Chapter One

The Well-Behaved World of Alan Moody

Disclaimer: I don't own my main character. Wish I did. But I don't. Don't own Shacklebolt, Scrimgeour, and Frank Longbottom & various others. Everyone else is mine. The way Aurors are tested & trained - mine. Basically if you know it it's J. K.'s. If not…mine.

Alan Moody was a happy, ordinary man. His wife, Rachel Anne Moody, could be slightly odd at times, but she was also very well-behaved. They had a well-behaved dog named Scruffy and a hamster named Noodle. (Noodle was considered a badly-behaved hamster because every so often she would urinate on the well-behaved carpet in the front room.)

Alan Moody had a well-behaved front lawn that grew green and very straight, and he mowed it twice weekly. Alan Moody also had a daughter named Anne, who was a normal and well-behaved child. She had blonde pigtails and went to preschool every two days.

He worked in a gray office building on Front Street, accounting for a construction company. His co-workers were very well-behaved. So were his neighbours. So were all the drivers on the roads going to and from work.

He had lunch every day at the deli across from the office, (a ham sandwich and 2 milk.) The girl at the register had neat brown hair and was well-behaved.

One part of his life was decidedly not well-behaved.

His son. Alastor.

As Alan sat behind the driver's wheel of his Chevrolet Aveo and looked out at the traffic, his mind turned that dangerous corner. He looked in his breifcase for some well-behaved aspirin. Even thinking about his son gave him a migraine.

As Alan Moody, the Muggle, sat in the route of his dull, monotonous life, he was not at all aware that his wife was keeping dangerous secrets from him.

You see, Rachel Anne Moody, was no ordinary housewife. Oh, yes, she washed the dishes with detergent and the clothes with bleach, swept the floors with a broom and vacuumed with a Dirt Devil, cooked with a stove and always used PAM in the frying pan. A very well-behaved woman. Her husband, whom she cared for very much, would never understand the secret that followed her like a swarm of flies. This secret was best made material by an innocent looking piece of polished oak that she kept in the front pocket of her apron.

Alan Moody had no way of knowing it, but he was married to a witch.

Rachel Moody was careful, oh, yes, she was a thorough, careful woman. She knew for a fact that her oldest child, Alastor, was not a Muggle like his father. Her feelings were confused about that. She shouldn't feel guilty about it - she was a witch after all, it was to be expected. But still, as the small, ginger-haired boy's eleventh birthday approached, she found herself praying that he would turn out a Muggle. The little girl, Anne, certainly had no magical abilities, and Alan got along fine with her. She was his little princess.

But Alastor --- no. There had always been tension between the two. They were far too much alike --- the same dark, serious eyes, the same stubborn streak. What separated them, Rachel thought, was that Alan was a great believer in the norm. Nothing could shake his idea of reality. Alastor, on the other hand, wanted desperately to believe there was something… else. He felt the way she'd felt as a child; left out, excluded, like a freak.

Just at that moment, the screen door banged open. Her son trudged in, covered from head to toe in mud, a red stain, like blood, spreading across his left hand. His little hands were clenched into fists.

Rachel raised her head. She was on all fours on the floor, scrubbing the linoleum.

"Alastor, what happened?" she asked, concern marking her dark eyes.

Alastor scowled, an odd expression on his little face. "Tommy said… He said you were queer." He took a breath. "So I socked him. In the nose. Got blood on me." He raised his left fist. Rachel's eyes opened wide. That was certainly something his father wouldn't have done. Alan would have curled up and cried.

"Alastor," she scolded, "What have I told you about fighting?"

"Not to do it," the boy grumbled.

Rachel nodded. "Good. Go up and take your clothes off, I'll run you a bath to get this dirt off. Then," she said firmly, "I'll settle on a punishment."

Alastor turned around and, walking up the stairs, pulled his shirt off, throwing it in a muddy heap on Mrs. Moody's clean floor. "One day," she grumbled as she bent to pick it up, "He'll get into serious trouble with a bigger boy, and I'll never see him again."

Then, she turned up the stairs to run a bath for her son.