A Pint for Payment

Jack needed to meet with Michael. He had promised her a pint. He had promised her some explanations. Even though she was tired and weary, she needed to see him.

She had gone home, procured herself a gun, 'calmly' explained what had happened the night before to her beweildered and exasperated husband, and then had gone into work. She had gotten off early, perks of being an Unspeakable was there was no offical clock out time, and then she had visited Henry Yewbeam, checking in on her fallen allies. It had been a long day - still, a pint and a story could do her tired soul some good.

She had sent Michael an owl, letting him know she would find them a private room in the Leaky Cauldron. The bartender showed her up to a room and brought a nice big mug of Firewhiskey - she knew Michael would pick up the tab, and she would not explain. She had been kept in the dark for a long time, defending the country in near blindness. She deserved a pint at the least. She would not complain about getting her due.

((sorry it's short. My tired brain is beating me into submission.))

Michael could get into anywhere unnoticed, well, almost. Sometimes it depended upon how determined he was not to be seen. Today, he didn't want to be seen. He had Robert with him, and once they were in the second floor of the Leaky, they found the private room that Jack had arranged. They went inside quietly, and Robert removed the cloak and the mask.

Now that Robert was inside, Michael sent for a bottle of firewhiskey and a couple of glasses. They made themselves comfortable and when the whiskey arrived, Michael poured a couple of large glasses, one for Robert, and one for himself.

"You could use a little sleep, you know," Michael told her, seeing her fatigue was more than apparent. "But I also know how your curiosity works. You've been in the dark for a long time, and as much as I wanted to tell you, I couldn't. Now, we need to.

"Robert hasn't abandoned anything," Michael said. "His absence from the public eye has been important. Robert disappeared in September when Thaor tried to kill him.

"Here's the story. Robert had had a late night at work that night, and there were several of us who gathered to go get a pint, maybe some pub grub...It really was all very innocent, just a group of old mates out for a few laughs.

"It didn't stay so innocent. We were on our way home, and we were ambushed by Thaor. He had been well past insane for awhile, but we couldn't catch him. Thaor fired at Robert, and he damned near killed him. Thaor disappeared again before we could catch him, and because Robert was so critical, our attentions were honestly more focused on not letting him die...."

Robert signed impatiently at Michael.

"Oh, shut it," Michael scowled. "He said we should have him die and killed Thaor. That wasn't your choice. It was ours. Oh, let me stop a minute. The sign language we're using was something that we developed in Hogwarts as a bit of fun to be able to get by with talking in class. Used it for pranking, mainly. Never thought we'd be using it again. Kate and Robert and I are probably the only ones that remember it now. But since he can't speak, it served us to resurrect it.

"At any rate, we took him back to St. Mungos. When the dust settled, we found out that Thaor had cursed Robert. Its nothing we've ever seen, and from what we can figure out, to make matters worse, Thaor bungled it when he cast it. You know how powerful Thaor was. To undo a powerful dark curse is hard. To undo an unknown one is harder yet. To undo a bungled one, well, there's no textbook for that.

"And here's what its left him. He cannot speak. Sometimes that's a blessing..." Robert rolled his eyes at Michael. "Well? Its true. We know it causes him relentless pain. It also amplifies his emotions so severely that he sometimes has no control of his own behaviors. And-this is probably the most painful part for him--he's figured out that this curse is transmissible to energy workers. Anyone who uses their own body's magical energies as the primary source of what they do--seers, healers, that sort of lot.

"That means he cannot touch people like his own family without passing this on to them. He can't kiss his wife, touch his daughter, not Brian, and a lot of our friends and allies. He doesn't dare touch an energy worker to heal them, not even if it means letting them die.

"His mind is completely intact, but he is unpredictable. I spend my time with him, largely, these days because I can touch him. I'm not an energy worker. He can't pass it to me. And he and I go back far enough that I trust him--most of the time--not to kill me. The times when I just don't know, well, I'm willing to risk it for him. His curse is the first problem."

Jack did not wait long at all. Michael and Robert arrived, and Jack quietly greeted them. She was not in the mood nor the shape to make clever little quips or smart-arse greetings. She just greeted them and continued to drain her Firewhiskey. Michael’s bottle was delivered and after he poured himself and Robert some of the drink, she refilled her own mug. She sometimes wondered if her elder friends were ever worried about her near-alcoholic tendencies, or if they allowed it because, frankly, she had earned the right to drink away her tension.

Michael commented on her exhaustion and Jack inhaled, looking for a response. She had none. She was tired. She was pooped. She was always tired, sure, but the last few days had come out of nowhere and thrown her for a loop, making her exhaustion feel even more pronounced. Rather than responding, she exhaled, shrugging as the breath escaped her. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” she said, quoting the old cliché she had used to hate. She had stopped hating it when she had begun living it.

Jack listened. It was a habit she had fallen into when it came to the people she so lovingly deemed the Lupin clan, Michael being her strongest connection to them. They always had a lot to say, and Jack was a fairly silent person. (Strong but silent type.) She was a clever girl, but she preferred action to speaking – how she had ended up in politics, she could not guess.

As he came to the conclusion, Jack raised an eyebrow. “Alright… So…” She tried to gather her thoughts. “I understand the discretion of not revealing him as he is, in case more attacks follow. I get your reasoning. But something has to change. We need a new Minister until you can return, and Eli is obviously allowing terrible things to happen. This marriage law, the half-breed laws – if he’s supposed to be standing in your stead, he obviously has a twisted view of what you believe. If we let it be known that a replacement is going to need to be stronger and more permanent, we need to act before these laws stick and have irreversible effects. Already, children are being born into these forced marriages. The Ministry has coerced human beings.”

Robert turned to Michael, needing him to translate. Then he looked back at Jack and signed to her directly.

"You are, of course, correct," Robert said. "Someone is indeed doing terrible things, but that is the other reason I am in hiding. I have a fox in my henhouse, and a murderous fox at that. Eli has become little more than a doormat, I fear, for whoever is pulling the strings. I doubt he's even truly doing the job at all..."

"Robert," Michael said cautiously, knowing Robert's anger at Eli. He wanted to nip it before it had a chance to flourish. Robert merely took a breath to gather himself.

"We do need this to end soon," Robert signed, "but if I put someone else in there, our master mind will bury himself even deeper and we'll never find him. He'll just wait and cause more problems internally.

"I have no choice. I have to smoke him out, and the best way to do that is to let him get overconfident. I need him to screw up. And, I need the Unspeakables inside to be looking at everyone and at every link in this chain. I'm the only one who knows who all the Unspeakables are. I need them to be the ones to go in and do the espionage that its going to take to get this job done.

"I want this guy, Jack. I want him to rot for the rest of his days in Azkaban. I don't' want any chance he could resurrect and cause more damage than he's already doing."

Robert was not the only one angry at Elijah Krum - it took everything within her not to punch the man in his mouth every time she saw him. He was the lover, and she was certainly the fighter. She knew order was necessary to restore their country, but how she would love to kickstart a recovery with a kick to Krum's groin. He was letting this all happen and she was certain his reasons were absolutely horrid. She had really tried to give him credit, and he had taken it from himself time and time again. She was done trying to find the good in him - all she could find was selfishness.

But she had restrained herself, because she knew there was always a bigger plan in the works. As she listened to Michael, hearing Robert's words through an old friend's voice, she could not help but feel a bit disappointed. The plan... did not sound like a plan. It sounded like an idea and a concept, and she was tired of dealing with theory. This was a war, and war was not won theoretically. Those who won in theory typically lost in reality.

"So your plan is more bastard children, more arranged marriages, more discrimination against those we need to appeal to most. We have a pack of werewolves attacking your daughter and now we are letting young werewolves get hunted and treated like rats - they will join Blood. We had to arrange our own little coup to save some of them, but surely others will fall through the cracks. I'm sorry, but if the Ministry is planning on going up in smoke to smoke out one bad man, I refuse to add fuel to the fire that will burn the masses." She was frustrated, and she knew she had better bridle her anger with an unstable Robert. But her Minister was in there somewhere, and she wanted him to start acting more like it.