"Mad Dogs and Scotsmen" (Alastor Moody, Emmeline Vance)
Author: 
delphi
Prompt/Prompt Author: Alastor's growing paranoia has alienated even his closest friend(s). After his ordeal in the trunk, he has to turn to one (or more) of them during his recuperation. How do they (or don't they) rebuild trust between one another? - squibstress
Title: Mad Dogs and Scotsmen
Characters: Alastor Moody, Emmeline Vance
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Descriptions of post-traumatic stress disorder and the unorthodox treatment thereof.
Word Count: ~2800
Summary: "Growing up in the country with old-fashioned grandparents, you slapped a poultice on whatever ailed you and hoped for the best. Dragon pox, a broken arm, being stuck in a trunk for ten months. Either you got well or you didn't, and that was that." Or, the one in which Emmeline chose a bad month to quit smoking.
Author's Notes: My sincere thanks to my beta-reader, F.
The problem with Moody's friends, she reflected as she stubbed out her last cigarette on the exterior wall of St. Mungo's Hospital and went inside, was that they were all old friends. That was the thing about being an Auror. It eventually got so you couldn't trust anyone you hadn't bled alongside at three o'clock in the morning. All of Moody's friends dated back to Hogwarts or the barracks, or else like her, they had come up under him when he was a senior agent in the '60s. They had been there as he slowly shuffled across the line from sharp to squirrelly, and now they were stuck with him.
"Emmeline Vance," she said at the front desk. "Here to pick up Alastor Moody."
The matron sighed, confirming Emmeline's guess that it hadn't been Moody's idea to come in for observation and he hadn't made it easy on them. "Room 315."
She had been in favour of drawing lots, but at the end of the day, her lifestyle was in itself the short straw. She had no dependents, no civilian entanglements. Her house was in the country, far away from any nosy neighbours, and on a good day, hex-fire would be an improving renovation. So here she was.
The hospital seemed disquietingly empty. She had managed to avoid the place since the early '80s, when on a bad night the wounded had to be put on cots and blankets in the corridors because all the beds were full. Now it echoed, the lack of activity at odds with the wiped-down walls and the stench of cleansers, as if it were standing in wait, holding its breath for some imminent emergency. She'd never liked hospitals. Growing up in the country with old-fashioned grandparents, you slapped a poultice on whatever ailed you and hoped for the best. Dragon pox, a broken arm, being stuck in a trunk for ten months. Either you got well or you didn't, and that was that.
*
"Bugger off," Moody said when she intercepted him on the second floor. "I'm not going anywhere with you."
"Nice to see you too." She fell into step beside him.
He didn't have a good pivot on his inside leg, but with a clumsy stomp of his walking stick, he put another few inches between them and left her a little ahead of him. She submitted to the perp walk for the time being, even though it made her neck itch.
"Look," she said. "How about we skip the argument? Your house has been compromised, Scrimgeour isn't going to let you sleep at the Ministry, and I doubt you want to stay here. So I see this going one of three ways. You can come with me now like a civilised man, and we'll go to mine and order in a curry. You can resist and force me to take you with me in a body-bind, putting me in an even worse mood than I already am. Or you can hex me and bugger off yourself, in which case Dumbledore isn't going to let you near any Order business until you can find someone else to vouch for you."
He stopped halfway down the corridor, peering suspiciously in both directions with his back to the wall. "You're not half as clever as you think you are, Vance."
She was clever enough to put her own back to the opposite wall, her hand close to her wand. "And you look like hammered shit."
His natural eye fixed on her while the other darted from corner to corner and his jaw worked silently. Finally, he said, "I left my broom at Hogwarts."
He wasn't in any shape to be flying, but she refrained from pointing that out. "We'll take the train."
For a moment, she thought they'd have to do this the hard way. Slowly, however, he pushed himself away from the wall and reluctantly nodded. "Think Alfie will be pleased to see me?"
"Alfie hated you. And he's been dead three years, you pillock."
Which Moody was well aware of. He was the one who had bought all her drinks at the Hog's Head the night she'd had to put Alfie down.
"Just checking," he said, and with a jerk of his head, he gestured her ahead of him again and followed her out of the hospital.
*
It was late afternoon by the time they got off the train, and Emmeline had a nauseous headache from watching Moody pace the aisle all the way from London to King's Lynn. The walk was slow. She lived outside of town, and Moody was visibly jittery as they trudged down the three miles of narrow country lane that led to her house. He'd taken nothing with him from the hospital but his wand, and she supposed she couldn't blame him if he'd set his trunk on fire.
"Why are you so twitchy?" he asked abruptly, his eye narrowed.
She resisted the urge to flip him off, lest the sudden movement draw fire. "Why am I so twitchy? You're twitchy. You're making me twitchy."
He stopped where he was and looked at her in hard appraisal. Rattled he might be, but his nose was still working. You couldn't bullshit Alastor Moody.
She sighed. "I quit smoking."
He snorted, then shook his head resolutely. "It's not going to take."
"It'll take," she said, frowning when he spun around and drew his wand on what turned out to be a pheasant in the brush. "This time, it'll take."
Her place couldn't come into view soon enough. It had already been a long day, and she supposed she'd need to go back into town for supplies as soon as Moody was settled in.
"Still a hole, I see," he said when they approached the sprawling old farmhouse.
She had bought it after the supposed fall of You-Know-Who, intending to fix it up in her spare time. Except life never really got less busy, or maybe peacetime made her lazier. Fourteen years on, and she had fixed the plumbing and put in a new kitchen, but hadn't accomplished much else.
"It's a good thing I'm not charging rates, then," she said.
Moody set off across the property, stalking around the perimeter, pausing over each of the ward stones. She watched him without comment and waited for him to work his way back to the front door.
"Open it," he said, his wand drawn again.
So it went for every door in the house. The cupboards. The shower curtain.
"I fixed up the spare bedroom for you," she said. "Loo's across the hall. I'll pick you up some things in town. Toothbrush, razor…anything else?"
He wouldn't go in, standing in the hallway and shaking his head as though she were trying to throw him into a lion's den. "Window's too big. Security risk."
"All right," she said. "You can take my room, and I'll take the spare."
"What's in the attic?" he asked.
"A roof with too many leaks," she said and then regretted it when he didn't look dissuaded.
She knew what he was thinking. It was sound from a tactical perspective, easily barricaded and defensible. She also knew he wasn't entirely aware of how wobbly he looked. He didn't give the impression of being able to reliably climb a set of stairs, let alone a ladder.
"Fine," she said. "But don't come whingeing to me when you get rained on."
The attic was a low, narrow space that had long been cleared out of anything she cared about. It was littered with various bowls and pots and pans to catch the drips, and the lone little window afforded a view of the river. Or would have, if it were clean enough to see through.
"I can bring up the mattress," she said. "There's a dry spot right under the beam."
Moody looked around the bare space. "Reminds me of my days in Gryffindor Tower."
She rolled her eyes as she started back down the ladder. "You were in Hufflepuff. And I realise you're testing me, but if you go and hex me because I don't know which of your balls hangs lower, I'm going to decide you're asking all this because you're senile. At which point the healers come in."
"The left one," he said and slammed the hatch shut after her.
*
When she got home from work the next day, all her food had been thrown out. At first, upon opening the icebox and finding it empty, she wondered if Moody had simply been hungry. He hadn't come down all last night and had refused any supper, and the icebox had only contained last night's takeaway, part of last week's takeaway, a wedge of cheese, and some milk that had definitely gone off. This hypothesis faltered when she opened the cupboards.
Her tea leaves were all gone. So were her biscuits. The flour bin had been emptied out, not a speck remaining. Her spices were nowhere to be found, and all right, she'd never actually used any of them since buying the rack, but they had all been there this morning in their neatly labelled jars. Everything was gone, spotlessness in its wake. She took several deep breaths. Then she went into the loo, where she found that the toilet tank had been drained.
"FOR FUCK'S SAKE, MOODY!"
There was a faint sound of movement in the attic, but he didn't come down. She picked up her broom and used it to bang on the hatch, to no effect.
"Fine," she said. "But I'm ordering from the Golden Dragon, and I am only getting one egg roll."
*
She could hear him moving around up there at night. It was off-putting to say the least, given that she hadn't seen hide or hair of him since he'd moved in. Sometimes she'd come home from work to find the bathtub still damp or the hob still cooling down, and now and again she swore she could smell toast and tea, although her own bread and leaves remained untouched. She could have come home early one day to try to catch him out, but then, she wasn't an idiot.
Periodically, she hammered on the hatch and promptly dodged the bolt of fire that shot down after her.
"I'm getting supper from the pub. Do you want anything?"
No response.
"Are you still wearing the same clothes? I can do laundry, or pick up something at your place."
No response.
"Moody."
"No," he said shortly. His voice placed him at the far end of the attic, near the window.
"Did you go home?" She paused. "Oh Merlin, tell me you aren't naked. You are not allowed to be naked in my house."
No response, but she thought she heard a faint snort of amusement, and it made her smile. He was obviously going into town for food, or else he had someone delivering him goods while she was out. She didn't like the mystery any more than she liked leaving him unsupervised among her things during the day, but she also didn't want to have to explain to Dumbledore why Moody had died naked and malnourished in her attic.
"I'll get you a pie if you'd like. I'll leave it down here for you."
Somewhere around the second week, she started to hear him moving around downstairs. Her eyes opened when the ladder very softly touched the floor. She cast a lumos and consulted the clock. Half-past three. He must have had a muffling charm on to be walking around so quietly. His gait was the same as ever, crooked, heavier on one side, but she had to strain to hear it.
Bloody hell, she thought, and kept her wand in hand just in case as she followed his movement by ear around the dark house for over an hour.
*
This was her home, she felt the need to point out, and a woman ought to be able to sneak out for a cigarette during the wee small hours in her own home without nearly getting her head blown off. She hadn't even heard him get up this time. God help her, she was getting used to his night-time patrols and had evidently started sleeping through them. But the moment she opened her bedroom door, she heard the startled whirl down the corridor.
Reflex made her drop to the floor an instant before a portion of the wall exploded in a burst of plaster above her.
"Moody!" she cried. "Stand down!"
Silence, save for the sound of his heavy breathing in the dark.
"Right," she said, getting back on her feet and straightening her dressing gown with a very annoyed sniff. "Get in."
"What?" He sounded more shaken than she was.
She patted her pockets, finding that her matches had fallen out in the scuffle. Her bare foot swept along the floor, but she couldn't find them. It would have to wait until morning. "Get in my room, lie down, and go to sleep."
He hesitated audibly.
Her fingers traced the hole in the wall. She could bill him for it later. Not that it was much worse than the half-renovated second bath. "It's that or I'm going to have to put my dresser against the door. You're scaring me here, Moody."
His breath came out in a huff, and he slowly approached. She moved cautiously, putting a hand on his tense back and gently shoving him inside.
"Come on, in you go. Wand on the night stand."
Clothes and leg and boot still on, he lay down on top of the covers, taking the side closest to the door like a gentleman. She climbed in beside him. He was shaking. She made her breathing slow and steady, knowing his own would catch on, and closed her eyes.
"Alfie was fifteen when he went," she said eventually. "His hearing was the first to go. He started snapping if you snuck up on him. Then his vision went, and he was jumping at shadows."
Moody's breathing began to even out.
"It was a mercy when I put him down," she said. "I did it myself, and it was a mercy. That's no way to live."
There was no reply, but after a moment, she heard the quiet click of a wand being set down on the table. Then, after a moment of shuffling, the heavier thump of a knife being laid down beside it.
"Get your head together, all right?" she said, carefully curling up on her side with her back to him. In time, they slept.
*
The job got busy. All the old crowd were coming out of the woodwork, and she was lucky if she managed a trip home every 48 hours. At first, she put the fact that the place seemed tidier than usual down to her absence, but soon there was Greek food she hadn't ordered waiting in the icebox. A few bottles of her favourite cider appeared on the kitchen table. The cup of tea that had turned to sludge on the counter was dumped out and the mug scrubbed clean. It was like living with a particularly heavy-treaded house-elf who took up half the bed.
It was nearing the end of July when she came home and found the attic empty. The ladder was down, and when she carefully poked her head up-after first waving a white dish cloth over the edge of the hatch-she found the space tidy and unoccupied. There were no signs of a struggle. She looked through the rest of the house, finding nothing, and then went out into the back garden.
There she leaned against the house and pulled out her ciggies and a pack of matches. After a moment of virtuous hesitation, she lit up. She drew in a deep mouthful of nostalgic smoke and then let it out in a sweet sigh of relief.
"Told you it wouldn't take."
She glanced up sharply to find Moody leaning over the edge of the roof.
"Oh, for-what are you doing up there?"
She backed up for a better look, spotting the jury-rig of boards and ropes with which he'd hoisted himself up, along with a large sack, a mallet, and a bottle of ale.
"I bought some shingles in town," he said. "Your roof's shite."
"Yeah, I know my roof's shite," she said, and she smiled. "Need some help?"
He shook his head, his natural eye squinting at a goshawk circling in the grey sky. "I'm good up here."
"How about a curry? I'm starved."
She saw his gaze dart around and his shoulders hunch, but then he shrugged.
"Vindaloo," he said. "And some of those pickled limes."
"Sounds good," she said.
She stubbed out her last cigarette against the wall and went inside. A moment later, the sound of hammering started up. A fire-call to Chaudhry's first, she thought. Maybe a nice chicken tikka masala, and make that a double order of pickles. Then she'd send a note off to Dumbledore and let him know they were ready to get on with it.
delphi
Prompt/Prompt Author: Alastor's growing paranoia has alienated even his closest friend(s). After his ordeal in the trunk, he has to turn to one (or more) of them during his recuperation. How do they (or don't they) rebuild trust between one another? - squibstress
Title: Mad Dogs and Scotsmen
Characters: Alastor Moody, Emmeline Vance
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Descriptions of post-traumatic stress disorder and the unorthodox treatment thereof.
Word Count: ~2800
Summary: "Growing up in the country with old-fashioned grandparents, you slapped a poultice on whatever ailed you and hoped for the best. Dragon pox, a broken arm, being stuck in a trunk for ten months. Either you got well or you didn't, and that was that." Or, the one in which Emmeline chose a bad month to quit smoking.
Author's Notes: My sincere thanks to my beta-reader, F.
The problem with Moody's friends, she reflected as she stubbed out her last cigarette on the exterior wall of St. Mungo's Hospital and went inside, was that they were all old friends. That was the thing about being an Auror. It eventually got so you couldn't trust anyone you hadn't bled alongside at three o'clock in the morning. All of Moody's friends dated back to Hogwarts or the barracks, or else like her, they had come up under him when he was a senior agent in the '60s. They had been there as he slowly shuffled across the line from sharp to squirrelly, and now they were stuck with him.
"Emmeline Vance," she said at the front desk. "Here to pick up Alastor Moody."
The matron sighed, confirming Emmeline's guess that it hadn't been Moody's idea to come in for observation and he hadn't made it easy on them. "Room 315."
She had been in favour of drawing lots, but at the end of the day, her lifestyle was in itself the short straw. She had no dependents, no civilian entanglements. Her house was in the country, far away from any nosy neighbours, and on a good day, hex-fire would be an improving renovation. So here she was.
The hospital seemed disquietingly empty. She had managed to avoid the place since the early '80s, when on a bad night the wounded had to be put on cots and blankets in the corridors because all the beds were full. Now it echoed, the lack of activity at odds with the wiped-down walls and the stench of cleansers, as if it were standing in wait, holding its breath for some imminent emergency. She'd never liked hospitals. Growing up in the country with old-fashioned grandparents, you slapped a poultice on whatever ailed you and hoped for the best. Dragon pox, a broken arm, being stuck in a trunk for ten months. Either you got well or you didn't, and that was that.
*
"Bugger off," Moody said when she intercepted him on the second floor. "I'm not going anywhere with you."
"Nice to see you too." She fell into step beside him.
He didn't have a good pivot on his inside leg, but with a clumsy stomp of his walking stick, he put another few inches between them and left her a little ahead of him. She submitted to the perp walk for the time being, even though it made her neck itch.
"Look," she said. "How about we skip the argument? Your house has been compromised, Scrimgeour isn't going to let you sleep at the Ministry, and I doubt you want to stay here. So I see this going one of three ways. You can come with me now like a civilised man, and we'll go to mine and order in a curry. You can resist and force me to take you with me in a body-bind, putting me in an even worse mood than I already am. Or you can hex me and bugger off yourself, in which case Dumbledore isn't going to let you near any Order business until you can find someone else to vouch for you."
He stopped halfway down the corridor, peering suspiciously in both directions with his back to the wall. "You're not half as clever as you think you are, Vance."
She was clever enough to put her own back to the opposite wall, her hand close to her wand. "And you look like hammered shit."
His natural eye fixed on her while the other darted from corner to corner and his jaw worked silently. Finally, he said, "I left my broom at Hogwarts."
He wasn't in any shape to be flying, but she refrained from pointing that out. "We'll take the train."
For a moment, she thought they'd have to do this the hard way. Slowly, however, he pushed himself away from the wall and reluctantly nodded. "Think Alfie will be pleased to see me?"
"Alfie hated you. And he's been dead three years, you pillock."
Which Moody was well aware of. He was the one who had bought all her drinks at the Hog's Head the night she'd had to put Alfie down.
"Just checking," he said, and with a jerk of his head, he gestured her ahead of him again and followed her out of the hospital.
*
It was late afternoon by the time they got off the train, and Emmeline had a nauseous headache from watching Moody pace the aisle all the way from London to King's Lynn. The walk was slow. She lived outside of town, and Moody was visibly jittery as they trudged down the three miles of narrow country lane that led to her house. He'd taken nothing with him from the hospital but his wand, and she supposed she couldn't blame him if he'd set his trunk on fire.
"Why are you so twitchy?" he asked abruptly, his eye narrowed.
She resisted the urge to flip him off, lest the sudden movement draw fire. "Why am I so twitchy? You're twitchy. You're making me twitchy."
He stopped where he was and looked at her in hard appraisal. Rattled he might be, but his nose was still working. You couldn't bullshit Alastor Moody.
She sighed. "I quit smoking."
He snorted, then shook his head resolutely. "It's not going to take."
"It'll take," she said, frowning when he spun around and drew his wand on what turned out to be a pheasant in the brush. "This time, it'll take."
Her place couldn't come into view soon enough. It had already been a long day, and she supposed she'd need to go back into town for supplies as soon as Moody was settled in.
"Still a hole, I see," he said when they approached the sprawling old farmhouse.
She had bought it after the supposed fall of You-Know-Who, intending to fix it up in her spare time. Except life never really got less busy, or maybe peacetime made her lazier. Fourteen years on, and she had fixed the plumbing and put in a new kitchen, but hadn't accomplished much else.
"It's a good thing I'm not charging rates, then," she said.
Moody set off across the property, stalking around the perimeter, pausing over each of the ward stones. She watched him without comment and waited for him to work his way back to the front door.
"Open it," he said, his wand drawn again.
So it went for every door in the house. The cupboards. The shower curtain.
"I fixed up the spare bedroom for you," she said. "Loo's across the hall. I'll pick you up some things in town. Toothbrush, razor…anything else?"
He wouldn't go in, standing in the hallway and shaking his head as though she were trying to throw him into a lion's den. "Window's too big. Security risk."
"All right," she said. "You can take my room, and I'll take the spare."
"What's in the attic?" he asked.
"A roof with too many leaks," she said and then regretted it when he didn't look dissuaded.
She knew what he was thinking. It was sound from a tactical perspective, easily barricaded and defensible. She also knew he wasn't entirely aware of how wobbly he looked. He didn't give the impression of being able to reliably climb a set of stairs, let alone a ladder.
"Fine," she said. "But don't come whingeing to me when you get rained on."
The attic was a low, narrow space that had long been cleared out of anything she cared about. It was littered with various bowls and pots and pans to catch the drips, and the lone little window afforded a view of the river. Or would have, if it were clean enough to see through.
"I can bring up the mattress," she said. "There's a dry spot right under the beam."
Moody looked around the bare space. "Reminds me of my days in Gryffindor Tower."
She rolled her eyes as she started back down the ladder. "You were in Hufflepuff. And I realise you're testing me, but if you go and hex me because I don't know which of your balls hangs lower, I'm going to decide you're asking all this because you're senile. At which point the healers come in."
"The left one," he said and slammed the hatch shut after her.
*
When she got home from work the next day, all her food had been thrown out. At first, upon opening the icebox and finding it empty, she wondered if Moody had simply been hungry. He hadn't come down all last night and had refused any supper, and the icebox had only contained last night's takeaway, part of last week's takeaway, a wedge of cheese, and some milk that had definitely gone off. This hypothesis faltered when she opened the cupboards.
Her tea leaves were all gone. So were her biscuits. The flour bin had been emptied out, not a speck remaining. Her spices were nowhere to be found, and all right, she'd never actually used any of them since buying the rack, but they had all been there this morning in their neatly labelled jars. Everything was gone, spotlessness in its wake. She took several deep breaths. Then she went into the loo, where she found that the toilet tank had been drained.
"FOR FUCK'S SAKE, MOODY!"
There was a faint sound of movement in the attic, but he didn't come down. She picked up her broom and used it to bang on the hatch, to no effect.
"Fine," she said. "But I'm ordering from the Golden Dragon, and I am only getting one egg roll."
*
She could hear him moving around up there at night. It was off-putting to say the least, given that she hadn't seen hide or hair of him since he'd moved in. Sometimes she'd come home from work to find the bathtub still damp or the hob still cooling down, and now and again she swore she could smell toast and tea, although her own bread and leaves remained untouched. She could have come home early one day to try to catch him out, but then, she wasn't an idiot.
Periodically, she hammered on the hatch and promptly dodged the bolt of fire that shot down after her.
"I'm getting supper from the pub. Do you want anything?"
No response.
"Are you still wearing the same clothes? I can do laundry, or pick up something at your place."
No response.
"Moody."
"No," he said shortly. His voice placed him at the far end of the attic, near the window.
"Did you go home?" She paused. "Oh Merlin, tell me you aren't naked. You are not allowed to be naked in my house."
No response, but she thought she heard a faint snort of amusement, and it made her smile. He was obviously going into town for food, or else he had someone delivering him goods while she was out. She didn't like the mystery any more than she liked leaving him unsupervised among her things during the day, but she also didn't want to have to explain to Dumbledore why Moody had died naked and malnourished in her attic.
"I'll get you a pie if you'd like. I'll leave it down here for you."
Somewhere around the second week, she started to hear him moving around downstairs. Her eyes opened when the ladder very softly touched the floor. She cast a lumos and consulted the clock. Half-past three. He must have had a muffling charm on to be walking around so quietly. His gait was the same as ever, crooked, heavier on one side, but she had to strain to hear it.
Bloody hell, she thought, and kept her wand in hand just in case as she followed his movement by ear around the dark house for over an hour.
*
This was her home, she felt the need to point out, and a woman ought to be able to sneak out for a cigarette during the wee small hours in her own home without nearly getting her head blown off. She hadn't even heard him get up this time. God help her, she was getting used to his night-time patrols and had evidently started sleeping through them. But the moment she opened her bedroom door, she heard the startled whirl down the corridor.
Reflex made her drop to the floor an instant before a portion of the wall exploded in a burst of plaster above her.
"Moody!" she cried. "Stand down!"
Silence, save for the sound of his heavy breathing in the dark.
"Right," she said, getting back on her feet and straightening her dressing gown with a very annoyed sniff. "Get in."
"What?" He sounded more shaken than she was.
She patted her pockets, finding that her matches had fallen out in the scuffle. Her bare foot swept along the floor, but she couldn't find them. It would have to wait until morning. "Get in my room, lie down, and go to sleep."
He hesitated audibly.
Her fingers traced the hole in the wall. She could bill him for it later. Not that it was much worse than the half-renovated second bath. "It's that or I'm going to have to put my dresser against the door. You're scaring me here, Moody."
His breath came out in a huff, and he slowly approached. She moved cautiously, putting a hand on his tense back and gently shoving him inside.
"Come on, in you go. Wand on the night stand."
Clothes and leg and boot still on, he lay down on top of the covers, taking the side closest to the door like a gentleman. She climbed in beside him. He was shaking. She made her breathing slow and steady, knowing his own would catch on, and closed her eyes.
"Alfie was fifteen when he went," she said eventually. "His hearing was the first to go. He started snapping if you snuck up on him. Then his vision went, and he was jumping at shadows."
Moody's breathing began to even out.
"It was a mercy when I put him down," she said. "I did it myself, and it was a mercy. That's no way to live."
There was no reply, but after a moment, she heard the quiet click of a wand being set down on the table. Then, after a moment of shuffling, the heavier thump of a knife being laid down beside it.
"Get your head together, all right?" she said, carefully curling up on her side with her back to him. In time, they slept.
*
The job got busy. All the old crowd were coming out of the woodwork, and she was lucky if she managed a trip home every 48 hours. At first, she put the fact that the place seemed tidier than usual down to her absence, but soon there was Greek food she hadn't ordered waiting in the icebox. A few bottles of her favourite cider appeared on the kitchen table. The cup of tea that had turned to sludge on the counter was dumped out and the mug scrubbed clean. It was like living with a particularly heavy-treaded house-elf who took up half the bed.
It was nearing the end of July when she came home and found the attic empty. The ladder was down, and when she carefully poked her head up-after first waving a white dish cloth over the edge of the hatch-she found the space tidy and unoccupied. There were no signs of a struggle. She looked through the rest of the house, finding nothing, and then went out into the back garden.
There she leaned against the house and pulled out her ciggies and a pack of matches. After a moment of virtuous hesitation, she lit up. She drew in a deep mouthful of nostalgic smoke and then let it out in a sweet sigh of relief.
"Told you it wouldn't take."
She glanced up sharply to find Moody leaning over the edge of the roof.
"Oh, for-what are you doing up there?"
She backed up for a better look, spotting the jury-rig of boards and ropes with which he'd hoisted himself up, along with a large sack, a mallet, and a bottle of ale.
"I bought some shingles in town," he said. "Your roof's shite."
"Yeah, I know my roof's shite," she said, and she smiled. "Need some help?"
He shook his head, his natural eye squinting at a goshawk circling in the grey sky. "I'm good up here."
"How about a curry? I'm starved."
She saw his gaze dart around and his shoulders hunch, but then he shrugged.
"Vindaloo," he said. "And some of those pickled limes."
"Sounds good," she said.
She stubbed out her last cigarette against the wall and went inside. A moment later, the sound of hammering started up. A fire-call to Chaudhry's first, she thought. Maybe a nice chicken tikka masala, and make that a double order of pickles. Then she'd send a note off to Dumbledore and let him know they were ready to get on with it.