Shine

In his dream, the light is blindingly white. It pushes straight through his eyeballs and scours his brain. He doesn’t close his eyes, though. He lets it into himself, allows it to purify him.

Rufus’ parents are worried. Most children have done some accidental magic by the time they reach his age. They murmur the S word behind closed doors, and Rufus tries to pretend he doesn’t notice, or perhaps simply doesn’t care.

His younger brother Benjamin has already proved himself, by clambering into the fire at the age of three-and-a-half to play happily with the embers. Rufus stores up his bitterness and mulls over it every night, watching the candles arranged about his bed flicker. He tells himself that the most powerful magic manifests itself late in life. Who knows; it may even be true.

Today, Benjamin is keeping a secret from Rufus. It’s one of the usual fights between brothers close in age, which at the time seems the most important thing in the world.

Shut up! I won’t tell you!

You will, Rufus replies. He knows how this will end, with the sort of dirty, no-holds-barred fight that only little boys can engage in, and reconciliation by the time Mother comes up in response to a frantic summons by the house-elf.

Won’t, won’t, Benjy screams.

I’m the older one, so you have to tell me.

You’re just a Squib, and I don’t have to tell you anything.

Rage consumes Rufus. He tries to reach out to Benjy, to crack his brother’s head open and force him to spill everything.

And for a moment, it works. He’s in the dark, unexplored depths of Benjy’s mind. It’s as if he holds a torch or a candle, and he experiments, shining it in every place he can see and illuminating everything that lies hidden.

He stays as long as he can, but eventually his will wavers and he returns to himself. There’s a buzzing in his ears; finally he realizes that it is Benjy screaming.

Benjy’s mouth is wide open. His eyes are bulging, and his entire body is shaking dreadfully. Rufus has never seen anything like it before. He watches with interest.

Eventually, Mum and Dad burst in. They try to calm him down, but at best Benjy’s screaming only forms words: Oh oh oh mum the light everywhere the light the light oh god the light, and so on, tears streaming down his face.

When the screaming becomes tiresome, they all troop to St. Mungo’s, a place Rufus has never visited before. He and Dad sit in the waiting room on hard wooden benches for what seems like hours, until Mum finally reappears and tells Dad to take Rufus home.

Benjy and Mum come home two days later. Benjy is quieter, but still very different from before. Mum tells Rufus, Treat your brother carefully, now, he’s very fragile and may never be the same.

Rufus gives Benjy the cherry on top of his pie at dessert time, and marvels at how much more tractable light can make a problem.

His head feels as if it’s been scoured clean. It is becoming easier to see, now, and Rufus realizes that he is in a room. Light emanates from the ceiling, and the walls, and the floor. All of the room is bathed in this harsh, pitiless light. It is the most beautiful place Rufus has ever seen.

Rufus is twenty years old, and on his very first Auror mission. Grindelwald has been defeated, thankfully, but several of his adherents are known to have fled to Wales. Rufus, paired with a more senior Auror named Crouch, is currently tracking the exact whereabouts of one Alexei Dolohov.

There’s a train station over there, Crouch says, pointing. There’ll be a few locals there. They may know something about strange foreign visitors.

Rufus sighs. While he doesn’t have anything against Muggles, he isn’t particularly interested in dealing with them either. He became an Auror to fight the forces of darkness, not to make small talk with a bunch of know-nothings.

Crouch makes Rufus douse his Lumos charm when they get closer to the station, which makes Rufus nervous. It is very dark outside, with no moon, and anyone, or anything, could be watching.

Now they round the corner of the building. A stark, white rectangle of light is thrown onto the pavement. Rufus, who is used to the flicker of firelight or the buttery color of most Muggle lamps, is intrigued despite himself. Crouch pushes the door open, and they both go inside.

The room is bathed in the purest, whitest light that Rufus has ever seen. He fights the urge to wince and turn away from it; instead, he opens his eyes wide and stares into it until black spots dance across his vision.

Eventually, his eyes adjust. The Muggle light is contained in a strange tube fastened to the ceiling. The room itself is grubby and uninteresting. He hears the Muggle behind the desk say, What’s the matter with your friend there, presumably to Moody.

He’s just a bit touched, Crouch replies. Harmless, though.

Mhm, the man says. So you’re looking for a home here? Well, Englishmen should be better than those odd Russians living over on the hill.

Russians? Crouch says, offhandedly.

Well, they haven’t said as much, but ‘tis rather obvious. I heard one in London once, and these Russians sound the same.

Thanks for your time then, Crouch says. Come along, Sc-Rufus.

Rufus does not want to leave. But he does not want to be seen as a bad Auror either. He comes along.

Dolohov is sent to Azkaban two weeks later, though his wife and son manage to throw themselves on the mercy of the Wizengamot. Crouch praises Rufus highly to the head of the Office, and Rufus is sent on increasingly important missions.

During his infrequent leisure time, Rufus spends six months learning that the name of the Muggle light is a fluorescent lamp, and another two years finding a charm that can be modified to generate the same sort of light. He casts the charm on the ceilings of every room in his flat, and spends hours lying on his bed gazing up into the light.

As his eyes adjust further, Rufus realizes that there is furniture in the room, all of it as white as the walls. But something isn’t right. Deep beneath the bed in the corner, there is the barest hint of shadow.

Rufus steps into his new office and sinks into the plush, obscenely comfortable chair. He is not surprised at his new position; after all, he had been planning to become Minister of Magic since the age of eight. Of course, he had imagined that it would come under happier circumstances.

But Rufus is used to twisting bad events into better ones. You only have to shine a little light onto the problem, he is fond of telling his subordinates. Things tend to work themselves out after that. Certainly it’s the philosophy that got him where he is today.

He regards the reports on his desk gloomily. People being tortured and killed in their own homes, bridges falling down, and of course the continuous depressing presence of breeding Dementors. You Know Who is going to require a great deal of light. Still, Rufus knows he can defeat the wizard, even if he has to drag every sympathizer out of hiding and lock each one up himself.

Rufus pulls out a quill and taps the tip against the corner of his mouth for several moments, thinking. Then he conjures up a blank scroll and begins to write:

To all departments,

You Know Who cannot be allowed to continue. From now on, we will have a zero tolerance policy regarding Death Eaters. Any person so much as found sympathizing with the Dark Lord’s followers is to be immediately apprehended and thrown into Azkaban! No exceptions!

Rufus Scrimgeour,
Minister of Magic

He feels better after this memo has been sent, and calls his secretary for another cup of tea.

Months pass, however, and little changes. A few people are caught. Hangers-on and know-nothing boasters, most likely, but of course releasing them would make it seem like the Ministry isn’t keeping people safe. Albus Dumbledore, and by extension Harry Potter, who should by all rights be Rufus’ greatest allies, are being profoundly unhelpful. It has not been a good year.

Somehow, every important move that the Ministry makes, every bold and daring initiative that is certain to flush the Death Eaters out of hiding, comes to nothing. The Death Eaters refuse to take their bait, or, even worse, make off with it without leaving a trace. They are absolutely uncanny. It’s as if they can predict the Ministry’s every move.

Rufus begins to suspect that there are spies in the Ministry.

The shadow under the bed slowly darkens, until nothing else can be seen. It looks like a hungry mouth, hoping to swallow Rufus whole. As he watches it, in fascinated horror, the shadow begins to spread.

They are everywhere. Rufus can tell.

He sees them lurking in the walls. They’re hidden in the shadowy corners of rooms. He can see them in the dark smudges under the eyes of his department heads and in the scenery of his enchanted windows.

And he rages against them. He seeks to drive them out of his office, out of his Ministry, out of his world. He orders purges of every department, even Magical Games and Sport. He inspects offices at random, personally, eyes flashing everywhere. And yet he finds nothing.

Don’t be afraid, he says to his frightened-looking department heads. When you fear, the fear becomes powerful. We will look in other places. After all, even if they aren’t working for us, they must be somewhere in this building. They nod, and he lays out his new plan.

Light everywhere. Illuminating every nook and cranny in every corner and every room, even the shadowy shaft of the lift. White light beaming from the windows, instead of the usual weather and greenery. For his own office, Rufus enchants the furniture clear, and charms the floor, walls, and ceiling with the fluorescent lamp charm he uses in his own bedroom. Candles are placed in the few places that the light does not reach, until Rufus is able to see every corner of the room from the chair behind his desk. Almost every visitor complains, and more than a few were actually made nauseous, but Rufus refuses to so much as dim the room. This office is the one place in the building he knows to be secure.

Proper lighting is not the only thing Rufus has been working on, of course. In fact, he’s been working both earlier and later as things have become worse, exceeding even the normally long hours of a Minister in time of war. There is so much information to sort and process, so many decisions to be made on its basis, and he lives in constant fear of missing something crucial.

Right now, it is two o’clock in the morning, and while everyone else has gone home, Rufus is re-reading the testimonials of the Death Eaters captured at Hogwarts, extracted under the Cruciatus Curse. Really, it’s a shame that they were all found to be immune to Veritaserum, he is thinking. One can never be quite sure that they’re telling the truth.

Without warning, his entire office goes pitch black.

The darkness spreads much too quickly. Soon it has engulfed the entire room. In his dream, Rufus can feel the darkness pressing in on him. He gasps and tries to escape, but there is nowhere to turn, no light he can reach for. He is alone, and he is going to die here in the dark.

He hears the door open, then close. There are things moving in the darkness. They’re here.

Rufus has been an Auror for many years. Head of the Auror Office, no less, ever since poor old Barty was forced to step down. And yet the only spell he can remember is the first one he ever learned.

L-lumos, he says, gripping his wand tightly. Wandlight flares across the last thing he will ever see.

Boo, says Lord Voldemort.

The light goes out.