оххх... только вы меня не бейте

[guldfisken]

Еще один выплеск, с позволения сказать, творчества. На аглицком языке. Рейтинговый. Много "круциатуса". Если вам неинтересен Руфус Скримджер (а он вам, скорее всего, неинтересен ), не читайте этот ужас.

The Lion's Last Stand

He was writing when they came. The door of his office burst open, spilling in a dozen people, some masked and hooded, others - workers of his own outer office - blank-eyed, obviously Imperiused. They were all pointing their wands at him, watching him.

He was the first to break the silence, his Scottish accent quite heavy as it always was under stress.

'There's no point Imperiusing me, you know, it won't work.'

One of them laughed, and he felt his skin crawl: he knew this laugh only too well. She stepped forward from behind the taller Death Eaters' backs, and he could see her face: her eyes were bright and focused, she was definitely not under the Imperius Curse...

'Yes, you have always been very stubborn, Rufus,' she said.

'Very sweet of you to come to bring me down in person, Dolores.'

He rose and walked slowly round the table towards her. His fingers closed around the wand in the pocket of his robes. He'll blow himself up together with them... he just needs to move a little closer so that they take the full force of the explosion... As though sensing his intention, Umbridge made a swift movement with her own wand and he froze, unable to move a limb. She stepped up to him, patted his pockets, pulled the wand out of his unresisting hand, them flourished hers. He felt his body unfreeze.

I'm getting old, he thought bitterly. Slow.

'There'll be no further trouble, Rufus, if you tell us just one thing. Tell us, and there still may be place for you under the New Order...'

Scrimgeour knew that witty repartee had never been his strong point, so he remained silent. Umbridge looked up into his face searchingly.

'Where's Harry Potter, Rufus? Please tell us.'

He smiled and leaned back against his desk.

'Yes, I knew it would be something like that...' He glanced around his office, taking in the austere interior - the books, the maps on the walls, the old leather sofa on which he had slept - when had he last slept? about thirty hours ago, was it? - for what now he knew was the last time. 'You can spare yourself the trouble of - of punishing me, Dolores, and tell them to kill me outright. I'm not telling you.'

'But you know?'

'Of course.'

'And you won't tell us?' she asked softly, eyeing him with a slightly hungry look now.

'Of course not.'

Another familiar voice sounded from behind a mask. Apparently its owner did not want to see Umbridge get in full stride.

'Rufus, please be reasonable. You'll have to tell us, sooner or later. I don't want to have to cause you pain...'

Scrimgeour stared at him ferociously from where he stood.

'You're despicable, Thicknesse.'

'Enough of that,' Umbridge said firmly. 'You don't want to tell us. We need the information. We'll have to make you want to tell us. Unfortunately we don't have any Veritaserum, so...' She turned around. 'Take him,' she said to the two Death Eaters nearest her.

They came up to the Minister, grasped his shoulders and tried to pull him away from the desk; but he wouldn't budge an inch, holding onto the edge of the tabletop.

'Make haste!' Umbridge said shrilly, 'I want him up against that wall right now!'

Scrimgeour was peering at his assailants unblinkingly over his wire-rimmed glasses as they tried in vain to make him move. Then one of the Death Eaters grew tired of the fight and hit him hard in the solar plexus. The Minister gasped and doubled over in spite of himself, and they used the opportunity to tear him away from the desk and drag him to a wall. One of them magicked up a couple of chains, which they then used to bind Scrimgeour's wrists to two of the brackets holding torches.

'Well...' Umbridge said, twirling her wand in her hands and moving closer to Scrimgeour.

'Dolores, wait.'

Thicknesse removed his mask and revealed a face queasy with the anticipation of what was to come. He turned onto the group of people still standing silently behind them.

'Leave the room,' he ordered. 'Leave us alone.'

The Death Eaters, including the two still standing by the Minister's side, and the Ministry workers filed out.

He closed the door. Umbridge was now standing a couple of feet away from Scrimgeour, who, after a brief and futile struggle against the chains, was now standing quite still and steeling himself for what he knew would follow.

'Rufus,' she said, gentle reproach in her voice.

'You've wanted to do this for quite some time, haven't you, Dolores?' he asked, looking down on her. 'Think you'll be the next Minister for Magic?'

'No,' she said, removing his glasses carefully and putting them, neatly folded, on the desk. 'No, I'm quite happy being second in command. The Minster has... too much to cope with,' and with these words she whipped him across the face with a Scourge Hex. He winced, but quickly regained composure.

'I thought you were rather fond of me, Dolores,' he said, not quite failing to sound caustic.

'But you've never been fond enough of me, Rufus,' she answered and whipped him again. He felt the skin on his cheekbone break.

Thicknesse now came over to them and stood there, fingering his wand, looking above Scrimgeour's head as if he found the sight of the Minister's blood indecent.

'Please tell us where to find Potter, Rufus,' he said. 'It doesn't have to get worse than this...'

Scrimgeour did his best to look bored.

'I didn't want this to happen...' Thicknesse said, and then pointed his wand at Scrimgeour's chest. 'Crucio!'

He was a strong man, and a proud man, too. His hands clenched into fists, his teeth were set as he closed his eyes and breathed shallowly, trying not to betray his agony. He managed to alienate himself from the pain at last, but he knew it would be difficult to do again... he was certainly a bit too old for this...

The pain stopped. Then started again, before he could draw breath. Then stopped again after a while. He opened his eyes to see Thicknesse looking uneasy, Umbridge impatient.

'You're doing this wrong.'

She came up very close now, looking up into his face, and then drew her wand slowly, almost sensuously down his cheek, down his chest, down his side, down his thigh, until the tip rested against his wounded knee. There was a bang and he cried out as his knee exploded with pain much worse than what Thicknesse's half-hearted curse had brought. White-hot knives were driven into his leg, again and again and again, and he felt his strength ebbing away... then it stopped.

'Tell us, Rufus,' she crooned, and the tip of her wand was moving along his cheek again, 'tell us, and you needn't suffer any more...'

He opened his eyes slowly and looked at her, and his thin lips curled into a defiant smile.

'I shan't.'

'Well, then... let's try another method of persuasion, shall we? What you felt just now is a pain that stops when I lift the curse. Whereas this...'

She flicked her wand and looked at him closely, waiting to see his reaction. He didn't understand what she had done at first, but within a second, he knew, and he gasped, unable even to cry out. All the injuries the old Auror had ever received were brought back to life, barely healed just enough not to let him bleed to death on the spot, but hurting, hurting unspeakably, all of them, from the razor cut of the day before right down to the bruises he had got as a child, every scratch, every bone he had ever broken: and each wound was fresh, and agonising, including the old scar on his chest where the enchanted crossbow bolt had skewered his body through and nearly killed him twenty years ago. He sagged in his chains, his head swimming, and heard Umbridge say:

'This won't stop, Rufus. This won't heal unless I do it. Do you want me to heal it?'

He nodded weakly.

'Do you know what you must do for me to heal it?'

He nodded again, without opening his eyes.

'Will you do it?'

He opened his eyes and laughed shakily, then drew himself upright on his chains again.

'Of course - of course - not.'

'You'll regret it right now. Crucio!'

His head jerked upwards as he screwed up his eyes again, his sharp eye-teeth, the legacy of his vampire great-grandmother, sinking into his lip, piercing it through, preventing the scream from escaping his straining throat, his newly-open wounds were on fire, and he knew he was dying, nobody could take so much pain, not even an Auror, and whatever they wanted to know they'd never know, not from him anyway, he was lost, gone, drowning in a blood-red ocean, deeper and deeper into its scorching heart...

Then it stopped, and he heard Umbridge's voice reach him:

'So exciting to see you bite your lip like this, it's quite sexy really... but poor Rufus, so much blood...'

Somebody ran a hand softly over his mouth and chin, then slapped him roughly across the face.

'Open your eyes, Scrimgeour! You're not dead, and you won't be any time soon, don't even dream of it! Tell me where to find Potter!'

It was difficult to speak now that his lip was swollen and painful and his chest hurt so much he found it difficult to breathe, but he felt that his head had cleared a little of the blood-red haze - enough for him to be articulate.

'It's not like you to be so unperceptive, Dolores... I won't tell you anything... I told you... kill me now, torture me for hours... no difference.'

'Crucio!' she shrieked, and the white-hot knives were all over him again. He screamed this time, weakened by the agony, screamed, then groaned, then moaned, his voice trailing away, but she didn't seem to notice, drunk with his pain, she watched and watched his body writhe, his robes blossom with dark damp patches where the old wounds were bursting open...

'Finite!' a voice said. 'Dolores, are you mad? Twenty minutes under an uninterrupted Cruciatus! He'll snuff it right now or go mad, we need him alive and sane, we need him to give us information!'

The tortured man shook his shaggy, grizzled head. He unstuck his tongue that got glued to the roof of his mouth, and his parched lips formed the words that were little more than a whisper:

'I... w... will give... nothing... to... V... Voldemort...'

Thicknesse grabbed hold of the Minister's hair, raised his face up towards his own and looked into his eyes.

'He won't, Dolores. He won't.'

'Then kill him, Pius.'

Thicknesse peered into the Minister's yellow eyes again, raised his wand and dug it into his victim's chest. The Minister's blood-stained face betrayed no fear as he stared back.

'Avada Kedavra!'

The chains disappeared in that same instant, and, liberated from its torturers, Rufus Scrimgeour's body crumpled onto the floor.

'V-voldemort,' Umbridge imitated disdainfully. 'How brave!'

'Don't say the Dark Lord's name!' said Thicknesse, then, after a pause, 'you've given me a thought...'

He went over to Scrimgeour's desk, stepping over the body on the floor, and started rummaging there.

'I hope they won't get suspicious, it's not the sort of thing he would order...'

The office door opened, and a secretary walked in. His eyes glazed, unseeing, he gave Thicknesse a piece of parchment and walked out again.

'What is it?'

'The Dark Lord wishes me to become the new Minister for Magic,' Thicknesse replied. 'Well, this makes things even easier...'

Finally he found what he was looking for: Scrimgeour's last order, dated and signed. He tapped the parchment with his wand, and the words started to reform: instead of placing more protection around St Mungo's, the document in Scrimgeour's writing now proclaimed his resignation, and the appointment of Pius Thicknesse in his stead. Then the new Minister took a clean parchment and quilled his first decree, making the name the Dark Lord had chosen for himself a Taboo and a jinx to break down magical protection...

Meanwhile, Umbridge busied herself about Scrimgeour's corpse. She had wanted this man in her power for so long... now he was beyond her reach... but she would still have it her way. They would have to remove the body anyway, and she could do it so easily... She waved her wand and muttered an incantation, and the body at her feet began to change, until, seconds later, she was looking down at a small dead animal on the floor.

'You thought yourself a lion... but I think otherwise,' she whispered, magicked up a flowery box from thin air and placed the dead kitten inside it.

She would bury it in her garden. She would plant a pink hydrangea on the spot.

He would be hers, forever.

* * *
upd: Добрый человек и мой хороший друг Sir Doctor of TARDIS перевел сие на русский язык, так что если вам интересно, ступайте по ссылке. :)