Chapter Ninety-Five: Triple-Edged Blade: Second Cut
Rufus looked up with a small smile when he hard the knock on his door, at long last. "Come in, Hope," he called.
The Auror poked her head through, trying and failing to hide a grin. "She's here, Minister," she said. "Do you want me to send her in?"
"She's passed all the tests?" Rufus asked. Of course, he knew the Liberator must have, or Hope would not offer to let her come in. She would have been kept for an hour in a room alone, without anything to drink, so that she could not take Polyjuice, and she would have had the strongest anti-glamour charms the Ministry possessed cast on her. Even if she were the person who had written letters to the Minister that helped him and Harry win against Falco Parkinson, one could not take chances.
"Yes, sir," said Hope. "And it's—well, it seems like her. From what I read of her letters, she's like this. She's young, and so excited she's fit to burst."
Rufus laughed. "That sounds like the Liberator," he agreed, and leaned back in his chair. His life was full of good news lately, it seemed. Harry had accepted the position of liaison between the packs and the Ministry, and the Wizengamot was falling in line, even those who had only voted for his measure because everyone else had voted for it. And now the Liberator had escaped from her parents' home and was waiting just a few doors away. Rufus could not wait to meet her.
He glanced back at Percy, who sat at his desk behind his ward, and met a grin that matched his own. Percy had shared more of Rufus's concerns about the Liberator with him than anyone else. It was only fair that he be present at the first meeting with her, too.
"Bring her in," he told Hope.
The Auror nodded, and ducked out. Rufus shoved aside his paperwork and sat up, watching, almost holding his breath until the two smiling Aurors waved the young woman in, shutting the door behind her. The wards lifted.
The Liberator was even younger than Rufus had expected her to be, with soft brown hair tinged with blonde that hung to her shoulders, and large brown eyes. She flushed under his scrutiny, to the roots of her hair, and ducked her head as if, freedom and all, she still knew how to be shy. Rufus reminded himself she hadn't been out of the house more than once a month before. That she had summoned the courage to make the great trek across England to the Ministry was a miracle.
"The Liberator, I presume?" he asked, rising to his feet.
"Yes, sir," she whispered.
"Might I know your name?" Rufus put his hand out.
She graced him with a dazzling smile, as if the request had restored her confidence. "Iris Raymonds, sir," she said, and then caught his hand in a firm grip with her left one.
Rufus started to reply, to speak a welcome and reassure Iris once again that she'd be safe in the Ministry, but a sharp sting interrupted him. He pulled his hand away from Iris, startled, and stared. A small wound was open near the base of his right wrist, seeping blood. From it, a numbness spread up his arm.
And Iris was changing.
Shadows of leaves and flowers appeared beneath her skin, flipping it over, rippling it until her features became those of a different woman entirely—a magic beyond Polyjuice, beyond any glamour Rufus had ever heard of. Streaks of green flooded her hair. She shook her head, and tendrils shone around her arms, dark eyes pooling and shining with power. Where Iris Raymonds had only seemed a witch of average magic, here stood a witch to be feared.
Rufus might not have known who she was even then, had he not read the descriptions Harry had passed him of Death Eaters.
"The Thorn Bitch," he whispered, still too caught off-guard to feel anything but stunned.
"Yes," said Indigena Yaxley simply. She watched him with a wistful smile, the only remaining trace of the Liberator, then nodded to his right wrist and held up her left arm so he could see the thorny rose coiled on the back of her hand. "My poison is in you now, Minister. You have approximately two minutes to live."
Rufus could not speak. There was no answer to this, no way to explain how his life had exploded or what it meant. Above all, he could not believe death was upon him. He had too much left to do.
Percy leaped up from behind his desk suddenly, a ringing battle cry starting from his throat. Indigena swung her head, then bowed it, and two thorns on long, slender vines lashed out from sheaths on her back.
One thorn took Percy through the throat. The other plunged into his chest, staking him like a vampire. When it pulled back out, something red and dripping came with it, something Rufus looked away from.
He knew, now, that the sluggishness gripping him was not the result of simple shock. Indigena's poison raced through him, biting and stinging with cold spikes, aiming for the heart. He tried to lift his wand to confront her, but his hand could not grip. He watched from a numb distance as his fingers opened and the wand fell to the floor.
Indigena withdrew her thorns from Percy's tattered body and sat on the edge of his desk, crossing one leg over another, watching him.
Rufus forced his mind to work, to think. He had been poisoned before, in his work as an Auror. There must be a way out of this. "How did you do it?" he whispered.
Indigena's eyebrows lifted. "Why, Minister," she said, "I'm a very, very good liar. I thought you would have figured that out already."
"But what—what was the plan?" Rufus forced the words through a closing throat. The poison seemed to buzz and rattle in his ears, or was that his failing heartbeat? "Why send me letters directed at the defeat of Falco Parkinson?"
Indigena sighed and shook her head. "There may be listening wards on the office, Minister," she chided him. "Or someone could cast a spell that picks up impressions from objects. I'd rather not spill my cunning plan to you. Let us find something more pleasant to talk about in the last minute of your life." Her face sobered. "I really did consider you almost a friend, you know. The only person I could communicate with during this time who wasn't my Lord. It is a pity that we could not have met under different circumstances. You are a good man."
Rufus's legs gave out. He slumped to the floor, and Indigena bent, following him down.
"Sleep now," she said. "You've done enough for the wizarding world."
Rufus closed his eyes. He wondered what he should think of in the final moments of his life.
Unfortunately, all he could think of was what would happen now that he was dead, who would be Minister.
Juniper, of course. They will turn to him out of sheer terror.
And before he could fully comprehend the consequences of that, the Light came for him, wave after wave, to welcome him home.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Indigena leaned down further, and gently closed Minister Scrimgeour's eyes.
He had a peaceful expression on his face at the last. Indigena wondered what he had been thinking about. She would have liked to have shared it. But then, her consideration of them as friends, in a sense, had been one-sided, as it must inevitably be.
She was glad that this was done. It had been her plan, her idea, that she would help Harry against Falco Parkinson while making sure that the "help" did not put Harry too far ahead of her Lord. She had come up with the plan when she first realized that another Lord had entered the contest between Light and Dark. Take the Minister at the end of the game, and the blow struck would be a greater hindrance than the help of any minor information she could research about Falco and provide through letters. And the letters themselves, spaced out over time, never quite matching the information of any existing Light family, would encourage the Minister to trust her, and eliminate the difficulties that would exist in getting access to him.
She'd had time to write three letters and leave them with a contact at the Daily Prophet—Gina de Rousseau, a woman who did not know her, but would do nearly anything for money—with information to post them on the dates indicated. Given her Lord's preparations for battle at Hogwarts on Midsummer, Indigena could not have been entirely sure that she would survive the fight, or have time to write the letters if she was running or wounded. And that had been a wise precaution, considering what Hawthorn Parkinson had done to her.
She had altered the plan a little bit in the last stages, when she saw a chance to coax Scrimgeour into acting against Cupressus Apollonis and losing himself a Light ally. That had been an outside chance, though, a risk. She was glad it had worked.
Glad and not glad at the same time, she thought, staring at the Minister. I did not want to kill you. But you would never have taken the Mark, sir, my friend.
She gave a final glance at Percy Weasley as she stood and pulled a leaf out of her pocket. She had not wanted to kill him, either; his death had never been meant. But since he was in the office with Scrimgeour, he had needed to die.
She placed the leaf on the ground and carefully Transfigured it, until a model of the body she wore as Iris Raymonds lay on the floor of the office. She stabbed a hole through the body's throat when the Transfiguration was done. She had no intention of hiding that this was the work of the Thorn Bitch, but she also had no intention of revealing her disguise if she could help it, the disguise superior to Polyjuice and glamours of every kind. It might come in useful later with people who were not the Ministry's Aurors.
Her own wand had rested safe in her pocket, wrapped with yew leaves, the same way Indigena had smuggled it in when she attended the Potters' trial. That did let her leave Iris's wand with the body. She parted from it with only a little twinge. Her own wand and her plants were dearer to her than a wand she rarely used.
Then she turned and lashed up with her plants towards the ceiling. She would leave the Ministry the same way she had once entered Tullianum, digging up through solid stone.
While she moved, she cast the Dark Mark, and it rose and streamed through the ceiling, to hang over the Ministry and mark the sign of a Death Eater kill. The passing of the Minister would send the wizarding world into chaos. Indigena had just upended everything rather neatly, and she smiled at the thought of the excitement to come, though she had killed two men she did not want to kill.
She had other errands in the meanwhile. First, she was to go to a certain orphanage in Muggle London and fetch out the wand of Rowena Ravenclaw, a Horcrux of her Lord. Voldemort had decided that the orphanage was not a secure holding place for it. When Indigena had it, she would Apparate back to Thornhall and bury it in her garden.
And then she had—something yet again to do. She might have feared to do it, but Harry was busy at the moment, thanks to her Lord. Indigena knew he could not interfere.
Up rose the Dark Mark, carrying its message of death and doom, and on Indigena climbed, steadily, her vines ripping out the stones in front of her, cocooned in the power of green and growing things, bringing her back to the evening light.
