Jacoba didn't really know if Hogwarts had parent-teacher conferences and she wasn't, officially, in a position to know.  She obviously wasn't the parent of a Hogwarts student and officially (by muggle legal standards) she wasn't even family of a Hogwarts student.  Oddly, the closet people Sasha currently had to parents were teachers.  Therefore, there was no official reason why Tapendra would be obligated to accept her invitation to meet.  But she was grateful he had. 

Armed with the benefits of a government paycheck (even a part-time one), Jacoba entered the restaurant area of Signature and spotted the lanky professor at one of the tables.  "Sorry if I'm a little late," she offered, shrugging her jacket off.  "Getting some actual snow down in London.  As Murphy's Law would have it, of course it took me ages to get through the brick wall." 

"I appreciate you taking the time, though," Jacoba offered, sincerely.  "It's safe to say you had your hands full over the holidays.  Did you manage to get a vacation in after the vacation?  There are some interesting characters in that bunch."  That Winifred and Georgiana and Sasha all had their own idiosyncracies.  And, when they were combined together...it must have been a long two weeks. 

But, Jacoba was grateful for the opportunity to catch up with Tapendra.  He seemed to know the most about her brother and, in contrast to Sasha, seemed willing to talk.  There had been a lot going on lately and Jacoba was fairly certain she only knew the half of it.  There'd also been some recent developments that her brother was unaware of that could very well become public knowledge soon.  Jacoba had tried to talk to Sasha over the holidays but he'd seemed more distant than usual.  Even, sometimes, that arrogantly proper and detached mode that reminded her so much of her father. 

"Term off to a quiet start?"

“Good evening.” Tapendra raised his eyebrows as she sat, nodding in greeting. Sasha’s sister (or half-sister, if you wanted to be technical) was someone he’d met on and off but generally liked, and so he hadn’t had a second thought about saying yes to her request for a meeting.

“No such luck. Term’s been nice and quiet, though, at least so far,” he said, simply. It was the best way to sum up the answers to her questions, but he grinned and continued anyway, leaning forward onto the table, elbows rather firstly planted on the wood.

“The girls can be overwhelming when they want to be, and so can the rest of the kids – they’re an enthusiastic bunch. Especially our first years.” His smile twisted slightly. “A loud bunch, that. They’ll bowl you over if you give them the chance to.”

He shrugged, smiling slightly sheepishly. He liked the kids, the enthusiastic little blighters. “How have you been, then? I’ve been hearing things about you getting a new job.” He raised an eyebrow. Jacoba was not the best person to trust the grapevine on; the accusation of muggle tended to warp the stories on it quite a bit.

“No such luck. Term’s been nice and quiet, though, at least so far.

"No...magical tying each others' shoe laces together?" Jacoba started with a coy grin before her voice trailed off.  "I don't really know what mischief kids get up to in a magical school," she admitted.  Her brother being a student there didn't offer much with which to experience it vicariously.  "My crowd in school typically stuck to recreational ingestibles.  I'm assuming they don't turn each other into toads.  That seems too cliche to be real."  She assumed the reality had to be at least a bit more exciting.   

"It has been interesting since the third.  London after Cambridge is always a bit of an adjustment."  Though Jacoba had found her own arrangements, she'd spent the majority of the Hogwarts break up in Cambridge.  There was a little muggle hostel only a few blocks from the Trishna residence and Jacoba had tried to spend as much time with her brother as possible without overtaxing the already overwhelmed household.  Or, more accurately, had spent as much time with him as he'd allowed.  He'd been ever polite but increasingly distant. 

In the end, it had been a bit of a relief to get back to London.  "You've been hearing right.  Started two weeks ago with the Accidents and Catastrophes office.  Department.  Muggle Consultant.  It's only part-time, though.  I'm still at Reducto part-time.  It's a bit too much like home to leave.  Literally and symbolically.  I wrote my brother to let him know but, as always, schoolwork I'm sure has distracted him."  Jacoba leaned against the table and chewed her lip, slightly.  "There were a few other matters I wanted to discuss with him but it seemed coming to you might be more ... productive." 

"They tend to be a bit nastier than that, really. Make each other grow antlers and inflate their heads and the like. Muggle education doesn't know the half of it." Which was why discipline at a university like Cambridge made Hogwarts seem rather like a row in slow motion; he'd grown used to administrative issues rather than disciplinary problems, outside of large scale pranks and the like.

And he'd been the sort to participate in some of the pranks, too, which hadn't helped.

"They don't turn each other into toads usually, no. That spell's a bit advanced," he said, with all the matter-of-factness of a wizard discussing the weather. "Weasels or ferrets are a bit more popular. In the case of toads,  mostly they lick them."

The idea of her working at the Ministry was still a tad mind-boggling to him, one he wasn't sure what to make of. It was certainly a sign of progress, true, and that was something he fully endorsed. But a muggle at the Ministry...

"How is it? They're treating you alright, I hope?" He couldn't see many wizards being keen on that, Muggle-related department or no. There was tolerance and then there was...tolerance. Even for all his pro-muggleness, Tapendra found himself a little confused at the idea - and anytime someone proposed breaking the Statute, but considered them a bit nutters.

He sat back against the chair, raising his eyebrows at her tone.  He had a few guesses - hurried, panicked guesses - at what sort of topics she might be thinking of. He could only hope he was wrong.

"Well, I can certainly try," he said, casually. "What's the matter?"

In quick succession, surprise, confusion and resigned acceptance flickered across the young woman's face.  She knew, by now, logic and magic were not friendly bedfellows but there were still occasions when the absurdity of assumptions in the magical world caught her off guard.  How could ferrets be easier to change people into than frogs?  Weren't frogs...simple creatures? 

"How is it? They're treating you alright, I hope?"

Jacoba shrugged.  "So far, I've stayed within Level 3 and either most of the people there have been welcoming or they're willing to pretend to be to placate the boss.  I'm not sure of which in most cases."  Being there on Edwin's invite certainly had been a help, at least with the local crowd. "If I meet people and they clearly don't realize who I am, I just say I'm a squib.  Makes it easier in the long run.  If I run into someone who is concerned with me being there, then, well..."

To be honest, Jacoba was a little surprised and very impressed Tapendra didn't know about her trip to Ireland with the Reid sisters.  Jacoba had been confident Aileen would have kept her confidence but she'd half-expected Abby to have let it slip.  It always seemed Tapendra knew everything - that all the lines of communication somehow flowed through him.  If he actually didn't know, Jacoba definitely owed Abby a cake of gratitude. 

"Well, I'm not sure why he seems to be shutting himself off.  Maybe it's just me and the confusion with all the new family ... complications."  Jacoba had considered that possibility, especially since her meeting with Ignan.  After all, Jacoba was the remnants of a side of his family that Sasha was probably all to eager to put behind him.  "But, there's a possibility our family might be popping up in the rumor mill, again, and I figured he'd want to know ahead of time.  Seems as though the ... magical ... aspect of our family is getting bigger.  Including me.  Apparently, it's not just luck that I was able to see the Diagon and Hogsmeade so quickly."

He couldn't help an ever so slight smirk at Jacoba's confusion. The words didn't sound strange to him - the difficulty levels of various spells always being at best unapparent and at worst incredibly nonsensical - but to someone like her it must have made little to no sense at all.

Bit like explaining some scientific principles to wizards, really.

"That's good," he said, with a smile. That she hadn't been shoved into a locker yet - literally or metaphorically - was hopefully a good sign. The squib excuse probably helped, he assumed, though the attitudes towards a Squib weren't much better. Muggles were outsiders. Squibs were...well, they were failed wizards, really. The attitudes he'd seen growing up had certainly made the pureblood view on them clear enough.

"Hopefully it remains that way," he added, with a bit more caution. "That department is certainly friendly enough to Muggles-" It had to be, after all, "-but unfortunately attitudes towards muggles and even squibs aren't good ones, in a lot of cases."

Still, he could content himself that most wizards would do nothing worse than gossip around the office about her. Which, while not the most welcoming behavior, certainly ranked above getting hexed.

Her question, in the end, was the one he'd been rather dreading. It was hard not to notice the distance between the two siblings, especially at Christmas. Sasha's family life was  a tangled mess of worms that he'd really only recently begun to understand, and the sibling situation was still a strange outlier.

He kept his face steady, expression shifting to one of thought. The setting was entirely to public for a real indepth talk and even then...

Jacoba was in enough danger just being herself. The fact of the matter was she was in danger either way, but he really didn't know her well enough to go into the truth.

"Well-" he started, and then her words finally sank into his worried brain. "I'm sorry?" he asked, confused. "What's happened?"

All in all, things could be much worse at the Ministry and Jacoba knew better than to test her boundaries.  At least, not test them too much.  Or, more than she had already.  Admittedly, that was quite a bit.  Luckily, Jacoba doubted anyone would try anything too extreme at the Ministry.  Sour scowls, veiled insults and the like she could handle - she'd survived much worse.  To do anything more extreme would put their jobs at risk.  And, Jacoba suspected that those who were more likely to want to toss insults around were the same ones who were most likely to consider her not worth the risk. 

Especially since she had been given the official all clear to be there. 

The young woman cast a quick glance around but, the lunch crowd still seemed thin.  There didn't seem to be anyone close enough to overhear. 

"Last spring, when I left, I stayed on the move for the first few weeks.  Without Adon, I was certain the Ministry was going to come and zap my brain.  So, I kept moving around.  Odd...suspicious things started happening.  Or, maybe I just started noticing them.  Most of them I could dismiss as coincidences or what not.  But, there was this one guy who gave me some grief outside of a bar one night.  He grabbed me but then tripped and I was able to pull away.  When I looked back, he was busy untying his shoelaces that had mysteriously worked themselves into a big, fancy bow." 

Jacoba shrugged.  "That's why I came back.  I kind of freaked and figured coming back here made the most sense.  Long story short.  I told Sasha the abbreviated version of what happened.  He told Abby who then told Aileen.  They convinced me into going to a wandmaker for a test drive?  I haven't told my brother about that.  Or, that the wand I tried ... reacted.  I've always assumed his magic came from his father but, that might not be all of it." 

Tapendra's eyebrows rose slightly at the way she glanced about , which made him nearly reach for his wand to cast a muffling charm. Gods knew who was here to overhear whatever she had to say, and Jacoba didn't really have the option of muffling charms on her own.

But what she said sent his eyebrows into his hair, and he struggled for a long moment to find words. The idea that she might be a witch was frankly a bit odd to him - how had she not been sent a letter? How was she only discovering this now?

He wasn't sure what to think of that, really - in the back of his mind, the first thought was congratulations, which he felt quite a tit for thinking. But that feeling of her now being somehow elevated remained, and he knew - as much as he hated it - that it was nigh impossible to break from that slightest of prejudices that had taught him to pity muggles for their magic-less state.

"It did? Really?" He asked, surprise obvious in his tone as well as his expression. "That's - I mean, you never got a letter? No one told you?" He wasn't sure how that could happen, really - he'd certainly never heard of it happening. Of course, if what came out of such misses was just that a muggle never fought out and got on with their lives...how would he, or anyone, really know they'd made a mistake if the muggle never had an issue with wild magic?

"You didn't - you didn't have any idea about that beforehand? Sasha's...implied your parents were a bit, um..." How did one put this politely? Sasha's inferences were, as usual, vague  - but Tapendra felt he'd picked up some of the subtext, at least. Sometimes Sasha said a lot when he didn't say anything.

"Sensitive about magic, I suppose. I mean, I know you weren't...around them a lot, but..."

Jacoba countered his surprise with a baffled look and shrugged her shoulders, shaking her head.  "No letter.  Not that I know of, at least.  I've considered it's not impossible one came and I never knew about it."  Jacoba had already figured out that, if a school letter had ever arrived at their doorstep, her parents wouldn't have willingly passed it on. 

"Besides, where would I have even gotten a letter from?"  Jacoba shrugged.  "I wasn't born in the UK, so Hogwarts wouldn't have registered me.  Durmstrang wouldn't have taken me.  I was born in East Germany and we moved here just after the wall came down.  I don't know.  Maybe it just fell through the cracks.  And, I never had any idea but I probably wouldn't have noticed even if there'd been indications." 

"Sasha's...implied your parents were a bit, um...Sensitive about magic, I suppose. I mean, I know you weren't...around them a lot, but..."

The young woman glanced over the table and offered a soft grin before shaking her head.  "You don't have to pussyfoot about it.  I know what my parents were; my father was paranoid and cruel.  I got my kicks out of rubbing him the wrong way.  He was a lot of things, but he wasn't subtle.  I find it hard to imagine that if he'd known ... suspected ... it wouldn't have been obvious.  I was the one who unearthed my mother's affair, after all." 

Though, did she know that for sure.  Jacoba took a deep breath and rubbed her face with her hands.  "To be honest, I don't know if that's even true.  I don't know how much they actually knew.  Any of them.  It appears I'm not the only one.  That Hector Harrison fellow who died here a few weeks back[1]?  Appears as though my great uncle was a cohort of his."  Jacoba tugged a copy of The Common Good[2] and opened it to the page Raizel had shown her.  The book was near brand new, Jacoba had purchased it shortly after meeting the witch in Diagon, but already its spine was creased and well-stretched. 

Jacoba pointed to the young man in the uniform at the front and center.  "Otto Waldgraf.  My great uncle.  We were told he died in combat in Hungary, but he'd...well, he'd been a Grindelwald follower."  Jacoba pursed her lips and sighed.  For someone who'd spent years trying to find some source of redemption in her family tree, having to admit her only known magical relative had fought from the wrong wizarding side wasn't easy. 

"Maybe my parents did know.  It would explain why they tried so ... hard to keep my brother on the straight and narrow." 

1.	War Hero Found Dead in Hogsmeade
2.	A page from the wizarding history text

Tapendra didn't really have an answer for her - he wasn't sure off the top of his head what the non-selective school in Germany was, either. Durmstrang seemed to overshadow any academy in the area around it - and, now that he'd met much of its staff, he could see why. It was very much on purpose.

He answered her rhetorical question with a pause and a hapless shrug, staying silent as she continued. He did look guilty a moment as she described her father quite harshly, though, his gaze darting away for a long moment. Sasha tended to avoid that sort of description altogether, so it was at once distressing and reassuring to hear it described so plainly, especially since it confirmed his own assumptions.

Sasha and Jacoba's family history seemed to get murkier by the month, didn't it?

"From what Sasha's told me -" And the letters with Kronos had revealed, but he wasn't about to mention that, "If he had known, there'd have been a lot of yelling involved." Condemn the magic away, he thought to himself. Or pray it away - the family's religious practices were murky at best to Tapendra, since Sasha seemed to have discarded them.

He took the book as she moved it towards him, adjusting his glasses as his eyes darted across the pages. If their great-uncle was a wizard...well, they were still muggleborn, but it explained Jacoba, certainly. A muggleborn fighting for Grindlewald was a bit surprising, though - but Grindlewald hadn't been a purist movement persay, had it?

Did this mean Sasha might be legitimate after all? He wasn't quite sure how the test Sasha and Ignan had taken worked; the magic in the line that had produced Jacoba had to come from somewhere, and the Storms were from the same region, weren't they?

"Do you know anything else about your great uncle?" He asked finally, handing the book back. "No hint in the family about him? If your father...suspected, then -" It did explain a fair amount, certainly. It wasn't all of it, but...

"For whatever reason they did it, it's certainly stuck," Tapendra added, and the dry sarcasm in his tone wasn't something he bothered to disguise.

"From what Sasha's told me - If he had known, there'd have been a lot of yelling involved."

"At the very least," Jacoba confirmed, shaking her head.  Unless the need to keep those skeletons in the closet had overshadowed the need to make his disapproval known.  Perhaps any desire to express his disapproval had been overshadowed by the knowledge that Jacoba would have never kept her mouth shut on the subject.  Still, to do so required a level of self control Jacoba wasn't entirely sure her father possessed. 

Jacoba watched Tapendra look over the book.  How, exactly, was she going to explain this to her brother?  And, was there any way to predict his response?  He was usually so evasive when it came to discussions of their family history.  Not that Jacoba could entirely blame him for it. 

She took the book back with a shake of her head.  "Nothing that helps with this," she confirmed.  "He was a Hauptmann - a Captain in the Sixth SS Panzer.  German military."  She glanced up at Tapendra, looking for signs of confusion or understanding.  But, by everything she'd heard and observed, he seemed plenty muggle-savy enough to have more than enough muggle history for this.  Even if he was a science geek.

"We were told he died in Hungary during the Lake Balaton offensive in 1945.  He never married.  From most of what I heard, he'd been a bit of a disappointment, being the firstborn son and only achieving the rank of Captain."  Jacoba shrugged. 

"This is all with the Waldgrafs - my mother's side of the family.  I suppose it's possible my mother or grandmother knew and never said anything.  It's just as possible he kept it secret.  I still don't know what ... how ... if he would have been arrested for having magic."  Would the Nazis have counted magical ability as part of their master design or a trait to be eliminated?  Had Otto hid his magical abilities for his own safety and his family's safety as well?  If so, forging allies with the most powerful wizard in Europe might have simply been a strategic move. 

Jacoba had no idea.

His expression turned but a bit confused as she looked at him, waiting to see if he understood her meaning. And it did take him a long moment, thinking quickly to his experience of muggle history that he hadn't heard much about as a kid.

Thank Merlin for the BBC, in that regard. "Panzers," he said, looking more quizzical than sure of what he was saying. "Tanks, right?"

He had to hope that was mostly correct, since he really wasn't sure - the history of World War 2 was not one he'd taken a particular interest in, though it was hard not to find it morbidly fascinating. It held an eeire echo in their own Wizarding Wars, though, didn't it...

"Arrested?" He asked, doubtful. "I would think they'd just assume he was a nutter - the Ministries tend...to be very good about that kind of thing. Usually." The history of the Ministries during the War was one their History courses didn't really cover. Chaos seemed the order of the day. "Arrested by the local Ministry, maybe, but..."

He shrugged. "Was he the only one, do you know? Any history of...oddballs in the family?"

"Heavy infantry.  Tanks.  Yes." 

The young woman grimaced, slightly, and shook her head.  "That would have resulted in the same thing, though, wouldn't it?"  It had been a rhetorical question.  One she knew the answer to as well as anyone.  If his commanding officer or anyone in the Reich had deemed him 'a nutter,' he still would have been arrested and his family investigated. 

But, then, this was all history that was probably only obvious to muggles.  Just as who Grindelwald had been was obvious to Raizel and everyone else in Alohomocha. 

"Was he the only one, do you know? Any history of...oddballs in the family?"

Jacoba simultaneously shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.  "Not that I know of.  But, then, I never heard anything about him being an oddball.  Obviously, they are well versed in concealing oddities." 

The young woman leaned back against the back of her seat and shook her head.  In themselves, none of things were all that big - certainly nothing insurmountable.  Except, "I just don't know how to address anything with him anymore.  Of, if should even bother.  Maybe he'd rather not deal with it." 

The question, semi-spoken as it was, was a difficult one for Tapendra to answer. Addressing things with Sasha was something he himself struggled with; how could he give her advice on how to do something he wasn't good at, either?

He sat back, rubbing his chin. There was...well, it was something a relief to find that Jacoba was a witch, odd as her predicament was. Should he tell her about Ignan? No, not for now - but for Ignan's sake, rather than Sasha's. There were things you didn't do without permission, and he wasn't sure if she knew. He wasn't going to tell her about Kronos. That issue had walked far enough, and any more and he might not be able to curtail it...

But the two siblings both having magic did connect them in a way they might not have been, didn't it?

"I honestly don't know what to tell you. It might..." He frowned, fingers brushing over the hair on his chin. "It might help, though, if you talked to him about your discovery. I can't really talk about the impact being magical would have in a muggle family-" He didn't continue the thought out loud, but he couldn't help but add especially one like yours in his head. "Since my own was...well, magical. But it might be good for him to know he's not..."

What was the word? The way the boy talked about magic and the way the family seemed to think about it...he looked at her a for a moment.

"Let him know he's not a freak," he said, finally.