A Stranger's Life:
What They Don't Know
In Children's Eyes.
Nothing To Tell
4. Until You've Walked In His Shoes
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There is a cold leading from the window. The pane is splintering…
He keeps meaning to fix it but it never gets set to the most important of priorities. He could do it now, but that would involve him having to remember the right spell that wouldn't have the window breaking or some wrong Transfiguration.
He doesn't feel like getting into all that right now.
All he wants is a quiet evening left to his own thoughts.
Thoughts that are half formed and of little matter.
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There is something about the past that allows one to reflect and forever remain in either humiliation or awe of a moment no one else in Time will ever think of again.
Like how when he was ten he would think of all the ways he could save everyone in his family in acts of heroism. Each one more melodramatic than all the others.
He even made Cassy and Morgan swear that only he would be able to save them.
Of course by the time he was thirteen he didn't think of it like that. Instead he thought of becoming an Auror and saving all sorts of people, but mostly catching the bad guy.
When he was sixteen and idealism came on strong to everyone around him. He developed his own idealisms.
To be honest he never really forgot them.
Alastor wanted there to be justice for both the people on either sides of the lines. Because if anything there were two sides to each story, one being considered lawful and the other that may not be lawful but still is something of value to some people.
In fact that was what made women equal to men, races equal to each other… everything that had to do with peace and equality through protests and unlawful conducts was worth fighting for!
He would be an Auror. But he would be the Auror who fought for his fellow man in efforts to create equality for everyone.
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He thinks that there might be something wrong with him.
Perhaps he finally grew up and stops thinking along the lines of fighting for what you believe in and fighting to stops something that is evil.
He's nearly sixty and it took him 20 years to stop thinking that everyone had justifications for their actions.
He has lost a leg, an eye skin all over his body over the years. But it still took him a very long time to stop living in his past dreams of peace and equality.
What are you suppose to do when you forget how to dream and all you think about is how you don't believe in your old dreams anymore?
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The first man he ever caught when he an Auror in training was a werewolf who had been trying out a form of potion that would render someone the ability to be a werewolf and functional in society.
Alastor demanded that they let him go.
"He killed someone!"
"His regret is great an obvious. The family has sent money to pay for a funeral to the grieving family." Alastor is not a man to be cowed by his superiors.
Langley throws up his arm and goes into a tirade of how he's going to deal with Alastor.
Alastor smiles inwardly, hoping that the werewolf is let go to make headway in research that may one day be finalized.
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"Constant Vigilance!" That's what he says when the Order asks him what advice he has for them going on to the field.
They roll their eyes and Kingsley laughs.
"We need more that that Mad-Eye." Says the Weasley with a twin.
"Keep a wand in your hand. Don't drop it, don't do anything but have it ready. Cast Alert Charms every three minutes and keep a Pepper Up Potion in your back pocket. Expect the worse, and don't panic no matter what you do. Clear heads are what in the end make the decisions that will save your lives." It's short and precisely what they need. After all Alastor should know, he's done this job for nearly his entire life.
The Order nods and looks like they did need that small tiny lecture.
Alastor can't help but think that most of them will panic, just like most of his students did twenty years ago. One out of seven would keep their heads clear, all the other suffered greatly from their affliction.
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The first time he killed a man Alastor never thought his heart would beat again.
"You had to do it. After all he was coming after you with the Killing Curse first." His partner at the time is trying to calm him down.
He's been an Auror for six months. The first man he kills is one of the first of a long line of Death Eaters.
He doesn't pay attention to his partner. Just concentrates on the name Joseph Parkinson, a man who has a son just starting at Hogwarts.
He writes down his name and cuts out the obituary from the Prophet and places it in book that will end up with more names and more obituaries.
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He pours Kingsley some of the stew that he's just made.
The boy is strangely quiet today.
He starts to growl out something to make the boy talk to him when Kingsley gets up. "I'm going to bed."
He follows Kingsley and stands there.
"Ron Weasley disappeared today."
Alastor nods. "Where is Potter and the girl?"
"They disappeared two days ago." Kingsley's voice dies by the end.
"Is this because they are children, or is this because you knew them as children?" Alastor trained with peers his age, could've died with them. But instead he lived to teach and send their children off to their deaths.
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When he kills a woman he finally shatters his dream of peace.
But he can still believe in equality. For this shows that there is equality in genders and races with these vagrants and fresh gang of Death Eaters that are starting to pop up everywhere.
"She tried to kill me. She nearly killed my partner. She had killed three children." Every justification for his actions prove that the only justifications he can make are for himself, nobody else.
There's a scar on his cheek that he can see in the bathroom mirror. There's a small nip on his chin.
"She probably killed more than that…"
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Alastor doesn't know whether or not be sorry about how he is now.
Sometimes when he looks at Molly he wants to console her and tell her that her youngest son will come back. That wait and all three of those children will come walking through the door.
Reality most likely would be, that the family would be blessed to get even the body found.
This is a War.
Nothing in war is ever done for those who need consolation.
Never.
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By the time he's been asked to teach younger people he's been disillusioned too much to find he has still has dreams.
Instead he teaches by virtue.
Instead he watches with envy the students who come in with the dreams he once believed in.
Only to feel sorry when he watches them fall disillusioned just as he did.
When Cassy comes to England to spend some time with him she says over dinner,
"Sweetheart, it's not good to go through life feeling nothing. Dreams are what the sense of purpose. What are ambitions but dreams? Even that Dumbledore you talk about must dream."
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Alastor finds that he's tired of envying those who still have dreams.
He finds Kingsley's dreams of righteousness tiresome and irritating. He once found Albus' annoying and tried to talk sense into the man.
He sometimes stares at where his leg used to be and runs his fingers over it feeling what are the scars deeply inputted in his skin.
He remembers his dreams. But more than ever he remembers the reality of such dreams.
There is no such thing as peace.
But he supposes you could still fight for it.