Fic: The Minister's Wife
Title: The Minister’s Wife
Pairing: Rufus Scrimgeour/Rita Skeeter
Rating: NC-17
Summary: After years of hard work and scheming, Rufus Scrimgeour has finally been made Minister of Magic. But every success has a price, and this one seems to be expensive indeed.
A/N: Thanks to sugarquill39 and florahart for looking this over. For FF100 prompt 23: Lovers. This fic was very much inspired by edgewise's Beholder request. Why yes, this many months after the exchange. This bunny has been attempting to get me to write it ever since.
The foyer was dark when Rufus slid his key into the door and felt the wards and the lock click open to let him inside. Candlelight flickered upstairs, but all he could see as the door closed behind him was the shape of the hall table hunched against the wall and a sliver of light from outside caught in the mirror above it. Three steps in, setting his briefcase by the door, and then he pressed right into her warm, silent body as he moved forward.
“You’re so predictable,” she murmured. “You always step in the same places. I thought habits like that got Aurors killed.”
She smelled of musk and clove and spices. He leaned into her, feeling her breasts press against his chest. In an instant his fingers were tangling in her hair and he tasted wine on her tongue, devoured her, hungry and sightless. She wrapped her arms around him and he shoved her back against the table, hitching her leg up to his waist with a rough tug as rickety wooden legs gave a shudder.
“I’m not an Auror,” he hissed against her cheek, fingers sliding over her stockinged knee and under the hem of her robe, “I’m the Minister of Magic.”
“So I heard.” One more breath and he kissed her again. The table legs scraped the floorboards as he pressed himself against her and he made a noise into her mouth when his cock ground into her pelvic bone.
She turned her face to the side. His lips dragged over her cheek and she laughed. “There’s dinner upstairs getting cold.”
He growled against her. “Don’t you know warming charms, witch?”
“Of course. But your appetites are as predictable as you are.”
As if on cue, his stomached rumbled, though it sounded more like a roar in the silence. She laughed again, slipping her hands down to his waist and using it for leverage as she slid off the table. “Come. I cooked. And dessert doesn’t get cold.”
He followed her up the stairs, emitting a long-suffering sigh. “You cooked? Shall I put St. Mungo’s on standby before we sit down?”
“Oh, be quiet. Unless you want your sexual performance reviewed in tomorrow’s Prophet, that is.”
As they ascended the stairs into candlelight, the shadow of her body gave way to colour - her blonde ringlet hair, the purple and silver brocade of her robe. The cord that secured it at her waist swung back and forth from her hip as she climbed. Her stockinged feet rendered her silent but for the swish of fabric.
“So what was it like, being sworn in by the Wizengamot?” she asked as they reached the top of the stairs, glancing at him as he unbuttoned his heavy red outer robes. They were ceremonial, robes of office, the cuffs trimmed in gold thread. The colour represented the department he had ascended from - Aurors wore red. Fudge’s had been navy, since he had worked in International Magical Cooperation. It was common for Ministers to be promoted from Law Enforcement during times of war, and it seemed appropriate that his robes were the same crimson as freshly shed blood. The thought had weighed on him all day; dragged - at least as much as the heavy folds of fabric had.
“Strange,” he said. “Surreal. I’ve wanted this forever, but somehow it didn’t feel like much of a victory.” He dropped the robes over the back of a lounge chair as she padded across to the bar, picking up a bottle of red wine. For a moment, the thought of drinking it made him feel slightly ill, but then wasn’t red wine supposed to be purifying? The blood of Christ, he remembered from his childhood.
“Why?” she asked, pulling him out of the thought. Liquid tinkled into glass and there was a furrow between her eyebrows. “You’ve worked so hard. We’ve worked so hard...”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, ran his fingers over his hairline. “All those Muggles on that bridge; the murders. Fudge is completely destroyed...”
“Because he’s no longer suited to the position, Rufus. You didn’t bring him down, his own hubris did. You deserve...”
“At the price of Amelia Bones’ life? I was second in line, not first.”
She crossed the room, wine glasses in hand, and pressed one into his. She didn’t let go when his fingers slid between hers to take it.
“And why did she die? Because Fudge was too blind and obsessed with his own image to admit that You-Know-Who had returned, and that gave him an entire year to make alliances and track down his targets.”
Rufus smiled wryly. “You’re starting to believe your own spin, Rita.”
She pulled away, hissing in frustration. “I’ve always believed it! I heard him, that night at Hogwarts. Merlin, if I’d been able to write last year...”
The smile turned to amusement. “You would have done exactly what everybody else did. Written what your editors told you to, what would sell papers. And we both know that had you published what you’d heard back then, Fudge would have been forced into action, and would likely still be Minister. And you wouldn’t be the reporter who took a year without pay to pursue the truth, then published it before anyone else dared to.”
Rita’s lips had twisted into a little smirk, and she gave in. “True.”
“It just happened a little fast, is all. I was hoping to become Head of Law Enforcement when Amelia was made Minister, prove myself during the war...” Take charge when it was all over and order needed to be restored. Post-war Ministers had a longer life expectancy than wartime ones, but that didn’t bear thinking on too long. Rufus sipped his wine. “Where is this dinner that you insist is getting cold?”
--
“So what’s the plan now?” Rita asked, topping up their glasses as Rufus sliced a piece of roast pork into exact halves. He considered the question as he chewed, tasting orange and clove in the tender meat. He made a little noise of pleasure in the back of his throat. For a woman so decidedly un-domestic, Rita could certainly come through when she tried.
“Well,” he began, the word hanging heavily in the air for a moment, “the Ministry will have to be seen to be doing something against the threat. Raising awareness with posters and the like, visible Hit-wizard patrols. Mobilising the Aurors to track down as many Death Eaters as possible.”
Firelight flickered against Rita’s knife as she cut up green beans, a swirl of fork and the utensil paused mid-air. “And the press?” Her eyebrow arched minutely - what can I do for you?
Rufus sighed. He knew what he wanted, but he doubted it would be easy, even after Rita’s Quibbler article. “I’m hoping that we might be able to get Potter on our side. That would give the Prophet plenty to do.”
Rita snorted. “Good luck. If someone came asking for my help after they’d been calling me a lunatic for a year, I’d be telling them to sod off.”
Her words echoed his thoughts, but he found himself irritated nonetheless. Set about dissecting his potatoes into neat quarters and his carrots into even rings. “Unless someone had something over you, of course.” His voice came out more tersely than he’d intended, but from the tone of her reply, she was ignoring it.
“Touché. Not that the Ministry has anything over Potter.”
“Of course, you...” he broke off as a sickening realisation pushed its way into his brain, but he didn’t want to bring it up now. Couldn’t. He was exhausted, and he didn’t have the strength to think about it, to debate it with her over dinner.
“What?” she asked. The tone of the question said she was reading the lines on his face. He shook the thought off and looked up at her.
“Nothing. Forgot what I was going to say.”
She arched a brow, sceptical, but he held her gaze, and after a few moments she dropped hers to the plate as if nothing had passed between them. Accepting his silence; for now at least. He knew that the topic had not been dropped, just postponed. She was not a person who let things go - she always, always pushed until she got what she wanted. It was one of her most infuriating qualities, but also the one he respected the most. He just hoped they could make it through dinner - and ideally sex - before she called him on his evasion.
--
By the time they’d finished their meal, her robe had somehow slipped open over her left breast, giving him a lovely view of rounded white flesh and black lace with a tiny peek-a-boo of nipple. Rita sipped her wine, leaning back in her seat, and banished the dishes to the kitchen with a wave of her wand. This would be their last night in this house, he knew, but he couldn’t help but be amused by the thought that, were they staying, those dishes would sit there for days. Rita’s little bout of domesticity certainly wouldn’t have extended to being elbow-deep in soapy water any time soon.
“There are house-elves in the Minister’s Residence, you know. Do you think you’ll ever want to cook again?”
“Perhaps,” Rita smiled, swirling the wine in her glass. “But we’ll probably have to entertain Wizengamot members or foreign delegates on hardly any notice, so there’d bloody well want to be house-elves. I certainly don’t have time to slave over a hot stove and meet deadlines.”
“No,” he let out a light chuckle, but it felt tight in his chest - they were dangerously close to the thought he’d had earlier, and he really didn’t want...
But she was standing, letting her fingertips drag across the table as she circled it, and settling herself in his lap, one hand sliding over his shoulder and the other still holding her wine. “So,” she murmured, nails scraping his scalp as she raked her fingers through his hair. She slipped his glasses off, then her own, and took another sip of her wine. “When is the Minister going to bed his First Lady?” She twisted to deposit glass and spectacles on the table behind them, then her fingers were in his hair again, fisting gently, and she was kissing him, tasting once again of wine, but slower this time. Her eyelashes brushed his cheek as she grazed her lips over his jaw, the scar below his ear.
His arm encircled her waist, pulling her as close as their positions would allow, and his hand slipped into her robe, cupping her breast and catching the lace covered nipple between forefinger and thumb. Her warm breath gusted against his cheek.
“I’m exhausted,” he murmured. “Tomorrow I have to figure out how to fight a war.”
Her lips brushed his eyelids. “Then let us have tonight.”
As dinner was candlelit, so was their bedroom coloured by the pale light of the moon filtered through the mist clinging to the windows. He watched her move above him, the night painting her skin blue and bleaching the colour from her hair. Her fingernails against his chest, his hands on her hips, then her nipples blushing bruise-purple as he pinched them.
He tossed her onto her back and the muscles in his bad leg screamed as he found purchase on his knees and buried his head against her shoulder, blocking out the pain and focussing on her heat, on the musky-sweet smell of her throat and the taste of sweat on her skin.
Let us have tonight. He was deep in her, drowning, and there was nothing else in the world as she clutched at his back and shattered. He followed soon after in the familiar way of bodies that knew each other well, and she slid her leg under his before he collapsed on her, taking away the strain he felt when he used it to hold himself up.
He held her close, sated and weak, and only when his eyes were closed and the exhaustion weighed heavily on him did she ask, “What were you going to say, earlier?”
He groaned, pressing his lips into her shoulder because why now?, but he knew he had to answer her eventually and perhaps while he was holding her was a better time than any other.
His whisper sounded loud in the dark. “The Minister’s wife can’t work for the press, Rita.”
He was braced for a fight, ready for her to pull away, but she just murmured “Oh”, and then the room was silent until they fell asleep.
--
Rita was gone when he woke - already at the office for the morning edition - and he stumbled over clothes on his way to the shower and made breakfast around last night’s dishes. He could smell the dregs of wine as he sat down to eat - eggs and toast and ice-cold pumpkin juice; he’d need all the energy he could get - and he pushed the glasses to the side of the table. He discarded eight toast corners, perfectly matched in size, but left the plate where it lay.
There was a guard waiting for him when he emerged from the house - only one, he noted, and was pleased. It meant the other had tailed Rita to work. She would no doubt be unimpressed when she realised, but until Rufus had some idea what they were facing - how far Voldemort’s supporters had infiltrated and an approximation as to the scope of his plans - he preferred to err on the side of caution. He had bigger things to worry about than her being irritated by the surveillance, anyway. Her silence following his comment last night did not bode well for their next conversation.
The morning passed in a blur of meetings with advisors and heads of department, floo calls with foreign delegates and forms he had to sign. By the time three o’clock rolled around - his first moment of respite in the day - he had a pounding headache and an empty, hollow feeling in his gut that had gone beyond hunger hours ago.
His glasses were in his hand and his fingers pinched over the bridge of his nose when a knock came at the door. Stifling a groan, he slipped the frames back onto his face and looked up, steeling himself for another onslaught.
Gawain Robards was lounging in the doorway, looking rugged and casual in his red Auror robes. Three black stripes on his wand arm marked him as the head of Magical Law Enforcement.
“Tough first day, eh?” he asked, lips quirking into a rueful grin.
“You might say that,” Rufus agreed.
“Brought you something.” Out of his bottomless pocket, Robards produced something long and rounded in a wrapping of charmed paper with tiny red lizards squirming on it. Rufus recognised the logo of Salamander’s - a hole in the wall place in Diagon Alley that was most Aurors’ first choice for food on the go. Even from his desk across the room, Rufus caught a whiff of salty meat.
“Bacon, beef and chilli,” said Gawain, striding forward to set it on the desk. “Also this.” From a different pocket he pulled a small blue phial. “Hangover potion. Brilliant for tension headaches and lethargy; better than the generic headache stuff.”
“I knew there was a reason I chose you as my successor.”
Abandoning any pretence of the stiff-spined Minister before this man who had seen him after twenty-four hours without sleep and on his thirtieth cup of the bitter swill the Ministry called coffee, Rufus downed the potion in one mouthful and tore open the hot bread roll with all the finesse of a caveman.
“So,” he said, minutes later, having conjured a serviette to dab at the corners of his mouth and folded the charmed salamander paper into a neat square. Robards was watching the fake weather from the fake windows. “I presume, had you only come to bring me provisions, that you would have departed by now?”
Robards turned with a smirk. “Oh, I’m not allowed to admire your thunderstorm? Clearly, the weather wizards don’t think we get enough of those above ground. Level six had a tornado this morning - that was creative. You should demand some more interesting scenery.”
“If things continue at the rate they were going today, I hardly think I’ll have time to appreciate it. Why are you really here?”
Gawain slipped his hands into his pockets. “To get you moved into the Minister’s Residence. I’m just waiting on word from Proudfoot, whom I sent to collect your wife.”
--
The Minister’s Residence was an old manor house in Wiltshire. Its grounds were enormous, fenced and warded with the kind of protection bested only by Hogwarts. Unplottable, Robards explained - more for Rita’s benefit than Rufus’ - as he walked them through the grounds closest to the house, with anti-Apparition jinxes on the ground and anti-broomstick ones in the air.
When he took them inside, their footsteps echoed in the open space and the air was heavy with magic and silence.
“We’ve just reinforced all the enchantments on the house, but that buzz will be gone soon. If you’ll follow me. This is your private living area. The fireplace here is connected to the floo network, as is the one in your study, Minister, and the conference room in the south wing of the house - though that one is a direct line to the Ministry. The bedrooms can be connected at your request - if you have foreign officials staying at any point, they might like to make international calls from the privacy of their rooms.”
“And if I don’t want to floo every time I go out?” It was the first time Rita had spoken since they’d arrived. Robards gave her a quizzical look, as though wondering why anyone would be opposed to floo travel.
“You could... ask one of the Watchwizards on the gate to let you out, then Apparate from outside the grounds?” He scratched his ear absently.
Rufus closed his eyes for a moment as Rita murmured a short, toneless reply. He knew precisely why she wouldn’t want to floo in and out of the house all the time: she didn’t like getting ash all over her clothes. He also knew that Rita was an intelligent woman, and perfectly capable of figuring out that the only thing someone had to do to avoid the Apparition wards on the property was to step outside its perimeter. She was asking simply to be difficult, and there were many possible reasons for that; none of them good. She also hadn’t made eye contact with him since they arrived.
The tour ended in the conference chamber - a sparse, airy sort of room with windows that overlooked the southernmost part of the grounds. Rita stood at one of them, gazing out at the green landscape highlighted by the bleak glare of overcast day, while Robards explained the security features of the room - silencing charms on the walls as well as a number of hexes that prevented things that were said inside it from being easily repeated. When he was finished, he handed Rufus a scroll that contained his schedule for following day, then made his exit, flicking a glance at Rita as he said “I’ll leave you two to get settled in”.
Settled indeed, Rufus thought, slipping the scroll into his robe pocket without opening it. At that moment, he had more pressing concerns.
The room was eerily silent with Robards gone. In London, there had always been some noise or another - commuters, drunken revellers from the bars on Diagon, Muggle air-planes flying in to land. Here, the landscape was silent. Rufus knew there must be elves around, silently unpacking trunks, but they were well-trained in the art of being invisible.
He approached Rita quietly, moving to stand beside her at the window. Her hand was clutching the frame. He studied her face in profile. She was perfectly made-up: hair in corkscrew curls, a fine dust of powder on her cheeks, lips pursed in a scarlet pout. War paint.
She spoke to the window; her breath misted the glass. “You can’t ask me to give up my career, Rufus.”
He turned his own face to the glass, wrapped his fingers around the wooden window frame. Leaned his forehead against the cold pane, searching manicured lawns for answers he didn’t have. His breath gusted out of him in a sigh as he pushed himself back.
“I’m not asking...of course I don’t want you to give up your career...”
“Not now; not when I’ve just got it back. Not when what I do can finally actually help you.”
He turned to look at her again. “But that’s exactly it, Rita. You can’t help me, not now that I’m actually Minister. And even if you don’t, even if you swear to me and to your superiors that you won’t take what you learn from me to work with you, the public won’t believe you. The first time the Prophet publishes an article in support of the Ministry, there’ll be questions - did you influence it, did I ask you to. If someone picks up a story of cover-up or corruption in one of the departments, they’ll wonder if I told you, if you’re trying to smear anyone who might oppose me. The press can’t be the Fourth Estate when a senior reporter is married to the Minister.”
Rita snorted humourlessly. “As if the Prophet isn’t corrupt anyway. As if half the editors aren’t in bed with the Ministry as it is.”
“I know that, but what happens behind closed doors is different than what’s on public record. Surely you realise...for the public to lose faith in the Ministry’s integrity right now would be disastrous. We’re already on wobbly broomsticks...”
“So, what?” she asked, turning to look at him, then. Her eyes were full of angry defiance, frustration, defeat. “You reach the pinnacle of your career and I have to give up mine? Stop being everything I am and become just the Minister’s Wife? One of those pretty pureblood witches who stand at their husbands’ sides, charm his guests and do fuck-all else? I never wanted to be one of those women, Rufus, and you certainly didn’t choose to marry one.”
She blinked furiously. Her eyes were wet, but he knew from experience that she wouldn’t let him see her cry. Rufus stood, motionless for several moments, feeling like someone was hollowing him out. He reached out but she didn’t come to him.
“I don’t...I don’t know what you want me to do, Rita. I don’t know the answer. Merlin, I wish I did, but...”
He turned away again, back to the window, because he couldn’t face it when he wanted to touch her and she wouldn’t let him.
Her voice was quiet behind him, gravelly. “This place is horrible. I don’t know how to think when it’s so quiet.” He could hear the tears, now, but he didn’t turn around. Rita could never bear to be weak before anyone.
--
She was gone to the office again the next morning, and he supposed that was an answer to their conversation. More along the lines of sod off than yes, you’re right, but he supposed he couldn’t blame her. Perhaps he’d been too hasty. Perhaps it would work with things as they were. He supposed he could afford to let it all play out for a few days and see if anything happened.
More meetings, that morning; more strategy. A session with Fudge that involved the history of his dealings with Dumbledore and did little more than frustrate Rufus. Before the briefing, he’d been inclined to imagine Dumbledore as a powerful man, a man with vast magical power and life experience, but essentially a civilian with a jumped-up sense of his own importance. Fudge’s explanations proven him wrong - not only was Dumbledore a Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot (which Rufus had forgotten) and Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards (which he hadn’t known), but his position as Headmaster of Hogwarts gave him direct access to the minds of Britain’s youth. He was charismatic and powerful, and Fudge believed he had started some sort of underground resistance. Whether against Voldemort or the Ministry wasn’t clear, though Fudge thought it was the latter. Rufus was inclined to think that garbage - if Dumbledore had wanted the Ministry, he could have taken it on one of the numerous occasions he was rumoured to have been offered the position of Minister. But with access to international political figures as well as the entire youth of wizarding Britain, Dumbledore would make a powerful friend and an even more powerful enemy.
Fudge also told Rufus that the old man was very protective of his students, citing several examples of incidents in recent years in which Dumbledore had refused to name the students involved, preferring to deal with everything internally. Rufus felt his hope of getting Potter onside and uniting the images of Hogwarts and the Ministry against the Dark Lord begin to dwindle.
Around lunch time, when hunger had him by the gut and his mood was suffering as he sat through another tedious meeting, Rufus realised that he was the Minister, damn it, and he wanted a short break to eat and pull his thoughts together. Dismissing everyone from his office, he called the personal crew of house-elves that his secretary had informed him were in his charge and asked for a plate of cheese and crackers and a bottle of Gillywater. While they were off collecting his request, he floo called the weather wizards and demanded to see some sunshine, for Merlin’s sake.
He was halfway through his crackers when the witch in the portrait left of the fireplace cleared her throat.
“Gawain Robards, Head of Magical Law Enforcement, is requesting a floo call.”
Rufus swallowed a mouthful. “Put him through.”
The portrait fell silent, and a moment later the fire turned green and Gawain’s head appeared. “Ah, I see you managed to get lunch for yourself today,” he grinned.
“Apparently,” Rufus replied. “Hello, Gawain.”
“Right, hello. Um, you should probably turn on the wireless.”
“Why?”
“I think you should hear what they’re saying.”
Rufus felt his brow crease, but he didn’t think Robards was suggesting he tune in to hear the results of the Harpies playing the Prides and speculation about what the witch’s team did in the showers after the game. Slipping his wand from his robe, he activated the wireless with a flick. The faux-interested voice of a WWN news reader filled the room.
“...And today, the Prophet’s leading story was about our nation’s new Minister, Rufus Scrimgeour, who was promoted from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to take charge in these troubled times. The Minister’s representatives yesterday issued a statement saying that Scrimgeour intends to attack He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his supporters head on. Magical Law Enforcement will be recruiting heavily for Hit Wizards in the months to come, and training many already in the force as Aurors. Hit Wizard patrols will be increased, and Aurors investigating all reports of Deatheater sightings, recruitment and activity. What the Prophet failed to report was that the Ministry has also tightened its hold on public post services, issuing all owlery owners yesterday with notices that their businesses will now be subject to random checks and audits by the Ministry, which will allow law enforcement employees to open and read the personal correspondence intended for members of the public. The Ministry has justified this by suggesting that persons organising illegal activities will be unlikely to use their own birds, and will instead choose the anonymity of public owleries. How is it that the Prophet failed to report such a blatant infringement on the rights of every witch and wizard in Britain? Could it be that, as in previous years, the Ministry is leaning on the Prophet to only print the stories it wants the public to know about? Or did the cover-up come from inside the Prophet itself? Our most recent reports tell us that the Minister’s wife, the journalist who writes under the name Rita Skeeter, retained her position at the Prophet even after her husband was sworn in as our nation’s leader...
Rufus silenced the wireless with an angry flick of his wand.
“Fuck,” he whispered, reaching up to slide his glasses off so he could rub at his eyes. He stared at the hard wood of his desk, at the papers he’d shoved aside when the elves delivered his lunch, and began to arrange them into a perfect fan with one hand. “This is a nightmare.”
“I’m sorry, mate,” said Robards, and Rufus’ head jerked up, having completely forgotten the other man was there. He looked awkward, embarrassed to have witnessed a private moment, and undoubtedly realising that the odd tension between Rufus and Rita the previous afternoon had something to do with what they’d just heard. “I hope...well. Good luck.” With that, his head popped out of the fireplace.
--
The Prophet had issued a statement in their evening edition, and Rufus read it with a growing sense of dread. The WWN is mistaken. While Rita Skeeter was indeed in our employ when her husband was sworn in, she is no longer with us. Our coverage of the Ministry’s new laws for public owleries is included in this edition. The reason for this delay is no conspiracy, simply the fact that, at the time of printing our morning edition, we did not yet have enough information to publish the story. Unlike the WWN, the Prophet does not have the luxury of announcing news items whenever they happen to come to light.
When he arrived back at the house (he couldn’t possibly think of it as ‘home’ yet, and wasn’t sure he ever would), Rita wasn’t inside. One of the house-elves informed him that she had gone out onto the grounds, but couldn’t offer any insight as to where (Kimmy is a house-elf, Minister Sir, not a garden-elf). Sighing, he ventured outside to look for her. He just hoped she wasn’t sitting on a leaf somewhere - he’d never find her if she’d transformed.
Thankfully, he located her without too much trouble. Beetle or not, he knew she liked flowers, so he followed rambling summer roses down a garden path. But she wouldn’t stick to the path - wearing heels had never stopped her doing anything - so he stepped off the paving as soon as there were no longer flowers lining it, found crushed grass on a shallow decline and tracked it through the gap in a trimmed hedge. On the other side, he came upon a small man-made lake, at one end of which sat a gazebo. Rita was sitting on its stone steps, looking ridiculously out of place with nature in magenta robes, but her eyes were the same grey-blue as the sky, and just as bleak.
She didn’t look up as he approached. When she spoke, her voice sounded small. She wasn’t a large woman, not in stature, but he didn’t think he’d ever thought of her as small before. “They let me go,” she said. “Twenty years, I’ve been there. Twenty years of biting and clawing my way to the top, of spinning their bullshit when the Ministry was leaning on them, and they just...” she waved a hand and it looked like the ripples on the water - hopelessly contained in an unnatural space. He sat down beside her, close enough that their legs brushed against each other, and contemplated the scenery she was staring at. It was a rather pathetic water feature, actually. “I suppose it would be childish and hypocritical to say ‘it’s not fair’, wouldn’t it?” Rita asked.
“Possibly,” Rufus admitted. “I don’t think it would get you anywhere, either.”
“I wish I knew what would.”
She didn’t sound sad so much as bereft. Hollow. He wanted to say he was sorry, that he wished there could have been another way, but he didn’t think that would get her - them - anywhere either. The moment for sympathetic platitudes had passed, but it also didn’t feel like the right time to try and offer practical solutions. He leaned forward and laid his forearms over his knees, clasped his fingers together. His bad leg twitched and his heel tapped against the stone beneath it. He was frustrated, he realised, by her composure, by the emotionless way she spoke, by the fact that, even though their thighs were touching and he could feel the warmth of her, her body was still angled away from his. She wouldn’t turn to him, wouldn’t lean in and give him the chance to support her. Fucking Slytherin. She’d always supported him and he’d always let her - they’d talked endlessly about his career and how her position in the press might subtly advance his position, but her journalistic career was something she’d built by herself. She’d never asked him directly to put her in contact with this or that person, never asked him what was happening in this or that case so she could use it. Instead, she arranged for them to attend a function, or informed him that she’d met the wife of someone he knew well at the market today and had invited them both out to dinner. She’d networked at the parties and forged friendships over dinner, and made all her contacts on her own. Hell, she’d even become an illegal animagus so she could listen in on conversations that told her the same things he could, but she’d never asked him for help.
It was as if, even after all the years they’d been together, she still expected to go belly-up in the snake pit if she showed any weakness. He knew it wasn’t that simple, knew it wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, that was just how she was, but Merlin, it didn’t make it any easier.
“Would it be so hard,” he asked, and his voice was barely louder than the breeze, “for you to just let me hold you? Let me hold you up for a little while, until you find your feet again?”
He watched her shoulders rise and fall in a heavy breath, and then she finally, finally turned toward him. She didn’t say anything but she moved closer. He lifted his arm and she slipped under it, and he could feel her trembling with something, and then he pulled her closer and she let him. Her head was against his chest, his robes around her, and they could make him Minister a thousand times but he’d never feel more of a man than he did when this fiercely independent woman let him protect her.
--
They made love ferociously that night, as if Rita wanted to prove to him that even though she’d let him comfort her, she was still the same woman who could drive him crazy with something as simple as scraping a fingernail over his glans. It wasn’t sex but exorcism, tossing out everything that made them civilised, everything that made them aware and restrained.
He’d just finished a conference with the Minister of Australia and was slipping back into the bedroom to shuck his robes of office when she pinned him to the wall and unfastened them just enough to slip her hand inside and wrap it around his cock. Then she was sliding, dropping to the floor, burrowing in amongst the heavy folds of fabric and taking him into her mouth, hot and tight and all the way down, and his voice gurgled in his throat as his hand fisted in her hair. She was voracious, insistent; filling the air with the sounds of suck and slap, and the blood was rushing away from his brain and filling his mind with fog. He was pulling her hair, tearing her away from him and letting her fill her lungs, then plunging back in and she looked wet, hungry, filthy, beautiful.
They were on the bed, his teeth sinking into her thigh above the line of stocking, and she was gasping out his name as his cupped palm came down hard on her slick cunt.
He was above her, his leg bad leg burning and his body aching for release as he teased himself against her entrance and watched her buck off the bed and her mouth twist in rapture, watched as the head of his cock slipped in and out of her and the way she stretched around him as he pushed inside.
And when she was begging, whimpering and cursing him and he couldn’t stand any more lest the world come back and try and claim him, he plunged into her and obliterated it altogether.
Afterward, hot and sticky and both of them broken, he held her tight and pressed his face against her shoulder, breathing against her neck and inhaling the smell of her.
But his night was not over. He’d barely regained his breath - or so it felt, though he knew he’d been holding her for a while although not long enough - when the frame that had contained an empty canvas since they’d arrived here cleared its throat.
“Senior Advisor Cornelius Fudge has asked me to remind the Minister that he has a meeting with the Muggle Prime Minister in five minutes.”
Rufus groaned, growling into Rita’s hair, and she made an answering sound of disappointment in her throat.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, squeezing his hand around hers before gently extricating it. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She made another weak sound of protest as he left the bed, but he was moving through the dark and into the adjoining room. It was a private sitting area with his and hers dressers on either side of a full length window, an ensuite bathroom through one door and a mirror that made a contemptuous noise in his general direction as he passed it.
He threw himself into the shower, washing away the smell of sex and scrubbing his face in an attempt to feel a little more alert. When he emerged, damp and pink-skinned, he laid a hand on the back of the armchair as if to pick up his robes, but they were on the floor in the bedroom smelling like sweat and cock and Rita’s perfume, so he selected a set of black ones from the wardrobe instead. To meet another Head of State, he technically should have worn his robes of office, but the Muggle Prime Minister wouldn’t know the difference.
The painted figure that had spoken in the bedroom had followed him into its frame on the wall opposite him. It cleared its throat again, and said: “Fudge is with the Prime Minister now, Sir, and is wondering where you are.”
Rufus, buttoning his robes, scowled. “Oh, tell him I’m writing a letter to Dumbledore, or something. He’ll actually be familiar with that idea, unlike the concept of sleeping with one’s wife. I doubt that bed’s seen any action more exciting than a crossword puzzle in years.”
The portrait, apparently only the most basic of semi-sentient artwork and thus completely lacking a sense of humour, merely nodded and faded from view.
Rufus secured a cravat about his throat, dried his hair with a wave of his wand and slipped his glasses on. Tossing a pinch of floo powder into the fireplace, he stepped through to meet the Prime Minister.
--
Writing a letter to Dumbledore, indeed.
The following day, after all the morning meetings were over and done with, he found himself doing precisely that. As much as he hated to admit it - as much as he hated it altogether - he did need the man’s help. He wasn’t particularly hopeful that Dumbledore would help him persuade Potter to lend his support to the Ministry, but he would try. Not in this letter, since it was the first, but eventually.
What he really needed was some intelligence. All the Hit Wizard and Auror patrols in the world wouldn’t give him insight into what Voldemort was planning next, and that was what he really needed. Rufus knew that Dumbledore had an informant in the form of Severus Snape, but from what Fudge had said, the old man wouldn’t disclose any of the information Snape gave him because it might compromise the man’s security.
Laying the quill down in the centre of the parchment he’d addressed, Rufus picked up the pile of papers that were notes on Hogwarts and Dumbledore. They contained all of Fudge’s correspondence with the Headmaster, and from the tone of it, it seemed that Dumbledore was not opposed to an alliance between the Ministry and Hogwarts, so long as, it seemed, the Minister didn’t actually expect to be told anything.
Well, Rufus didn’t work like that. Fudge hadn’t either, but that was because he was a pompous old git who wanted to know everything simply so he had the upper hand. Rufus had been an Auror for years. He understood the importance of war and battle intelligence on a need to know basis, but he certainly wasn’t prepared to just take Dumbledore’s word on what needed to be done and when, without any explanation. He wouldn’t send his people out into dangerous situations without knowing what they were getting into, just as, he was sure, Dumbledore wouldn’t. What he needed to do was convince Dumbledore that cooperation between the Ministry and Hogwarts was imperative to the war effort, but that he needed to be informed of what was going on so that he could make informed decisions about the safety of his people.
Right. That was going to be easy, wasn’t it?
There were a number of pages in the pile that didn’t seem to have anything to do with Dumbledore. In fact, they seemed to from the years before he’d become headmaster. The record of Rubeus Hagrid’s expulsion, and attached to it a note to Headmaster Dippet from ‘Albus’, asking him to reconsider the decision. An incident report recording the death of one Myrtle Hogkins and a signed statement from a boy called Tom Riddle that said he had caught Hagrid in the act of releasing an acromantula onto school grounds.
Curious, Rufus laid the pages beside him and leafed through the rest of the pile for anything out of the ordinary. Under a few more letters from Dumbledore that said similar things to all the others, he found a sheet of Ministry office memo paper with notes written in Fudge’s hand.
Hagrid cleared 1993. Attacks proven to be the work of basilisk. Enchanted diary.
Chamber of Secrets? Heir of Slytherin? Parselmouth??
TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE = I AM LORD VOLDEMORT?
Hogwarts student 1943?
The name ‘Voldemort’ was written in shaky handwriting. Rufus arched a brow, looking over the name again. Huh, it was an anagram. Who’d have known Fudge’s love of crosswords would ever amount to anything?
Within the hour, Rufus had pulled every file that contained information about Hogwarts in the 1940s. It was fascinating reading. Nothing that would actually help him win the war, he didn’t think, or induce Dumbledore to talk, but at the very least it pointed to gross negligence on Armando Dippet’s part. A fascinating story, obviously covered up and untold. He’d been at Hogwarts barely fifteen years after these events, and had never heard a word about a girl who died.
A fascinating story.
Determined not to think about the possible implications of what he was about to do, Rufus pulled out his wand and duplicated every piece of useful information.
--
He took the floo into the conference room direct from his office that afternoon. In the living area, he found Rita sipping a cup of tea, surrounded by shopping bags. The one on the end had fallen over and green satin was spilling onto the settee.
Rita looked up at him, barely blinking, and said “I had no idea what else to do with my time.”
Rufus’ lips curled into a smile, and he slipped the copied file from inside his robes and dropped it onto the coffee table. “Have you ever considered expanding into books?”
The expression on her face barely wavered, but he could see the Slytherin gleam spark in her eyes as the wheels in her mind started to turn. Still watching him over the top of her glasses, she leaned over and placed the dainty teacup on the table, pulled the file into her lap. Her fingertip touched her tongue and she opened the folder with it, skimming the pages inside with movements that became more focussed and tense with every passing moment.
Finally, she looked up at him, and he could see that he had her back. His Rita. Or rather, she had herself back.
“I hadn’t,” she said. “But I am now.”
Pairing: Rufus Scrimgeour/Rita Skeeter
Rating: NC-17
Summary: After years of hard work and scheming, Rufus Scrimgeour has finally been made Minister of Magic. But every success has a price, and this one seems to be expensive indeed.
A/N: Thanks to sugarquill39 and florahart for looking this over. For FF100 prompt 23: Lovers. This fic was very much inspired by edgewise's Beholder request. Why yes, this many months after the exchange. This bunny has been attempting to get me to write it ever since.
The foyer was dark when Rufus slid his key into the door and felt the wards and the lock click open to let him inside. Candlelight flickered upstairs, but all he could see as the door closed behind him was the shape of the hall table hunched against the wall and a sliver of light from outside caught in the mirror above it. Three steps in, setting his briefcase by the door, and then he pressed right into her warm, silent body as he moved forward.
“You’re so predictable,” she murmured. “You always step in the same places. I thought habits like that got Aurors killed.”
She smelled of musk and clove and spices. He leaned into her, feeling her breasts press against his chest. In an instant his fingers were tangling in her hair and he tasted wine on her tongue, devoured her, hungry and sightless. She wrapped her arms around him and he shoved her back against the table, hitching her leg up to his waist with a rough tug as rickety wooden legs gave a shudder.
“I’m not an Auror,” he hissed against her cheek, fingers sliding over her stockinged knee and under the hem of her robe, “I’m the Minister of Magic.”
“So I heard.” One more breath and he kissed her again. The table legs scraped the floorboards as he pressed himself against her and he made a noise into her mouth when his cock ground into her pelvic bone.
She turned her face to the side. His lips dragged over her cheek and she laughed. “There’s dinner upstairs getting cold.”
He growled against her. “Don’t you know warming charms, witch?”
“Of course. But your appetites are as predictable as you are.”
As if on cue, his stomached rumbled, though it sounded more like a roar in the silence. She laughed again, slipping her hands down to his waist and using it for leverage as she slid off the table. “Come. I cooked. And dessert doesn’t get cold.”
He followed her up the stairs, emitting a long-suffering sigh. “You cooked? Shall I put St. Mungo’s on standby before we sit down?”
“Oh, be quiet. Unless you want your sexual performance reviewed in tomorrow’s Prophet, that is.”
As they ascended the stairs into candlelight, the shadow of her body gave way to colour - her blonde ringlet hair, the purple and silver brocade of her robe. The cord that secured it at her waist swung back and forth from her hip as she climbed. Her stockinged feet rendered her silent but for the swish of fabric.
“So what was it like, being sworn in by the Wizengamot?” she asked as they reached the top of the stairs, glancing at him as he unbuttoned his heavy red outer robes. They were ceremonial, robes of office, the cuffs trimmed in gold thread. The colour represented the department he had ascended from - Aurors wore red. Fudge’s had been navy, since he had worked in International Magical Cooperation. It was common for Ministers to be promoted from Law Enforcement during times of war, and it seemed appropriate that his robes were the same crimson as freshly shed blood. The thought had weighed on him all day; dragged - at least as much as the heavy folds of fabric had.
“Strange,” he said. “Surreal. I’ve wanted this forever, but somehow it didn’t feel like much of a victory.” He dropped the robes over the back of a lounge chair as she padded across to the bar, picking up a bottle of red wine. For a moment, the thought of drinking it made him feel slightly ill, but then wasn’t red wine supposed to be purifying? The blood of Christ, he remembered from his childhood.
“Why?” she asked, pulling him out of the thought. Liquid tinkled into glass and there was a furrow between her eyebrows. “You’ve worked so hard. We’ve worked so hard...”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, ran his fingers over his hairline. “All those Muggles on that bridge; the murders. Fudge is completely destroyed...”
“Because he’s no longer suited to the position, Rufus. You didn’t bring him down, his own hubris did. You deserve...”
“At the price of Amelia Bones’ life? I was second in line, not first.”
She crossed the room, wine glasses in hand, and pressed one into his. She didn’t let go when his fingers slid between hers to take it.
“And why did she die? Because Fudge was too blind and obsessed with his own image to admit that You-Know-Who had returned, and that gave him an entire year to make alliances and track down his targets.”
Rufus smiled wryly. “You’re starting to believe your own spin, Rita.”
She pulled away, hissing in frustration. “I’ve always believed it! I heard him, that night at Hogwarts. Merlin, if I’d been able to write last year...”
The smile turned to amusement. “You would have done exactly what everybody else did. Written what your editors told you to, what would sell papers. And we both know that had you published what you’d heard back then, Fudge would have been forced into action, and would likely still be Minister. And you wouldn’t be the reporter who took a year without pay to pursue the truth, then published it before anyone else dared to.”
Rita’s lips had twisted into a little smirk, and she gave in. “True.”
“It just happened a little fast, is all. I was hoping to become Head of Law Enforcement when Amelia was made Minister, prove myself during the war...” Take charge when it was all over and order needed to be restored. Post-war Ministers had a longer life expectancy than wartime ones, but that didn’t bear thinking on too long. Rufus sipped his wine. “Where is this dinner that you insist is getting cold?”
--
“So what’s the plan now?” Rita asked, topping up their glasses as Rufus sliced a piece of roast pork into exact halves. He considered the question as he chewed, tasting orange and clove in the tender meat. He made a little noise of pleasure in the back of his throat. For a woman so decidedly un-domestic, Rita could certainly come through when she tried.
“Well,” he began, the word hanging heavily in the air for a moment, “the Ministry will have to be seen to be doing something against the threat. Raising awareness with posters and the like, visible Hit-wizard patrols. Mobilising the Aurors to track down as many Death Eaters as possible.”
Firelight flickered against Rita’s knife as she cut up green beans, a swirl of fork and the utensil paused mid-air. “And the press?” Her eyebrow arched minutely - what can I do for you?
Rufus sighed. He knew what he wanted, but he doubted it would be easy, even after Rita’s Quibbler article. “I’m hoping that we might be able to get Potter on our side. That would give the Prophet plenty to do.”
Rita snorted. “Good luck. If someone came asking for my help after they’d been calling me a lunatic for a year, I’d be telling them to sod off.”
Her words echoed his thoughts, but he found himself irritated nonetheless. Set about dissecting his potatoes into neat quarters and his carrots into even rings. “Unless someone had something over you, of course.” His voice came out more tersely than he’d intended, but from the tone of her reply, she was ignoring it.
“Touché. Not that the Ministry has anything over Potter.”
“Of course, you...” he broke off as a sickening realisation pushed its way into his brain, but he didn’t want to bring it up now. Couldn’t. He was exhausted, and he didn’t have the strength to think about it, to debate it with her over dinner.
“What?” she asked. The tone of the question said she was reading the lines on his face. He shook the thought off and looked up at her.
“Nothing. Forgot what I was going to say.”
She arched a brow, sceptical, but he held her gaze, and after a few moments she dropped hers to the plate as if nothing had passed between them. Accepting his silence; for now at least. He knew that the topic had not been dropped, just postponed. She was not a person who let things go - she always, always pushed until she got what she wanted. It was one of her most infuriating qualities, but also the one he respected the most. He just hoped they could make it through dinner - and ideally sex - before she called him on his evasion.
--
By the time they’d finished their meal, her robe had somehow slipped open over her left breast, giving him a lovely view of rounded white flesh and black lace with a tiny peek-a-boo of nipple. Rita sipped her wine, leaning back in her seat, and banished the dishes to the kitchen with a wave of her wand. This would be their last night in this house, he knew, but he couldn’t help but be amused by the thought that, were they staying, those dishes would sit there for days. Rita’s little bout of domesticity certainly wouldn’t have extended to being elbow-deep in soapy water any time soon.
“There are house-elves in the Minister’s Residence, you know. Do you think you’ll ever want to cook again?”
“Perhaps,” Rita smiled, swirling the wine in her glass. “But we’ll probably have to entertain Wizengamot members or foreign delegates on hardly any notice, so there’d bloody well want to be house-elves. I certainly don’t have time to slave over a hot stove and meet deadlines.”
“No,” he let out a light chuckle, but it felt tight in his chest - they were dangerously close to the thought he’d had earlier, and he really didn’t want...
But she was standing, letting her fingertips drag across the table as she circled it, and settling herself in his lap, one hand sliding over his shoulder and the other still holding her wine. “So,” she murmured, nails scraping his scalp as she raked her fingers through his hair. She slipped his glasses off, then her own, and took another sip of her wine. “When is the Minister going to bed his First Lady?” She twisted to deposit glass and spectacles on the table behind them, then her fingers were in his hair again, fisting gently, and she was kissing him, tasting once again of wine, but slower this time. Her eyelashes brushed his cheek as she grazed her lips over his jaw, the scar below his ear.
His arm encircled her waist, pulling her as close as their positions would allow, and his hand slipped into her robe, cupping her breast and catching the lace covered nipple between forefinger and thumb. Her warm breath gusted against his cheek.
“I’m exhausted,” he murmured. “Tomorrow I have to figure out how to fight a war.”
Her lips brushed his eyelids. “Then let us have tonight.”
As dinner was candlelit, so was their bedroom coloured by the pale light of the moon filtered through the mist clinging to the windows. He watched her move above him, the night painting her skin blue and bleaching the colour from her hair. Her fingernails against his chest, his hands on her hips, then her nipples blushing bruise-purple as he pinched them.
He tossed her onto her back and the muscles in his bad leg screamed as he found purchase on his knees and buried his head against her shoulder, blocking out the pain and focussing on her heat, on the musky-sweet smell of her throat and the taste of sweat on her skin.
Let us have tonight. He was deep in her, drowning, and there was nothing else in the world as she clutched at his back and shattered. He followed soon after in the familiar way of bodies that knew each other well, and she slid her leg under his before he collapsed on her, taking away the strain he felt when he used it to hold himself up.
He held her close, sated and weak, and only when his eyes were closed and the exhaustion weighed heavily on him did she ask, “What were you going to say, earlier?”
He groaned, pressing his lips into her shoulder because why now?, but he knew he had to answer her eventually and perhaps while he was holding her was a better time than any other.
His whisper sounded loud in the dark. “The Minister’s wife can’t work for the press, Rita.”
He was braced for a fight, ready for her to pull away, but she just murmured “Oh”, and then the room was silent until they fell asleep.
--
Rita was gone when he woke - already at the office for the morning edition - and he stumbled over clothes on his way to the shower and made breakfast around last night’s dishes. He could smell the dregs of wine as he sat down to eat - eggs and toast and ice-cold pumpkin juice; he’d need all the energy he could get - and he pushed the glasses to the side of the table. He discarded eight toast corners, perfectly matched in size, but left the plate where it lay.
There was a guard waiting for him when he emerged from the house - only one, he noted, and was pleased. It meant the other had tailed Rita to work. She would no doubt be unimpressed when she realised, but until Rufus had some idea what they were facing - how far Voldemort’s supporters had infiltrated and an approximation as to the scope of his plans - he preferred to err on the side of caution. He had bigger things to worry about than her being irritated by the surveillance, anyway. Her silence following his comment last night did not bode well for their next conversation.
The morning passed in a blur of meetings with advisors and heads of department, floo calls with foreign delegates and forms he had to sign. By the time three o’clock rolled around - his first moment of respite in the day - he had a pounding headache and an empty, hollow feeling in his gut that had gone beyond hunger hours ago.
His glasses were in his hand and his fingers pinched over the bridge of his nose when a knock came at the door. Stifling a groan, he slipped the frames back onto his face and looked up, steeling himself for another onslaught.
Gawain Robards was lounging in the doorway, looking rugged and casual in his red Auror robes. Three black stripes on his wand arm marked him as the head of Magical Law Enforcement.
“Tough first day, eh?” he asked, lips quirking into a rueful grin.
“You might say that,” Rufus agreed.
“Brought you something.” Out of his bottomless pocket, Robards produced something long and rounded in a wrapping of charmed paper with tiny red lizards squirming on it. Rufus recognised the logo of Salamander’s - a hole in the wall place in Diagon Alley that was most Aurors’ first choice for food on the go. Even from his desk across the room, Rufus caught a whiff of salty meat.
“Bacon, beef and chilli,” said Gawain, striding forward to set it on the desk. “Also this.” From a different pocket he pulled a small blue phial. “Hangover potion. Brilliant for tension headaches and lethargy; better than the generic headache stuff.”
“I knew there was a reason I chose you as my successor.”
Abandoning any pretence of the stiff-spined Minister before this man who had seen him after twenty-four hours without sleep and on his thirtieth cup of the bitter swill the Ministry called coffee, Rufus downed the potion in one mouthful and tore open the hot bread roll with all the finesse of a caveman.
“So,” he said, minutes later, having conjured a serviette to dab at the corners of his mouth and folded the charmed salamander paper into a neat square. Robards was watching the fake weather from the fake windows. “I presume, had you only come to bring me provisions, that you would have departed by now?”
Robards turned with a smirk. “Oh, I’m not allowed to admire your thunderstorm? Clearly, the weather wizards don’t think we get enough of those above ground. Level six had a tornado this morning - that was creative. You should demand some more interesting scenery.”
“If things continue at the rate they were going today, I hardly think I’ll have time to appreciate it. Why are you really here?”
Gawain slipped his hands into his pockets. “To get you moved into the Minister’s Residence. I’m just waiting on word from Proudfoot, whom I sent to collect your wife.”
--
The Minister’s Residence was an old manor house in Wiltshire. Its grounds were enormous, fenced and warded with the kind of protection bested only by Hogwarts. Unplottable, Robards explained - more for Rita’s benefit than Rufus’ - as he walked them through the grounds closest to the house, with anti-Apparition jinxes on the ground and anti-broomstick ones in the air.
When he took them inside, their footsteps echoed in the open space and the air was heavy with magic and silence.
“We’ve just reinforced all the enchantments on the house, but that buzz will be gone soon. If you’ll follow me. This is your private living area. The fireplace here is connected to the floo network, as is the one in your study, Minister, and the conference room in the south wing of the house - though that one is a direct line to the Ministry. The bedrooms can be connected at your request - if you have foreign officials staying at any point, they might like to make international calls from the privacy of their rooms.”
“And if I don’t want to floo every time I go out?” It was the first time Rita had spoken since they’d arrived. Robards gave her a quizzical look, as though wondering why anyone would be opposed to floo travel.
“You could... ask one of the Watchwizards on the gate to let you out, then Apparate from outside the grounds?” He scratched his ear absently.
Rufus closed his eyes for a moment as Rita murmured a short, toneless reply. He knew precisely why she wouldn’t want to floo in and out of the house all the time: she didn’t like getting ash all over her clothes. He also knew that Rita was an intelligent woman, and perfectly capable of figuring out that the only thing someone had to do to avoid the Apparition wards on the property was to step outside its perimeter. She was asking simply to be difficult, and there were many possible reasons for that; none of them good. She also hadn’t made eye contact with him since they arrived.
The tour ended in the conference chamber - a sparse, airy sort of room with windows that overlooked the southernmost part of the grounds. Rita stood at one of them, gazing out at the green landscape highlighted by the bleak glare of overcast day, while Robards explained the security features of the room - silencing charms on the walls as well as a number of hexes that prevented things that were said inside it from being easily repeated. When he was finished, he handed Rufus a scroll that contained his schedule for following day, then made his exit, flicking a glance at Rita as he said “I’ll leave you two to get settled in”.
Settled indeed, Rufus thought, slipping the scroll into his robe pocket without opening it. At that moment, he had more pressing concerns.
The room was eerily silent with Robards gone. In London, there had always been some noise or another - commuters, drunken revellers from the bars on Diagon, Muggle air-planes flying in to land. Here, the landscape was silent. Rufus knew there must be elves around, silently unpacking trunks, but they were well-trained in the art of being invisible.
He approached Rita quietly, moving to stand beside her at the window. Her hand was clutching the frame. He studied her face in profile. She was perfectly made-up: hair in corkscrew curls, a fine dust of powder on her cheeks, lips pursed in a scarlet pout. War paint.
She spoke to the window; her breath misted the glass. “You can’t ask me to give up my career, Rufus.”
He turned his own face to the glass, wrapped his fingers around the wooden window frame. Leaned his forehead against the cold pane, searching manicured lawns for answers he didn’t have. His breath gusted out of him in a sigh as he pushed himself back.
“I’m not asking...of course I don’t want you to give up your career...”
“Not now; not when I’ve just got it back. Not when what I do can finally actually help you.”
He turned to look at her again. “But that’s exactly it, Rita. You can’t help me, not now that I’m actually Minister. And even if you don’t, even if you swear to me and to your superiors that you won’t take what you learn from me to work with you, the public won’t believe you. The first time the Prophet publishes an article in support of the Ministry, there’ll be questions - did you influence it, did I ask you to. If someone picks up a story of cover-up or corruption in one of the departments, they’ll wonder if I told you, if you’re trying to smear anyone who might oppose me. The press can’t be the Fourth Estate when a senior reporter is married to the Minister.”
Rita snorted humourlessly. “As if the Prophet isn’t corrupt anyway. As if half the editors aren’t in bed with the Ministry as it is.”
“I know that, but what happens behind closed doors is different than what’s on public record. Surely you realise...for the public to lose faith in the Ministry’s integrity right now would be disastrous. We’re already on wobbly broomsticks...”
“So, what?” she asked, turning to look at him, then. Her eyes were full of angry defiance, frustration, defeat. “You reach the pinnacle of your career and I have to give up mine? Stop being everything I am and become just the Minister’s Wife? One of those pretty pureblood witches who stand at their husbands’ sides, charm his guests and do fuck-all else? I never wanted to be one of those women, Rufus, and you certainly didn’t choose to marry one.”
She blinked furiously. Her eyes were wet, but he knew from experience that she wouldn’t let him see her cry. Rufus stood, motionless for several moments, feeling like someone was hollowing him out. He reached out but she didn’t come to him.
“I don’t...I don’t know what you want me to do, Rita. I don’t know the answer. Merlin, I wish I did, but...”
He turned away again, back to the window, because he couldn’t face it when he wanted to touch her and she wouldn’t let him.
Her voice was quiet behind him, gravelly. “This place is horrible. I don’t know how to think when it’s so quiet.” He could hear the tears, now, but he didn’t turn around. Rita could never bear to be weak before anyone.
--
She was gone to the office again the next morning, and he supposed that was an answer to their conversation. More along the lines of sod off than yes, you’re right, but he supposed he couldn’t blame her. Perhaps he’d been too hasty. Perhaps it would work with things as they were. He supposed he could afford to let it all play out for a few days and see if anything happened.
More meetings, that morning; more strategy. A session with Fudge that involved the history of his dealings with Dumbledore and did little more than frustrate Rufus. Before the briefing, he’d been inclined to imagine Dumbledore as a powerful man, a man with vast magical power and life experience, but essentially a civilian with a jumped-up sense of his own importance. Fudge’s explanations proven him wrong - not only was Dumbledore a Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot (which Rufus had forgotten) and Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards (which he hadn’t known), but his position as Headmaster of Hogwarts gave him direct access to the minds of Britain’s youth. He was charismatic and powerful, and Fudge believed he had started some sort of underground resistance. Whether against Voldemort or the Ministry wasn’t clear, though Fudge thought it was the latter. Rufus was inclined to think that garbage - if Dumbledore had wanted the Ministry, he could have taken it on one of the numerous occasions he was rumoured to have been offered the position of Minister. But with access to international political figures as well as the entire youth of wizarding Britain, Dumbledore would make a powerful friend and an even more powerful enemy.
Fudge also told Rufus that the old man was very protective of his students, citing several examples of incidents in recent years in which Dumbledore had refused to name the students involved, preferring to deal with everything internally. Rufus felt his hope of getting Potter onside and uniting the images of Hogwarts and the Ministry against the Dark Lord begin to dwindle.
Around lunch time, when hunger had him by the gut and his mood was suffering as he sat through another tedious meeting, Rufus realised that he was the Minister, damn it, and he wanted a short break to eat and pull his thoughts together. Dismissing everyone from his office, he called the personal crew of house-elves that his secretary had informed him were in his charge and asked for a plate of cheese and crackers and a bottle of Gillywater. While they were off collecting his request, he floo called the weather wizards and demanded to see some sunshine, for Merlin’s sake.
He was halfway through his crackers when the witch in the portrait left of the fireplace cleared her throat.
“Gawain Robards, Head of Magical Law Enforcement, is requesting a floo call.”
Rufus swallowed a mouthful. “Put him through.”
The portrait fell silent, and a moment later the fire turned green and Gawain’s head appeared. “Ah, I see you managed to get lunch for yourself today,” he grinned.
“Apparently,” Rufus replied. “Hello, Gawain.”
“Right, hello. Um, you should probably turn on the wireless.”
“Why?”
“I think you should hear what they’re saying.”
Rufus felt his brow crease, but he didn’t think Robards was suggesting he tune in to hear the results of the Harpies playing the Prides and speculation about what the witch’s team did in the showers after the game. Slipping his wand from his robe, he activated the wireless with a flick. The faux-interested voice of a WWN news reader filled the room.
“...And today, the Prophet’s leading story was about our nation’s new Minister, Rufus Scrimgeour, who was promoted from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to take charge in these troubled times. The Minister’s representatives yesterday issued a statement saying that Scrimgeour intends to attack He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his supporters head on. Magical Law Enforcement will be recruiting heavily for Hit Wizards in the months to come, and training many already in the force as Aurors. Hit Wizard patrols will be increased, and Aurors investigating all reports of Deatheater sightings, recruitment and activity. What the Prophet failed to report was that the Ministry has also tightened its hold on public post services, issuing all owlery owners yesterday with notices that their businesses will now be subject to random checks and audits by the Ministry, which will allow law enforcement employees to open and read the personal correspondence intended for members of the public. The Ministry has justified this by suggesting that persons organising illegal activities will be unlikely to use their own birds, and will instead choose the anonymity of public owleries. How is it that the Prophet failed to report such a blatant infringement on the rights of every witch and wizard in Britain? Could it be that, as in previous years, the Ministry is leaning on the Prophet to only print the stories it wants the public to know about? Or did the cover-up come from inside the Prophet itself? Our most recent reports tell us that the Minister’s wife, the journalist who writes under the name Rita Skeeter, retained her position at the Prophet even after her husband was sworn in as our nation’s leader...
Rufus silenced the wireless with an angry flick of his wand.
“Fuck,” he whispered, reaching up to slide his glasses off so he could rub at his eyes. He stared at the hard wood of his desk, at the papers he’d shoved aside when the elves delivered his lunch, and began to arrange them into a perfect fan with one hand. “This is a nightmare.”
“I’m sorry, mate,” said Robards, and Rufus’ head jerked up, having completely forgotten the other man was there. He looked awkward, embarrassed to have witnessed a private moment, and undoubtedly realising that the odd tension between Rufus and Rita the previous afternoon had something to do with what they’d just heard. “I hope...well. Good luck.” With that, his head popped out of the fireplace.
--
The Prophet had issued a statement in their evening edition, and Rufus read it with a growing sense of dread. The WWN is mistaken. While Rita Skeeter was indeed in our employ when her husband was sworn in, she is no longer with us. Our coverage of the Ministry’s new laws for public owleries is included in this edition. The reason for this delay is no conspiracy, simply the fact that, at the time of printing our morning edition, we did not yet have enough information to publish the story. Unlike the WWN, the Prophet does not have the luxury of announcing news items whenever they happen to come to light.
When he arrived back at the house (he couldn’t possibly think of it as ‘home’ yet, and wasn’t sure he ever would), Rita wasn’t inside. One of the house-elves informed him that she had gone out onto the grounds, but couldn’t offer any insight as to where (Kimmy is a house-elf, Minister Sir, not a garden-elf). Sighing, he ventured outside to look for her. He just hoped she wasn’t sitting on a leaf somewhere - he’d never find her if she’d transformed.
Thankfully, he located her without too much trouble. Beetle or not, he knew she liked flowers, so he followed rambling summer roses down a garden path. But she wouldn’t stick to the path - wearing heels had never stopped her doing anything - so he stepped off the paving as soon as there were no longer flowers lining it, found crushed grass on a shallow decline and tracked it through the gap in a trimmed hedge. On the other side, he came upon a small man-made lake, at one end of which sat a gazebo. Rita was sitting on its stone steps, looking ridiculously out of place with nature in magenta robes, but her eyes were the same grey-blue as the sky, and just as bleak.
She didn’t look up as he approached. When she spoke, her voice sounded small. She wasn’t a large woman, not in stature, but he didn’t think he’d ever thought of her as small before. “They let me go,” she said. “Twenty years, I’ve been there. Twenty years of biting and clawing my way to the top, of spinning their bullshit when the Ministry was leaning on them, and they just...” she waved a hand and it looked like the ripples on the water - hopelessly contained in an unnatural space. He sat down beside her, close enough that their legs brushed against each other, and contemplated the scenery she was staring at. It was a rather pathetic water feature, actually. “I suppose it would be childish and hypocritical to say ‘it’s not fair’, wouldn’t it?” Rita asked.
“Possibly,” Rufus admitted. “I don’t think it would get you anywhere, either.”
“I wish I knew what would.”
She didn’t sound sad so much as bereft. Hollow. He wanted to say he was sorry, that he wished there could have been another way, but he didn’t think that would get her - them - anywhere either. The moment for sympathetic platitudes had passed, but it also didn’t feel like the right time to try and offer practical solutions. He leaned forward and laid his forearms over his knees, clasped his fingers together. His bad leg twitched and his heel tapped against the stone beneath it. He was frustrated, he realised, by her composure, by the emotionless way she spoke, by the fact that, even though their thighs were touching and he could feel the warmth of her, her body was still angled away from his. She wouldn’t turn to him, wouldn’t lean in and give him the chance to support her. Fucking Slytherin. She’d always supported him and he’d always let her - they’d talked endlessly about his career and how her position in the press might subtly advance his position, but her journalistic career was something she’d built by herself. She’d never asked him directly to put her in contact with this or that person, never asked him what was happening in this or that case so she could use it. Instead, she arranged for them to attend a function, or informed him that she’d met the wife of someone he knew well at the market today and had invited them both out to dinner. She’d networked at the parties and forged friendships over dinner, and made all her contacts on her own. Hell, she’d even become an illegal animagus so she could listen in on conversations that told her the same things he could, but she’d never asked him for help.
It was as if, even after all the years they’d been together, she still expected to go belly-up in the snake pit if she showed any weakness. He knew it wasn’t that simple, knew it wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, that was just how she was, but Merlin, it didn’t make it any easier.
“Would it be so hard,” he asked, and his voice was barely louder than the breeze, “for you to just let me hold you? Let me hold you up for a little while, until you find your feet again?”
He watched her shoulders rise and fall in a heavy breath, and then she finally, finally turned toward him. She didn’t say anything but she moved closer. He lifted his arm and she slipped under it, and he could feel her trembling with something, and then he pulled her closer and she let him. Her head was against his chest, his robes around her, and they could make him Minister a thousand times but he’d never feel more of a man than he did when this fiercely independent woman let him protect her.
--
They made love ferociously that night, as if Rita wanted to prove to him that even though she’d let him comfort her, she was still the same woman who could drive him crazy with something as simple as scraping a fingernail over his glans. It wasn’t sex but exorcism, tossing out everything that made them civilised, everything that made them aware and restrained.
He’d just finished a conference with the Minister of Australia and was slipping back into the bedroom to shuck his robes of office when she pinned him to the wall and unfastened them just enough to slip her hand inside and wrap it around his cock. Then she was sliding, dropping to the floor, burrowing in amongst the heavy folds of fabric and taking him into her mouth, hot and tight and all the way down, and his voice gurgled in his throat as his hand fisted in her hair. She was voracious, insistent; filling the air with the sounds of suck and slap, and the blood was rushing away from his brain and filling his mind with fog. He was pulling her hair, tearing her away from him and letting her fill her lungs, then plunging back in and she looked wet, hungry, filthy, beautiful.
They were on the bed, his teeth sinking into her thigh above the line of stocking, and she was gasping out his name as his cupped palm came down hard on her slick cunt.
He was above her, his leg bad leg burning and his body aching for release as he teased himself against her entrance and watched her buck off the bed and her mouth twist in rapture, watched as the head of his cock slipped in and out of her and the way she stretched around him as he pushed inside.
And when she was begging, whimpering and cursing him and he couldn’t stand any more lest the world come back and try and claim him, he plunged into her and obliterated it altogether.
Afterward, hot and sticky and both of them broken, he held her tight and pressed his face against her shoulder, breathing against her neck and inhaling the smell of her.
But his night was not over. He’d barely regained his breath - or so it felt, though he knew he’d been holding her for a while although not long enough - when the frame that had contained an empty canvas since they’d arrived here cleared its throat.
“Senior Advisor Cornelius Fudge has asked me to remind the Minister that he has a meeting with the Muggle Prime Minister in five minutes.”
Rufus groaned, growling into Rita’s hair, and she made an answering sound of disappointment in her throat.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, squeezing his hand around hers before gently extricating it. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She made another weak sound of protest as he left the bed, but he was moving through the dark and into the adjoining room. It was a private sitting area with his and hers dressers on either side of a full length window, an ensuite bathroom through one door and a mirror that made a contemptuous noise in his general direction as he passed it.
He threw himself into the shower, washing away the smell of sex and scrubbing his face in an attempt to feel a little more alert. When he emerged, damp and pink-skinned, he laid a hand on the back of the armchair as if to pick up his robes, but they were on the floor in the bedroom smelling like sweat and cock and Rita’s perfume, so he selected a set of black ones from the wardrobe instead. To meet another Head of State, he technically should have worn his robes of office, but the Muggle Prime Minister wouldn’t know the difference.
The painted figure that had spoken in the bedroom had followed him into its frame on the wall opposite him. It cleared its throat again, and said: “Fudge is with the Prime Minister now, Sir, and is wondering where you are.”
Rufus, buttoning his robes, scowled. “Oh, tell him I’m writing a letter to Dumbledore, or something. He’ll actually be familiar with that idea, unlike the concept of sleeping with one’s wife. I doubt that bed’s seen any action more exciting than a crossword puzzle in years.”
The portrait, apparently only the most basic of semi-sentient artwork and thus completely lacking a sense of humour, merely nodded and faded from view.
Rufus secured a cravat about his throat, dried his hair with a wave of his wand and slipped his glasses on. Tossing a pinch of floo powder into the fireplace, he stepped through to meet the Prime Minister.
--
Writing a letter to Dumbledore, indeed.
The following day, after all the morning meetings were over and done with, he found himself doing precisely that. As much as he hated to admit it - as much as he hated it altogether - he did need the man’s help. He wasn’t particularly hopeful that Dumbledore would help him persuade Potter to lend his support to the Ministry, but he would try. Not in this letter, since it was the first, but eventually.
What he really needed was some intelligence. All the Hit Wizard and Auror patrols in the world wouldn’t give him insight into what Voldemort was planning next, and that was what he really needed. Rufus knew that Dumbledore had an informant in the form of Severus Snape, but from what Fudge had said, the old man wouldn’t disclose any of the information Snape gave him because it might compromise the man’s security.
Laying the quill down in the centre of the parchment he’d addressed, Rufus picked up the pile of papers that were notes on Hogwarts and Dumbledore. They contained all of Fudge’s correspondence with the Headmaster, and from the tone of it, it seemed that Dumbledore was not opposed to an alliance between the Ministry and Hogwarts, so long as, it seemed, the Minister didn’t actually expect to be told anything.
Well, Rufus didn’t work like that. Fudge hadn’t either, but that was because he was a pompous old git who wanted to know everything simply so he had the upper hand. Rufus had been an Auror for years. He understood the importance of war and battle intelligence on a need to know basis, but he certainly wasn’t prepared to just take Dumbledore’s word on what needed to be done and when, without any explanation. He wouldn’t send his people out into dangerous situations without knowing what they were getting into, just as, he was sure, Dumbledore wouldn’t. What he needed to do was convince Dumbledore that cooperation between the Ministry and Hogwarts was imperative to the war effort, but that he needed to be informed of what was going on so that he could make informed decisions about the safety of his people.
Right. That was going to be easy, wasn’t it?
There were a number of pages in the pile that didn’t seem to have anything to do with Dumbledore. In fact, they seemed to from the years before he’d become headmaster. The record of Rubeus Hagrid’s expulsion, and attached to it a note to Headmaster Dippet from ‘Albus’, asking him to reconsider the decision. An incident report recording the death of one Myrtle Hogkins and a signed statement from a boy called Tom Riddle that said he had caught Hagrid in the act of releasing an acromantula onto school grounds.
Curious, Rufus laid the pages beside him and leafed through the rest of the pile for anything out of the ordinary. Under a few more letters from Dumbledore that said similar things to all the others, he found a sheet of Ministry office memo paper with notes written in Fudge’s hand.
Hagrid cleared 1993. Attacks proven to be the work of basilisk. Enchanted diary.
Chamber of Secrets? Heir of Slytherin? Parselmouth??
TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE = I AM LORD VOLDEMORT?
Hogwarts student 1943?
The name ‘Voldemort’ was written in shaky handwriting. Rufus arched a brow, looking over the name again. Huh, it was an anagram. Who’d have known Fudge’s love of crosswords would ever amount to anything?
Within the hour, Rufus had pulled every file that contained information about Hogwarts in the 1940s. It was fascinating reading. Nothing that would actually help him win the war, he didn’t think, or induce Dumbledore to talk, but at the very least it pointed to gross negligence on Armando Dippet’s part. A fascinating story, obviously covered up and untold. He’d been at Hogwarts barely fifteen years after these events, and had never heard a word about a girl who died.
A fascinating story.
Determined not to think about the possible implications of what he was about to do, Rufus pulled out his wand and duplicated every piece of useful information.
--
He took the floo into the conference room direct from his office that afternoon. In the living area, he found Rita sipping a cup of tea, surrounded by shopping bags. The one on the end had fallen over and green satin was spilling onto the settee.
Rita looked up at him, barely blinking, and said “I had no idea what else to do with my time.”
Rufus’ lips curled into a smile, and he slipped the copied file from inside his robes and dropped it onto the coffee table. “Have you ever considered expanding into books?”
The expression on her face barely wavered, but he could see the Slytherin gleam spark in her eyes as the wheels in her mind started to turn. Still watching him over the top of her glasses, she leaned over and placed the dainty teacup on the table, pulled the file into her lap. Her fingertip touched her tongue and she opened the folder with it, skimming the pages inside with movements that became more focussed and tense with every passing moment.
Finally, she looked up at him, and he could see that he had her back. His Rita. Or rather, she had herself back.
“I hadn’t,” she said. “But I am now.”