FIC: "The Ministry's Man" for injustice_worth

[bethbethbeth]

Recipient: injustice_worth

Author: musamihi

Title: The Ministry's Man

Rating: PG-13

Pairings: John Dawlish/Bartemius Crouch (Sr.) (unrequited); John Dawlish/Rufus Scrimgeour.

Word Count: 11,300

Warnings/Content Information (Highlight to View): * Canon character deaths, dark themes.* 

Summary: John Dawlish has spent his career in the shadows of the Ministry's greatest men. One of the only things they all have in common is that they never stay for long.

Author's Notes: I hope you enjoy, injustice_worth! Your inspiring list of characters was a joy to work from. Many, many thanks to M for beta-reading – all remaining mistakes are my own. And thanks, of course, to the wonderful mod, for running such a fantastic fest.

---

Barty Crouch is a great man.

It didn't take me long to see it. Maybe none of us bought in when he made his first speech to the incoming class – his first speech, in fact, as Head of the Department – standing down on the scuffed stone dais in that black, echoing auditorium, his nasal voice magnified out of all proportion to his body. He looked tiny from my seat in the middle of my pack of hundreds of would-be Aurors, crammed into one of the Ministry courtrooms for our convocation. He sounded like someone who hated making speeches, rushing from clause to clause with no regard for the usual cadences of human speech, grammar or even logic. The applause he received was dutiful and short.

Of course, it's hard to be impressed by anything when you're so scared your breakfast is fighting to climb out of your stomach.

But I know better now. I know a lot, after three years of hanging on through all the sleepless study, through the channels of a bureaucracy that borders on the absurd, through the training exercises that seem all too real. I know that the things I meet in the dark of the simulation chambers are evil, and that they walk the streets with me hidden in plain sight. I know that the Ministry is the only force that can bring order to this chaos of not-knowing who your enemy is or when he might be standing beside you, a smile for a mask. And I know that Barty Crouch meant it when he said that without us – without the fifty men and women who remained to hear him offer his brusque congratulations when we finally earned our Auror's robes – without us, the world would be eaten from the inside out by the Dark. The Ministry itself would collapse, riddled with iniquity and corruption.

And the Ministry is bigger than one man, than fifty men. In some ways, it's larger than the nation it serves. It has to be. Mr. Crouch knows the enormity of it and knows that beside it, he – like me – is nothing at all. But we're very different, of course; I don't mean to say I could measure up to a man like him. I may know that the Ministry is the last rock we can all cling to so we're not swept away by the animals among us, inside us, and that we have no choice but to do whatever it takes to keep it strong. But Mr. Crouch knows that it's right. To be sure of anything in times like these requires greatness – requires a courage, an uprightness that I wouldn't have believed possible if I had never met him – and it's easy to see in his face that he possesses the pure and brutal love that mankind needs in a protector. The strength of his knowledge fills him up and overflows, while mine just chews holes in my stomach.

I think that's why it's such a comfort to be near him. It's enough to redeem being stuck on late-night guard duty, watching the long line of fireplaces in the Atrium, most of them grated and impenetrable at this hour; I know he'll come down sooner or later, old leather soles and stiff robes echoing through the dark, silent hall. I unlock a grating for him every night – he seems to pick them at random – and send him on his way. Once I asked him why he didn't just use the Floo in his office, and he told me you can never be too careful.

He's late tonight. It's almost two in the morning before I hear the high chorus of the hinges that means he's coming off the lift. He's not alone. The way the voices fly to the ceiling and crash back down on themselves in this room makes it easy for me not to overhear the conversation, but I know it's an angry one, and I know even before they turn the corner that Minister Bagnold is the second party. A few words escape the Atrium's acoustic confusion – ruthless, evidence, innocent. The Minister whips off her high pointed hat and gestures with it, making her look short and stubby beside Mr. Crouch, who's no giant himself. They've both got presence, though. Even if it were eight in the morning and this place were packed from wall to wall, they'd be the only people here.

"It's going to get away from you, Barty," she says, stopping not five paces from me. I'd try not to eavesdrop, but what's the point? This is an argument all of Britain is having. If you believe the papers and the press releases, she and Mr. Crouch are the only ones not at each other's throats about it, but she has no choice but to fall in line with him in public. He's too popular now (how poorly it suits him!) for her to disagree with him openly. "When this is over, when you've got your men in Azkaban, think of what we'll be left with. An Auror Office that's learned not to give a damn whether someone's guilty – panels that have forgotten the Charter of Rights even exists, moldering away as it is now."

"Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures." Mr. Crouch looks her square in the eye and starts winding a thick muffler around his neck. I don't know why he gets all bundled up to take the Floo home, unless that's not where he's going. "No one has forgotten anything. Without our work, the Charter and every other guarantee of peace and freedom would be dead instead of dormant. When the time comes, the Aurors' special powers will be allowed to expire. Until then –"

"No. They won't, Barty. The Aurors will raise a fuss and you know it, and after they've just spent years putting away every seedy-looking wizard in the country there's not a soul who'll be able to tell them no. You don't stay in office by butting heads with the men who keep the streets clean." The Minister wrings her hat in her hands. "I know you'd be the first to step down, Barty, when you thought your job was done. But no one else is going to. You've opened the door to something terrible, and you've got to shut it. It may not be too late. Killing a piece of filth like Rosier is one thing, but if you don't rein them in soon, there will be others. It can't become normal, Barty. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is gone. It's time to put a stop to this before it gets any more out of hand."

Mr. Crouch's frown makes his mustache twitch to the left. There's a little silver in it that I haven't noticed before, glinting in the low light of the green embers that makes everything look dull and grey. "Gone, Millicent, but as good as alive. While his followers are free, we can't afford complacency. We'll strike hard, and keep striking – until we can stop. And we will stop."

I'm one of the Aurors the Minister is worried about, I've realized. I hope he never stops. She doesn't trouble herself over me, though; after giving Mr. Crouch a long, worried look, she just nods and turns away. "We'll see, Barty," she says, shoving her tired-looking hat on her head as I draw my wand and tap the nearest mantelpiece, raising the flames and sweeping aside the golden grating. She gives me a nod and a tight smile. "Goodnight, Dawlish."

"Goodnight, Minister." Then the fire swallows her, the grating races back into place, and when the clang of metal on stone has disappeared into the walls, Mr. Crouch and I are alone.

He stands with his arms folded over his chest, his face passing in and out of shadow as the flames recede. For a moment he looks like he belongs in the middle of the fountain, gilt and polished, an eternal fixture in the Atrium. He's about as reachable as a statue, after all – about as likely to be swayed by the whispers that fill this building's corridors every afternoon, just as likely to turn in your direction when you call.

I'd rather he not move. We stand face to face for what seems like a minute and I feel invisible, as free to admire him unobserved as if he were inanimate, an image of human stone. But all too soon he turns on his heel and makes for the end of the glowing rows of fireplaces, and I follow without speaking, waiting for him to stop once he's chosen his route home. Tonight it's the very last grating on the right, the one that's almost flush against the massive stone relief of Merlin in a council of war that looks more and more every year as though it were being slowly ground away by wind or water. He rests his hand on a piece of its scrollwork, his shoulders tilting slightly out of their usual rigid geometry. He doesn't look tired – I have never seen him look tired – but he's not as fresh as he could be. Who would be, this time of night?

"He hasn't gone, Dawlish." He stares up at one of the many stone faces, none of which I've ever really been able to identify.

"No, sir. Not while he's got his lackeys running free." Personally, I don't hold with some of the more superstitious opinions about where You Know Who's disappeared to. If the man weren't dead, his followers would be doing even more damage than they already are. The Imperius problem in the Ministry has largely come to an end, a sign that any organized attempt to infiltrate has collapsed.

"But he will go," Mr. Crouch says, running his hand over the smooth stone before buttoning up his overcoat. "Once we have the last of his followers in chains, we'll have our peace. The department won't bear this burden forever, whatever the Minister thinks."

Burden is a curious word for the free hand he's given us. I don't think anyone in the Auror Office has ever felt lighter. "No, sir. It might be that we should, though. Bear it, I mean." His eyes meet mine and he purses his lips and almost smiles. I know that patient and yet unwavering expression well – he knows I'm wrong, but sometimes he can be so kind about it. I press on, however. "Only think how much good it could do – we could do, even after You Know Who's been taken out of the picture. No one could say a word against you. The way we're putting people away, we'd probably work ourselves out of a job in a year."

Mr. Crouch bows his head, smiles, and starts pulling on his mittens. "The witches and wizards you protect deserve to enjoy their lives as they once knew them, Dawlish, in peace and order – and according to the principles they have always known." When he looks back up at me there's something softer about him, as though he's recalling some fond dream. "Which means that special powers must be laid aside when the special circumstances that require them evaporate."

"But there'll always be –"

"No." He raises his hand in a rare interruption. "Bad enough to suspend tradition for the Death Eaters and their ilk, but to destroy it forever on account of the lesser evils that will always clog the courts would be a terrible thing. We must respect our forbears," he says, glancing up at the shadowed faces of Merlin and whatever kings he's standing with. "It's the only way truly to preserve order."

I don't see that it makes a damn bit of difference whether you follow someone else's rules or make them up as you go along, so long as there aren't any Dark wizards on the prowl, but there are a lot of things I don't understand. I know, at least, where my trust lies. "If you say it is." I open the grate for him, watching him pale in the sudden burst of light.

"The only way. Goodnight, Dawlish." He gives me a sharp nod, steps across the hearth, and disappears into the fire. I resist the urge to follow him.

The grating slides shut, the hall dims, and I'm alone again – probably until my shift ends. I try to imagine what he might do were he in my position, left to himself in the dark silence among the Ministry's grand symbols, the place it presents itself for the first time to its people. I don't know why he thinks it's so important to throw away the power he's gained for all of us when he's the one who's always said that we'll do what must be done; I don't understand why he sees more safety in preserving some old piece of parchment than in handing out much-needed justice. I wish I could believe what he believes, because whatever's wrong inside of me leaves a vast distance between us that I can never hope to cross, as much as I long to. But now, in the most desperate dead of night, dwarfed by the Atrium and everything it's seen, I can share with him at least the sense that what I'm surrounded by is holy. I know what he feels when he sees all of this in his most private moments, and I can begin to taste the back-bending reverence that could make someone value this over human lives, and I resolve to be the Ministry's man, even if I can never be his.

***

The courtrooms deep underground should feel just as sacred, home as they are to the power of the Wizengamot and the final retribution of a wounded people against its attackers. This is where Mr. Crouch picks over our suspicious crop and removes the wrongdoers to Azkaban like so much blighted fruit – this is where the hope goes out of so many who would have this place fall to pieces.

Recently, though, the courtrooms have been too crowded for solemnity. Even in December stuffing the benches full of human bodies makes for a pretty ripe environment, and when half of them are only there for the show the room fills up with side chatter in a matter of minutes. Sometimes you can hardly hear the testimony unless you've got a good seat. Mr. Crouch glares and shouts and mostly keeps the peace, but it's a close thing. Ever since we started dragging in the Death Eaters and their associates at the rate of one or two a week, the ceremony of it all has become markedly less impressive. People are beginning to feel safe enough to consider this entertainment.

I don't go to watch very often. I can't handle the dementors. You can't feel them, of course, if you're up in the gallery, but the mere sight of their dead hands and the vacant darkness under their hoods is enough to make me lose sleep for nights at a time. The handful of times I've come close enough to suffer their effects, I've felt so empty that I wanted to scream – full of nothing and surrounded by chaos, cut free from the world like a ship from a dock, and drifting out onto flat black doldrums where I have nothing to hear but the way my voice echoes inside me. Hollow. Empty. Every time I sit in on a trial I can't help but begin to feel lost.

But I had to come today.

It's quiet, for once. It still smells, but it's almost cold – probably because everyone is sitting so still, their necks craned just so, the better to see past the dementors to the four seated prisoners. Mr. Crouch's wife, Johanna, is the only person moving, and the only person – aside from me – whose eyes aren't fixed on the accused. She keeps leaning forward like she's going to be sick, her face hidden behind a wrinkled handkerchief. I've seen her a few times before, always in the warmer light of Mr. Crouch's office, and always dressed formally. Now she looks as though she's been wearing the same robes for days, and her hands are pale as bone. I'm sorry for her, if not as sorry as I am for poor Frank.

Mr. Crouch is steady on his feet and reading off his own son's crimes in a firm, unhesitating voice. The only sign that he's at all out of sorts is that his jaw is clenching with fatigue. "We have heard the evidence against you. The four of you stand accused of capturing an Auror – Frank Longbottom – and subjecting him to the Cruciatus Curse, believing him to have knowledge of the present whereabouts of your exiled master, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named." There's none of the awkward stop-and-go that mars Mr. Crouch's public speeches or his wireless interviews. I thought perhaps today his cold conviction would falter, but it hasn't, and I'm glad. I've never had to feel sorry for him, and I don't want to. It's so much easier to be proud.

“You are further accused of using the Cruciatus Curse on Frank Longbottom’s wife, when he would not give you information." He's shouting, now; his son's begging has almost drowned him out. The gallery begins to hum and writhe as people turn to murmur to one another. "You planned to restore He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to power, and to resume the lives of violence you presumably led while he was strong. I now ask the jury –”

"Mother!"

Mr. Crouch's son is nothing like his father. His hoarse, high-pitched screaming is broken with fear, and what I can see of his body is contorted and shaking. Nothing about them suggests any relation. When Mrs. Crouch begins to sob in earnest, her choked, heaving voice shaming the packed benches once more into silence, she seems just as poor a fit for Mr. Crouch as is her son. The distance that lies between them is as great as the chasm of faith that I look across every time I set eyes on him. The realization sends my heart into a wicked frenzy and I'm sure everyone can hear my pulse drumming through my body. She doesn't understand him, either. She doesn't know the way he knows that all of this is absolutely necessary. She's like me. Does he even love her? I want to cry, too.

Applause crashes though the room like a massive wave against a cliff, filling all the corners and sweeping all other noise aside. They've convicted him – they've convicted him, and Mr. Crouch and the four Death Eaters are just pantomiming figures down in the well of the courtroom, their voices lost in the tumult. I stand and shove past the spectators sitting beside me, stumbling into the aisle and through the sea of grim faces toward the room's one quarter of stillness, the benches where the Council are still seated, looking blank or drawn or smug or worried, but silent to a man – always decorous. I break through the wall of sound just in time to hear the boy send up one last plea as the dementors close around him again.

"I'm your son!"

Mr. Crouch's face pinches and colors, and for the first time I see the hot, twisted signs of pain on him. He's a different man now, marked and wounded by what he's done – but never lacking for confidence. "You are no son of mine!" The words erupt from him with a force that makes his entire body shudder. "I have no son! Take them away! Take them away, and may they rot there!"

There's a brief commotion behind him – Mrs. Crouch has collapsed, and two of the women on the Council are gathering up their robes and rushing down to her, taking her hands and saying her name, Johanna, Johanna. Mr. Crouch stands alone, clutching the parchment in his hands so tightly that his thumb rips through, and staring through the opposite wall with wild eyes. I watch his fury fade – more likely he's just swallowing it back into himself – and swallow my own sorrow, the blistering tightness in my throat that I must release, though my heart is breaking for him. His wife can't help him now – I wonder if she ever will again – and I've decided that I'm the one he needs. I know what it's like to feel as though everything's been knocked out from under you, and I know that sometimes the only thing that can help you haul yourself back up is finding someone who can show you what to stand on. I'll show him what he is to me, and he'll see. He'll see that he could never have done anything differently. It won't wash the pain away, but it will ease it. He doesn't deserve to hurt.

So when he turns on his heel and starts for the door, I follow him. The crowd parts before him, so it's easier than it should be in this suffocating room. I only lose him once or twice in the crush of the hall, and by the time he's wedged himself into a crowded lift I'm right beside him, willing the rest of the riders to disappear. They do, one by one, until there are only four of us waiting to get off at level two. I hesitate as Mr. Crouch sweeps off into his office and slams the door behind him – I'm losing my nerve. I can't do this here. How could he tolerate it? He would never allow himself the weakness I know is eating at him, not in his own realm.

Shaklebolt catches my eye and raises his eyebrows, his mouth a flat, tight line. "He should go home," he says in that quiet way he has, as though he's afraid he'll startle someone. "This is going to get –"

Mr. Crouch's door flies open and bangs against the wall and he marches out, his Council robes gone in favor of a plain black set that's skewed and sticking up at the collar. His overcoat is draped over one arm. At the lift he stops and turns, staring past my shoulder for a moment before the dazed shadow in his eyes lifts and he sees me. "Dawlish. Good. Come with me."

I jump into the lift. "Level eight," Mr. Crouch says, hoarse, and with a very slight waver.

Where are you going? I've never wanted to know more than I do now. If it were me, I'd want to be alone, but I also know it wouldn't do me any good. If I had someone who wanted to follow me the way I need to follow him … "Sir, what you d –"

"There will undoubtedly be someone from the Prophet in the Atrium," Mr. Crouch cuts in without looking at me. The pitch of his voice is slipping upwards. It's the sound of someone who's just holding on. "And various other press representatives. You will inform them that I have nothing at all to say."

"Yes, sir." So I'll have all of ten seconds alone with him – nowhere near enough. I could just reach out and touch him, if I thought he would understand it. I don't trust myself to be so eloquent. I've loved him for years, and yet I've never thought through what I might say to him, never let myself imagine having him. I've always known it was impossible. But now he needs someone, and who else is there? "Sir – you couldn't have –"

"You will also tell – Bones, yes – I'll see her first thing in the morning. The Undersecretary will need to be in attendance. Scrimgeour had better come as well. I won't return today."

And then the grille opens, and my brief opportunity – perhaps my last – is ended. The Atrium's usual mid-afternoon population is indeed supplemented by a good fifteen men and women armed with quills and self-rolling parchment and unwieldy cameras. I don't know how they do it – maybe they can sense my fear – but I haven't taken three steps into the hall before they start trying to close around the man behind me.

I let the avalanche of questions fall uninterrupted. I don't know that Mr. Crouch even hears them; when I turn to ask him where we're going, he's got that same unbounded gaze he's had since they took his son away. It's like he can see through everything, like there's nothing for thousands of miles that's worth looking at. I hate it. "Sir?"

"The visitor's entrance." He starts to pull on his bulky coat, his sleeve flapping at one of the nearby floating quills. In that, I suppose, he could just about pass for a Muggle, which none of these reporters will be able to do. A clever escape, if there's nowhere on the Floo network good enough for you.

There's a bewildered-looking man stepping out of the old telephone box as our little mob approaches. I wave him to the side and Mr. Crouch slides in, buttoning his coat. With a creak and a rush of air he's gone. The press, realizing they've just lost their quarry and not terribly interested in me, start to dissipate back into the Atrium's crowd. I should walk away, too – I should go back up to level two and round up Bones and Scrimgeour and any other curious parties and deliver the prelude to what I'm sure will amount to Mr. Crouch's resignation. But I can do all of that tomorrow. Right now, all that matters is that no one else is following him. It has to be me. I draw my wand, counting away the minutes until I know the box is shuddering back into place at street level, imagining that I can hear its glass rattling high above. In the time it takes me to call it down again and ride to the surface, I've almost certainly lost him. But I'm going to try.

I'm not about to pass for a Muggle either, of course; a Disillusionment Charm is the best I can do. I step out of the telephone box and I'm covered over in rust and scratched glass and scrawled-on cement. I've never liked being able to see the ground beneath my feet – it's unnerving. Who needs more reminders that you might as well not be here? But precautions must be taken, even though it's four o'clock and very nearly dark. The streets are crowded, after all – crowded with an endless stream of hatless men in black coats, every one of whom could be Mr. Crouch. Trying to move through them is like trying to run in the paralysis of a nightmare. I don't even know where I'm going.

I doubt he'd have stayed around here very long, though. He'd be anonymous, true enough, but he'd never be able to think. Human and mechanical noises fight against one another in the narrow arena between high buildings until the entire frigid shadowed space that is the road is thick with them. The windows are all too bright and too full of words, symbols you can't help understanding at first glance whether you want to or not, and you must keep moving, lest you be snapped at, jostled, trampled. This is no place for contemplation. I duck into a side street and just keep walking down the gentle slope of the land, turning the corners that allow me to descend.

Will he be walking down? It's the natural thing to do, to seek the warmth and comfort of the sheltered places in the earth. Or, barring that, at least somewhere where the city rises up around you on all sides, or the floor beside the bed where your pencils, bottles, socks always seem to roll and come to rest, the place where you know you'll stay once you get there, because the laws of physics dictate it. There's nowhere lower, and nowhere safer.

I find that place at the side of a road lined by bare, scarred sycamore trees. A cold draught falling from the grassy incline at my back swims around my ankles, making dizzying waves in the curbstone as my robes flare gently out over the gutter. Cars pass by, one blinding arc of headlights after another – it's a busy street, but not motionless with thwarted traffic. There are very few pedestrians; this is not the shortest way to anywhere most people want to be.

Mr. Crouch is here, though, rocking silently from heel to toe on the corner half a block away, his chin shoved down into his coat.

We've come to the same place. I could almost die happy.

He steps into the road and I run after him, not because he's going to be hit – of course he's watching for cars – but because I can't lose sight of him again. I have to stop between the opposing lanes of traffic when he steps up onto the curb and looks from side to side, turning, lost, his mouth and mustache twitching. To approach him now, particularly while more or less invisible, would be disrespectful.

"Repello Muggletum."

The cars steer around me as smoothly as though the road itself had diverged. Mr. Crouch watches, disengaged, following the forked path of the Muggle vehicles with eyes that show nothing but the flat grey of the courtroom walls. I wish he would cry out again the way he did when he disowned his son. I know he's still in pain, and he shouldn't doubt himself so much that he needs to hide it. It's no sin to grieve a loss. He's done nothing wrong. He must know that. Even I know it – even I can see how important it is that abandoning his son to the rule of law be the right thing to do. I want to take him in my arms and tell him that it means everything to me and he can't leave me standing by myself –

Mr. Crouch slumps under the weight of his coat, and the passing lights paint his face a stark, dead white, casting his eyes in black shadow. "Johanna," he says, destroying us both. He still seems uncertain, wavering between left and right, twisting in his footprints. But when the next wave of lights threatens to engulf him, he backs away from the curb and slips into the dark, shrub-lined square behind him.

And I walk home unseen.

I don't wake up until eleven the next morning, and when I do my mouth feels like it's full of mulching leaves and my stomach is ready to twist itself free of my body. I'm pretty sure I've been sick in the night, but it's not really worth remembering. I can see myself again, at least, even if I didn't remember to take my shoes off. I wet my hands and pull them through my hair, shave, Tergeo my robes and try to remember how to press them, and then stagger into the fireplace.

The spinning almost makes me sick again, but I fall out into the Atrium clean except for the usual covering of ash and Floo powder. Nothing is different – the same people are moving along in the same currents toward the same lifts, the reporters are nowhere to be found, the constant flash and ebb of green from the fireplaces is as headache-inducing as it always is on days when I need about eight more hours of sleep and a hangover potion. It should be comforting, but it's not – my stomach stays on level eight as I take the lift with its slightly increased population of memos up to Auror Headquarters.

There's no chaos here. The only sign that anything has changed is that Scrimgeour is in the office rather than out trying to get himself cursed to pieces by his latest target, and Bones isn't back behind closed doors buried under the last three months' reports. They're both following Minister Bagnold past our broad windows – which Magical Maintenance has decided to fill with a sickeningly sunny day, I see, nothing like the choppy white sky I left aboveground – into one of the meeting rooms.

I let them pass and collapse into my seat behind my desk. After sending my mug to go collect some tea and milk and finding a case file to hide behind, I relax enough that my mind begins to return to me. Bones will be the new department head, almost certainly. Scrimgeour I'm not sure about, but it's no secret that Bagnold and her advisers have always liked him. Harkniss, our current head of the Auror Office, is one of Mr. Crouch's favorites, and it's hard to imagine he won't be moved out of his office by the end of the day. Scrimgeour doesn't really strike me as a leader, but what the hell do I know? I've never been head of anything.

I do know that for once I've seen things more clearly than Barty Crouch – he didn't have to do this. I may never see him again – I may spend the rest of my life wishing I'd followed him all last night. I don't know where he is, and I'm afraid to find out. But yesterday he poured out his own blood to keep the order he holds so dear, and today he's gone, and that's wrong. I have him to thank, as always, for giving me the one solid fact that keeps me from drifting free of my anchor here and now. He made a sacrifice, and his departure is a travesty.

Still, it nags at me all day – he left of his own accord. He might have been forced out later, of course, but Mr. Crouch would have been more than capable of fighting those battles. He left, and I – I alone – saw him in his last moments as the rock that he once was. I alone know that he left because he found something more important than the Ministry, and it broke him.

I've never been so terrified.

***

When Mr. Crouch is finally gone, it's almost a relief, like the tearing, acute pain that means a day of kneeling in front of the toilet is almost over, that tells you this is it – either you'll make it through or you won't, but one way or another, something's about to give. No thought is possible. There's only suffering and the ecstatic hope that soon it will be over. I think if I could only fall asleep, I might ride out the worst of it unconscious. In the morning my mind will be clear and the world won't have that stark, eye-burning brightness, that nauseating quality it has when you've been up for almost twenty-four hours.

But Scrimgeour's been staring at me for several minutes now; and though my arms are crossed on top of his desk and all it would take is one moment of weakness to let my head fall to my wrists and find sleep at last, any comfort would be short-lived. I have a lot to answer for. My account of the day's events, clumsy and jumbled and too high-pitched by far, is still hanging in the silence of this office. He doesn't like it. That hard, affronted look he gets, all flat eyes and flaring nostrils, tells me in no uncertain terms that he doesn't like it at all. But then, I don't think he's ever liked me – he's always shoving me off on dud assignments. Personal security for the Minister of Magic might seem like a nice line on a résumé, but in Rufus Scrimgeour's Auror Office, it just means you're no good for anything but absorbing curses intended for Cornelius Fudge.

"Why did you allow the dementors to perform the Kiss on Barty Crouch?" he asks, steepling his fingers under his chin.

"There was nothing I could do. Minister Fudge insisted the dementor come with us, and once it saw him – that was that."

"The Minister did not have the authority – the man hadn't been properly identified, never mind sentenced."

"He sure as hell had been sentenced –"

"Not for the murder of Cedric Diggory." Scrimgeour's eyes narrow very slightly. "He ought to have stood a new trial. Was Minister Fudge personally threatened?"

I don't see how he couldn’t have felt threatened, faced with a man who should have been dead, with You Know Who's mark tattooed on his arm to boot. Crouch's unconsciousness, I'll admit, had seemed little enough protection at the time. "Crouch was a Death Eater. He'd just – well, people were saying that he'd just killed a boy."

"Is that what they were saying?"

I raise my eyes from the rumpled cuff of my sleeve to stare back at him. Who else can he have spoken to? It seems like only a matter of minutes since that evil, empty, rotting thing swept down over Barty Crouch's son and tore away his soul, but of course it's been hours. Rumors spread. I shrug. "Not exactly."

Scrimgeour leans back into his creaking chair, raising his eyebrows. "No, not exactly." He's watching me very carefully now, but I'm not sure why. I don't know anything. "They were saying that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has returned. That he killed the Diggory boy. That Crouch was merely his accomplice."

"I reckon Snape would say just about anything."

"Probably. And McGonagall?"

In truth, I can't think of a reason for either of them to lie about it. Snape whitewashing his history with the Death Eaters is nothing new, and being one of the first to raise the alarm against his old master might play well – but only if he actually comes back. McGonagall stands to gain nothing at all. "She might believe it. Who knows – she's been under Dumbledore so many years. What he says goes, I'm sure."

"Hm." That seems to have struck a note with Scrimgeour. His stiff, calculating expression very nearly breaks into a sneer. "Perhaps. They may not be wrong. We don't know – and we won't know."

"I told you, Minister Fudge insisted –"

Scrimgeour yawns. "You're not much of an investigator, are you."

I rest my forehead in my hand, tracing a ring-shaped stain on his desk with the tip of my finger. I'm too tired for this. "I wasn't there to investigate. I was there for the Minister." And the Minister is a coward. I should have done something to stop him, but that's not my place. And watching the man who wrecked Mr. Crouch lose everything that made him human was something I thought I wanted.

"An unenviable position."

The clock on the wall gives a reproachful cough and informs us that it's three in the morning.

"I'm good at it," I say.

But it's an unstable job in the best of times, and Minister Fudge doesn't exactly inspire confidence. If You Know Who is back, I imagine we'll have a new Minister in a matter of months. No one's going to follow a man who's closed his eyes to the greatest crisis our world has seen in decades. Fudge is a champion at digging his heels in and staying put, but in an emergency that's unlikely to be the most popular course of action for very long. If Fudge is right and Dumbledore is talking nonsense, then we'll see. The truth will out eventually.

I wonder if Mr. Crouch would have believed that the Dark wizard whose followers he reduced to a few desperate fugitives had returned.

Yes. I plant my hands on the arms of my chair as the pain twists through me again. Yes. Of course he would have believed it. He probably even knew about it. Maybe that's why he's dead.

He's dead.

When I start to feel lightheaded, I realize I'm breathing too quickly, and I do my best to relax back into my chair, but my fingers have dug into the wood like vines and my back seizes up and I can't move. We have not yet discovered his remains, Snape said, cool as you please, but we have reason to believe they were left on the school grounds. Mr. Crouch is in the ground and it's going to drive me fucking crazy.

"You are good at it," Scrimgeour says, but I can't take any more of this and I stand up. I have to go home. He's just looking at me, without contempt, without emotion – as usual, I have no idea what he's thinking. I think there must be less to him than there was to Mr. Crouch. He has the persistence, the same cold efficacy, the same ruthless adherence to the Ministry's mission of maintaining order. I don't know if he cares one way or the other, though, that it's right. It's hard to say what he believes. He may not believe anything.

I can't really blame him. Mr. Crouch's passionate faith was what crushed him, and what little of it was ever reflected in me hasn't done me any good, either.

***

Every job has its hazards, and mine has recently included having a head like a cabinet full of clattering china. I've never before had occasion to count the bones in the human skull, but they make so much noise as my feet slap again and again on the pavement that I can't help but pick them all out. I should go home and shut them up with some Dreamless Sleep, but orders are orders. Dumbledore is leaving Hogwarts tonight – follow him, and report directly to me. I don't suppose Minister Scrimgeour was expecting me to be jinxed right off my broom within the first five minutes, but he probably should have.

At least I'll be early, for once. It only took me ten minutes to steady myself enough to climb out of that tree. He's always griping that I'm behind schedule, but not today.

The Minster, I've noticed, has the strange property of being a shadowy inverse, a skewed reflection. He lives in a peeling block of walk-ups that could easily house my own flat if you simply flew it ten miles or so to the east and painted it a slightly grimier shade of grey; the weight of disappointment that settles inside me as I take the stairs up to my room and another night of waiting for the time when I can go to sleep is reversed here, trying to raise itself out of my throat with every step. By the time I've found the door (it's 15C – knock five times, and speak to no one until you've seen me) I'm not quite sure how I got here. Everything feels backwards.

I knock five times, though, and the door opens. A dim light spills out and shows all the dirt I've kicked up from the bristly doormat. The corridor beyond is briefly disorienting – it's far too long to fit inside this building, and lit on only one side by a single gas lamp standing on a narrow table near the door. Once the door closes, shutting the outside world behind me, everything settles back into proportion.

"Lumos." The wand light helps as I travel past several open doors with their own maze-like hallways stretching in every direction, heading for the bright archway at the end of this strange, dusty tunnel. I've never visited him at home before. I think this is home. We've only ever met in rooms over Muggle pubs before, in empty lots or fields he seems to choose at random. His attempts at keeping track of the goings on at Hogwarts are nothing he considers Ministry business, it seems.

I wonder if these other doors lead anywhere, or if this is simply Scrimgeour's version of traveling by a different fireplace every night. He has some of Mr. Crouch's cold paranoia, but his fear always seems slightly more immediate, more desperate. He's missing Mr. Crouch's steadfast serenity, which, when it comes to preserving life and limb, may not be such a bad thing.

Scrimgeour is just rising from his seat at a long, low writing table when I step into his bare parlor, extinguishing my wand and only now trying to formulate the proper words. There isn't much to report, but one likes to make these things sound good.

I never have the chance, however. "I should have known," he says with the force of an oath, sending a quill skittering off to the edge of his desk. "It was a mistake – too obvious, too eager. You never had a chance. Damn him." He stalks off into another room in an angry whirl of robes.

It hardly seems fair. "Yes, sir." That doesn't help my headache any. I follow, because there's no way I've come all the way here to be dismissed without saying a thing. I wish he'd decided it was too obvious and eager before sending me out after the man who took down Gellert Grindelwald. "It did seem a bit of a stretch, and –"

"And you did it anyway." His broad, stooping frame fills up most of the tiny kitchen. I stop short just before running into him – there's no room for both of us. He puts the kettle on with a bit of a lurch, landing on his bad leg. "And now you're speaking as though I were a mile away. Are your ears ringing?"

They are. I doubt tea's going to help, but I won't say no. He can't expect me to drink it and stand at attention, so that must mean I'm allowed to sit down. Thank goodness. "I'm sorry." There's an armchair not far away that looks especially inviting.

"You shouldn't be. A necessary risk." Once the teacups have made their way safely to the counter, he turns and takes me by the chin, showing me my rather disheveled reflection in the glare on his glasses – stubbly lantern jaw, tired eyes, hair that may still have a few twigs hiding here and there. "And your pupils are the same size. You'll be fine. How far did you fall?" Just like that, his hand drops away from my face and he brushes past, somehow squeezing through the doorway without upsetting a candelabrum that I immediately send to the floor when I turn to follow him.

"Yes sir." I spend a moment orienting the candles back in their sockets, my throat suddenly very tight. "I don't – not far. I hit a tree."

"And you have no idea where he was headed? A town, a direction? Nothing?" He's pacing the length of his parlor with that halting but graceful gait of his. I've seen him do this in his office for an hour at a time, but now he stops and points to the armchair. "Sit."

He doesn't have to ask me twice. Sitting is harder than it should be, though, like I'm learning how to do it all over again now that I've got body parts hurting that I never even knew I had. "No. Nothing. He was too fast – spotted me too quickly, I mean. He knew what I was doing from the start. He wouldn't have led me anywhere important." I should be embarrassed, but with Scrimgeour I rarely am, even when all I have to offer him is utter failure. He never stops to make me feel stupid. I imagine he thinks it would be a waste of time. We're on the same side, after all. Whatever the reason, I count myself lucky, because I've seen him stare other men down halfway to tears. "Wherever he was going, he didn't want anyone to know."

"And we won't, until he decides it's for the best. Dealing with Dumbledore is very much like –" He stops, his jaw working as he glares straight ahead. "It's very much like trying to speak to a particularly thick and well-mannered troll. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. There's no reasoning with him. He must know I can't help him if I know nothing. If he means to fight He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, he must know that a united front is essential. For the public peace of mind, if nothing else. 'The Ministry does nothing,' that's what everyone says and has for years, but there is nothing I can do – nothing but sit and wonder what the bloody hell Albus Dumbledore thinks he has up his sleeve this time."

"There must be something you – something we could do without him." I wish he would sit. The frustration is stiffening his shoulders and sending the muscles in my back into tight coils in sympathy.

"Very little. He has the keys, I'm sure of it." Scrimgeour breaks off to disappear into the kitchen, and returns momentarily with tea. "And he won't deploy them until he sees fit. Why hide them, otherwise? If he has no other agenda, why not spread the burden? He's up to something, and I'm supposed to sit back and trust that it's for the best. All of Britain is supposed to wait patiently while he sorts it out for us. He can't possibly be blind to what it's doing to the country – this ridiculous inaction."

I take my tea in shaking hands and drink. Ginger, and something else – it actually helps, and I can think clearly enough to reconstruct what's just been said. The high whine between my ears finds a lower pitch and stays there. "But we're not inactive. We know who we're chasing. Tracking down the biggest breakout from Azkaban in history seems active enough – I don't know." The Auror Office is doing what it can. We may not be part of anyone's grand plan, but chasing You Know Who's servants is pretty much old hat. "We've got more than half the force out ready to round up the Death Eaters. We've done it before."

"Oh, yes." Scrimgeour curls his lip at his tea. "To great effect."

We drink in silence for a while.

There's not much I can do to help him, and I know he only says these things to me to get them out into the air, to hear them out loud. I'm not much of an investigator, I'm worse than useless as a spy, and all the twists and turns of politics leave me vaguely nauseous, but he knows what I am good at. Being there for Fudge meant covering for him, not asking questions, leaving his motives to one side and simply doing what I was asked. Scrimgeour wants other things. Fudge was wretched at keeping secrets, so a trusted ear meant little or nothing to him; to Scrimgeour, it means everything. He marshals facts like soldiers, and his tactics are so byzantine I don't know how he manages without driving himself mad. Speaking candidly is, for him, a pleasure rarely to be indulged. He wants his orders followed too, of course, but they're rarely self-serving. I think we may be something like friends.

The first time my shoulder pressed against his in the cramped space of a restaurant booth, one of our countless secret meeting places, it made me think of what I could have been to Mr. Crouch. I don't know what it made him think of, but we both got the same idea. It wasn't long after that that I started touching his hand without having to, standing too close to him while speaking, failing to move away when he leaned over my shoulder. He has secrets that have nothing to do with politics, just like me (although to hear him tell it, everything has everything to do with politics). And I like sharing them, and keeping them. Not least because I am very good at it.

I don't have the chance until a few days later, though – which gives me a chance to get my head to stop ringing like a bell, at least. It's given Scrimgeour a chance to get more than usually worked up over Harry Potter. I think this may be the first time I've seen him personally offended.

"You wouldn't believe the cheek," he's saying, pulling his hand too quickly through the tangled wilderness of his hair and rapping his knuckles on the headboard. The blankets are gathered at his waist and he's put his glasses back on, and he seems somewhat more human than when I arrived. Still seething, but sapped at least of all the energy I could take from him. I wish he would act a little more worn down; I'm still catching my breath, and I'm twenty years his junior. I'm not complaining, of course. There's nothing I love more than this. "No, 'cheek' doesn't being to describe it. Stalling and trying to string me along, making the most impudent accusations – he's as short-sighted and thick-headed as his blasted keeper. Arrogant – arrogant to a fault."

I drape my arm over my face to block out the lamplight. My elbow juts into his side. "He's sixteen. Like you said. I'm sure he didn't mean –"

"It doesn't matter what he means. It doesn't even matter if knows what he's doing or if he's Dumbledore's puppet – it matters what he does, as I tried to make sufficiently clear even for a boy of his obviously limited capacity. But he only spat back at me the same circular nonsense Dumbledore does. The Ministry isn't doing all it should to stop He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, so he'll have nothing to do with the Ministry. Dumbledore leaves us in the dark and looks down his nose at us when we're at a loss – Potter won't drop me so much as a hint, and then sees fit to scold me for arresting the wrong person. What do they expect?"

"Fudge." He's still what everyone expects, having been out of power less than six months. "They just – they don't see, yet. That things are different."

Scrimgeour snorts quietly. His fingers drum across my pillow. "Fudge. You're absolutely right. It's thanks to my illustrious predecessor that our credibility is so shockingly low that I'm reduced to begging a teenager for the honor of throwing his name around."

"It isn't fair."

"It isn't working. The longer we're left to founder on our own, the less likely we are to survive. The Dark Lord already has spies in the Ministry." His voice drops to a low rumble. Even here, there are some things that require extreme caution – and even under three blankets and with his hand hot on my shoulder, it makes me shudder. It's happening again. "He's already eating away at the walls. The weaker people think us, the easier it will be for him to find a foothold. The danger is very real – yes, very real. Dumbledore's not wrong to hold his secrets close, but we must trust one another, or the Ministry has no chance of coming through intact. He acts alone – he can afford a grand confrontation. We can't."

I slide my hand down my face and turn to look up at him, watching the lines of his neck shift and stiffen and fade back into him again. "They'll all have to see, soon – you're not Fudge. No matter what they think they can do on their own … It took the entire department years to bury the Death Eaters, last time. They'll need you."

He pulls his glasses off and starts cleaning them with the bed sheet. "They won't realize it for another year, perhaps more. I'm being given no opportunity – the entire Ministry is suffering." He sighs. "Why must we always be judged against those who come before us?"

"Who else are we going to be judged against? Anyway," I add, before he can snap at me, "I'd rather be judged against Fudge than anyone else. You can't help but come out looking good. It'll just take a little time."

Scrimgeour's mouth twitches up at the corner, and though he spends the next several minutes in silence, polishing his lenses so thoroughly I'm surprised they don't chip, I know I've pleased him. "You should shave," he says, when he can finally see again.

"Why?"

"It's Christmas."

"I don't have anything special planned."

"Oh, I'm flattered."

I roll onto my side, spreading my hand over his thigh beneath the sheets, finding the best place to feel the strong, steady pulse that I'll fall asleep to. For several minutes his hand stays on my shoulder, his thumb traveling up and down the inside of my arm – and then it's gone, and his heat evaporates as he leans over to the side of the bed to take up a book. I shut my eyes and try not to imagine the cracks that must already be opening in the bedrock of the Ministry for Scrimgeour to speak of them with so much dread. Sleep is the only thing that can make them seem less than inevitable.

***

It's midsummer when I wake up and discover that all of his fears have been realized. My eyes take almost a full minute to bring everything into focus, and even when they do it's all warped and sideways, stone and kicked-up carpet and a torch whose flame seems to be defying gravity until I sit up and the world settles into place. I'm not in pain. The antechamber that feeds into the Minister's office is scattered with the splinters of one unfortunate chair and there are sooty marks on the walls from badly-aimed spells, but otherwise the room is peaceful – silent. The portraits are all empty.

We thought we had more time. The men in the masks came too early, only moments after we heard the alert – Scrimgeour had only just drawn his wand to set his desk on fire when the doors flew open and three of them lit the room red with Stunning spells. I killed one of them before blacking out, but his friends must have taken his body. He's nowhere to be seen.

My wand has disappeared, too, or it's rolled off into a corner somewhere. I'll check soon, but Scrimgeour's office has to come first. I push myself to my feet and, one hand on the wall to combat the sudden downward rush of blood that makes me think I'm about to take another header to the floor, stagger to the yawning shadow behind his wide-open door. It's dark enough to be the middle of the night. The office's window is shattered, its enchantments destroyed, and behind the pane there's only more stone. There's no smoke in the air, but the stench is powerful, charred wood and burnt parchment and leather and I don't want to guess what else. How long was I out? Did they take him alive? Did they kill him while I was lying just outside? He's gone; the lone torch in the antechamber casts enough light to show an empty room with a blackened desk and walls smeared with ashes. Digging through a heap of papers behind his desk chair I find his glasses, one lens missing from the crushed wire frames, and I stick them in my pocket and move on to the upturned bookcase by the hearth. The signs of struggle are everywhere, but none of them speak to me. I'm almost certainly too late, in any case. It doesn't matter.

There's nothing I can do to help him. He'd understand, I'm sure. He knows what I'm good at – following orders, standing in the shadows, waiting to be called. There are other people who are better suited to attempt a rescue, if indeed a rescue can still be accomplished, and I have no doubt that were he here he'd tell me to keep my hands out of it. Everything I know about fighting Death Eaters is worth about as much as the ash on the bottom of my shoes if the Death Eaters are the Ministry, and I'd like to think they wouldn't have been able to take us unawares unless they were well on their way to a complete takeover. What am I supposed to do now?

I could run. They didn't bother to kill me; they might not care. Scrimgeour might even do the same thing, in my position, although I suppose he would be only a temporary refugee, determined as he is to fight the battle that we seem to have lost. I could go out blazing, spend my last few hours running around looking for the men who did this before they decide I'm too much of a bother and put me out of my misery. That's what Mr. Crouch would have expected. I'm glad he won't see any of this.

I'm especially glad that he won't see me, because I think I'm probably not going to run. I think I'm going to stay. I'm the Ministry's man. I've never had another place to go. I'm sure I could try and scrape out a different sort of life if I needed to, either pulling in enough money to keep my flat or giving up and drifting from my sister's couch to the hospital and back again. But why should I? My reasons are both dead. Mr. Crouch would hate me if he knew, and that might be the surest sign that he was worth loving, but I was never like him. Never sure like Mr. Crouch, never brave like Scrimgeour, and who knows – maybe if I stay, there'll be another man I'm nothing like. Maybe this is the best thing I can do.

Scurrying away like a rat from a sinking ship to drown in the cold swell of the storm is much less appealing.

The corridors outside the complex of the Minister's offices are undamaged. A few of the portraits have even begun to poke their heads back onto their canvasses. The lift comes when I call it, and as the grille is squeaking shut an old man in a mahogany frame shakes his head at me and says, "You go careful, there."

Going about my business as usual is being careful. Clenching my hand so tightly around Scrimgeour's glasses that the remaining lens cracks and opens my palm is a little less so, and walking into the Atrium like I belong there is probably folly. Maybe all they've got waiting for me is a curse – maybe they won't let me stay at all. But this way it's not in my hands, and that's always better.

It must be very late at night indeed, because I'm alone in the hall. I stop by the fountain, inspecting my hand in the shivering golden light that rises off the water, and pick out a sliver of bloody glass. The sting brings tears to my eyes. There was no blood in the office, but wherever he is now, I wonder –

Footsteps. I drag my sleeve across my eyes and turn, holding the glasses loosely behind my back. They're evidence, one way or another, and I shouldn't have taken them, but I don't want anyone else to have them.

Thicknesse and a tall, stout man with a face like a bulldog's are brushing off their robes, stepping out of the dim arcade of fireplaces into the fountain's circle of illumination. Thicknesse looks not in the least surprised to see me, but he rarely looks anything but blank, and as much as I'd like to be shocked to see him so very calm after a raid by the Death Eaters, I'm not. They must have had their spies, of course. It could just as easily have been anyone. I drop Scrimgeour's glasses into the fountain just as he's raising his wand. His partner whispers something into his ear.

I don't have time to tell him that he doesn't need to do it – whatever curse it is he's planning, Avada Kedavra, Imperius, Obliviate – he should save himself the trouble. He's the head of the department, and I'll take his orders. My loyalties are dead and ready to be reborn; or if they're not quite ready yet, I'll manage somehow. Whatever he's about to throw at me, it's unnecessary.

But I have a split second to hope that, whatever it is, it will make things easier.

"Confundo."

***

"Dawlish!"

I think Merlin's the one with the kind face and the jowls, but maybe he's the one with the gigantic beard. I've never been good with faces, and these aren't even real – just stone. Merlin in war council. This corner of the Atrium is the best place to look, especially in the early morning when all the fireplaces are lighting up, green and green and more green. The continuous bursts of light make the figures come to life.

A hand on my shoulder spins me around against the wall. "Dawlish – what the hell are you standing around here for?" Dolohov shoves a roll of parchment against my chest. "Take a wrong turn out of the Floo again?"

"Only looking." I unroll the parchment and remember that I'm meant to be collecting my latest list of truants. There are nearly twenty names this time. Some of them must be repeats – so many get away. "This – these are the kids?"

"No, it's my fucking Christmas list. Take it, go get your men together, and get out of here. It's time you lot brought us back something. You're starting to embarrass me."

"Sorry." It's hard to track anyone down when you feel like your brains are about to tip out of your ears. I've been this way for months, and there aren't many things I've found that help. Standing here and trying to remember the names of all the great stone men on the wall feels good. I've looked them up several times, but it's still a challenge. I start again, rolling the parchment so tightly in my hands that it crumples at the edges. There's Merlin, and Arthur, and something with a B –

"Dawlish!"

"Right. I'm off."

I turn and start for the lifts. In the early morning crush, Dolohov is swept up right behind me. "Useless," he mutters.

"Useful enough." Yaxley seems to sniff every two words or so – he's hard to miss. "Anyone can round up children, and it's not as though we have many volunteers."

"I wish this one would volunteer to stay home. If he's not camping out in that corner, he's rattling around level one like he belongs there. I must have to send someone up to fetch him at least twice a day. He'd still be jumping in the fountain if we hadn't scrapped the damn thing, digging around for Galleons and whatever else he –"

"So keep better track of your team. I haven't got the time to do it for you." Yaxley pushes past without so much as a glance in my direction.

When the mass of people parts, diverging at the base of the Atrium's enormous new statue, I whirl around and press my back against the pedestal and squint at the far wall. I can still make out most of the carved figures, but as usual the names escape me. I know it's important to remember, though – I know that those men are there for a reason, and that I've got to do my best to puzzle it out and take it to heart. I'm better at remembering when I can stand beside them, down past the very last fireplace where I can touch the carvings and feel where everyone else has touched them and worn them smooth. Sometimes, when it's very late and there's no one around to bother me, I come so close to understanding.

I have no time now – there's always a job to do, and the way working settles the constantly shifting clutter in my head, I'm glad – but I'll come back tonight. That's our time together. I never sleep so well as when I stumble home, feet aching and legs swollen and neck cramping from standing for hours and staring up, and trying to remember.

---

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