August 13, 1997
The oak door of the room in the Byrgen House that Jack had made his office loomed in front of me. Our father used the same room when we were growing up for the same purpose. I had gotten a lot of scoldings in here for teenage antics, mostly my use of witchweed until I got smart and started hiding my stash in a hollowed tree in the back garden. I wonder if my stash is still there?
My brother's voice boomed from the other side of the door. I had no memory of knocking, but I opened the door swiftly.
The office was nice, it was made of wood and stone with a few landscape paintings and a large window behind the desk that made Jack look almost as sinister as he imagined himself to be. The walls were lined with bookshelves and texts of law and protocols. There was a section of true crime and memoirs on one of the other oak bookcases.
Some other shelves displayed various, delicate magical knick knacks and Jack's small bag of animal bones for his occasional bouts of divination via osteomancy, he said it helped him think. I was inclined to believe it helped unfog his inner eye and give him a clear path for something he understood intuitively but could not rationalize. Throwing bones might be a way for him to confirm he was not crazy? Well, Jack was crazy, but I was not allowed to say that to anyone but my wife.
My brother was going over some papers from a box from work, the black box, where the emergency reports from the Embassy Offices were put aside for the President's viewing.
I had never been jealous of my brother, Jack trapped himself in the expectations of family years ago, I had been free in a way that he had never been.
"Hey Jack! Anything good in there?"
Jack looked at me with a raised eyebrow as he closed the box that was probably full of international secrets and espionage.
Yep. My brother and I did not discuss politics with one another. Not just our differing opinions, mine as a some kind of hippie, Jack being… well, himself, or a copy of our father, I was never sure some days. My brother and I saw each other a couple of times a year and it was enough. I was always happy to host Alex and Audrey for a week or two during the summer, especially after Araminta told me that Audrey seemed a bit lost in the shuffle of Alex's drama and much younger siblings in the house.
"Well," Jack fumbled his black box into a drawer and began to move things on his desk back to their proper place. "We need to talk-"
There was a distinctive tapping at the door announcing our father's arrival. He did not wait for Jack's permission to enter, Atticus Graves entered rooms like a storm and this was no different. He was all purpose and planning that was the hallmark of what I described to Araminta as the general Graves personality.
It took this recent family meeting for me to truly realize how old Atticus Graves was becoming. Wix live long lives, but that doesn't mean time passes over us. Hair recedes, the skin wrinkles, but it's a slower process then No-Majs until we're over a hundred, even if we have a lot of energy, there is still the fact that we can see a century before we begin to slow down a little, but there is something in my father that seems immune to that notion. Atticus Graves is a powerful warlock, his battle scars riddle his arms in a complex pattern of patriotism and antagonizing behavior. His silver hair is short and thinning but there is still something so strong in his countenance that ensures no reasonable person would cross him.
My father's accomplishments in the family business of being Auror was enough for me to know that it was not a career path for me. Jack had all of this drive on being the perfect Graves son as a young man that played a part in him becoming an Auror and that fall off a fourth story balcony that ended his career before it even truly started.
Atticus was always disappointed that the direct line of the Graves family career tradition ended with his children. It was why he made all the grandchildren learn how to duel like he did with Jack and I. Atticus has always been pushy, he wanted Alex to sit the Auror exam from the time he was fifteen, he said Alex was one of the best duelists he had ever seen. A natural, a once in a generation talent. I felt bad for the kid, Alex refusing to consider becoming an Auror was the first time he ever actually voiced an opinion on his career. I would have been more proud of Alex for doing so if it had not felt like spite against familial expectations, but who was I to judge such things? I ran away to play music in a jazz band.
I never pushed Quincy and Zuri into an Auror career. Quincy went to Auror training on his own accord, something that still horrifies Araminta and I. Zuri tried, did well in my father's eyes but realized quickly that she did not enjoy it and soon just refused to engage entirely. My daughter's a sensible girl and told him she had no desire to indulge his nonsense.
I wish I had that kind of gumption as a kid.
Atticus had been proclaiming since he started teaching Annette that she had the drive and skill of a born duelist. That she was graceful and precise in the way she moved from one stance to another the way he taught her and landed a solid stunner on Audrey before beginning school two years ago.
He never had such praise for Audrey. Over drinks one night he stated that Audrey was by far the least gifted of the batch. She was too timid. Too reluctant. Too soft.
I saw nothing wrong with softness.
Of course, who would ever hold a candle to Alex in any case?
I felt my back straighten when Atticus spoke. "Where's my chair?"
Jack summoned a thick plush chair from a small box on the bookshelf, placing it across from him on the other side of the desk as it took the proper size to be enjoyed by an old warlock. Atticus sank down into it with a contented noise.
"Perfect," Atticus sighed and looked at us, his gaze resting on Jack. "What's going on?"
"I… Need your advice about something."
Not parenting surely, this family clearly produces steller parents.
"Politics?" Atticus huffed. "I think you know more about that than I would, boy."
"You had friends in Britain during Voldemort's first rise to power right?"
Atticus nodded, "I think they're all dead now. I did a conference with some of their Aurors before the real chaos started. Nice folk. Clearly scared shitless. People would just up and disappear when Voldemort was active, the lucky families were able to find the bodies."
I was going to be sick.
"Jack," my chest was tight and I could feel the rage coming to rest there, tapered down by a sense of civility that was not earned by the conditions of this talk.
Jack's mouth tightened as if he were forcing himself to silence, but I knew Jack very well and that was not his natural state in any capacity.
"I've read the papers, yeah, we get news in New Orleans and Quincy actually sends me letters." A low blow on my part to mention that, but I did not care at the moment. I pulled a couple out of my pocket. "Dear dad, not much I can say, please know that we're all okay." I pulled the second letter out from behind the first. "Dear dad, still alive. There is weird purist shit happening on the government's orders. You know where to take this." I pulled out a pamphlet that my son had enclosed featuring a woman being strangled by vines and slammed it on Jack's desk. I had read the contents last night and I felt emptier and stupider for the experience. "What the hell is going on over there?"
Jack took the pamphlet and looked it over as if he had seen one before. Which I was sure of, Jack was through that way.
"Where is my boy?"
I could see images of Quincy growing up in my mind's eye. All toothy smiles, beautiful curly hair and skinned knees, flying on his first broom, making the Quadpot team for his house, helping me in the bar over the summer, bringing his friend Cassandra home to introduce us, and getting accepted to the Auror Apprenticeship…
"Where is Cassandra?"
Cassandra's steady intensity had been a regular presence in my home for years. Having Cassandra as a daughter-in-law was just formality, I had long considered her my third child, even if she and Quincy never decided to marry or just to stay friends she was always going to be welcome in my home.
"Why haven't you ordered them home?"
"The situation in Britain is complicated-"
"Cut the crap, Jack!" My voice was sharp. "Two years ago one of the most powerful dark wizards rose from the dead and had a year to fester before anyone did anything about it! Now the British Ministry is publishing this shit!"
I could see our father looking between the two of us as my temper rose.
"Order them home! All of them! We don't need to get involved in foreign domestic disputes or held to ransom over the lives of our children!"
"You think I don't know that!" Jack was on his feet now and looking down at me in a way that reminded me of our father, but that gleam in his eyes as he got worked up was all our mother. "But we cannot allow Seeds to be prosecuted! It goes against everything we stand for on the international stage!"
"Is Audrey still working for the Minister?"
Jack froze and I had my answer.
"What are the procedures for intervention?" Atticus spoke from his seat, drawing our attention to him before we could engage in some old fashioned brotherly beatings. "To make this an international conflict instead of a domestic issue of Seed rights?"
"Britain has never enshrined protections or support for their Seed community," Jack said slowly.
"Backwards backwater that they are," Atticus muttered with some barely masked disdain.
"We would have grounds if the government acted against citizens of Magical America," Jack continued, "but going through the government here and then the ICW would take months. We could act independently with just the approval of the states and deal with the International Confederation of Wizards later, but I don't think it would happen for a singular person's behalf. I could pull strings to instigate a vote to action from the representatives and the senate to firmly state the country's position, just in case the nonsense leaves Britain or affects our people overseas."
"You've both missed the point entirely." This family gives me a headache. I really missed my bar back in New Orleans, I vastly preferred the tourists and the ghosts to dealing with the more political aspects of my family. "I'm asking you to get our kids home."
Jack gave me a stern look. "I've told you that-"
"You've already talked to Audrey, I know. I did not think she was stupid enough to ride this out. I thought she was the smart one."
"Clearly we were all wrong about that."
"Why is she staying? It can't just be for Alex."
Alex's name was a taboo generally, he had slung a lot of metaphorical mud at Jack on his way out the door and this time was no different, but something about it was. Jack looked resigned and somehow much older for a few seconds, like stress and worry had fully taken hold for a moment and it faded just as quickly.
"She's a sensible girl," Atticus chimed in gruffly. "Mostly."
"I've been thinking about that…" Jack trailed off for a moment and I watched his eyes move towards the bone bag on the shelf.
"Ugh, don't tell me you threw bones over this?"
Jack rolled his eyes, "I had an inkling. I am positive she's staying for a boy!"
"No. She's too smart for that. When have teenaged impulses ever led Audrey around by the nose? I can't think of any time that has been an issue." I needed to get this back on topic. "Think Jack! Maybe she's still angry with you! Has that crossed your mind at all?"
It had, but he was not going to admit as much.
To my brother's credit, he did not take the bait. "Quincy and Cassandra will be fine. They're term ends next summer and that goes through our Auror Office. I will ask that they are advised to come home, but that is up to their bosses."
"I'm not even sure I'm as worried about them as I am about Audrey."
"I'll handle it."
"Handle it?" I scoffed, "You've tried that already. Good luck Jack, she's clearly as stubborn as you are! Like dad said, if this goes wrong you'll be lucky to have Alex or Audrey's bodies to bury!"
I flung the office door open before Jack could respond and caught a glimpse of mousey brown braid disappearing around a nearby corner. I would have to talk to Annette later about not getting caught while eavesdropping.
The room next to the office was far better for that kind of mischief.
Oo0Oo0
Author's Note: Jack has a little bit of sight, not a lot but enough that the act of using his preferred method of divination can help clear his inner eye to pull him in a direction and guide him if he's meandering over something.