Excerpts from the Memory of Rufus Scrimgeour

[Lorpius Prime]

1. June 1996


Rufus Scrimgeour tapped his wooden cane against the stone floor, marking down the seconds as they passed on an imaginary clock. The sound echoed on the cold walls of the antechamber. The cane was the lesser of two concessions Rufus made to his age and health, the other was the pair of wire-rimmed glasses which sat before his eyes. Rufus hated the glasses, more than anything else they marked him for what he was: a lion past his prime.

None of this showed on his face, which remained hard and still, his lips pinched shut around his teeth. He did not sit entirely straight, but allowed his back some support from the chair. There was no reason to deny himself every comfort of the world anymore.

One of the great wooden doors before him was pushed open, and a young wizard wearing an assistant’s robes stepped out to look at Scrimgeour.

“They’re ready for you,” the boy said, with only a slight waver in his voice.

Bringing the end of his walking stick down a final time, Rufus pulled himself up out of the chair. He paused a moment to be sure of his footing, then strode for the door, his long fluid steps nearly hiding the weakness of his right thigh.

The assistant gave a nervous smile as the older man passed, but it collapsed under Scrimgeour’s hard gaze. The boy stood aside to usher him inside.

The room Rufus entered was like the one he left: a large chamber surfaced in stone, dark and cold despite the torches which lined the walls. His cane continued to echo sharply as it struck the floor. The sound stopped when he reached the center of the room, and stopped.

The only other noise, the low murmur of hushed voices also died down, till the gray dungeon chamber was deathly silent. A hundred or so eyes peered down at Rufus from a raised platform, most showing the terrible fear of their owners. Scrimgeour’s own yellow eyes met their gaze, grim but steady.

“Well, I’m sure you've surmised why you’re here, Rufus,” said the Chief Warlock.

His eyes were among the few in the Wizengamot that weren’t fluttering nervously, but twinkled in blue brilliance behind their tiny spectacles. Scrimgeour said nothing. The Chief Warlock, who liked his rhetorical questions, went on:

“Cornelius Fudge has decided to resign as Minister of Magic. And while we are all grateful for his long and noble leadership,” Scrimgeour watched as many heads were turned to look at Fudge, who was seated towards the back of the dungeons. The flesh of his face was gray and loose. The Chief Warlock continued, “the Ministry needs a new Minister.”

There was a pause, and the eyes returned to face Rufus, who continued to stand and wait. The Chief Warlock cleared his throat.

“Rufus Gregor Scrimgeour, the Wizengamot, here convened, requests your service as Minister of Magic. Will you accept?”

“Yes.”

[Lorpius Prime]

2. June 1996


Some hours later, Rufus was standing in a graveyard. A gust of wind caught in his cloak, and threatened to pull him off his walking stick, upon which he was leaning for support. The wind subsided, however, and Rufus remained where he was.

The stone marker was weathered, and the grass had grown long at its base. Still, the engraving was perfectly visible; its protective enchantments hadn’t worn off. Rufus looked at it in silence for a while. His first act as Minister of Magic had been to banish the army of aides and office seekers who’d threatened to crowd around him for the night. He needed to make this one pilgrimage, then he would be ready.

“The war’s started again,” he said. “You-Know-Who’s come back.”

The grave, of course, said nothing.

“We were all fools; I was a fool, again. None of us wanted to believe it. But He’s come back.”

The dead were silent, as the dead usually were.

“They’ve made me Minister of Magic.”

The wind picked up again, briefly, and Scrimgeour weathered it.

“I may be a while. There won’t be time to come back until we’ve finished Him. Or he’s finished me.”

He had one last, long look at the grave, then let out a long breath through his nose. Replanting his walking stick, he turned to leave the graveyard.

Grass grew up through the path which led out of the graveyard and down the hill it occupied. Rufus walked along it slowly, not eager to begin the work which lay at the end of it.

But he was met at the bottom of the hill by another man. Like Scrimgeour, he also leaned upon a walking stick, but one so gnarled it might have been a branch hewn off a tree and put right to use. His wounds were also more grievous and visible than any of Scrimgeour’s.

Rufus nodded as he approached this man.

“Alastor.”

The nod was returned, “Hello Rufus.”

The man, who had a false leg and a false eye, fell into step with Scrimgeour as he walked away from the graveyard.

“Congratulations,” said Alastor Moody.

“Thank you.”

They traveled in silence for a while, before Moody spoke again.

“Dumbledore’s reformed the Order of the Phoenix, Rufus.”

Scrimgeour nodded, “I suspected as much. And I do believe he’s taken two of my best aurors along with him. Not to mention you.”

Moody growled, very slightly, “I’d have thought you’d learned from Fudge. The Order isn’t out to undermine the Ministry.”

“Vigilantes aren’t much better than criminals themselves, Alastor.”

“You-Know-Who’s not some two-bit thief,” Moody barked. “Just like last time, it took the Order to—“

Rufus snorted, “Last time! And what did the Order do to stop Him last time? All you lot ever managed was to bump your names to the top of his list and get most of yourselves killed.”

Moody snarled, but Scrimgeour ignored him.

“Other than Harry Potter, and without him you know as well as I do that we’d all be dead by now, the only ones who did anything, anything to defeat You-Know-Who was the Ministry. Bagnold saw to it that everyone still had some hope; some distant, slight hope of survival, and that kept us all fighting. Without the Ministry, we’d have all given up long before the boy was even born.”

Now it was the old ex-auror’s turn to snort, and he spoke with derision, “You’re blinding yourself, Rufus, same as Fudge did. Bagnold was a shrewd witch, and tough as nails, I’ll give you that, but Dumbledore’s the only one anyone had hope in. And you aren’t half the wizard Dumbledore is, Rufus. You’re no Millicent Bagnold, either; you can’t really expect to take on You-Know-Who yourself, the Ministry’s too soft.”

Scrimgeour shook his head, “You-Know-Who isn’t half of what he used to be, either. And he’ll have a hell of time getting followers; everyone remembers what it was like. We’ll get him.”

“You’re a fool, Rufus. A good auror, but a fool. I can only hope it doesn’t mean the end of us all.”

“Don’t think I’ll tolerate Dumbledore's interference any more than Fudge. He doesn’t do anyone any favors by attacking the Ministry the way he does. And don’t think I’ll go easy on you either if you do the same, Alastor.”

With a final, disgusted grunt, Moody disapparated. Rufus didn’t turn his head as the banging sound washed over him. London loomed ahead of him, and his resolve was hardening with each step. He had a war to fight.

[Lorpius Prime]

3. June 1996


Rufus was drowning. He wouldn’t let anyone else see that, of course, but he was absolutely overwhelmed. There wasn’t enough time. Simply not enough time to fulfill all of his many responsibilities, not well, not with the attention they truly needed.

The letter sat on his desk, still unfinished. To think: there was a war on; He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had returned; and Rufus Scrimgeour, the man selected to lead the fight against him was perched behind a desk writing a letter to his Swiss counterpart, declining an invitation to holiday in the Alps. It was absurd.

He wrote another, magnanimously apologetic sentence. It was painfully difficult to resist drawing out his wand and sending a howler to the fool in Bern, which is what the stupid invitation deserved. But relations had to be kept up. Just like appearances.

A small grunt came from one of the portraits above his fireplace, “Fudge is waiting.”

“I’ll be there in a moment,” Rufus snapped. He finished the letter with an angry slash of his quill, then folded and sealed the parchment. Wand at the ready, he opened his office window, and gave the letter to one of his owls. After the bird departed, he sealed the window immediately and redrew the curtains. There was no point in taking unnecessary risks.

Sighing, he turned to the fireplace. Scrimgeour hadn’t slept since that first night after he’d accepted the post of Minister. He took a moment to be sure his face betrayed no weakness, and picked up the bag of Floo Powder.
The meeting with the Muggle Prime Minister, he hoped, would be short. There was still so very much to do, his people were still in so very much danger. Who had time to waste on a distraction like the Muggles?

The green flames roared and grew, Rufus stepped inside.

[Lorpius Prime]

4. July 1996


Rufus observed the proceedings with his usual scowl. Most of the staff were growing used to it by now and spoke their minds without too much hesitation, which is what Scrimgeour wanted them to do anyway.

The gray-haired witch finished her report and sat down. Faces turned to the Minister, apparently no one had anything to add. Rufus nodded thoughtfully and sat up a bit.

“I don’t think we can spare anyone else to help you right now, Mafalda, I’m sorry. And, as you say, many of these incidents are just going to be the work of Death Eaters. It’s probably best if you just keep passing everything that might be useful along to the Auror office. Thank you.”

Mafalda Hopkirk nodded her understanding. At least she was smart enough to realize that there were more important things at the moment than minor breeches of the Statute of Secrecy.

Rufus scanned the table, but no one else seemed to have any other regular business. Which meant…

“To the war, then,” he said.

“Minister—!” two voices spoke at once.

There was a short pause as glances were exchanged, and Gawain Robards gestured for a wizard in black and gold robes to proceed.

“Minister,” Pius Thicknesse started again, “it is my strong belief, and Robards here agrees with me, that since we are once more at war with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, that it would be wise to start implementing the kind of defensive measures which the Ministry undertook in the last war.”

Scrimgeour thought he knew where Thicknesse was going with this, but inclined to indicate that the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement should continue.

“The Ministry is vulnerable to infiltration, both by Death Eaters themselves, and by the Imperius Curse. We must take all possible precautions to ensure that the Government does not fall to such subterfuge. Bagnold’s War Laws—“

“Hem hem!”

Rufus raised an eyebrow, and most of the heads at the meeting turned to a short, toad-like witch at one end of the table. Dolores Umbridge displayed a rather sickening smile, “My dear Pius, You-Know-Who has been gone for so long, now. Do you really think we need to be upsetting the order of the Ministry because of your own frankly alarmist fears?”

Thicknesse bristled, “Alarmist?! If you and Fudge had taken the threat from You-Know-Who seriously a year ago, it would be Amelia Bones sitting here, rather than me. The ‘order’ here is quite upset enough already, the War Laws are necessary to prevent any further damage from You-Know-Who’s agents. Or from wretched toads like yourself.”

Umbridge’s eyes threatened to bulge entirely out of their sockets, “Are you accusing me of aiding the Dark Lord? I should have you know I’m related to—“

“That’s enough,” Scrimgeour spoke loud enough to quash the argument and regain the attention of everyone in the room. “Dolores, look at me.”

The squat little witch, still purple with rage, turned to face the Minister. Rufus drew his wand out of his robes, and pressed the tip to his temple.

“Legilimens!”

The mind of Dolores Umbridge was not a pleasant place to be. She was cruel, power-hungry, and apart from Cornelius Fudge, possessed not the slightest concern for the rest of Scrimgeour’s administration. But she was not under the Imperius Curse, nor had she made an alliance with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

Rufus left her mind and put down his wand, returning it to his robes. There was a nervous tension in the room as everyone looked at him.

“Thank you for your concern and your diligence, Pius, and all of you. The day may yet come when we require the laws of Millicent Bagnold to protect us from You-Know-Who. But for now, we will continue in our present manner. Swift and effective communication among all of your offices is vital to winning this war, and I would like to preserve it for as long as possible.”

Thicknesse nodded in reluctant deference, while Umbridge seemed to perk up slightly from her fuming.

“Now then, Gawain, have you made any progress on the Vance murder?”

“No, Minister, unfortunately…”