Note: Well hello there again! I am back in Germany after my Christmas holidays and as such, the updates should be slightly more regular. C&I underwent a big overhaul last week, because I finally shed my ridiculous chapter length paranoia. So from now on, there will be some longer chapters, some shorter chapters, and some normal length chapters. I hope you enjoy this new offering.

Chapter Twenty-One

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Rufus Scrimgeour was the Minister of Magic. He was possibly the dourest Minister of Magic that the wizarding world had seen in recent decades, but given the circumstances, this was an understandable feature, and the nickname of 'Grimsceour' was not wholly unwarranted. As Minister of Magic, Scrimgeour understood that he had certain responsibilities that only a politician would have, such as lying through one's teeth with fingers crossed behind one's back, telling everyone that nothing was really as bad as it seemed; that the Death Eaters had not really infiltrated the Ministry as much as they had; that the bastion of freedom, democracy and a force for the good remained strong and unbreakable. Reassuring a public who simply would not be reassured because they knew that they were being lied to was no easy task, and not one that Scrimgeour had been looking forward to when he had taken on the post. Coming to think of it, why had he taken on the post? Because whilst Rufus Scrimgeour was most certainly the Minister of Magic, he was also an Auror.

Everyone knew that no-one could simply stop being an Auror, and the people who knew that most of all were the ex-Aurors themselves. The instincts, the training, the inherent wariness… They never left you behind, and neither did the principles of right and wrong that had driven you into the profession that drew the line between those two extremes in the first place. And every Auror, practising or former, knew that politics was the profession the furthest removed from the Auror Office as possible. Whilst Aurors drew a pointed line between the white of good and the black of evil, politicians walked a precarious tightrope of semi-truth that was a murky grey colour, the good and the bad mixed into each other so intricately that no-one could truly tell them apart. The public were not stupid, thought Scrimgeour. They knew the true extent of the situation, so why didn't he just admit it to them?

Because, despite his Auror's instinct telling him that honesty was always the best policy, Scrimgeour had to admit that he was no longer an Auror, and as such he should not be acting precisely like one. He was a politician now, however reluctantly, and since everyone expected politicians to lie about everything, he couldn't spoil their illusions by being the bunt and forthright man that his Aurors had once known. Scrimgeour sighed as he unlocked the door to his office, looking forward to sitting down away from the world and wallowing in the quagmire of his conscience for an hour or so, trying to make sense of everything that was being required of him at the moment, most of it contradictory. He had never really intended to become the Minister. He had been semi-coerced, semi-bamboozled into it by Fudge. Once the Ministry had decided that they needed a new, stronger leader – Scrimgeour couldn't disagree with them there – Fudge had decided to search himself out a replacement. Unfortunately, none of the more capable political staff within the Ministry wanted to go anywhere near the job, which had been when Fudge had suggested Scrimgeour.

He was the perfect candidate, really. He was a well-known figure in a well-respected position and he had been out of active Auror service due to his age for a year or so beforehand. Looking at the expectant faces of the Ministry election committee, Scrimgeour had been at a complete and uncharacteristic loss for words. It was only when it was insinuated that there was no-one else for the job that Scrimgeour had agreed, however reluctantly, to step into the breach.

But in truth, he was no better than Fudge. He had no idea how to handle the catastrophic situation in which they had found themselves any better than his predecessor had, but he did have one advantage over Fudge in that respect. Scrimgeour was an Auror, and Aurors did not show their weakness to the enemy. So Scrimgeour had gone ahead, lying through his teeth and wishing to whichever higher power was out there, if indeed there was one, that something would get better in the near future. He shook his head sadly. He would not wish this job upon anyone, except perhaps back on Fudge, who had lumbered him with it in the first place.

Scrimgeour locked the door of the office behind him – old habits died hard. He had barely sat down when something caught his attention, and the Auror within roared back into life from where he had been trying to keep it down whilst talking in 'politician mode'. He pulled out his wand and listened carefully. The Auror's best tools were his own senses. He had definitely heard a noise, a noise that definitely shouldn't have been there. It had sounded human, and since he was certain that he was the only human in the office, and he had not made the sound, something was amiss.

He concentrated hard; whilst the sound did not come again, he tried to remember the direction in which it had come from. He opened his eyes and his gaze alighted on the small cupboard in one corner of the room, where he kept his spare cloaks and a clandestine bottle of Bourbon. There was someone in the cupboard.

Scrimgeour rolled his eyes and walked over to the cupboard, keeping to the side so that he could not be sprung upon by his intruder. He raised his wand, and in one swift movement he had shoved it through the keyhole of the cupboard and cast a stunning spell. Even if he had been wrong and all he had succeeded in doing had been to stun his cloaks, one could never be too careful. He unlocked the door and a heap in a pinstripe suit fell out of the cupboard, landing in an ungainly crumple at Scrimgeour's feet. A wand rolled out of the figure's limp hand as Scrimgeour turned it over to find the identity of his would-be assailant.

"Fudge?" he exclaimed, disbelieving, but there was no mistaking the ex-Minister. Scrimgeour narrowed his eyes. It could have been Fudge, or it could have been an imposter pretending to be Fudge. Either way, someone had been hiding in his wardrobe and that someone had probably been in there with less than honourable intentions. But something still didn't quite add up.

"What kind of an idiot tries to assassinate an ex-Auror by hiding in a cupboard?" he grumbled, although he couldn't put anything past Fudge; the man's stupidity had at times seemed to know no bounds. Why would Fudge want to kill him in the first place? Scrimgeour prised open one of Fudge's eyes and saw the telltale glaze of an active Imperius curse. As he had suspected…

Suddenly, a cold wave of dread filled Scrimgeour, starting with his feet and working its way up until he could feel the ice running through every vein in his body. Only an idiot would try to assassinate the ex-Auror Minister of Magic by hiding himself or someone else in a broom cupboard, but the Imperius was not an everyday curse. To perform it well required skill and practice, and those who were so skilled and practiced in it were certainly not idiots. They were ruthless, evil, and above all, when it came to their previous two qualities at least, they were extremely and sadistically clever.

"What kind of an idiot indeed?"

Scrimgeour stood from Fudge's prone form and turned to face the new intruder slowly. They would not hit him in the back, he was fairly certain about that. They would want to gloat about their achievement in duping the ex-head of the Auror Office, one of the best Aurors that the Ministry had ever known, and about how they were about to kill the Minister and how once that was done, the Government would be theirs and total domination would be that one step closer.

Not if Scrimgeour could help it though. There was one responsibility of the Ministerial position that he had never held any qualms about undertaking whilst the other politicians did, by the very dint of his being an Auror. The Minister represented the entire wizarding population. He was the last thing that stood between them and total chaos and destruction; a lawless society. And as a former law enforcer, Scrimgeour was determined to protect them and their interests to the last. He viewed his new attackers, his real attackers. There were four of them, and he was only one, and he felt a small, bitterly ironic wave of pride that Voldemort should think him important enough to send his most trusted troops on this assassination mission. The three Lestranges and Dolohov, the professional torturer. Scrimgeour felt a wry smile ghost over his lips. This was going to be an extremely interesting little tea party.

"Can I help you?" he asked lightly, backing up towards the window of his office. Naturally, it did not actually lead anywhere, the entire Ministry was underground, but if his plan was going to work then he needed a distraction, and the heady storm that was brewing outside the window, cooked up by the maintenance wizards to express their own anger and fear at the political climate, would provide distraction enough. He only needed a few seconds… He clasped his hands behind his back in a classic politician's pose, causing Bellatrix's eyes to narrow. She too knew that Scrimgeour was not, in reality, a politician. Had he been, she would probably have come alone, without the heavy support. She knew he was up to something, but by the time she had cast the disarming spell, the others following suit meaning that there was no way of evading the magic, she was too late. His plan had worked. The spell had been cast.

The force of a quadruple disarming had sent him flying into the corner of the room opposite the damned cupboard, and Scrimgeour could not suppress a groan as he got to his feet. He had retired from the active Auror service for a reason; his bones were not what they had been.

"What did he just cast?" hissed Bellatrix, peering over his wand with mingled glee and suspicion. As he moved forwards quietly, trying not to draw attention to the direction in which he was limping, Scrimgeour wondered if she'd been mad before or if it really was just Azkaban. Surely any family with that degree of interbreeding must have some sort of genetic defects in there somewhere. Scrimgeour sighed inwardly, extremely glad that his mother had not held the same pureblood ideals and had married a Welsh sheep farmer who was about as magical as an old sock.

Rodolphus cast the priori incantatem and a roaring silver mountain lion burst out of the tip of his wand. Scrimgeour always felt a surge of pride on seeing his patronus, and its fearsome face gave him the impetus he needed to bring about the final stage of his hastily improvised plan. He shot forward with a burst of speed and picked up Fudge's wand where it had rolled under his desk, whirling round and firing off a series of spells at his assassins before they had time to pre-empt his attack. Forced into a defensive rather than an offensive position; Scrimgeour smiled grimly on seeing the anger on Bellatrix's face. Once an Auror, always an Auror. All he needed to do was to hold them off until help arrived, which should be any minute…

A shape apparated by his side. The patronus that he had sent had held no message, just a spell, a spell that would allow the recipient to bypass the secure charms on his office and come straight to his aid.

"Rufus," grunted Moody by way of acknowledgement, dodging a hex that Dolohov had just rebounded back at him. "Glad to see you've got everything under control."

"Well, it's always nice to see an old friendly face," said Scrimgeour, although he would not admit the blessed relief that was pounding through his veins on the receiving of some assistance.

"I came as quickly as I could," said Moody. "I knew something was wrong but I never realised that you would have a vermin infestation of this magnitude on your hands."

Perhaps it was the comparison to a rat that had driven Bellatrix into the highest point of ire, Scrimgeour didn't know, but it was with her shrieked command that the attack suddenly tripled in intensity, destroying what little furniture remained in the room at that point. They were equally matched, advanced experience negating advanced years, and blind enthusiasm making up for any lack of skill on the part of the Death Eaters. But the Death Eaters were not lacking in skill, not by any manner or means, and there were four against two. Somewhere along the line, someone would not be able to keep their eyes everywhere at once, and when that happened, catastrophe would strike.

They held out remarkably long considering, but not long enough for Scrimgeour to call for further back-up. He doubted any would come anyway; the Lestranges had no doubt left a trail of bodies behind them on their way to find him and distract him with Fudge. Duelling Dolohov, Scrimgeour did not see the flash of green coming towards him from the side until it was too late. Before it could reach him, however, a sharp pain in the back of his knees sent him sprawling onto the ground. His wand flew out of his grip but before he could try and reach it, another body landed heavily on top of him. As he watched a bright blue eye roll away along the floor, he realised with a sinking heart and rising bile what had happened. Moody had kicked him out of the way and in doing so, taken the killing curse himself.

"Well well well," said Bellatrix, stepping over Moody to crouch down in front of Scrimgeour, twirling his wand between her fingers and seeming to be lost in thought. He felt strong hands pull Moody's body off him and then haul him to his feet, dragging him across to the battered desk. A split second before they dumped him on it, he felt his entire body go rigid, petrified. "I wonder what the Evening Prophet's headline will be today then?" Bellatrix continued, circling around the desk. "I can picture it now. Ahem." She affected a tragic voice. "We of the Evening Prophet are sorry to announce the tragic death of the Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour. Mr Scrimgeour was ambushed this afternoon in his office by one of his ex-Aurors, Alastor Moody, and the former Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, both of whom were killed in the ensuing violence. It is believed that Mr Moody, known to suffer from severe mental problems and paranoia, had suffered a nervous breakdown before resolving to attack the Minister, first using the Imperius curse on Mr Fudge and then, when this attempt failed, in person." She smiled evilly, leaning in so that she was less than an inch from Scrimgeour's frozen face. The look melted into one of contempt and she spat in his eye before stalking away. "A half-blood in charge of the Ministry indeed."

Scrimgeour couldn't move, but he could hear them kill Fudge, who had remained slumped on the floor throughout the entire battle. Bellatrix returned to his field of vision.

"Now," she said, "we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. You can tell us where Harry Potter is, and then we kill you, or you can refuse to tell us where he is, we can torture you, and then we can kill you. Which is it to be?" She paused. "We know that you know where he is, Minister. With so many Aurors, so many old friends in the Order, you must be in possession of the knowledge."

Scrimgeour was indeed in possession of the knowledge. But Scrimgeour was also an Auror.

One of the brothers lifted the body-bind, and deprived of a wand, Scrimgeour did the next best thing, launching himself at the nearest one of his attackers in a frenzied physical assault. He knew that it would be of little use, but he also knew that he could not do nothing. He would go down fighting, fighting till the bitter end just like the rest of his career had been one long fight against the dark. He would die as he had lived. He would die an Auror.

"The hard way it is then."

Scrimgeour had borne pain in his line of work as a matter of course. This was no different. It was worse, but no different. All he had to do was clamp his jaws shut and get on with it.

"Are you feeling any more inclined to talking now?" asked Bellatrix, her voice exceedingly bored. "Since you're going to end up dead at the end of it anyway, why don't you just spare yourself any more trouble? Potter has made life difficult enough for you over this past year, you might as well return the favour before you expire."

Scrimgeour shook his head, too winded and drained to speak at that point. He knew that if he opened his mouth, all that would come out would be a scream of pain, and he was not going to give them that satisfaction.

"Oh this is ridiculous," said Bellatrix suddenly, "and someone's coming. Finish this!"

She disapparated, husband and brother-in-law following shortly afterwards.

"Any last words?" asked Dolohov.

"Four," Scrimgeour gasped. "You. Will. Never. Win."

Then there was green, and after that, there was nothing.

Note2: Ok, three down in one chapter. It never rains but it pours, eh?