Pints and Plans

Robert went into the pizza parlor and passed by the one lone man in the jeans and the leather bomber jacket who was at the bar sipping a pint. He went, instead, and placed the order for a pizza and a couple of pints with the friendly half-giant who owned Biggz. The pizza had become a late night favorite for Michael and him--especially when Michael was frustrated with trying to parent twin baby boys that he'd never asked for in the first place. Khaat and Brian, in truth, had the babies most of the time, but Michael did want to step up. It was certainly hard to teach the old dog new tricks, though.

He wasn't here to meet Michael tonight. He took a place at the table that appeared to be the farthest from just about everything so they could talk. Fortunately, it wasn't exactly a common time for Hogwarts students to be here anyway, so he liked it half empty. He sat down, smiling slightly as he thought about how much Kate would disapprove of his completely unhealthy food choices that day.

There had been the fish and chips that he'd had brought in from the Leaky for lunch. And prior to that, he'd had a business breakfast with Lee Shepherd that had been far from prying eyes. There was much to discuss, and he couldn't afford anyone overhearing classified information. He and Shepherd had some common problems in their respective governments, and it made sense that they align to find a common solution, even if it meant doing things a bit out of the norm.

Doing things out of the norm, though, required someone who could adapt to being out of the norm, and it also meant it needed to be someone who could step right in and be someone Robert and Lee could trust implicitly. The choice had come down to one person. He'd sent an owl to her, and since he hadn't heard otherwise, he was presuming she was coming.

The giant delivered the pints, promising the pizza was on the way. Robert took a sip of his pint, enjoying the tradition of ending the day with a really good pint and a bit of pub grub.

“You don’t smoke anymore.”

She met his eyes in the mirror as she twisted the hair band round the pony tail she was constructing. Bringing one hand down, she took the cigarette from between her lips and set it on in the ash tray that had made its home on her windowsill beside her dressing table. Baldric’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, nervousness shadowing his features as he stepped further into the room.

“I have to do something,” she ventured, dropping her hands down into her lap. “Anything to stop thinking about him.”

“I’m surprised you’ve not opted for something harder,” he commented, sitting himself down on the bed she had once shared with her husband.

“I can’t,” she replied softly, glancing at the photographs of the children that were moving in their frames on the table by her jewellery box. “I can’t do it to them… but I have to have something.”

“Roll us one then, love.”

Hours had elapsed since. At five o’clock on the dot, Peter came in through the door. He smiled, hung his coat up on the hook, shoved is shoes into the box and crossed the room to envelope her in a hug. She clung to him, allowing herself the brief respite of another person in her arms, someone who she could speak to, someone who understood. The sandy-haired man’s lips found her temples and his large, warm hands rubbed reassuring circles into her back. He’d look after the children. He’d see to that. Finley was at a friend’s that evening.

It gave Millie the time to meet Robert. Loath though she was to leave Darcie and the twins, she knew that when the Minister called, she could not refuse. Donning a cloak to protect herself against the harsh winds that had been rolling up and down Hogsmeade High Street since early that week when she had gone to buy some new quill tips, Millie left the safety and warmth of the castle and stepped out into the night, hurrying past the lake, Bean hot on her heels.

The canine took a seat across the road from the pizza parlour, settling himself in the yellow light of the street lamp to watch the goings on inside. Millie finished rolling the cigarette she had been clumsily making since entering the village and tucked it inside her filter box before putting the paraphernalia away in her bag. She sighed, reaching up to squeeze the bridge of her nose. She couldn’t use a Dreamless Sleep Potion tonight. Sleep would elude her, however much she wanted it.

Ruffling her hand between Bean’s ears, Millie murmured that she wouldn’t be long before crossing the cobbled street.

Inside, the pizza parlour was hot and smelt strongly of pepperoni. The witch wrinkled her nose, unaccustomed, now, to the smell. Many years had passed since she and Trent would while away Sunday nights in Fulham during the summer, in cafés that continued to serve espresso into the small hours, talking about everything under the sun – although, technically, it had been the moon and stars. She wasn’t used to being anywhere other than Hogwarts, now. Absurd though she felt for thinking it, the pizza parlour was almost too gritty and real.

She spotted Robert immediately. It was hard to hide a man like that in plain sight.

Shrugging her coat off, Millie crossed the parlour and slid into the seat opposite the Minister.

“Good evening,” she greeted him genially, a weary look in her eye.

The fact that she missed her husband oozed from every pore. And yet, she went on. She had learned from her mother-in-law. Like Bridget, she carried on.

“What sort of hair-brained adventure are we going on, Minister?”

And despite herself, she found a smile for him.

God, how time changed things. He remembered the lively, loveable, slightly scatterbrained young woman that he had come to depend on. Here she was, a little older, a lot wiser, sophisticated, and, whether she knew it or not, more indispensable to him than she probably knew.

"Hello, Millie," he smiled, glad to see her, and he saw the deep fatigue on her face. "Should I have gotten you a cup of tea rather than a pint?" The last he'd seen her, her marriage had been on rocky ground, he remembered. He'd heard just the barest of whispers that Kieran was, somehow, gone. Robert knew no details. While he understood heartache, he couldn't honestly say he knew what it was like. That wasn't, thankfully, a bridge he and Kate ever had to cross. He certainly felt for Millie, though. He had had a parental sort of relationship with her, but this was discussion was about to go into a direction that most parents would forbidden themselves to ever go.

"You know me too well, don't you?" he smiled, amused by her straight away calling him out and hitting it dead on. Touche, Millie, he thought. There was another adventure, of course. She'd gotten straight to it, and he liked that in her. "I'm in need of someone to take a very special assignment, and it has to be someone I trust. That reduces the candidates from the outset. It has to be someone who can learn quickly and adapt and who can think on their feet. And--above all, it has to be someone who is very capable and willing to keep strict confidences.

"On the up side, it has better benefits than you have now, and, without a doubt, the best pay you've ever received, and a very sizable time-off package." He knew Millie surely could now already start to piece things together.  She couldn't possibly have been exactly blind to some of the people who had allegedly worked as clerks in the Department of Mysteries and who certainly seemed to enjoy some luxuries beyond a clerk's salary--Michael Tremaine aside. He doubted she knew for certain what they actually did, but he was offering her an opportunity to find out. True, he hadn't told her the mission yet, but, he wasn't going to land it all on her at one fell swoop, in case she really was needing some time to try to put her life back together. He would certainly understand that too. If she couldn't do it, though, he was surely going to be feeling up the proverbial creek.

“Beer is good,” the witch nodded with a soft smile. Peter had been telling her for weeks that she needed to do something to properly unwind but he’d not cajoled her into visiting the Hog’s Head yet. She unwound in the small hours, sat on the windowsill of the bedroom she and her husband should have shared, when sleep no longer came, and she’d blow silvery smoke rings into the night air, up towards the stars twinkling down over Hogwarts. She had seen every sunrise since he’d been gone.

To prove it to Robert, Millie curled her small hands around the cool pint glass. She brought it to her lips, finding that she hadn’t missed the fizzle and pop of beer. Once it passed over her tongue, though, it was a familiar enough action. It was a taste she could stomach. Setting the glass down again, Millie let her hands settle in her lap and she lifted her dull, silvery-blue gaze to her minister’s face. She swallowed, raising a bit of a smile for him. She felt tired. Beyond that, in fact. The lethargy was in her very soul, picking away at what was left.

She listened dutifully, her mind twirling, absorbing his words. She knew she was going to say yes. She suspected he knew, too. Hence, he’d come to her. She half wanted to point out that it was rather pointless talking to her about pay packets and all the rest. In a sardonic tone, she wanted to wax that her husband had left her with plenty. She also wanted to tell him that even if she needed it, Peter would have covered what her salary couldn’t stretch to and, if she’d asked, Theo would’ve given her the raise.

It wasn’t the money. It was the chance to feel alive again.

“What do you want me to do?”

He wanted to say to her I'm telling you this because you look like hell and I don't want you to turn me down in case your fatigue bests you. He resisted.

"Yeah, you're right," he said, responding to her unspoken Get to the point, Robert. "You and I did some training--enough for you to polish your skills a bit. But--I want to work directly for me. I want you to be an Unspeakable, but I want you to have a set of skills like no other.

"You know, I'm sure, what some of the dossiers said, but there's also the unwritten dossiers that were Eyes Only that not even you saw. Those are the people I want to put you with. There's a hole in my espionage team, and I need someone who is highly specialized in some difficult areas.

"Bottom line? You couldn't tell anyone but another Unspeakable what you do, but I want you to work for me doing international espionage--and your first assignment would be something that very few of my people have ever done. In some ways, that would make you a bit more alone, perhaps. In other ways, though, it puts you into a whole new circle of friends, allies, collegues that would open up an entirely new world for you. I can't say it wouldn't be dangerous because it certainly could be at times. I can promise you, though, that you'd have as much support and training as I know how to provide for you."

An Unspeakable. Millie let the reality of it wash over her. Melissa Hayes, Unspeakble. Her thumb turned in towards her third finger and she turned at the wedding ring. She knew that she would have broken the rules had he been with her, still. Keiran would have had an ear to every detail before she agreed to it and he would have been her counsel every step of the way. But he wasn’t there. This was solely her task. Her burden to bear alone, like so many to come.

“Would I have to give up teaching?” She inquired softly, reaching for her beer again. She didn’t want to leave Hogwarts, mainly because there were two places she could go and she didn’t want to revisit either. There was a house in Ireland that belonged to them, that they had made into a family home. If not there, then there was his flat in London. Both had memories she loved and wished to forget but her overriding preoccupation was that if she moved, she would have to reckon with the fact that he wasn’t coming back.

“The only thing I want you to personally ensure is that if,” she used the word loosely, her voice firm with the unspoken declaration that she was not going to allow such a scenario to unfold, “something happens to me, Liam, Kelly, and Darcie are taken care of. If there’s something these last few months has taught me it’s that we…” she paused, a sick feeling settling in her stomach. Her eyes fluttered shut and she gritted her teeth for a few moments before forcing herself to speak. “…won’t always be there. I need,” she reopened her eyes, “to know that someone will take care of. That they’re brought to their grandmother, to Baldric, or someone else. I need to know they’ll be safe.”

Because they’re all I have left.

“When do I start?”

"Good question," he said. "Actually, I need you to keep that job. There are things in the works in the States that will make it absolutely necessary for you to be just exactly where you are.

"Do you remember Lee Shepherd?" he asked. "We don't know exactly how the new collaboration with Ilvermorney will affect Hogwarts but Lee and I think it presents not only some potential security risks, but also some incredible opportunities. I want you to be able to access not only all of England's resources but all of America's too.

"In other words, where most of the Unspeakables only have one back door out of an assignment--me--in this case, you usually will have no less than two--Lee and me. Your ability to access both England and the States through the schools put you in a pivotal position to be perhaps one of the most essential agents I've ever had, with a somewhat unique arrangement that would allow you to operate under Lee's supervision and mine jointly."

She had accepted. He presumed, more or less, that she would.  He drew out the necessary contracts from his pocket and a pen and put them on the table.  

He understood all too well her concern for her children. Much as he loved Kate, he had always known Kate was a spitfire who would survive, who could certainly hold her own. His child, their only child? That, he would protect with all he had, for as long as he lived. And if there were anything he learned from Remus, it was how delicate a life really was. A twist of a single thought had the power to rip a heart in two or destroy countless lives. Anyone could be here one moment, and with the absence of something as thin and frail as a single breath, that same person could be gone forever. He had always had a parental fondness for Millie, and if he could have sheltered her from heartbreak, he surely would have. He could, though, honor her desire to protect her children. He would have anyway, but he wanted it, if it happened, to go without screw ups.

"I promise you," he said gently, "if anything happens I will make sure your children are always as safe as I can make them. You can certainly determine how you would like things to happen, but I can tell you what standard procedure generally is. The way most of the Unspeakables prefer to word that in their contracts is to put my name in as the person you'd want the children to go to.  The reason they do that is because I'm generally the first one or only one to know that an agent is in trouble. It allows me to get to the children and do whatever I need to, to secure their safety, without any delays.  From there, I work to get them to whoever you've chosen them to be with and to expedite any necessary legalities. All it does is to allow me to move faster to help your children and prohibits anyone else from interfering. It also helps keep the ones you love from knowing what the devil you're doing because I can provide a cover story and the paper trail that goes with it."

There was going to be a lot for her to think about, he knew. It wasn't a small matter. He also knew that her decision was, in part, based on her trust in him. He would not send her in to any assignment for which he wasn't entirely sure she was as prepared as he knew how to make her.

"The sooner you start, the better," he said. "You've done some training, and that's good. You will need more--much more. I'm going to set you up with intense training with Brian for his fighting skills and with Michael for his talents with, shall we say, fine arts? And, I want you to learn a great deal from Marcus Belby.  Marcus's primary skills are in espionage. I want him to show you how to create different identities, different looks, how to access alternate credentials, how to become essentially a different person at a moment's notice. And, Lee will teach you how to take an assignment totally on the fly if you need to--how to get in, how to get out,  how to handle the unexpected emergencies and how to access different contacts and information exchanges. In essence, you'll be able to work not only with a team but you'll know how to go to just about any location we give you and adapt to doing a job alone, if that's what it takes.

"It's liable to feel like a bit of bootcamp, but I am going to make sure you have every bit of resource we can give you.  I can set up some training as soon as you think you can get time to leave the castle to do it. Can you get any time across the weekend, perhaps?"

The States? The Londoner was hardly new to the United States. She had often visited during her ‘gap year’, as it were. Jamaica, after a while, could only satisfy so many whims and the wizarding community there was small. No matter where she went in America, she could find magical friends. She had ties there, too. Contacts that would eventually, she didn’t doubt, come in handy. But still she couldn’t help but wonder why she was being drawn back across the Atlantic. Perhaps these next few years really were going to be a rehash of her past.

She nodded, recalling Lee Shepherd only vaguely but not worrying too much about that. In the coming weeks, they’d know each other quite well. What the witch was concerned with was what Robert had to say about the children. She nodded again in silent acquiescence on the matter. There were a number of people who she knew would fight tooth and nail for the children, Robert was just another name to the list. They’d never be alone, never without love, if something were to happen.

“I’ll, um…” she tapped her nails against the pint glass. “I’ll draw up a plan of action, a will I guess, and have it sent to you.” The word felt strange and uncomfortable in her mouth, heavy on her tongue. She was too young for this, she thought, but then … after everything that had happened already, she supposed it was long overdue.

“I’ll make the time.” She swore, that stubborn spark of determination beginning to light up her eyes once more.


(OOC: Do you want to make the bootcamp-y thread? ;D)

sure.  i thought you might like to do that.  LOL