Constant vigilance

Alastor Moody. 45. Auror. Alcoholic.

[padfootmarauding]

A Little Death Around the Eyes || Sirius & Alastor

[padfootmarauding]

There are very few people Sirius Black can say he genuinely looks up to – and each and every one of them he would deny vehemently if asked. He’s supposed to be an enigma, supposed to be a man that stands alone, rejecting his family and his upbringing to be a man in his own right, without the name to weigh him down.

But if he’s learned nothing else in his time outside of Hogwarts, it’s that his upbringing taught him a lot about how to act, how to speak, and how to walk – he learned how to be an heir, but Sirius never learned how to be a man. His parents loved him for the symbol he was, for the extension of their name he promised them, and for his ability to walk with grace at the age of two – his parents loved him, but never thought to teach him how to grow.

As a sixteen year old misfit, freshly thrown from the house of his birth and the only role models for adulthood he’d ever known, Sirius found himself attached to various models of growing up – each and every one for reasons known only to him. James, Remus, Minerva McGonagall, Dorea and Charlus Potter, and, after graduation and a mere two minutes after he’d signed up to join the Order of the Phoenix, Alastor Moody.

Which was why, when Moody stalked up beside him at the entrance to the pub, Sirius couldn’t do much more than shrug, “Lost weight, or something,” he told Moody, with a grin that was more than half strained and less than a quarter genuine, “Been working it off lately.”

Moody’s already walking away though, and Sirius doesn’t dwell on the consequences of his choices any longer – Moody’s drinking, so he’s drinking with him. Sirius pushes through the door after him, taking a seat at the bar beside him.

“Been busy,” he asks Moody, tapping the bar for two of his usual, “We haven’t had a meeting in a while.”

[aurormoody]

There was comfort in the steady noise of the Leaky Cauldron. A false illusion of safety that he should know better than to trust, but that kept him grounded. His eyes scanned the crowd and room for anything suspicious, for a lingering costumer that stood out from the intoxicated masses. He found no apparent threats that required more than a steady level of attention and Black’s voice was bound to get lost in the noise. But there was no such thing as safety.

“The usual, Tom.” Only after he had ordered did Alastor bother to turn back to Sirius and made a mental note of the feebleness of his smile. The kid wasn’t looking too good, and his familiarity with the bartender likely meant that he had been spending more time there than what was commendable, but that didn’t particularly surprise him. It would have been far more suspicious if Sirius had seemed healthy or content, feigning a stability that no longer existed in the chaotic state the world around them had fallen into. It would lead him to question whether he had an ulterior motive or drive to keep a perfectly polished façade of normalcy.

“Well, that’s what you get for being the black sheep. Disowned doesn’t get you fat or lazy, Black. Welcome to the working class, lad.” There was no change in his usual pitch, nothing that indicated that the statement had been Moody’s own version of a joke. The truth was that he both pitied and admired Sirius Black. On one hand, the kid had willpower of the likes he had rarely seen to be able to leave that snake’s nest people had the indecency to call a family behind. Yet, Alastor could only imagine how the other man could have turned out if he had been born in any other family. Because to him, it was as if there was something about that name that stained the kid.

He brought the glass to his lips and spoke with it front of him, a precaution that would have seemed unnecessary to any other due to the noise of the bar, but that he couldn’t bring himself to neglect. “It’s my fault. It’s been a fucking shit-storm down at the department. Fires, dead muggles, those hooded freaks are having fun.” Disdain dripped from his every word, and he finally took a sip of the glass before laying it down on the counter. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

[hushed-lion]

Tattered Frames // Alastor & Mary

[hushed-lion]

The sudden yet light tap upon her hand created a mild panic inside of Mary. Part of her wondered Amycus was back to finish the job, and the other half of her knew there was nothing worse that could be done; besides, any sudden movements were out of the question. The beeping of the heart monitor sped up momentarily but eventually settled again, the gruff voice to her right was a familiar one that she knew would bring her now harm.

Alastor Moody.

With difficulty she shifted her head, an immediate ache beginning again but she endured all the same. Slowly she blinked at the familiar man, taking in his features and the charmed ID that was obvious to her but not the others. It was nice to be in the presence of friend again (silently she plead with Remus to depart and get some rest), but then again a lump of guilt rose steadily in her throat.

The guilt stemmed from various roots but the most prominent one was the fact that simply being near her could endanger others. Alastor was potentially in danger by being in the same room as her, the helpless patients were in danger as well if the Death Eaters sought her out again, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

That fact burned in the back of her throat, swelling emotions and raising her body temperature by a fraction. A shuddered breath was taken in, lungs pressing again shattered ribs for a few seconds before the carbon dioxide was expelled, though ill thoughts still remained.

Tough? Was she truly or was she simply… durable? For a while she simply blinked at him, the battered features of her caramel skin remaining neutral and giving no hint of the pain she was in. Undoubtedly Alastor had questions and Mary had answers, getting her to speak would prove to be the most difficult part.

Fragile fingers shifted, repeating the same tapping motion on the back of Moody’s hand to simply tell him thank you.

[aurormoody]

The feeble pressure of her fingers against his hand and the strange pace of her breathing alerted him that she wasn't simply awake, but councious. He wondered if she was thanking him and it almost made him feel a bit guilty. In any other occasion, Alastor would have tried not to look directly in her face, avoiding a display of frailty that always managed to make him feel uncomfortable. Yet he was there exactly because he needed to invade the memories where she had been at her weakest, to ask her about what she had seen and heard during her captivity. Compassion was secondary, it was an obstacle that could keep the girl from getting the justice she deserved.

Mary Macdonald was still there. He took some comfort and even pride in it, noticing how there was so much suffering in her eyes. Pain. She was suffering, but it was deeper than the animalistic physical one that afflicted those who had lost the ability to be hurt in any other way. They had taken something, but they had failed to rob her of the most important thing. For all their brutality and the girl’s seemingly meek nature, they hadn’t been able to destroy her humanity. Perhaps they thought it better to have someone walk around broken rather than completely destroyed, someone that could still suffer so deeply. But they knew nothing. Mary Macdonald was still there.

“Start at the beginning. The fires.” His voice sounded as rough and blunt as usual, but he made sure his eyes didn’t stray from her face for a second. “Everything you can remember, as ordinary as it sounds…”

[withoutknock]

[aweasleywizard]

Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody

[hushed-lion]

Tattered Frames // Alastor & Mary

There it was again, that irritating ringing; or was it more like a buzzing?

The noise was infinitesimal at best, but Mary still heard it each and every time her eyes struggled open and her consciousness surfaced. There was beeping to be heard as well, though she didn’t notice it accelerated every time she woke: a heart monitor. In truth, Mary didn’t know where she was at all. The witch remembered the past week up until Remus found her inches from death on the sidewalk. She remembered screaming at him an hoarse voice not to touch her, and then nothing. 

If her eyes would stay open for more than a moment, she would recognize the alabaster walls of a hospital room. She would take in the smell of various chemicals and notice the IV in her arm, the stitches littering her body and the recently removed tube from her throat.

When her mind did surface from the deep and thick fog swirling within her body, Mary could hear the whisper people as they moved around the room, though no voices were familiar. She could have sworn she heard the irritated voice of her mother, but she wasn’t sure. The phrase “lucky to be alive" was heard often and if Mary was able to do anything other than lay there, she would have scoffed.

She wasn’t lucky, she was damned.

Death was in her immediate grip but somehow she’d slipped through the cracks. The majority of her still wanted that peace that came with death, only a fraction of herself knew that the pain had to be endured.

Now she blinked, once, then twice; her eyes opening for the first time in hours, squinting as they took in the unfamiliar surroundings with caution.

[aurormoody]

Alastor was used to the feeling of standing out in a crowd. His height and unfriendly expression made him easily recognizable in any environment. But in the muggle hospital, pale and sickly in its entirety, punctuated only by faded colors that painted a false and ineffective picture of happiness to comfort the patients in their pain, he couldn’t be missed.

The enchantment in his identification soon allowed them to let him pass, but suspicious looks followed him all the way across the room he was told MacDonald was in. He wondered if the strong smell in the air was an attempt to cover up the persistent stench of death and disease that always lingered in that sort of place. If it was, it failed miserably. Disinfectant and foul smelling soup only exacerbated the aura of rottenness the whole place seemed to exhale.

He spotted Mary Macdonald’s frail body, lying on the hospital bed even before he entered the room. There was a tube attacked to her hand, one of those awful muggle cures that seemed as invasive as the torture itself. She hardly even looked conscious, but nothing in her expression suggested peacefulness and it would have been foolish to expect otherwise. They would never have allowed her to escape without making sure that she was permanently damaged somehow, without taking what they wanted from her.

He sat in a chair near the bed, waiting for her to regain consciousness and avoiding looking directly at her face, as if there was something indecorous about seeing someone so vulnerable. She blinked, seemingly awakening from her sleep, and Alastor remained silent for a while, unsure of what to say. Instead, he found himself reaching for her hand, tapping it instead of holding it in his own in an attempt of reassurance.

“You’re a though one MacDonald.” He would have to make her relieve those memories, to fumble around in her head for clues about what had happened, but it was what it took to see those bastards rot in Azkaban, it had to be done.

[aurormoody]

Dead End || Bellatrix and Alastor

The mere sight of the bleak manor made him cringe. Alastor could never quite understand the honor in marrying within one’s own family for several generations to preserve an abstract ideal, and the building in front of him was the material representation of all of those beliefs. It had always struck him as a phenomenally idiotic, but it was when the deaths started that the hatred within him began to fester.

At first, there was the occasional attack to a muggleborn reported in the prophet , hateful pranks in the halls of Hogwarts and delusional speeches about the “sacred twenty-eight” made by kids with an inflated sense of importance. Then the pranks got worst, the attacks became more frequent, and by the time he became an auror, there had been a river of blood spilled due to of a useless endeavor to maintain something that had never existed in the first place.

He knocked on the door, tightening the grip on his wand. Of course, murdering an auror would have been an extremely difficult unwise thing to do, particularly when there were people who knew where he was. But the whole place made him feel uneasy, as if the walls irradiated madness and decay.

A missing order member, muggles burned to a crisp and not a single clue. When he realized examining mutilated remains and destroyed establishments would get him nowhere, the name Bellatrix Black had been the first to cross his mind. The woman had just the right amount of fanatic enthusiasm and barely contained madness to have heard of the crimes from something other than the morning edition of The Daily Prophet.

The front door opened slightly, and he cleared his throat before announcing himself to what he figured to be a frightened house elf. “Good Afternoon. Looking for Bellatrix Bl… Lestrange.”

[the-lovely-carrow-deactivated20]

And the Saints Shall be Hung from the Highest Branches || Alecto & Alastor

[the-lovely-carrow-deactivated20]

As quickly as the cigarette had been offered, it vanished from sight, tucked back into her robes. She didn’t allow her annoyance to show in her features, but in her mind, the small fraction of her brain that had some sense was turning, trying to think of a way to win the man over. He was wary of her, unlike most men who fell head over heels into their grave at the sight of a young, defenseless girl. This man was smart, a king of rats. But even the wittiest little creature couldn’t escape an inferno that crawled into all their secret nooks, and corners left untouched by man and feline alike. Fire would consume everything in it’s path, without mercy, without an ounce of regret. Let the man be weary, it mattered not. By the end of the night, he would be hung up like a pig, his blood left to drip down into the streets.

”What is being sane, mister?” Innocent eyes blinked up at him, lips pursing.”Sanity is being stuffed and tied into corsets that have left permanent scars on my body. Sanity is plastering a smile on my face as suitors twice my age whisper dirty things in my ear. I ran away from sanity, mister. And if hiding in the dark and making offers to men who look like they could use a bit of company is insane, so be it.”

His offer to go to St.Mungo’s was met with a nod, not a single hesitation. Little rats had a nose for hesitation, and if she had even let a fraction of a second pass before replying, her cover would be blown. She beamed, tilting her chin up so she could see him, the way a young child looked up to their father.”Yes, sir. You lead the way.”

They wouldn’t even get to the next block, before the little rat was caught in her trap.

[aurormoody]

Only someone completely demented would offer their company to an older, mean looking stranger when people where being slaughtered every day. She could be just as harmless as she claimed, turned careless due to the years of forced captivity and abuse at the hands of her family. Yet, it was in his nature to distrust, and he was rarely misled by his own instinct. How could a girl so aware of the bleakness of her own situation, harmed by everyone who was meant to care for her, trust a stranger in the dark? That expression, so different from the childlike one she now exhibited wouldn’t leave his mind.

Lead the way. There was a breach in his otherwise impassive expression, a furrowing of his brows that gave away his reluctance. Having his back turned to people was not something he was comfortable with. It was something discouraged in the training, carved into the minds of young aurors only to be forgotten a few years later, when over-confidence got the best of them. But ordinary aurors hadn’t seen members of their family perish because of the same foolish mistakes. Alastor did. It was not suspecting that someone would be cowardly enough to attack them by the back that had gotten his parents killed.

“You go ahead. The passage to muggle London in the leaky Cauldron is at the end of the street. Reckon you shouldn’t have too many trouble finding it. I prefer to stay behind you and check for any possible threats. Can’t be too careful these days.”

[the-lovely-carrow-deactivated20]

And the Saints Shall be Hung from the Highest Branches || Alecto & Alastor

[the-lovely-carrow-deactivated20]

She recognized him, not by his features, which were put on display for Alecto to observe as he stood under the street light in front of her patch of shadow, but by his voice. The vocal cords that lay deep in the man’s throat ran down to his very soul, strings that knitted together to form the very fibers of his being. His was instantly recognizable; one could hide minor things, accents and lisps alike, but one couldn’t hide the sweet note of experience. He had seen more than Alecto had yet to see in her twenty-two years, had felt more blood on his hands than she could fantasize. The beast inside her was intrigued, and wanted to rip out his vocal cords and gain access to the deepest caverns of his soul.

”I couldn’t breathe. Trapped between two walls, one my father, pushing me into a suitor who knows not that not even the rarest of jewels can buy my love.” To create a proper lie, one always needed to inject some seed of truth. She had been tossed around, from suitor to suitor who offered lavish gifts and drunken promises in the hopes of winning her. As though she was a war prize, waiting for a knight in shining armor to pick her up and save her. The words flowed smoothly, injecting sadness into her words in an attempt to conjure sincerity.

”I just kept running, until my legs gave out. My father is long gone, any man who wants me as property is too far away to claim me as their own. My bloodied elbows and mangled limbs are a small price to pay for freedom. I’m lingering because I can linger, inhaling smoke into my lungs because I can. I am free.” The beast scratched at her skin, begging her to hex the man and let the festivities begin. Logic won over, calming the beast. We will have his blood on our hands, but when he is on his dying breath, he will realize what a fool he was for believing a pretty girl with bloodied clothes.

A hand slithered out of the shadows, a cigarette held delicately between her finger as her other hand appeared, holding out a lighter. ”Care to sin with me tonight, stranger? Enjoy new found freedom from the chains of society that have knocked us to our knees and kept us there until we found the strength to lift the weight of expectations? We are much more alike than you believe, for we are both out alone, defenseless, in a world full of lunatics, are we not?”

[aurormoody]

One of those. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time that a girl would find herself that position. There were plenty of pureblood girls who were never allowed to become more than useless birds trapped in cages for the amusement of others. By the time they reached adulthood, they had grown to see the war as an opportunity for their families to thrive, unable to see that their lives would be endless parades of frivolity and loneliness. He had come across many of her kind when questioning possible death eaters, and the initial sympathy had long disappeared to be replaced by the same contempt he felt towards any other pureblood supremacist.

But this one spoke of it with a thoughtfulness and sorrow that only the ones who were painfully aware of their situation ever allowed themselves to reveal, and if it wasn’t for the twisted smirk that had been plastered across her face a few moments before, he would have felt sorry for her. And what was better decoy than a damsel in distress?

Alastor had been patrolling the street for almost an hour, and he hadn’t spotted anyone lurking besides the red headed girl, but that hardly meant that she wasn’t a threat. Her words were strangely haunting, hardly fitting of the picture of the gullible young lady she had painted. There was something rotten in there, but it was hidden under many veils.

“I’ll pass. I’ve made peace with my societal expectations and I wouldn’t call myself defenseless.” And I don’t know if I would call you that either. “Your freedom won’t do you much good if you use it to make dubious propositions to strangers in dark corners. It's not a very sane thing to do."

Nodding towards the blood stains in her robes, still uncertain to whom they belonged, he felt himself tighten the grip on his wand and signal the path in front of him. “We should get you to St. Mungus. That doesn’t look good…”

[aurormoody]

Anon Monday

[padfootmarauding]

A Little Death Around the Eyes || Sirius & Alastor

The interesting thing about slowly sinking into alcoholism, is that acceptance of the fact comes slow. It creeps into the mind with an insidious and torturous insistence – something like a friend who won’t stop pestering about bad habits, won’t just let it go. Every drink becomes a moment of reflection, a moment of wondering if this is, truly, the only drink of the evening, or if it’s the only drink that’ll be remembered.

Like Christ contemplating the crucifixion in the Garden of Gethsemane, the simple act of drinking – once a refuge from the horrors of a life lived in war – becomes a contemplation of the act of agreeing to his own death. A crucifixion by liquor is no less pretty a sight than by the cross.

These are the thoughts that overwhelm Sirius Black, standing in front of the Leaky Cauldron, wondering if throwing himself back to the mercy of the bottle is the best decision to make, so soon after spending three days on the floor of some unknown bar. He is not an alcoholic – he is not the type of man to admit to his addictions, to his weaknesses for giving into the temptations that life throws his way.

But there is something to be said for that initial drink, that first step over the edge of the cliff – that stomach dropping half fall into the abyss that he isn’t sure there even is a bottom to – which begs the question if there even is a bottom for a man like him.

And so he stands, teetering on the precipice that never bothered him before, hesitating on the edge of a drop he’d leapt head first over each and every time before. He wonders if throwing himself into a drink, when the foul, stale taste of the cheap whiskey he’d drowned himself in for three days still sits on the back of his tongue, is succumbing to a demon that he’s battled for too long. He wonders if stepping through the doors that had always welcomed him before is signing the death warrant on his free will.

Sirius is so caught up in his thoughts that he almost misses the presence at his side. He glances over, and raises an eyebrow, refusing to show weakness so soon after being brought low (and yet still not at the bottom – how many times does he have to almost die, in how many ways must he throw himself into life without thought to his well-being and his friends, before he slams into the rocks that must be waiting at the bottom of that abyss?).

“Headed in?” he asks, hardly knowing if he’ll follow or part ways.

That’s the problem with crossroads, he supposes, never knowing which way they lead, never knowing which turn is the right one, never knowing if taking the right is turning his back on his friends to the left, or if headed to the left is leaving his chosen family alone in the right.

Addictive personalities are never all that fond of the big picture choices. 

[aurormoody]

For the most part, drinking didn’t make him forget. There had been some notable exceptions, but mostly, the alcohol made it all clearer. It wiped out all the traces of pain and excessive paranoia so he could concentrate on what was really important. He knew it was bound to collect one day, to take a toll on his health and sanity. He knew it. But it was a choice he had made a long time ago, and it separated him from any of the drunks sulking in the corners of that very same establishment. Moody wasn’t drinking to escape, he was drinking to keep himself in place, to allow a small release that would keep him from slipping away when he was needed. And, well, maybe sometimes he liked to reward himself for managing not to hex Bartemious Crouch into a pig.

That night, he walked away from the Longbottoms and their matching dimples and a pile of paperwork that needed to be turned in far sooner than he cared to, in the direction of the familiar building, already anticipating the warm liquid burning his throat. His hands were shaking, and he gripped his wand to make sure his reflexes were intact, that he was vigilant enough to deal with any possible complications.

When he spotted the Black kid eyeing the sign from a few steps away, he felt the urge to leave and pour himself a glass of firewhisky at home. Except he knew it wouldn’t be one glass, or two, or five…Without the noise to keep him grounded, he would drink himself into an unpleasant numbness that rendered him melancholic and vulnerable.

Clearing his throat before walking to the door, he pretended not to notice Sirius until he spoke. “Reckon I wouldn’t be standing out here if I wasn’t. Can’t say I’m not surprised to see you here without your friends. You look different. Like you lost a limb or something.” He didn’t spend too much time dwelling on the meaning of the words, already opening the door to the pub. “Well, are you coming in?”

[the-lovely-carrow-deactivated20]

And the Saints Shall be Hung from the Highest Branches || Alecto & Alastor

The beast had finally been released from her chains. After weeks of trying to slide dresses made of the finest materials over her shackles, and entertaining potential suitors from behind steel bars, she was finally free. Her silk skirts and chiffon tops had been replaced with bloodied robes, her once styled to perfection hair, now falling wildly across her face, the flames licking away the ice that had manifested on her skin. She walked slowly, leisurely, she had all the time in the world.

She had let her body lead the way down the streets, the creature inside of her eager for the first kill of the night. She was a bloodhound, stuck in a world full of a million scents. She could tell, when she got up close to a victim, what they were. Mudbloods always smelled the sweetest, as though the pure blood that ran through their veins was reaching up through the skin, shrieking at her to release the ruby liquid from an unworthy host. And so she had made her way through the streets, making quick work of anyone who crossed her path. Her head count was ten, but the night was still young.

After all, she had a record to beat. Last time she had gone hunting, she had caught twenty rats.

She grew tired of wandering, realizing in a fraction of a moment when her mind had overpowered her primal instinct to destroy, that she shouldn’t be the one going to the rats. They would come to her, they always did. She was a flame, bright and boasting it’s warmth off to all the vermin that scurried across the streets. They were drawn to the light, and their mesmerized minds brought them close enough to the flame, that it was too late for them to outrun the raging forest fire that was Alecto Carrow. She would destroy them, leaving nothing but a corpse and the scent of burning flesh.

A cigarette was extracted from her robe, slim, death-like fingers, bringing it to ruby-stained lips as she let the smoke fill her lungs. She watched people scurry past, snapping her jagged jaws at whoever passed and chuckling as they all but sprinted away.

Her cigarette was on it’s dying breath as she finally heard a particular set of footsteps, the embers trying frantically to find something, anything, to set them ablaze again. She didn’t look at the figure, simply let out a puff of smoke and watched as it vanished into the night air, lips curling into a grin.

”I was starting wonder if somebody would catch me.”

[aurormoody]

These days, most people outside the order who knew him to be an auror would stare at Moody with pleading looks on their faces, as if he was their very last chance of assuring their safety. They ended up walking away disappointed when he wasn’t able to offer them any kind words of comfort, to tell them that it would all turn out fine and that the pureblood supremacist would soon be in Azkaban were they belonged. Alice always managed to reassure them with her sweet face and kind words, but the sight of the broken and unpleasant man that he was only seemed to frighten them further. Of course, some were different. There were those who would mumble insults under their breaths, turning their eyes to the floor when he inquired about what they had said. As if the only people that protected them from what was out there were to be resented for their troubles.

Patrolling was no longer a dull thing. It was rare for there to be a night that didn’t end with muggles, or muggleborns, or “blood-traitors” or any other human being that a lunatic had deemed unworthy to live, strung from a tree with their guts on display.

Piles of burnt bodies plagued his mind, making their way into the corner of his head that all the innocents who had lived too little called a home. He went over the names over and over again, taking comfort in what made have distraught others. Men who were meant to seek justice for those who could not defend themselves were not allowed the luxury of forgetting the gruesome details.

His gaze was drawn by a cloud of smoke coming from a dark corner. Smoke. There were days were he felt like a fool trying to catch smoke. But it was all he knew how to do, and the only thing that could ever grant him any satisfaction.

A man walked past, glaring at him with thinly disguised contempt.  “Move along…” The hostility in his voice was enough for him to walk way, but he realized he had revealed his presence to the lurking smoker, and a female voice soon reached his ears.

At first, she looked young. He still couldn’t see much of her in the dim light, merely catching glimpses of messy hair and facial traits.  But the look on her face soon deformed her features in Alastor’s eyes. He saw the same corrosiveness he had spotted in a mad man who had sacrificed his own child, and the smug, cat-like grin made his stomach turn. “It’s late. Any particular reason to linger?”

[moviesmovesme-blog]

[aurormoody]

A Nocturnal Stroll || Alastor & Molly

[ilovemollsweasley-deactivated20]

Molly mustered up the best laugh she could. Even if Alastor hadn’t intentionally tried to make her laugh, he still managed to do so. She could tell she caught him off guard. 

When Molly and Alastor got to a corner, she noticed him stumble and lean up against the wall. She figured he wouldn’t want her to ask him about it, but her maternal instinct was much too strong to ignore what had just happened. “Are you okay?” she asked. She knew there was a good chance he might shrug her off, but she still felt the need to ask him anyways.

When Alastor said he would wait where he was standing, she nodded and walked into the store she needed to get the nappies from. She was grateful that he walked her to her destination. It was something that made her feel a lot safer.

[aurormoody]

“I’m fine. Hurry.” His voice sounded even harsher than usual, but there was no fluctuation of pitch that indicated any particular emotion, only hostility. Alastor turned his gaze to the house in front of him, one that, like so many other in Diagon Alley those days, seemed to have been abandoned by the owner. There was a comfort to the desolation, like the varnish that covered the danger that lurked in every corner was fading.

The quiet remained, interrupted by the faint echo of Molly’s voice inside of the building she had stepped into, the occasional stray cat and the unsettling mumbles that always came from Knockturn Alley. He still couldn’t believe he had kids putting themselves at risk everyday of their lives while the ministry still allowed the place to exist right under their nose.

 “Do take your time…” Alastor yelled into the inside of the building, soon returning his attention to the dark streets.  “Arthur’s gonna think you ran away or some shite…”

[aurormoody]

A Nocturnal Stroll || Alastor & Molly

[ilovemollsweasley-deactivated20]

Molly couldn’t help but smile at how serious Alastor was. You could always rely on Alastor being the one to talk sense into someone. It gave Molly a sense of relief because it was so dangerous to be out at this time at night, with how bad the war was getting. “Yeah, I think it is,” she said as she forced a laugh. She realized how forced the laugh was, but despite feeling relieved that it was only Alastor following her, she was still scared out of her mind.

"Constant vigilance, right?" she said as she smiled to herself, knowing perfectly well that Alastor couldn’t see it. She had heard him say it so many times that she often found herself saying as a joke to people who knew him.

"Yeah, you get good at finding places that do," Molly said as she walked along with Alastor. Having three kids older kids, she found that she knew all the tricks that came with having them.

[aurormoody]

Alastor nodded at the words, surprised to hear them coming out of Molly’s mouth. It was something he had first been told during his auror training. An old mantra, casually mentioned in one of the books he had been forced to read that had resonated with him for some strange reason. Constant vigilance. “Right. You’re a sharp woman, follow your own advice.”

They reached a badly lit corner with a building he wasn’t familiar with, and Alastor leaned against the wall to wait for Molly. For a brief moment, he felt an unusual weight in his legs dragging him down. In anyone else, the stumble might have seemed like a distraction, but not in Alastor Moody.  His face turned even more sullen than usual, trying to use his hostility to keep Molly from asking anything about his drinking. For Moody, drinking was what allowed him to be alert. If he remained sober for too long, his mind would wander through bloody scenarios with people who should never have died, in minor details that struck him as the beginning of nightmares. Alcohol was what kept him afloat, and he was in no mood to be lectured about it.

“I’ll be right here.” He nodded towards the woman, concentrating in the silence that filled the street. Yet, he found himself resenting the quiet, as if the universe was luring him into a false sense of security.

[aurormoody]

What do you want to do for the rest of your life?

I’m an auror. Always have been and always will be. Being an auror doesn’t mean working for the ministry, though. If things keep going at this rate, I might as well be a glorified cleaning man one of these days… I’ll never stop protecting people. Merlin knows I’m disaster at everything else…

[aurormoody]

What's your favorite color?

A pale shade of nosy git… Do I look like I dwell on that sort of thing? Black. Robert’s hair was black.

[aurormoody]

Do you have any favorite Order Members?

Can’t afford to pick favorites. Most of them will be dead when the war is done, anyway. It would be foolish to get attached.

Plenty of good ones in the bunch. Would have to go with the Longbottoms, though. Bloody good aurors, bound to become great ones.