A Day in the Life of Jess Potter

There was rarely a more satisfying scene to witness than watching a man squirm. To Remy, it was the ultimate payoff for all the work she did to get them to that point. The best part about this situation was that she hadn’t had to do much at all; Jess had all but set himself up for this one. Jess looked embarrassed, and Remy reveled in it. It was amusing to see what a hold emotions had over people that actually experienced them.

“Don’t worry about it, love,” Remy replied smoothly when Jess had groveled a satisfactory amount. There was no reason to torment the man – she was, after all, trying to get information out of him – but letting him believe he had said something inappropriate might make him more anxious to get on a subject he felt more comfortable with, such as his own life and the lives of the Order.

It seemed that her question about his job was just what Jess needed to start talking, and Remy let him do so as she took the first bite of her oatmeal. She found the oatmeal undercooked and had to chew at the grains, but the sugar made it palatable. Following this bite with coffee, Remy nodded with imitation empathy at Jess’s plight, acting as though she could sympathize with his situation. While it was true that she well understood the concept of disliking the people you work with – that imbecile that was Vito’s other bartender at Satan’s was a walking joke that served no other purpose than to be Vito’s whipping boy – Remy wasn’t capable of the type of sympathy she was mimicking now for Jess’s benefit. Her ‘sincere’ looks, though, were enough to keep him talking, and Remy was able to realize a bit more of Jess’s situation.

“I can imagine that puts you in a difficult situation,” Remy replied in an ‘I’m-on-your-side’ kind of way. It was a standard line she had offered up to countless bar patrons, the words as empty this time as it had been all of this, but Jess didn’t need to know that. It seemed that he was enjoying this chance to put his problems out to the world, just as so many others did. It was the reason why Remy always knew so much; no one suspected that the attractive bartender or party-goer with the sultry smile and friendly ear would ever have ulterior motives for wanting to know their life stories. She just came across as someone ‘safe’; someone far enough removed from their ‘real world’ that telling her their secrets wouldn’t matter.

And Jess, it turned out, was really on a roll. Without warning, Jess let fall from his lips another secret that had nothing to do with his job, or seemingly with anything they had been talking about. Instead, he had divulged that he missed someone named Mari, with whom Remy was unfamiliar, but from the tone of his voice, Remy could guess where the missing came from.

Stupid men and their hang ups about women, Remy thought, though she kept her expression one of carefully constructed sympathy, Unless this Mari can have sex for hours standing on her head while simultaneously cooking a five course meal, she’s probably nothing to miss.

But of course, Remy was not about to say this to Jess, not when he seemed to be in a revealing mood. Remy had no ambition to talk about lost loves, but she would do it if it would eventually bring Jess to give her what she wanted (or rather, what the Death Eaters wanted and what she needed to be able to impress them and therefore reap rewards for herself).

“Lost love?” Remy asked humanely, extending her hand part way across the table in a gesture that was meant to imply that she was ‘there for him’, or whatever that nonsense was. She had seen it in a movie once, and it had worked like magic then.

“Hogwarts sweethearts, perhaps?” Remy probed discreetly. She really didn’t give two knuts when or how Jess had met this Mari, or who she was for that matter, but maybe this could – in an exceedingly roundabout way – work in her favor.

((Yours post made me lol. Lololol))
Jess couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief as Remy let it go, he'd felt a little awkward when she'd revealed he'd just dissed her profession, however he had tried his best to backtrack, without completely losing face. Probably too late for that anyway. "Thanks," he said after short pause, with a small smile flashed her way, he was glad she'd not pursued the matter.

Jess nodded as she agreed with him, it did feel nice to have someone on his side, he had to admit. Right now he'd been feeling quite alone, quite as if no one really cared, despite their major differences, he couldn't help but feel an inkling of warmth towards Remy. Not one of Romance, no, that was an avenue he steered away from most days, but one of friendship.

Hearing her questions he snapped out of his dreary mood, shrugging a little and shooting shy look her way. "We met in Hogwarts, yes," he replied, but he said that as he shook his head. "But we both left, it was a Hogwarts thing, but no longer," he told her with a smile.

"Ah Hogwarts," he said quietly, looking off into a near distance, reminiscing his time there. "Tell me," he said, "What was Hogwarts like when you were there?" he asked. "It was fun when I was there, I remember that it was the time of my life, that it was where I was the most happy," he said, sounding quite vague as he thought about the past.

"I hear things are different now though, I think you'd know a little more about that," he said, lightly tapping his nose and winking at her. "I've heard from... friends," he told her with a chuckle.

Jess was looking demure again when Remy inquired about his sudden revelation about the mysterious Mari. But he was not shy enough to withhold information about what he had been saying. Even if the original information had been a slip up, something in Jess had loosened his tongue and allowed him to provide further information on the subject. As Remy had predicted, Jess and this Mari had met at Hogwarts, where it seemed everyone found their “one true love” or whatever nonsense people were spewing now-a-days.

Remy smiled at Jess’s reminiscence of better days at Hogwarts, seeming supportive on the exterior but finding an entirely different and much more personal reason to smile. Jess’s prompt to tell him what Hogwarts had been like when she had been a student was sparking Remy’s memory of the time she had spent in the castle. Remy had been plucked from the-middle-of-nowhere and selected to attend Hogwarts, which came as a complete shock to both Remy, who had never shown the slightest indication of having any magical powers, and even more so to the elderly muggle couple that had raised her on their farm after she was dropped off there by someone that had never come back.

When she got to Hogwarts, all the others students had already had exposure to the magical world from having grown up in it. At first, Remy thought of this as the reasoning behind her near complete ineptitude at anything magically related. In charms, she could levitate nothing heavier than a small pebble, and transfiguration had been a nightmare once they moved past changing the color of everyday objects. While other students rose to the occasion, Remy tried unsuccessfully to stare her wand into submission.

As one might have expected, that tactic didn’t turn out to be so successful, so Remy began looking into other means of getting through her classes. For the first few years, she was still cute and young enough to use her innocence to waylay professors into ignoring her mistakes and to convince older students to do much of her work for her. As she got older, however, the cuteness wore off and new tactics had to be developed. As she got older, she started to buy off her male peers with promises of “extracurricular activities” behind the greenhouses, and in one fateful step she jumped the gap between bribing students to bribing teachers, using the same subset of skills. It was in this way that she managed to get through seven years of Hogwarts education without being able to produce so much as a minor cheering charm. It was rather a point of personal pride that Hogwarts had graduated her without her doing any of her own work, or even being capable of producing anything more than rudimentary magic.

The only academic subjects she had ever really excelled in were those that required no real magical ability: herbology, care of magical creatures, potions (to a certain extent), and divination (which was really just a lesson in lying convincingly, which Remy had already discovered she was good at.) And because her “studying” meant she was actually engaging in a much more physical activity, Remy had plenty of memories of Hogwarts that brought a sly smile to her face, but none of them were tales she was going to tell to Jess.

“It was certainly fun,” Remy said wryly, a small smirk playing on her freckled features, “And I think we all miss it after we’ve graduated.”

Hah. I don’t miss that place at all. My talents are put to much better use earning me power, protection, and payment than they ever were earning a trivial Exceeds Expectations. Not that I didn’t earn that grade… I am certain they always found me to exceed expectations…

Although her response was meant to put Jess and herself on the same side of the situation, Jess had somehow steered it toward highlighting the differences between them again. Remy was frustrated by this turn of the conversation that she had neither orchestrated nor approved, but she wasn’t about to let Jess know that. He was doing those trying gestures again, the winking and the nose tapping and the other trivial bullshit, which only added to Remy’s ire and made her mind come up with a long string of barbed comments about the stupidity of the male gender as a whole, but Remy never said these things aloud. Oh yes, she thought them, she couldn’t help but think them because they were the absolute truth, but no one ever got ahead in life by insulting the people with power.

“Well, I did teach Care of Magical Creatures for a time,” Remy replied simply, pretending that she believed this is what Jess had been referring to when he had suggested she knew more about Hogwarts than he did, blatantly ignoring the obvious implication of his words that Jess had intended to confer, “But that position has been filled by several other individuals since my brief stint there. So really, my lack of direct connection with the school and staff puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to knowing what is going on there.”

“But surely your high-status position within the ministry affords you some knowledge of the goings-on of Hogwarts?” Remy inquired nonchalantly, sliding the ego-boosting compliment of Jess’s high-status position into her inquiry both to distract him from his further line of questioning and to encourage him to reveal what he might know of the ministry and order’s involvement in the school. That information would be much more worthwhile to report to the Death Eaters with than the fact that Jess was frustrated at work.

Jess raised an eyebrow as she asked the question and thought for a moment, what he knew was speculated by many, almost all in fact, however few had gone so far as to confirm it. It was a rather sore point for Jess, and he wasn't one to let an opportunity to share his views on the school go by.

"Well," he said slowly, trying to think of what would be appropriate to tell her, knowing her position in society and how it related with his own, still, he saw few risks in the idle gossip they seemed to be sharing, and most of the information he had would be of little use to any of his enemies anyway.

"Well," he repeated, "What's been said of late is true, the Ministry doesn't know much about what goes on in Hogwarts at all," he told her, "Though what I know through the Ministry and what I know are two completely different things," he said, before realising the slip he'd made. "The paper... I mean, gives a few more ideas on what's happening, and I've heard from friends who's children attend the school," he told her, lies of course, but letting slip that he had sources inside the castle was not a move he wanted to make. Perhaps dropping a false trail would work slightly more effectively.

"Mind you," he said, thinking on his feet here, "What I know and what I share with the Ministry are also two different things, so maybe that can... uh... explain... things." He said, feeling a sense of absolute horror in himself, in trying to cover up a minor bluff, one that the Death Eaters probably already suspected, he'd let slip a terrible truth, one that he had certainly not intended on sharing with anyone, not even the Order itself.

"How about yourself?" He asked quickly, "What was the school like when you were there?" He asked, knowing all too late that he had stuffed up majorly. He considered leaving, but that would serve only to strengthen any conclusions Remy might have made.

((Sorry it's crap, rushed for bedtime ))

Jess was somewhat hesitant to answer Remy’s question, but as she had predicted, he couldn’t help himself. That was Jess’s problem: he cared too much. And if you gave him the opportunity to show how much he cared, he always, always took it. Remy couldn’t understand Jess’s passion for the plight of the school, but that didn’t mean she would hesitate to use it to her advantage.

Remy leaned slightly forward as Jess began his answer, inviting him to be open with her, though he shortly proved that he needed no invitation. At first, his answer seemed to be nothing useful – if the ministry didn’t know anything that was going on at Hogwarts, that instantly made Jess less knowledgeable by association. However, Jess’s next sentence – which perhaps had seemed off-handed to him – left Remy stifling the urge to smirk deeply. Jess had unknowingly just admitted a key piece of information, and Remy realized it a few seconds before he himself did.

Jess had said that the ministry knew nothing of the goings on at Hogwarts, but that he did. Which meant, quid pro quo, that the Order was interfering with the affairs of Hogwarts. This would be key information for the Death Eaters, especially since the new and highly ornate plan involved Hogwarts in a very distinct way. Knowing that the Order would be a faction to compete with in that arena would serve to make the Death Eaters more cautious and less vulnerable to any surprises Jess and his cohorts might have had in mind.

Remy would have preferred to prod Jess further on the subject, but when she saw realization flicker over his face and his dismal attempt to cover up what he had just said, the dark-haired Death Eater knew that route wouldn’t be feasible. Jess hadn’t known initially but had quickly realized the error he had made in revealing this information to Remy, a woman he didn’t know all that well in truth, and was trying (and failing) to cover it up.

“Yes, of course,” Remy said to placate Jess, her new plan now that further inquiry would not be possible on the subject, “The Daily Prophet is very interested in the affairs of Hogwarts, and it seems to be on the tongue of nearly everyone with any ties at all to it – whether alumni or parents of current students. Completely understandable,” she reassured, successfully controlling the urge to let sarcasm leak into her voice.

Remy knew Jess was really trying to dig himself out of a hole when he repeated the same question he had just asked – what Hogwarts was like when she was there – and he seemed to have really lost his grips on the control he usually held. Remy was delighted to see him squirm – twice in the same breakfast, and her birthday wasn’t even until next week – but there would be time to relish in that later. For now, she needed to play along and see if there would be any more crumbs to take back to Ellidir and Grindelwald.

“Nothing like it is today, I’m sure,” Remy replied, not even commenting on the fact that Jess had asked the same question twice. No reason to let him know she was on to him. It would be better to let him believe he had covered up his error and that she was not perceptive enough to notice such things, “That was a calmer time, what with the fall of Voldemort and everyone’s relief at finally having achieved some sort of equilibrium between grieving for those lost and celebrating a better future.”

“But certainly we should not spend our entire morning meal discussing things lost past,” Remy segued, helping Jess out by turning the conversation away from his glaring error, “Do you have any plans for the summer? Perhaps taking some time away from the ministry to enjoy the warm weather?”

Ugh. Small talk. I hate small talk. And this oatmeal is bland. If Jess wasn’t the head of the Order, and I wasn’t here under direct orders, I would have blown this joint 10 minutes ago.