April 28th, 1888 — DMLE Interrogation Room

Things had not gone exactly according to plan.

After disentangling himself from the obnoxiously persistent witch with the chizpurfle matter, Ben had wasted the better part of thirty minutes trying to find the room where they kept old employee files, and had been redirected through four different floors before he'd finally stumbled upon it. Once there, however, he didn't care to ask for help locating the file he needed, since, again, he had no cover story for why Aldous might need to peruse an ex-auror's career history. Instead, he'd set about digging through things himself, and had gotten deep into the weeds of the files trying to find the correct ones.

He was on the right track, he thought, when he was apprehended. He'd managed to make it into the records of former aurors, but given he had no idea when Mr. Scrimgeour had "retired," he'd been forced to go through them all year by year seeking out the one he needed. He was still empty-handed when the Department of Magical Law Enforcement employees slipped into the room, and at first spared them only a glance. He didn't realize they'd drawn their wands until he was already under arrest.

It was a short walk to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and he was halfway through it before he realized that since the charade had expired, he could drop the over-exaggerated limp now.

Ben had been arrested before (not that his brothers knew that), but never by the government of magical Britain; he'd spent a week in a Portuguese jail (not a recommended vacation spot) for something he hadn't done, and then a night in a cell in Irvingly after he'd started a brawl in the Casino. Neither had gone on his record — the first because he hadn't actually been guilty, as it turned out, and the latter because he'd had the good sense to never give his name. He had no illusions that this little escapade would be similarly easy to evade consequences for, but at the very least he didn't want to incriminate himself any more than was necessary by talking to the wrong people. He considered sending a desperate letter to Art (though even Ben wasn't clear on what he expected his best friend to do about it, since he probably wouldn't be breaking into the Ministry to liberate him), but it seemed he didn't have the privilege of writing letters — at least, not until they'd finished interrogating him and actually charged him with something.

He was under no illusions that either Aldous or Roman would be particularly inclined to let him off lightly, but making a plea to either of them seemed like a much better plan than trying to explain matters to a stranger sent in to interrogate him. As such, he made it quite clear he would refuse to speak to anyone about the matter except one of the Mr. Crouches. There were some serious misgivings about this on the side of the investigators, which was understandable — a man who had, for reasons unknown, assumed the identity of Aldous Crouch ought, perhaps, not to be left alone in a room with him for uncertain motives — until the polyjuice wore off. Once they realized that he was, in fact, the other Mr. Crouch, they seemed more confused than anything.

Eventually he'd been shuffled into a holding cell, where he was abandoned until morning. He wasn't sure whether he had been charged with anything yet, but if so, no one was letting him in on it. They were equally unhelpful the following morning when they roused him from his cell and showed him back into the same interrogation room — though, to be fair, it wasn't as though Ben was trying to make conversation, either.

At any rate, he'd been left alone in the room — deprived of his wand and magically chained to the table in front of him — for far longer than he cared to be. He'd eventually foregone sitting tensely and waiting for something to happen, and was sitting with his head buried in his crossed arms on the wide table when the door opened once again.

Open to: a DMLE employee, Roman Crouch, Aldous Crouch

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International floo travel was available only to the highest officials in the Ministry of Magic—in any given country—and only under extraordinary circumstances. Though the ‘runner’ who had been sent to Aldous in Portugal had not specified the nature of those circumstances, it was with no shortage of trepidation that he found himself stepping into the fire to arrive in an inn a block from the main London entrance to the Mininstry of Magic offices.

Upon arrival, it became evident that circumstances were not as terrible as he had envisioned and that some friendship or another had expedited matters, but as soon as Aldous heard his brother’s name, he knew that things could not be good either.

The wall to the interrogation room was a ruse, one visible only to the side of the guilty party. From the corridor, Aldous was able to see his brother, who had since regained his own form, and remain there for some time without detection. Malachai and Alberta Crouch had been good parents before their demise; the nannies, governess, and tutors the boy furnished with well-selected. Why was it, then, that Aldous, Roman, and November had turned out so ordinary, so well, and yet Reuben had gone so far off the rails? Had the foolish man’s sojourn to Canada not rid him of his ridiculous antics, as Aldous had hoped? Had he been dropped as a babe, and that scar stayed with him to inform his adult years?

After what felt like a lifetime but was, perhaps, only three quarters of an hour, Aldous stepped through the ‘wall’ into the interrogation room.

“I did not know whether I would see you when I arrived, or myself staring back at me,” the wizard remarked dispassionately, though only a blind man could have missed the look of utter disappointment on his face.

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— Aldous walks with a cane and pronounced limp as the result of a splinching accident. —

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Ben looked up with a start at the noise, and was relieved to see that it was Aldous who had entered and not some other Ministry investigator. He wasn't sure relief was really the correct emotion, given the look on his brother's face, but surely whatever Aldous ended up doing with him would be better than the alternative. Especially since the alternative was prison.

(Reuben had assumed without really realizing he was doing so that of course Aldous wouldn't let him go to prison; whatever his failings, Aldous was his brother. His older, established, respectable, and powerful brother — if anyone could smooth this whole thing over, it was Aldous, wasn't it? And if anyone was inclined to smooth this whole thing over, it would be Aldous. He hadn't even had the heart to send Ben to Canada for the full six months, in the end. Ben hadn't been entirely sure whether Roman would be inclined to help him or whether he would think whatever punishment he was allotted was justified, but surely Aldous wouldn't let him go to prison).

That said, though, he had no idea how to start. With a rather morose shrug, he found himself responding merely, "Well, yeah. Polyjuice doesn't last forever."

  

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At that, something in Aldous snapped. It was all the wizard could do to keep himself from punching his youngest brother in the face. Ever the dignified gentleman, though, Aldous tightened his deathgrip on the head of his can instead, lashing out with his words though he yearned to lash out physically.

“What in Merlin’s name were you thinking?!” he demanded sharply, but quietly. Though there were charms about the room to muffle dialogue to anyone outside, some level of discretion was always advisable. “You have conjured up idiotic schemes in the past, but this, Reuben, this is new levels of madness! Clearly I erred in not sending you to the asylum after all; clearly you have less sense in that thick skull of yours than a damned flobberworm. Tell me, tell me why I should not just walk out the way I came and let them cart you off to Azkaban!

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   Bella Scrimgeour

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— Aldous walks with a cane and pronounced limp as the result of a splinching accident. —

— graphics by lady ❤ —

Ben flinched, both at his brother's tone and at the words he was using. He deserved a tongue lashing, certainly, but the way that Aldous' little rant started heading made his heart rate increase dramatically. Aldous wasn't actually considering letting them send him to Azkaban, was he? Even worse, did this mean that he'd been serious with the asylum thread after all? Although the suggestion had stung at the time, Ben had more or less decided afterwards that it had simply been a scare tactic to induce him to agree to the ticket to Canada. It hurt more than he might have expected to think that Aldous actually thought there was something wrong with him, something that needed professional intervention to fix.

"It wasn't — I wasn't trying to do anything illegal," he insisted, stumbling over his own words in his haste to find a way to explain himself. Of course, impersonating a Department Head at the Ministry of Magic might have been illegal in its own right, but Ben wasn't really sure. That was probably something he should have looked into prior to securing the polyjuice for this little scheme, but the whole thing had seemed so harmless. It wasn't as though he was trying to steal sensitive information, or anything — he was trying to figure out what might have happened to Miss Scrimgeour, while also watching out for his own neck in the meantime. But how was he supposed to explain all of that to Aldous?

"It's just — there's, uh —" Shit, how was he going to even start with the whole mess of Miss Scrimgeour's potential disappearance? He didn't have any concrete proof that she had even disappeared, not really, and suddenly her melodramatic final letter was seeming less and less convincing as he contemplated what Aldous' probable response would be to a frantic letter written by a teenage girl — much less one Ben shouldn't have been writing at all and certainly shouldn't have been cavorting drunkenly around Ireland with. The case for Miss Scrimgeour being a very level-headed individual who would never exaggerate her own circumstances was admittedly very weak.

Well, there really wasn't any way to get around it — not unless he was just not going to tell Aldous what he'd been doing, but given the intensity of his brother's anger, that didn't really seem like the best plan. Shifting his gaze awkwardly down to his lap, Ben mumbled, "There's, uh, this girl —"

  

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“You stole the identity of a Ministry official to root around in law enforcement files!” he shot back in utter disbelief, no longer trying to keep his volume down. “What part of that wasn’t illegal?!”

And a girl, of course there was a girl—Ellory Pendergast had been a girl, and that mess had almost seen the Crouch family blackballed from society (If anyone had that power, it was Olivia Pendergast’s daughter), not to mention the ramifications it might have had for Aldous and Roman had Lucius Lestrange become involved. Who was it this time—the new Minister’s wife?!

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— Aldous walks with a cane and pronounced limp as the result of a splinching accident. —

— graphics by lady ❤ —

Well, when you put it like that.

Ben wasn't sure what to say for himself, and what he'd said so far clearly hadn't helped his case at all. For a moment he was simply agape, not sure where to go from here or how to even begin to respond to his brother's accusations.

"But I think she's in trouble," he eventually blurted. "Like — serious trouble." He almost added and I think I might be in trouble, too, but stopped himself from doing so at the last moment. He was chained to a table in a Ministry interrogation room; there was no longer any might where the latter sentiment was concerned. Ben was in trouble, and he was just beginning to suspect that the potential fallout from Mr. Scrimgeour, if it existed at all, might be the least of his worries.

  

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She was in trouble. Of course, Aldous reasoned, that meant she had to be pregnant. He fell silent for several long moments as he tried to digest this latest information—information that still did not shed any light on what had actually transpired here today?

“Were you the one to place her in trouble?” he asked quietly. Merlin’s beard, if this was Ellory Pendergast he would castrate his brother, family line be damned.

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— Aldous walks with a cane and pronounced limp as the result of a splinching accident. —

— graphics by lady ❤ —

The silence was ominous, but at least Aldous seemed inclined to listen to him now. That was progress, wasn't it? Still, Ben wasn't sure how to respond to his question. He didn't know for sure that Miss Scrimgeour was in trouble, much less the exact nature of the trouble she was in. She'd made it all sound very dire in her last letter, but there was a chance that she was perfectly safe and sound and undergoing whatever the Scrimgeour variant of a quick trip to Canada was, in which case Aldous would probably consider the matter none of their business. Either way, he supposed it was partly his fault, but he was reluctant to take the full blame for the matter. It wasn't as though he had any control over what rumors people started, and most of them had been unfounded.

"I, er — no," he decided. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, which made the chain attached to his wrist clink rather obnoxiously. "There were — uhm, rumors, about us, but it wasn't — nothing happened," he insisted. Aldous would likely not consider Ireland nothing, but Ben wasn't trying to dig himself into any further holes by admitting to more than he needed to. "But I guess she's not on the best of terms with her father, and he thought — uhm, I don't know," he continued rather evasively.

He would feel a bit more confident going forward with this line of reasoning if he'd actually been able to see the employment record and verify whether Art's theory about Mr. Scrimgeour being fired rather than retiring was accurate, but c'est la vie.

"She seemed really worried about it," he continued doggedly. "And now she's just — gone."

  

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Reuben’s definition of ‘nothing’ had never exactly lined up with what the dictionary might elect, but even Aldous knew that his brother would not class ‘penetrative sex’ as nothing. That, at least, was a modest reassurance. The ‘trouble’ he announced, though, was so dramatically different than that which Aldous had been expecting that the wizard finally moved to sit down in the chair opposite his brother’s own.

“Start at the beginning,” he directed calmly, setting his cane to rest against the table. “Who is missing—and how in Merlin’s name did that lead you here?”

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   Bella Scrimgeour

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— Aldous walks with a cane and pronounced limp as the result of a splinching accident. —

— graphics by lady ❤ —

"Miss Scrimgeour," Ben explained, obvious relief in his tone as Aldous took a seat. Starting at the beginning was a relatively small price to pay for finally being able to get his story out, and Ben was convinced that once Aldous had heard it, he would be inclined to look at least a little more charitably on the polyjuice escapade of the day before. He had no illusions that Aldous was ready to forgive him, but — well, it wasn't like he'd come in here intending to sell state secrets to the French, or something. He honestly had been trying to figure out what had happened to Miss Scrimgeour — and help save his own neck in the process, of course.

"She said her father was going to come and visit her on the twenty-second, and she was going to write me afterwards and tell me how it went, because she was really worried about it. She doesn't live with him," Ben explained. He couldn't remember who she did live with, particularly since he'd never made any midnight windowsill visits to her house like he had with Ellory Pendergast, but that seemed a minor detail at present. "And he sent me some letters that were — I don't know." Threatening wasn't exactly the right word for it, because they were polite, despite the somewhat troublesome undertones, but he wasn't sure how to convey that to Aldous. "And Art said he used to be an auror and he might've gotten — uh, you know, asked to resign," Ben continued, not quite willing to put any direct accusations into words when he had no proof — despite the fact that he was all but accusing the man of murder where his daughter was concerned.

"And I thought if I could figure out why he got — er, ah, why he quit — maybe I could figure out what happened to her," he explained. And what he might have in mind for me, next. "She hasn't responded to my letter and it's been days."

It had, in fact, been one day; he didn't imagine he would have gotten her reply had it been sent after he'd been locked up in the holding cell. That being said, he didn't want to make it seem as though he had jumped the gun on this whole thing, particularly if Aldous didn't know about any potential dark history Argus Scrimgeour might have had in the Ministry.

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   Bella Scrimgeour

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“Miss Araminta Scrimgeour?” Aldous asked, confused. He hadn’t been aware that the two were acquainted, and having less than nothing to do with Witch Weekly, had no idea another Miss Scrimgeour had been linked to his brother. “And really, Reuben, you should know better than to put much stock in what Arthur Pettigrew has to say!”

Aldous sighed. This had gone so far in a direction he had not expected that it felt as though his head was spinning. November would never have taken him in such a dramatic direction, of that Aldous was sure!

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— Aldous walks with a cane and pronounced limp as the result of a splinching accident. —

— graphics by lady ❤ —

Araminta Scrimgeour? Who the hell was that? Ben shook his head, but stumbled as he tried to explain himself. "No, uh — Miss..." Bella, she signed her letters Bella. But was Bella her actual first name, or a nickname? Using a nickname wouldn't be a mark in his favor, and he thought that was probably what it was, but he didn't know what it was short for. "Isabelle Scrimgeour?" he guessed. "I don't know. Her name isn't — whatever you said."

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That, at least, made a bit more sense. He had encountered the other Miss Scrimgeour at events in the past, and did not think her to be at all the sort to befriend his brother. Either brother—for good young, unmarried ladies were seldom friends with gentlemen.

“No matter. As misguided as I think your actions to be,” Aldous allowed with some difficulty, “I can only commend the motivations behind them. Before either of us can do anything for your Miss Scrimgeour however, there is the matter of your arrest and likely trial. I hope that you do not wish to actually go to Azkaban, though past experience has taught me to make no assumptions of you.”

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   Reuben Crouch

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— Aldous walks with a cane and pronounced limp as the result of a splinching accident. —

— graphics by lady ❤ —

Another wave of relief. Ben had known Aldous wouldn't actually let him go to jail, even if the situation had seemed rather dicey during the first half of their conversation. "No, no," he insisted, shaking his head vehemently. He wasn't sure there was anything he had ever wanted less in his life than to gain any first hand experience of Azkaban. Art hadn't exactly described it as a thrilling joy ride, from his brief stay there several years ago.

"Just tell me what to do," he said, earnestly. Independent though he had always been, he was aware that he had gotten himself in way over his head, between the uncertain fate of Miss Scrimgeour, whatever dark past her father had, the ominous letters he'd received, and now the not insignificant matter of his arrest. He didn't want to make things worse, and was prepared to do anything (almost anything) Aldous requested of him in order to see his way clear to the other side of this.

  

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A part of him had wanted to let his brother go to Azkaban. Even with his motivations, Aldous could not help but think that Reuben was in dire need of some sort of reality check, something to ground him back in the land of the sane. But Reuben was still his brother, and family was important.

“It seems I am always presenting you with ultimatums,” Aldous said wryly, though his smile did not entirely reach his eyes. “You’re very fortunate, Reuben—I’ve…negotiated a way out of this mess for you.”

Before seeing his brother but after finding out what the idiot had done, Aldous had, of course, reassured the arresting auror that Reuben was a prankster—an idiot, but a prankster. He had not been malicious, naught but common decency had been at risk, etc. A little pressure from above had seen the option fully materialize.

“If you make an Unbreakable Vow not to set foot in the Ministry of Magic under the guise of anyone else—nor to encourage or aid others in doing so—again, the matter will be dropped.”

Though he explained it without malice or chiding, Aldous’ eyes practically screamed that this was the last time Reuben could hope to see such a lenient offer. Under the circumstances, Aldous thought it best unsaid that he had put his own reputation on the line to secure it.

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— Aldous walks with a cane and pronounced limp as the result of a splinching accident. —

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