Sam Seaborn and the Prisoner of Love

By: Jenna
Category: J&D/General
Rating: YTEEN,
Disclaimers: Absolutely!
Summary: Amy must go!

White House Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn sat at his desk and frowned as he twirled a pen between his fingers.  To all appearances he was deep in thought over the President's upcoming address to the troops at Fort Benning, Georgia.  That couldn't be further from the truth.

'Okay...  So, I'm Harry Potter', Sam mused. 'I've got the black hair and the glasses.  Who cares if my eyes aren't green... Josh and Donna are so completely Ron and Hermione that it's scary.  Of course, Ron and Hermione have an excuse for acting like a couple of jealous 14-year olds with raging hormones.  Josh is just being an idiot and Donna isn't much better.'  His frown deepened and his lips narrowed in irritation at the crux of their problem:  Amy Gardner.  Amy Gardner was a sucking the life out of everyone in the West Wing.  Amy was most certainly a dementor.  Dementors, as Professor Lupin had explained to Harry were "among the foulest creatures that walk this earth.  The infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them... Get too near a dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you.  If it can, the dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself... soul-less and evil.  You'll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life." 

The worst thing that could happen to you though was the Dementor's Kiss.  That's when the dementor sucked the soul from your body leaving just an empty shell.  And Josh was in danger of losing his soul --or what was left of it-- to the dementor's kiss.  Josh's behavior lately showed that he had already succumbed to being a lesser person from Amy's influence.  Harry --er... Sam-- had to save his friend before it was too late.  Sam didn't understand what had happened to their warm and fuzzy world.  Last year Josh and his assistant Donna had seemed to be on the cusp of discovery that they had --despite their best efforts to the contrary -- fallen head-over-heels in love with each other.  But something had happened.  Sam didn't understand what it was, but a chasm had opened up between the two.  Sam sighed and threw the pen down in disgust:  he was going to have to recruit assistance if he was going to play the wizard.

* * *

"Hey CJ, you got a minute?" Sam called to the Press Secretary as she hurried down the hallway from the Press Room following the conclusion of her 11:00 briefing.

"Sure.  Whatcha need, Spanky?"

"Umm..." Sam looked around furtively, pulled CJ into an empty meeting room, and leaned close to whisper.  "It's Josh".

CJ's smile faded and was replaced by a frown.  "What's wrong?  Is he okay?  He's not... you know..." she waved a hand, "having flashbacks?  I know the ATVA guy was here..."

"No, no.  It's not that.  It's... I just don't think he's really happy.  I don't think Amy's good for him."

CJ breathed a sigh of relief.  "No shit Sherlock."

"So you'll help me do something?"

"Not so fast.  I agree, she's as wrong for him as... well... as Mandy was... but he's a big boy.  He can make his own mistakes.  Maybe he'll learn something this time."

Sam gave her a double-take that basically said 'Josh?' Our Josh? What planet did you just arrive from?' and then followed it up with a sarcastic, "Well, there's always a first time."

CJ held up her hand, "I know, I know.  The man shouldn't be allowed out without a keeper, but he's locked his keeper out of the cage, so now he's got to beard the lion by himself.  He's gotta pay the piper.  Dance with them that brung him."

Sam looked puzzled at the hodge-podge of imagery, but shook it off, "Whatever.  The thing is... I'm Harry Potter and --"

"I thought Harry Potter was like 12 or something..."

"It depends on which book you're reading.  Anyway, you're not Hermione, but --"

"I'm not Hermione?  Why can't I be Hermione?"

"Because Donna's Hermione."

"But she's Josh's -- whatever... wingman --woman-- shouldn't your sidekick be Hermione?"

"No.  Because Josh is Ron."

"Josh is Ron?  He's *your* sidekick?"  CJ looked doubtful, "'Cause I gotta tell you Spanky, from where I'm standing..."

"Look," Sam said slightly irritated, "The analogy isn't perfect, okay.  Josh can be Harry in his own story, but this is mine and I say he's Ron."

"Okay..." CJ said in her humoring the deranged voice.  "So what do you want my help with, Spanky --er, Harry?"

"Didn't you watch 'Harry Potter' when the President screened it?  That time Liz and Annie came down?"

CJ shrugged, "Parts of it... I fell asleep."

"Well Ron and Hermione obviously have a thing for each other.  It's obvious even in the first book.  By the fourth book, where they're 14, Ron, who ignored Hermione and took her for granted, is royally jealous when she goes to the dance with another boy."

"Okay... I can see where the analogy comes in.  But what can we do about it.  Why should we care if Josh takes a fall?  He hasn't exactly been Mr. Nice-pants lately."

Sam started to say something and lost his train of thought.  "Nice-pants?"

"I'm expanding my euphemisms."

"I don't think I want to know..."

"Josh deserves to be taken out and horse-whipped for the way he's been behaving lately.  Why should--"

"Exactly.  Josh isn't at all himself.  It's like he's been stashed in the basement and a pod-person has taken his place."

"You're mixing your movies, there, Harry."

In the third book, 'Prisoner of Azkaban'', there are these characters called dementors.  They're like 'Death' -- the Grim Reaper -- or Ring Wraiths if you've read --"

"I know Ring Wraiths.  I love Aragorn," she replied, thinking how the handsome, brooding future-King was every teenage girl's fantasy hero.

"Really! Me too!"  CJ looked at Sam and raised her eyebrows at that.

"Uh... anyway..." Sam quickly changed the subject, "the dementor's suck all the happiness out of their surroundings.  And the dementor's kiss will suck a person's soul out of their body."

"Amy."

"Yeah.  I mean, not literally, of course, because there really aren't any dementors and even if there were, Amy's a person--"

"That's open for debate."

Sam looked at CJ and cocked his head sideways, "What'd she do now?"

CJ rolled her eyes, "Let's just say she thinks she knows my job better than I do."   At Sam's 'spill the beans' look, CJ shrugged and continued, "She says I have a bully pulpit and thinks I should turn every press conference -- every issue -- into a feminist rant. 'Bully' is right."

"She tried to get Toby to fire me and replace me with the gossip columnist from Channel 9.  Says it's important to have more women on the Senior Staff.  I agree Leo and the President should add more women, but--"

"But they should have the right qualifications and not just the right chromosomes."

"Yeah.  Besides, I don't want to be fired."

"Yeah.  So what do you have in mind?"

"Hm?"

"What do you have in mind?  I take it you have a plan to get Joshua out of the dementor's claws?"

"Actually... no."

"No?"

"That's why I came to you.  I thought that you could come up with something.  You know, a woman's perspective to make Josh come to his senses and run back to Donna where he belongs."

CJ sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose.  "That's the problem.  Whatever it was that happened between the two of them last fall...' she shook her head, "now he's convinced that that's a dead end.  He's given up any hope of happiness, and he's bent on going to hell in a handcart with devil-woman pushing the way."

"So we need to restore hope to Josh.  That's how you defeat dementors -- with happy thoughts.  You should read it...  So, you'll think about a plan?"

"Yeah," CJ replied thoughtfully as she left to get back to work.

* * *

Several days passed before Sam had a chance to talk to CJ about whether she had given further thought to developing a plan for un-ensorcelling Josh Lyman and ridding the West Wing of the dementor's unwelcome presence.  He caught up with her as they left the morning staff meeting.  A meeting that had left both CJ and Sam stinging from Josh's passive-aggressive attack cloaked as witticisms --barbed witticisms. 

"Hey."

"Honest to God, Sam, I think he's got a death wish.  Some days I feel like shooting him myself!" she fumed, then stopped short at what she'd said.  "God.  What'm I saying?" 

"Yeah," Sam commiserated.  Old habits about joking about 'killing' someone slipped back into the banter, but they just didn't joke about harming Josh.  No matter how much a jackass he was.  They still remembered the smell of his blood mingled with gunpowder...  Thoughts of that night still sent white-hot frissons of panic through their bodies.

"I'm tired..." CJ said putting a hand to her forehead.  "I'm just tired and that's why I didn't think..." she continued, trying to reassure herself on the matter.  "I was up half the night reading that book."

"The Prisoner of Azkaban?" Sam asked, perking up.

"Yeah.  It's just a children's book.  I wasn't expecting it to be so--" she waved a hand in desperation for Sam to supply the right word.

"Good? Exciting?"

"Applicable."

"Applicable?"

"What's applicable?" Toby Ziegler, their boss, asked coming up to join the conversation.

"Nothing," CJ replied nonchalantly.

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," Sam replied at the same time.

"Ah," Toby replied in understanding.  "Ron and Hermione and the dementor."

CJ and Sam both stared at him with their mouths hanging open, dismayed that a) he obviously knew his Harry Potter, and b) that he had immediately recognized the applicability in question.

"You've read Harry Potter?" Sam asked.

"I have nieces and nephews," Toby replied somewhat defensively.

"Right," Sam responded as if that were a perfectly reasonable explanation as far as he was concerned.

CJ appeared less inclined to let it lie, but that was to be expected:  teasing Toby was her favorite pastime.  "So..." she started only to be interrupted by a warning growl from Toby.

"So why are you talking about Harry Potter, anyway?" Toby said.

"I've decided that I'm Harry and I have to save Ron," Sam volunteered.

"And get him back on track to marrying Hermione when he grows up," CJ continued.

Toby and Sam stared at CJ at that.

"What?"  I can't be a romantic?"

"You don't care that there might be an issue over Josh and Donna?" Toby inquired.

"I'd rather deal with some malicious gossip about the Deputy Chief of Staff nailing his assistant than deal with his death wish and Ms. Amy 'What's in it for me?' Gardner any day.  She's why feminists get the 'feminazis' rap."

"Okay.  Tell us how you really feel, CJ." Toby smiled. 

CJ glowered and replied, "Just get Amy out of the picture and I think Josh and Donna can take all the time they need to get themselves back on track.  Josh was paying more attention to Donna than Amy at the First Lady's birthday party the other night.  Not to mention how delighted he was with Amy's little shenanigans of going behind his back to involve the First Lady."

"So," Sam piped up before the conversation got hopelessly sidetracked on how pissed Josh had really been at that, "now we just have to come up with a plan for getting Amy out of Josh's life, so he can go back to being his usual egotistical, smart-assed self.

"As compared to his current egotistical, smart-assed self?" Toby responded.

"Well, he never used to mean it.  Now I don't know.  I think he does..." Sam replied a sad, wistful note in his voice.

"He's lost all hope.  All happiness," CJ explained.  "The dementor sucked it out of him."

"So, we have to eliminate Amy and thereby restore hope and happiness to Josh's life?" Toby asked in a deadpan voice as if he didn't quite believe the conversation he was having.

CJ and Sam both beamed at him as if they were proud parents watching their toddler take his first steps.

"Yes!" CJ exclaimed while Sam nodded vigorously.

"Right," Toby answered seriously.  "You're going to pull out your magic wand and turn her into a toad?"

"No," Sam said scornfully at the evidence that Toby wasn't taking this as serious as he should.  "We've got to come up with some way of convincing Amy to release Josh.  He's too far gone to see that she's just using him."

"Okay," Toby replied thoughtfully rubbing his beard. "What do we know about Amy?"

"She's a barracuda." CJ answered. 

"Isn't that simply what 'ambitious women' are called?" Toby chided.

"In her case, it's the truth.  She's unethical, unscrupulous, and underhanded," CJ replied ticking off the reasons.

"Three things that mean the same thing," Sam muttered inconsequentially.

"Also: manipulative, conniving, and sneaky."

"You're on a roll there, CJ," Toby smiled.  "Granted that Amy is sleeping her way up the...  uh... Washington power-pole, what can we do about it?"

"Give her a bigger fish," Sam quipped with sudden inspiration.

CJ and Toby looked at him as they deciphered his meaning.

"Give her a bigger fish," he repeated serenely.

"So she'll let our guppy go..." CJ mused.

"It might work, but who would we be willing to saddle with her?"

"Oh, we don't have to actually provide the big fish, we just have to make her think that Josh isn't worth keeping so she'll open her jaws and let him escape," Sam explained.

CJ continued, "We can make her think that Josh is about to get fired!"

"Everyone knows the President and Leo think the world of Josh," Toby scoffed, "who would believe that he's about to be fired?"

"Hoynes!" CJ and Sam said at the same moment.

"Hoynes wouldn't believe for a minute that Josh is going to be fired."

"No, of course not." Sam replied scornfully.

"But he could convince *Amy* that Josh is," CJ said smiling predatorily.

"You're hot when you're vicious, CJ," Toby purred.

"True," CJ quipped insouciantly.

"Guys," Sam interrupted. "Hoynes..."

"Right," Toby turned his attention back to restoring hope and happiness to the life of Josh Lyman.  "Why would Hoynes want to convince Amy that Josh is going to be fired?"

"Hoynes hates Amy with the heat of a nova.  "He always thought her remarks about his record on women's issues was grossly misrepresented and cost him dearly in the primaries."

"That I remember.  But it doesn't explain--"

"His wife hates Amy with the heat of a red-hot supernova," Sam continued. "Apparently at the First Lady's birthday party, Amy made some snide remark about waitresses, not realizing Kathy Hoynes had paid for her college by working as a cocktail waitress.  Then she followed it up with a disparaging remark about housewives -- and, of course, Kathy spent 12 years as a full-time mom."

CJ continued, "And then she made a rather bitchy comment about Donna--"

"Who Kathy adores for helping out that time in Topeka when they all had the flu," Sam concluded referring to a particularly miserable campaign trip three years prior.

"So what you're telling me," Toby concluded, "is that Amy's even worse than Josh at foot-in-mouth disease?  Maybe she'll think she can have his job."

CJ winced, "I wouldn't put it past her."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "So who talks to Hoynes?"

They all looked at each other trying to pass the buck.  At last CJ sighed, "All right, I'll do it.  I will talk to the Vice President about the Deputy Chief of Staff's love-life."

"Well, you gotta admit, CJ, that it wouldn't be a very manly thing for either of us to do." Sam replied.

CJ just rolled her eyes in exasperation and walked away.

* * *

Several days later Toby and Sam were in CJ's office to watch the coverage of the Vice-President's speech to a convention of women's rights activists.  Hoynes was making vague promises of what all he would do to improve health care, day care, schools -- the usual women's issues.

"He sounds like he's planning on running for President," Sam remarked.

"He is," CJ replied gloating.  "In four years."

"He sounds like he means now," Sam continued, shaking his head in puzzlement.

"Doesn't he?" CJ smiled.

"Amy thinks he's going to declare he's running against President Bartlet." Toby made the question a statement.

"And that she's ear-marked for an important role.  The Vice-President had a better idea than banking on Amy to believe Josh would be fired."

"Hoynes went one better," Toby narrowed his eyes as he followed the Vice-President's reasoning.  "He didn’t want to just get her to release Josh, he wanted to damage her professional standing."

"That's our Hoynes," CJ replied cheerfully, as she headed to the mini-fridge to get some beers.

Hoynes wrapped up his speech and made what appeared to be a praising introduction of Amy Gardner, if you didn't know his true feelings.  He then made a hasty exit explaining that he had to get on Air Force 2 and fly to his home state of Texas, hinting that there would be a big announcement there.

"So what's the announcement?" Sam asked as Amy Gardner took the podium and started profusely praising Hoynes.

"Not what Amy thinks.  It's just an educational incentive package," CJ answered handing them each a beer.

On the TV Amy was now digging a hole for herself by talking about the 'tired, old policies of the Bartlet administration' and the need for fresh ideas advancing the causes of women --ideas that Hoynes offered.  CJ grabbed hold of Toby arm in anticipation as the speech went on.  Finally, she did it:  Amy issued an official endorsement giving the WLC's support to Hoynes for President in 2002.

"Yes!" CJ yelled, as Sam and Toby high-fived each other.

Down the hall the familiar bellow was heard, "Donna!"

They paused, listening hopefully, "Donnatella Moss!"  They smiled; Josh hadn't been calling her 'Donnatella' lately.

The familiar refrain followed, "Hold your horses Joshua.  Honest to God were you raised in a barn?"

"Donna!  Did you see what-- what she--"

"Oh yeah!"  CJ said and raised her beer in a three-way toast with Toby and Sam.

"Amy Gardner, you are *so* history!"

* * *

The End

More on dementors and the dementor's kiss at:

http://www.i2k.com/~svderark/lexicon/dementors.html

And I definitely recommend 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban'.  It's actually a good introduction for an adult into the world of Harry Potter.

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