This was really, really very difficult to write. I'm still not very happy with it, but I decided to post it anyway, if any of you are still interested. The reason this took me so long to post is the difficulty—it kept coming out wrong, so I kept putting it off until I came to regard this fic as a kind of summer thing. I have an end in mind for it, though, and I didn't want to abandon it, so I'm going to continue it now. Tell me if this one turned out completely awful.

And if you're still around, I haven't forgotten the requests for Hermione and Hagrid.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.


Alastor Moody, March 21st, 1980

Alastor had seen the Mirror of Erised only twice in his lifetime. The first was exactly eighteen years ago, on the twenty-first of March, 1962. It had been exactly a week after his twenty-first birthday; exactly a week after the day he had been taught that nobody in the world could truly be trusted – not even one's own self.

He had been young and stupid then – much like the teenagers he was faced with now. Lily and James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Marlene McKinnon – they were all incredibly brave, talented witches and wizards, idealistic, and stupid.

The young twenty-one-year-old Alastor Moody had been under the impression that he had nothing to fear. He had believed that he had been as careful as one could be; he had trusted that nothing would happen to him, and that was his undoing.

It was ridiculously predictable and cliché, how it had come about – it began with a girl. Her name was Cara Gwynfor. She was the only daughter of a renowned pureblood wizard, and she had been homeschooled by her uncles in Scandinavia, one of whom had died a month after Cara returned to Wales at seventeen.

She had joined the Auror Academy, which was where Alastor met her. Foolish as he had been back then, his first thought had been that her name was pretty (she pronounced it 'k-ya-rah gwin-ver'), his second thought had been that she was an unfairly good duelist (he had won their duel only narrowly, walking away with a nearly unrecognizable face), and his third thought had been that she was pretty (when she walked up to him and offered to teach him a curse that had gone through his shield if he showed her the curse that had temporarily blinded her in one eye).

Nearly four years after their first meeting, he had been ready to propose to her. He had been known as the most promising young Auror of that age, having been involved in the lockup of the Finnish Dark Wizard Anton Nikula, who had been responsible for his entire family's deaths the year Alastor graduated.

He had been reveling in the feeling of having avenged the deaths of his family members when he decided to propose to Cara and asked her to meet him in a park on March 16th, his birthday. He had been nearly skipping with joy as he made his way to the park with a ring in his pocket.

She was standing alone in the park, staring out at the horizon. "Cara!" he called, and she turned to face him.

"Happy birthday, Alastor," she said softly, tucking a few strands of dark hair behind her ear. She reached into the pocket of her robes. "I've got something for you." And she pulled out a gold pocket watch with a dark gold eye painted into the center of the face. "So you remember to be watchful, regardless of the time. An eye always open."

He grasped the watch by its chain, staring at the face. "Ever an Auror," he said with a grin, glancing up at her. "Giving me constant vigilance for my birthday."

She didn't smile. "I mean it, Alastor – our lives are dangerous. If you ever let yourself think you're safe, you could die – and I can't lose you."

His grin vanished. "I know," he said. He opened his mouth to continue, but she held up a hand.

"Wait," said Cara. "I've got another gift for you. It's nothing exciting, so don't hold your breath."

He arched an eyebrow at her before freezing as she held something out to him. It was black, with the Moody family crest embossed in gold. His mouth fell open. "A hip flask," he said incredulously. "Cara!"

She grinned at that. "What?" she asked. "You said the other night you'd do anything to get out of having to listen to Bossley go through another one of his awful speeches. Your exact words, if I remember correctly, were 'pity I can't carry around a bottle of liquor and pretend it's a medication or something.'"

"And how does this help?" he demanded exasperatedly. "'Sorry, sir, I've got a permanent cold and need this pepper-up potion to sit through your speech without sneezing. Excuse me if I seem a little woozy; I've got a pounding headache to accompany the cold.'"

Cara shrugged. "You'll think of something. I can't do everything for you, now can I?"

He laughed and accepted the flask. Then he took a deep breath, steeling himself. He had to ask her. Before he could say a word, though, she leaned forward to whisper in his ear conspiratorially. "It's already filled," she said. "I figured we'd need a proper way to celebrate."

He shook the flask, noticing the weight. Then he swallowed and looked back at her. If he was successful, they'd have something much better to celebrate. Dropping the flask in his pocket and retrieving the ring, he knelt in front of her.

Her eyes grew enormous and she let out an exclamation of surprise. "Cara Gwynfer, you and I both know that I'm as good at speeches as Bossley, so I'm not going to ruin this with one of them. I love you, Cara, and I'll love you forever, and –"

He broke off nervously. Her expression didn't look very inviting. She looked as if she was about to burst into tears. They're probably just tears of joy, he tried to assure himself, but Cara wasn't the sort to cry easily, and he'd never seen her cry tears of joy. Well, you've never seen her receive a proposal either, you bloody idiot! he scolded himself. Thank Merlin for that. Oh, shut up and get on with it.

"Marry me, Cara," he implored, and to his horror, the tears spilled onto her cheeks as she stared at him mutely. He waited anxiously, but she didn't say a word, only stood very still and looked at him with tears shining in her eyes. (At least, he thought, she hadn't burst into tears or anything dramatic).

"Cara," he said cautiously, when she hadn't said a word even after several minutes. "Cara, if you don't want to marry me –"

She stopped him with a kiss. "Of course I want to marry you, idiot," she said when she pulled back. His shoulders slumped in relief.

"Why didn't you bloody tell me earlier? I was internally dying!"

"Shut up," she said fondly. "We've got better things to celebrate now. The hope of having a future, for one."

"I'll drink to that," he agreed, and retrieved the flask again. He put it to his lips and tipped his head back, but before he could take a sip, she stopped him.

"Not even going to make sure it's not poisoned?" she asked teasingly, but that undercurrent of disapproval was back.

He gave her an exasperated look and took a long swallow. When he was done, he held it out to her. "Do you want some . . . Cara?" There seemed to be two of her in front of him. He tried to turn and stumbled, feeling a wave of nausea overcome him.

A flash of green erupted in his vision, and a body shoved him aside – Cara. "Cara, be careful – I can't see – " This wasn't supposed to happen to him. He'd done everything. Cara had agreed to marry him—

Her hand ran through his hair, and she pressed a kiss against his forehead before slipping his wand out of his robes and suddenly she was gone. Alastor tensed. "Cara?" he asked warily.

And then he heard her voice. "Careful, Uncle," she said, and he something inside him shattered. No. She wouldn't. "He is a good Auror—the only mistake he has ever made is—"

She had. "Trusting you," he said, and even he could hear the open anguish in his voice. Even as tears burned in his eyes, his instincts and training kicked in, his mind piecing things together rapidly.

"I do love you," she said, and there a somewhat desperate note of apology in her voice. "I did want to marry you. But—you put my uncle behind bars, and I loved him, too. And in the end . . . I'm sorry, Alastor, but I've chosen my family—"

"You've chosen the side we've pledged to dedicate our lives to fight," he said flatly. There was an unfamiliar feeling brewing in his, turning his stomach into a hard knot, and it was ugly and furious. It showed in his voice, which didn't sound like his. It sounded harsh and brutal and cutting.

Her uncles—she had spent time with them in Scandinavia—and one of them was Anton Nikula. This was a plan for revenge.

She did love him, he also realized. She had tried to warn him. She had chosen her family, but she had tried to remind him that he could not trust anybody, not even her.

He knew her well enough to realize she didn't want him to die, that she saw her actions as a sacrifice because she truly cared about him, and that she was going to let her uncle kill him in revenge anyway. What a sick sort of love.

Alastor wasn't the best young Auror of his age for nothing. He pushed the conflicting mass of unidentifiable emotions aside and steeled himself, calculating rapidly. It was a vicious cycle—her uncle had destroyed his family, he had destroyed her uncle, she was destroying him with her uncle . . . and he would destroy her and her uncle.

"At least give me my wand," he tried. "This isn't fair." They wouldn't—they weren't Hufflepuffs. Cara herself was a Ravenclaw.

"If you wanted justice you should have joined the Wizengamot," snapped Cara's uncle.

"I can't see and I can't stand," Alastor persisted. He was going to hate himself for what he was about to do later.

The dark wizard's mouth opened to reply, and at that moment Alastor threw himself upward and staggered forward as fast as he could, trying to outrun the nausea that threatened to overcome him. He followed the general direction of their voices before leaping forward and tackling Cara in a very unorthodox manner.

Wildly, he tried to find his wand, but he should have known better than to try blinded—Cara was an exceptional Auror, in skill if not in principle. He barely had time to register a sharp pain behind his eyes before everything faded away to nothingness.


Alastor stirred, groaning slightly. His body ached . . . had he gone through some particularly nasty duel the previous night? With the practiced ease of someone who'd been doing it forever, he reached out to his nightstand to retrieve his wand . . . and then promptly froze. His wand wasn't there.

He'd have known if it had somehow fallen in the night; it was heavily warded and over a dozen defenses would have fallen into place the moment it was moved.

Then the events of the previous day came rushing back to him, and it was as if something inside Alastor had broken again. Alastor forced himself not to think about it. He needed to figure out an escape from wherever he was; then he could break down.

Resisting the urge to bolt upright, he shifted and let out a convincingly loud snore; Cara had often told him his snores could cause earthquakes in America.

When nothing happened, he opened his eyes to narrow slits, tilting his head back against his arm so he could see properly. He was in a cell; that much he had predicted from the cold draft raising the hairs on the back of his neck. The ground beneath him was cold and hard, and upon further inspection, he surmised that there were shackles around his cold-numbed feet.

They were someplace cold, then. Alastor continued to breathe deeply and evenly, listening for some source of human life outside his cell. Was he being monitored?

"Alastor," came Cara's voice. "I know you're awake."

She didn't. She probably had a very good guess, but she wasn't completely sure, he knew; she was half-heartedly checking to see if he would rise to the bait and give himself away. After a moment, a chair creaked as she stood, and he heard the sound of her receding footsteps.

He didn't fall for it. She had merely paced to the other side of the room, or the door. That, at least, gave him a general idea of the dimensions of the room he was in—not that they really mattered to him just then, considering he was in a cell.

The door slammed close; now he knew there was a heavy door, metal from the sound of it. Still he did not rise. He refused to give any indication of his consciousness of his own accord.

But Cara was just as stubborn. And so the game continued, and the hours slipped through his fingers like smoke.

He didn't know how long it was before he was alone, but the first thing he did was complete a thorough inspection of his cell. It was fairly small. There weren't, as he had first suspected, shackles around both his feet; rather, only his right leg was chained to the wall.

It looked horrible. There were spikes on the inside digging into the ankle, and they seemed to be coated with some sort of poison. Alastor observed it all with the sort of apathy he'd been maintaining since his capture. The poison seemed to be spreading up through his leg . . . he knew what would happen when it reached his heart.

He was, it seemed, racing against the clock.

Days passed. One day he woke to a terrible truth: he could not escape. Truly, this was an unescapable prison.

By then, the poison had reached mid-calf.

He was going to die.

He tried to focus on escaping; he knew giving into the futility of the exercise would be his ultimate undoing. But it wasn't the only thing he was trying to fight—he spent the majority of his time in a fever-induced daze, hallucinating and hearing things and allowing himself to be tortured by his own memories.

Would death be the price of his freedom?

No . . . an old memory sparked; a quote he'd read long ago . . . "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." It was too late for that, wasn't it? Too late for him.

His leg had turned an odd blue-violet shade. It pulsated, radiating an intense sort of heat that pounded in time with his heartbeat. Everything began to seem rather like a clock. Somewhere, he could hear the tapping of a foot. His head throbbed a steady beat. The world was a metronome, and it had no end.

Vaguely he remembered a clock. Or an eye. Or was it a flask? Something to do with keeping time . . .

He thought it was important.

The thought slipped away, and time receded into monotony once more.

Until something broke it. There was silence one moment, and the next he couldn't hear himself breathe. Shouts and screams and flashes of light pierced the world, and there was a bang and a rush of cold air somewhere near Alastor.

The door to his cell had been ripped off its hinges. A wild, haggard face appeared in the doorway, staring at him for a moment before shoving something into his hand. Alastor felt his fingers curl around something before the figure vanished.

More people swarmed into his cell, and Alastor knew he had to get out. He could not speak, but one did not need to speak to do magic when magic was like breathing. He knew the shackle around his leg was the only thing incarcerating him, and he concentrated.

A minute later, he was dragging himself out. Nobody noticed the man dragging himself along the floor. Outside there was a heap of men on the floor. They were standing and fighting, they were sitting, they were dead, they were alive, they were other prisoners, they were guards—they existed, and that was enough.

He made it some distance before something hit him, and then something like a heavy brick replaced half his face. It wasn't something he could feel. It was something he could . . . not feel, and that was what made him realize something was different. He couldn't feel half his face.

He couldn't feel much of anything. He didn't have a final goal in mind; no destination, but the metronome that was the world never stopped, and he did. He stopped, and he knew he had arrived, although he did not know where, and through it all he had somehow managed to keep ahold on the thing in his hand.

Those were the memories Alastor had. Even he couldn't make sense of them, but he had relayed them to his superiors, and they had accepted the fact that incredibly, Alastor Moody had managed to survive a terrible ordeal.

The people who had captured him were dead. Most of their other prisoners were dead as well. Nobody knew the details of what had gone on, not even Alastor. They understood that, and they understood this: the Alastor Moody in front of them was not the Alastor Moody who had stood before them in the past.

This Moody had a peg leg, a brutally scarred face, and a hip flask he regarded with dark humor they didn't understand. This Moody was surprisingly calm after what had happened to him—they expected him to break down, but he didn't. Not even once. He never really reacted to what had happened at all.

(That they knew of. This was a lie. He reacted to all of it the first time he looked in the Mirror. He was obsessed with mirrors for a while after what happened, because they showed him something he never expected to see. But then he looked in this mirror and it showed him what he would have seen before, and that made him furious. And then it hit him exactly what had happened, and all the pain and rage and frustration and love and hate came pouring wrathfully out, and he wrecked the room completely. And then when the room was destroyed but the mirror wasn't, he looked into it and he saw justice. And then he left, because it was different, the way it should be—he shouldn't ever look in the mirror and see the same thing as before again.)

Alastor thought it rather interesting that he still saw justice in the mirror after twenty years, but the image was different. Perhaps it was because he had seen even more since then. He had watched other young and stupid people become destroyed by their youth and stupidity.

Lily and James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Marlene McKinnon—they had all experienced it. And it was their faces that he saw in the mirror, alongside his. He hated those faces because they reminded him so much of himself.

That was what he wanted to rectify. He wanted to teach the young and stupid constant vigilance, and that trust was something that should never be given away completely. It was only with that knowledge that they would be sufficiently armed in the war he fought every day as an Auror.

He believed in that war just as much as he had when he had first begun training. He would believe in it until the day he died. And winning it was his deepest, most ardent desire.