Old Men Dreaming
Title: Old Men Dreaming
Author: Winter Dragon
Rating: PG
Length: 3500
Summary: As Voldemort's shadow darkens Wizarding Britain and strikes even into the heart of Hogwarts, Rufus Scrimgeour takes action. Theodore Nott suffers the consequences.
Author's note: Written for the omniocular January challenge.
Old Men Dreaming
Even without glancing at the Daily Prophet that had just fallen into his morning tea, Gawain Robards knew it was going to be a trying day. Outside, the sun was just crawling over the tumid waters of the Thames, but he’d long since been routed from his bed and summoned to a secret, high-security chamber deep within the bowels of the Ministry of Magic. Despite attempts to make the space suitable for use by high-ranking Ministry officials, it persisted in being dankly inhospitable. He shifted surreptitiously in his seat, wondering if another Warming Charm would fend off the all-pervasive chill, and eyed with distaste the meager breakfast that languished upon the closest sideboard.
On the other side of the meeting room, Rufus Scrimgeour was pacing, his hands clasped behind his back. A casual observer might not have guessed the Minister had been awake for hours, but Robards had known Scrimgeour a long time. When necessary, his predecessor as Head of the Aurors could muster nearly inhuman focus and endurance. It was part of what had made Scrimgeour a formidable Auror; it was part of what made him a difficult boss.
“I’ve just come from Scotland.”
The grim tone was to be expected, given the reign of terror that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had imposed on the Wizarding world, but Scrimgeour sounded particularly solemn that June morning. Robards poured himself a fresh cup of tea and snagged a triangle of stale toast. His initial disdain had waned: it didn’t appear likely that he’d be out in time to have a proper meal, and he suspected he was going to need the sustenance.
“The Dark Mark was sent up over Hogwarts last night. Albus Dumbledore is dead.”
Robards choked. His cup clattered to the table, sloshing tea all over the fine mahogany surface. “Dumbledore? Dead?”
It was unthinkable. Dumbledore had his differences with the Minister, to be sure, but he was the greatest wizard alive, and in the war against Voldemort his aid was invaluable. If even he could become a victim… Robards cut off that line of thought. The Minister must be mistaken.
“Dead,” Scrimgeour repeated, limping to a chair and settling himself, now that the shocking news had been delivered. The iron strands of his hair fell back, unveiling unsettling amber eyes that were fixed upon Robards’s face. “Saw the body myself.”
The essential facts were quickly told: how the younger Malfoy had managed to open a way into the school, how Snape had performed the Killing Curse on the Headmaster, how the Death Eaters had fled. Afterward they stared at each other for a long moment, Scrimgeour inscrutable, Robards stricken. Spilled tea dripped onto the floor unnoticed.
“I had no idea Death Eaters were planning to attack Hogwarts,” the Auror said at last. “I never thought they’d dare. Not this early.”
“And that’s precisely the problem, isn’t it?” The Minister leaned forward, his golden eyes flickering, and Robards felt like a cornered boggart about to be ridiculed. “We’re fighting blind, Gawain, my boy.”
The chill of the chamber found a home in Robards’s gut. Flatly he said, “You want to talk about the Wizarding Defense Program again, don’t you?”
“If last year, after Amelia Bones was murdered, you’d agreed to monitor known Death Eater sympathizers, Dumbledore might still be alive.”
Robards flinched. “Tracking and eavesdropping spells are illegal.” And immoral, he added to himself.
“That can be changed.”
“The Wizengamot will never agree.”
“With Dumbledore gone?” Despite their warm golden color, Scrimgeour’s eyes were cold and calculating. “I think they’ll agree to anything, even emergency powers for the Minister. We’re at war. The public understands that desperate times require desperate measures. They want to know that we’re protecting them by all necessary means.” He paused, considering the lean, scarred man who sat across from him. “And everyone in my cabinet must be committed to that.”
The veiled threat hung in the air between them: Robards’s job was on the line. This time, the Minister would not back down, and Robards felt his stomach writhe as if under the Cruciatus Curse. It would only be a matter of time before his principles crumbled under Scrimgeour’s relentless onslaught.
I’m sorry, he thought, though he wasn’t sure to whom he was apologizing, and from far away he heard the faint lament of phoenix song.
A fortnight later, Robards sat in his office, pressing the heels of his hands against his aching eyes. He knew what he would see when he opened them again. On the left side of his desk was the litany those murdered in the war; in its shadow lay the long list of witches and wizards who the Aurors were monitoring.
All the expected families were being watched: the Crabbes, the Dolohovs, the Goyles, the Gibbons, the Jugsons, the Macnairs, the Malfoys, the Mulcibers, the Notts, the Rookwoods, the Rosiers, the Traverses, and the Wilkeses. Of course they would be monitored; all had relatives who were confirmed Death Eaters in Voldemort’s first rising.
But other names were more surprising.
“Nymphadora Tonks?” Robards had protested when he’d received the Minister’s personal additions. “She may not be the best Auror we’ve got, but she’s loyal, and a half-blood besides.”
“Don’t forget she’s a Black,” Scrimgeour had answered, shuffling through a thick stack of documents on his desk marked Top Secret. “Sometimes it’s the half-bloods who are the most dedicated to Voldemort’s cause.”
Though his instincts had told him Tonks was not, and would never be, a Death Eater, Robards had been unable to object further more in light of Snape’s defection. “What about Shacklebolt?”
“I suspect he has ties to the enemy. His handling of the hunt for Sirius Black was uncharacteristically incompetent.”
He couldn’t keep an acerbic edge out of his voice. “Then perhaps we shouldn’t have him guarding the Muggle Prime Minister, either.”
At that Scrimgeour had looked up, a challenging gleam in his eye. “Do you intend to question all my choices, Gawain?”
“No, sir.” It’s just that I don’t have enough resources to spy on everyone, sir, so let’s not waste our time on absurd possibilities.
“Then I bid you good day.” Scrimgeour had extracted a file and begun writing in it, his quill moving confidently and purposefully across the page.
No wonder the Wizarding world places its trust in him at a time like this, Robards had thought as he made his way down to his own office. The man has never had a moment of self-doubt in his life.
He wished he could say the same for himself. But sitting before the lists of the living and the dead, he couldn’t help but feel that he had failed everyone.
As the summer dragged on, the civilian death toll continued to rise, but the reports Robards received remained as disappointingly dull as ever. The monitoring wards turned up little beyond the ordinary errands that the women ran in Diagon Alley and the impromptu Quidditch matches that the children organized. Only two homes showed no activity at all. One was in Wiltshire: Narcissa Malfoy had disappeared, but whether Voldemort had murdered her or whether she’d gone into hiding was anyone’s guess. The other was in Exmoor, where Theodore Nott lived alone.
“Odd,” Roger Williamson noted, tapping the blank space under the boy’s name.
While the others contemplated the parchment, he dove under the table to rummage through the heavy bag he always seemed to be lugging around. He was quick, clever, and thorough, so despite his relative youth, Robards had assigned him to lead the three Aurors assigned to the surveillance project.
“Suspicious,” the pepper-haired Dawlish grunted, scowling at the papers as if doing so would force them to yield more information. They remained stubbornly empty.
“For the past two months, he’s gone nowhere and seen no visitors?” Robards was astonished. “No Flooing, no Apparating, nothing?”
“So it would seem.” Frowning, Williamson emerged, ponytail swinging and another sheaf of papers in hand. Quickly he flipped through its pages. “Hmm. Hasn’t even been to see his father in Azkaban. Been told to lay low, I expect.”
“We should bring him in for questioning,” Dawlish said, stabbing a thick forefinger at Nott, Theodore, inscribed in impersonal Quick Quill cursive. “He can’t be up to any good in that great moldering house of theirs. He’s probably hatching a plan to sneak Death Eaters into Hogwarts or something, just like the Malfoy kid. Shake him up a bit, I say, and see what comes out.”
Robards had the uncomfortable feeling that Dawlish meant to do a lot more than question the boy; he’d always been a little too quick to use the Unforgivable Curses. “No need for that, yet. We can start with intercepting his owls.”
In the cramped meeting room, an uncomfortable silence settled and congealed.
“Scrimgeour gave us permission to do that weeks ago. Back when the Carmichaels disappeared.” Michael Savage, a small, dark man not given to much talk, spoke up for the first time. “But it’s turned up nothing interesting.”
Does Scrimgeour imagine he’s still running the Department? Robards wondered irritably. “Then perhaps,” he said, more sharply than he’d intended, “young Nott’s got nothing to hide.”
Four pairs of eyes turned on him with varying degrees of shock and disbelief. At last Williamson said firmly, “Better safe than sorry, sir. I think we should ask him a few questions.”
Robards thought tiredly, If I don’t approve this, I suppose they’ll just go over my head anyway.
“Very well, then. Bring him in. But be…” As his gaze flickered over Dawlish, he trailed off, searching for the right word.
Williamson finished the thought for him. “We’ll be fair.”
“What do you know about the murders of the Ashby family?”
“Nothing that wasn’t printed in the Prophet.”
Theodore Nott, haggard and gangly, squirmed in the deliberately undersized chair of the interrogation chamber. A single harsh light dangled in his eyes, forcing him to squint. A thatch of nondescript brown hair clung damply to his pale forehead. Though his tone was defiant, he looked as if he were about to be ill.
While Robards, Williamson, and Savage watched from behind an Invisibility Screen, Dawlish circled the perimeter of the interrogation chamber, giving a chillingly uncanny resemblance to a dementor. Dementors didn’t speak, but if they did, they’d probably have shared his cold, pitiless tone. “What about the Forresters? Or the Harrises? Or the Lewises? Or the Shaws?”
“I told you, I don’t know!” Exhaustion had made Nott sullen and quite disagreeable. “I’ve taken Veritaserum. You’ve questioned me for forty-eight straight hours. What more do you want from me?”
With a dramatic swirl of his robes, Dawlish strode to loom over the boy. “The truth,” he hissed, jabbing his wand into Theodore’s chest. “I was there when we arrested your worthless Death Eater father in the Department of Mysteries last year. I’ll see you locked away in Azkaban, too.”
To his credit, Nott didn’t even flinch. “Like father, like son, is that what you think?” he asked bitterly, and for a moment he looked so desolate that Robards was tempted to sneak him a Cheering Charm. Then a stoic expression settled back on his face. “I suppose I should be used to it by now.”
Unmoved, Dawlish continued repeating his barrage of questions. “Do you have any knowledge of the whereabouts of either Draco Malfoy? What about Severus Snape?”
“No, and no.”
“Do you -”
“I believe we have enough information for now.” Robards stepped out from behind the screen and placed a restraining hand on Dawlish’s arm. “You may leave, Mr. Nott. Thank you for your assistance.”
The boy didn’t immediately move. “As if I had a choice,” he muttered, just loudly enough to be overheard. Only then did he unfold himself from his chair, donning a poor imitation of Lucius Malfoy’s frigid hauteur to display to the world outside.
His desperate dignity reminded Robards that he was, for all practical purposes, alone and friendless in this world. “I’m sure it’s been a difficult summer.” Robards spoke just before Nott gained the door. “Is there anything we can do for you?”
The pinched, drawn mouth opened to make a scathing retort; flat, expressionless eyes fixed on Robards. But something Nott saw there - guilt, perhaps - made him hesitate. His face softened, regaining the tired, careworn lines that aged him well beyond his meager seventeen years. He shook his head. Then, almost reluctantly, he said, “But there is something I can tell you. You’re wasting your time with your surveillance. Do you really think those who support the Dark Lord would be foolish enough to entrust their business to owl or Floo?”
Flushing a dark, angry red, Dawlish interrupted. “How’d you know about the wards?”
Before the harsh echoes of his voice had even died away, the tension was back. Nott shot him a disdainful look, once more a condescending pureblood lordling.
“They were about as well-concealed as a hippogriff in a broom closet. A first-year Hufflepuff could have done a better job. I sensed them as soon as they were placed; I imagine everyone else did too. You might as well dismantle them, for all the good they’ll do you.”
Dawlish, who’d cast the spells on Nott’s home himself, stepped forward, fists clenched. “You’d better keep a civil tongue in your head -” he began.
“Or what? You’ll arrest me again?” But as he smirked, Nott’s face turned the color of week-old curry. Then his eyes rolled upward, and he toppled to the unforgiving flagstones of the interrogation chamber.
“Sir, my other Auror teams are already stretched responding to Inferi attacks every night. If what he said is true -”
“The Nott boy was just trying to taunt us into taking off the wards,” Scrimgeour determined, though his attention remained absorbed by the intelligence report in his hands. “Why make life easier for him? In fact, let’s make it harder. I want tracking charms placed on all the witches and wizards we’re monitoring, and conversations on their properties recorded.”
“Sir, is that wise? I’ll have to triple the number of Aurors on the team just to read all the transcripts, and as I said before -”
At last the Minister looked up. With an annoyed grimace, he reached across his desk and rapped his knuckles on the latest edition of the Prophet. “Two more killed in Death Eater attacks last night, Gawain, and Harry Potter nowhere to be found. The public needs reassurance.”
The wards remained.
Autumn arrived with a swirl of dull, dry leaves that skittered skeletally on the pavement above the Ministry and swept down its chimneys into the fireplace-lined Atrium. The Ministry staff, evidently too preoccupied by the grim business of war to clean properly anymore, allowed the shifting brown drifts to accumulate in shrouded corners, where they whispered dark secrets to themselves and spooked visitors and workers alike.
Theodore Nott was a frequent guest; Williamson brought him in for questioning six more times. The Ministry never learned anything from him, though Robards noticed his Malfoy impression continued to improve. Each time as he left he’d shake his head, patronizing amusement chilling his eyes. “The ones you want are beyond your reach,” he’d drawl.
Dawlish took it as a personal affront. His dislike for the boy grew so intense that Robards had to prohibit his presence when Nott was questioned. Instead he’d sit outside the interrogation chamber, glaring at the door, cracking his knuckles, and muttering, “We’ll teach that little bugger a lesson.”
While his efforts to employ “more potent methods of persuasion” were rebuffed, the Ministry authorized additional levels of surveillance on Nott’s home, until his little corner of Exmoor fairly bristled with magic.
But still the ranks of the dead continued to swell.
One dreary December afternoon, Robards returned to his office to find Theodore Nott waiting for him. The boy was paler than usual, and seemed strangely jittery. His eyes flickered restlessly around the room, as if he were expecting Voldemort to materialize at any moment.
“Mr. Nott,” Robards began in surprise, but at the boy’s alarmed expression he subsided. Nott leaped to his feet, flicked the door shut, and cast a series of Imperturbable Charms on it. “How’d you get in here? What’s the meaning of this?”
“I’m sorry about this, sir,” Nott said, tossing his wand onto Robards’s desk and spreading his arms wide. “I had to see you in secret, so I cast a few Repelling charms on myself to keep people from noticing me. It’s an extremely urgent matter.”
Robards didn’t move from his place beside the door. Beneath his robes, his fingers stayed clenched around his wand, which he’d seized the moment Nott had moved. “What is it?”
“Azkaban, sir. The Dark Lord is planning an attack tomorrow night, to free the rest of his imprisoned supporters.”
Keeping his face carefully neutral, Robards sidled around the room and slid behind his massive, paper-strewn desk. It comforted him to sit there. He felt safer, as if he were barricaded behind the walls of a great fortress. “How’d you come by this information, and why are you telling me?”
Nott heard the suspicion bristling in his voice; he flushed and looked down, evidently engaged in an internal debate. At last he said, “I can’t betray my source, but if he weren’t reliable, I wouldn’t have come to you.” He took a deep breath. “Look, I know I haven’t been very… cooperative during my visits here, so I understand if you don’t trust me. But please hear me out, at least. Please.”
Robards nodded for him to continue.
“I need my father to stay in Azkaban.”
“Pardon?”
“I love my father, really I do,” Nott said hastily, seeing the Auror’s incredulous expression. “But he’s safer where he is. The moment he’s back in the Dark Lord’s service, he’ll be used as a hostage, to force me to take the Dark Mark. And I won’t make the same mistake my father did. I won’t.”
“Safer in Azkaban?” Robards could only blink at him.
Exasperation flashed across Nott’s face. “With the Dementors gone, Azkaban’s not half as terrible as it used to be. It may not be pleasant, but he won’t go mad, and he won’t die. Besides, what do you have to lose? Send your Aurors out tonight, and if I’m right, you keep your Death Eaters in prison, and if I’m wrong, there’s been no harm done.”
The boy had a point; he wasn’t in Slytherin for nothing. “Very well,” Robards said, wondering whether this could possibly be a trap. “I’ll do what I can.”
Theodore’s eyelids fluttered shut, and for a moment relief made his hollow-cheeked face transcendent. “Thank you, sir.”
“No,” Scrimgeour said flatly.
“What do you mean, no? We looked into it; this a credible threat. It’s exactly the sort of intelligence we’ve been hoping for this whole time. I recommend we send all the Aurors and Hit Wizards we can spare to Azkaban.”
“We could do that.” The satisfaction plumping the Minister’s voice doused Robards’s exhilaration as surely as a personal visit from Voldemort . “But think how much better off we would be if we had a spy within the Death Eater ranks.”
Shock rendered Robards speechless for a good minute. “You want Theodore Nott the take the Dark Mark and become our spy? He won’t do it. He told me himself that he wouldn’t join the Death Eaters.”
Scrimgeour waved his hand dismissively. “He’s a Slytherin; he’s got a strong sense of self-preservation. If he has to choose between taking the Mark and being killed, he’ll take the Mark.”
“You can’t be serious. You’re gambling with this boy’s life!”
“The fate of the entire Wizarding world is at stake, Gawain. The ends justify the means.”
Robards flailed for an argument that Scrimgeour could appreciate. “He’ll never work for us if we don’t take his warning seriously.”
“Good point.” The Minister looked thoughtful. “Send two or three Aurors out there to make a fight of it. But make sure they’re ones you won’t mind losing.”
Shaking, Robards got to his feet, but his voice failed him. Without another word he turned and swept out of the Minister’s office.
On January 1st, 1998, the Daily Prophet reported that during the New Year’s Eve celebrations, Death Eaters attacked Azkaban Fortress. In the confusion eleven prisoners escaped. Two Aurors and five prison guards were killed during the fighting.
On January 6th, the remains of Alastair Nott were found outside Little Hangleton, Yorkshire. An autopsy indicated he’d sustained injuries consistent with extended exposure to the Cruciatus Curse.
On January 8th, just before midnight, Ministry wards at Combe Martin, Exmoor recorded the simultaneous arrival of thirteen known Death Eaters. After the mansion’s extensive protective wards failed beneath a blistering barrage of spells, a fierce fight erupted, ultimately reducing the house to rubble. The bodies of Theodore Nott and Gregory Goyle were discovered in the wreckage.
On January 9th, Rufus Scrimgeour received an unexpected letter.
I, Gawain Robards, hereby resign as Head of the Department of Aurors.
Note: The title is taken from a quote by George McGovern, former US Senator and Democratic candidate for President in 1972: “I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in."
Author: Winter Dragon
Rating: PG
Length: 3500
Summary: As Voldemort's shadow darkens Wizarding Britain and strikes even into the heart of Hogwarts, Rufus Scrimgeour takes action. Theodore Nott suffers the consequences.
Author's note: Written for the omniocular January challenge.
Old Men Dreaming
Even without glancing at the Daily Prophet that had just fallen into his morning tea, Gawain Robards knew it was going to be a trying day. Outside, the sun was just crawling over the tumid waters of the Thames, but he’d long since been routed from his bed and summoned to a secret, high-security chamber deep within the bowels of the Ministry of Magic. Despite attempts to make the space suitable for use by high-ranking Ministry officials, it persisted in being dankly inhospitable. He shifted surreptitiously in his seat, wondering if another Warming Charm would fend off the all-pervasive chill, and eyed with distaste the meager breakfast that languished upon the closest sideboard.
On the other side of the meeting room, Rufus Scrimgeour was pacing, his hands clasped behind his back. A casual observer might not have guessed the Minister had been awake for hours, but Robards had known Scrimgeour a long time. When necessary, his predecessor as Head of the Aurors could muster nearly inhuman focus and endurance. It was part of what had made Scrimgeour a formidable Auror; it was part of what made him a difficult boss.
“I’ve just come from Scotland.”
The grim tone was to be expected, given the reign of terror that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had imposed on the Wizarding world, but Scrimgeour sounded particularly solemn that June morning. Robards poured himself a fresh cup of tea and snagged a triangle of stale toast. His initial disdain had waned: it didn’t appear likely that he’d be out in time to have a proper meal, and he suspected he was going to need the sustenance.
“The Dark Mark was sent up over Hogwarts last night. Albus Dumbledore is dead.”
Robards choked. His cup clattered to the table, sloshing tea all over the fine mahogany surface. “Dumbledore? Dead?”
It was unthinkable. Dumbledore had his differences with the Minister, to be sure, but he was the greatest wizard alive, and in the war against Voldemort his aid was invaluable. If even he could become a victim… Robards cut off that line of thought. The Minister must be mistaken.
“Dead,” Scrimgeour repeated, limping to a chair and settling himself, now that the shocking news had been delivered. The iron strands of his hair fell back, unveiling unsettling amber eyes that were fixed upon Robards’s face. “Saw the body myself.”
The essential facts were quickly told: how the younger Malfoy had managed to open a way into the school, how Snape had performed the Killing Curse on the Headmaster, how the Death Eaters had fled. Afterward they stared at each other for a long moment, Scrimgeour inscrutable, Robards stricken. Spilled tea dripped onto the floor unnoticed.
“I had no idea Death Eaters were planning to attack Hogwarts,” the Auror said at last. “I never thought they’d dare. Not this early.”
“And that’s precisely the problem, isn’t it?” The Minister leaned forward, his golden eyes flickering, and Robards felt like a cornered boggart about to be ridiculed. “We’re fighting blind, Gawain, my boy.”
The chill of the chamber found a home in Robards’s gut. Flatly he said, “You want to talk about the Wizarding Defense Program again, don’t you?”
“If last year, after Amelia Bones was murdered, you’d agreed to monitor known Death Eater sympathizers, Dumbledore might still be alive.”
Robards flinched. “Tracking and eavesdropping spells are illegal.” And immoral, he added to himself.
“That can be changed.”
“The Wizengamot will never agree.”
“With Dumbledore gone?” Despite their warm golden color, Scrimgeour’s eyes were cold and calculating. “I think they’ll agree to anything, even emergency powers for the Minister. We’re at war. The public understands that desperate times require desperate measures. They want to know that we’re protecting them by all necessary means.” He paused, considering the lean, scarred man who sat across from him. “And everyone in my cabinet must be committed to that.”
The veiled threat hung in the air between them: Robards’s job was on the line. This time, the Minister would not back down, and Robards felt his stomach writhe as if under the Cruciatus Curse. It would only be a matter of time before his principles crumbled under Scrimgeour’s relentless onslaught.
I’m sorry, he thought, though he wasn’t sure to whom he was apologizing, and from far away he heard the faint lament of phoenix song.
A fortnight later, Robards sat in his office, pressing the heels of his hands against his aching eyes. He knew what he would see when he opened them again. On the left side of his desk was the litany those murdered in the war; in its shadow lay the long list of witches and wizards who the Aurors were monitoring.
All the expected families were being watched: the Crabbes, the Dolohovs, the Goyles, the Gibbons, the Jugsons, the Macnairs, the Malfoys, the Mulcibers, the Notts, the Rookwoods, the Rosiers, the Traverses, and the Wilkeses. Of course they would be monitored; all had relatives who were confirmed Death Eaters in Voldemort’s first rising.
But other names were more surprising.
“Nymphadora Tonks?” Robards had protested when he’d received the Minister’s personal additions. “She may not be the best Auror we’ve got, but she’s loyal, and a half-blood besides.”
“Don’t forget she’s a Black,” Scrimgeour had answered, shuffling through a thick stack of documents on his desk marked Top Secret. “Sometimes it’s the half-bloods who are the most dedicated to Voldemort’s cause.”
Though his instincts had told him Tonks was not, and would never be, a Death Eater, Robards had been unable to object further more in light of Snape’s defection. “What about Shacklebolt?”
“I suspect he has ties to the enemy. His handling of the hunt for Sirius Black was uncharacteristically incompetent.”
He couldn’t keep an acerbic edge out of his voice. “Then perhaps we shouldn’t have him guarding the Muggle Prime Minister, either.”
At that Scrimgeour had looked up, a challenging gleam in his eye. “Do you intend to question all my choices, Gawain?”
“No, sir.” It’s just that I don’t have enough resources to spy on everyone, sir, so let’s not waste our time on absurd possibilities.
“Then I bid you good day.” Scrimgeour had extracted a file and begun writing in it, his quill moving confidently and purposefully across the page.
No wonder the Wizarding world places its trust in him at a time like this, Robards had thought as he made his way down to his own office. The man has never had a moment of self-doubt in his life.
He wished he could say the same for himself. But sitting before the lists of the living and the dead, he couldn’t help but feel that he had failed everyone.
As the summer dragged on, the civilian death toll continued to rise, but the reports Robards received remained as disappointingly dull as ever. The monitoring wards turned up little beyond the ordinary errands that the women ran in Diagon Alley and the impromptu Quidditch matches that the children organized. Only two homes showed no activity at all. One was in Wiltshire: Narcissa Malfoy had disappeared, but whether Voldemort had murdered her or whether she’d gone into hiding was anyone’s guess. The other was in Exmoor, where Theodore Nott lived alone.
“Odd,” Roger Williamson noted, tapping the blank space under the boy’s name.
While the others contemplated the parchment, he dove under the table to rummage through the heavy bag he always seemed to be lugging around. He was quick, clever, and thorough, so despite his relative youth, Robards had assigned him to lead the three Aurors assigned to the surveillance project.
“Suspicious,” the pepper-haired Dawlish grunted, scowling at the papers as if doing so would force them to yield more information. They remained stubbornly empty.
“For the past two months, he’s gone nowhere and seen no visitors?” Robards was astonished. “No Flooing, no Apparating, nothing?”
“So it would seem.” Frowning, Williamson emerged, ponytail swinging and another sheaf of papers in hand. Quickly he flipped through its pages. “Hmm. Hasn’t even been to see his father in Azkaban. Been told to lay low, I expect.”
“We should bring him in for questioning,” Dawlish said, stabbing a thick forefinger at Nott, Theodore, inscribed in impersonal Quick Quill cursive. “He can’t be up to any good in that great moldering house of theirs. He’s probably hatching a plan to sneak Death Eaters into Hogwarts or something, just like the Malfoy kid. Shake him up a bit, I say, and see what comes out.”
Robards had the uncomfortable feeling that Dawlish meant to do a lot more than question the boy; he’d always been a little too quick to use the Unforgivable Curses. “No need for that, yet. We can start with intercepting his owls.”
In the cramped meeting room, an uncomfortable silence settled and congealed.
“Scrimgeour gave us permission to do that weeks ago. Back when the Carmichaels disappeared.” Michael Savage, a small, dark man not given to much talk, spoke up for the first time. “But it’s turned up nothing interesting.”
Does Scrimgeour imagine he’s still running the Department? Robards wondered irritably. “Then perhaps,” he said, more sharply than he’d intended, “young Nott’s got nothing to hide.”
Four pairs of eyes turned on him with varying degrees of shock and disbelief. At last Williamson said firmly, “Better safe than sorry, sir. I think we should ask him a few questions.”
Robards thought tiredly, If I don’t approve this, I suppose they’ll just go over my head anyway.
“Very well, then. Bring him in. But be…” As his gaze flickered over Dawlish, he trailed off, searching for the right word.
Williamson finished the thought for him. “We’ll be fair.”
“What do you know about the murders of the Ashby family?”
“Nothing that wasn’t printed in the Prophet.”
Theodore Nott, haggard and gangly, squirmed in the deliberately undersized chair of the interrogation chamber. A single harsh light dangled in his eyes, forcing him to squint. A thatch of nondescript brown hair clung damply to his pale forehead. Though his tone was defiant, he looked as if he were about to be ill.
While Robards, Williamson, and Savage watched from behind an Invisibility Screen, Dawlish circled the perimeter of the interrogation chamber, giving a chillingly uncanny resemblance to a dementor. Dementors didn’t speak, but if they did, they’d probably have shared his cold, pitiless tone. “What about the Forresters? Or the Harrises? Or the Lewises? Or the Shaws?”
“I told you, I don’t know!” Exhaustion had made Nott sullen and quite disagreeable. “I’ve taken Veritaserum. You’ve questioned me for forty-eight straight hours. What more do you want from me?”
With a dramatic swirl of his robes, Dawlish strode to loom over the boy. “The truth,” he hissed, jabbing his wand into Theodore’s chest. “I was there when we arrested your worthless Death Eater father in the Department of Mysteries last year. I’ll see you locked away in Azkaban, too.”
To his credit, Nott didn’t even flinch. “Like father, like son, is that what you think?” he asked bitterly, and for a moment he looked so desolate that Robards was tempted to sneak him a Cheering Charm. Then a stoic expression settled back on his face. “I suppose I should be used to it by now.”
Unmoved, Dawlish continued repeating his barrage of questions. “Do you have any knowledge of the whereabouts of either Draco Malfoy? What about Severus Snape?”
“No, and no.”
“Do you -”
“I believe we have enough information for now.” Robards stepped out from behind the screen and placed a restraining hand on Dawlish’s arm. “You may leave, Mr. Nott. Thank you for your assistance.”
The boy didn’t immediately move. “As if I had a choice,” he muttered, just loudly enough to be overheard. Only then did he unfold himself from his chair, donning a poor imitation of Lucius Malfoy’s frigid hauteur to display to the world outside.
His desperate dignity reminded Robards that he was, for all practical purposes, alone and friendless in this world. “I’m sure it’s been a difficult summer.” Robards spoke just before Nott gained the door. “Is there anything we can do for you?”
The pinched, drawn mouth opened to make a scathing retort; flat, expressionless eyes fixed on Robards. But something Nott saw there - guilt, perhaps - made him hesitate. His face softened, regaining the tired, careworn lines that aged him well beyond his meager seventeen years. He shook his head. Then, almost reluctantly, he said, “But there is something I can tell you. You’re wasting your time with your surveillance. Do you really think those who support the Dark Lord would be foolish enough to entrust their business to owl or Floo?”
Flushing a dark, angry red, Dawlish interrupted. “How’d you know about the wards?”
Before the harsh echoes of his voice had even died away, the tension was back. Nott shot him a disdainful look, once more a condescending pureblood lordling.
“They were about as well-concealed as a hippogriff in a broom closet. A first-year Hufflepuff could have done a better job. I sensed them as soon as they were placed; I imagine everyone else did too. You might as well dismantle them, for all the good they’ll do you.”
Dawlish, who’d cast the spells on Nott’s home himself, stepped forward, fists clenched. “You’d better keep a civil tongue in your head -” he began.
“Or what? You’ll arrest me again?” But as he smirked, Nott’s face turned the color of week-old curry. Then his eyes rolled upward, and he toppled to the unforgiving flagstones of the interrogation chamber.
“Sir, my other Auror teams are already stretched responding to Inferi attacks every night. If what he said is true -”
“The Nott boy was just trying to taunt us into taking off the wards,” Scrimgeour determined, though his attention remained absorbed by the intelligence report in his hands. “Why make life easier for him? In fact, let’s make it harder. I want tracking charms placed on all the witches and wizards we’re monitoring, and conversations on their properties recorded.”
“Sir, is that wise? I’ll have to triple the number of Aurors on the team just to read all the transcripts, and as I said before -”
At last the Minister looked up. With an annoyed grimace, he reached across his desk and rapped his knuckles on the latest edition of the Prophet. “Two more killed in Death Eater attacks last night, Gawain, and Harry Potter nowhere to be found. The public needs reassurance.”
The wards remained.
Autumn arrived with a swirl of dull, dry leaves that skittered skeletally on the pavement above the Ministry and swept down its chimneys into the fireplace-lined Atrium. The Ministry staff, evidently too preoccupied by the grim business of war to clean properly anymore, allowed the shifting brown drifts to accumulate in shrouded corners, where they whispered dark secrets to themselves and spooked visitors and workers alike.
Theodore Nott was a frequent guest; Williamson brought him in for questioning six more times. The Ministry never learned anything from him, though Robards noticed his Malfoy impression continued to improve. Each time as he left he’d shake his head, patronizing amusement chilling his eyes. “The ones you want are beyond your reach,” he’d drawl.
Dawlish took it as a personal affront. His dislike for the boy grew so intense that Robards had to prohibit his presence when Nott was questioned. Instead he’d sit outside the interrogation chamber, glaring at the door, cracking his knuckles, and muttering, “We’ll teach that little bugger a lesson.”
While his efforts to employ “more potent methods of persuasion” were rebuffed, the Ministry authorized additional levels of surveillance on Nott’s home, until his little corner of Exmoor fairly bristled with magic.
But still the ranks of the dead continued to swell.
One dreary December afternoon, Robards returned to his office to find Theodore Nott waiting for him. The boy was paler than usual, and seemed strangely jittery. His eyes flickered restlessly around the room, as if he were expecting Voldemort to materialize at any moment.
“Mr. Nott,” Robards began in surprise, but at the boy’s alarmed expression he subsided. Nott leaped to his feet, flicked the door shut, and cast a series of Imperturbable Charms on it. “How’d you get in here? What’s the meaning of this?”
“I’m sorry about this, sir,” Nott said, tossing his wand onto Robards’s desk and spreading his arms wide. “I had to see you in secret, so I cast a few Repelling charms on myself to keep people from noticing me. It’s an extremely urgent matter.”
Robards didn’t move from his place beside the door. Beneath his robes, his fingers stayed clenched around his wand, which he’d seized the moment Nott had moved. “What is it?”
“Azkaban, sir. The Dark Lord is planning an attack tomorrow night, to free the rest of his imprisoned supporters.”
Keeping his face carefully neutral, Robards sidled around the room and slid behind his massive, paper-strewn desk. It comforted him to sit there. He felt safer, as if he were barricaded behind the walls of a great fortress. “How’d you come by this information, and why are you telling me?”
Nott heard the suspicion bristling in his voice; he flushed and looked down, evidently engaged in an internal debate. At last he said, “I can’t betray my source, but if he weren’t reliable, I wouldn’t have come to you.” He took a deep breath. “Look, I know I haven’t been very… cooperative during my visits here, so I understand if you don’t trust me. But please hear me out, at least. Please.”
Robards nodded for him to continue.
“I need my father to stay in Azkaban.”
“Pardon?”
“I love my father, really I do,” Nott said hastily, seeing the Auror’s incredulous expression. “But he’s safer where he is. The moment he’s back in the Dark Lord’s service, he’ll be used as a hostage, to force me to take the Dark Mark. And I won’t make the same mistake my father did. I won’t.”
“Safer in Azkaban?” Robards could only blink at him.
Exasperation flashed across Nott’s face. “With the Dementors gone, Azkaban’s not half as terrible as it used to be. It may not be pleasant, but he won’t go mad, and he won’t die. Besides, what do you have to lose? Send your Aurors out tonight, and if I’m right, you keep your Death Eaters in prison, and if I’m wrong, there’s been no harm done.”
The boy had a point; he wasn’t in Slytherin for nothing. “Very well,” Robards said, wondering whether this could possibly be a trap. “I’ll do what I can.”
Theodore’s eyelids fluttered shut, and for a moment relief made his hollow-cheeked face transcendent. “Thank you, sir.”
“No,” Scrimgeour said flatly.
“What do you mean, no? We looked into it; this a credible threat. It’s exactly the sort of intelligence we’ve been hoping for this whole time. I recommend we send all the Aurors and Hit Wizards we can spare to Azkaban.”
“We could do that.” The satisfaction plumping the Minister’s voice doused Robards’s exhilaration as surely as a personal visit from Voldemort . “But think how much better off we would be if we had a spy within the Death Eater ranks.”
Shock rendered Robards speechless for a good minute. “You want Theodore Nott the take the Dark Mark and become our spy? He won’t do it. He told me himself that he wouldn’t join the Death Eaters.”
Scrimgeour waved his hand dismissively. “He’s a Slytherin; he’s got a strong sense of self-preservation. If he has to choose between taking the Mark and being killed, he’ll take the Mark.”
“You can’t be serious. You’re gambling with this boy’s life!”
“The fate of the entire Wizarding world is at stake, Gawain. The ends justify the means.”
Robards flailed for an argument that Scrimgeour could appreciate. “He’ll never work for us if we don’t take his warning seriously.”
“Good point.” The Minister looked thoughtful. “Send two or three Aurors out there to make a fight of it. But make sure they’re ones you won’t mind losing.”
Shaking, Robards got to his feet, but his voice failed him. Without another word he turned and swept out of the Minister’s office.
On January 1st, 1998, the Daily Prophet reported that during the New Year’s Eve celebrations, Death Eaters attacked Azkaban Fortress. In the confusion eleven prisoners escaped. Two Aurors and five prison guards were killed during the fighting.
On January 6th, the remains of Alastair Nott were found outside Little Hangleton, Yorkshire. An autopsy indicated he’d sustained injuries consistent with extended exposure to the Cruciatus Curse.
On January 8th, just before midnight, Ministry wards at Combe Martin, Exmoor recorded the simultaneous arrival of thirteen known Death Eaters. After the mansion’s extensive protective wards failed beneath a blistering barrage of spells, a fierce fight erupted, ultimately reducing the house to rubble. The bodies of Theodore Nott and Gregory Goyle were discovered in the wreckage.
On January 9th, Rufus Scrimgeour received an unexpected letter.
I, Gawain Robards, hereby resign as Head of the Department of Aurors.
Note: The title is taken from a quote by George McGovern, former US Senator and Democratic candidate for President in 1972: “I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in."