Chapter 1
A/N
IM ONLY SAYING THIS ONCE! THIS STORY IS NOT MINE! IT BELONGS TO selenaquana.
ALL PRAISE GOES TO selenaquana. on Ao3. THE ONLY REASON IM PUTTING IT ON FANFICTION IS TO LISTEN TO IT. IM NOT DOING THIS TO GET LIKES OR ANYTHING ITS FOR MY OWN PERSONAL PLEASURE!
I WILL ALSO REMIND YOU THIS IS FANFICTION! THING DO NOT NEED TO BE THE SAME AS IN THE BOOKS OR MOVIE. IF THAT BOTHERS YOU THAN DONT READ FANFICTION!
And now enjoy the story.
Mad-Eye Moody's Little Marauder
By: selenaquana
Summary:
Mad-Eye Moody always wanted kids, but it never happened. So he made due with a slew of apprentices.
Until one day, he finds a little boy who needs someone to step up. Someone who can protect him from any threat, and more importantly, teach him how to protect himself.
Or, how one adult stepping up can change the world (and also make people's heads spin).
Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Alastor "Mad-eye" Moody hated walks. He hated the outdoors. He hated nature. He hated sunshine. He hated being in public places where he couldn't vet the surroundings. Or where people he didn't know might be. Suspicious people. People who would be suspicious of him. He hated open places where anyone could take him out with a sniper shot.
Alastor Mad-eye Moody was not, however, an idiot. He knew that his vigilance could sometimes go too far. And really, if he was to anxious to go in a public space for a walk, he was to anxious to be an auror.
Alastor Mad-eye Moody loved his job. Many who knew him after he became an auror would doubt this, but Moody loved many things. He loved history. He loved his county, even if it was made up of some idiots with dandelion fluff for brains. To those that knew him in school, then, the fact that he loved his job would not seem out of place. In fact, for a Hufflepuff, to find a job where one could help people and pursue justice and find self-fulfilment was the goal of life.
Alastor Mad-eye Moody also had a good deal of fondness for children. He had adored his younger siblings growing up. He had adored the younger years over whom he was prefect (although not Head Boy because Minerva was in his year and everyone knew there was no beating out that smart-ass). He had always wanted children. Unfortunately, he hated the aforementioned sheep with dandelion fluff for brains. And he found, during his teen years, most women of his age fell into that category. When presented with the choice between time at a career he knew was fulfilling and the pursuit of some perfect bride he may never meet, he chose work. Every time. Until he was to old and scarred and all the women of his generation interested in a family were taken. So he lived his parental fantasies out vicariously through his friends (yes, he did have friends, despite what the younger aurors thought) and apprentices.
Alastor Mad-eye Moody loved his apprentices, even if he swore he'd never let them know. Shack was a good kid, strong and capable. Scrimgeour was intelligent, crafty, if a bit bigoted. Bones was a genius, and he doubted he'd ever felt prouder than the day she was named Head of the DMLE. Felt like he was walking his own daughter down the aisle (even if she was only a decade younger than him) when he handed her the key to the director's office after Crouch moved out to International Relations. (He had loved Black and Potter too, for all the good it did him. One dead and the other a traitor, should have seen the signs… No, man, no. You've thought of that enough. Nobody saw it, not even James, and he was a damn fine auror. Nobody saw it, stop thinking about it, that way leads madness.)
Alastor Mad-eye Moody knew he was paranoid. He also worked very hard to make people think he was more paranoid than he actually was. He made them think he was crazy. Many people ignored the threat a crazy person posed. And his paranoia kept the young'uns on their toes, kept them honest, and most importantly kept them alive (except Potter… damn it man, focus!)
At the moment, Alastor was taking one of the hated walks. He didn't trust the wizarding world for such a thing, of course. To small-town, to many people who knew him. To many people who hated him. To many people who would try and have a bloody conversation with him. No, no, the wizarding world had no anonymity.
So, he took his every-other-day walks through the muggle world. This offered a variety of convenient advantages. Nobody knew him, so nobody wanted to talk. Heads down, they'd shuffle around each other on the sidewalk and move on, nothing to see here. He got a few glances for his scars and his leg (a muggle prosthetic, far better than anything wizards made, charmed to look like an eagle's claw when a wizard looked at it. After all, if wizards thought he used a slow, plodding, noisy, garish thing like that, they'd never expect him to move with the speed the muggle prosthetic allowed). But he had learned long ago how to keep his back straight and face blank, putting of the invisible aura of military veteran . He even had the occasional man from the muggle forces salute him passing on the street, which Moody was quick to return. After all, a fellow warrior was a fellow warrior, even if they fought different types of evil. These walks also allowed for observation of muggle customs, dress, and other things. Moody hated the wizards who failed to keep up with the times, that was just asking for trouble. His own home was in a muggle neighborhood, with a television, radio, telephone, and other such appliances. Knowing how to blend and operate was important for every modern wizard, and muggle ways and fashions changed so often. The only way to keep up on it was to maintain constant vigilance.
Alastor also, as a matter of course, intentionally took his walk in a different region every time. Today, a warm fall day, with leaves just browning and the smell of rain in the air, he was walking in Surrey, a small town called Little Whinging to be precise.
This, he realized quickly, was a mistake. Suburbs were much harder for blending in, as the women peeking out from behind curtains or over fences could attest. And this suburb seemed particularly bad, with houses and yards all laid out in neat, same-looking roads. But, clearly if he was being noticed, he was not blending in well enough. The only way to fix that was to learn where he stood out and amend the behavior.
He passed a young, harried looking mother with a set of screaming twins in a stroller and a tired two-year old clinging to her trouser pocket. Moody gave the little boy his least terrifying smile (yes, he had those, even if giving them pulled on the scars and hurt like hell, wich was why he saved them for cases like this), and got a shy shuffle behind his mother in return. The woman nodded and smiled kindly before going on her way.
It would appear, from the increased ruffling of curtains, that was the wrong thing to do. Huh.
Alastor had just reached the small alley separating house eleven from house ten, still mulling over what could give him away, when a small body hit him from the side. Alastor, for whom balancing was always difficult due to the missing leg, immediately went down. The boy, for it was a boy, did not. And then the child looked at Moody with a face that stopped his heart cold, muttered a quick sorry, and ran off.
Alastor had no idea what to think. The boy was tiny, far to tiny. He should be what, six? But the tyke barely looked four! And his cheeks, all sunken in like that one kid Moody had pulled out of the Bower house a few years ago…
That thought stopped his heart for the second time. No. There was no way Harry bloody Potter was in the same type of situation as the Bower kids. Potter was supposed to be safe, protected. Albus would never let anyone treat him like… well, like that.
Moody was pulled from his thoughts as a gang of children came upon him, covered in dirt, screeching.
"Get 'im"
"Yeah, run away little coward!"
"Yeah, that's what you get freak!"
Well, well. It looked like a group of schoolyard bullies. Wonderful creatures, children. Moody did love them. Particularly well behaved ones. Of course, when he was a prefect, he learned that sometimes one had to intervene to turn a rowdy child into a behaved one. And luckily, no parent would believe a six year old about the strange man who said weird words and left them with wedgies for three days, or made their shoes constantly untie, or any other type of "bad luck" that might befall them.