Some admin things before I get started.

First, copyright. What elements of this story that I own, and are not the property of anyone else, are licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. That means that you can take anything in this story, up to and including the whole thing, and use it however you like, as long as you promise me three things:
1. You will link back to me (preferably to my author page)
2. You will not make money off whetever you do
3. You will share your work under these same conditions

Next, I want to apologize for my long absence. I've left a statement on my author page, if you want to go and read it. I hope you do.

Finally, A few words about this story that aren't covered in the description. My current vision (subject to change) is that this will be an epic of the life stories of Mad-Eye, McGonagall, and my OC Iain Menzies (readers of my other stories will be familiar with him). It will be a story of pain, suffering, and the evils men can do, and above all how the bonds of our friends can bear us through even the most trying of circumstances. I hope you enjoy the show.

Finally-finally, the chapter title is a line from the Irish national anthem, in Irish Gaelic. It means "Tonight we man the gap of danger."


Prologue: Anocht a théam sa bhearna baoil

In the year of our Lord 1930, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi began his historic crusade for Indian home rule. In the same year, the National Socialist German Worker's Party won its first major victory in German federal elections. Also in this year, and far more significant to the story at hand, a young man named Sean was married to a young woman named Anna by a very elderly priest, whose name isn't important, in a mud brick hut in a small Irish hamlet, whose name didn't even exist. What separates this union from the many others that had taken place in the recently-established sovereign nation, and indeed from those performed by this very preacher, is the fact that they both had magic blood, from very old and established pure-blooded families in the strange and mysterious world of Wizardry.

Which, regrettably, meant very little in this particular case. Anna, though from the very old, wealthy, and respected Morris clan, had been cursed with the misfortune of being born unable to do even the basest of magic. For a family with as many generations of pureblood witches and wizards as the Morris', this travesty was simply unacceptable. So Anna had found herself in this dirty little town, about to be married to another disgraced heir of an ancient and noble family.

Sean's ancestry was just as deep and rich as Anna's, but he had the advantage of being perfectly able to do magic. Where his difficulty lay was in his parentage. His father, a formerly respected wizard of high status, had lost all standing in wizarding society when he had fallen in love with a muggle in the village, and had married her. In magical society at the time, this was the most grievous sin a son could commit against his parents, and these parents had seen fit to write their son out of their will. When Sean had been born, in 1892, he had been introduced into his grandparents' will in place of his father.

The two had met when Anna's parents, contacting her for the first time in decades, urged her to marry the older man, so that she wouldn't be quite as pathetic of a daughter. Well used to the criticisms of her parents, Anna did so. She quickly learned that Sean was in possession of a vicious temper and cruel streak, but she married him anyway. Needless to say, she did not enjoy her wedding night.

The life they made together was equally dismal. Sean's favourite pastimes, in order, were drinking, complaining, beating on his wife, and sleeping. He would wake around noon, spend hours in the village pub (racking up an enormous tab), and then come home expecting a hot meal. If he got one, it would never be to his liking. If he didn't, or if what he did get was especially offensive to him, Anna would hear about it from his fists.

Her life, unlike Sean's existence of laziness, was full of hardship. She woke early to tend to the sheep that they kept, and to tend the potatoes, carrots, turnips, and other vegetables planted in her modest garden. These vegetables, as well as milk and wool from the sheep, formed the extent of both their modest diet and more modest income. Sean had never found out that she sold half of what she grew in the village market every Sunday, nor did she feel the need to burden him with the information. As long as she was within sight of the hut when he left for the pub, Sean would never be the wiser, and he never was.

She took his every beating silently, and why wouldn't she? She was married to a drunk, yes, but he was a drunk who would someday inherit a vast and ancient fortune. Maybe, just maybe, that would be enough to reconcile with her family. She had left three brothers behind when she had been ousted by her parents, and she missed all five of them dearly. Enough to suffer through her private hell of a marriage.

For all of her justification, that didn't mean that she didn't want the almost daily beatings to stop. It was for this reason that, in the spring of 1933, she was especially glad to reveal to Sean that she was carrying his child. Even through the drunken haze of his twisted and angry mind, that news had a strange effect on him; the punishment that had plagued her life for three years ended, and the flow of complaints slowed. He still never lifted so much as a finger to help her, but as long as he wasn't lifting that finger to hurt her she could handle it. That was, until the day she collapsed at the market. Sean must have been having a particularly enjoyable time drinking himself into a stupor, because he was completely absent for all of the twelve hours that she spent in horrible, excruciating pain, giving birth to his child. To his son.

To revenge herself in some small way, she recalled a little-used name for the ancient god Zeus: the avenger. Coupling that name with the name of her husband's family, the name she had taken for herself, she named the boy.

On 14 January, 1933, Anna neé Morris gave birth to Alastor Moody.