**
He was near the house, only near it: he couldn’t pop right into his own living room, didn’t feel right about it. The whole place would need a thorough check. I don’t need to ask Amos and Arthur. I look ridiculous enough as it is.
Poppy had tried to discourage him from Apparating before he left Hogwarts. Should have listened to her. It was a very hard Apparition. He’d felt stretched and unstable. Might have been the closest I’ve ever come to Splinching myself. Not that there’s all that much left of me to Splinch. Damned leg is sore without the callous, and my eye keeps sticking…
There was an alleyway down the block he’d used as an Apparition point before. He should have come in closer “ maybe his shed, or the yard next door. He should have waited until morning, he should have…
Stop it, you fool! You’ll drive yourself mad for real, and then what use will you be to the Order?
Miss Stewart’s gate was half a block closer than his own, just a few steps away, and he could turn in there, could sleep in her garage: she’d never know, wouldn’t mind if she did know. I can face the wreck tomorrow.
"Alohamora!" The gate opened. She had something leggy and sparse growing up through the bricks in her walk. Probably deliberate. She’s a careful gardener. The roses are coming along nicely. She did use that walk, after all. Checked her mail every day. Random thoughts of a young woman in her garden ran through his head. He could let himself host random thoughts. But they were scattering like dropped marbles, and he practically stooped to pick them up before he simply stopped and collected himself.
She might be gone, someone else here. She’d had a year’s lease. Was it up?
The light came on, bright, piercing, and a muffled, “Oh my God!” Small hands were reaching out and taking hold.
“Come in, come it. I’ll get you some tea.”
Was she pulling him? Half carrying him? Poppy was right, he should have waited, he …
“Is your puppy alright? I don’t know, I didn’t see one. I’ll go look.”
I must be muttering. He put up a hand, shook his head.
“No dog,” he managed to get out of his mouth. “No dog,” his breath failing him, the repetition fading off.
He heard clattering in the kitchen, far off, not far off. A buzz, a bell, running water, all out of order. He was shaking, shaking all over. Dear Merlin, I can’t DIE here, I can’t DIE in her parlor! What a mess that would be for her. The possibility suddenly seemed very real, however, and he could not shake the feeling that it would be unneighborly and ill bred to let himself expire in her chair. He was struggling to rise, but she came back in, tea tray in her hands, a brisk manner to her speech.
“Mr. Moody, I‘m going to take your pulse and temperature, if you don’t mind, before I give you some tea. If that is all right with you,” she said, but he had the impression that it being all right or not all right with him was far to one side or the other of her point. She stuck something in his mouth, picked his wrist up gently and turned it up so, was looking at her wristwatch and mumbling. She had an old book open on the tea tray.
“Well, if the Girl Scouts knew what they were talking about in World War One I suppose you’re in the realm of the living. Here, have some tea. Are you on any medication? Hmmm. Just in case, I had better leave out the whiskey.”
Firewhisky? Where would she get that? No, you idiot, they have their own. Fireless. Muggles have Fireless Whiskey
“Whiskey, okay.”
It ought to be okay. It ought to just do “ less. Less, not more. Muggles, their things - -less, not more.
“Of course I am more or less meddling. A neighbor shows up on my doorstep at four A.M. a total wreck, what else would I do but meddle “ if you can even call it that under the circumstances. Here, Mr. Moody, I’ve put sugar and lemon in the tea with the whiskey. Let me help you.”
Let me help you. Not “Can I help you,” not “Do you need any help,” not even “Are you really certain you should,” just “let me.”
She held the cup to his lips, inexpertly, but still, it was right there, just hot enough, not too hot. One sip. Another. Two, then, his hands up, he was finishing it off. It rolled down his throat, warm, and sweet, and healing in a way Poppy’s potions had not been.
He could focus on her now. She was wearing Muggle denim pants and a big loose shirt with no place for buttons or buttonholes. It went on like a jumper. What did they call them again? Something-shirts. Oh, he was daft.
Her brow was furrowed, her glasses riding a little down on the bridge of her nose. She was trying to smile, though.
“Are you better? Is your trunk out in the street? Do we need to get it?”
His trunk was probably sitting in his fireplace right now. Not that he was so sure he ever wanted to see it again. “Delivered,” he managed to spit out.
“I see, alright then, here, take another cup of tea. I’ve got bread. Shall I make you a sandwich?”
“Toast,” he said, quietly. “Here.”
She said nothing, just went into the kitchen. Well, he thought, he could still cast a burning spell, and there, he had. Without moving from his seat, he had pointed his wand at the neat pile of logs by the grate. Wingardium Leviosa! With another muttered word or two they had arranged themselves in the fireplace. Then he’d whispered again. It was burning. It was not blazing, exactly, but it had caught, and when she returned this time, on the tray was a knife, an unsliced loaf of bread, a labelless jar of jam, some butter and a toaster. She glanced at the fire in surprise.
“Well, they must have really taught you - something, way back when. Nice fire.”
“Long fork.”
She turned from gazing at the fire to look at him again. “A long fork? I’ve got a sort of long one, I think. It came with the house.”
She returned from the kitchen with a standard cooking fork, about two feet long from prong tip to handle’s end.
“It’ll do,” he whispered, holding out his hand, and she wordlessly handed it to him. When he reached again, she sliced him off a thick piece of bread. He expertly, despite his shaking hands, fitted the bread onto the tines.
“Like that.”
“I see,” she said, admiringly. “I’ve roasted marshmallows and hot dogs, but never toast. I think I know the principle. Wait.”
She went back into the kitchen, and when she returned there was another similar fork in her hands, although it was older, and bent. She handed it to him as well, and he noticed how she contrived, between the curlicue openings in the edge of the fire screen and he knew not what to place each fork in turn close to the fire.
“I know I haven’t got the patience to hold it, but that will do.”
***
He woke with a crick in his neck. Well, that was nothing new. He’d woken up with a crick in his neck every time he’d woken up since Barty Crouch had stuck that wand in his back…
But there was light.
There was a golden sunlight very much like the sunlight on the East side of his kitchen, and there was a crackling fire, and he smelled toast, and…
“Good morning!”
A woman’s voice, not the imposter’s, a young woman’s voice. He could almost place it.
“Would you like an egg? I’ll probably ruin it, but it’ll still be good for you.”
Yes, that Stewart girl.
“Eh?’
A low chuckle, “Not a morning person? Me either, really. I’ve got to go give in my grades. They will insist on having them. And then I am taking three sick days, let them dock me if they don’t like it, and summer break will officially start! But I’ve got to eat breakfast first, so “ boiled or fried?”
Her hair was worked up onto the back of her head, and she had on a dark skirt and jacket with a light sweatery blouse thing. He’d never seen her dressed for work, not up close.
“Do they dare give you a hard time, when you’re dressed like that?”
“Not as hard as it looks like they gave you. Boiled or fried, Mr. Moody?”
He looked at her piercingly from under bushy, wild brows. “You’re not going to let it go, are you?” he asked, starting to stretch unobtrusively.
“Well, the toast didn’t kill you, did it?” she asked, tilting her head to one side.
Merlin’s beard, he’d eaten in her house! After everything that had happened to him, he’d eaten in a Muggle house. Well, a Muggle isn’t putting any potions in there, or cursing it, is she? he was surprised to find himself thinking. And she was right, he felt fine “ better than he had any right to, in fact.
“All right. Hard boiled, please, and another piece of toast, if you’ve got it,” he said in a voice that did not properly express his bemusement.
“You probably know where the kitchen is, and the bathroom. I put out a hand towel and a fresh soap for you, and a toothbrush too. It’s new.”
She whisked off to the kitchen, and he unfolded himself from the chair he’d collapsed in.
She’d made it homey, almost. She had a blanket-thing “ an afghan, he thought they called it -- and she had rearranged the furniture. The rug, now he looked at it, was hideous, and it would take more than a scouring charm to make that sofa worth sitting on. The last tenant had brought it in, he thought. She had a straggly philodendron “ that had probably been left behind as well. The walls were clean. He recalled her washing them when she moved in, before he’d turned his eye away from the place when she was home, before he’d decided she was harmless and left her her privacy..
The bathroom was quite fresh. It smelled as if she’d just cleaned it, actually, the discolored chrome faucet shining with moisture, a trace of powdery cleaner around the bottom of the handle. There was a miniscule shower unit in the corner that hadn’t been there before. He could see that it had taken some ingenuity to hook the water up, and couldn’t fathom why she’d spent the money. He knew there was a tub upstairs: recalled when they’d put it in, as a matter of fact; right after Grindelwalds’s downfall.
He brushed his teeth and washed his face, but he also used a general Scourgify on his robes. Well, they weren’t his exactly. His had been “ he’d worn them for ten months straight. He hoped they’d been burned. He’d had to borrow, and these were actually Minerva’s, who was close to him in height.
What was he doing in a Muggle’s home, in front of a Muggle, in his robes? She’d already seen them, no point transfiguring them now. He’d just have to Obliviate her.
He arrived in the kitchen quietly, but she heard him. “Your egg is just done. Your eggs, actually “ I made you two of them.”
He could see from the messy plate on the table that she’d already eaten.
“I’ll be back after lunch “ about three, by time I get here. You can stay if you’d like. Your house is bound to be a mess. We can go over there when I get back if you’d rather just nap “ hell of a journey you had, I can see.
She said nothing about the robes. Could it be she hadn’t noticed? And then, “They make jokes at work about getting us academic robes to teach in, but it’s gallows humor. You’ll have to tell me sometime how you liked them. I’m doing grocery shopping on the way home. Should I pick up milk and bread and coffee and so forth?”
He nodded absently.
“Bye then.” She picked up a large bag by the door, and was off, and he was alone in her house: alone with all her things, her thoughts, the meager contents of her cupboards and closets, with her knitting left loosely on the sofa. He could see it all, sitting in the chair in the living room, with the whirling electric blue eye. With a casual curiosity, he searched the upstairs bath. Why had she put in the shower?
A few towels of an odd color maybe “ remembering his mother’s long ago frugality “ maybe purchased on sale. A toothbrush out, a few extra in the medicine cabinet, along with a few headache medications, razors, shaving cream, deodorant, toothpaste and a bottle of prescription medicine he couldn’t read. In the tub…
“Dear Wandering ….” In the tub were his Ramora!
They’d grown, too, there was barely room for them. She couldn’t have gotten them upstairs that size, and what had she been feeding them?
And why?
Not pretty fish. Not an ugly color, but monotonous, all businesslike body shape, and that funny expression around the eye.
The tub was clean, too, with some Muggle machinery, which might be pumping in air, or maybe the fish just liked the buzzing sound.
He sank further into the chair, in wonder, but also in exhaustion, and fell back to sleep.,
“No, I won’t take a cent! I’ve been cutting your roses for the table -- let’s call it even. Wouldn’t want you calling the police on me like Mrs. Albright did on you!”
The Muggle police at my house? Yes, Albus mentioned that, didn’t he?
“…and I told her, later that day, that it was probably kids putting fire crackers in the bins, and she’d be lucky if they didn’t do hers next, now that they’d seen how hysterical it made her. She’s been keeping them locked in the garage ever since. Waits till the truck is at the corner and then wheels them down to the curb on this little cart she’s got for them.”
She was smiling, her eyes crinkling at the corners. How odd, really “ he was the one people always found paranoid, and here was this girl talking to him as if he was entirely normal, and, well, now that he thought of it, she wasn’t saying anything against Mrs. Albright, really. She was just saying what Mrs. Albright was doing. She thought it was an overreaction, but it was effective, wasn’t it?
Was it worth it, just over bins?
Was he, Mad-Eye Moody, questioning someone else’s caution?
He had to shake his head to get back to her point. She wasn’t taking any money for the food. He was in no condition to argue the point, although he felt he should have. Looking at her meager pantry, the half empty closets, she didn’t have the galleons to spare.
Not galleons, fool “ ounces they call their money, or something like that.
Oh, but he was weary. How could lying in a trunk for ten months tire him so? He was sure he knew what Muggles called their money, if only he could remember.
She looked over, a bit uncertainly, and started in a hesitant voice, “I’ve got your fish. I was afraid they’d die from the cold. I asked at a pond place, and I tried to measure how deep your pond was, but I couldn’t, and they were talking about a heater and all I could think was that with my luck I’d electrocute them or cook them by accident, so I just put them in buckets and brought them upstairs. The thing is, they grew, and I’m not sure I can get them back down. I just can’t carry that much flopping fish in that much water. I did a trial run just with the water in the buckets and I just can’t…”
Another expense, and she wasn’t saying a word about it. “Don’t worry. I’ll get my godson, Arthur. He’ll help,” Moody assured her.
“Well, that’s a relief. I was starting to fear I’d have to ask Mrs. Albright for her son’s help, which would, of course, expose the fact that he doesn’t really exist.”
“Oh, but he does,” Moody said, ruefully. “Horrible young man. I know him well.”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
He hadn’t laughed in at least ten months, shouldn’t be laughing now, really, and yet…
“You’ll be glad to see the gardens, then. Your roses outshine hers by a million to one.”
Muggle Matters by ProfPosky
Chapter Notes: I told you it would not be quite as long a wait! Being locked in a trunk imperioused, drugged, or a combination of who knows how many things does a body no good - but who is Mad-Eye Moody to listen to the voice of reason?
A million thanks to Ravensgryff, my superfantastic beta. And, as always, thanks to JKR for letting me toss Elizabeth and a few other odds and ends around in her world.
Chapter Endnotes: I'm down on my knees begging for reviews, here, people! Even a "Writer, you are strange," would be better than silence...