Two Months in Ottawa on Alumni

Joe Umland

May 04, 2020 6:36 PM

Two Months in Ottawa by Joe Umland

Parliament Hill, Joe wrote, as he looked out over a view which included that landmark, is just as grand as it looks in the books. Unfortunately, I am nowhere near important enough to go anywhere near it.
* * * * * * * *
"Ommand, you said? Can you spell that?"

"Um-land," repeated Joe, trying to emphasize the missing sounds. "U-m-l-a-n-d - like it was a country for umlauts."

This remark got him only a blank look in response. Joe suspected it was less a case of the frazzled-looking young woman not knowing what an umlaut was and more a case of Joe not being particularly funny.

Of course, it was also possible that she had simply not heard him properly. Every inch of air, it seemed, was disturbed by sound waves: feet moving, voices humming, fireplaces roaring with emerald green flames, howls hooting, memos flying...at that very moment, a voice raised above it all, someone declaring that "I don't give a damn about - " before the speaker was either cut off, thought the better of shouting, or was just swallowed by the general clamor.

To Joe's surprise, the woman's face softened slightly, into something almost like a smile. "First time here, then?" she asked.

"That obvious?" he asked with a self-deprecating grin.

"A bit, yeah," she said. "Don't worry - most of the time it's quieter elsewhere than it is down here. Except the staff canteen on Chirstmas. Don't go to the staff canteen on Christmas without your wand - that's the most important rule about this place, and it's not in any of the handbooks!"

"I hope I'm back in Calgary by then," said Joe, "but thank you for the warning."

* * * * * * * *
The first thing I learned here is that you and I were right all along about John - that is to say, that the man is objectively a menace to society. No less an authority than the Canadian government thinks that association with him is the sort of thing one has to formally disclose!

(Really it's just with expat relatives in general, though you know what he'd think if I told him about it - since he's just a hop over the border, and I was American-educated too, he'd get it into his head that the government thinks William brought in an American spy! Which I doubt William would mind if they did; it would at least shake things up a bit here.)
* * * * * * * *
If Julian said that she had some reason to be concerned that her husband might run around on her if given the chance, then Joe believed her. His sister was many things, but utterly irrational and paranoid was not usually one of them - that was John's role in the family, and sometimes Paul's. Not Julian's. However, as far as he could tell, William seemed totally committed to his new job, to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Admittedly, the furthest Joe could tell was not an outstanding distance. He spent most of his time doing the no doubt deeply important work of filing records related to Splinching incidents. This was mostly as expected, and had no overlap with what William was doing in the capacity of an advisor to one of the western region’s elders in the Council of Canadian Wizards. However, William seemed to bring a lot of files home with him, in addition to spending parts of the evening running back and forth to talk to heads bobbing in the fireplace or respond to owls, and when he did go out to events, he returned solitary and sober, and usually immediately curious about whether any messages had arrived.

“It is a good opportunity for him,” said Peggy Archer when Joe somehow found himself remarking to her that he had never known William was such a hard worker. “And to think Ted almost disowned him when he took his last job! But then, none of us could have seen Julian coming, then.”

Peggy was one of the strangest pureblood women Joe had ever met. At first, he had been very careful to avoid her and her brother as far as possible, and to always try to look and sound as submissive as possible and to remember to call her ‘Ms. Archer’ when he could not avoid her, but that had hardly had time to rankle before she had told him to give over with that and just call her Peggy – everyone did, after all, and he was clearly part of everyone, and therefore ought not do otherwise. It was logic he might have expected from John, but not from a pureblood woman – even a divorcee. And she seemed to know everything about everyone and have no compunctions against gossiping with whomever happened to stand next to her long enough.

“Disown him?” asked Joe, curious, now.

“Oh – not like that. No. We’re hardly related at all. Will was just Teddy’s elf at school – “

“His what?”

“Elf,” said Peggy, looking amazed that this made no sense to Joe. “Is it not a practice in America, then? At school, beginners – well, the more ambitious ones, anyway – would try to get attached to an older student, and wait on them, so we called them house-elves. Will did everything Ted said for – gosh, we were fifth years when he was a first year…three years I suppose.”

“We didn’t do that at Sonora, anyway,” said Joe, thinking he suddenly had whole new levels of insight into why his mother had thought it would be tantamount to murder to send John to school closer to home. He could not say for sure what would happen if someone referred to John as a house-elf, but somehow, he suspected the speaker would not enjoy the experience. “At least not in my House.”

“Oh. That’s too bad. It really is a very good system, you know, especially for those from – well – more modest backgrounds. You made connections that way – Teddy got Will his first job, didn’t you know? Though goodness, Teddy was upset when Will started thinking for himself – Ted told him that the Muggle enforcement thing was a terrible idea, that the way the winds were turning, it would be too easy to make the whole department out as villains.” Joe thought of his brother again and conceded silently that Teddy might have had a point. “But Will did it anyhow, and they barely spoke for a year! Julian does help with the optics, though, with the way you all grew up...."

They didn’t have cause to run into each other for several days after that, so it was an utter surprise when one morning, she appeared in the kitchen – already smartly dressed, gingery-dark hair curled around her strong-jawed, slightly pointed face; that was another thing about Peggy, that she wasn’t objectively particularly pretty at all, but one tended to forget it once she started talking – and interrupted Joe’s breakfast of egg sandwiches and lapsang souchong to announce, “I’m having a small get-together with some friends tonight, now, Joe, and I will be absolutely furious if you go lurk upstairs like you have the other times we’ve had guests. There’s at least three people you simply must meet.”
* * * * * * * *
William continues to show no evidence of whoring, Joe wrote to Julian in the first week of July, but I am another story. You wouldn't believe the amount of socializing I've somehow fallen into. I actually thought for a moment about buying unnecessary shoes just for aesthetics the other day, though the thought of the noise John would no doubt make if he heard it had even occurred to me stopped me before I actually did anything foolish.

It seems that Peggy, William, or both have somehow convinced any number of people that if I give an opinion, that is the same as hearing yours – and you, unlike me, are legally recognized, now, as a member of a prominent magical family which traditionally sends representatives in here at an alarming rate. Also I think some of them may think I’m Peggy and Ted’s half-brother. Several have remarked that I look a bit like him, but surely they can’t think I’m his son – they may not have many biologists around, but I assume most of them can count. Either way, if I am not careful, I might end up somehow accidentally founding a House Umland at a garden party, and then John would kill us both.

* * * * * * * *
Joe never told Julian why her august ancestors were on his mind, and he didn’t plan to ever do so. He didn’t even know himself, after all, why he kept going to the Council gallery, with its photographs of notable past members, and sitting down to look at the picture someone had hung there of Julian’s biological father.

If Joe had ever had any polite skepticism about the chances of a powerful pureblood gent being Julian’s father, it was dismissed the first time he laid eyes on that picture. The resemblance was pointed and a tad creepy, if he was to be honest. The man on the wall had already been graying (though curiously, the dates on his picture indicated he’d been seventy when he died, not very old at all) when he’d sat for the portrait, and his face was somewhat lined and he looked like an utterly humorless, dried-in old stick – in these ways, he resembled Julian not at all. In almost every other particular, though…the exact color of his remaining dark hairs, that was the same as Julian’s. The blue eyes, the nose, the round face, the ever-so-slight prominence of the cheekbones – those were all Julian’s features, strangely grafted onto an old man though they seemed. Had the photographed smiled, Joe would not have been surprised had Richard Crowley demonstrated the same slight unevenness of one tooth on the right side that Julian had. The old man did not smile, though, just peered severely out at the world, as though looking for someone to punish for the slightest infraction of the rules, despite the fact he had been spending some of his off days having kids with at least one woman who had not been his wife.

“Strong resemblance, isn’t it?” said his brother-in-law’s voice from behind him one day while he was studying Richard Crowley yet again, startling him.

“Jesus, William,” he muttered. “What are you doing here?”

William didn’t answer, instead stepping up alongside him to also study the picture. “He was a great wizard, Richard was,” he said. “Not as great as his father, they say, but he did well. Quite prominent in experimental potions – his widow, Margaret, still gets the proceeds from the potions he patented. Funny thing, though – they say it’s what killed him.”

“His own work?”

“More or less. Experimental potions – dodgy field. Well, all the experimental fields are, really, but that one…poisonous smoke, the story goes. Not that it killed him directly – it just set off some hereditary condition. Twenty, thirty years around it, and not a problem – and then when it hit him, it hit him hard and fast, they say. He left this place a month after he was diagnosed, went back to research – and then whoever got hold of what he was working on after he died actually concocted a reasonably effective treatment for the condition that killed him. So I suppose you could say that spending time in politics killed him as much as anything else, too.”

“Might be a moral in that,” said Joe.

“One you’re planning to take to heart?”

“Probably not,” admitted Joe, and William laughed.

“Fair enough.” He studied his semi-father-in-law another moment, then said, “So what’s the dream, hm? Why do you want to be here?”

“Got to make a living somehow,” said Joe with a shrug. “The civil service might not be quite as stable as the funeral business, but it’s a close second.”

William laughed. "That's not a common reason for coming here," he observed. "Most people either come here because they believe in something...or because their father was here...or because they're ambitious."

Joe shrugged again. "Short of the revolution, I'm setting myself up for disappointment if I get too ambitious," he said bluntly. "The game's fixed - and I think it's probably for the best that it is." He admitted this almost without expression. It was, after all. The system was horrible - the game was fixed in such a way that the purebloods would cling to their power in North America for another century or two at least - but it was stable, enough so that he didn't have to worry about one of his brothers starting a cult to smash the game board when he had two brothers he thought might be capable of such things, in another world. "But if I'm with you and Julian, then maybe the world gets a little better for people like me and my parents and my brothers. Or at least it doesn't get worse. Plus I get paid every other Friday until I look like him," he added with another nod to the picture.

"With me and Julian," repeated William. "And where do you think we're going?"

Joe just barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes. "As far as you can, I expect."

William smiled, looking satisfied, somehow. "We plan to meet expectations," he said. "And to look out for those who stick with us through the ride."

Joe tried to keep a straight face. He had not really thought people actually said that kind of thing. How, he wondered, had he come to be surrounded by so many drama queens? He was almost at a loss to find anyone who wasn't like that. "That's good news for me, then," he said calmly. "Because Julian knows I'll always have her back."

16 Joe Umland Two Months in Ottawa 329 Joe Umland 1 5

John Umland

May 07, 2020 3:11 PM

Supplemental Information, Part One by John Umland

The international apparition laws were, John thought irritably, ridiculous. For one thing, it was his own business if he wanted to take the risk - he assumed people who were not much good at magic were as aware of this as he was of his own abilities, so on their heads be it. For another, the lines on the maps were purely academic matters, subject to change any time - he knew the Americans thought their system would last forever, but that was because they were historical illiterates, wasn't it? Rome had lasted for centuries, along with versions of England and Russia, but even they had not always had perfectly consistent boundaries. Other countries hadn't even consistently existed at times. There was no reason why Canada shouldn't conquer their daft cousins to the south any time now, bringing them back into the Commonwealth and teaching them better manners all at one stroke, so there was also no reason why the artificial boundary currently in existence should interfere with John's ability to come and go as he pleased. For a third thing, which made his case particularly illogical, he actually lived far closer to Ottawa than to Oklahoma, so it made no sense for it to be perfectly legal for him to try to Apparate to one of those locations but not the other. He thought this was more than enough evidence to support the idea that the law banning international Apparition was stupid.

Unfortunately, however, politicians were by their very nature illogical. Even those who were not evil were often illogical. This was one thing, John reflected as he made his irritable way through customs, which he intensely disliked about the whole lot of them, and which he hoped Joe had not picked up after a few weeks of close contact with William.

Sadly, as, a few minutes later, he looked up at the 'just a little thing, really' in which his brother and brother-in-law were staying with some of the latter's friends, he was not optimistic about Joe's chances. Little thing indeed! His parents' house could have fit in this tall, narrow building three times, and his parents had raised five children in reasonable comfort in theirs. He had gathered that one woman lived in this thing on her own most of the time. One woman! What did anyone need that much private space for? It shouldn't have been allowed, he thought, determined to be as grumpy as possible as he made a point of sauntering right up to the front door. If they wanted the half-blood rabble to use the tradesmen's entrance, they should have said so, so he could have told them precisely where to shove it, holding their attention long enough for Joe to hex 'em all in the back.

It was his brother who answered, which deprived him of any opportunity to express this, which, even he had to admit, was probably for the best. Joe looked surprised, but not displeased, as he said, "John? What are you doing here?"

"Visiting," said John, in the tone he reserved for idiots he liked. He stepped into the entrance hall, taking in fixtures: the black and white tiled floor, the warm, highly polished wooden paneling, the equally polished brass lamps. "Are those gas?" he asked, peering at a lamp.

"At least based on it," said Joe, closing the door. "And no, you may not take them apart - or ask Peggy or Ted for permission to take one apart," he added. "I thought you were in Colorado."

John nodded absently, still studying the lamp. He had contrived to get himself hired to assist one of his old elective professors with taking some of the undergraduate magizoologists to the Rockies this summer, a pretty convenient, he thought, way to get back out west, where it was fractionally less hassle than usual to pop back home to visit Julian while she was temporarily unable to travel much. He thought it had been a pretty good arrangement, minus the bits where he'd been expected to actually interact with humans other than Sammy (who had come along, which had had the nice benefit of allowing the house to also come along; he really did not understand why more people didn't follow his mode of life, it was very convenient). Those bits had been...interesting, but nobody had died, he thought he had done an adequate job the times Dr. Malfang had told him to try to teach them something despite that technically not being his job, and Simmons had eventually figured out how to reattach his hands, so on the whole, he was prepared to call the expedition a success. The university had been a bit perturbed about him cursing Simmons (the official report had noted that "while Mr. Simmons' actions warranted rapid intervention...to reduce the risk of the whole party being eaten by hidebehinds", they still felt that John "could have done this through some method other than what seems to have been a novel variation on a Switching Spell, which temporarily transplanted Mr. Simmons' hands onto a bowl previously used to contain Mr. Simmons' supper of vegetable soup mixed with cornbread" and felt it had then been a bit excessive to "then leave Mr. Simmons' hands attached to the soup bowl until Mr. Simmons was able to figure out how to remove them himself"), but Malfang had backed him up, reckoning nothing would have been said at all had he not left Simmons' hands attached to the soup bowl so long, so he was still counting it as a success.

"Got in yesterday," he said absently. "After me and Sammy went up to see Julian, of course - she's doing as well as can be expected, said I had best come see you."

"Why would she think I needed seeing?" asked Joe.

"Probably worried about you spending so much time with damned politicians," said John. "I hope you aren't turning into one."

"Turning into one?" a voice said, a voice he didn't recognize. John looked toward the staircase to see a man and woman, older than him, who he didn't know. The woman was the speaker. "What's Joe turning into?"

"Hopefully not a politician," said John.

"John," said Joe through his teeth, but the woman laughed.

"Oh, we'll have him in the Council in twenty years - fifteen if he keeps indulging me when I feel like gossiping," said the woman. She glided up to them, tilting her head back to look up at John. "But who are you?"

"John Umland," said John, proffering his hand; to his surprise, she laughed and then shook it.

"Oh, you," said the man, looking intrigued now. "You're the one Julian has all the amusing stories about!" Before John could recover from this astounding statement, the man offered his hand, too. "Edward Archer - call me Ted, everyone does," he said. "And my sister, Peggy - "

"Oh. This is your house, then," he observed to Peggy.

"It's not much, but it's home," said Peggy with a laugh.

"Looks like a lot to me," said John, without much humor, but she either didn't notice or didn't care.

"Yes, I suppose it would," she said calmly. "You're the brother who lives in a tent, aren't you?"

"I prefer portable house," said John, again flatly, whereupon his brother, who looked like he wanted to die, stomped on his toe. "Ow," he complained, scowling now at Joe.

"Sorry," said Joe. "Accident."

"Oh, dear," said Peggy. "And I am sorry if I implied there was something wrong with your - er - house - wish I could haul mine along when I travel! Though then I would miss out on all the good hotels...but you usually have it in America, don't you? You simply must stay for dinner, I have some friends from international relations over - "

"I'm sure that would be great," said Joe hurriedly, "but I think John will have to, er, go before supper - "

"I can stick around," said John. He had no desire to do so whatsoever at this point, but anything Joe was this keen for him not to show up at was something he clearly needed to show up at. "It'll give me plenty of time to catch up with my brother."

Joe smiled. He looked like he was considering either cursing John or throwing up. "Oh. Uh - very good then," he said weakly.

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John Umland

May 14, 2020 2:22 PM

Supplemental Information, Part Two by John Umland

Several hours later, John was regretting his impulsive decision to see what it was his brother didn't want him to see, and wondering if in fact the issue had not been so much Joe being embarrassed by him and had been very very much Joe trying to do him a favor. He had thought he had known what boredom was, but past experiences with mandatory classes far beneath his level were nothing compared to the scenarios he had just witnessed and participated in.

Joe, bizarrely, seemed pleased by something. "That didn't go nearly as badly as I expected," his brother said, drawing up a chair and offering John wine with a silent gesture, which John refused with just as silent a gesture. "At this rate, we'll be able to take you out in public more often in a year or two."

"I do know how to behave," said John dryly. "Most of the time. Nobody there was very confusing anyway."

"Really?"

"Mm. Politicians. They wanted a sideshow - just not too much - so I delivered."

Joe winced. "I don't really think..." he began, but trailed off rather than complete the lie.

"What are you doing with these people?" asked John. "You were practically ready to kiss that one woman's shoes this morning. I know you well enough to know you wouldn't do it for no good reason. What's the goal here?"

Joe shrugged. "Keeping my options open," he said.

"What does that mean?"

Joe shrugged again. "Man's gotta make a living, you know," he said. "I'm not good enough at magic to do it anywhere in that, so talking people to death, that's an option."

John frowned. "You're good at magic," he objected. "You were able to hold your own with me in a duel for a while, and that was after I cursed your shoes to start biting you."

"Yeah, I still haven't got you back for that one, have I?" asked Joe. "Soon. Count on it." John laughed and Joe grinned before fading back to seriousness. "That's not a way forward, though. Got to find a way forward, one way or another....you never really wondered, did you?"

"Wondered what?"

"Wondered what you wanted to do with your life."

"Actually I did, all the time," said John. "Well - what I wanted to do most, anyway. Not going to live long enough to do everything I'd like to, even if I had the money. Why?"

"Because I can't think of what to do most of the time," said Joe. "I don't know. Sometimes it feels like - ah, forget it."

John frowned crossly at his younger brother. "You're sulking about something," he pointed out. "You might as well say what."

"Yes, Mom," said Joe sarcastically. "Just...it feels like I'm always reacting, you know? To Julian, to Mom and Dad, to you - whatever. I never just...act, on my own. Hard to say what you want, when you've never thought about it that much. When you just react to everyone else."

He sounded outright broody now. John frowned again, now half-puzzled and half-concerned about whatever strange paths his brother's mind was wandering along. "Isn't that what everyone does?" he asked, a touch plaintively.

For one moment, he thought the look Joe gave him was almost pitying. "Fair point," he said finally. "Anyway. What do you think of them picking Rhys for the final Chaser for this year's national team?"

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