Who: Pepper and Mill Where: Minister's office When: Monday (8th December) morning What: They have had it with this motherfucking Order on this motherfucking plane Rating: PG-13 for language of the naughty kind Status: Complete
First thing Monday morning wasn't a particularly wonderful time to be the Minister of Magic. First thing Monday morning was usually when the Minister considered - in between the six vital, urgent and essential briefing sessions she had to dash between - considered strongly the benefits of using polyjuice to create multiples of herself. Or, say, escaping to the New Hebrides.
No matter how large "Speak with Pepper re: Order" may have been writ upon her own "first thing Monday morning" schedule, when Mill actually managed to clear enough room to do so, it was decidedly more like mid-morning. She strode in through the outer office, not pausing long enough to give anyone time to even think, "Just a moment, Minister." Over her shoulder, she snapped, "Pepper, my office, now."
As much as Pepper would have liked to have been decidedly less busy than Millicent, he was not; the events of the weekend were public and large enough that the reports were already piling up on his desk, and as too-familiar as he was with parts of it, it was his job to suck it up and read the damn things anyway. Still only most of his attention was on the task as he waited for a good moment to try and get some time to talk to her, fully aware that Monday morning was not the best time to do so... maybe the afternoon, or failing that, possibly even the next day. Not that he was putting it off, at all. He had to do this, and the sooner the better. There was nothing at the end of this road but destruction.
At any rate he was perfectly aware of every time she passed even remotely near, and was lifting his head even as she was half-way through saying his name, rising from his seat at "my office" and falling into step behind her at the punctuation. How terribly efficient he'd gotten, he thought with dry unamusement. The whole thing was something of a reprise, though, even if the office were bigger and grander and his robes weren't blue and the mood was a lot more tense. He fell into the chair in front of her desk with the same casual sprawl, words spinning in his head as he decided to wait to see what she wanted before bringing up his own issues, not bothering with jokes today.
The handful of lavender Ministry files made a hollow, echoing wooden noise as Mill dropped them into the appropriate tray. Well, a tray. She'd deal with them later. The door slammed shut at the imperious wave of her hand (one of the residual bits of magic sculling about this office that she actually liked) and she then leaned against the corner of her desk. Time wasn't something they had a lot of anyway, and though she'd had time since Saturday to sleep, to think and rethink, to ostensibly calm down, Mill still wasn't in any mood to prevaricate. "I have had it with the fucking Order," she stated.
Pepper blinked. That was either vaguely fortuitous or ominous, he wasn't entirely sure which - and he was fairly certain he hadn't told her what they were called, so clearly she'd been talking to someone else. Like Abe. Well, the timing on that had turned out well, hadn't it? Her mood was sharp and he had little doubt she was about to launch into a dozen odd questions about exactly what he'd figured out, and... he couldn't lie to her. He could conceal half-truths, maybe, but with her wits honed to an edge by anger and determination she'd see right through him if he lied. Maybe the thought should have relieved him; certainly it took some of the burden of guilt from his shoulders, didn't it? "Funny, I was waiting for the opportune moment to say pretty much the same thing." That comment was dry and amused, because there was a certain kind of humour in the situation... granted one that not many people would necessarily appreciate. "I suspect the reasoning is slightly different though."
Mill may well have been fully prepared to launch into a crisp and summarised version of precisely why she wasn't going to tolerate any further bullshit from that quarter, but she hadn't made it to the head of the DMLE squad, let alone to this office, by talking when she should shut up and acquire further information. So her eyebrows went up, and she swallowed her diatribe down, and settled into her own chair. "Go on then," she prompted.
Well, that wasn't fair - Pepper rather wanted to know her reasoning too, though it wasn't a far leap to the conclusion that it had a fair amount to do with Gummy. Still, she had all the power here and really he was sort of at her beck and call - professionally speaking, that was, obviously - so it wasn't as though he could reasonably get into a childish "you go first" "no, you go first" "you started it!" argument. Which, besides, would waste valuable conversation-time. "They're never going to trust me," he declared, summing up everything that had been bothering him for the last few days in one concise statement. And, shit, this was about where he had to admit that he'd been working this angle since August and pray she didn't slay him with the power of her glare. He quite liked being un-slayed. "I.. have been in communication with them for a while, actually, with Fabian and all, and I've given them advice and tried to teach them things so they wouldn't get killed, but... somehow, after a month of debate, an interrogation under veritaserum, basically losing my job over them, letting them dictate what I'm allowed to say and who to and god knows what else, they still don't trust me, and I don't see that changing. They're more concerned with pissing off purists even now than actually doing anything intelligent and I'm really not sure how to change that if they're second-guessing my motives at every turn despite all the evidence that I don't actually like people dying, and I'm sick of it."
It took a moment, sifting through the deluge of Pepper's information (and the similarity with a child who'd been caught out at something was fleetingly amusing) and making the necessary connections (wait, Fabian Prewett, hadn't he been dead since...?) and assessing the scope of what he was discussing.
A moment after that, her hands hit the edge of her desk, and she was back on her feet, looming the way an average middle-aged witch really shouldn't be able to. "How long?" she demanded, just short of a shout.
Oh, there it was. This, he suspected, was about to get quite unpleasant. But then he had expected that, he was prepared for that, and he had already proven with Rufus that he could be very persistent in winning people back and at least he was owning up to things, that had to count for something, didn't it? He attempted to sit confidently, manfully, and not to give in to the urge to make sad puppy guilt-eyes. He wasn't entirely sure how successful it was. "After Fabian died. And it took a while to get them to stop ignoring me and playing dumb shits, so... September. About the time you made Minister." And started avoiding me at all costs, he added silently but didn't vocalise.
Millicent was immune to puppy guilt-eyes. Even from Pepper. Especially from Pepper when he had been lying to her for months. Her mouth was open and her breath drawn in, the shout coiled in her throat like a spring... and she closed her mouth so firmly that her teeth clicked, looked down at her desk - the varnished mahogany, the white clench of her knuckles - and let the breath out slowly and as steadily as she could. Which wasn't actually all that steadily, but letting this out right now would not get her anywhere.
After everything she had done for him.
She looked up again, and said evenly, "You tell me everything, and you tell me right now. If you lie again, if you leave anything out, I will make you wish you'd been fired five seconds ago."
There it was - everything. He could do that. Preferably in such a manner that they wouldn't be sitting here for two hours while whoever was outside raised their eyebrows to the roof, but then after four years of writing standard reports, he'd gotten good at summarising. "Fabian wanted me to join, I thought they were amateurs who were only slightly better than a complete waste of time, except... Benjy Fenwick and Gideon Prewett nearly managed to get into the seventh floor of Lestrange Library. And then the rest of them completely fucked up the aftermath. So I thought-- I could use them." And they were going to kill him. Utterly and completely. He recited the important events, demanding to be let in, the stalling and prevaricating, being veritaserumed, the ironic disorder they operated under, hesitating only slightly before including the Masquerade plot in his account. He did not doubt for a second that she meant what she said, and after Dedalus' comments to him - even if he did accept his apology, even if he didn't bear him any ill-feeling - his loyalty was not to the Order, it was clear. He mentioned the safehouse and Agnes' refusal to go into hiding there, the constant worry about wards and the debates over how much the Death Eaters knew, the stupid petty little fights and Marlene and Agnes exploding at him over telling Rufus about Edgar. The Godric's Hollow fire and his lapse in judgement over the journal tags. And, finally, the events leading up to that single ringing statement: you, of all people. He didn't even try to look Mill in the eye as he spoke, instead keeping his gaze to a steady desk-level, not really focusing on what he was seeing anyway as he tried to make sure he didn't forget anything important that could come back to screw him over later, because god knew there was enough here to screw him over three times in a row already. By the time he was finished his throat was actually beginning to hurt for speaking - or perhaps that was a persistent, niggling tightening, the kind that signalled anxiety. He thought he preferred the former.
Mill had resumed her seat once Pepper got going, watching him steadily throughout. The minutes ticked by as he talked, but she didn't try to hurry him, nor did she ask questions, merely listened, face stony.
When Pepper finished, the silence stretched, before being interrupted by the chirp of the intercom, and Henry's voice saying, "Minister? Can you--"
Mill's finger on the button cut him off. "Not now."
They had been in here for a while. There were all the other Monday things, the Minister things, the inescapable piles of drivel that were just meaningless but utterly unavoidable. She hated this job. Actively hated it.
She couldn't trust anyone else to do it, right now.
"Right," she said, finally and quietly. "Well, I've already told Aberforth Dumbledore--" Her mouth twisted; in hindsight, she wasn't particularly pleased with her temper tantrum on Saturday, but she'd stand by the gist of it. "--that if I can't trust the Order, I can't allow it to continue with such freedom. I suppose your... greater level of involvement may actually assist in this, if we don't have to worry so much about you settling in." Just, apparently, about him being his usual charming self. They'd all get over it. "There is, however, something of more immediate importance I want you to handle. In return for my advice, Aberforth mentioned the likelihood of a Death Eater DMLE leak related to the death of Agnes O'Hare." She smiled tightly. "I'm sure you can guess how the next bit goes."
"A Death Eater leak?" Pepper did look up now, biting idly at his lower lip for a moment. "Funny how that idea keeps coming up." And he was going to be slaughtered and ritually sacrificed to Eris goddess of Chaos. If they found out, that was. At least Mill was intelligent. He'd trusted her before with his career and freedom, and she hadn't let him down... which, he supposed, was probably better than what he'd done himself. She knew the risks here. The Order never had to find out. Or at least, not until it didn't matter anymore. "It's not the Longbottoms, Moody or Diggle. Elle doesn't know about the Order but she's dealt with members on good terms before."
Mill's eyebrows went up (the Longbottoms? She would never in a dozen years... well, that was the point, wasn't it?) but she didn't say anything about them. She didn't even know who this Diggle person was, but that was why the Ministry had files; she could look later. "I know," she said. "I was going to have you sit down with Miss Abercrombie to discuss what she knew about them, but I suppose that's completely redundant now. Best do it sometime anyway, for appearances." Though, considering the way Elle had reacted on Saturday to the merest reference to the Order, 'good terms' was a thing of the past. Pepper could find that out for himself when he interviewed her. "That's a good start; we at least know who it isn't. But I want either proof that there isn't one, or to know who it is. And I want it yesterday, and I want it silently." Of course.
He was sitting too far from the desk to absently tap the tip of a finger against the hard wood, so he settled for a minor leg-fidget instead. Investigating the whole DMLE? This was going to be a major operation, and while he could easily think of people he was certain were not Death Eaters (Kate, Jo, Elladora, Kingsley), there were an awful lot of other people that left him room for doubt. "I assume you want me to focus solely on this," he commently blandly, thinking of all the reports on his desk that he was sure he would be absolutely heartbroken not to read. Well, he liked knowing things, but he couldn't say he didn't miss investigations, even... messy, screwed up, awful betrayal-involving ones like trying to figure out which of his ex-coworkers was a terrorist.
"This is your most important assignment," Mill confirmed. "But don't neglect everything else." Who knew what might be in there of use. Even for this. "Start with the O'Hare files. Someone told them where to find her." She was close enough to the desk to drum her fingers on it, and did. She'd been thinking about ways to narrow the search since Aberforth had told her, trying to find incidents that made likely cross-references. "Pepper," she said now, "was it the vigilantes who killed Roman Selwyn?"
Pepper blinked. That question, he had not expected. He supposed it made a certain kind of sense, actually, though he hadn't thought about the actual death for months now except in the vague terms of the fact that it had happened, especially if you factored in the fact that Edgar had been in the Order. "No. They have a week long moral debate if someone so much as suggests using a bit of... extra-ethical force, I think most of them even now would have major problems with actually out and killing someone, and back then they seem to have been way more idealistic." They'd gotten pretty horrified at his tete-a-tete with Georgie as well, he recalled, though didn't bring it up - it had ultimately been pointless, after all, and thus wasn't really in the same league as Selwyn's death.
"That's good to know, at least." Mill hadn't liked to think that the Order could get past Ministry security (though with so many well-placed agents in their midst, that would've been quite easy, really). She didn't like to think that the Death Eaters could either, but at least they were supposedly The Threat. And also had an agent, apparently. "Cross-reference with that incident, then. If they were killing their own, their leak must have been involved." Oh please Merlin, let there only be one. The thought had her rubbing between her eyebrows, passing her hand over her eyes. "Any other incident that looks promising," she added, opening her eyes again. "You don't need me to tell you how to do your job. Just don't let me down."
He nodded, starting to rise - god, the last time he'd waited for an actual dismissal was how long ago? - before remembering one rather vital thing, and closing his eyes briefly in almost physical pain. "Er-- I don't suppose you could tell Crouch to stop being a whiny little bitch when I ask for files, could you? Last time he sent up an entire decade's worth because I forgot to specify I wanted back to October first of this year. Normally I could totally beat him at passive-aggressive but I really don't have the time for it right now."
"That I should be able to manage," Mill said, with some small measure of satisfaction. She tugged a sheet of parchment out of a pile, and reached for her quill. "Consider it done. And tell Henry he can come in now."
Good lord, someone with a name. Pepper nodded again, glad at least that he was walking out with all his limbs, organs and other related parts intact and attached. There was still well over half the workday left and a lot to get started on, and that would have been difficult spurting blood.