avenger

alastor moody A L I V E with no intentions of changing that

[markedmanmoody]

♡ - flowers

Hisfirst taste of failure came with the overwhelming scent of decayingflora and sharp fertilizer that seemed to permeate everything withinthe greenhouse where Herbology lessons were held.

It wassuch a simple lesson. One of the earliest plants the tiny first years(all disproportionate limbs and green and black robes and awkwardsilences and pointed glances) had been tasked with caring for was astrange little flower the professor merely called Moly. A dark stemand pale petals made the flower easy to distinguish from every otherplant around it, and each and every one of the children were given asproutling to care for. The task was so simple Alastor had snortedinternally and barely refrained from rolling his eyes– among theendless stacks of books his parents and his grandfather kept, therehad been more than enough tombs his greedy hands and quick eyes hadlusted over, and his family was always quick to encourage aninquiring mind. Thus he had read about herbalism, about usingchamomile mixed with John’s wort to brew potions to put one to sleepand calm victims of of mental shock, feverfew for headaches andunpleasant side effects of common colds, monkshod in small doses toinduce vomiting and larger doses to kill, and–

And ittook him approximately six days to kill his sproutling.

To sayAlastor had been floored had been an understatement. He had fastestablished himself among those of his house and those of his year asa growing force of nature, mastering charms and transfiguration witha sort of ease that was almost unnatural, and appearing all but boredwith defense against the darkarts as if he would feel at ease getting up and adding to theirlectures at any point. The boy with his nose in a book so often hemight as well have been an eagle but with a particular fiercenesswith his wand that echoed the loudest roars of a lion failing atkeeping a simple floweralive? Inconceivable– and yet ripe for ridicule. The professor hadbeen quick to supply him with a new sproutling and attempt to tutorhim through the process, but it was too little, too late to stop hischeeks running red when he heard his classmates snickering at hisfutile efforts.

Herbologycontinued to be the subject he would always struggle with through hisyears of schooling, no amount of additional books and time spentstudying and being tutored ever being quite enough to make him feelsecure in the skill he knew he needed to pull top marks in if he everintended to be an Auror. It was during his fifth year, one eveningwhen exhaustion and frustration were taking hold and he’d alreadybeen in one fist-fight that semester and couldn’t risk another, withdark eyes staring blankly at the shelf of books ahead of him in thelibrary, he vaguely remembered a comment his father had made inpassing; something to do with healing, when his spell wasn’t quiteenough to fix his broken nose.

I guess some hands are meant tomend, and others are better suited for destroying.

[markedmanmoody]

no one ever told me that grief felt so like fear

[markedmanmoody]

♡ - hands

One of his first lessons from hisgrandfather was that the most valuable places to watch after yourtarget’s eyes were their hands.

Eyes looked, eyes glanced, eyes peekedand peered and glared and smiled and grimaced and shone and werehooded and were hidden; eyes could tell you all too much about what aperson might intend. Handsoften more told you what they did or would do;they reached and grasped, they hit and soothed, they flexed andbrushed and bruised and struck and held and squeezed and twitched andshivered and caressed and smashed and fondled and betrayed, betrayed,betrayed what couldhappen long before long or short or thick or slender fingers foundtheir way to their target of choice.

Moodyhad been taught to watch hands, and watch he did, watch he did as hewatched everything around him with the sense of vigilance a mortalcould only maintain. He was so busy, he often didn’t watch his ownhands, which betrayed intentions and stories of a different kind.

Hishands, which twitched toward his wand whenever Aisling decided itwould be great fun to creep up behind him while he was losing himselfto his thoughts.

Hishands, which were a twisted collection of tiny scars, the majority ofwhich existed thanks to his potions classes and later experiments.Poisons and antidotes came to him world’s easier than much of what hehad been sent to study, and yet too often the carefully sharpened tipof his blade would inevitably catch the delicate flesh of his fingerswhen his mind wandered to magical theory or the boundary between darkand light, cutting a quick, vicious wound and leaving a glowering redmark that would take its sweet time fading away.

Hisleft hand, the last three fingers of which had been gripped in themidst of a fight with a particularly stubborn wizard who had refusedsurrender. His body had twisted unnaturally with the spell thatstruck him, and more than his crumpling form, Moody remembers thesensation of the last three fingers trapped in his grip being rippedfrom their places, sending bolts of pain through his hand andwrist. Years later, he can’t close those fingers properly, and oftenhas to tuck those last few fingers in with his thumb in order to forma proper fist.

Hisright hand, the knuckles of which would be permanently dyed red andtwisting white with slow-to-heal scar tissue. The first time he hurtthem, he punched the brick facade of his home in frustration. Thefirst real time he used them, he had tackled a bully into the streetin the village he’d grown up near, where he never truly fit in forthe sense of ‘otherness’ that would always hang heavily over those ofmagic blood trying to fit in with their non-magic kind, where he hadhit the boy in the face with his tiny angry fist over and over untilsomeone had pulled him off. The last time he remembered using them,it was to barely escape a Death Eater– and it had been pure chanceon his part they were so close, that so much of the Proper duelingetiquette they’d been taught blinded them on how to truly fight, howto deal with a fist aimed squarely for their faces. His knucklessmashing into their solid mask had hurt like a mother fucker, but hadgiven him the split second he needed to escape.

One ofhis first lessons from his grandfather was that the most valuableplace to watch after your target’s eyes were their hands. Moodyreveled in the small advantage such a deeply borne habit offered him,without ever wondering what his own hands, twisted and worn at nearlythirty years of age, told about him.

[bevinget-archived-deactivated20]

Send me ♡ + a word, and I’ll write a headcanon.

[succintsilence]

the waves have a redder glow // alice & alastor

( @markedmanmoody )

Watching the paranoia grow in an environment that fostered nothing but would have been worse if she were not already accustomed to the feeling. Surviving a war had a deadening affect on the feeling of impending disaster. With the Nox Division incoming, and their silver-eyed woman identified, Alice felt calmer now than she remembered feeling in months. She had never fallen prey to the wild speculations about the ghost. Once you held a newly-murdered woman’s body in your arms and used her as a gruesome mannequin to stage your own suicide, you learned to turn your panic into something more productive.

Knowing that their shy spy was her cousin warmed her, but only to an extent. Alice did not know her cousin very well, whatever familiarity the two women adopted now.

It was that doubtful judgment that drove Alice to search out a more skeptical mind than hers. Moody had been her partner and sounding board for too long for her to not solicit his opinions now. Up until recently, their opinions regarding Port Montrose and its inhabitants had been shared–the Mud Club, Vivienne, and the Nox Division had changed too much, and Alice could not be sure what Moody thought any longer.

She found him making rounds, pretending as always that he was not watching his neighbors as closely as he was looking for intruders. Out of earshot of the rest and not close enough to the wards to attract attention if a certain silver-eyed woman were nearby, Alice fell into step beside him. The sound of the waves was overpowering for the first few moments, but proximity acclimated her ears. It would drown out any voice spoken in the right tone. She would have been surprised if Alastor had not chosen this route for that exact purpose. It seemed more prediction than coincidence that she’d found him here. He knew the risks she’d taken finding Arabella.

“She should stay in the village as much as possible. They accept her there.” The resident jam-maker visiting the craggy, haunted coast too often would draw attention to them. With more people arriving every day, Alice’s concern fell to keeping her friends safe–and her cousin.

[markedmanmoody]

Alice could not be sure of his thoughts any more than Moody could be sure of hers. It had been different, once, when she was a young Auror trying to secure a foothold in their department in the midst of war; they had even been of a similar mind for much of the early days of the Port, agreeing at strategy. Yet her recent actions had marked her as one of them, one of the kids who didn't seem to give a damn about his thoughts any longer and went out of their way both to spite him and put themselves in danger. Perhaps the sheer monotony of their chosen prison had finally driven the lot of them to madness, or perhaps they were simply tired of listening to the man who clearly had no idea what he was doing. Moody told himself he didn't give a damn any longer, and retreated further and further into his thoughts to keep his own counsel.

Which might have worked if he wasn't plagued by the same broken fragments of half-forgotten memories like tiny slivers of glass digging their way into his skin. Silver and metal beneath his finger tips; clenched hands and white knuckles; nox. His dreams consisted of little else, which, while it was a welcomed reprieve from re-examining every fight he'd been in and every dead body he'd discovered, brought with it its own fresh unsettling sense of anxious tension that left his heart racing and his head muddled.

The best way he could deal with the unknown and the increasingly weighted sense of wrongness was to move, and his tiny room felt even more claustrophobic that morning than it usually did. Thus, and it wouldn't be the first or last time he did, Moody had decided out of the blue that they could use an extra perimeter guard and had started his rounds. He alternated both between watching the outside world for the barest hint of a threat and turning a stern glare inwards, making sure his were staying put, making sure no one else would pick that morning to go running out alone into the woods like the lot of idiots they were.

He spotted her long before she spoke, but was petty enough to turn a cold shoulder and ignore her until she deigned to break the silence. Her voice made him bristle, especially that she was referencing her, the woman who might not be an obvious threat but had still taken it upon herself to spy on them, the woman she had told no one she would pursue. Moody did not tolerate being stalked, being spied on, and didn't care to examine how much of a hypocrite despising what he constantly did made him.

It was childish and petty to continue to ignore her, yet he made it a point to cover several more steps before answering. Even when he opened his mouth, he didn't bother to look Alice's way. “Oh? She doesn't want to watch us up close? Reckon she can keep better notes if she sits right in the fuckin' center a' the houses.”

[model-hommes]

Henrik Fallenius for MR magazine. PH: Greg Swales.

[theyarevance]

returning home // emmeline & alastor

There were blisters on their hands and blisters on their feet, every muscle seemed to ache from the miles of hiking and climbing, little fairy locks were forming in the long dark hair – a brush had not made it onto Emmeline’s quickly scribbled packing list two and a half weeks prior – and little cuts dotted the once smooth dark cheeks though they were hardly visible in the dim moonlight. Yet none of these things seemed to matter as Emmeline Vance felt the edges of Port Montrose’s wards tickle the hairs along their arms. The familiar mixture of magic pulling them home.

Home.

Funny how their unexpected time away had made Emmeline realize how much they valued the relative security of this newly reclaimed town. These were the thoughts that ran through Emmeline’s mind as they stood at the edge of the wards, toes wiggling anxiously inside their well worn boots. It was only now that they had returned that Emmeline wondered how their sudden departure may have effected those they had left behind and the apprehension as to what sort of welcome they would receive bubbled up.

It was the familiar magic within the wards that finally pulled Emmeline through the magical barrier and into the village. Remus’s magic was there, right alongside Alastor’s, and the juxtaposition of the two left Emmeline smiling as they turned away from the beachfront and up towards the cottages. Alastor Moody was the single thought in Emmeline’s mind as they followed the familiar and well worn path towards cottage number two.

There were no lights flickering in the windows – it was later than Emmeline had previously guessed – but there were very few locked doors in this town and it was easy enough for Emmeline to slip inside and pad across the rough floor to the small room she knew Alastor had claimed months ago.

With their want in hand – it would be unwise to wake the man with no means of defence – Emmeline whispered into the dark toward the lump sprawled on the floor below them.

“Pssst… Alastor wake up. I’m back.”

[markedmanmoody]

Sleep did not come easily to the tired man. It never had-- as a boy, he'd taken to reading late at night, eyes straining as he sought out any tiny advantage that might help him later in life. Ever since the war had reached a fever pitch, his tendency to stay up late into the night cozied up with a new sense of anxiety that woke him up every so often for the smallest fears; every time his cabin floor shifted the wrong way, or the wind blew especially hard, or the wards tugged at the tips of his fingers just right. Sleep for him was a careful balancing act between true rest and long periods of semi-wakefulness wherein he might listen and imagine what was going on around him, rousing whenever something happened to match up with his latest and wildest worries, only to  leave him cursing his paranoia and trying to relax once more-- or whatever approximated “relaxing” these days. The best cure for sleeplessness was sheer exhaustion, and every few days this and this alone claimed him for a few hours, leaving him no less than a tight ball curled up in his sleeping bag, but at least a tight ball who was getting a solid handful of hours for the night.

Sheer exhaustion so very late that night was what precluded him from noticing the intrusion on the wards he hadn't felt for too many weeks, signifying the return of one of their own who had vanished for reasons even their note hadn’t really spelled out for him. It would have been nice to be up, to be greeting them with a sharp rap of whatever was within reach across whatever of theirs he could hit, but as it was, their presence didn't even begin to register as a passing event until he felt the floor boards of his cabin creak, old wood no match for new footfalls. Even this wasn't enough to truly rouse him until he heard the tell-tale squeaking of his door hinges giving way, and by the time someone said his name, he was already moving, blind and instinctual as it most certainly.

His wand always lay just beside his bag, his trusted companion, and his fingers were around it, the point of it aimed toward the door well before he was sitting up and a good chunk of time before he managed to recognize the voice that he could barely hear past the sudden racing of his heart somewhere between his ears. Shit! The curse he had in mind melted over his tongue just before Moody could give it voice, and he shot a very bleary glare Emmeline's way, his hair a mess around his face and leaving him looking more rumpled than usual. “About goddamn time. Where the hell did you go?” He hissed into the dark, before reaching for the wall and kicking with one foot to free himself of his bag. The effort was fairly lopsided and he swore to help hide it. “Runnin' off without a bloody word-- you tryin' to make us all worry? This fun for you?”

[heir-disillusioned-blog]

Captain Oh Captain || Regulus and Moody

“Not you, Black.”

As Regulus turned his head, he saw his brother do the same, but unfortunately it was Regulus himself at which Moody’s glare was aimed. Regulus held back a sigh, fighting the urge to wistfully look back at the others while they left. 

This was why he tried to wake up earliest and leave first as well as to come back last in the dead of night. The lack of sleep such a schedule caused sometimes caught up with him, however, and that morning he’d slept until the cottage’s activity had woken him. 

As the last person stomped out of the cottage, Regulus couldn’t help look back just as the door closed. The thud left a heavy sinking in his gut. No Death Eater, defected or not, wanted to be left alone in a stone room with Alastor Moody. Regulus turned back to the other man who was already sitting, staring at him. Regulus chose a chair and returned the favor. 

After a moment of silence in which they both seethed and glared at one another, Regulus rose a brow. “Am I meant to guess what you want?” 

“Lemonade? Puppies?” Regulus leaned back lightly, feeling resigned, like talking to a wall. “A pony,” he said decisively as though he’d finally put his finger on it. “I’ll work on it.” 

The glare only deepened as though it could cut through him, and Regulus was just so tired. He had little reason to censor himself around these people anymore. It was driving him mad, really, and he found himself regressing at times to a glibness he hadn’t managed since he was a child.

[markedmanmoody]

More often than not recently, he woke to the sensation of warm skin giving beneath his clenched hands. Simple flesh did not fight him overly much, and the flexible veins and arteries beneath followed easily enough, but the strong muscles accustomed to constantly holding so much weight and the solid structure of the trachea took so much more effort. The joints in his hands hurt enough from how often he held tensed fists at his sides; he didn't need this to add to their damage. Yet day and day passed, a foggy, indistinct grey blur of day giving into night giving into day, and every single time he opened his eyes again he had to see one of them. More often than not, it was the younger of the two Blacks. Bastard Black, he'd taken to designating him in his mind, though the sheer animosity he held toward him wiped away any lingering suspicions he held for Black, The Older One, and made the distinction clear enough.

Moody didn't particularly want to subject himself to his insolent tongue, grown brave after so long without the punishment he rightly deserved, but the way he saw it, he didn't particularly have a choice. More and more often he saw the wild, vicious eyes of a trapped animal when he crushed his hands tight, and it was a lingering thought that slithered up from the mist that seemed to have seeped into his skull to greet him at odd times, whether or not he happened to be passing by their makeshift prison. As an Auror, building a profile of his targets had been expected; the more you knew about a threat, the better equipped you were to deal with it.

He needed to be better equipped. It was worth it even to tolerate Bastard Black without giving in to the need to break his jaw to arm himself.

And so he sat. And so he glared, the faint ghost of a sneer tugging at his scarred lips. The boy was under the very mistaken impression that just because they'd let him get by this long, he would be kept safe for much longer. Moody wished he could beat the idea out of his thick little skull, and felt his fingers twitch at the thought. All it would take was one shifting of the winds, one change of the tides, and the kids would eventually see how much they wasted on this lot and how much it cost them to do so. Until then, he would have to put up with the Bastard, and get whatever he could shake out of his skinny form.

“Pull a horse out your arse, an' we might all be impressed,” he intoned flatly, already quite done with his lip. “Your batshit buddy rotting in the shack. Who is she?”

[fumificates-blog]

and it keeps me beating (alastor)

@markedmanmoody

In a way, she always seemed to look forward to these lessons. Well, it wasn’t that complicated, she did, it’s just that Alastor was rather… grumpy. But he’d been eager, somewhat reluctantly, out of the effort, she thought, rather than the prospect. She had come to him, asking that he’d teach her about offensive magic. She was a Quidditch player, not a fighter— and that’s the point.

She wanted to be a fighter.

Because, hell, if she was going to participate in this damn war, then she’s gonna fight for it. Lucinda would not sit on the wayside. She had incited a fire, caused flames to grow, and she was determined to keep it alive. She was the smoke, the proof. 

This was the third one.

They had duties, of course, and ones that she attended to with vigour. But, in moments like these, when they lapsed, Alastor would teach her. And she took them seriously. With a similar kind of diligence that she had applied to her studies. Some things had been simple: Incarcerous, Stupefy, Flipendo, Confringo but some of the others, however, weren’t. It was even more difficult when she sparred with him. The last time she had duelled, before this, was in Hogwarts, under the supervision of the professors. Now, “Duelling Niceties” as he’d like to refer to them, didn’t matter. They shouldn’t. 

In a situation like where Vivianne Travers attacked them, they didn’t mean jackshit. 

She glanced behind her as she heard footsteps coming her way. Giving a small smile, polite, Lucinda spoke up. “So glad you could join me. Was thinking you weren’t going to make it.” Humour wasn’t a strong suite, but she couldn’t help it. It’d be easier if he weren’t so wound up all the time. She understood responsibility, and having to shoulder looking out for other people, but she didn’t put it on others. “What am I learning this time?” She asked, after a moment, her tone more serious.

[markedmanmoody]

Alastor had been unsure what to do with the Mud Club when the group of them arrived on their doorstep-- almost quite literally-- this ragged band of refugees fleeing the war as earnestly as all the rest of them. (The ragged band who wouldn't have had to flee had the ministry not fallen.) He'd had no time to address them, either, what with them bringing a new danger for him to fret over in the small hours of the morning. Thus, his worries over how they were going to feed so many mouths with so little food and resources to gather more, to say nothing of the issues of housing them and keeping them warm as the lingering cold of winter barely loosened its death grip from the shore, had been pushed to the sidelines for the time being as the Order debated what to do with her.

He would always push for the simplest, quickest, safest solution. The moral high ground no longer held any appeal for him.

Lucinda coming to him out of the blue-- and Moody had held his tongue and waited to hear what the kids said about her, as he hardly knew her name, let alone any reputation the young woman might carry with her-- brought him both a distraction, and a possible use for the new group of weary souls. They weren't fighters, but hell, the Order had been more pathetic than they presently were months and months ago, and he'd managed to turn the lot of them into something resembling soldiers, right? If he could do something with this lot, perhaps they'd regain some of the strength their losses had taken from them. It wouldn't be the same as before, but it would be something, and when too often it seemed like they had nothing at all and he felt the utter absence of those they'd lost as acutely as a broken and jagged tooth, Moody was willing to grasp blindly and desperately at something.

So he agreed to teach her. Six years. He'd had six years of grueling Auror training to fall back on when he was on the job, when he fought in the war. Now, Moody wasn't holding his breath for six weeks. What the hell could he teach them all in such a short amount of time?

She became his guinea pig as much as she became his standard; if he could make something of her, maybe he could make something of the rest of them. Thus, their lessons were short, as he sought to teach her the very bones of what she would need to know to survive. Winning wasn't the goal; getting away to live another day was. So he would teach her basic and effective spells, teach her how to fight dirty, teach her how to use distractions and create her own if she could. The lessons relied on her practicing on her own when he wasn't there, but he'd seen some middling progress to indicate she had been. (As he'd sworn he'd give up on her the second she got lazy.) In short, it was a start.

Today would be no different. “You would have waited,” came his very short faux-greeting, and it was half threat as much as it was an observation: I'm doing this to help you. We're on my time, not yours. Sometimes questions warranted a direct answer, but this one would not, and Alastor launched into it almost as if he hadn't heard hers. “Drop your wand,” he said, even as his slipped into his hand, the stretch of wood between the two metal bands resting comfortably on his forefinger.

“You've no wand, an' you're facing an opponent who still has his. What d'you do now?”

[markedmanmoody]

two sinking ships [] alastor & remus

[martyrmoony-blog]

Remus chafed beneath routine; Remus cherished routine. 

Routine had been a dirty word in the Order repertoire, once upon a midnight dreary. Certain aspects of Moody’s own training had surely been ingrained on the very genetic makeup of those who had endured it. Certain phrases or gestures had been used so many times that the greens had been soaked, simmered, stewed in them. They listened intently, they watched closely, they mocked mercilessly, albeit only well out of ear-shot of the growling beast whose terrifying bark was assuredly less dangerous than his bite. Moody’s influence was so absolute that Remus was half certain if any of them should manage to whelp a child, the poor thing’s first words would be “constant vigilance,” snarled when barely free of the womb. 

No tick or quirk of Moody’s had more of a grip over Remus (aside from his aforementioned purported catchphrase) than the jack-hammer drilling-in that routine lead to laziness and predictability; that laziness was nothing but an advantage to the enemy; and that predictability was nothing but an invitation to have your head delivered home to your kinfolk on a silver platter. For the rest of his likely short and miserable life, Remus would find himself smirking at the first hint of a thick Scottish drawl, and automatically pulling his shoulders up towards his ears in anticipation of a rap of sharp knuckles across the back of his head. 

Routine bred predictability, and predictability was (at best) a nuisance, and (at worst) a weakness of unfathomable proportions. Yet Alastor Moody, commander and captain and chieftain as he may be, fell into routine as comfortably as an old and well-worn jumper. Remus Lupin, forever striving as he were to set a shining beacon of an example to the denizens of the Port and beyond, tumbled sidelong with him, without so much as a hesitation. 

There was much comfort to be found in Alastor’s company, not that Remus would have believed it even six months before. Firstly, the young man was solitary half to a fault. Secondly, the older man seemed more apt to bite four fingers off at the knuckle in one chomp of sharp teeth and strong jaw than deign to shake a hand offered. Company was something that Remus– foolishly, or so he realized only now– assumed a man of Moody’s calibre would never need. Company and routine; that was two weaknesses, not that Remus was stupid enough to point them out without fear of leaving the conversation without his nose intact. No, Alastor Moody may have been quiet about his needs, but that hardly meant they didn’t exist. And Remus, worn and threadbare as he may have been, wanted nothing if not to stop Moody’s wild temper from skidding into another downswing. (To aim for happiness, or even some semblance of contentment, was far too much for even Remus’ delicate and tenuous optimism.) A cigarette and a spot of quiet conversation once a day, every day, like veritable clockwork, was hardly a creature comfort he could deny his commandant. 

That Moody’s presence was an unspeakable comfort to Remus in turn was beyond his realization, let alone recognition. 

But routine in earnest was too much to ask from the Port. It was the correct time of day, and the correct location in the small stretch of land they made their camp, and the worn steps beneath his arse as well as the unlit cigarette clutched between his fingers may have been so familiar they lulled him into a false sense of security; but when Moody offered him the small flame, he found himself quite unable to lift his hand and take the light. His mouth tasted of ash already– for the single comfort they both indulged in, the pair of them; the single comfort they dug their greedy fingers into and squeezed until it choked– hung stale and spoiled by as little as a nervous flick of green eyes up into Moody’s scarred face. 

“Greta found a piece of notepaper,” he declared, without warning nor preamble. Their conversations were forever in staccato: short, intense bursts of words, rarely minced and often able to stand on their own. “She told me a moment ago. Someone’s been watching the Port. Making notes. About you, about Greta, about the Longbottoms. No names, but they’ve been close enough to know about the garden and the shack and who’s in it. Careless enough to lose it, less they left it behind intending it to be found.” He exhaled a quiet breath that– despite every effort to remain as unflappable and calm as he’d let Greta assume he was– immediately betrayed a marrow-deep sense of panic. Who? Who is coming? How much fresh danger are we in now? “She found it in town. I checked the wards this morn– I check the wards four times a day, Moody, and they’ve never–” He gave his head a small shake, reigning himself in hand over iron fist, and forced the feeble thrumming of his racing heart to slow. “They’ve never so much as wavered. I’d’ve noticed. You’d’ve noticed. I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”

[markedmanmoody]

It was the uncharacteristic pause that left his fingers growing uncomfortably warm with the fire hovering between them that alerted him that something was wrong. (Not something new. Not already--) He held his breath, black eyes focused on the flame, willing his panic to remain at bay and his overactive imagination to give in to his exhaustion and be still for once, and in doing so somehow managed to make the moment stretch on long past what could be considered normal. One second became an hour, and time only caught up to him when Lupin began to speak at his side and when the very tips of his fingers began to blister from the heat.

Moody couldn't tell if it was the pain or the lad's clear discomfort that left him able to keep his head past a wave of dizziness his words evoked, but he was grateful for it either way; for the pain, which always provided something to focus on and center himself, whatever fresh ache was to be greeting him on any given day; and for that uncharacteristic note in Remus' voice. The lad was like a security blanket, well worn and torn and more threadbare and thin than he had any right to be for his young age, and security blanket's didn't waver, didn't wind themselves tight with worry. Their very existence was to do the opposite of this. He let his attention waver between this strange new development and the fire as he finally lit his cigarette and let his words wash over him like a wave, it forever being easier to let the wave break than to try to stand in its way.

They were being stalked.

He let the flame go all at once when he felt hot, horrible smoke claw its way down his throat like a particularly abusive lover, and shook his hand out to dispel some of the pain. Stalked. Stalked was the only word he could let himself use to describe it: someone was keeping tabs on them, someone who had somehow managed to avoid their capture despite their best efforts, and there was absolutely no way they could mean the rag-tag group of soldiers and refugees and prisoners anything but harm or else they would have revealed themselves by now. This was not a friend. This could not be a friend. He would not let himself hope this was somehow a friend; he would prepare for a fresh enemy, and this one he wouldn't allow to stay in their home and waste their resources like the rest he'd had no ower over. He was singularly tired of not doing anything at all to cut off the heads of the snakes that slithered in their midst, especially when it was only a matter of time before they were bit.

“They're not careless,” Alastor finally said slowly, after letting the word roll over his tongue with the smoke, with Stalked. “If they were careless, we would've felt them breach the wards--” he gave his head a shake, half clarifying for Remus, half clarifying for himself. Working these things aloud left him only half speaking to the man at his side and opened it up for both him and himself to interject in his stream of consciousness, and if this was at all a strange way of working through a new problem, he didn't want to hear it. “But we didn't, so either they're far better at this than any of us-- then we're real fucked, we all check those wards-- or else they might have help from someone in here. Just because the prisoners don't have wands doesn't mean they might not be able to-- to interfere-- anyway, not careless, not at all. They must have dropped it to lure us out.”

He took another drag and jerked his chin toward the invisible ward line that lay within their field of sight and yet patiently invisible, unless it was to be disturbed. “It's worked before. Got McKinnon runnin' out there just from seein' eyes.” Those strange eyes that left him tracing the second band of metal around his wand, the silver one, smooth, cold metal reminding him of something just beyond what his memories could reach. “That alone won't work anymore, so why not leave a note to get one of us out there? They can see past the wards but they can't break the-- yet. Easiest way to weaken us is to get us to go beyond them, preferably alone.”

[markedmanmoody]

red sun rises like an early warning [] alastor & marlene

[misfitmarlene-blog]

Her skin was wet, glossy with a mix of sweat and mist. Her hair was damp, matted down at the temples where moisture had run down the sides of her forehead. Her knees and nail beds were still caked with dirt – she’d fell a few times chasing the silver-eyed woman through the dark. Marlene was a mess, but she was a mess that did something. She fought her own battle, no matter how small. Marlene contributed, and her appearance was evidence of that. 

She would find the silver-eyed woman.

Marlene didn’t brag. She was proud of her small accomplishment – that she was the one to finally follow the silver-eyed woman out of camp, to see where she came from – but she only told everyone what she’d seen because she thought it was important. 

She’s in the village. She’s real. We’re not imagining things. 

And the listened, hung on her words even if they offered little information. Marlene wasn’t used to feeling useful. 

She shared what she knew and headed back to her cottage to wash off the evidence of last night’s adventure. Marlene was exhausted. But just as she was through the door, Moody pushed his way in behind her.

He wanted to know more, surely. Marlene would help as best she could. She’d recall every detail. She was going to be useful. But, Moody’s words weren’t what she expected and, though she tried to ignore it, Marlene’s heart sunk. 

Marlene was loud. Always the first to speak up, her fists raised in the air, her voice broke through the sound of a crowd. She was fearless – until she saw someone was disappointed in her. 

“I–,” she began, still rocked by his words, “Moody. I had to find where she came from. No one else even cared! She’s not a ghost. The silver-eyed woman is real. She always was! No one was doing anything! You weren’t doing anything!” 

Marlene didn’t mean to be harsh, but she felt cornered, like a wounded animal. All Marlene wanted was to do something good. She didn’t need Moody yelling at her. He was supposed to be on her side, be her friend. 

[markedmanmoody]

Perhaps, were their circumstances different, he would have found it in himself to care about the abrupt shift in Marlene's demeanor when the first of his barking struck her, as if she was almost sinking into whatever boisterous personality she wore like a shield to get through her days. Her bruised, tender feelings were the absolute last of his concerns just then, and so he swept the observation aside for all that it mattered: nothing

A cornered animal she might be, but he was the attacking beast then, and it wasn't in her best interest to poke at him then like she did flawlessly. You weren't doing anything. His anger ran hot or cold depending on the hour, the day, and probably which planet was in retrograde for how often it shifted, with both threatening to burn him at any given moment-- and just then it burned hot, hot enough for him not to be able to consider her words with anything approaching calm reason through the searing smoke. Alastor would not feel the crushing helplessness that hung over him every other hour of the day; he would only feel that anger, and gods help whoever got in its way.

Marlene was the current target. “Congratu-fucking-lations, you ferreted out our ghost!” He spat back at her, all biting sarcasm and sharp teeth. “I'm sure in that brilliant head of yours you had a plan for what would happen when you figured out she was real, right? You knew exactly what you were doin' when you ran out there on your own? Acause otherwise, it looks to me like you just put everyone here at danger to go play paranormal investigator. It looks to me like you ran off like a fuckin' idiot without a single damn care about what might happen to you, or everyone else here.”

He couldn't have any use for friends, not during a war, not when they might and probably would be killed and he'd be the one sending them to it, either through inaction or his mistaken judgement. He also would not have any use for someone willing to put themselves in danger to play hero; they simply did not have the strength for it. So he gestured his hands out, palms up, an invitation, a trap. “So am I just seein' it wrong, McKinnon? I'd fuckin' love to be wrong right about now.”

[markedmanmoody]

red sun rises like an early warning [] alastor & marlene

Constant vigilance. He ought to have kept his guard up, ought to have expected the eventual curious party who might sniff our their little community. (Besides the Death Eaters, who were another problem altogether.) Perhaps they were a soul from the nearby village-- not much of a threat. Perhaps they were something worse. Constant vigilance. When he'd heard the kids begin to murmur among themselves of their pale lady, their vanishing lady, their ghost in the night, he'd dismissed it as the collective works of one too many overactive imaginations left to stew in boredom day in and day out, much as he had the tales that there were selkies and mermaids and all manners of beasts ready to pull the unsuspecting underwater in the nearby ocean. Constant vigilance. This was all kinds of foolishness on his part; much as he repeatedly told himself he would start treating the lot of them more seriously, some stubborn portion of his mind demanded he take care of them, and somehow this had warped into not taking them all as seriously as he ought to have. Foolishness. He would not make the same mistake again.

It was sheer happenstance-- and perhaps that wasn't quite generous enough to explain it away, as in the mornings the lot of them were either coming off their evening shifts to sleep the better part of the day away or groggy enough from sleep to band together in small groups as if sheer numbers conveyed body heat that might help in coffee's absence (as alas, alas, they were out again, and who knew when they might be able to get more?)-- that lead him to overhear McKinnon regaling her nighttime adventure. That she was off chasing ghosts was of some small concern, though Moody couldn't always begrudge them their small flights of fancy when they had so little to look forward to; that she was off chasing ghosts alone, in the dead of night, and had discovered their ghost seemed more tangible than they all assumed, left the hairs standing up on the back of his neck.

Constant vigilance. Someone was scoping out their camp that none of them had been good enough to catch. Magic, then-- they had to be to evade their watchful eyes for so long. To make matters worse, McKinnon might have just blown their entire cover wide open, and regardless of whether she had or had not, she'd put herself unnecessarily in danger to satisfy her curiosity. Stupid. Dangerous. He thought she was smarter than that-- assumed, and didn't that make a ass of him then?

Past the ache in his back and in his bones, the end result of one too many nights spent sleeping in poor conditions when he could hold fast to the idea of sleep at all, a distinct, spreading warmth bloomed through his belly. Anger. Moody was more than passing acquaintances with his temper and recognized it fondly as it greeted him then, background noise to his narrowing of nearly-black eyes fixed on McKinnon retreating from her eager audience to excuse herself to her cottage. Tired from her nighttime flight, perhaps.

He had a hard time finding sympathy for her just then.

Bypassing the kids milling about in the almost-sunny weather, he lurched on after her, skipping masking his limp in favor of dogged speed. He was to the door she slipped through before it got the chance to close entirely-- though this was perhaps due to the warped wood of the cabin no one had quite managed to fix-- and he shoved it forward without even the pretense to gentleness. A quick scan of the room confirmed they were alone for the time being, which suited his purposes just fine. His voice was a growl when it escaped bared teeth: “What the fuck did you think you were doin', runnin' off alone in the middle of the night? Thought you were smarter'n that.”

[rebelscumwrites]

Port Montrose Cottage Aesthetics – Cottage Two

Sirius Black, Regulus Black, Alastor Moody, Irina Rosmerta, Bertram Aubrey, and Narcissa Malfoy

[markedmanmoody]

justice, hanged man, world

justice: do you value fairness over mercy?

“ i despise mercy. what the fuck is mercy? it’s falling for your lies. it’s giving in to some tender goddamn feeling when you sniffle an’ say you’ve learned a big lesson after you’ve done something to fuck someone else over. it’s all a lie. it’s just the guilty covering their arses once they’ve been caught an’ have to answer for their crimes.

i hate mercy like i hate any other weakness. “

hanged man: how do you feel about martyrs?

“ you know how you help your cause?

it isn’t by dying.

throwing your life away– or maybe losing it no matter how hard you fought– it isn’t worth the damage it does to those you leave behind. it isn’t worth losing you, losing your voice, your ideas, your energy.

i can understand those who’ve lost their lives despite their best efforts– the gods know we’ve all been there– but whenever someone is just a wee bit too eager to lay down for the greater good, i get ready to start swinging. it’s real damn easy to die. living is the harder task. “

world: what do you hope to accomplish before you die?

“ i want to get them out of here.

christ, it sounds so fuckin’ melodramatic, but– i want to see all these bastards with babies in their laps, surrounded by friends an’ family, so happy i get nauseous lookin’ at them. i want these motherfuckers to drown in how safe they are. i want them to tell me, “fuck off, moody, we’re fine. you don’t need to keep trying.”

then i’ll die. then, i can die. “

[markedmanmoody]

hermit, wheel of fortune, emperor

hermit: what are you like when you're alone?

“ i grow wings out my arse an’ slowly float up toward the ceiling.

what d’you wanna hear here? i move, a lot. pace, y’know. open and close my hands. i talk to myself-- reckon everyone here has figured out i do that, but it’s nice, hearin’ your thoughts out-loud. i write things down i need to remember, but mostly, i talk it out with my shadow. i’ve always hated sitting still. way i see it, i’ll be still for a long arse time when someone finally puts me in the ground, so no sense bein’ still now. “

wheel of fortune: how's your luck?

“ well, let’s see here.

i lost the biggest war britain has seen in-- ever.

i’m trapped with a bunch of goddamn kids who’ve all fought an’ lost more than i can hope to keep track of.

my leader’s vanished an’ folk are under the impression i can take up his slack.

we’re now stuck with a bitch who’s hoping to make us all sick so we can slowly die together, to say nothing of the three assholes we already had to waste resources on when we should have tied them to rocks an’ thrown them in the ocean ages ago.

an’ i got a splinter today.

so my luck is pretty fuckin’ awesome if i do say so myself. “

emperor: describe your relationship with your father

“ don’t got much to say on that front. he used to like to tell me, y’know, we moodys are great in a fight, great for a fuck, an’ shit at pretty much everything else. far as i can tell, he’s not wrong.

i was a right terror growin’ up an’ didn’t get much better with age, an’ he-- well, he took it all in stride. he’d been an auror for a while afore he got my mother knocked up after what i understand was a pretty wild party an’ married her to take care of us both, so i figure he’d seen worse than me by the time i rolled around. he kept me fed an’ watered, answered my questions an’ made sure i knew what my duties were, an’ he gave me the resources to do what i needed to do. affection-- affection isn’t a strong suit among us. we’re not a mushy lot. suits me just fine. think the most i remember getting from him was after graduating the academy. he was damn proud an’ let me know it.

was nice.

fuckin’ disgusting.

but nice. “

[markedmanmoody]

magician, devil, tower, death and star

magician: list 3 of your talents

“ one: my ability to answer inane questions without strangling anyone.

two: strong stomach. i’ve only gotten food poisoning twice since we washed up here.

three: a sense of pity. you need it, watchin’ the kids duel. “

devil: is there anything you're addicted to?

“ self-loathing.

and cigarettes. “

tower: what do you most want to change about yourself?

“ nothing. i’m great. who the fuck told you otherwise?

i want to be what they need right now. i need to be more decisive. i need to know what i’m doing. “

death: do you like change?

“ fuckin’ love it. love having shit changed without my permission or consent. love havin’ more shit happen to us when we already have enough to deal with. that ticking time bomb we’ve been stuck with? love. it. “

star: what religious beliefs do you have?

“ when i was a weeane, i used to press my ear up against the wall of the nearby kirk. i could hear the organ from halfway across the town, but when i did that, i could feel it too. i always liked how it sounded.

doesn’t mean i put any stock in their half-baked ideas. i just like the music. “

[markedmanmoody]

tarot card asks

fool: what's the biggest risk you've ever taken?

magician: list 3 of your talents

high priestess: do you pay more attention to your heart or your mind?

empress: how dependent are you on others?

emperor: describe your relationship with your father

hierophant: do you value tradition?

lovers: does someone need to share your values for you to pursue a relationship?

chariot: in what situations are you most assertive?

strength: how impulsive are you?

hermit: what are you like when you're alone?

wheel of fortune: how's your luck?

justice: do you value fairness over mercy?

hanged man: how do you feel about martyrs?

death: do you like change?

temperance: do you tend to focus on the past, present, or future?

devil: is there anything you're addicted to?

tower: what do you most want to change about yourself?

star: what religious beliefs do you have?

moon: do you have any recurrent dreams?

sun: do you believe optimism is always good?

judgement: how confident are you in yourself?

world: what do you hope to accomplish before you die?