WHO: Owen Dearborn and Corban Yaxley WHAT: Employee reviews and training WHEN: Earlier today WHERE: The DMLE - Yaxley's Office WARNINGS: Unforgivables, :(
Nothing good ever came from being summoned into Yaxley's office these days. With the upcoming Order plans running through Owen's head and Jasper's ex's murder still fresh in his mind, Owen had to take a few minutes to get himself composed before making his way to see the Head Auror. He had his wand. He had his emergency portkey. As long as he wasn't literally walking into the killing curse upon setting foot into the room, he'd be okay.
Probably.
"You wanted to see me?" Owen asked, knocking on the already partially open office door.
Yaxley glanced up from an open file on his desk and smirked at Owen. A gesture from his wand sent one of the chairs sliding away from his desk, just enough to make room for Owen. Another gesture contradicted the open door with a silent muffliato. “Have a seat, Dearborn,” he said.
Owen's eyes dropped down to the chair as he entered the room, leaving the door open behind him. He cast a quick analysis spell at the chair that he tried to disguise as switching the hands that his wand was in, just in case. He sat down on the edge of the seat, his hands resting on his knees as he leaned forward, looking expectantly up at Yaxley, ready to spring back out of his seat at a moment's notice if he tried anything fishy. "Yes? ...Sir?" he tacked on to the end, the word feeling a bit like acid in his mouth.
“I want to talk about the Cruciatus curse,” Yaxley said evenly. He didn’t trust Owen enough to set aside his wand entirely, but he moved it and his hand off to the side. He lifted one side of the open file, indicating it. “I understand you tried it once, but didn’t do particularly well.” Which was old news, but that was beside the point.
That was absolutely not what Owen had been expecting. He visibly tensed, sitting up a little straighter, and he couldn't entirely keep his poker face straight as he looked down at Yaxley's file. "You have some misinformation," Owen finally responded. "Things were exaggerated to sell papers. Am I in trouble because of something a reporter said over a month ago?"
“In trouble?” Yaxley raised his eyebrows in feigned surprise. “Why would you be in trouble? I’m impressed. And…” He paused to laugh under his breath. “I think you and I both know I didn’t hear about it from some reporter.”
For some strange reason, Yaxley being impressed felt like a worse punishment than being in trouble.
"Seeing as how Lestrange lived to tell the tale and to go on to murder for another day, it seems like no harm no foul, then," Owen said, rising to his feet to leave. "It won't happen again."
“Actually.” The chair Owen had been sitting in slid forward an inch to catch the back of his legs. “I want it to happen again.” Owen stumbled back into his seat as the chair slid forward and grabbed the arm rests to regain his balance. He stared up at Yaxley as if the older man had sprouted a second mullet. "You're joking, right?" he laughed skeptically. "That's… that's kind of your other job's calling card, not the Aurors'."
Yaxley shrugged off Owen’s words, smirking over his desk at the other Auror. “I can teach you myself.”
This was insane. Owen shook his head, laughing again out of disbelief over how bizarre this was. "Yeah, no, I think I'm good," he said, pushing himself back out of the chair again and then moving to leave. All he needed right now was knowing that Yaxley and the Lestranges would have something else to hold over him.
But then he paused, his hand resting on the back of the chair for a moment before he turned around, looking back at Yaxley curiously. "Why would you want to?"
Yaxley raised his eyebrows at the question. “Well, you’re one of us now, aren’t you?” He managed to say it with a straight face.
… Again, not the response that Owen had been expecting. He blinked a few times, trying to wrap his head around what Yaxley was talking about, because nothing that he was personally coming up with made sense. "What… what are you talking about?"
“You haven’t fucked off like Williamson,” Yaxley said. “And you aren’t constantly asking for it like Savage.” He gave Owen a considering look. “You’re willing to do what needs to be done. That’s admirable.”
That made Owen's stomach turn. Yaxley wasn't wrong, exactly -- the threats toward his son tended to cause Owen's protests to burn off, and since his mother was killed, he'd definitely been going through the motions more than not. He wanted to believe he was still staying to try to help from the inside, but lately he'd felt more like he was just treading water. Their hands were tied; they couldn't actually get anything useful done on an "official" level when things were like this, as much as he'd tried to cling to how they needed to make sure they kept some good people in the Ministry so that they stopped being completely blindsided.
Although maybe he wasn't one of the good people still at the Ministry, because the offer was getting more tempting the longer he waited there. "Okay. What's the catch? Because you know I'd… probably have different targets than you. Considering."
“You would need to abandon your targets and consider sharing mine,” Yaxley said, watching Owen closely. “Like Savage, for instance. How would you shut her up?”
"...I think having a conversation about policy would be best," Owen finally managed to sputter out, alarm bells sounding in his head. "I think… if that's a target that you have, I'm not sure if this is the right course of action. It'd turn into this whole martyr thing. You don't want that, yeah?"
“I don’t really care as long as she shuts up,” Yaxley said with a shrug. “Killing Curse does that well enough.” He paused. “What about that one? You wanna learn it, too?”
"I mean…" Owen trailed off, feeling weird about coming right out and saying it, but definitely acknowledging that it would make things easier. "That one was legal for Aurors for a while there. It's just training. A skill set. The actual crime is using it on a person, right?"
“Depends on the person.” Yaxley folded his hands under his chin, his wand still perched in his fingers and his elbows resting on the edge of his desk. He hadn’t expected Owen to actually consider that particular offer and he was genuinely intrigued finally. “Savage? I think we’d all look the other way. A Lestrange…well. We’d have a problem.”
Then we’ll be having a problem, Owen mused silently. That was a problem for future Owen. Present!Owen was trapped in a situation that he had no plans for and was trying to make the best out of a weird situation. “Let’s focus on... that first one for now,” he said, it still feeling uncomfortable to say it out loud. “Since I’ve already tried it. What are your, uh. Tricks of the trade?” he asked, moving back around the chair to sit down again.
“Let’s see your technique first,” Yaxley said, leaning back in his own seat with a gesture at himself.
“Are you… on you? Right now?” Owen asked hesitantly. This absolutely had to be a trap. There was no way this wasn’t a trap. His mind was racing with all the possibilities of ways that this could go wrong.
But then, there was that small part of him that was excited, and that was just as terrifying. He’d threatened Kevin multiple times, though. And Jeremy. And hell, he’d probably just murdered Felicity. Getting up again, he tried to reflect on the stance he’d seen used too often used on him and his colleagues in fights with the Death Eaters, mirrored the wand movement a few times, aimed at his boss’s chest, and shouted “crucio!”
It wasn’t a sound often heard in the DMLE offices, but Yaxley only laughed when the burst of red from Owen’s wand fizzled out across his chest. “That tickled.”
“That’s more than it did the last time,” Owen grumbled under his breath. “Did you have any recommendations?” he asked, and then quickly added, “without using it on me as an example.”
But Yaxley’s wand had already started to move in Owen’s direction. “Well, it’s more of a —” He nearly mirrored Owen’s wand movement with his wand held a little differently and his swish a little tighter. Nothing happened, though. “And you can’t just kind of want to cast it.” His tone grew slightly mocking when he said ‘kind of’. “You have to want it.”
He gave Owen a considering look. “But let me show you how to cast my favorite spell.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, a flash of green flew from the tip of his wand.