**
It was ridiculous. It just wasn’t done. That Give-Thanksing day, that had been an aberration. And charming her window locks so they would only open to her “ well that was very low level magic, really; the charm wouldn’t have kept out a wizard, just the local children, mischief makers, if there were any, the odd, pathetic rapist…
He had gone back to sporadically running his eye over the place. He was busy enough with the Order, he didn’t need anything to do, but she was such a nice girl, he liked to just give her house the occasional once over, just to be sure she was safe and had food in the kitchen.
She loaded me down that day. Hasn’t been that much food in the house since Mum died. Good thing I thought to ask Molly Weasley how to keep it.
He’d had to be cagey, too, waiting until there was a small pile of leftovers at the kitchen in Grimmauld place that night “ enough for one person, but by no means enough for two. He’d had to work at putting just the right touch of pathos on his face. Molly, not expecting anything, had been easily fooled.
Well, most of them aren’t Aurors. They don’t really know how much chicanery and skullduggery the job takes, and Tonks hasn’t gotten to that level yet. Training and natural ability aside, there are certain jobs you only get with experience. It’s only Shacklebolt, of the bunch of them, who really has an idea. It’s not like I usually play-act for the fun of it.
He could not have recalled anything he did just for the fun of it prior to his retirement, because prior to retirement he had had no fun. Perhaps he had not needed to. He had loved his job. The job had been everything. If they sent him to some foreign mountain range where he had to transfigure his own dinners, he could. If he had to infiltrate foreign governments, he could. Muggles, undoubtedly, were his weak point, but Aurors were, by definition, Dark Wizard catchers. The Muggles must have had their own Dark Muggle catchers and Dark Muggles who, no matter how dangerous or powerful they thought they were, did not tend to last long in close contact with Dark Wizards. No, his Muggle experience was quite old, and quite limited.
“Molly, dear, you haven’t got any particular use for that bit of beef, have you?” he’d asked that evening in Number twelve.
“No, not with Fred and George at school. Lord knows, I think Sirius is quite happy sharing rats with Buckbeak. Take it, go on.”
“The thing is, I’m not on tonight, and I thought I’d get some shut eye before I am on all day Monday. I was wondering…how do I keep it?”
“Keep it? How do you usually keep food, Mad-Eye?” she said, puzzled.
“I normally don’t keep much of a perishable nature in the house. If I need something fresh, I just transfigure it. I do pretty well at skim milk for coffee, not so well at cream…well, cream is no good for you anyway…”
She responded in a businesslike manner, waving her wand flawlessly and magically cleaning up what remained of dinner as she did so. “You use a chilling charm. You want it above freezing, but only just. If you can get hold of one of the old Muggle feridgingrators it makes it easier “ they don’t affect the charm, but once you get the food cold it stays better in there…and if you want, you can charm up a nice block of ice and put it next to. Not that I ever needed to know, but since Ginny is gone, and especially with Arthur working all hours and then of course duties here…” Her voice trailed off. Food, it seemed, was not moving at the Burrow’s customary pace.
“Molly, that’s fantastic, thank you!” He didn’t think she’d mind if he poured it on a bit thick “ Molly knew men liked her cooking.
She’d given him a piercing look, though, and surprised him by saying, “You should have eaten more at dinner, Mad-Eye. I noticed you were only picking.”
“I’m tired, Molly,” he started, but it seemed he didn’t need to say more. She leaned in conspiratorially and almost whispered.
“We’re all tired, Mad-Eye, but it’s in a good cause. There, there’s the pot roast, all wrapped up. You know how to heat it? You’re sure? And here’s a few rolls, you know. My father always liked a nice crisp roll in the morning with his tea. And Gideon, too.”
She smiled, the hurt old and banked in the back of her eyes, and he thought all of a sudden I wouldn’t want to be the Death Eater that faces her.
No, it might be ridiculous, but they all had bigger things to worry about. If he wanted to make a little lunch for a Muggle neighbor who’d been kind to him, that really ought to be all right. Poor girl had no one else, really, for all the good a family thousands of miles away did on a holiday.
All of this tempest in a teacup “ I ought to ask her first, and then she may tell me she’s busy. It ought to have been a comforting thought. It wasn’t, though. He did not admit it and therefore did not have to ask himself why Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, scourge of evil for three quarters of a century, should not like the idea of a hapless Muggle needing company on Christmas day.
Catching her so that he could ask her was not simple either. He hadn’t really spied on her personally since he had determined that she was harmless. She’s normally gone by six-forty-seven a.m. and home by four-thirty p.m., but recently I’ve seen her come in later. Five-o-four and forty six seconds yesterday, and no shopping bags to show for it either. Not that he kept track. He had just happened to notice. After all, that clock had been a gift from Arthur, and he tried to appreciate it. He thinks I’m batty, just like the rest of them. Even knowing what we’re facing, they still don’t take it half seriously enough. It’s just that he’s kinder about it. Gave me that Muggle clock because he knows I like to be prompt to rendezvous. Thinks I’m a bit off for worrying about it, but gave me the clock. It was the sort of thing he never really understood, and he managed, now that he was more or less working again, to keep his mind from straying to those thoughts. He had others.
At five fifteen “ and he’d been about to pull his Invisibility Cloak on and start down the road to see if she’d had car trouble “ she pulled into her driveway, and he carefully sauntered out to meet her.
“Hello! Home a bit late tonight?” he said casually, as if he’d come out here to bin some trash and only noticed her by accident.
“Oh! Hello! Well, they’ve got me running the Christmas Pageant. No one comes to rehearsals, and I doubt the half of them will show for the performance, so it is a losing side, and they are happy to have me on it, I’m afraid,” she responded, smiling tiredly.
“I’ve been hoping to run into you. I was wondering if you’re free to come in for a bite on Christmas Day,” he offered, still casual. “You were kind enough to have me for Give-thanksing…”
She smiled and giggled. “Thanks-giving. And how very kind of you to return the invitation.” They were both ignoring the circumstances of his invitation that day. “Are you sure your other guests won’t mind?”
Damn, I never thought of that. It never occurred to me she might “ I mean, it was all right when I was in her house... He decided to rely on the truth, which he had found curiously useful in the past. “There are no other guests coming.” He was quite surprised to find this followed by, “I haven’t really got anyone to invite. My godson has a large family, and I’ve got a few other friends, but one is in mourning and another is busy -- he’ll be at his school…”
“Oh! All the bother of entertaining, just for me?” She seemed both flustered and pleased. “Well, I’d love to, if you “ I’d just love to. Thank you very much. What time shall I be there?
“Lunchtime. I don’t know “ about twelve?”
“Lovely. I’m going to Midnight Mass, so that will give me a chance to sleep in. Can I bring anything? You brought that lovely cake.” She seemed “ excited.
He thought about that later that night, as he pulled his Invisibility Cloak on and Apparated into a village the Order had not sent him to. He checked out the small house several blocks from where he appeared, and finding it apparently unmolested and for what it was worth apparently unused, he quietly Apparated away. No one else checks. There’s a great deal which needs attending to, but no one will listen. No one will listen. Shame. He did what he could in addition to what he was told, but he worried that they were fighting a desperate rear guard action that could only end in disaster. He didn’t believe it, but he worried about it from time to time. He could remember what it had taken to vanquish Grindelwald “ and Grindelwald had never…well, who knew, but the ones fighting him had had many, many more wizards on their side than Wizarding Britain seemed to have right now..
He was on his way to his next unofficial, unassigned assignment when a silvery form brushed by him. “Damn!”
****
The note he’d sent over to her mailbox by magic had been answered. Although he’d been concerned at his not having a stamp, hers didn’t have one either. It’s like putting a note on the hedge, then. Muggles must do this all the time. She would be happy to come at eleven instead of twelve. Because I’ve got to be at number twelve in time to take them over to St. Mungo’s. And I want another look at Arthur, myself. Not that Molly doesn’t take marvelous care of him, but if his father was here, he’d do it.
On average it did not bother him that he had no children. When he’d first retired, everything had bothered him, and since Voldemort had returned, he hadn’t had time to be bothered by anything. He thought idly that if he had had a daughter, it would have been nice to have one like Miss Stewart. But no, she’d be my granddaughter, more like. At any rate, she was a lovely girl, and he hoped her father was proud of her. He really ought to be. She was coming early after having been out past midnight. “Ought not to be out like that, things being what they are. Well, I can try a general warning.”
He looked over the table nervously. He’d gotten a little Christmas dinner in Diagon Alley, and they had very conveniently included instructions on heating the food. It turned out his warming spell was a bit stronger than the directions had anticipated, but the mashed potatoes “ well, he thought he’d gotten most of them off the wall, and it was only the plain that went. The ones with chives and sour cream were fine. It had all checked out with his wand and dark detectors, so he was reasonably sure it was safe. He heard a knock at the kitchen door, straightened up, stumped over to it, releasing the wards silently, and resetting them just as silently as she stepped through.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Moody! Many happy returns of the day!” She stood there smiling broadly with a bag in each hand and a twig of holly on her lapel.
“And to you, Miss Stewart, and to you!”
There was a moment of silence. Then he pointed over at the table. “I could have put us in the dining room, but it seemed awfully formal for two neighbors who usually meet over dr “ cow manure.”
She laughed as he had intended, seemingly not noticing his slip. “It would be, wouldn’t it? This is lovely -- nice and warm with the fire and everything. What would you call it?”
He turned, surprised. “Why, it’s the kitchen, of course. Not all the latest like yours -- I haven’t bothered. Someone is trying to get me to pick up a refringingator, though, I might do that.”
“Oh!” she said, startled. “How…oh how nice! Where will you put it, do you think? It might fit over by the dresser, just to the left,” she recovered. Wondering now how I kept all that food she gave me, or if I just threw out her hard earned money, he thought, only partially correct.
“Let me take your coat. It’s nice and warm here by the fire.”
She took off the coat, a bright purple plaid with very large buttons and no collar, along with a knitted hood and a large shawl she had over it, and her gloves.
She was wearing a soft black sweater and black trousers. She seemed taller than usual, and he realized she must be in high heels, although her feet were covered by her trouser legs, and he noted with interest that the very humble stone hanging from a bit of string around her neck seemed to have runes on it. Catching his interest in the piece, she laughed deprecatingly. “Oh, that is a sort of joke. I painted them on because my dissertation is about them. I just thought the grey stone looked nice against the black sweater. Here, I’ve brought a few things…a bit of dessert, and a quiche, although I can see we don’t need it, and,” she seemed to be a bit unsure of herself, “a little hostess gift for the host.” At his blank stare, she explained. “You know, when you go to someone’s house for dinner, and you bring “ dessert, like you did, or flowers, or a bottle of wine.” He seemed confused.
“But you already brought a pudding,” he said, nodding towards the first bag.
She got determinedly breezy and said, gesturing widely, “Well, a hostess present, a Christmas present “ it is a holiday, and I thought you might like something to open besides what you friends might have sent you. They sounded like very busy people, or very sad ones. I thought they might not have had time to wrap.”
She casually lay the small parcel on his mantle in the open space where a pot of Floo powder normally stood, and turned, composed once more, staring him straight in the eye and from habit, he murmured Legilimens in his mind, his hand clasping his wand in his pocket.
He quickly corrected himself, but not quite quickly enough. He caught a picture of himself sitting at this table, a cold tin of soup in front of him, eating it with a spoon. It was crowded by images of him trying to heat a can of beans in the fireplace, and huddling under a blanket next to the grate. He saw just enough to realize that she thought he must be destitute, and kicked himself mentally for forgetting to conjure a Muggle stove before she came through the door.
Through long experience he his hid his reaction to this revelation and pulled out a chair for her. “I have to leave about twelve forty five, I’m afraid. My godson is in hospital and I want to go see him.”
He pushed the chair in under her and they sat to the meal, which was magically still warm. He was nervous again about questions she could ask. He really didn’t like memory charms “ did them all the time when he was working, but this seemed different, I mean, a guest in my home…it doesn’t seem right to be Obliviating her. If I can trust her to come through the door…
“So, would you like some meat?” he asked, politely.
“I think I’d like a little bit of everything. This is a marvelous meal, Mr. Moody. You have really outdone yourself. They’re not eating this well at home.” She said, “shall I pass you my plate?”
Merlin’s beard, I have to be careful! At the point of levitating that serving dish over here… “Well, let’s have it then.”
The food was quite good. It was nowhere near as good as Molly’s, of course, and he found himself mentioning this aloud. “My godson’s wife is a much better cook than this. Of course, she’s a bit distracted at the moment.”
“Yes, you said he’s sick. I’m so sorry to hear that. Which one is he?” she asked.
“Which one? Which one of who? I’m sure you’ve never met him,” Mad-Eye responded, puzzled. She leaned forward on her elbows “ a bit of a relief, because so far her manners had been perfect and he had been feeling more and more nervous about his own, racking his brain to recall every little thing his mother had used to harp on - with a cautious look on her face.
“That day the police came, before you left for your new job. Those folks who were here to see you off.”
This time he gripped his wand under the table and thought Legilimens! without the slightest compunction. He easily saw the scene as he looked in her eyes “ she kept replaying the part out by the pond, the part where Barty Crouch had walked up behind him and ground the tip of his wand into Moody’s back. From her point of view, the wand had not been visible. Of course he’d been immobilized, but he could have thrown it off at that point. He had been biding his time, waiting to see who was accosting him and why. He had been ready to fight, until he heard the hissed words. “We’ve got wands trained on the neighbors, Moody, the one in her kitchen, over there, and the one up at her window, staring down at us. I wouldn’t want anything mysterious happening to them, would you?” Normally they would have killed both women first but they had still been lying low, and one of them must have realized that dead bodies on either side of their crime scene might raise suspicions. Still, he had considered the women both hostages at that point. He had thought, though, that nosy Mrs. Albright had been the one at the window, and had pictured her avidly drinking it in and memorizing bits she could recall for her warped little social circle.
He snapped back to the moment. “You saw them. Well, they weren’t friends, as it turned out, those. Especially that scruffy looking one. Please don’t ever go speaking to them if you should happen to see them, or - just let me know and I’ll sort them.”
“Oh.” She took his answer surprisingly well, and now she was fighting, he saw, a flashing series of very frightening images, and then a picture of what looked like him, leaving the place with Arthur.
“The red-haired man who came later, he’s my godson, and he’s a very good person. Don’t class him with those others for a moment. He’s all right,” Moody rushed to assure her. Not that she was likely to meet Arthur “ having a Muggle in to lunch, and he still could not believe he had a Muggle in his house, eating at his table, just as if she were a perfectly normal witch “ was different from introducing her around to his acquaintances.
“That red-headed man “ your godson - seemed to calm the police down. I suppose it was the others with the firecrackers in your trash bins, not neighborhood children.”
“Got it in one.” Before he released the charm on her, he saw that she was forming vague images about his activities “ gambling, it looked like, but then clearing into a medical establishment. She was concluding he was in to moneylenders for more than he could pay, seemingly for medical treatment. She didn’t seem to think he was a gambler. Odd that she would think that, because while it was the easiest answer, the first answer that would pop into anyone’s mind, and because she had no particular reason to think anything else, he wasn’t a gambler at all. She was giving him considerable benefit of the doubt.
“Well, I hope you’re avoiding them too, Mr. Moody. And I hope your godson “ is it the same godson? - will be ok. It’s not anything serious, I hope.” He released his hold on her mind, and watched her carefully. She put a hand to her forehead, but only for a second, and no suspicion passed over her face.
“Snakebite,” he surprised himself by saying. “Got it in the course of his avocation. Gave us all a terrible scare, but he ought to be fine eventually.” That was all true and sounded perfectly reasonable. She seemed to agree “ was shaking her head with a rueful smile.
“Herpetologists. I knew boys back in high school who had a whole snake collection, but most of them were harmless. I wonder what ever happened to them? Maybe I should go to the next reunion. More potatoes would be lovely, yes.”
****
He had managed to convince her that he could easily manage the dishes, which had been a bit of a challenge since they could both see the sink, and it was quite obvious that there was no hot water laid on. Not that she mentioned it. She was the soul of tact. When he had asked her what she would like as a little Christmas gift, she had told him she needed a cable needle. A cable needle, it seemed, was something you used when you knitted sweaters, and could be easily whittled out of a twig.
“It would be so nice to have one whittled from one of the bushes in your yard. Then, when I am an old, old lady knitting in my home in New York, I can tell my great-great-great nieces and nephews about living here now and how you taught me all about roses. But a rosebush twig won’t work. They’re too fragile. I noticed you have a willow, though, and that would be fine.”
She had even drawn him a little picture. “This is the kind I want “ points on both ends, and a bit, only a bit, thinner in the middle. They sell them that way, but I am always too cheap to buy them for myself.”
Saving face. She understands saving face. Leaves a man his dignity. He wondered what she had given him and wandered over to the mantle.
It was not unusual for him to get gifts for the holiday. Arthur always had something for him, and surprisingly enough, Snape usually gave him some potion or other. This year’s had arrived by owl, despite that fellow’s busy schedule, and seemed to be a slender flask of rose food. The instructions read to pour it around the base of the bush during the increasing moon. Severus must have heard Molly thanking him for bringing some of his roses for the table at number twelve last summer. Amos Diggory was probably still too grief stricken to do much but mechanically go to work each morning and return home each night. Arthur was in hospital, thankfully alive, thanks to the Potter boy’s sense in alerting Dumbledore to what he’d seen.
The package he lifted off the mantle was soft. The cheap paper tore easily in his gnarled hands, and he found himself eager as a child. Open, it revealed…socks, hand-knitted, thick, warm socks “ not one, for the one foot he had, but a pair, like anyone else would get. They were wrapped around an orange, and a walnut, and a small bar of chocolate, reminding him very much of the war against Grindelwald and the little packages like this that his mother, and everyone else’s wife and mother, tried to send through with the communication owls whenever they could. The socks were warm, tightly knit, and when he turned them over he found a little surprise on each sole. On one was a rose and on the other a fish, like the ones from his outdoor pond.
He stared at them blankly. He could not understand how something that had clearly been made with no magic at all could be so magical and was just a little bit later than he had planned arriving at headquarters for Molly and her brood.
Muggle Matters by ProfPosky
Chapter Notes: **
Only one more chapter to go after this one! Thanks to my lovely Brit-picker Equinox Tonks and my supercalifragilisticexpealidocious beta, Andrea. If my punctuation ever crawls into the 21st Century it will only have been because of her magnificent work!
I am not J K Rowling and I do not own her characters or universe.
Chapter Endnotes: If you have read this far, I beg of you, review, please! "it's ok" at least lets me know one person finished it.... :-)
This is the next to last chapter in Muggle Matters - but Muggle Matters began as a prologue to Muggling Along. While that story has been listed as complete for a while, I actually have a few *cough* more chapters for it. I haven't counted, exactly, but they are divided, like Gaul, into three parts, and .... but I won't give it away.
Just to note - I wrote the bit about Molly before DH came out, if I am remembering correctly -score one for my divination skills?
And Yes, Snape sends Christmas presents to Moody. To really understand why, you'll have to read Muggling along....mwahahaha...