She was profoundly asleep with her lips slightly parted and breathing deeply. Alastor's face was against her ribcage. The bed was just big enough that this configuration worked if they fell asleep on the diagonal. He didn't want to wake her and the bed was warm but he wanted a soak. This had become a little bit of their routine. She would understand. He edged away and she woke to startled cartoon alertness. He was already halfway out of bed.

"Go back to sleep." He said. He got back on the bed, kissed her neck as she nodded. She turned over on her stomach and fell back asleep draped over the bed. He watched this smiling and a little self satisfied and then it happened. Her back was partly exposed and he made a move to cover her but couldn't.

Alastor was not given to fantasy because he could not sustain the illusion long enough. He could not hold falsehood long enough in his mind to enjoy it so he didn't. Enjoy it, he didn't enjoy it so he didn't fantasize. And this wasn't a fantasy either which maybe was worse. He had read after that Dorcas had a scar on her back between the left shoulder blade and her hip on the left side. She had sustained an injury in the field. So much had changed already but he knew there used to be an archive of images of how all of them looked taken when they first entered the field. For reconstruction purposes. And for a time, when Alastor was younger, they would also be called in to document the wounds they sustained or had witnessed if someone could not document their own injuries any longer. Some faint, some gruesome, many lethal.

Alastor was unsure if the ministry kept up this practice but he didn't want to see it. Not really, not that way but he sat down and read part of her file from when she had been recommended for apprenticeship. The scar had not existed then. He did not imagine or overlay her back over the sleeping woman's back but he had a strong urge to crawl back into bed. The bath could wait. He slipped his right hand between the woman's rib cage and the covers which woke her again from a less deep sleep. She smiled over her shoulder. He pressed his left thumb under the woman's left shoulder and kneaded. The woman let out something like a moan and yawn laced her left hand into his right hand.

If this had been Dorcas, and it was not, he knew, and if she had let him which she hadn't because this was not her, even if it had taken days, he would have massaged that scar away. It would have melted into her back. He would have kissed that scar away. He would have treated that scar with such care, with such attention it might have rolled off her back grown legs and run to his back and stuck itself to him instead believing that he would be a more suitable host for the tenderness he would have shown it. He kissed the woman's shoulder. He traced where he thought Dorcas' scar might have been because he hadn't seen it. He felt drowsy. No, he corrected himself. He felt dizzy. He wouldn't lie to himself.

"I won't interrupt you again," he said to the woman.

"It's alright." She murmured into the pillow. "I know you're busy." He peeled himself away from the bed. He could feel his own body heat filling the air. He decided to take a bath after all.

None of the women in his life had any illusions about him. He really did choose well. They understood that he may or may not come back. They understood not to run their mouths to just anyone as a matter of security. They understood who he was and what he did and what he could do and not as a threat but as a matter of historical and documented and lauded fact. The first one he had met that Valentine's Day in Diagon Alley. He hadn't intended for anything to happen. Now he had several women who "kept him company". Some of them cooked, some of them were tidy and organized, some left their clothes in piles on the floor, some of them hummed. Some of them had flatmates who were out but, not many, some of them had other significant others but this was Alastor Moody. Do you understand? He'd shown interest and it didn't matter the circumstances they were in, they had shown interest back. Everyone was adults here and everyone knew it wasn't forever. He got along very well with a few of them, as in they could talk and laugh together but that's not why he went over and they all understood that.

Overtime, he visited this one many more times than the others until he had stopped visiting any others, or fewer others, than he had before. It had been Emmeline who had started him on the baths.

It was a convenient coincidence that the woman he had left in the bed had an enormous bathtub which was a little funny because her flat was so tiny. He liked it. He liked how plush and soft everything was, how worn in her furniture was used to a warm familiarity. He liked how contained and closed off everything seemed to be. He liked the silliness of the large tub.

Alastor had walked in after a long evening, a very long evening.

Emmeline sniffed the air, saw him, leaned in slightly and sniffed again. It was any wonder actual smoke did not stream out of her ears, she was so furious.

"I know we are all grieving. I know you are hurt, Alastor, we all are, but if you must honor her memory in that way can you please bathe afterwards?"

She had a sensitive nose. Or maybe she didn't.

It wasn't that he cared, not really, but maybe it was the way she said it. Anyway, he did enjoy the baths. They were an excellent idea and so maybe he had Emmeline to thank or maybe it should have been Emmeline that caused what eventually happened to happen though no one really could have blamed her for telling him to fix up afterwards. So, he did now and found he enjoyed it. If the woman he was with didn't have a bath tub, he'd shower and very seldom did he do either of these things alone anymore.

The woman, the same one who was sleeping deeply in a too small bed, in a small but cozy flat with a big tub had exited the water which was warming itself. It would heat up in waves courtesy of some magic she had learned from her own mother for when she didn't want to get out of the bath. The soft rolling change soothed him.

He jolted awake that day from or to a memory. The woman apologized. She hadn't meant to startle him she was just putting the hand cream away.

"What is that smell?"

"I can change it if you don-"

"No… It's nice."

She smiled. On her, it smelled sweet, almost buttery. On Alice Longbottom, it had smelled like a set breakfast table. Like tea and bright lemons and a centerpiece of roses. On Dorcas, it smelled like a warm day in summer after you've watered a garden. When all the green growing things are breathing an air-filtered sweet plant sweetness. On her it smelled like roses and lemon sparkling with water drops. For all his awareness of everything, Alastor hadn't thought about it in some time because he hadn't smelled it or even realized the smell had been missing.

He remembered when he first smelled the hand cream. Before Dorcas had been sent away, before he had even mentioned that he thought she should leave, before she did she had bought herself another of the same one. She did not need back up or accompaniment nor did Alice but he had gone out of fear which made people and aurors careless. They took the night watch. Alice and Dorcas were pressed against each other talking with one another in a frantic excited hushed tone. They got along well with each other though they didn't spend too much time together. Everything came out of a flood of discussion when they were together but no one could have told you what they had to discuss in the first place. Alastor sat a little ways away and then he smelled it. That same hand cream.

"Alastor?" Alice had chirped offering him some over her shoulder. He shook his head.

Dorcas rubbed her hands together and breathed in the smell.

"Ooohh," she cooed.

"I have more where that came from," said Alice. "Take this one."

"I couldn't."

"You could. I have so many because it's the only fragrance I can stand right now…"

Parts of the conversation drifted back to Alastor and floated away or got stuck in the space between. A moment later he looked up at the sound of another gasp and squeak. Dorcas hands covered her mouth and Alastor was about to say something to investigate further but Alice shook her head in affirmation and they both threw their arms in front of one another for an embrace.

"Congratulations, Alice!" They were both beaming. Alastor's suspicions were confirmed at the kitchen table with Frank telling him and Edgar both that he would be a father. Alice started showing soon after. Alastor shifted in the tub so that his arms were draped over his knees and his head could rest on his forearms. Since the bathwater wasn't getting colder, he had a strange sensation that he was being cooked but shook his head to clear the thought. The woman had gone back to the bed. Alastor pulled the plug to drain the water and only stood up to get out of the tub was completely empty.

It took a monumental effort to even stand up and he wondered how fair it would be to just flop on the bed wet like a fish. She wouldn't mind. If she did she wouldn't say anything. He was the great Alastor Moody, most of them didn't say much of anything. He toweled himself off slowly, thinking, remembering, wondering. He knew of someone who'd done it before. This woman had the same hand cream. That could work. Is that how it worked? Dorcas used to talk about her friend, what was her name? Lind-, Lal-, Lydia! That was it! He also thought to himself, well if he could do it, he wouldn't have to even searched for her name in his mind but, she would know something about this. He smiled. This is what it felt like to dream. This is what it felt like to lie to yourself. It felt nice. It pushed the heavy truth out: that he could not or would not contact Lydia to ask her any favors of any kind. That he had already made up his mind what he was going to do when he smelled the hand cream. That smell, smell being the most difficult memory to alter, would keep him anchored to the real world. He thought that's where they had messed up before, all the others. They had nothing to call them back to themselves.

He didn't go to the bathroom dresser to get the hand cream because he knew the room would smell like it when he went back to bed and it did. Alastor wrapped himself around the woman not caring if he woke her this time. He brought her hand to his face and breathed in slowly and deeply.