It’s a sad day when an Auror is reduced to spying on the Muggle neighbors for lack of anything better to do he thought, sitting in a straight backed wooden kitchen chair and watching the woman who lived next door carry trash to her bins. Something has got to change before I go madder than they already think I am.
Mad-Eye Moody had a plan for getting through the day. He got up every morning in the pre-dawn watch, just to check the perimeter, and if all seemed clear he made himself a cup of tea. (All always seemed clear, but he kept the proviso in the plan just to be prepared) The Daily Prophet owl would arrive, he would pay for the paper, and then spend somewhere between fifteen and forty-five minutes reading, cursing and fuming. He sometimes wrote a Howler or two, which he destroyed rather than sent, and by then, needing some sustenance, was ready to get himself some eggs and toast and the occasional sausage or bit of bacon.
On a very good day, this brought him to about eight am.
The plan was that from nine am to eleven he would work on his memoirs; the hour between eight and nine, then, was awkward. This day was not a good day, and the hour between eight and nine was actually the hour between six thirty and. It was, however, a lucky day, for he had a new neighbor, and she was out in the garden bringing trash to her bin.
I’ll just wait until she’s done and get that lot over here, where I can properly examine it. She seems to be harmless, but those are the worst kind.
He knew, even as he thought it, that suspecting this woman was grasping at straws. There was absolutely nothing to be learned about her from the Foe-glass, the extra-powerful Sneakoscope, or the view of her home he could get through his magical eye that indicated she was anything but what she seemed to be: a young woman who taught in a school not all that far away. The school was in a dodgy part of town; he knew this from the lady at the grocery store where he sometimes bought a Muggle paper “ his desperation was increasing lately, and any news, no matter how silly or irrelevant, was better than having none at all to think about “ and his new neighbor had taught there before. She was merely upgrading her premises - she had been living closer in towards the school, not far enough, perhaps, from the neighborhood she taught in. She was, according to the grocery lady, “Not young,” but he took that with a grain of salt, as the woman had seemed to be looking for a compliment, and been a bit miffed when he hadn’t said anything like “Unlike yourself, miss,” or “Not that you would know about not being young, eh?”
His new neighbor had moved in yesterday. The house was let furnished; she had made two trips with her microscopic Muggle auto full of boxes, one in the morning, the other, later in the afternoon, and had then ceremoniously unrolled a welcome mat in front of her door. She was done transporting her worldly goods then. He was not surprised. She was supposed to be “foreign,” which probably meant she did not have much accumulated here, unless she was settling permanently. The rubbish might tell.
He had followed her progress for an hour now. She had gotten up and showered, which he had politely ignored. Once dressed, she had come downstairs and put oatmeal in a bowl, put the bowl in a box and pushed a panel. Nothing had happened, she had cursed, found a plug, inserted it in the hole in the wall, and pushed the panel again. A light came on in the box. He’d made a mental note to tell Arthur Weasley about this.
Breakfast (she ate neatly, washed her one dish in the sink, but left it there because, it seemed, she did not have a dish drainer) then being over, she had gone out into the garden, binned her trash, and drawn in a deep breath, eyes closed. She did this again, and again. Should I get out my quill and note all this down? he wondered, Arthur will be fascinated when he comes to dinner. After three deep breaths, she had gone inside and begun unpacking books onto the built-in shelves in the circular lounge, shivering a bit. Skinny thing, she could do with a bit of a jumper. Nothing there to keep her warm. Two hours later, done with the books which were now quite carefully arranged, by what system he couldn’t tell, she went upstairs for her purse, came back down to enter her car, and drove off.
Well, no one is going to want to read the book when I’m done writing it. he told himself, truthfully if also philosophically, I can get the trash now.
**** Three weeks later, Alastor Moody knew a great deal about Elizabeth Stewart, including that she was entirely unsuspicious. She was, however, curious, and he found her looking at his home, converted some hundreds of years ago from a fifteenth century tithe barn and the nearest residence to hers, when she could not have known he was looking. He did not think she had seen him at all.
The problem was that he was starting to wonder if that was a good thing. The problem was that he ought not to have started looking in her bins. The problem was that his very quiet and quite unobjectionable neighbor was dangerously lonely, and now that he knew this, it bothered him.
Nice girl, that, he sat thinking one morning, a pile of her draft letters home in front of him. Doesn’t want to worry her mum. Starts out telling her the whole truth and keeps cleaning it up till she’s telling nothing but the truth.
The letter in question, which he had been retrieving over a period of four days, started with the heinous details of life in the school staff room, and in front of a class of students who clearly would have benefited from a term or two at Durmstrang. “The Assistant Headmistress still hates me, Mommy, and has been talking about me behind my back. I know because when I walk into the staff room, it falls quiet, and she looks pleased. She called me in to her office yesterday to see a pile of papers I’d graded, and demanded to know why I had missed marking some of the grammar errors,” was one pathetic piece of information. “Lydia Crasswhythe asked in that tone again about where I bought my skirt. I’ve learned to lie to her, or at least not to tell her much. ‘London, Lydia,’ I said.
‘Really, which shop?’ She wanted to know. ‘Some London shops are better than others, you know. You really ought to find someone to help you with that,’ she went on. As if I don’t know better than to take her advice “ she’d send me someplace stupid that only sold disgusting stuff and then laugh at me when I wore it. Everyone hates me, Mommy, and I cry every night.”
Obviously she had never intended to send it that way. The final draft read:
“The Assistant Headmistress is taking a real interest in my professional development, and one of the girls asked me where I got my skirt, so things seem to be warming up.”
Warming for battle, alright, and she’s telling the truth. Wonder if her mum knows how much she’s leaving out? Would he have known how little of it she told if he had only seen the final version?
Then there were the accounts of her classes.
“The boys in period three were playing some ball game with a crumbled up piece of paper again yesterday, and when I looked around Bobby Buffleston was hanging, and I do mean hanging from the light fixture, which I was afraid was going to come right out of the ceiling, and I was ready to jump out the window myself. When I asked him to come down he burst into a tirade of God alone knows what sort of gutter slang, of which I understood not one word, but understood well enough to know it was meant to destroy me.” This had become “Bobby in period three has great athletic ability and the kids all have a wonderful sense of spoken language, but you know that; I’ve mentioned it before.”
Well, she’s been there over a year. Probably every day’s a bit like that,he thought somewhat grimly.
There were other bits as well “ scraps on which she had done little sketches. One was the corner of his house, with a lot of converging lines behind it. Some were of plants he recognized from the yard. They were not magical plants, most of them, and he did not know their names. Bleeding heart and forget-me-nots were different: those he knew, and heart’s ease, and roses, of course.
She drew the sketches as if each flower were a face, and she were making its portrait. None of them were perfectly done, and some of the papers were stained with tears (he had checked with his wand) A few had been ripped to bits. He could not see any difference in the quality between them They’re all very nice. You can tell what they are. Can’t imagine why they’d make her cry, or why she’d ruin them.
He glanced over at her house again. Yes, she was in the kitchen, washing her dishes, and still drying them in the sink “ didn’t have anything to drain them on yet. Well, there was no law against talking to Muggles, was there? And transfiguring a few old tins into a dish drainer oughtn’t to be a problem “ it wasn’t as if he was enchanting a dish drainer, was it?
It was only as he stood with his wand up over the tins that he thought.
Careless old man! How in Merlin’s name are you supposed to know she needs one? Shaking, Alastor Moody, who had faced Grindelwald’s followers, who had faced Muggle Nazis, who had faced Death Eaters, sank into a chair, and put his face into his hands.
Muggle Matters by ProfPosky
Chapter Notes: Thanks to my fabulous beta, Ravensgryff, and Kumydabookworm and Spottedcat83, who read the story for me as well. Any errors or idiocies remaining are mine.
Disclaimer - I'll say it once and consider it said. Jo owns Mad-Eye and the rest of the Potterverse. Elizabeth and the roses are mine.