No Good Deed
A Harry Potter thing
By
EvilFuzzy9
Rating: K+
Genre: Friendship
Characters/Pairings: Ron W., Harry P., Hermione G.; [canon ships where applicable]
Summary: Actions have consequences. Between provocation and punishment lies an impulse decision and a stroke of luck, whether good or bad, that will lead to results which few would have dreamed of and fewer still would have hoped for. Whether it is fair and whether it is right is entirely subjective.
With a sniff and a wary look, Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody finished searching through the effects of the Weasley twins. Questionable objects found in the course of his search had been stacked up for closer inspection, and it was rather large pile. There were many suspicious artefacts in the possession of Fred and George Weasley, a good number of things that were dangerous, or at least potentially so.
A good fraction of the twins' possessions was comprised of contraband prohibited by Hogwarts, including a small collection of adult publications quite inappropriate for a pair of fourteen year olds. Those, Moody did not bother with confiscating, though he did check them for secret messages, codes, or notes. But there were many suspicious things among the twins' effects, and several potentially dark artefacts.
Potentially dark Moody called them, because his colleagues were as likely as not to gainsay him and refute his suspicions. And maybe they would be right to do this, for their part. Moody knew he had a reputation for jumping at shadows, so to speak, and he often identified as dark objects that were in truth perfectly benign. He was less accurate than his peers, chiefly because he labeled such a great many objects as "potentially" dark.
Most of the time these days, he was proven wrong, and that was just fine by him. Better paranoid and wrong than unwary and wrong. Too many good sorts had died, or bad sorts got off scot free, because of an auror failing to spot a bit of dark or illegal magic. He had seen far, FAR too many people snuff it because someone was a little lax or incautious.
During the war, and the first years of uneasy peace afterward, Alastor Moody's paranoia had been bloody well justified. Some compared him to an oversensitive sneakoscope: he was tightly wound and liable to go off at the minutest stimulus. That had saved his behind more than once back in the war—You-Know-Who and his followers were GOOD at what they did, and the best of them could weave plots so insidiously subtle that all but wary old Alastor would overlook them as innocuous. Moody had learned to be paranoid because the Death Eaters were cunning, and he'd made many dangerous enemies over the course of his career as an auror.
But the war was over, long over now, and still he remained paranoid. Old habits died hard.
The healers said he had high blood pressure. Hypertension. Moody was so high strung that it was killing him, albeit very gradually. But if he stayed with the aurors and kept going as he was, he'd be lucky to last another ten years, and not because he had good odds of being cursed or poisoned. Stress was deteriorating his body, and although he would insist that his mind at least was still as good as ever, there could be no denying that his reflexes were not what they once were.
It had not been some pitched battle against the Dark Lord or his most perilous followers that had cost Alastor his eye; he'd not lost that until after the war. Though his vigilance waned not, his skills were in decline as surely as his health. If he stayed on with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement much long, it would have to be in an administrative or managerial capacity. He had a good head on his shoulders, no matter what some others might mutter about paranoia, and that at least he could yet ply with confidence.
Moody moved on from the twins's dorm and searched equally suspiciously through the possessions of young Ginevra, looking through her things as carefully as he had through her brothers'. That she was a first year did not make him less diligent in the search. If anything, the fact that she had used the homorphus charm and exposed Pettigrew—allegedly not knowing what the spell would do—gave him cause to be doubly wary. Even if something didn't set off his dark detectors, he still treated it cautiously, and if his gut told him it was suspicious, then he treated it like it ruddy well was.
And when he fished out a small, somewhat old-fashioned muggle diary labeled as belonging to T. M. Riddle, Moody did not need the buzzing or the flashing or the shrill klaxon cries of those dark detectors to tell him that he had just hit the jackpot in the worst sense possible. His sneakoscope whirred, his secrecy sensor whistled, and every other tool for the detection of dark magic or concealment spells that he had in his arsenal went off at once. The din rang through Gryffindor tower, probably badly startling whatever kids were in the common room enjoying a rare midday break.
But Moody barely needed these things to tell him that the diary was steeped in the darkest and most dangerous sorts of magic. His nerves screamed, and every instinct honed over decades of auror work shouted at him that this diary was Bad News, and the most damning article to be found in the girl's effects, or indeed among any of the Weasley kids' possessions.
Moody knew the name Riddle, and he could guess who those initials belonged to. He was one of the few who had known the bastard before he went fully dark, however distantly so, and had the sense to guess at certain connections. Dumbledore deserved credit for some of it.
But T. M., Tom Marvolo Riddle, was a name Moody knew. And he knew also the connection of that name to one much blacker and more feared.
Tom Marvolo Riddle.
I am Lord Voldemort.
The diary felt altogether loathsome in his hand, and bile rose in his stomach at its touch. Not solely for the knowledge that this thing had belonged to You-Know-Who, either.
Biting back the confused urges to both gag and snarl, Moody promptly confiscated the diary and stuffed it into a auror issue mokeskin pouch. This was serious, very serious. It was now a matter much bigger than Peter Pettigrew, and that had been a thing of no small concern.
No longer just the things he'd set apart, but EVERY article in the possession of the Weasley family would have to be subjected to the strictest scrutiny, and all the Weasleys interviewed, not just Molly and Arthur. The kids too, and their classmates, their teachers, everyone.
Moody suppressed a shudder. He tasted bile on the back of his tongue, and his stomach twisted horribly. His hands felt dirty.
A part of Moody dearly wished now that his knowledge of dark magic was not so deep and thorough. Far better did blissful ignorance seem in a situation like this, happier by far would he be if all he could identify about the diary was that it was a bit of powerful dark magic. Better if he did not know, if he could not tell precisely what sort of magic this was, just how foul and despicable and horrifying.
And the implications of this... while he had always agreed with Dumbledore that You-Know-Who was probably still alive somewhere, somehow...
He felt sick to his stomach.
Though Moody had never before encountered this kind of magic in person, he knew enough to identify it. He was probably one of very few aurors sufficiently qualified to do so.
This was the diary of Tom Riddle, the Dark Lord Voldemort.
A horcrux.
It didn't take a genius to put the rest together.
Whose it was? That was obvious. But more perplexing, and in a way more pressing, was how something like this could have found itself in the possession of an eleven year old girl, let alone the daughter of someone like Arthur Weasley.
Even Alastor Moody was not so paranoid as to think a vocal and unabashed muggle fanatic like Arthur could be a dark wizard. It was a possibility, EVERYTHING was a possibility, but in this case only very faintly so, even as he reckoned it. Most of the rest would dismiss it out of hand, he did not doubt.
Molly was even less likely. Her brothers were killed by Death Eaters, and Molly had loved them as much as anything. Even if she had secretly been in league with the Death Eaters, it was very unlikely that she would have remained so after that. She wore her emotions on her sleeves, that woman.
Not that Alastor wholly discounted these possibilities, but already he was considering other ways for the diary to have found its way here. It may have been planted. Indeed, there were people who would stand to gain a great deal if such a dark artefact were found in the possession of Arthur Weasley's youngest.
It was possible that Arthur and/or Molly had secretly been Death Eaters. Moody could not afford to ignore any possibility. But even he had to admit that it seemed dreadfully improbable.
Either way, they would cross that bridge when they came to it.
Moody took out his wand and conjured a patronus.
"Rufus, I've found something big. Call in a task force. Send for Unspeakables. We have a horcrux."
A/N: This chapter took longer to finish than it ought to have, considering I'd had most of the above on paper for at least a week. But my meds were low, and I was somewhat preoccupied with other concerns, and getting back into LOTRO also. Still, here it is. I think the fic might be nearing its end, now. Or at least I've started giving thought to how I will end it.
I've found it's usually best to try and wrap a fic up before it drags on too long. Continue a story past its prime, and it will invariably stall out. Admittedly, this has not been a long fanfic by any measure save drabbles, or my earliest works, but make of it what you will.
Updated: 4-18-16
TTFN and R&R!
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