A crime to outlive him

A crime to outlive him - part 6

The fireplace in the Minister of Magic's office suddenly burst into flame. Rufus Scrimgeour got up from his chair and strode over with his usual long lope, so unsuited to an office environment, that always carried a suggestion that he might just be about to pounce on someone or something. He bowed over and addressed the head that was becoming visible in the flames.

"Headmistress?"

"Minister, good morning. I would like permission to visit Azkaban." Just like Minerva, he thought - straight to the point, wasting no time on small talk. He remembered her as a gawky adolescent, and sometimes he felt he could still imagine the shy wallflower with her unfashionable glasses behind the abrupt and powerful Headmistress of Hogwarts.

"Certainly you may. For what purpose?"

"To question Narcissa Black Malfoy again. I thought she had been quite sincere with me, but recent events..."

"Ah, you got some of the leaflets?"

"I doubt they would be so insolent as to send them to Hogwarts, but half a dozen parents have informed me in the last few minutes." Minerva McGonagall was silent for a split-second, a lowering anger in her face, then continued: "Of course the Ministry would be informed of everything I learn."

"Well, of course. I think our interests are the same in this matter.... Would you consider letting yourself be deputized for the purposes of this investigation? That might smooth things for you in some areas."

"I would, Minister. Thank you."

"Thank you, Headmistress," said Scrimgeour. He removed his ring of office from his left ring finger, placed it between left thumb and left forefinger, and pointed his right forefinger at it, and through it at Minerva's face. He muttered a few words, and suddenly a large, golden seven-pointed star covered Minerva's right ear and much of her cheek, with the words oculus magistratus picked out in tiny red rubies.

Scrimgeour then turned and called out: "Weasley!!" One of the office doors opened, and a tall, lanky, red-haired young man appeared. "Inform Azkaban that Headmistress McGonagall is about to visit them on a mission from me, and that she is deputized."

"Yessir," said the young man, and swiftly strode out of the office.

The flames in the chimney died down, and Minister Scrimgeour was left, briefly, alone. He picked up one of the leaflets, and smiled at himself... No wonder Minerva McGonagall was furious. The leaflets informed that a new Wizarding School had been founded, "alternative to the current dubious educational provision", and invited wizards and witches to enter their children. And the name of the school? Voldemort School of Magic and Wizardry.

Percy Weasley came in. "Sorry to disturb you, sir, but you said you wanted to be informed as soon as word came. The Ministries of Transylvania, Malta and Lithuania have been in touch."

"So far!" said Scrimgeour, looking, for the first time, concerned.

"Yes, Minister. And from what they said, I think we can take it that most wizards and witches in Europe will have received these damned pieces of parchment."

"Damned is the word, Weasley."

"Yes, sir. It represents a pretty enormous expenditure of magical energy, for one thing."

"It does. If they wanted to advertise their power," growled Scrimgeour as he started striding up and down in his office like a caged animal, "they certainly managed it. Nobody will believe the war is over, after this."

"I do not understand their purpose, sir".

"You don't?" answered the Minister, and stopped pacing. "You don't? I'll tell you one thing, Weasley. Neither do I." (For a second, Percy Weasley's butler-like mask fell, and he looked astonished and rather afraid.) "But whatever game they are playing, it's one heck of a first move."

"It's forbidden to set up wizarding schools without the assent of the Council of Ministers," said Weasley. "Perhaps their game is to start denying the laws, till they have set themselves up as a counter to all wizarding authorities. That would make them an established power, with whom people would have to negotiate....at least."

"I cannot think of any better reason, Weasley, so this shall be our working hypothesis." (Percy blushed with pleasure.) "Is it your view that a new wizarding school is viable?" At this direct question, Percy looked nervous and bewildered. "Don't get nervous, man. I do have my own estimate on these matters, I would just like yours."

"Well... Sir... I would say that the potential for a breakaway school is definitely there. My estimate would be that from one-tenth to one-third of the public might be interested. The Ministry is not well loved, I'm afraid, and nor are most or our colleagues abroad. The pureblood faction especially does not appreciate the way things are taught at Hogwarts, at Beauxbatons... even at Durmstrang. Our victory over the last... well... over Vold-d-d-emort... has not changed many minds."

"Hmmm."

"If I may make a suggestion, Minister..."

"Yes, go ahead."

"The Enemy's corpse should be exhibited in public. This would reassure the populace that he is indeed dead and incapable of further harm."

"That is not a bad idea, but it would not quite work. For one thing, few people have ever seen him in person, and for another, the corpse is so decayed as to be hard to recognize. But we will do it anyway; it cannot do harm, at least."

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Minerva smiled a small, amused smile. She could get used to this deputized status. This was the third Human Guard who, as soon as he had noticed her cheek-badge, drew himself up and saluted.

Azkaban was different without the Dementors. Less hushed, for one thing. And when one heard talk, it was a purposeful, patterned sound, not whine and babble. Even though... she did not know how to feel about it. Her humane feelings were not displeased to find no staring eyes, no open and drooling mouths, nobody lying asleep on the courtyard floor in the middle of the day and twisting in the hold of hideous dreams; but the headmistress and Wizangemot member, concerned with the safety and peace of her school and of the wizarding community in general, worried about the amount of power contained in this island, and wondered whether it could be controlled. Still, it was Moody who was in charge. If anyone could be trusted to think of every possible contrivance to keep the prisoners safe, it was him...

...and here he was. They exchanged salutes.

"Have you come to interview Narcissa Malfoy?"

"Yes, Alastor. Want to keep me company?"

"Can't, lassie. Too much to do. But Shacklebolt can come with you, if you want."

...................................................................................................
Minerva McGonagall and Philip Shacklebolt sat in Narcissa Malfoy's bare dungeon of a cell, she on the trunk of personal items that Narcissa had been allowed to take to Azkaban with her, he on the creaky, unvarnished wooden chair that came with the jail-room supplies. Shacklebolt had wanted to awaken Narcissa on the spot, but Minerva asked him not to. "Think," her voice whispered silently in his mind, "how disorienting it will be for her to awaken and find us looming over her. She will start wondering how long we have been there, and will be scared and nervous, and altogether less ready to start putting up defences the moment we start questioning her." Shacklebolt had thought about it a second, then nodded. He still was not altogether sure, but he wanted to see how this interrogation went - then he would place it in his store of professional experience, ready to be considered in other occasions.

Minerva was looking intently at the prisoner's face. Lying on a pillow made of her own clothes, to spare her soft skin the scrape of the straw mattress below, bare of any make-up, her long golden hair in a dirty tangle, it still was beautiful. Like many people who had never had any themselves, Minerva McGonagall was very sensitive to human beauty, both in men - though she would never tell Philip Shacklebolt, that broad-shouldered, long-legged demi-god now sitting quietly beside her - and in women. But her mind was not only on Narcissa's beauty. There's no art/ To find the mind's construction in the face, truly. This plotter, suborner, possible murderess, certain Death Eater, who had apparently been misleading her even in her sobbing grief for her own dead sister; how she lay there, looking as soft and innocent and helpless as a month-old baby. Someone who did not know what Minerva and Shacklebolt knew would feel protective of the gentle-featured creature in the dungeon.

Her reaction on waking was everything Minerva had hoped for. As she became aware of the two looming, severe figures sitting over her as though in judgment, she literally jerked on the bed - almost a jump. "Well, Narcissa," started the Headmistress, not giving her time to recover, "did you enjoy the lies you told me last night?"

"L-lies?" said Narcissa weakly, her eyes still heavy with sleep.

"Lies. You were really there to draw our attention away while your friends emptied Gringotts and got away clear, weren't you?"

"No... what's this about Gringotts? No," stuttered Narcissa, shaking her head weakly.

The questions continued, probing, relentless. Eventually Narcissa gathered her wits and her story became more coherent. After two hours of questioning - helped by Narcissa being both hungry and in need of a toilet - they were fairly sure that the story she was telling was either the truth or at least as much as they were ever going to get out of her.

"I don't know what the others decided to do in my absence. We had agreed that I would go and try and probe you to see if any agreement could be reached. If they did not hear from me by four o'clock in the afternoon, they were free to do whatever they wished. I did not discuss our accounts at Gringotts with them, or anything... sounds like a natural first step, though.

"I really did hope that some kind of surrender might be negotiated. I meant what I told you. But I did not think it was likely. I took Bella with me because I was afraid she might do exactly what she did. With the Dark Lord gone, she had nothing to live for... at least, that is what she felt."

"Is that not what you felt?"

"There is always something to live for."

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"Minister?" said Percy Weasley, opening the door slightly. "Goblins here to see you, with a prisoner."

"Ah," said Rufus Scrimgeour thoughtfully. "Let them in, Weasley".

The door opened fully, and something like a dozen goblins, all in their best robes and with their badges of office very visible, came in, dragging a hulking creature wrapped in silver chains and held by a dozen enchanted leashes. For a second, Scrimgeour did not recognize the prisoner; then, with an inner jump (while he took care to keep outwardly poker-faced), he knew that this was Fenrir Greyback in front of him. Fenrir, the fierce, the bloodthirsty, the untameable... cringing in the sunlight, refusing to look at anyone in the face. Damn it, he thought with reluctant admiration, those goblins have really done a job on him. He made a small, polite bow to the goblin leader.

"Congratulations, Skendolkey. I trust that Mr. Greyback is all in one piece?"

"You will not find any pieces missing, Minister. We are always pleased to be of help to the Lord Minister."

"I take it you questioned him already. Anything interesting?"

The goblin's crafty face showed genuine regret. "We did talk with him a bit," he said slowly, "and it does seem that Mr. Greyback knows nothing of the other escapees. He left almost immediately and headed for London on his own."

"Did he indeed," said Scrimgeour, always with his poker face. This was a disappointment. "Nevertheless, even on his own Mr. Greyback is a considerable catch. I shall have the one hundred thousand Galleons offered for his capture conveyed to Gringott's, and make sure the goblins are properly acknowledged in the press."

"We are most grateful, Lord Minister," answered Skendolkey. "May we leave now?"

The pretended humility in that last question, thought Scrimgeour, was downright insolent. And that was probably what they were here for. Yesterday, he had inflicted a severe humiliation on them, which they had not been able to avoid because they knew all too well that it was deserved. Today they could have conveyed Greyback to him in any one of a dozen secret or confidential ways; but they had chosen to march in straight through the Ministry, no less than a dozen together - and that was a great force for Goblins, thought Scrimgeour - taking care that every Ministry employee saw them and recognized their prisoner; they had burdened him with showy physical bonds so as to draw everyone's eyes. It was a display of strength.

It was to be expected, he supposed. Goblins remember every skirmish in two hundred years of Goblin Wars as though it had happened to them personally, and dread nothing more than looking vulnerable in front of wizards. The best thing was to leave things as they were, allow them to recover their pride - and to keep an eye on them, since they could still lead the Ministry to the remaining Death Eaters.

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"So you believe her, lassie?" Alastor Moody's office was scarcely furnished, she noticed, except for his famous collection of Dark detectors. They were alone; he would question Shacklebolt later and separately. Still the same old Alastor, she thought with a grimace; not that he did not trust his childhood friend Minnie, but she could have been placed under Imperius or Polyjuiced. Trust nobody had been Alastor Moody's motto for a very long time now.

"Can't say I do altogether, Alastor. She probably has some little secrets still kept clutched to her Black little heart" - and Minerva shook her head in disgust. Alastor noticed that move, so familiar to him from of old, and smiled inwardly. So very Minnie. Compromise was one thing she had never understood. "I don't think we are going to get them out of her willingly, that's all. You might consider sneaking some Veritaserum into her food ration."

"Pretty ruthless these days, aren't you?"

"Not really. A moderate dose of Veritaserum will not hurt her, and breaking down her resistance... and her husband's for that matter... might be the best thing anyone can do for them in the long run."

"You think that she would become a useful citizen if you forced her out of her old bad habits?"

"It can't do any harm, anyway," said Minerva with a surface air of indifference which did not deceive Moody in the least. They knew each other well - Scottish, passionate, courageous, and forbiddingly upright. And yet they had never agreed.

"This is not a school, Minerva. You are speaking as though you can break grown men and women of their bad habits and teach them to live decently."

It was Minerva's turn to look at Moody's ravaged face and figure. They had grown up together, and even as a child he had been brave. Now he was a living monument to the unyelding, uncompromising obstinacy of evil and rebellion. If anyone had good reason not to believe in repentance and conversion, he had. He had found so many men corruptible, so many corrupt, and so few willing even to surrender, let alone to change. He bore the marks of unrepentant enmity on every part of his body; and he was still willing to stand and fight some more; he would never stop, as long as life was left in him.

"Yes, I am," said Minerva McGonagall with unaccustomed softness. "I know that you say you have never met a Dark Wizard who repented, but have you ever thought how many have never come back a second time? You may say that they were only scared of Azkaban, but even that is educational - it makes a difference if people learn that there is no glory or reward at the end."

"Meaning only that they have become cowards, Minnie. Not that they have become upright."

"Is there always a difference? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, they say."

"It does not change them, lassie. Not deep down. Watch how they behave when the next Dark Lord comes along."

Minerva was wondering whether to answer and carry on the discussion. It was an argument they had had so many times before, there was almost no point in revisiting points made a dozen times. Before she could make up her mind, however, a violent commotion could be heard from outside Moody's office; and before she had risen from her chair, Alastor was half-way to the door.

"What's going on?"

"It was Fenrir Greyback, sir. The goblins just captured him..."

"Greyback" broke in Minerva, "you got Greyback?"

"The goblins?" added Moody, thunderstruck.

"Yes, madam... Mr.Moody, sir. They had promised the Minister to help catch the runaway Death Eaters, and I guess Grayback is the first. He came in all quiet and subdued, till he saw Lucius Malfoy through the bars of his cell. Then he went berserk, shouting that his wife had sold him to the goblins. Before we could stun him properly, he had wrenched out half the bars in the window and was almost through into Malfoy's cell."

"How is Malfoy?"

"Physically he's OK, but he's had a bad scare. He claims he has no idea what Greyback was talking about".

"I think for once we can believe him. Funny how paranoiacs always pick the wrong targets." Moody grinned, then he turned to the young Auror. "You know what to do. Have Malfoy's cell repaired immediately, and check all its enchantments. A wizard of his power must never be given a chance... traumatized or not."

"This is tremendous news about Greyback," said Minerva to Moody on their way back to his quarters. "I will have to congratulate Scrimgeour and the goblins when next we meet."

"As you say," answered Moody with a closed face. "It's not particularly good news for me, though."

"Are you overcrowded?"

"Out of control. I am being pushed to a decision I'd much rather not be making."

"You mean...?"

"Yes, Minnie. I think it's time to turn this place over to the Dementors again."

Minerva couldn't help it. She thought of Narcissa's face sleeping in the morning light, as soft and untroubled as a child's; she thought of those grey, shattered, babbling, whining horrors she had seen in this place when the Dementors were in charge - often people she had taught, or people she had known as well as, sometimes better than, Narcissa. She burst out: ""No!"

"I knew you'd say that," said Moody bleakly. "Well, Minnie, my dear childhood friend, tell me any reasons why I should not."

"You know what the reasons are! First, that to use the Dementors reduces any punishment inflicted here to pure cruelty with no hope of improvement and no re-educative purpose at all. You will let out someone who has suffered as no normal human being can imagine suffering, but who is otherwise just as bad as, or even worse than, he or she got in. Second, that it makes the notion of graded punishment a joke - to be subjected to a Dementor for two weeks or for a lifetime is equally agonizing, so you are inflicting the same punishment for an unpaid fine as for an Unforgivable Curse. Third and worst, it is degrading for us who inflict the penalty. There are things no honest man should touch with a barge-pole, and to destroy the soul of another and drive them to starvation or suicide is definitely one. If we call back the Dementors, then every time a Moot passes a sentence, we are making ourselves accomplices with those horrors. We cannot and will not stop punishing offenders, but we shall do it with poor heart and a sense of guilt. If we are reduced to that, it would be more merciful to just kill offenders. Any offenders. And in particular those who have not done enough to deserve it - because if they have not done enough to deserve it, they certainly have not done enough to deserve the Dementors. And how does that square with justice?"

Moody shook his head gloomily. "These are all things that I had already said to myself, Minnie. Now listen to how things are. With the arrest of Greyback, I have hit the limit of my resources. We are already using more Aurors than we ought just to patrol this place. That is a sickening waste of good trained men. It sets up a vicious circle, where the weakness of the Corps of Aurors encourages people to offend, and the more they offend, the more they are sent to Azkaban, and the more Aurors are needed here instead of discouraging and detecting crime elsewhere.

"And the Dementors do exist, Minnie. Short of a campaign of extermination, there is nothing else to do with them except make use of them. And even if you are willing to countenance a campaign of extermination, I have to remind you that they never have worked yet. Wizards have tried at various times to exterminate Giants, Goblins and vampires - it never worked. Some always survived. And, as you say, it was a hideous and degrading experience for those who had to do the killing.

"The number of Dark Wizards and other offenders in Azkaban makes this an everlasting danger point. The potential concentration of power is enormous. Yet, if we do not hold them here, where else can we hold them?

"The Ministry, in effect, named me prison governor as an alternative to using the Dementors. I was supposed to be smart, tricky and suspicious enough to keep all my brood of brutes under control one way or another. I now must report and explain that I no longer can guarantee it. If the prison population keeps growing, as it indubitably will, I will hardly be able to keep it all under personal review. And someone will escape.

"There is only one alternative conceivable - bringing in compulsory service with the Corps of Aurors for every young witch or wizard who graduates from Hogwarts, and that would be madness."

"Why madness, Alastor? I personally see nothing wrong with asking all wizards and witches to take part in the defence of their country."

"You know that that is nonsense, Minnie. Half of them would flatly refuse to serve, and then we would have to hunt them down and force them to. The Ministry has enough power as it is; give it the powers it would need to tackle mass desertion, and it would be nothing short of a tyranny. Besides, how many of the enlisted people would turn out to be dark wizards and witches? We might be letting more of them in through the door than we chase away from the windows. You have to see that I am right."

"Say I don't want to. In Merlin's name, Alastor, you have to see that anything would be better than to have to deal with those horrors again!"

Moody was silent for a moment, then replied: "There is one thing worse, and you know it, Minerva. And that is to let Dark Wizards and other criminals overpower us." He looked at his old friend and thought he understood her. "I think this is the difference between us. You look at Narcissa Malfoy and you see a former student who might not have gone wrong if she had not fallen in with the wrong crowd. You see someone who is still human, and who might yet take another turn. I look at her and I see someone who is complicit in most of You-Know-Whose murders and other crimes, whose hands drip with innocent blood, and who will probably kill more people if she is ever let out. And if she does not, someone else will.

"I know that miscarriages of justice happen. I could tell you the names of people who have spent years in here, or even died, and did not deserve it. And there will be again. But make no mistake, Minnie: ninety-five per cent of them deserve it. And my job is to protect the rest from them. Everything else is secondary. If I can make their punishment help change even one of them, so that they will not go back to being public enemies, well and good. But if I have to choose between the possible redemption of a villain and the security of the public, then you know where my duty lies."

Minerva did not have any retort. Everything that could be said had been said. She loooked at the fierce noonday sun picking out the raw stones and lichens of Azkaban's massive, dark-blue walls, and had a frightening image of being caught in that stone machinery and never let out; and she shivered.