Constant Vigilance

Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody decides to slack off on the constant vigilance just a teensy bit before Harry Potter's fourth year at Hogwarts. He's actually going to try to live a life (!) Not much romance... just pathetic attempts at it with tips from Nymphadora.

Ch 1 Summary: Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody gets tired of his "Constant vigilance!" catch phrase. Nymphadora Tonks tries to pry into his romance life, or lack thereof. Knowing Tonks, chaos ensues, consisting of her accusing Alastor of being an impersonator, Alastor voluntarily promising himself a personal life, and her almost giving the presence of a favorite werewolf away in the Ministry...

Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling. (read: I don't own Harry Potter... bitch. xP)

The Singles Club

A few days later, Alastor was tidying himself up for a Singles Club party tonight. Nymphadora had told him he was really getting desperate for this love life, but what did she know? Her cutesy-ness and flirting had gotten her… well, quite a few boys, Alastor had to admit, even if many were driven away by her clumsiness.

This was an important Singles Club party. A Singles Over-Forty Club party, as a matter of fact. He might as well attend a few more of these since he just retired two days ago… even though Alastor seemed to look at least seventy with his wrinkled, scarred face. Hopefully the women there would take that to be a sign of his bravery.

He winked flirtatiously at himself in the mirror. He was a left eye winker, but he had lost his left eye, obviously. He had been practicing winking with his right eye when he wondered how those pretty boys could manage that difficult task without looking disgusting. At least he had other men there to learn from.

At long last, he pulled his obsidian cloak over his charming—or so he thought—mahogany robes. He looked himself over in the mirror and smirked his you-foolish-Death-Eater-thought-you-would-escape-the-famous-Mad-Eye-didn't-you? grin.

And with that, he Apparated to the given address.

-:-

After approximately two hours of wandering around and introducing himself amidst plain recognition ("Wow, is that Auror Mad-Eye Moody?!" "Er, Ex-Auror now…" "Excuse me while I go introduce myself to him!" giggle, giggle, giggle), Alastor finally found a nice woman. She was a medium-height brunette with an average body. She seemed to be around forty-four years old and had not been gasping and spilling drinks all over Alastor like some of the others had. In fact, she seemed pretty indifferent, but he practiced conversing with her.

He figured out her name was Mary and she liked the color pink… well, Alastor could pretty much tell from her outfit, makeup, and nails. The most interesting thing about her would probably be the fact that she worked in the Department of Magical Transportation at the Ministry of Magic.

Right. How boring.

Alastor chatted with her for maybe fifteen minutes and had not learned a single thing from it when a slightly tall man with boring brown hair in average gray robes came over to the pair of them. A lean blonde woman who looked to be one of those gossip queens from secondary school except thirty years older quickly followed him. She kept touching the boring-looking man flirtatiously, but the man obviously thought she was too clingy for her own good as he started conversing with the brunette woman.

In the end, Alastor learned that the boring-looking man also had a boring personality to match. And that the indifferent brunette he had been talking to earlier had liked boring people. They had left Alastor and the blonde after a short conversation.

So now Alastor was stuck with the blonde named Brenna. He would have just Apparated back to his home if he had not made Nymphadora a deal that he would stay at the party for the entire night.

Actually, it had been more of an Unbreakable Vow than just a deal. It wasn't really that important to Alastor, but he had done it just to show Nymphadora how dedicated he was to socializing…

Not.

Damn that Nymphadora.

The blonde immediately began batting her eyelashes while asking questions endlessly. Alastor tried so very hard to make conversation with her, but after about a long five minutes, he left her when she turned around to check out some passing man. A sixty-year-old man… who wasn't a courageous Auror like himself. Desperate, much?

Oh well. Alastor went to grab another firewhiskey—just kidding, he had brought some that he had checked himself, constant vigilance, man!—and came upon a very startled Amelia Bones. Yes, Amelia Bones from the Ministry.

They both talked about work for a while. Well, more like Alastor asked Amelia questions about her department since Alastor had just retired and could not talk about his secret Auror work anyways.

Amelia left after a bit since she was apparently helping one of her close friends throw the party.

So maybe she wasn't single. Hm. Who would've known?

Alastor then stumbled upon a pleasant, intriguing redhead with curves in all the right places. Much better than that gossipy lean blonde or that utterly boring brunette. Not that Alastor was biased towards any hair color. In fact, he was a dirty blonde himself… before he had got caught up with his constant vigilance. Now he had grey hair, rather pretty if he does say so himself.

The redhead seemed rather fascinated with Auror work, though Alastor could not reveal any details regarding it. Alastor soon learned that she, Lydia Newton, worked at an apothecary in Diagon Alley. She seemed to be very knowledgeable since she dealt with so many potions, though she also mastered Transfiguration and seemed to like Defence Against the Dark Arts, at any rate. Or maybe that was just to impress Alastor.

They talked for quite a while about anything but politics since that was a pretty touchy subject, particularly when Alastor worked for the Ministry. They talked about school; Lydia had been sorted into Hufflepuff at Hogwarts before attending Beauxbatons as an exchange student for several years. Alastor thought she was definitely nice enough to be in Hufflepuff.

When the clock struck eleven forty-five, some members at the party had started saying their goodbyes and Apparating back to their respective homes. The circles dispersed and soon, not many people were left. Alastor and Lydia arranged a date in a rather subtle way and left themselves, though Alastor made sure it was past midnight for him to return so the Unbreakable Vow wouldn't turn on him.

A/N: Tehe, quite OOC, I know. But that's what made writing this so fun. (: