Note: My dear readers, my zen is back! Yes, despite my newly-discovered addiction to Mad Men (I'm seriously obsessed – Sal is awesome!), and my head currently being held to ransom by the Phantom of the Opera and a Parisian art dealer (long story...), the old HP spark was reignited after a very strange dream involving Harry, Draco and a suit of armour... Enjoy the results.
Note2: Moving around the Ministry: I am working on the general principle because I have not as yet found anything to contradict it that people can apparate into and out of the Ministry but they cannot apparate within it.
Chapter Sixty
Manhandling the Minister
The lift in which the remaining Order members were travelling towards the atrium stopped at the second floor and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and Kingsley exited.
"Kingsley, what are you doing?" asked Hestia. "Aren't you coming with us?"
"I'm trying for reinforcements," said Kingsley grimly. "I'll catch you up."
"Well, good luck," said Arthur, his voice betraying his unease at the auror's sudden and unexpected departure. He hit the required button again and the lift dropped them out of sight once more, leaving Kingsley alone in the empty corridor. Although he had no idea what the outcome of his hastily made decision would be, he was quietly optimistic. His ex-colleagues were a good bunch, even if they were currently serving under slightly misguided leadership. And Dawlish himself wasn't all bad, just an inept and easily manipulated head of section. It was probably for this reason that he'd been kept on in the job after the Ministry had fallen. Kingsley was sure that it would not take much to convince his co-workers to join them in their last stand against the regime that they reluctantly served. He hurried down the corridor towards the Auror Office and, ignoring any slight feeling of trepidation in favour of focussing on the thrill of the unknown and the frisson of danger that had attracted him to his chosen career in the first place, opened the door.
"Kingsley? You're back?"
The office, occupied to less than half its usual capacity, stopped what little work it was doing a soon as he entered. Kingsley was staggered to see how much it had changed in the few short months that he had been away. His and Tonks' abandoned desks had not been reallocated, and they stood in foreboding company with a number of other more recently and rapidly vacated ones. The cheerful camaraderie that had always pervaded the place had gone, and in its place there was a gloomy air of not quite despair but definitely melancholy. Despondency reigned supreme. It should have been expected, of course, but the change made Kingsley momentarily forget the impassioned speech that he had been improvising on his way towards the room and begin in a much less oratorical fashion.
"Where is everybody?" he asked.
"Gone," said Forsyth, a grey-haired and bearded wizard fast approaching retirement who had always served as the director of operations for aurors in the field. His eyes were still as wide as saucers, staring at the prodigal son who had returned to his office once more. "They either followed your lead and got out when they could or were thrown out when upstairs management decided that a team of dark wizard catchers was a slight oxymoron under our current administration and downsized dramatically."
"We're the only ones left," added Miriam, who had been Tonks' best friend all through their time on the training programme together. She gestured around at the few occupied desks. "Well, Andy Anderson as well but he's gone home to drown his sorrows in firewhiskey. It's just us now. The ones who can't afford to give it up."
"But seriously, Kingsley," Forsyth began. "It's not that I'm not overwhelmingly pleased to see you in one piece; when we didn't hear anything for so long we feared the worst, but if anyone finds you in here, you won't be in one piece for much longer. They'll have your head."
"Who cares?" said Miriam flippantly. "If that's the case then they can have my head too." She got up from her desk and came over to Kingsley, shaking his hand until his teeth were rattling in his skull, and gradually the other aurors followed her lead. "He wouldn't come back if it wasn't for a fantastically good reason, would you, Kingsley? He's got his head screwed on straight. It's good to see you again. So… Why are you here?"
"We're taking back the Ministry," Kingsley replied quietly.
"I take back what I said about having your head screwed on straight," said Miriam drily. "Who's 'we'? How many of you?"
"There are eleven of us at the moment," Kingsley admitted, "but you could make it seventeen."
"Eleven. You're attempting to take over the Ministry with eleven people." Forsyth's expression was a perfect picture of worried, and yet slightly impressed, disbelief. The others leaned into the huddle that Miriam and Forsyth had begun, anxious to know what was going on. "It took You-Know-Who a year with an entire army."
"No, it took him less than half an hour with four people," said Kingsley. "The Ministry doesn't fall till the Minister does."
The undeniable fact engendered an uncomfortable silence which Miriam broke at length.
"Is Tonks part of this miniature army?" she asked. "You and she did a lot together."
Kingsley nodded.
"Then I'm in. Twelve against the Ministry. Anyone else?"
"The Minister is key," Kingsley continued. "Once he turns, the rest of the Ministry follows. All we have to do is get Thicknesse back on side and hopefully the rest of things should take care of themselves. There's someone working on Thicknesse as we speak; all we need to do is make sure that he stays uninterrupted by… ministerial aides."
Forsyth and the other aurors looked a little unsure but Kingsley could tell that they were warming to the idea, and he pressed on.
"What have you been doing for the past however many months since the change upstairs? Chasing down enemies of the regime, undesirables. How many of those people would you have arrested under Fudge or Grim? We all chose this job because we wanted to fight against evil, and look what a good job we did of that. Well, this is the chance to try and put it all right again. We're aurors. Like aurora. Dawn. The coming of light after darkness. That's got to resonate somewhere. Let's get back to the job we're meant to be doing."
There was a long pause, and finally, Forsyth and the other aurors agreed.
"You can count on us, Auror Shacklebolt," said the older wizard.
Kingsley nodded gratefully. He had known that the aurors, however few of them that remained in the broken office, would not need much persuasion to join him. Now they simply had to fight and defend their fellow wizards like they had been trained to do. Forsyth immediately began to organise his colleagues as if he was commanding raids once more.
"Auror Collins, go to the Floo Office and send a message to Anderson and our former colleagues, I'm fairly certain that they'll never forgive us if we get all the glory. The rest of us are with Shacklebolt. Lead on, MacTavish!"
"MacDuff," corrected Collins, who'd taken muggle studies.
"What's going on here? Shacklebolt?"
The aurors turned to see their perplexed-looking superior standing in the doorway to his office. Dawlish, Kingsley reflected, was looking less stupid and more harassed than he remembered ever seeing the man before, and, for a moment, he felt sorry for his fellow auror. He was only doing his job, after all, even if he wasn't doing it very well or with the slightest degree of imagination.
"We're taking on the machine," said Kingsley. "This has gone on long enough and it's high time someone did something about it."
"You're starting a revolution?" asked Dawlish incredulously.
"Or we'll die trying," said Miriam vehemently. "Are you coming, John, and proving that there's an auror inside that office, or are you going to continue hiding behind your in-tray?"
Dawlish looked at each of his fellow aurors in turn. As he opened his mouth to speak, however, another voice invaded the group, an instantly recognisable and thoroughly unwelcome one.
"Well, isn't this a nice little reunion. Welcome back, Auror Shacklebolt."
Dolores Umbridge was standing in the doorway of the Auror Office flanked by two goons from her department, smiling unpleasantly.
"Auror Dawlish, I trust you know what the form is concerning the treatment of deserters…"
Dawlish turned his attention to the parasitic presence in the doorway and, without a word, cast a stunning spell, leaving her useless bodyguards staring stupidly at the slumped figure between them for a second before he put them out of their misery.
"I cannot stand that woman and her lackeys," he said. "Come on, Kingsley, we're right behind you."
They could not have arrived in the atrium a moment too soon. The reinforcements whose arrival the Order had feared had indeed materialised in the entrance to the Ministry and a pitched battle had begun between these new soldiers and the waiting defenders. Although the numbers looked fairly evenly matched at that moment, the Order not horrifically outnumbered, Kingsley had the horrible feeling that they would not remain so for long and that there was more to the scene than met the eye. The aurors needed no prompting to enter the fray and Kingsley quickly dispatched the Death Eater against whom Hestia was putting up a brave fight.
"There are more of them," she panted as Kingsley helped her to her feet. "They split up as soon as they arrived; they'll have gone after Bill and Percy."
"There are more aurors on their way," Kingsley assured her. "We'll hold off the main force here, you take Arthur and the others and try to intercept the individuals. We've got to give Bill as much time as possible."
Hestia nodded her understanding and, covered by Kingsley's colleagues, she and the other Order members less habituated to such combat left the atrium to continue the hunt. Kingsley had no time to ponder the on the possibility, or lack thereof, of their success; he had already been engaged in another duel with another faceless warrior. All he could do was fight and hope.
X
The partitioned-off part of the office in which the Minister's secretary worked was empty when Bill and Percy entered the room.
"Hmm," said Percy. "If his conduct of previous months is anything to go by, our esteemed governmental leader has secretary in his office and is finding numerous pretexts to get her to bend over."
Bill looked at his brother.
"Were you always this cheerfully cynical or is a recent change?"
Percy merely glared at him and, straightening so that he grew two inches on the spot, he knocked on the inner door to the Minister's lair and calmly waited for a reply, as if this was everyday behaviour for him. A frantic scramble could be heard from within the chamber; it sounded as if papers were being hastily set in order and as if the Minister was trying to create the impression that he had indeed been engaged in serious work vital to the wizarding world.
"I thought the door was sealed," they heard Thicknesse mutter. "Who in Merlin's name can have got in? If it's Yaxley again, I'll…"
Percy, evidently tired of waiting, opened the door unannounced and strode in, Bill following close behind. The Minister was sitting behind his desk looking the picture of confusion whilst his secretary was looking very flushed and standing rather pointedly in the corner of the room furthest away from the desk.
"Mr Weasley and… Mr Weasley," Thicknesse began. "This is a most unexpected visit. May I assume…"
As Thicknesse continued to prattle on, not really paying any attention to his rhetoric, he was picking up his wand and beginning the motions of a spell that even though as yet unknown, was unlikely to have friendly consequences for the two intruders in his office. Bill noticed the movement and disarmed him, and the Minister's eyes widened.
"It's for your own good, sir," said Percy. "We'll explain it all once we've finished. The upper echelons of your administration are most worried about the state of your health and believe you to have been put under a curse by a maleficent unknown, and my brother here has kindly agreed to break it for you."
Thicknesse sat dumbly in his chair and Bill cast a quick glance at the secretary, still standing shell-shocked in the corner, before deciding that she was better left where they could keep an eye on her and moving forward to raise his own wand and attempt to diagnose the particulars of the curse, and afterwards break it.
Curse-breaking was a dangerous profession, Bill had always known this and accepted it. Curses generally broke themselves upon the death of their caster, but this was by no means a universal rule. One only had to look at the terrible traps in long-dead tombs to see evidence of that in practice. And some curses, of course, needed to be broken far sooner than natural (or unnatural) death would allow. This was one such case.
The imperius curse was one of the hardest to break, but it was not impossible. A lot of its difficulty depended upon how much independent resistance the victim had of their own accord.
But this case… Bill shook his head as he finished his preliminary diagnostic spells. This was a curse unlike any he'd ever encountered before, spells wrapped up in spells within spells, giving You-Know-Who complete control over the Minister's mind but at the same time making Thicknesse believe that his thoughts, decisions and actions were all of his own accord. In effect, the curse could not be broken because its victim did not want it to be broken; at a deeper psychological level he did not realise that he was being cursed. Most victims of the imperius recognised the fact that they were such, even if they could not do anything to prevent it – hence why there had been so many problems with its use as a defence at the original trials after the first war.
"Bill? Bill?"
It took a moment for Bill to realise that Percy had been trying to get his attention.
"Is everything all right?" his brother asked.
Bill shook his head.
"The curse is unbreakable," he muttered.
"What?"
"It's unbreakable," Bill repeated. "If I try… well, the best that could happen is that he ends up dead."
"That's the best?" exclaimed Percy incredulously.
"The worst case scenario is that he is rendered completely, psychotically insane."
"Oh."
There was a moment of absolute stillness and Bill could feel the great weight of failure falling heavily onto his shoulders. They had come with the express intention of his breaking the curse to free the Minister and thus the Ministry; they had not come to provoke an all-out battle. Bill swore out loud. If they had known that the curse was unbreakable before, then they would never have set out on this perilous mission and endangered all the others who had so bravely accompanied him. They should have known that the comparatively simple task would not be so very simple. Of course You-Know-Who would have failsafes in place to make sure that his grand regime could not be overthrown by a single curse-breaker.
"Is there nothing we can do?" Percy asked, but the next few moments provided the answer for him, showing that the Minister was beyond accepting their help. In an unanticipated burst of activity, Thicknesse shot up out of his desk, leapt across his desk with an agility that belied his age and grabbed his unsuspecting secretary, forcing her wand from her hand and digging its point into her ribs.
"Now, Messers Weasley, I believe that we have some matters to discuss."
X
Jim Wilkins, nominal deputy head of the Ministry executioners (that there were only two of them to start with was completely beside the point), listened to the running footsteps in the corridor outside their cramped office. The office itself was at the end of a long corridor that hardly anyone ventured down, but this in turn led to the main hall of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, of which they were a subsection. It was from this part of the floor that they could hear the sort of sounds one would not usually expect to hear at quarter to eight in the evening. Something was distinctly Up, the thought being indeed worthy of capitalisation.
Jim turned to his superior, Tewkesbury, six-and-a-half feet of Devonshire-bred muscle that could probably behead a hippogriff without the need for an axe.
"Tewkesbury," he ventured (he could never get used to calling the huge man Geoffrey), "do you think something's Up?"
Tewkesbury nodded.
"Most certainly. Should we go and have a look?"
Jim was not sure that this was altogether the best idea, and from the look on Tewkesbury's face, he didn't think it was such a good suggestion either. As intimidating as the man was in appearance, he did have good common sense and knew that staying out of sight and therefore alive was generally a more attractive option than running pell mell into something they didn't understand. Before they could contemplate the moral highs and lows of remaining where they were versus investigating, however, the door to their office was flung open and a robed and masked Death Eater strode in, wand raised. Whilst Tewkesbury merely turned a pale shade of green, Jim gave a minute squeak and flung himself under his desk, hoping in vain that the sturdy wood and veritable mountain of overdue paperwork would protect him from whatever evil was no doubt coming his way.
"Don't hurt us!" he cried from his makeshift fortress as the Death Eater came further into the room. "We're only executioners, the pay's rubbish!"
"I know, Jim," replied the Death Eater, walking straight past the quivering wizard and towards the armoury at the back of the office, unlocking the door with a practiced hand and a well-used key. He tapped his wand against the chains that held one of the great axes, as long as Jim was tall with a two-foot blade, and it fell from the wall into his hands. "Well hello there, my bonnie lass," he crooned as he tested the weight. "Long time, no see."
"Walden?" choked Tewkesbury in disbelief as his former colleague passed back through the office with the axe, long since christened 'Matilda', swung over his shoulder. The Death Eater waved.
"See you in hell, lads. I've got me a werewolf to catch."
X
After splitting off from the rest of the group in the atrium, Arthur had found himself alone on the fourth floor of the Ministry, separated from the rest of the Order who had followed in the myriad other directions taken by the Death Eaters. The corridor that he was in showed no signs of life but it would be imprudent not to make certain. Keeping his wits about him in case of a surprise attack, Arthur advanced along the corridor, wand outstretched and ready.
If the scream from an adjacent corridor made Arthur's blood run cold, that was nothing that compared to the fear that the loud howl that followed it inspired in his bones. It was a full moon, he realised with horrible trepidation. How could it have slipped their minds? After all the planning that had gone into this excursion, they had forgotten the fact that at least one of the Ministry's likely defenders would be at his most uncontrollably dangerous. Remus must have known though… Why had he not said anything?
There was no time to be wasted in anger at his friend's oversight or intentional misleading as a second scream pierced Arthur's eardrums. There was a werewolf in his immediate vicinity, and it was not Remus…