Sheesh, I don't know what's going on with me:D
The muse doesn't let me sleep.
While the Weasley siblings – or at least the most troublesome of them – are busy, Kakashi enjoys the peace and quiet it brings. He's reasonably sure they'll need at least a week to realize that he hasn't really rigged the door; the ominous wire is merely glued to the ceiling.
Kakashi turns a page in his beloved book, relishing in his petty victory for a moment. One would think he, as an elite jounin, would be above taunting children, but no – still feels amazing. Across from him Albus Dumbledore eyes him with exasperation. It's a familiar expression; the Sandaime's face had been practically stuck that way. "I trust you read our files on his inner circle?" the old wizard prompts, eying the deceptively kitschy cover of Icha Icha Paradise with mild interest. Kakashi sighs.
"Yes. But I have to admit, it's not the sort of intel I expected." A lot of it was about blood and family background, which would be useful if they had any sort of Kekkei Genkai – which they don't – and their crimes. The fact that Bellatrix Lestrange tortured the Longbottom family to insanity does not tell him nearly as much as the headmaster may have thought. After all, physical torture is a practice that even Iwa employed during the war – most of the perpetrators being of very sound mind and merely driven by strong patriotic convictions. After talking to Sirius though, who appears to be her first cousin, it turns out the woman is completely mad.
Albus frowns. "Then what sort of intelligence would you have preferred?"
"A psychological profile," he admits. The look he gets in return is entirely blank. "Mrs. Lestrange – she's mad, isn't she? What sort of madness?"
"It's the Black madness." This time Kakashi stares at him.
"All right," he says slowly, "so it's hereditary. But what does it do? Is she paranoid? Does she experience visual or auditory delusions? It appears she is a sadist – do you know if she liked to torture small animals as a child?" Albus' expression becomes increasingly pinched. He rubs the bridge of his crooked nose just below his half-moon glasses, eyes becoming a little despairing.
"Is that … of import?"
"Very much so," Kakashi says, deciding to take a little pity on the old man, "mental illness can look unpredictable, but in fact it completely controls its victim. If I know what sort of delusions she experiences, I can use them to predict her reactions with an accuracy of nearly ninety-two percent." At this the other man's eyebrows shoot up in surprise.
"That closely?"
"It's the same with everyone else – the more I know about their character, their habits, their little quirks, the easier it is to predict them. I can make you questionnaires, if that would help. Have your people fill them out – those who grew up with them, went to school with them, fought them. The more different perspectives, the better."
Albus nods slowly. "Very well, I shall tell them. I can already tell you, however, that it won't be very easy with Voldemort. Few people who fought him survived and I suspect he is … deteriorating in unpredictable ways. As you may know, his name is not even Voldemort – I am still uncertain what young mind grew into this monster."
"Do we have an age?"
"An approximation, nothing more." But there's a glint to the old man's eyes that suggests secrets. For a moment Kakashi is tempted to call him out on it, but he'll have enough work to do with the profiles of the inner circle. Let the man stew in it a little; maybe he'll come out with it on his own. Or maybe it's time to ask the Potter boy.
"You're crazy and this is completely unnecessary."
Hermione is just as unimpressed as George suspected. Ginny tries her best sad-eyes first, but they never quite seem to work on other girls; trying to stare her friend down proves just as futile. "I could ask Harry," she finally threatens, only half-serious. "I'm sure he'll be very interested in what's behind that door."
"I'm sure," the older girl agrees. "But Harry cannot aim a spell through a closed door either, so good luck with that." She's right of course; it'll only be four idiots standing in front of the door instead of three.
"Aren't you curious at all?" she finally bursts out, wrapping her arms around Hermione's middle and tugging at her beseechingly. "He has books in there he wouldn't want you to read – we just want to know what they are."
"I've never seen any of you so interested in a few books before. They're probably dangerous," is the reasonable answer. "And even I know that I might be good, but not that good. I'll keep my hands to myself, thank you very much." Ginny releases her, only to twist her braids around her hands and pull in frustration.
"I can't believe you! Where's your sense of adventure? How can you fight off dementors and ride hippogriffs during the school year and then just completely turn off during the summer?" Unexpectedly, Hermione laughs. "Because the summer is for relaxing, haven't you heard?"
Discouraged, Ginny trots back to their room. She can't give up now; not after promising the twins. They'll never let her hear the end of it, and Ginny is sure it would mean the loss of all her Weasley honor. Maybe she should go to Harry. He's not as book smart as Hermione, but he can be unexpectedly crafty. Or could she dare involve Sirius? She's reasonably certain he'd be up for some mischief, but the question is what would cause the most chaos – actually helping them or letting them run head-first into the next load of pepper bombs? Not for the first time she wishes Bill or Charlie were here, though this time for entirely different, not mum-approved, reasons.
But hey, there's no way she needs her brothers for this, right? She's a big girl. An adult, practically. In any case, far too old to go running to her brothers every time something doesn't work out. No, Ginny has a better idea. Tearing open the bedroom door, she can already hear a commotion in the sitting room a level below, the familiar noise of armchairs scraping and something knocking into the coffee table. Who needs men anyway? – or Hermione, the traitor. And so Ginny cups her hands around her mouth and yells, "Hey Tonks! Are you busy?"
It is, quite possibly, an understatement to say that she's not happy with the entire situation. And since Minerva McGonagall has never been one to beat around the bush, her words to Albus are, "Albus, I am really not happy with this situation." He merely sighs at her, procuring yet another small stack of papers from his desk. "How is this supposed to help us?" She thumbs through the new stack; a questionnaire about Lucius Malfoy that, personally, reminds her a little of the 'Does he really love you?' tests in Witch Weekly. Not that she reads the silly magazine… anymore.
…Well, she was young once too.
"Keep an open mind please, Minerva," he urges, not for the first time today. "There is in fact a remarkably accurate branch of muggle medicine on this. I'm inclined to trust Kakashi's judgment here. And it will cost us nothing but a few hours."
"How can you trust him," she bristles, flat out ignoring the last sentence, "if he has done nothing to deserve our trust? He could be a regular muggle, for all we know – leading us around by the nose."
Albus pauses, directing a very serious look at her. Minerva fidgets, feeling uncomfortably like a student all of a sudden. It's been a while since he's been displeased with her; it's an unwelcome throwback to the earlier years of their relationship.
"Have you really started doubting my judgment that much?" he wonders, sounding defeated and a little hurt. "Do you think I would induct an outsider into the Order without assessing him myself?" The 'Or do you just not trust me anymore?' goes unsaid but not unheard. She pales.
"That's not it, and you know it too. You also know, that we cannot simply trust him on your judgment alone. What do you think would have happened, if you had inducted Severus before the end of the last war? I'm certain without over a decade in between, Sirius would have not taken it lying down."
"I am certain James would have convinced him."
This time it's her who sighs. "I fear you misremember both young Severus and James Potter. They would have tolerated, but with the Mark on Severus' arm they would have trusted each other, even on your word." Something wry colors Albus' face and she watches with grim amusement how he seems to concur. "Can you imagine the disaster if they had been forced to work together?"
Because she can. Even now Sirius rails against every piece of information that Severus can wrest from You-Know-Who. 'Why would I put my life into the hands of a Death Eater?'
But Albus is right, of course. This costs them nothing but a bit of time. Right now things are reasonably quiet; maybe it will turn out to be an advantage at some point. Carefully Minerva plucks a few sheets out of the stacks for herself. 'Lucius Malfoy' one of them says, then 'Bellatrix Lestrange' and 'Peter Pettigrew'. Those are the ones she's most familiar with. Minerva throws a sad, wistful glance at Peter's moving photograph. He looks a lot younger on it – by about fourteen years. She's not looking forward to handing this one to Sirius and Remus.
Despite her own skepticism, the questionnaires are met with general amusement among the rest of the Order. Molly Weasley in particular seems pleased when Minerva asks her to hand a few of them off to Harry, Ron and Hermione.
"They will be happy to help," she remarks, neatly folding the papers in half, "maybe it'll make them less restless." And then she adds a little less optimistically, "And maybe it'll keep them from looking for trouble." Even Minerva knows that this is unlikely. But she bites her tongue and hands Arthur 'Rabastan Lestrange' and 'Lucius Malfoy', the latter of which startles a laugh out of him.
"Oh dear – I'm not certain I can be objective here."
"No need," Minerva assures him. "Most questions are objectively phrased and I have been informed that even subjective information would be useful."
For the next few days Grimmauld Place looks like the site of a large scale exam.
"Will you stop looking at my answers?" Hestia Jones hisses when Mundungus leans suspiciously towards her paper. "We don't even have the same people!"
He looks momentarily surprised. "We don't?" Remus Lupin wraps a hand around the man's upper arm and pulls him back onto his seat.
"Come on, Mundungus, you either do it by yourself or not at all." Hestia snickers at him.
"Thanks, Professor Lupin." A smile tugs at Sirius' mouth. Filling out Bella's profile is strangely cathartic. There used to be no bad blood between them – when they were five or six they'd in fact been something like friends. As much 'friends' as two Blacks can be, in any case. After years and years of resentment, he feels now strangely wistful assuring Kakashi that, no, she didn't like to torture small animals until she was at least fourteen. He's not entirely certain what happened in the intermittent eight years, but knowing uncle Cygnus, and more importantly aunt Druella, he doesn't want to know either.
It wouldn't do to hesitate against the bitch, just because they used to play catch when they were little and he couldn't stop her parents from … not hugging her often enough. Or whatever.
He tries to shake himself out of it and carefully puts 'no' behind 'Have you ever seen her talk to herself?'
"How are things going?" Moony's voice interrupts his thoughts. "Have you done Wormtail yet?"
Sirius growls. "Peter is the last on my list. Though I'm not sure how much help either of us will be – can't have known him that well, can we?" Remus sighs. He flops down on the chair next to Sirius, eyes still fixed on Mundungus. When the man makes another move to peek at Hestia's paper, he clears his throat rather loudly. The other man jumps.
"Don't think that way," he finally addresses Sirius again. "We did know him. We just … stopped knowing him somewhere along the way and didn't notice." He winces. "Ok, so that sounded better in my head."
"Less like we're the assholes?" Sirius quips. "I sure hope so." He throws the papers onto the next table with a frustrated noise. "This better be worth it."
Harry taps the paper with his pen. "And this is supposed to work?"
"Well," Hermione hedges, "it looks like he's trying to put together psychological profiles. That would be useful." She winces. "Of course we don't know how qualified he actually is, so there's that."
"I think it's at least fun," Ron announces, scrawling a big 'GIT' under Lucius Malfoy's most defining characteristic. Hermione swats him.
"Take this seriously, please! If it really does help, do you want your only contribution to be 'Lucius Malfoy is a git'?"
"It'll be true," Harry reminds her, sketching rat ears around Peter Pettigrew's head. He does remember watching a TV series or two about profiling criminals – he also remembers being very impressed with it. But now that he's older, Harry wonders how much of it was actually true and how much was simply artistic license. Or as Uncle Vernon called it even then, 'complete balderdash'.
For a moment he merely watches his friends, Ron still chewing on his pencil, Hermione jotting down note after note until she runs out of space and has to write on the back of the paper.
"Do you trust that guy?" he finally asks. Neither seem surprised by the sudden question.
"Nope," Ron says, as if it's not a big deal. "But Dumbledore does and Mum seems fine with him too. And Sirius, for that matter." Which is true. Of course his godfather loves everything that spreads chaos and anarchy on principle alone; even Harry knows that Sirius is not the paragon of good judgment that way.
"He seems very … affable," Hermione adds. "And yes, Professor Dumbledore trusts him." He must still look somewhat unconvinced because Ron wheedles, "Snape hates his guts."
Harry snorts. "All right – sold."