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Moody took a photo out of one of the boxes in his attic. He kept everything like this up here, few people could reach
it, so it kept his secrets safer than they would be anywhere else. The photo was a secret, and it was precious to him. It
was his copy of the photo of the original Order of the Phoenix, hidden and bound by a spell and concealed behind another,
innocuous, photo deep in a box full of Quidditch memorabilia. You could never be too careful.
On the back of it, he'd
written the names of all of them. And then, when they died, he'd crossed them off. Now he was crossing off Sirius's name.
That was one less name to remember to forget to send a Christmas card to.
It was an odd ritual of his. He’d got
it from his father, who'd had a thing for Christmas, silly man that he was. Every single year, young Alastor had to cope with
his father Ebenezer’s increasing love for the Yule season. And while he himself was not a keeper of the flame, because
the celebrating caused people to become less vigilant, he still sent Christmas cards to all and sundry, almost automatically.
It
was perfectly fine to send cards to some of the people on the list. Dumbledore got one every year of course. And he always
sent one to the Longbottoms. In many ways, Moody hated Pettigrew more for what had happened to the Longbottoms than what happened
to the Potters. At least the Potters were dead, not shells that haunted their relatives.
And of course it was okay
to send cards to members of the Order who were also Aurors. That was expected since Moody used to be one. And would still
be one now if the Ministry had any sense. But the Ministry never did have any sense, if you didn't know better you would think
they were trying to make it easier for You-Know-Who to take over. Except Ministry incompetence being what it was, they'd most
likely have mucked that up too.
The problem was with people like Lupin who he theoretically shouldn't have had contact
with. If an owl to him went astray, the whole jig would be up. So he had to remember to forget to send Lupin a card.
The
list was shrinking more and more, just like it had the last time. Not only was Sirius off it, but also Podmore. Not, it had
to be said, because he was dead, no, they should be releasing him from Azkaban any day now, but because Moody was afraid of
what he might write. Of all the stupid things that the man could do.
It was times like these that made Moody think
that, one of these days, he himself would be the last name left. Obviously Podmore probably couldn't work for them again,
and Lupin, well, the boy wouldn't live to see the next decade, that was clear to all.
This new Order, born out of the
same fear; he so worried about them. They were all so young and unguarded. Now that they'd seen death it might have helped
to harden them a little. He didn't want to go through all that again, making plans, setting traps and suggesting ideas and
then waking up in the morning to find that someone half his age had been killed so they couldn't play their part so they’d
have to do it all over again.
For all that they made fun of his cries of constant vigilance and for all they thought
he was a batty old man who had Death Eaters in his belfry, he only did it to try and save them.
The thick red lines
made for depressing reading. All those names, all those people.
The twins. He remembered them as though they'd not
been dead for fourteen years. As well as being Molly Weasley’s brothers, they were related to the Diggorys in some way,
there was a shared shape of nose, so very distinctive. Moody could remember hearing about Cedric's death when he was fit enough
to be told. It was such a shame, he'd met the boy before when he was young, and he was so like his cousins. Shame that they
were all dead.
He remembered the Potters, kindly folk, and he could see Lily in the boy. And he could see James's temper,
flaring behind the glasses. But James and his son were separate people and if he would insist that other people remembered
this, then he too would have to.
That was what You-Know-Who did, he destroyed families. Take the Weasleys, for instance,
chances were that the boggart didn't lie, most likely Molly would have to put at least one of her children in a casket. Alastor'd
never done it himself, but he'd seen what it did to people. The Weasleys had been lucky so far, but luck never held out. Vigilance
was the only way forward.
There was a strange old guard forming, himself, Emmaline, McGonagall and Dumbledore, of course.
They'd seen too much and were far too old for this, but still, here they were because everyone else kept dying. Slowly, bit
by bit, the generation that was supposed to replace them were being thinned out and eventually they'd go too, and he couldn't
see Harry and the rest of them being properly able to fill their boots.
He did what he could - Shacklebolt was already
a fine Auror, he’d be proud to have him as a replacement, and Tonks would be good too, if only she’d learn to
concentrate. But two just weren’t enough, and none of the others were old enough to train properly yet. What he wouldn’t
do to be able to take them away for a year, six months even, and train them, mould them into a decent fighting force for the
future, with none of this namby-pamby health and safety nonsense stopping him. He’d have to hang on, make sure he was
alive and able to teach them when the time came.
All of which meant even further vigilance, and tidying away this photograph.
He couldn’t afford sentiment, not if they wanted to win.
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