semper-vigilo - Tumblr blog

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❝ Well you leave me hanging by the skin of my teeth. I’ve only got one leg to stand, you can send me to hell, but I’ll never let go of your hand. ❞

Are you askin' to hold my hand, or bite it?

The answer is "no" either way.

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❝ The world is wrong. You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard. ❞

Was with you 'til that last one.

If your flesh is a cupboard, maybe see a healer, yeah?

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❝ ... and what i want to know is how do you like your blue eyed boy, Mister Death ❞

Weirdest fuckin' owl I've gotten today. An' I'm countin' the lady who thought a dark wizard cabal was hypnotizin' her cats.

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Dementors have no face. 

This you learn if you have ever seen any Kiss performed, they have no face so to speak, just a skull-like thing with which they suck out the soul. 

What you will not hear is how they look, for just a moment, once they have fed on a soul. For just a moment they look almost human - not quite, they are inhuman beasts and this is never forgotten - but there is, suddenly, a face there. It can last several minutes, depending on the age and vitality of the victim, but these faces are never… right.

If you have seen the dead you know. If you have seen inferi or an mer going from peaceable to angered, you have some idea. It is that soaked, rotting beauty you see in the moments while it still looks human enough to be mistaken for living. It is an eerie beauty, a fey one, one which strikes a chill more even than the one gathered from watching the Kiss.

They have faces, those few seconds, but not of anything known as living.

— Excerpt from An Appraisal of the Evils of Azkaban: Dementors, Damnation and Devils by Arcturus Axe.

(Image Source)

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☝ , の

Send me☝for my character’s private thoughts about your character.

To think Mum used to gush about this man. Not in the way she did about new laws and Dad’s ice cream, but with genuine respect, like he was the Auror equivalent of a sun.

Can’t say I don’t feel the same. He burns bright and harsh; I remember when he used to be hard on me. Probably the worst of the lot, because I saw how he treated the others. Maybe it was his way of letting me prove myself to everyone else.

Now I would follow him to the ends of the earth, if that’s what it took for justice to be exacted. Despite everything, I think he’s a man after my own heart.

Send me の for my character’s opinion of yours in three words.

grumpy, hard-ass teacher. 

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prompts for the first wizarding war

☂ - Our characters get stormed in together

☏ - One (or both) of our characters is using the telephone for the first time

✎ - Our characters are supposed to be doing homework but get bored and/or distracted

∞ - A scene between our characters 10 years from now, if the war ceased to exist

☒ - My character is the reason yours dies

♚ - Our characters have a night in the pub

ϟ - One of our characters has a panic attack

☼ - Our characters have a child together

✪ - First date

❣ - “Because I’m in love with you, idiot!”

⚥ - One of our characters is caught in a compromising position.

➳ - Our characters serve detention together (or one of them is supervising the other’s detention)

❝ - Reference to Remus’s “furry little problem” 

✈ - My character’s first time riding a broom (or another experience, feel free to specify)

✿ - Headcanon: My character’s first kiss

♥ - The moment my character realizes they’re in love

☯ - Flash forward AU: our characters’ children get married 

☢ - “If you don’t tell him/her, I swear to god I will!”

▲ - My character confesses something to yours

♭- Both of our characters as muggles

☾- One of our characters shows up to the other’s place drunk.

↮ - Our characters are trapped in a broom closet (or other small space) together

★ - My character having a fantasy/wet dream

♠ - Love potion: My character is slipped it and comes on to yours

♜- Midnight snacks

✂ - Divorce

☺- Kiddos: how our characters would have acted (or did act) together as children

☞- Our characters move in together

✖ - Envy

ღ - Desire

☌ - Insecurity

✔- AU where one of your character’s ships is now a student/teacher relationship (you pick who is who)

Σ - My character comes back to teach at Hogwarts

ø - My character suffers from amnesia and can’t remember yours

¢- Someone loses a bet

⚔ - Adrenaline

♫- Five songs I think of when you think of my ship

♩- Five songs I think of when I think of your ship

✛ - Dreamcast my character’s kid(s)

☸ - My character at their lowest of lows; your character encounters mine (opt)

☮ - In a perfect world…

✑ - An entry from my character’s journal

❦ - My ship doing something that should stay behind closed doors 

✯- “Before you, I didn’t have this problem!”

♙- My character dreams of their future

♟- My character dreams of your character’s future

♣ - Felix Felicis 

♦ - Our characters during a raid

➤ - 13 Going On 30 AU: My character wakes up 7 years from now with no recollection of what has happened in the meantime

❄ - Mistletoe

☃- Our characters act like they’re twelve

℉ - Dog days of summer

≠ - Cutting loose ends

ℳ - Marry me

⌘ - Our characters dance together

✌ - Winning

♛ - “Screw this!”

✞ - Our characters attend a funeral or visit a tombstone

♮- Our characters as old geezers

♯ - Babies

☟ - “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”

☀ - Pets

♞ - Dark Horse: Your character surprises mine (specify how)

✉ - “I can’t do this anymore.”

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Why shouldn't he have his vices? Alastor was under the impression he did enough good every day, giving more than his all to a job that only demanded more from him, and if he fell back into habits that couldn't possibly be construed as either moral nor healthy after hours, that was his own business and no one else's. Whoring had been a natural evolution from these tendencies; as the years passed and he was subjected to the worst their kind had to offer, at some point he'd lost the ability to find faith in the best of them, and if he couldn't trust the best, how could he ever tolerate those who fell somewhere in the middle? And yet, and yet, and yet, he was still human, and still loathed going home alone some nights, especially those nights when his mind wouldn't shut off and the nightmares he dealt with refused to be banished to their usual corners. It was those nights women like Nora filled a niche essential to his sanity, and Moody found whatever resistances he might have had to the practice falling away easier than he might have imagined.

And it was nice, nice having someone who knew what he liked, nice having someone who demanded nothing more from him than he was willing to give. (Or in this case, pay for.) Nora backed off when he asked and advanced when he allowed it, and seemed to have an innate sense for where his boundaries lay and an instinctual sense of timing for when it was appropriate to push, and for this, he was grateful. So, yes, he did not notice his brother enter the bar past the beauty teasing her hand up his thigh, inch by painful inch, her nimble fingers wrapping around him through the denim of his pants; but where he failed, she easily succeeded.

“I didn't know you had a boyfriend, Alastor,” came her teasing tone, and it was only the word that allowed him to snap out of whatever spell she was weaving to tilt his head in acknowledgment of Kingsley. You don't look happy, brother. If he didn't know any better, Moody would have guessed his old friend looked jealous. That was, of course, madness.

“Very funny,” he grumbled, waving her away. (And silently mourning as her hand left him when certain parts of his anatomy had just begun to respond to her advances.) “Dorn't give me that look-- later, later, aye?” One could never be certain their intended would be available later, but Nora knew he was willing to pay to pad any lost income, and it was only with a comically attractive pout that she relented. He did his best not to notice how she looked over Kingsley as if she were sizing him up for a night as well. “Nice a' you to finally get here, Shacklebolt. Wipe that look off your face-- apparently, I owe you a drink. Still think you're makin' it up, but I'll play ball. What d'you want?”

Propositions ; July 28th, 1978 ; Alastor & Kingsley

Cigarettes. Cigarettes was the fourth of Moody’s vices, in that order: alcohol, fighting, whoring, and cigarettes. (Berating interns/FNGs and being sarcastic, Kingsley firmly believed, placed fifth and sixth respectively.) It was the fourth in the list that Kingsley was indulging in then, one lazy eye on the face of his watch that told time. He’d said ten, and Moody had said eight— nine it would be, and Kingsley would be perfectly on time. 

The glowing end was snubbed out without further ado against the brick wall at his back, eyes— though dark as coals— glinting almost as bright in the dim light of the buzzing streetlamp. It had been months of antsy anticipation since they had last been together. Whether the night ended with them too drunk to care that they were coiled around one another on the floor of Moody’s den or too drunk to care that they were pounding fists into one another’s face out back of the bar was entirely up in the air. Either end was desirable; both had been found before; both would be found again. 

They existed to temper each other, these two troubled men who had bonded over brotherhood and blood alike. A swift blow to the face meant just as much as a hug ever could and would do Kingsley just as well. He needed— desperately— to be rid of the tense ball of angst coiling ever tighter in the pit of his stomach. Moody would do as nothing else could, even a warm and willing mouth or a firm arse between his grasping fingers.

Yet when he slipped through the doors of Moody’s haunt and found his brother being felt up by some smirking chit with tits up to her chin it wasn’t relief he felt; it was something closer to quiet anger. She distracted him so completely with her palm at the apex of Moody’s thighs that his brother didn’t see him coming, didn’t look away at all until Kingsley slid his own disgruntled arse into the booth across from them. He fixed the prostitute— for surely his brother would allow no other sort of woman to touch him so intimately in the middle of a bar— with a look that might have withered wet paint from the very walls. Get your hands off of him.

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"Not at all," he hissed back, face less impassive and more disgruntled than he would have liked. (Fifteen years as an Auror, like hell he looked like a janitor!) Perhaps he oughtn't let a bloody kid get under his skin so easily, but that she wasn't much of a threat otherwise made it easier to do just that to him; his defenses were created specifically to ward against those who might actually do him harm, not bratty girls who wandered into pubs and tried to steal his drink.

Or she presumably wasn't a threat. Moody had no sooner caught the waitresses eye to signal for another when Daisy stuttered over the word, and for a sharp moment he thought she might have slipped on the name he distinctly remembered not giving her. Dark eyes flicked over to the girl in question before they narrowed faintly, watching her as she examined his badge. But she returned it, so what could she possibly--?

The woman coming and setting a new glass down in front of him interrupted his thoughts, and he acknowledged her with a short dip of his head before his hands wrapped protectively around the new glass. Daisy was speaking again, and his brows rose as he gave her a singularly unimpressed look. The look she gave him in return was worth a huff of laughter. Persistent, aren't you? "No way in hell am I buyin' a drink for a twelve-year-old." To punctuate his point, Moody let go of his drink only to grab his wallet and quickly squirrel it away in his jacket for safe keeping. "Now what did you just nearly call me?"

You Can't Hold Me Down || Moody & Daisy || July 10, 1978

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What are some of Moody's most notable injuries? What are some of his most memorable scars or marks?

"Notable." The scars on his face, on his hands are “notable” as they are the most visible of all the marks he carries, the rest hidden beneath layers of clothing and an attitude that demands no one try to investigate beyond what he shows them. A busted lip that healed poorly, a bit of scar tissue through his brow that keeps the hair from growing back, a nose that might have been a touch straighter years ago, a line down his chin from where he busted it against cement— they might have once been “notable”, but now they’re little more than the fuzzy memories of fist fights he’s had in the past. Concussions, plural, are not exactly conductive to a long memory.

"Memorable" is another word entirely.

"Memorable" is the mess of scars that is his right knee. Four years ago, a man slammed a beater’s bat into the knee, bringing Moody down hard and teaching him exactly how painful broken bones, plural, could be. To this day, the leg gets stiff at the absolute worst moments, and he jokes he can tell the weather by it without waiting for the arthritis old age might bring. (He doesn’t joke that if he makes it through the rest of his life without a knee injury he will die a very happy man.)

"Memorable" are the three dark marks cutting uncomfortably close to his neck on their way across his chest. Moody knows from experience that sphinxes lack a sense of humor, and is quick to halt any fooling around when even the slightest hint of danger is present. He remembers, far too well, what a monster with insanely sharp claws attempting to rip out his throat looks like, and he’d rather no one else go through a similar experience.

"Memorable" is the mess of scar tissue and wandering red tendrils of marks that is his left side. One does not easily forget multiple broken ribs— nor spending a week in a hospital bed feeling like needles were stabbing him with every breath, the end result of a punctured and then collapsed lung.

"Memorable" are the shards of glass a Healer spent half an afternoon laughing semi-hysterically as he pulled them first out of his shoulders, and then out of his ass. He has nothing but the truth to offer to anyone who might notice the marks and ask, as well as a precautionary story about not trying to leave a building through its window.

"Memorable" is the dark knot of scar tissue right above his navel. Not pulling foreign and sharp objects out of himself is a lesson he wishes it didn’t take multiple  attempts for him to learn.

"Memorable" are too many sore muscles and healed bruises and aching legs and arms and chest and stomach and kidneys from blows that will never leave a mark and yet knock him down for longer and longer periods of time; that make clawing his way out of bed some mornings a struggle; but this isn’t the sort of "memorable" anyone sees, and Alastor will be damned if he ever lets anyone notice. Aging is something that happens to other people; not him.

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Watch Everything You Do ; March 3rd, 1973 ; Alastor & Alice

Wear something nice, the note he'd sent her had ended, and it was only after it was out of his hands that he'd realized that was probably not the best way to finish that off. Fuck it. After the Head flat-out asked him if he had a problem with a woman in the office, a question where a quickly snapped I won't coddle her like the rest of you was the only appropriate response, he had tried to watch what he did and said around the new anomaly. A more optimistic man might have taken the fact he'd been assigned her to help deal with an investigation as a gesture of trust, but Moody was neither optimistic nor too terribly trusting; he knew it was a test for them both, one to try their patience, the other to test their competence. Which test was for which person was less obvious than it might have seemed upon first glance.

And he was quietly furious, furious in the way a man felt something important to him had been insulted yet was choosing to do something about it rather than say something could be. That the last time he'd been assigned a partner, as the Head was so quick to point out, had ended so well had been nothing but a fluke, an outcome no one could have predicted, and how dare he throw Shacklebolt in his face like that. This situation was worlds different. He was not some cocky young Auror who needed a partner to help temper his more unrefined qualities, he was a Senior dammit, and while he worked from time to time with Aurors under him, they were always lads he picked and put where he felt they would be best, not arbitrary Juniors pulled from the Academy with leashes still caught around their their collars. He was not a bloody baby sitter, and woe be it to this woman if she thought he was going to hold her hand through it all.

Speaking of-- Moody flipped the page of the newspaper he was not reading so much as he was staring blankly at, the action allowing him a moment to glance up and down the street. It was one of the less-frequented corners of Knockturn, (though all of Knockturn came with it a sense of desolation that he wasn't so sure all the foot-traffic in the world could ever really cure,) and as such, that it was currently quite empty was only worrisome in that he was waiting for the younger Auror to come meet him one block down from the store he'd listed in the note, Curios Cabinet. He'd thrown together a plan, but to pull it off, he needed someone who was less easily recognizable as law enforcement, and who better to fill such a niche than a young woman still fresh from training?

He hadn't gone to excessive means to disguise himself, knowing too much effort was just as bad and drew as much attention as not enough. His usual coat had been (begrudgingly) swapped with a black great coat and grey scarf to help ward off the gloomy end-of-winter chill and damp that was the rule in London, and he'd refrained from shaving for a few days to look scruffier than usual. A sprig of spearmint still filled one cheek, the scent of it barely powerful enough to mask the scent of cheap grain vodka he'd rubbed into his wrists and onto his neck like awful cologne. All of it combined to give the impression of a nobody, just some barely-functional alcoholic doing nothing with his time except waiting for someone else who was also probably a nobody, and as such, he drew no attention; he was worth no one's time; he effectively blended in with the stone walls behind him and the filthy cobblestone beneath his feet.

Or, would, if she'd hurry up. Waiting too long was suspicious-- unfortunately, so was checking his watch too many times. Breathing a quiet noise of impatience, Alastor resumed not-reading the week-old Quidditich scores in front of him. Hurry up, Longbottom, afore the damp gets to my bones.

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Don't be so stupid that I have to explain it. The prayer was a weak one at best; those who knew him knew very well how much he enjoyed slipping into lecture mode, a fact he scoffed at and insisted he only cared for because it was typically followed by "now do what I say or else I'll hit you with a stick" mode. (Which was, clearly, the best mode one could ever be in.) Fortunately for him, the earlier surprise Daisy had shown had shifted into something more bitter, more begrudging, more annoyed as she repeated the lie he'd fed her back at him. Alastor wasn't sure whether to feed that anger-- be angry, you should be-- or try to dispel it-- anger gets kids like you killed-- and decided it wasn't his responsibility either way.

Before he could think to answer, he huffed as a ripple of visible disgust tempered by self-righteous indignation crossed his face. "A janitor? Do I look like a bloody janitor?" Moody launched into grumbled reassurances to himself that he did not in fact look like a janitor as he slid the pack he'd earlier pulled out back into his pocket to be immediately lost for the next time he needed it, and, as an afterthought, wrapped his fingers around his wand to re-conjure the glass she'd so kindly stolen from him and set it upside down on the table. When his hand reemerged, he was holding a slightly-beaten black leather wallet, which he thumped on the table next to the glass for her to look at if she was so inclined. (A janitor. Really!) He, meanwhile, turned to spot where a waiter might be.

"Steal that an' I'll get a whole lot less nice, little one," he warned absently. "An' if I get another pint, are you goin' to try to fuck with it again? You're gettin' in the way a' the proud an' dead important tradition a' havin' a drink after work, y'know."

You Can't Hold Me Down || Moody & Daisy || July 10, 1978

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Revelation was a bitch, and yet he was exactly the sort of man to enjoy that moment of painful realization when she discovered the cause behind his latest clue. It wasn't nearly as satisfying as it might have been had she been older, had she been one of his marks, had she actually deserved for him to have fun at her expense-- but that hardly meant it wasn't enjoyable at all. All the same, he refrained from smiling as he returned his cigarette to his mouth and rested back in his seat, content to watch her either dig her hole deeper or attempt to shovel herself out.

The latter, it seemed. It took him an additional few seconds to place the word as Daisy oh-so-helpfully (finally) answered, having to remember church as the English kirk. Religion, singing, loud instruments and fancy clothes: definitely Muggleborn, though Moody couldn't decide with any certainty one way or the other if she'd refrained from revealing as much because she was a brat, or because she was a brat who knew better than to let people know her blood status. "Hmph. Still lyin'. They're shoppin' through Diagon an' dropped you off here acause you're annoyin' them." This was wrong and he knew it, yet he said it evenly with a pointed look for her. Don't say otherwise.

To cover his own sudden lapse into a state far more serious than what he'd otherwise affected in the pub thus far, Moody huffed a near laugh and, after one more good drag, snubbed his cigarette out. "Och, relax, little one. Underage magic an' petty theft aren't my jurisdiction." He grimaced, as if the thought of dealing with both on a daily basis struck him as a fate worse than death. "Am willin' to bet half the bastards in this building have done both at least once."

You Can't Hold Me Down || Moody & Daisy || July 10, 1978

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Or don't read the file. Honestly, as long as she gave him the information he needed, she never needed to glance at the medical reports if it made her happy, though taking the thick paper and using it as a cutting board as she did whatever it was she needed to do with the leaves struck him as a bit odd. It could be worse, Alastor reassured himself; she could be doing it on his desk, and without knowing what exactly it was, he wouldn't know what to use to get rid of Salazar's fucking tits did she just lick the goddamn poison?!

He froze. He absolutely froze and ceased breathing for a few seconds as fire hippie lady scooped up the leaf and stuck her goddamn tongue on it. Gods. She's tasting it. Who the fuck tastes a poison?! Every single one of his lessons with various poisons and toxins had all boiled down to teaching him, time and time again, that the absolute last thing one should do when facing any harmful substance was to put their tongue on it to check for taste. Alastor wasn't sure whether he ought to start laughing hysterically or find the first Healer he could drag back to his office, and wondered what he would have to do to cover his own ass should she drop dead in front of his desk. When he was trained to take over for the last Head, he'd very conveniently forgotten to cover the delicate subject of “what to do if a batshit insane herbologist starts taste testing poisons in your office”. Frankly, he was now offended that had been skipped.

Then she was-- talking, she was talking and she wasn't dying, and it was still a few moments yet before Moody could relax enough to breathe or remembered to wipe the expression of alarmed shock from his face. The moment Sapworthy appeared to be done with the plant cuttings spread across the thick paper of the folder, he reached forward to set the tips of three fingers down atop the file and drag it back to his side of the desk as if he was worried leaving them within convenient reach of the woman across from him was no longer a threat to him, but a threat to her. Hell, he was still too surprised to bother cutting her off and explaining this was not his first poisoning and he could reach his own conclusions about the implications at work, thank you very much. Though-- he gave his head a small shake as he heard she was as unsure how he'd managed to acquire the samples. “They need funding.” I don't know what for.

But that was information she didn't need to know and he didn't intend to share. Attempting to marshal himself, Alastor continued, eyes flicking to the vial she still hold every now and again. Why the fuck did you lick it?! “Thank you. Need two more things from you: one, a written statement sayin' as much as you've told me now-- mostly, I need your thoughts about any Dark magic used in the combination so I can get my arrest,” as the arrest of the dealer would give him an avenue to find whoever was supplying it, “an' I need to know if there's anything special we can do antidote-wise to counteract it in case we cannae find the suppliers fast enough.”

I also need you to never lick a poisonous plant in front of me ever again, he did not say.

Mother Nature Is Not Sweet ; Alastor & Selina ; July 21st, 1978

His nervousness at her opening the jar caught her notice, but she watched him only through her peripheral vision. He didn’t merit her full attention; that was reserved for the plant. Selina was not unaware of how most professional people saw her: tantamount to a Seer, really, and very few Seers received respect for their visions. There were too many false prophets for even the legitimate ones to rise above the laughter.

Not that anyone’s laughter at her dissuaded her from what she did. She was the one with poisonous leaves before her, being called upon to identify them, and that was enough for her to feel legitimate. Head Auror Moody, if he was gruff and watched her like he expected her to take the leaves and run, left her alone enough to do her job without interruption.

He pushed the file toward her, no doubt intending her to read it, but she had no need for files. Everything was in the plant; getting information from him would just speed her deductions along. Selina glanced at the folder and considered another use for it: she transferred the plant from her hand onto the thick cover, procured a thin blade from her sleeve, and neatly sliced the largest leaf in half. The purple-veined outside gave way to a dark green pulp, wet and thicker than it should have been.

She touched the cut edge to her tongue briefly, holding it cradled in her palm as her cheeks sucked in. Sour. Wrong. Distinctly wrong.

"Hellebore," she announced, finally, dropping the plant back with its fellows. "Picked early and given properties of a green tuber. That’s where the hypothermia’s coming from, but it’s hidden well. Takes someone talented to cross two incompatible plants, but there’s Dark magic in it, too. This one—" she tapped the scattered leaves with a finger "—isn’t potent. Too dry. Your poisonings are a practice run for something worse. It’s likely the cousins, the last two, know the poisoner; poisoning a child takes knowledge of the family and who is most diligent about what the child eats and drinks.

"Likely they all got different amounts. Ingested it. Children are smaller, so it affected that one worst. Children aren’t usually helpful in testing poisons—unless your target is a child. But none of these, so far, were targets." Selina shrugged, brushing the leaves back into the vial, disappearing her blade back into her clothing. "The final target—or targets—won’t survive. They’re having trouble perfecting the amount needed to be fatal. The only thing I can’t tell you is how this specimen ended up in your hands, because this isn’t useful for selling purposes. Likely, your acquiring it was purposeful." Her work done, her eyes met Head Auror Moody’s, impassive as she could make them, waiting for him to react.

[semper-vigilo]

What a snotty woman. It was a shame, too; Moody generally got along better with those who came with poor attitudes, but something about Molly rubbed him the wrong way. Perhaps it was her sense of all-knowing-I'm-rightness that both clashed with his own deep-seated arrogance and reminded him, as she was a mother, too much of his own. (Like hell he was chalking all this up to mommy issues!) Or perhaps they simply were not fated to get along very well, despite his fairly friendly relationship with her husband. It wasn't as if making enemies was a new experience for a man whom those who knew him knew to consider well versed in the practice.

Another frown gathered across his lips and then deepened as his brows stitched together and he gave his head a small shake, the expression too well put together to be believably sincere. (Fortunately, believable wasn't high on his list of priorities.) “S'not me you should be apologizin' to. After all, you're the one failin' to protect those five bairns a' yours you love throwin' at me as if they were relevant-- an' I enjoy your use a' the term “safe house”.” His voice dipped as he leaned forward a few inches, as if the door that seperated them and the children inside wasn't defense enough against whatever else he intended to say. “Forgive me, but I don't see the point a' usin' that word on a house that isn't in the least bit safe.” And it really wasn't, so much so that it struck him as laughable. What meager defenses must have been mustered at some point or another had been allowed to wither far past the point he considered acceptable.

Straightening up, his expression smoothed as he slipped his hands into his pockets and abruptly appeared to lose interest in whatever little snark-off the pair of them had decided to slip into, turning his face away instead as his eyes scanned over the generous yard again. The property had one thing going for it, he'd admit: it was remote enough that a random discovery was rather low on the list of possibilities. “I've told you what you need, an' I'm not big on repeatin' myself, but I will for your sake. I need you to keep your littlins inside an' away from any doors or windows-- they might interfere, an' I cannae promise breakin' one ward while I set 'em up will end well.”

Moody turned back to address her, very much no longer kidding as he pressed on. “An' I mean it, I need you to start botherin' to take care a' your threshold. Someone comes to your door, they might be a friend the wards let through, or they might not; we're trainin' everyone to use security questions for a reason. I don't see the point a' wastin' my time tryin' to protect you an' yours if you won't put some effort into it-- do you?”

Good News, Everybody! ; Alastor & Molly ; July 15th, 1978 & Prompt One

Molly could feel her head fuming, she really didn’t have any time for this. She was running on maybe three hours of sleep at the most and she still had a day full of taking care of her boys to do. Part of her wanted nothing more than to Owl Arthur’s mother and send the children off to her while Charlie was getting better. Molly could feel her eyes suddenly get heavy and her head start to spin as the sudden exhaustion hit her. 

"Bloody hell, Alastor." Molly growled at him. Molly really didn’t want to get into it with Alastor Moody about what she is capable of doing, not again. "Just tell me what you need so you can fix the damn things so I can take care of my kids." 

"I’m sorry, did I forget to uphold every single protocol you put in place on my house, the one I built, the one that I offered as a safe house for the Order?” Molly asked crossing her arms staring at the older man. “Please do forgive me, it must have slipped my mind between feeding my two month old twins and making breakfast for my other three children. I will do my best to do everything perfectly next time. 

[semper-vigilo]

Despite not knowing what that book was or who the character might be, Alastor would have had a good laugh hearing her compare him to a being like the one described; after all, if one replaced "jungle" with "glen" or "moor", she wouldn't be too far off the mark. But that wasn't what he heard. Instead, he was presented with another question, and another opportunity to either press for more information by giving some up about himself or a chance simply to wave her off as the annoying child she was. Much as the latter might have been the more reasonable choice, he was bored, and he knew giving up and going home meant either the anxiety of waiting for events that may or may not happen, or the tedium of being bored on his own, and neither were particularly attractive choices.

"'I'm innocent,' is the biggest one," he answered simply. There: if she was too dense to gleam the fact of his being in law enforcement from such an answer, then this entertainment was far more unfair than he originally assumed and he'd have to go out of a sense of pity for the braindead child across from him. It was no fun attempting to figure out a simpleton; there was nothing for him to figure out. (Something nasty in him made fun of how he chose to take his amusements, but Moody was an old hat at ignoring such feelings.)

Though like hell would he continue to play at her reciprocity game if she was going to continue to be tight lipped. Moody raised a brow and lifted his cigarette as if he meant to examine whether or not it was burning evenly, turning it slowly to watch the bright embers eat through the paper. "Not here. When you're not twelve, that question loses some of its effect, little one. Where are your parents?"

You Can't Hold Me Down || Moody & Daisy || July 10, 1978

[semper-vigilo]

[semper-vigilo]

Christmas was coming. This he knew not because he could make heads or tails of a calendar, a talent so many other people possessed that eluded him entirely, but because the obnoxious decorations were already filling the Ministry and doing their part toward guaranteeing he was nursing the beginnings of a headache before he even got to the office. Inconsiderate fuckers.

As annoyed as he was with the season and its holidays and its stupid goddamn lighted pixies who the fuck thought they were a good idea, all of it had combined to warn him big time that he needed to figure out some sort of gift to offer as a peace offering to his little goddaughter and, more importantly, her mother who was still huffing about him forgetting the holiday entirely last year. “I sent you a letter,” he mocked beneath his breath, voice heavy with what must have been a horrible faux-Swedish accent as the wrapping paper continued to crinkle loudly and do exactly everything except what he needed it to do. “Cannae even be bothered to check your damn mail--”

The complains continued, and the source of his frustration was immediately clear: wrapping gifts was yet another talent other people had that he certainly did not. Surrounded by obnoxiously-colored paper, more tape than could ever be construed as necessary, and balled up bits of trash, it had taken Moody the better part of an hour and several drags off the bottle at his side to wrap the first two, two handsome books he was sure Jan would love. The last gift-- a stuffed sheep about the size of the two year old herself-- was a far more difficult task to tackle than the predictably-shaped books. So far, he'd somewhat and somehow gotten a ring of paper around its neck, and was seriously considering giving up and jamming a bow on its head when a knock sounded at his door. He nearly knocked over his bottle, startled as he was, and grabbed it just in time to cast wide eyes toward the entrance. Och shit don't tell me I missed it again and she's come to yell at me--

Cautious and hoping the fear would sober him up, (hell hath no fury and all,) Alastor carefully screwed the lid back onto the bottle before hiding it just behind his couch. Using every ounce of that stealth training that had been offered to him a decade ago, which perhaps might have been more effective had he been keeping track of how much whisky he'd downed, he skulked toward the door, taking the opportunity to peek through the hole the moment it arose to gauge whatever intruder had come knocking.

Oh. He breathed a shaky sigh of relief, tension melting from his shoulders and allowing them to drop from the position near-about round his ears they'd taken up. Just Shacklebolt. Salazar only knew what the man wanted, but whatever it was, it was a far sight better than having an angry Swede on his doorstep. Undoing the locks-- a process that took a few moments even then-- whatever greeting he might have lobbed toward his brother died on his lips as he was assaulted both by a blast of shockingly cold air and an unnerving expression he hadn't seen before on the usually-stoic man's face.

His eyes fell to his feet, a sparkle of red having stood out quite plainly against the otherwise pure snow coating the ground. Years in the office allowed him to recognize blood immediately. Alastor stared at it for a long moment, noticing that it was slowly growing deeper, the heat and thickness of it eating through the snow before the cold ultimately conquered it, and appeared to be originating from the briefcase Kingsley had always preferred. Oh. Casually, he leaned against his door frame, attention rising back to his brother's face. His voice reflected his posture.

“Who was he an' how many people did you Obliviate?”

Brothers Who Slay Together || December 21st, 1971 || Alastor & Kingsley [TW]

It had gotten out of hand and quickly, as these things were wont to. 

The man’s body had gained fifty pounds, it felt, between when Kingsley had pushed him into the wall and when he’d crumpled to the ground. There was nothing at all different between this round out back of the bar and any other he’d partaken in, having picked the bad habit up from his partner, save for the poorly placed patch of ice and the sizeable metal peg sticking out where a brick had chipped around it. Bad timing and absolutely shitty luck conspired together to leave Kingsley with an enormous corpse and a puddle of hot blood creeping red into the snow at his feet. 

The screams had attracted his attention. He knew the boisterous sounds that came hand in hand with this seedier cesshole of London; knew them well enough to differentiate between the screeches of women having a laugh and the screeches of one decidedly not. He might have been inclined to tug his collar up around his face and carry on as the rest of the near-abandoned street seemed all too happy to do had his conscious not laid in on him to the extreme. His thick body rounded the corner and seemed to fill the mouth of the tiny alley before he could think twice about what he was doing, already hurling threats at the piece of shit with his pants around his ankles and his hands up the sobbing girl’s skirts. 

Blind rage and something akin to panic stopped him from drawing his wand, something he’d be loathe to admit to those who had a hand in training him. When the cunt took a swing Kingsley had hit back and hit hard, shoving him square in the chest, ripping his feet out from under him— 

— smashing his head back against brick and iron with a sickening crack of a thud and a low groan from his prone body. His cock was still hard, Kingsley realized, vision seeming to tunnel, and he had to snarl at the girl before she gathered her senses enough to flee. 

By then it was too late. Kingsley wasn’t and would never be a Healer, but even he knew that naught could be done for a bloke once he was well and truly gone. Gone by his hand— by his bare hand, and with a witness to boot.

Fucking dammit! 

Desperate times, desperate measures— and only one man would ever carry the brunt of Kingsley’s respect and trust. An enlargement charm on the interior of the hard briefcase he carried created a cavern large enough to shove the floppy corpse inside, hands stained red from his efforts, lips curled back from his teeth. His job involved looking at dead bodies— contorting them into small spaces, on the other hand, had always been the responsibility of the sort of wizard he captured, threw in Azkaban to rot— the sort of wizard he now was. 

And as such he found himself standing sheepish and wide-eyed on Moody’s front porch, briefcase sat upright at its side, leaking crimson slow and sure from the crack and into the snow as he waited for his brother to answer the damned door. 

By the diadem, Alastor, if I ever needed you before—