Coffee Coffee Coffee

The Three Broomsticks was literally the most hipster pub in the Wizarding World. It sold coffee. It sold curly fries. There was a trivia night.

It was conveniently near Selwyn's place of employment, so when Jack had suggested grabbing a coffee (she'd added the word date, it was not a date), he'd eventually owled her suggesting here.

Selwyn had a lot of questions for Miss Jacqueline. She said she had a club. She said she was doing "what needed to be done". To Selwyn, this sounded like the kind of melodrama that had almost got her killed in the past. And... yes, he did care if she got killed. Not that he'd be telling her that.

What would he tell her? You couldn't have a proper conversation with Jack Dyllan. She took offence at just about everything and it always turned into an argument. Selwyn brooded.

He had actually taken her up on it. She had thrown it out as a joke, not actually meaning it. But anyone who wanted to call her bluff was alright by her, for the meantime. She was very curious to see what he wanted to know from her, and what she could actually offer.

She had made sure that the kids were being watched by cousin Charlie, had left a note for Max, and had stepped out in the night to apparate off to the Three Broomsticks.

A gust of wind pushed her into the Three Broomsticks, as the weather seemed incapable of making up its mind. She cast an eye around the bar, shaking her jacket out, and spotted the former-Slytherin. She angled her way towards him and squeezed between tables and chairs, before dropping into the chair opposite of him. "You're a literal man."

Ah, there she was, always with the smart-arse comment on the tip of her tongue.

"'Hello, Selwyn, how are you this afternoon?'
'Oh, I'm fine, Jack, and yourself?'
'Perfectly fine.  I didn't realise you were going to take my invitation so literally.'
'Actually, I didn't.  I used it to manipulate you into meeting me here,'" Selwyn finished the conversation between himself and the imaginary, far more polite version of Jack by looking pointedly at her.

"Would you like something to drink or shall I just let you curse me now?" he added, standing.

Jack stared at Selywn with a blank stare, freezing as he began to outline how he would have liked the conversation to go. She kept her dull gaze on him, as though she were heartily offended by his words.

Then she snorted. "Sit down," she said, waving a hand. She flagged down a waitress and said, "Usual, please." Her classic order of rum and coke was known by the waitstaff, as she very rarely varied from that drink once five o'clock hit. She turned her gaze back to Selwyn, tilting her head as she waited for him to order his drink. This was his show.

Selwyn resumed his seat and ordered orange juice. He couldn't drink at this time of day. Or any time of day, if he wanted to keep his wits about him.

He was a bit surprised she hadn't taken him up on the offer of cursing him. Or at least tried physical violence. Maybe she had matured, after all.

"So," he began after the waitress had gone and the silence stretched long between them.

"If you and your club, as you call it, do what needs to be done, how is that different from what the Order is supposed to be for?" he asked.

"Or is the Order a front for the real freedom fighters?" he went on. "I noticed Oliver had no problem with your little statement of trust the other day and I thought, of course that would make sense if he already knew we weren't to be trusted."

"And if you've been stereotyping me because of my house again, I won't be impressed, Jaquellene."

She let him speak, as she had learned to do. Working in government and children had forcibly taught her that valuable and necessary skill. It seemed like Selwyn was remembering her in the thick of teenaged angst - a time she hardly remembered, but figured was probably his only point of reference. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen him, but she remember Potter's Army and looking at him with distrust because, back then, she hadn't trusted anyone. Certainly he had seen her name in the Prophet a few times since then, but when had the Prophet ever been known for being the most trusted source for truth.

She ticked her head. "I've gotten over the house thing. I've even learned to respect Hufflepuffs." She paused, lifting an eyebrow, though she admitted it wasn't the best of jokes. So she plowed on, "The Order is meant to do what needs doing, but they don't do it. They've been very passive for some time now, too afraid of becoming too much like the Death Eaters to do anything that might stop them."

She shifted in her seat. "Now, I'm very protective of my group. It's a fledgling group, in reality. As well as we work together, it could be easily torn apart and forgotten. But we've recognized that there's very few differences between ourselves and the Death Eaters, except that we have the public's safety and freedom in mind, whereas they believe the public needs to be re-educated or picked through until the best survive, etc. Each regime is a bit different. But the Order is afraid of preemptive strikes, afraid of upsetting the Ministry, afraid of breaking alliances, whatever. We're not. We find the bottom line and we fight for it. If that means taking out someone who has been kidnapping children and dropping them off at Azkaban in the middle of the night, we do it. We leave the politics to the Order and the Ministry."

The question of her feelings towards the Order were harder to explain. "Oliver knows little about my group. He knows that I'd like to use people from the Order who grow restless with it and want more, but he has respected my privacy. He, as most of the members who were there as my stint as leader, just understands that I've lost faith in organizations. Not in people, but in mentality they get into when they allow politics and fake ideologies to prevent them from doing good."

Some of the fight went out of him when she said she even respected Hufflepuffs, awful as that joke was. Selwyn's grandfather had been a Hufflepuff and he often envied the work ethic that seemed to come so easily to those of that house. He'd have got a lot further in life if his own ambition was complemented with some of that.

What she said next was surprising and yet not. He wasn't surprised that Jack had become disillusioned by the reticence of the Order. Sometimes he felt that way himself. Her solution, though, was something else.

"I thought you were muggleborn?" he asked.

It was a genuine question; he didn't want to presume she understood the state of the muggle world or its history if not.

He wasn't giving her much by way of reaction, considering how much she had revealed of her very private affairs. She had done it, partly to make up for some previous coldness towards him. As well as the fact that she had developed a distaste for acting all self important and withholding. Sometimes she had to, of course, but it never sat well with her.

She wasn't sure what he meant by his next question, but she was saved the opportunity from answering right off when the waitress returned and set their drinks down. She nodded her thank you and took a drink. Good stuff.

"I am a muggleborn."

'The usual' turned out to be something dark in a short tumbler.  It was probably deeply alcoholic and Selwyn envied her ability to knock it back as though it was nothing, a skill he'd never been able to develop.

"So you should know some history, then," he said.  "Unless we've so successfully assimilated you that you can't remember."

He took drink from his own glass, scrunched his nose up at the pulp.  He hated orange juice with pulp in it.

"Think about the recent muggle wars and how they handled doing what needed to be done. The common people's rights were completely eroded in the name of public safety," he pointed out.

He leaned on the table.

"To be honest, I find what you've just told me very disturbing."

Jack knew he wouldn't understand without seeing them in action. With the philosophical, activist mind's of Kip, with the freedom advocacy of Gabby, to the classic Potter mentality from Fred Weasley, there was always a balance between action and justice. The Order never seemed willing to employ the former, to find the balance, because being passive meant that they were never in the wrong. But an outsider couldn't understand that. And she wasn't asking him too. If she wanted him to understand, she would have come to him in the first place.

"Strangely enough, I'm not asking for your approval," she said, speaking carefully, trying to keep her emotions level. "And if we start needing it, I'll ask. And if you suspect us of foul play, please, check into it. I'm not afraid of checks and balances."