Chapter Twenty-Two: Collared In

The Honorable Joanne Jefferson was exceedingly tired. It had, naturally, been a wretched week. First, one of the plaintiffs in a case she had been agonizing over had disappeared Monday night. The Federal Department of Investigation (FDI,) wasn’t cooperating, and given the current Presidential administration, Joanne had a nasty feeling the disappearance was neither incidental nor temporary. She had therefore made arrangements to place the other plaintiff into Witness Protection, but again, given the current administration, the request had been politely denied on the basis that it was ‘not necessary.’ Meaning, she knew, that those sons-of-bitches had other plans.

She felt no remorse whatsoever for calling in the United Coventry’s crack force of International Aurors to place the plaintiff into inextriditable, World Government-level custody. As a matter of fact, the President’s chief of staff whining like a schoolgirl on TV about the ‘gross abuse of Court power’ made her fairly chipper. This had quite predictably infuriated the Slightly Beige House, who already resented the daylights out of Joanne’s UC ties. They seemed to prefer the idea that they ran the free world, instead of the global democracy that had maintained a fair semblance of peace since the Bartlet presidency. Idiots. Wednesday through Friday had consisted primarily of damage control and dealing with members of the press, and then she had spent Saturday nursing her arthritis. Oh, it was an awful week indeed.

The Feldman administration had been pissing her off since 2000, when an abstention due to illness among two of the Court’s eldest and wisest justices had seated the Red Party in firm control of the government. Since then there had been murmurings, and not just from the Blue, that the election had been subverted. Never mind what the Muggles had been up to. In one of the rare years that magical and Muggle elections coincided, the 2004 vote was particularly disputed. Feldman’s approval rating had been a record low of 37, and yet he claimed a 52 victory. The murmurings continued, especially as a Muggle party with many Red-sympathetic positions took an eerily similar control. It was partly because of all the chaos following a weather catastrophe the next year that Feldman’s cohort had been able to take control of Congress; with Reds outnumbering Blues and almost entirely ousting the tiny third party, Green, whose only representation was an elderly Senator from West Virginia, of all places. That was 2005. Now, in 2014, with the elections at hand, that old man was one of Joanne’s last great allies.

Redfield Butler was one of those unique politicians whose very longevity causes them to consider new points of view –Butler had opposed the racial integration of wizarding schools in the 1940s, been elected to the Senate in 1957 and disagreed strongly with the Equal Rights Amendment of 1962, until, of course, his wife added her signature. In his supposedly mellow old age, Butler should have been granted the chance to sit back a bit, but conditions between Red and Blue were becoming so vicious that he did not dare rest. He had recently suffered an umpteenth defeat, with the Reds’ vote on restoring the draft –and yet still he fought, even at ninety-one years old.

Joanne had seen a picture of Senator Butler in his youth, an American Auror serving with the Allied forces against Grindelwald, and the ferocity in his eyes had, if anything, gotten worse. She also knew for a fact, well, it was actually common knowledge that Butler carried a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his pocket every day. What Joanne knew that most people did not was that Senator Butler also carried another little secret –the Chocolate Frog card of one Albus Dumbledore. She had thought this idea very sensible when Butler revealed it, (over cocoa during her presidency,) and ever since had carried a similar advisor in her compact case.

“What do you think, C.J.?” she asked Josiah Bartlet’s former Press Secretary, then Chief of Staff. “Are they really as crazy as I’m afraid they are?” Ms. Cregg’s portrait looked grave. “How on earth did you manage it? The backwardness now is the same as then, they’re just whining about different stupid things. Is there some secret the history books left out that I need to know?”

The picture frowned sadly and glanced out of the card’s printed frame. Joanne followed the gaze to the wall, where various pictures waved at her. Specifically, she noted the decades-old picture of her former bodyguard, then-Corporal C.A. Alcott of the 54th Special Operatives. Twenty years old, wearing a uniform that consisted primarily of black leather…with a facial expression that normally showed the Corporal feeling particularly pleased with her intimidating garb –i.e., grinning like a fifth-grader on Pez. Tonight, the Corporal –Colonel when she died, was just smirking that bitter smirk. Joanne knew that if things pissed Cass Tyler off, it was a day ending in ‘y,’ but if things put that dead gaze into her old friend’s eyes…well…

The phone rang.

It was the Pittsburgh Gazette-Post. Joanne wondered how they had gotten her direct number.

“Your Honor, this is Jennifer Stein. How are you this evening?”

“Pretty well. How are you?”

“I’m…struggling to find a credible source for the breaking story on the 112th U.C. I figured if anyone might know, it’d be you or yours. Speaking of, how is Ms. Johnson?”

“Actually, she broke her foot last week.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that! We’ll send down –ten pounds of Sarris chocolate sound shibby? According to our records, she likes the crisp-rice kind…”

What was with Pittsburghers and chocolate? Still, Maureen loved the stuff.

“That would be wonderful. What did you need to know?”

“Well…could you give me something on-the-record about the hundred-and-twelfth U.C.? …Something like ‘everything is fine’ would be nice, make the Tribune look bad.” The Pittsburgh Review-Tribune was the Red paper, but worse, they printed the comics page too small. Joanne smiled for the first time all day.

“In that case, everything is entirely fine. The 112th United Coventry Aurory has always been friendly toward the United States and I have every reason to believe they always will be.”

“So their entry to protected airspace means that-?”

“It likely means someone finally got Penguins tickets. Does that help at all?”

“Yes, very much. Anything else, something on the Reds’ attempt to cloture the Instant Conception Amendment?”

Joanne gave a noncommittal statement, basically hoping the Constitution would be preserved and upheld, but in a tone of voice that implied the Red Party consisted of illiterate and religious-fanatic gits, which she felt it did. Stein thanked her again, clarified the address for the chocolate, and hung up. Joanne didn’t mind respectful members of the free press, though the Red-controlled censored-news could frankly get stuffed. The PG was still free, though just barely, and they were surviving largely on a bequest from the Allegheny Estate, though that, too, had drawn conservatives’ ire. After all, a newspaper funded by the proceeds of one of the century’s finest sex manuals…it tended to offend Red sensibilities. Privately, Joanne had bought about fifteen hundred subscriptions off her own bat for supporters, to help the PG along. She didn’t especially love Pittsburgh –it rained there, nor did she really read the PG devotedly. She liked it as a by-default…and she supported it in memory of lost friends.

The phone rang again. Oh, hell, did Stein forget to get a statement about the constitutionality of crispy-rice? Her chest hurt a little bit.

“Joanne Jefferson speaking.”

“WHAT …THE …FUCK!”

“Jennifer?”

“No, she’s in the back seat! What the fuck’s going on? What IS this?”

It couldn’t be.

“…You’re dead.”

“Oh, honest to –I am not! Joanne, what is this draft notice?”

“Cass…you can’t be talking to me…you’re dead…”

“For what must be the fifteen bazillionth time, no, I’m not!” There was an awful revving noise in the background. “Joanne, I realize you’re a very important person now, I realize the government’s likely as bright as a box of hammers, and I realize this must be very startling, but could you just set aside the dead-friend’s-alive startle and explain why my daughter’s been fucking drafted?”

“…I’m sorry…huh?”

“Dear?” Maureen limped in on aluminum crutches. The lack of trustworthy mediwizards in the Capital –Maureen was not liked –alright, despised by the Red Party, had forced the sixty-two-year old to use Muggle medicine for her broken foot. “What’s wrong?”

“Dead…Cass…phone…”

Maureen grabbed the cordless with her usual cool.

“Who is this?”

“Maureen, it’s Cass Tyler. Did Joanne pass out?”

The former Chairperson went ashen. Joanne gestured as if to say ‘See! Told you!’

“No, but…are you suddenly not dead?”

A spectacular line of cursewords emanated from the phone. The phrases ‘bugger,’ ‘spam dance,’ ‘bloody,’ ‘sheep carcass’ and ‘hamster balls’ were prominently featured and a grand finale of ‘with a spork!’ shattered Joanne’s calm. The Chief Justice cracked up laughing.

“Do I have to bloody well prove I’m here?”

“I…it’s just…you…alive…”

There was a knocking on the window and then a deafening crash of glass.

“I told you I can’t parallel-park yet, Mom!”

“Michelle, that is so far beside the point- See! Told you!”

In the middle of the front seat of a black flying car, cellular phone in hand and arrogant smirk on face, was Cass Tyler. “Say it with me, girls!”

“She’s not dead!” three teenage girls chorused, one of whom sounded awfully sheepish…the auburn-haired one, in fact, the one driving. John Tyler waved from the back seat.

“Your Honor, Your Excellence,” he greeted, then looked around, distracted. “…My little girl really can’t parallel-park, can she? It is genetic.”

“And yet I can be drafted. You had to have me in the States…”

“This… Michelle?” Joanne recovered her calm and did the only logical thing, which was to put out a hand and help the teenager out of the slightly scratched Dingo.

“It’s nice to meet you, Your Honor.”

“You’ve been drafted?”

“And I quote, ‘is to report to Sabreton no later than October first for basic training.’ She’s sixteen years old, Jo. Can’t you keep those assholes tranquilized or something?”

“Congress passed it by thirty votes. The Court was never called into it,” Maureen explained. “And who are these-?”

“These are my goddaughters –and my cadets, incidentally!” Cass hopped indelicately out of the car, now parked on the balcony. “112th U.C. Training Corps Special Ops. They’re World Aurors and I’m not ceding ‘em.”

“…I meant their names.”

“Julia Snape, ma’am.” Maureen smiled knowingly, not quite hiding a glance over Julie’s nose as the girl climbed out.

“Ah, the Professors Snape’s daughter. That means you must be Jennifer-”

“Weasley,” Jen finished preemptively. “Your Excellency.”

“Call me Maureen, kiddo. Everybody does.” The former world leader lit a cigarette, at which point the other former world leader took it away from her and transfigured it into a stick of gum. “Oh, for god’s sake…”

“You’ve been trying to quit for how long?”

“Fine.”

“You actually got her to try quitting. Wow.” Cass sounded impressed. “How long?”

“Easily ten years without a damn smoke,” Maureen growled. “Now how is it that you’re not dead?”

There was a long silence.

“A long story,” Mitchie observed. “But –uh, first…er…how come I just got drafted?”

“Also a long story.” Joanne pressed a button on the desk speakerbox and ordered some drinks brought up. “Basically, what I suspect…I think Feldman’s preparing to break with the U.C. and invade one of the Middle East dictatorships. Trouble is, the Home Guard is practically skeletal and even with a 67 cut in student loans, ol’ Feldy can’t get his troop numbers up.”

Calling the President ‘Old Feldy’ was a little sharp, considering Joanne was almost twenty years the man’s senior. Of course, Maureen’s next comment made it look civilized:

“That’s not the only thing he can’t…girls, right, sorry.”

“Hey, they’re cool with the dirty jokes. This one’s mine, after all.” Cass thumped Mitchie’s shoulder as the teenager frowned.

“Wait…isn’t that what the Muggles did when I was five or six? The invasion thing?”

“Exactly what the Muggles did. In fact, I don’t think that’s a coincidence, either. Alden Feldman was elected the same year as –whatever his name was, and their politics are amazingly similar. If I didn’t know that such a thing would be high treason and punishable by execution, I’d swear the Red Party was manipulating the Muggle element as a practice run.”

“No,” Mitchie breathed.

“Actually, yeah, that’s what Sevvy thinks,” Cass assented blithely. “I mean, seriously. What kind of President sends a ‘special secret team’ that consists of high players’ kids from the Potter War? Come on. Either the sonofabitch saw one too many ‘Charlie’s Angels’ reruns, or that was some disgustingly weird action.” The looks on the girls’ faces were somewhat nasty to watch as they realized they’d been tricked. “Especially considering that de Diablo fella was essentially for everything the Reds are against in the foreign policy front to the south and rather Blue in his less relevant opinions.”

“Huh?” Jen looked confused and Julie looked shattered. Mitchie looked furious.

“You mean to tell me that guy he told us was some nutjob was actually-”

“An inconvenient activist scapegoated by a censored, corporation press? So little of a genuine threat that the decoy force of teenage girls took him out? Your political ally?” Cass gestured with a finger across her throat, but there was sometimes no stopping Maureen’s bluntness. “Duh!” It was confusing how she had ever been elected –there simply was no tact. The black-haired girl’s eyes were wide and slowly brightening.

“I killed a good guy?” she gasped.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Julie, could you be more blonde and still look like that?” Mitchie growled. “They fucking set us up. Repub- Red bastards!”

“She cusses like you, Cassie! It’s adorable!” Maureen clapped her hands and Cass glared daggers. “You sounded Muggle there for a minute, kiddo.”

“I grew up with some! Don’t flippin’ believe those…” Mitchie’s cursing went low and incoherent, but one could almost swear she said ‘tap-dancing squirrel-fuckers’ at one point. Jen interrupted somewhere before that, though:

“Excuse me for being English, but exactly what does all this add up to? The Red Party used us to get rid of an inconvenient lobbyist?”

“Well, not quite a lobbyist, but yes, essentially they did.”

“Alright. Now, why us?” Mitchie’s voice really did resemble her mother’s.

“I expect, given the fact that there was no way to get actual members of the Potter War forces to work for them, and given that we were assumed dead and therefore had the gloss of hero-ized memory, the trouble any conservative party has getting the youth on their side, and of course the fact that things were so stirred up by Miss Snape’s rather unusual entrance into society…I think they just figured you girls were too young or too distracted to notice the fishy bits, and yet you had more or less the credibility of your supposedly august forebears.”

Joanne and Maureen stared.

“John…”

“Oh, I could always talk. I just don’t do it much.” He grinned with a gentle, wry sarcasm. “I don’t like people working on name-recognition. A name can be scraped off and pasted onto anything…like a pickle jar.” John put an arm around his wife in an unusually snuggly way, given the circumstance. “I bet there are some people who equate us with conservatives, because we’re allegedly dead and we’re often mistaken for war heroes.”

“I can’t picture us as conservative. Dead, perhaps, but not conservative. The one implies the other. But that’s true. The Reds wave the bloody shirt ‘til the original meaning’s lost.”

“You mean they’re using your names to try and get people on their side?” Jen asked.

“Hey…they think we’re dead. Dead people are unlikely to complain, ‘less they stick around as ghosts. Or portraits.” John frowned thoughtfully. “That’s an idea. But yeah, that’s a common thing. Take the 1950s…the story of Helen Keller was added to American kids’ textbooks as an example of American hard work and overcoming adversity, sure proof that they’d beat down the Communists. Nobody mentioned that dear old Helen was close friends with Eugene V. Debs and a self-proclaimed Socialist. Names are labels.”

“I really must not make a joke now about Helen Keller’s also being an example to young Alabamans trying to read, write and speak. Mustn’t.” Maureen smiled. “I honestly don’t know why we don’t leave this miserable country, Jo. It’s got a rather crap government.”

“Hey, ‘no man, no madness,’ Mo. It’s not the government that’s lousy…it’s the asshats contained within.” Cass made a strange gesture, twisting her hand upward in the air. “I still think the States have some potential as a country.”

“You call it that. That says a lot, Cassie.” Joanne’s smile had a bittersweet edge to it. “You know full well they couldn’t touch your daughter if you simply refused to come back. And it isn’t like you don’t have an awful lot of British in you by now.” Cass went suddenly very stiff, but the Chief Justice missed it. “You’ve got goddaughters with accents, a house there…”

“There’s still something worth saving here,” John Tyler insisted softly. “Don’t ask me what it is, because there will never be words for it. It isn’t the patriotic crap like the red, white and blue, or some notion of freedom that half the government forgets and the other half can’t fight for because of the symbols and colors and black-white mentality. Actually, if anything, I think the sheer cussedness of America is worth fighting for. A nation where at least a fifth of the country literally hates another third’s living guts? A country where unity and independence can fit in the same speech and nobody thinks it’s odd? It’s the one place where a person can be a complete prince and a total asshole at the same time, without even changing shirts. You see it all the time. A man gives to charity, fights for some one-true-cause, works tirelessly to advance some noble and perfect goal –and then goes out the same day to counter some other one-true-cause because he thinks a new use of a word is wrong.”

“I don’t believe that’s possible,” Jen looked confused. “Or if so, how?”

“Christian conservatives routinely raise millions for orphaned children, then spend millions fighting to keep the ban tight on gay marriage. A liberal mind could argue that gay couples, as adoptive parents, could fix the orphan problem and a million dollars saved. Then, of course, Christian liberals routinely raise millions for unwed mothers and spend millions fighting to keep reproductive choice legal. A conservative mind could argue that abortions could fix the unwed mother problem and millions upon millions saved.” Joanne’s eyebrow had started to slowly raise during Cass’s little speech and she quietly dialed a cellular telephone with one thumb. “Picture a yin-yang, in red and blue, spinning so fast you just see a purple blur. Or two dragons, eating each other up teeth to tail. That’s America, more or less. Nobody will ever admit to being wrong, and noone can ever prove being right. …Human nature’s awfully strong, and freedom’s a door that lets in both hornets and butterflies when opened. And yeah, maybe it’s better to let it burn, but I have rather a liberal mind. I’d like to try and make something good with all that sheer-cussed energy. Like…I d’know, solve the crisis they’re having for lack of it?”

“Did you hear that?” Joanne asked of the phone, putting it back to her ear. Cass stared. “Yes, born there, still owns an apartment house. Age…oh, mid- to late thirties…” The Chief Justice smiled. “Yes, married, with one daughter…yep… Distinguished Aurory background, looks fairly good in the uniform…Cass, they want to talk to you.”

“Huh?” The werewolf accepted the phone and put it to her ear. “Who is this?” John put two and two together and began to laugh silently, muffling the sound with his sleeve even as mirth shook him violently. Mitchie looked vaguely intrigued and Julie more mortally confused. Jen looked apprehensive and Maureen had to have another cigarette confiscated by her wife. Joanne just grinned like a five-year-old with a full box of M&Ms. “Oh…yes, I could move…you want me to what?”

In a very rare moment of sudden action, John sprang up from the desktop where he had been sitting, took the phone, listened even as Cass tried to snatch it back, and grinned broadly.

“She accepts. Oh, yes…I’m her husband. Yes, she accepts. Thanks a lot! You have a good night, now.” With a ‘beep,’ he hung up the tiny phone, still grinning a pleased, almost snarky smile at an increasingly enraged Cass.

“I don’t fucking believe you just…”

“You should do it. You will do it, I know you can.”

“I will tie you to a bedpost is what I’ll do!” Cass roared. John was more or less unimpressed.

“Oh, only if I’m especially good.”

Mitchie let out a strangled noise and covered her ears. Jen started to smile.

“What in the name of all sense made you do that now? I can’t accept this, those mad idiots don’t-”

“They know exactly what they’re doing and so do you. I know you’re going to fight this every step of the way. You fight everything unless someone picks you up by the scruff of your neck and throws you into the thick of it.” John kissed her forehead. “Consider this a light underhand toss.”

“Damn straight a tosser is what you are, bloody signing me up to bugger all-”

“You’ll make a great Senator.”

“Senator?” Jen gasped, amazed. Talk about nut jobs in government!

Maureen snorted unkindly and handed Joanne a folded bill.

“Told you I’d find someone,” the Chief Justice smirked.

“I’ll make a great expatriate if you think you can somehow-” John lifted Cass’s chin up with two fingers so he could see her eyes, “make…me…go…oh, hells.”

And then, quite predictably, the pair fell to snogging. Maureen and Joanne’s heads wound up on each other’s shoulders in the ‘aww’ moment, Julie looked none too surprised and a bit impressed, Jen was still wrapping her mind around the concept of the Colonel in government, and Mitchie was behind Joanne’s desk, hands on her ears, twitching.

“Don’t want to know, don’t want to know, don’t want to know,” she mumbled. It was only about a split second after her parents stopped for air that they remembered –she, too, could understand Wolfish.

“Umm…” Cass went red.

“Er…” John looked sheepish and ran a hand through his hair. Mitchie glared at them as if they’d been mentioning horrid surgical techniques in the middle of a meal.

“REALLY don’t want to know!” The secret language started to back-and-forth even as the full-humans started conversing on other things in English.

‘I thought you knew most werewolves liked collars, dear.’ John observed.

‘Oh, gods! You two are…I’m the one’s supposed to be a hormonal ball of lust! What are you, teenagers?”

“Actually, I have a nasty suspicion that you’ll be worse in about three years,” Cass remarked ruefully. “Anything like me, you’re fighting these same impulses like hell.”

“What did you do? Just…give up?”

“Essentially,” John purred.

“Funny what you gain when you lose control,” Cass agreed.

“You two are too kinky to be believed. Thank the gods real life hasn’t got subtitles.”

“Sure it hasn’t?” John remarked, gesturing at Julie and Jen, who had noticed their friend’s apparent silence and looked confused. Mitchie stopped, seemed to realize something, and slowly smiled.

“I love you guys.”

“And we love you, dear.”

“Of course, I’d prefer not to have such a literal idea of my origins…”

“Knowledge is power. After all, we’re professors, and…” Cass chose to stop at that moment, given that her daughter’s head did have the theoretical potential to explode. That, and the ordinary humans were really starting to stare at them. She grinned. “So, I hear Alden Feldman’s a jackass. What’s up with that?”