10
A Glaring Continuity Error
"Well, I feel a bit stupid."
"Tell me about it."
"Come on, then, let's wake him up…"
"Enervate!"
"—I can explain everything!" Sirius gasped.
"We were hoping you could." said Remus apologetically. Sirius felt someone haul him to his feet as his vision came back into focus. Sprawled on the floor before them, in Alastor Moody's now-oversized clothes and where Alastor Moody had until very recently been standing, was a man who, if nothing else, was not Alastor Moody. He clawed desperately at his shoulder where Moody's fake arm pinned his real one to his side, his eyes darting from face to face and wand to wand. Alastor Moody's fake eye swiveled aimlessly across the floor
"Polyjuice potion." Said Severus from off in the corner. The man on the floor stopped struggling as a spark of comprehension and a strange approximation of a Moody grimace flickered across his young, unscarred face.
"You see," he growled (in a voice that was not very well suited for growling, and sounded far more like a teenager whose voice had not quite stopped changing) "We go around trusting the likes of him, and none of us is safe." He pushed himself up from the floor, one-armed, and stood, practically daring any of them to stop him. For a half-barefoot man with arms that fell several centimeters short of his sleeves, he was surprisingly menacing. "Kingsley!" he barked, "Get me my wand. Let's try and find out who this lunatic's turned me into and—"
"Wait." said a low, gravelly, and instantly recognizable voice from the corner of the room. The color drained from the imposter's face. It was Moody, clutching at the wall for balance with his one hand, his black robes straining against his bulky frame. "I checked the potion." he explained, "Whoever he looks like," he inclined his head towards the man in Moody's clothes. "He is." Moody hopped carefully over to the fireplace, leaving one of Severus Snape's shoes behind. "And he looks like Bartemis Crouch Jr." he said, and threw some floo powder on the embers before anyone could react. "I'll be contacting the Headmaster and making myself some antidote, if anyone needs me." he explained, before disappearing into the flames.
Everybody but Arthur and Crouch (who were busy threatening or being threatened by each other, respectively) turned to Sirius.
"I think," Kingsley prompted "you had something to tell us, Sirius?"
Sirius nodded and began to explain.
***
Albus Dumbledore contemplated the archway in the Department of Mysteries in silence, a crystal phial of a house elf's memory in his pocket, a comforting triumph, an undelivered letter in his hand, a nagging defeat. He had stopped by (here meaning 'snuck in') to look at the veil for the first time today. Perhaps, in his flurry of self-confidence brought on by the fruits of his earlier labors, he had thought that the archway might give him some answer. Instead, he got nothing but the eerie, incomprehensible whispers of could-have-beens and never-weres. It was the most he should have expected. He looked down at his letter once more.
There was no way to send something into another reality unless there was something for it to replace and something to replace it in turn. In short, only if the other world was trying to contact this one at the exact moment he was trying to contact them could anything at all productive occur, and he doubted that anyone was going to try to make inter-dimensional contact on the word of an escaped Death Eater. He had written a letter explaining everything, but the only way they would receive the letter, is if they already knew what he was trying so hard to tell them.
He sighed and tossed his letter into the veil. It had been more out of his desire to throw something than out of his expectation that something would come of it, but come of it something did. Something small, square, and parchment-like, that flew back at him out of the veil as if in retaliation for his own disrespect and skidded across the stone floor. With a flick of his wand, it flew into his hand. It was addressed to him. It was clearly from him. He had never seen it before in his life.
He tucked the letter away in his pocket and walked out of the Ministry building through the way most people were expected to go in. He whistled a quiet sea chantey and wished the Aurors and security guards a pleasant evening as he passed. Albus was not often overly self-congratulatory, but tonight, he could not help but remind himself that not for nothing was he considered the greatest Wizard of all time.
***
Mundungus Fletcher pulled an invisibility cloak over himself like a blanket and attempted to fall asleep. Unfortunately, the stone thing he was stationed at was making ominous whispering noises, and the stream of identical letters charmed to fly back and forth through the veil were not exactly sheep. He turned over uncomfortably. He was missing an important meeting for this… keeping watch over a bunch of flying letters. He had begun to entertain thoughts of leaving the letters to look after themselves, when one of them fell out of the air and shot across the floor.
He picked it up. He couldn't tell whether it was the same as all the other letters, but Dumbledore had said to tell him if anything at all happened. This, he decided, was exactly the anything he had been waiting for, and disappeared under the invisibility cloak once more.
***
Albus Dumbledore stood sat at his desk, rolling a recently-acquired phial of memory between his fingers. He was eager to see it, but knew, as he locked the tiny bottle in his desk drawer, that falling asleep with his face in his pensive was terrible for his back. The memory would keep. The peaceful night would not. For thirty blissful seconds, Albus had no idea how right he was.
Thirty seconds later, a patronus in the form of a raccoon materialized on his desk, and then another in the form of a doe. He did not bother to contain his weary sigh.
"Well, Severus? Mundungus?" he asked the silvery-white messengers.
"Funny thing 'appened to one of your letters, 'eadmaster." said the raccoon (the only patronus Albus had ever seen that managed to look filthy).
"Thank you, Mundungus. I assume you're on your way?"
"Wouldn't want to interrupt anything. It'll wait, if you—"
"No, not at all." he said airily. "The fire is open and the night is young. Severus?"
"Alastor Moody was being impersonated by a man who died years ago." said the doe. "We have him at the Burrow now."
***
Having returned with no further incident from the Department of Mysteries, Albus Dumbledore leaned back into his desk chair in his silent office and unfolded the letter.
Dear Albus Dumbledore, it began, or rather, note to self.
Albus smiled. The letter he had sent began exactly the same way.
AN: The appearance of David Tennant's character (I swear, this scene was not conceived in fangirlishness) spawned, much to my surprise, both an allusion to the recent BBC production of Hamlet and a line ripped directly from Doctor Who. Anybody catch them?
On a more on-topic, Harry Potter fandom note, I always thought Barty Jr. deserved a better send-off than he got. I mean, the soul-sucking was a fine, realistic enough way for him to go, but his last scene shows him in a rather poor light for a man who spent a whole school year fooling several highly accomplished people into thinking he was one of their trusted allies/ closest friends. He's smarter than his non-Moody page time gives him credit for.