Mill "into the wild" Bagnold (faircop) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-12-07 11:24:00 |
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Mill hadn't slept yet. She'd been rather too busy, first with celebrations, then with the initial frozen shock of the news about Alastor, and then with the frantic investigations.
After her visit with Elle, the confirmations she'd been given of inklings she'd been starting to form, sleep was the last thing Millicent wanted right now. She was running just fine on steely determination, helpless guilt and a cold, bubbling base of anger. Well, maybe not quite so cold any more.
She turned her collar up as she trudged down towards the Hog's Head. Late on a Saturday morning, even one in this climate and weather, Hogsmeade was busy enough, but the pub was closed up and silent. Until Mill hammered her gloved fist against the heavy door. "It's Millicent Bagnold," she shouted. "I need to talk with you, Aberforth." She lifted her hand to hammer again.
Aberforth was standing in the middle of the pub with his eyes closed and his wand in his hand as he examined the wards and strengthened a few of them. He wasn't going to start warding werewolves and vampires out of the pub but there were other things he could do. He could just vaguely hear Marcus and Aknot's murmured conversation but he paid it no mind. He knew the chances of getting rid of those two today would be slim to non-existent but he didn't really mind. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to be alone and Marcus and Aknot knew when not to push. He also knew that as soon as they deemed it to be prudent, they'd be at him to sort things out with Rhisiart. He was aware he'd taken some of his temper out on the vampire the previous night and not all of what he'd said was deserved. He'd have to find Rhisiart tonight and apologise.
When the pounding started on the door, Marcus and Aknot's conversation came to an abrupt halt and Abe opened his eyes. He arched an eyebrow when he heard who it was but he wasn't all that surprised. He glanced over his shoulder at his friends. "Make yourselves scarce but not too scarce. She's a redhead but she's essentially sensible."
Marcus and Aknot nodded and headed for the staircase that lead upstairs. They knew him well enough to know what he meant - stay out of sight and only make a move if she ended up being completely irrational... which he didn't think would happen. Once they were gone, he walked over to the door, unlocked it then lifted the bar. He opened the door and arched an eyebrow, his expression neutral. "Millicent. How can I help the Minister of Magic?"
Mill lowered her hand and tucked it back into the pocket of her grey coat. Same coat she'd been wearing last night, same suit beneath it, and her hair had come down in the meantime and been twisted up again with rather less finesse than previously. But her eyes were steely despite the growing shadows beneath them, and there was no hint of her usual smile in greeting.
"You can answer a few of her questions," she said. "It won't take long. You'd prefer it to be in private, and I'd prefer to sit down, frankly." Neither were questions. She was maybe getting a little old to be on the go for twenty-eight hours and counting, but things had to be done.
Aberforth raised an eyebrow at Mill's manner but didn't take offense... at least not yet. Al had been one of her hitwizards and he knew Mill had taken it upon her to wipe out Greyback's pack. It didn't surprise him that she was angry and upset. He could understand her anger just as he could understand Elle's cold and angry reaction. After all, hadn't he been just as irrational and angry after Ariana's death, right down to causing such a scene at her funeral?
He waved a hand at the nearest table and the chairs flew down from the top and settled themselves into position around the table. He then locked and barred the doors again. "We're as private as we're ever going to get," he said, his eyes staying on the Minister and not straying even once to the stairwell leading upstairs. "Have a seat, Madam Minister."
"Thanks." It was curt but sincere; sitting down was a welcome relief, though Mill took only a few moments to settle on her chair, pull her gloves off, rub cool fingers over the knot forming in the back of her neck. Gulliver had always given excellent neck rubs, but this was possibly going to be beyond his abilities. She may have to ask Tabitha.
But here and now that was entirely secondary. With a tight little sigh, Mill dropped her hand away from her neck and straightened to say, "Aberforth, I need to know why you were communicating with Alastor."
Aberforth sat down opposite Mill and simply waited as she settled herself. Under the circumstances he felt it was best to let her take the lead. That would also give him time to consider his replies and his plan of attack.
He paused for a moment then decided that given what Pepper was doing and that he had already told Mill that Abe was his contact, there was little sense in concealing the truth.
"Two reasons," he said firmly. "Firstly he was keeping in contact with the Order and if he couldn't use his journal, he was using my contact. But irrespective of whether he'd chosen to inform the Order or not, I would have offered my contact. He was working for me before he started this and I do my best to care for mine. I was unhappy that this Ministry taskforce he was working with had not given him any way of contacting the wider world other than his journal should he get into trouble. It would, after all, have looked more than a little suspicious if he had been seen receiving or sending messages by owl."
Oh, there it was again, the anger surging up like a snarling dog chained to a wall. How dare he suggest that her people... how DARE HE. Her hand upon the table curled into a fist, knuckles pressed against the time-smoothed wood. "Well, that turned out to be a fucking great idea, didn't it?" Mill said, spitting each word out like a chip of ice. "The Order." It might have been possible for her to make it sound more scathing, but it would have been difficult. "Are there any other Ministry operations, top-fucking-secret or otherwise, that you lot are assisting?"
Aberforth did not move or flinch in the face of her anger though his own began to curl low in his chest and his expression became as hard as stone. "About as good an idea as sending a man already under suspicion back into the den after he'd just betrayed the pack," he said icily. "And I'll have you know that Al requested an alternate means of contact since he was worried about using the journals and didn't want to use owls." Sending Al back in there had been a fool move on the Ministry's part. The plan had been Al's idea in the eyes of the pack. Irrespective of anything else that had happened, they would likely have blamed him for its failure or worse given they were already suspicious of him.
"Assisting?" He snorted. "We did nothing except read what Al had written and worry." He had no intention of mentioning that Lily was part of the Order. He knew it was suspected but it was not his place to confirm that. "He knew the interest many of us, myself included, had in seeing the Pryce woman caged."
All the things she might have yelled at Gumboil about were meaningless now. All the ways in which this was not and had never been their fucking business would get her nowhere. Mill carefully unclenched her hand, spreading her fingers flat and wide on the tabletop, pressing them against the wood. "I don't care," she said, quietly but not precisely gently. "And you didn't answer my question."
Aberforth arched an eyebrow. "We tend to stay out of Ministry business. We weren't even really involved in this other than the information Al was giving us. Apart from the fact the DMLE tends to have all the subtlety of a brick through the window, we also tend to do things they can't and therefore never the twain should meet... ever. Besides there's one other reason we steer well clear. You have a leak in the DMLE." He said it bluntly and without any attempt at softening the blow. He'd been thinking about this ever since Agnes' death and he was certain that he was right.
They lacked subtlety? The only thing that saved Abe from an extremely caustic retort to that was his final comment. Her laugh was short and harsh and more full of scorn than humour. "We have a leak?" she repeated, anger leaking into her voice and raising her volume. "We leak like a fucking sieve. You lot have made sure of it, haven't you? How many others have you had in there, compromising our fucking security?" The legs of her chair squeaked against the floor as she pushed it back a little.
Now anger really flashed through Aberforth and his expression darkened, his eyes flashing with anger. "You have a leak right smack bang into the gods-be-damned Death Eaters!" he abruptly bellowed. "And that, my dear, has nothing to do with us! Look to your own before you start blaming others." He leaned forward, his eyes showing all of the anger, pain and grief he'd been holding back since Agnes' death.
"I hold the DMLE responsible for the death of Agnes O'Hare as much as Pryce and the Death Eaters," he said coldly. "She was living in a bloody tent in the middle of nowhere, Madam Minister. Half the bloody Order didn't know where she was and those who did wouldn't tell the Death Eaters. But your bloody Ministry knew where she was. You demanded that piece of information after the Masquerade and for once she was a good girl and told you. The Death Eaters found out where she was. How would they do that unless they had a pipeline right into the DMLE. Right into supposedly confidential files."
He reigned his temper in as best as he could. "We don't use any information that may come our way to go around killing people," he said harshly. "We don't even go around demanding information. We ask and if our people choose not to tell us then so be it. People may be unhappy about that but we will not risk our people more than we have to nor will we ask them to do things against their conscience." He arched an eyebrow. "If we were as bad as you think, we'd have used this supposed influence we have to stop Agnes from going to Azkaban. Perhaps we'd have done a cozy little deal in much the same way that Rodolphus Lestrange did. But we didn't, did we? So tell me, Madam Minister, how much information and influence do you think we have?"
One part of Millicent's mind took careful, if horrified, note of the information Aberforth revealed, tucking it all away to be considered later, when 'dispassionate' was even an option. The rest of her was rather busy being angry.
"I don't know, Mister Dumbledore," she said coldly. "That's rather the point. I have no idea, because you won't tell me. And I don't trust you. I can't trust you. You're fucking amateurs and you're unpredictable and attacking a Ministry you have done sod-all to support is not encouraging me to consider you anything other than a phenomenal danger to wizarding society as a whole." The chairlegs screamed against the floor this time as she shoved her chair back and stood up. "I strongly advise you to urge your fellow vigilantes--" A synonym for cockroach, the way she said it. "--to work with me, because if you cross me again, if I so much as catch a sideways glimpse, I will arrest every fucking one of you I can lay my hands on. I will make it a priority. Because I can't fight them while I'm waiting for you lot to stab me in the back by fucking accident!"
"Tell you what precisely?" Aberforth said with exasperation. "Who is in the Order? Why? Your Ministry leaks like a sieve and while I may be prepared to put myself in danger, I'm not prepared to do so to others. Besides, it's not my Order. I don't run it and it's not my place to make decisions such as that."
He threw up his hands in frustration. "Of course I don't support the Ministry. I'm Aberforth bloody Dumbledore. It's well known I don't support the Ministry because they arrested me for a small matter regarding a goat. If I turn around and suddenly start lauding Crouch to the high heavens, it's going to look pretty damn suspicious, isn't it?"
"Work with you?" he said flatly, almost willing Millicent to stop emoting and reacting and start thinking. He knew she was a clever woman but she was all angry redhead right now and there wasn't a lot of logical thought going on. "Why? What reason do any of them have to trust you? You demand that but offer nothing in return. They don't know you, Millicent. Why do you think they don't trust Pepper? Because for all they know, you're one of the Death Eaters and so is he and you're both just looking for a way to kill us all. We've had too many deaths to trust blindly anymore."
He rose to his feet too and rested his hands on his hips. He lost his usual slightly slumped posture and drew himself up to his full height. "As for arresting us, go ahead. Start with me, if you like. Your Ministry is hamstrung by beaucracy and red tape and you know it. You also know we're your best chance of getting things done under the covers, so to speak. In case you've forgotten, this is a war, Madam Minister. And in wars people die. Sometimes people you care about a great deal. I should know. This is my second wizarding war and I can't tell you the number of people I've lost. Do I feel guilt for Al's death? Of course I do. I live with that for the rest of my life. Am I going to run around screaming at people and allowing the true enemies to get a march on us? No. Why? Because that is not what Al would have wanted. He risked everything in order to try and bring that pack down and I'll be damned if I let his death be in vain."
And Aberforth's full height was impressive, but Millicent showed no signs of being particularly cowed by it, looking up at him with more equanimity, indeed, than she'd showed for much of this conversation. Her anger had trickled away - no, evaporated. Left her nothing but fatigued and alone. Always alone. "You're being ridiculous," she said wearily. "If I were one of them, they'd have won already. You wouldn't even matter." She rubbed the crease between her eyebrows, and sighed. "I have no reason to trust any of you either," she pointed out. "I have nothing but your word that your group hasn't already been compromised. No reason to believe in your organisation or your training or anything but your willingness to cause trouble. I won't deny you could be of use - of great use - but you have to step forward, because I have responsibilities larger than myself and I will not compromise those. And if we can't learn to trust each other..." She smiled, tight and tired and more than a little sad. "I meant it, Aberforth. I can't have you getting in the way if I can't trust you. Think about it."
Another day, she'd have added a please to the end of that. Not today. Today she just left it there, and moved towards the door.
Abe sighed and slumped down into his normal stance. "I know that, Mill. Just as I know Pepper can be trusted. But the bulk of our group are young and frankly scared. We're fighting people who are far more ruthless than we are and I know the argument is to stop and let the Ministry handle it but stopping isn't going to make a lot of them any less of a target. A lot of them are targets simply for existing. If you were in their shoes, I doubt you'd be sitting around twiddling your thumbs either." He gave the barest of smiles. "You're as stubborn and pig-headed as most of them."
He sat down heavily. "No, I know we don't know if we've been compromised but a few of us have been working on trying to ensure that doesn't happen or that if it does, we have some warning. And Mill..." He arched an eyebrow at her. "That is something I will say no more on, no matter how much you yell at me."
He watched her walk towards the door and decided to stop being a stubborn old bastard. "They were cocky. Both of them, Al and my contact. Al at least has some excuse since he'd just had a success though he was experienced enough to know better, damn it. As for my contact... he's had half his hide stripped off by me already and if he comes near me before I've calmed down again, he'll get the rest of it stripped off. They both should have checked the area better and they both didn't. I don't know why since neither of them were novices. And Al paid the price." He paused. "We can and will work with you. But you know it can't be anything remotely resembling openly nor can we be treated like your Hitwizards. You can't be seen having anything to do with us openly. You'd make yourself even more of a target for the Death Eaters and frankly, Mill... I'd hate to think who would replace you if they managed to tear you down."
"So would I," Mill told the door. She wondered, briefly, what they were working on; she didn't really care, couldn't bring herself to right now, but if he was so interested in defending it, it must be something worth knowing about. Neither here nor there right now. "Winning's going to make me more of a target," she said, tossing her hair out of the way as she looked back to Aberforth. "But that's not going to dissuade me from it. We'll have Pepper; we can make this work. I know how to keep a secret." Unlike a lot of people she thought knew better, apparently, but she wouldn't be making that mistake again. "So you let me worry about my end. You've got enough to worry about with yours."
She drummed her knuckles against the door with a faint curl to the corner of her mouth that might have been related to an actual smile. "Now let me out and I'll leave you in peace."
"I know you can," Aberforth said calmly. "And when I have information you can use, I will pass it on. I promise you that." He snorted. "Far too much to worry about," he muttered as he ran through his plans for his wards in his head momentarily. He was brought out of his moment of introspection by Mill rapping her knuckles on the door and he chuckled dryly. He waved his hand and the doors unlocked and the bar moved. "By all means, Your Maj. And be careful. I've had quite enough of losing people I care about."