sadness, the loneliness, the guilt, emanate out of her in waves. It washed over him, the silence, the sorrow, and above all, Albus could feel the weariness. The woman standing beside him was tired. So, so tired. Tired of fighting, tired of living, tired perhaps of even breathing. Albus could sense it in every labored breath, every listless stare. And Albus couldn't understand how she bore it, each and everyday.

So Albus stood there and said nothing, because only she could break the silence now. And when she did, Albus blinked in surprise, the smiled ever-so faintly. Now that was the Jack he knew. Being the one to initiate, the one to step ahead without fearing no matter how many times it hurt. And if he was interpreting this correctly, then this was a move forward. An invitation, to listen, if he wanted to. "I'd be glad to." He replied simply. He didn't want to say too much, or anything at all, to make her hesitate now.

This seemed strange, and yet not strange. Albus and Jack had never been close, the only reason why they even knew each other was James. They were as different as chalk and cheese, they never had any cause to talk to each other: the bold Gryffindor Triwizard Champion and the quiet Slytherin recluse. But as he placed a hand on Jack's unusually strong arm, Albus reflected on the fact that perhaps now, after having faced the ups and downs of life, the two weren't so utterly different after all.

((Thank you! Please excuse the long post and the mild godmode))

He agreed and Jack nodded. Yes. Well, good. So perhaps Jack had not fully realized what she was offering. Now, it was sort of settling in. Chase had not even seen her house, and James had never been inside. But she knew she was not casually inviting Albus into her home. She was inviting him into the mess she had created in her life, just so he could actually see the tangible effects of all that had plagued her in these past few months. She had to show just one person. At least one.

He took her arm and she immediately turned on her heel, forcing them through time and space to arrive a moment later outside of her home. She looked up at the oddly painted blue house and sighed. She stepped forward and opened the garden gate, ushering Albus in. She followed and skirted around him to get ahead, so she could unlock and open the front door before forcing back her small zoo.

Indeed, when she opened the door, immediately three creatures rushed to greet those entering. Her Gytrash Elliot had decided to settle into his usual spectral form of the white wolfhound; Fred the Jarvey was already throwing out curse words and other vulgarities; and Mongo the ottoman convinced he was actually a cocker spaniel, immediately began sniffing their socks, eager to take them right off of their feet. "Back," Jack said authoritatively. Elliot was the only one to really obey, but he quickly herded the other two away to clear a space.

Jack turned to Albus, gesturing around. "This is my house," she said, rather lamely. The house was messy but not necessarily dirty. You could see inside the kitchen, where there were no dirty dishes, but a stack of books covered the kitchen table. One of the armchairs in the living room was littered by her broom polishing set. She reached forward to close the door behind him. She glanced about again and gave a sigh.

If she was going to show him the mess, may as well show him the whole mess.

She gestured for him to follow her. As she passed the living room cabinets, a hand reached out and caught a photograph displayed there. She pocketed it and began climbing the stairs to the smaller second floor. At the top she turned and came face to face with a locked door that she had not looked inside for a few months now. She stepped forward, unlocked it, and opened the door.

The room was very frightening in comparison to the fairly orderly house. This room still had the trace scents of lingering drugs and alcohol in the air. The mattress had been pulled off a small bed frame, and the bed frame had been gutted so someone could sit inside. Bottles, cigarettes, razors, and other strange substances littered the ground.

Jack took in a slow breath. "You've heard about Nemo Omara, I'm sure." She procured a picture, looking at it a little sadly. "He lived with me. We met at the Ministry - we were both Heads of our Departments. You might not have head about this, but Nemo was known by two habits. His habit to be drunk nearly every moment of the day, and his habit to never be done attempting suicide."

She paused. "When he was kidnapped-" she began, sure Albus had seen the story in the newspaper. "I knew it was the Death Eaters. Matt Lestrange, who was leading the Order at the time, wanted me to infiltrate them for intelligence, but I was not to get near Nemo. He didn't realize my complications. A week after Nemo was kidnapped, his long lost daughter was on my doorstep. I had to help him. So I got him out of there."

She handed him the picture, which was of herself, Nemo, and Merlot. She and Nemo were smiling, but there were tears in her eyes, and exhaustion in Nemo's. He looked haggard and destroyed. Merlot smiled, but she looked frightened. And yet, there was a unity in the picture, a quiet sense of belonging.

"I took that picture before I shipped him off. I found them a new home, destroyed his memories of all that had happened to him since he arrived in London, and left them to start a new life." Jack felt a strain in her voice, speaking of Nemo, of the man she loved. She had to tell someone, even if she wasn't saying everything. She doubted Albus could deny the emotions that were charging this little speech, but she didn't know how she would feel about saying it. It had been such a private moment, so sad, so new, so hopeful. And now it was gone.

"He's gone and he won't be coming back," Jack said. "So, yeah. Something crawled up my ass and died."

Albus blinked once. Twice.

Blue. The house was blue. Albus didn't know what he was expecting from Jack Dyllan's home exactly, but this wasn't really it. Staggering a bit after the Apparition (he had inherited his father's notoriously poor sense of balance as far as Portkeys and magical means of travel were concerned), Albus straightened and followed Jack in, eyes flicking around the place curiously.

Unreal. That was what the situation was. Ridiculously unreal. Albus hadn't even heard of James being in Jack's home, she was unusually reluctant in displaying her private space to other people. And merely minutes ago in Diagon Alley, Jack caught Albus hiding behind a trash-can.....and here they were. In her home. Albus's eyebrows reached his hairline at the homecoming that Jack received, now that was a unique group of pets.

The awkwardness had clearly come back on Jack full force. Albus half-considered making a mildly sarcastic comment: Of course it is, unless you're in the habit of breaking into random blue houses inhabited by animals, but then decided against it. She was clearly steeling herself for something, and Albus didn't want to provoke a backlash at any cost right now. She started walking upstairs, and Albus followed her; eyes narrowing as she grabbed a photograph on her way. That man looked familiar somehow.....

Then his eyes widened. It was one hell of a job to shock Albus Potter, but Jack had accomplished it with ease. The room they were standing in.....Merlin......his eyes darted quickly to Jack, pinning her under an intense stare. Meanwhile, he was...praying?....desperately that Jack wouldn't say this all belonged to her. Because if it did, then everything would start to make sense: the pallid complexion, the corpse-like eyes. Heavy drinking.....drugs.....razors.....Jack?

She didn't. Albus barely had the time to release the silent breath that he didn't even realize he was holding in, when the world crashed again. Nemo Omara....of course he knew him. Who didn't? The man was a prodigy, and a mystery. He was clearly talented enough to take the entire burden of a Ministry department on his head, but at the same time was often glimpsed at pubs around London, drinking his head off. The suicidal tendencies was new news though. Also was the fact that Jack loved this man.

She didn't need to spell it out, nor did Albus need to peer inside her mind. It was visible in the light sheen of her eyes as she narrated the tale, the slight pauses, the deep breaths to take control over raging emotions, the slight, almost imperceptible choke in her voice. Albus stared at the picture in his hand. He had never seen a more broken family picture in his life. Because that was what it was: a picture of Jack's family. Which she was sharing with him. Albus dimly registered at the back of his head that he was supposed to feel outraged, disappointed, disapproving. After all, Jack had broken several laws, committed a serious crime. But all he could feel within him was a sharp, acute sense of......no, not sympathy. Sorrow. No one, absolutely no one in this world deserved a fate like this.

Albus raised his eyes, and met Jack's, square on. His voice was calm, yet ringing faintly in the small room. "Thank you. For telling me.......trusting enough. It wouldn't......couldn't have been easy." Albus knew he could say so much more, that he was sorry for what happened, but what good did apologies do really? Meaningless sentences, which didn't make a difference. But he did have one question to voice.

"Why didn't you go with him?"

There is this terse pause after a confession, one that is not voiced. When words are said that do not say what they mean, and yet get a point across. Jack did not have to say the words 'I love him' to admit it. Jack was admitting the one secret she had never told. Had she confessed to consorting with werewolves? Yes. Had she owned up to the creation of a murderous poltergeist? Yes. Had she ever told someone she was capable of the human condition of loving? And more than capable - Jack had loved this man with her whole heart. A man incapable of wishing to keep himself alive, and Jack had fancied that her entire happiness, her well-being, hinged on his proximity to her. She loved him so much he didn't even need to love her back, properly. He did, in his own ways. They would have never been able to be a traditional couple. But never had two people been so bent on preserving the life of the other, so hellbound on preserving happiness and sanity in another, even at the sacrifice of their own. They had not offered up their bodies or their minds, but their souls. And in the matters of souls, it all came to strength. It seemed, in the end, sacrifice was necessary. And Jack had been unlucky enough to be the stronger of the pair.

The tense pause held in the air. Her name could send her running back into herself, drawing out a hasty laugh to sweep the scene under the rug and forget it forever. A look could explode her fury and leave her home to the mercy of flame. A touch could conjure tears from the deepest well inside her and pour out a stream she had no control to stop. But it seemed words held the scene as it was.

She felt like a bell after being rung. She felt hollow but the air felt alive with the vibrations her sound had just created. These waves of sound were still hitting her, causing a hollow echo to rebound in the empty confines of her being. She blinked, and this simple act caused huge thuds to echo through her mind. She couldn't say 'you're welcome' to his thank you. She had needed to say it and he had wanted to hear why she looked so terrible. Both needs were met, they could move on with their lives, no questions asked.

Except for one.

Because this question had been on her mind too. Why couldn't she have uprooted with him? Why couldn't she stay? She paused, blinking a few times, thinking. She took a breath and explained, to both of them. "Nemo's memories were a patchwork of terrible pain and methods to destroy it. When I took away the pain from d'Eath Manor, there was more. So I took it away. Then there was memories of forgetting pain, which still had pain. So I took that. And I kept going. And going. And I found that the times he had with me had just as much pain. And if I left that, I left him in a place with just as much pain. I had to take it all away so he could stay put and live the life he was meant too. I just wasn't meant to stay."

And... there. That hurt. To know that her presence in his life had never been meant to be. That was where it hurt. She had been an accident, another one. She thanked Merlin for the accident, but she would never be able to feel okay about the fact that the time in his life had been just another chapter of pain that had to be removed to give him time to heal.

She took a deep breath and expelled it - with this, she released the topic. She turned to Albus, saying, "So now I have nothing to keep me back from doing what I'm best at. Kicking ass. Just got to figure out where to start."

((Oops. Got a little carried away. ))

Love. Curious word. People give many different definitions to it: some say love is when you catch a glimpse of God in someone else, some describe it to be an emotion constructed of the deep brew of passion, distilled of the decanter of affection, some call it being unable to live without seeing someone's smile, hearing someone's laugh, feeling someone's heartbeat.

To Albus, love had always meant sacrifice.

Not just being willing to give up your life for somebody. But happily, unthinkingly sacrificing everything it contained. Giving up time, giving up peace, giving up secrets, giving up hearts.......it was a simple, poignant offering of everything you were for someone else. And that was how Albus knew he had never loved. Because he had never, ever had enough strength to sacrifice something, anything for anyone else. Not his friends, not his siblings. Hell, not even his mother. He wouldn't call himself selfish. He just never had invested enough of himself in someone else to truly feel anything when they were gone. Unlike the woman before him.

Albus averted his eyes, looking at the dusty window behind the woman in front of him. His eyes traced out the barest patterns etched in the dust by fluttering cobwebs, and the path of a small spider painstakingly crawling up the window pane. He couldn't look at Jack, not right now. He knew that if he looked at her face, or Merlin forbid her eyes, he would see vulnerability and strength all at once. Albus knew it made no difference, Jack had already confessed her weaknesses in front of him, but by a stupid twist of his mind he felt as if he would be preserving the last remnants of her pride by not looking at her, perhaps giving them both the illusion that Jack had not just admitted her pain in front of him. And though Albus didn't want to admit it to himself, a major reason for why he avoided her gaze and remained silent, was because he knew that if he looked at her right now, there would be pain in her eyes. And respect for that pain in his.

Albus didn't respect easily.

A secret for a secret. A confession for a confession. A sudden thought burst, like a flickering flame in Albus's mind, subdued in the darkness of his mind, yet still visible. She told him about her secret. Why couldn't he tell her his?

No, Albus responded instantly, unshakably. No. Circumstances may have made Jack Dyllan reclusive, but she wasn't so by nature. She was compelled by her own personality to share, to project. Albus's nature was like a walled fortress, he didn't give up secrets. Never did. One pained confession couldn't make him desert that.

The flame licked against the iron walls of Albus's will. Why not? You had promised to change, hadn't you? To show the world what you truly were? Why not begin with her?

NO. Albus responded again, increasingly agitated. He wouldn't. Couldn't.

The flame grew higher, brighter. Receive and give back. Its how the world works. She shared her deepest, darkest secret with you. Doesn't she deserve something in return?

No. This final word was built of steel. My secret is nothing, nothing compared to hers. She had pain, and she needed to share the burden. She erased her memories from the mind of the man she loved. Mine is something deep, and dark, and dirty, and worthless, and should never be exposed to the world. And with that, Albus quenched the flame in his thoughts and turned back to Jack. He hoped, with the slightest hint of desperation, that he hadn't remained silent for too long to arouse suspicion. "Kick ass. Sounds good to me." The words sounded weak and unconvincing even to his own ears. Cmon. Get a grip on yourself. Albus tightened his jaw, and put on the mask again, the one he hadn't worn since Diagon Alley. His voice was much stronger this time, with a slight undertone of humor which still, despite best efforts, sounded forced. "We should announce a crusade against all the annoyances which inhabit the world. Beginning with the Prophet. And the worthless Ministry which controls it."

((Please continue to! I'm thoroughly enjoying this thread!))

All was silent and still. Jack was incredibly conscious of her own breathing right now, the steady rhythms of inhaling and exhaling. The expansion of her rib cage and chest, the swelling of the lungs as air filled them, the stretch in her shoulders, the steady drumming of the heart she was sure had turned to stone too soon, and yet not soon enough. She could feel everything on her. She could feel the weight of her own hair - perhaps she should just cut loose and shave the unruly mop. She could feel the ache that had settled into her joints from stress and physical strain. But more than anything, she could feel the stillness in her mind. She no longer had to run home to see if Nemo was alright. She no longer had to fret about Merlot while she was at work. Even though her thoughts may wander and wonder what the others were doing so far away, she no longer had something to occupy her thoughts.

And this stillness was going to drive her crazy.

She forced herself to regard the current situation she had involved herself in. Jack had not been one for sharing in the past few years, and yet she had made another exception tonight. Why? Perhaps it was just practical. If she didn't say it once, it was likely to spring from her lips unannounced at another, more inconvenient time, as it had when she and Nemo had first begun to acquaint themselves. If she got it over with now with someone she supposed she could trust, the odds were more favorable for her.

The reason she refused to consider was probably the one with the most weight though. That Jack Dyllan, Master of Fire, heart of ice, spirit of stone, was heartbroken and very, lonely. She had always managed to feel a place with someone but now, family estranged, best friend dead, poltergeist gone, and roommate in America, Jack found that these loose acquaintances were all she had left. She had to cling to something else she go mad. For eight years, she had had someone. With Nemo, Chase, and Vito all gone, she found herself utterly unattended.

And she had learned she was too dangerous to go unchecked.

Thankfully, Albus did not get sentimental on her. She would have hated that. Yes, she had opened her heart up, but she would have felt uncomfortable by anything sincere. Anyone who truly knew her knew to accept it and move on. Treat her as though she was weak and she was liable to explode. Albus had remembered enough of her temperament to follow her lead in moving away from the subject. She nodded casually, clicking her tongue.

The next silence didn't last very long. Suddenly, Albus was stating something in the dry voice of his, something that incited something strange inside her. Jack had learned to feel things she had never felt in the past two years, but this was an old feeling she had not felt in a long time. Suddenly, a spark was ignited, and it lit up a will to fight.

She turned to Albus, actually looking at him for the first time in the past long few minutes. "Please tell me you are being completely serious."

Albus blinked rapidly. He had only said it to divert the topic, distract himself and Jack but.......

He allowed his gaze to fall upon Jack, finally. It seemed impossible after the heavy confession that had been made not too long ago, but the woman seemed......hopeful? Her eyes seemed brighter, her shoulders straight and not bent down under the weight of the world. Something about the very posture of the woman told him she was beginning to revive, and only after one sentence. One line that had been said as a lame joke.

Perhaps he would have laughed it off if that had been it. After all, Jack wasn't his closest friend or anything like that. Why should he support something as ridiculous as rebellion against the Ministry, just because she lacked enthusiasm to live?

Well, maybe he would have said no if there hadn't been a flickering glimpse of something else in the woman's eyes: desperation. She was ready to grab on to something, anything, just to get herself moving. And besides....it wasn't such a bad idea.....

"Well I wasn't really serious but..." Albus started slowly, cautiously. But his mind was starting to get ahead of himself. Was moving forward, farther and beyond, in leaps and bounds. Picturing a revolt. A rebellion. With him, Jack, at its head. He could see himself working his way into the Ministry embowelments.....and rotting it from the inside. He could see himself raise his wand, lips shaping the words of spells which he had himself devised, but never dared to use for fear of it being classified as 'Dark magic'. He could see the Prophet, the stupid blasted Prophet, printing his name in big, block letters: 'Albus Severus Potter. Head of a new revolution."

And not one mention in the paper, not even one, of Harry Potter being his father.

It was a stupid idea. Downright ridiculous. It would never work. He would lose courage, and back out of it at the last minute, like he did for all things. The Ministry would crush them. Hell, they might even get sent to Azkaban.

Didn’t stop it from being one of the best idea he'd ever heard.

"What could we do anyway? Walk into the Wizengamot and threaten all the old codgers to step down or we'll incinerate them? Take down every single corrupt official in the building? Raze down the Atrium?" The questions were meant to sound rhetorical, disbelieving, mocking. They were supposed to illustrate to Jack, and himself, that what they had just suggested was not just completely illogical, but impossible as well. But his voice, his stupid damned voice, made it sound like suggestions. Plausible suggestions. Like things they could actually do.

"We can't do that. Of course we can't. Can't." Albus hadn't realized when his internal debate had turned audible, but he was most definitely muttering out loud. Well, atleast his voice managed to say something sensible. But of course, it had to ruin it by then addressing Jack, "Can we?"

He was going mad. Crazy. Completely and definitely bonkers. Or Jack was a bad influence on him, Or both.

Jack could practically see the mental backtracking in Albus' eyes. Her own intensity did not, would not ebb - Jack's spirit was one that, once ignited, was incredibly difficult to be extinguished. Jack did not want to pressure anyone into doing something they did not want to do - she thought it was ignorant to force people into situations where she needed them, because what use would they be without a fire in their own belly, a clawing in their own spirit. Jack wanted the allies that fate caused her to run into, not the allies that decided they may as well join her.

He started off, hesitation in his voice, but seemed to cut himself off. Jack said nothing and refused to alter herself. Her expression, her stance, her gaze -it all held on the younger Potter boy. What Albus needed to mull over in his head, she did not know. She knew Albus was not the model citizen James had so accidentally become, minus the fake scandals and the occasional showboating. Albus was not a buddy in the Order, he had not a strong network of friends that kept him happy and comfortable. Albus was a bit of an enigma, a lone wolf, and Jack could not imagine him even caring at all for the matters of the Ministry.

But he was thinking. And when he spoke, he seemed curious. He seemed curious to know whether any of these vague images were actual goals that could somehow be accomplished. Jack listened to each one, treasuring the idea of each. She had been in the Ministry, she had felt its corruption - to this day, she held small secrets about her work there that, if known, would surely warrant some time in Azkaban. She knew how easy, how simple it was to get your own way when you had Ministry power, to ignore what others wanted if it were too inconvenient.

She didn't speak, not until he posed a simple question. Two words, one tilt that made it a question. And with that, Jack's lips cracked into a small, devious grin. "Oh you bet your ass we could."

Jack felt like pushing something over, the adrenaline rushing into her veins, her heart beginning to pound in her ears. She walked towards a shelf where a few faded photographs that had belonged to Nemo were propped up - Jack put her picture of him among them and turned back to Albus. "It isn't anything more than putting our foot down. You wouldn't believe what could come of one crate and two people standing on it, proudly announcing that the Ministry has ceased to exist for the reasons it was formed, and that we, for one, would not be supporting them any longer."

She grinned. "The rest is just keeping ourselves out of prison long enough to give the officials hell."

Albus knew things started getting dangerous when he started planning.

It meant that he was invested in the idea. It meant he was actually considering the thought, devising ways of making it work, plotting out a plan of action. It meant that he might actually do it.

And when Jack stepped up, cocked her head, and looked at him with that spark in her eyes, Albus felt some of his negativity, pessimism, hesitance, getting eroded away by the force of that spirit. He felt something long stagnant in his mind regaining consciousness, stretching out, awakening. Like a man sleeping in the attic for a long, long time, who had woken up, seen the sun shining through the dusty window and decided to clean out the cobwebs.

That was when the cogs in his mind whirred into action.

"Don't be ridiculous." He muttered, when she spoke of keeping out of prison, his mind meanwhile traversing the distance of a thousand light years in a second. "What do you mean, keep out of prison 'long enough'? Do you actually want to jump in front of the Minister's Office, shouting slogans , without any proper plan? If we do something, might as well do it properly. I'm not going to make a fool out of myself in front of the wizarding world."

He started pacing, up and down the room, gaze hardly resting on one thing for more than a minute. Albus hardly ever committed himself to anything. Hell, he didn't even know if he was committing himself to this. But that didn't change the fact that at that very moment, hundreds of plans were being wrought, examined and rejected in his mind. He was a Slytherin, after all. Most people doubted the fact, considering his apparent lack of ambition. But he was a planner, and very, very patient. He didn't jump into things unconsidered, like James or Jack. He considered, pros and cons, probabilities and chances, very very carefully. Sure, that resulted in him not being able to accomplish most things because of hesitance. But once he did start something, Albus rarely ever made mistakes.

"It'll be silly to throw all our cards on the table at once." Albus had a habit of voicing his thoughts out loud when in deep thought, and that was what he was doing as he paced up and down now, nearly wearing out the wooden floorboards. His eyes were fixed intensely somewhere in the distance, his mind engrossed. "We need to work carefully. Infiltrating the Ministry is a good idea.......but quite inefficient unless we can reach high. Sure I can do that with my last name but......." A swift turn as he reached the back of the room, then front again. "Taking over the Prophet will give us access to the masses....people still believe in it even though its absolute trash. An open revolt.....declared by you, naturally. Your name is still quite respected, people will look up to you...I can work more in the shadows.....we should also contact more people, I'm sure we can't be the only ones with this idea...."

Albus wasn't even addressing Jack properly, or waiting for an answer. He was in one of his 'moods' now. His eyes were looking too far ahead......sketching out the basic lines of a revolution, one to overthrow a government. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he absently considered that with his plans and spells, and Jack's leadership and skills, they would make a good team. A Slytherin and a Gryffindor. Nigh unbeatable.

Albus stopped her quickly, thinking it was a simple thing, to derail the crazy train that was Jack Dyllan. As he questioned her methods, she shrugged, saying, "I wouldn't mind doing that." Then again, she did have a personal problem with the Ministry. Had they been responsible enough to do their job and recover Nemo, she might still have a roommate. Had they not given a suicidal alcoholic a high-profile job in the Ministry, she might still have a family. She would love to publicly bring to light the inadequacy in the Ministry, because once those words were out there, they could not be reclaimed, could not be forgotten. She and the rest of the public defenders out there had been given their share of besmirching in the media. And yet, the Ministry had been best friends to the Prophet, never inciting even the slightest of insults.

She scoffed. "Yes, I'd love to do that. Leave the 'fool'ing to me if you need to, I am perfectly okay with that." However, she did listen. She knew, that when push came to shove, she would get her chance. It would be a tragedy to reveal herself as a threat so they could get a chance to lock her away and shut her up before she had been given her fill of what she had to say. Jack had not even given any real thought yet to what could potentially be done to the Ministry. It was not until Albus has suggested it that she had even considered it. Deep inside her, however, had been a rooted bitterness and contempt that had been all too happy to be watered. She supposed she had better actually begin to consider the proper way of doing this.

Jack had learned that instinct had always been the best tool in her arsenal. She had been a planner in Hogwarts -sure, she had always been hotheaded and impulsive, but many of her pranks had been much too complex to have been whipped up at a moment's notice. Yet, the older she got, the more often her plans had failed and improvisation had come into play. In the Order, she had become one of the main planners, never revealing her ploys until they were already set into motion.

If Albus wanted a plan, she could help him there. And when the plan fell to pieces, she would be there to whip up a makeshift miracle.

He began to pace, muttering to himself. As he spoke, Jack reached up, gathering the photographs on the shelf and shuffling them idly, her ears soaking in all Albus had to say as she let him voice his musings. She butted in as he spoke of infiltrating the Ministry. "I wouldn't be able too. I was already Head of the Department for Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures. I couldn't take it over and I seriously doubt I could take over Nemo's former position. Everything else is filled."

He continued on. "Declared by me," she parroted. "Ally to evil creatures, enemy of both the Order and Death Eaters." She ticked her head. "That's a bit of a tall order." More people, though. Perhaps he had a point there. "Susan Bones left the Prophet because she was tired of corruption. I'm sure she and Neville and that little gang is probably chapped right now."

Wait a second.

Hadn't Albus been hiding behind trashcans ten minutes ago, and hadn't Jack been consumed by hopelessness? What had changed things so drastically? How did rebellion suddenly become the saving grace of the lost?

Jack couldn't answer, but she knew she had found a hunger for change she needed satisfied.

((bleh. Muse fail. I've had a long day.))