Liars

“Rumors and Whispers”

Summer, 1970

Knowing what they both knew, neither of them wanted to put a name to it. Neither wanted to be the first to say the words, then have the fact snatched away from them the next day. So neither Alastor nor Minerva discussed emotions, which was just as well.

It had seemed practical at first for her to share his living space during the summer. It didn’t make any sense, after all, to own or rent an apartment or house just for three months out of the year, and she was tired of staying at the school on holidays. Though she was well aware that the students thought that all the teachers had no lives apart from their curriculum, Minerva refused to prove them right any longer.

So it was that on a warm night in late June, Minerva McGonagall did something she hadn’t thought to do again--she apparated onto Alastor Moody’s doorstep and rang the bell.

Instead of the enthusiastic response she was expecting, she felt magic being performed. The air seemed to crackle, and there was the distinct sense of being watched. Before long, a voice barked, “Who is it?” in tones so harsh that she almost didn’t recognize Alastor’s voice.

“It’s Minerva!” she called through the door. “Alastor?”

The door opened at once, and his unattractive face split into a wide grin. “Sorry,” he muttered, levitating her bags inside. “Can’t be too careful.”

“Of course,” she assured him. There had been another death this last week, one of the Aurors, and the rumors and whispers were growing louder daily. “May I--”

“Yes, yes, come in,” he said hastily, beckoning her forwards. She didn’t miss that he peered around her cautiously as if he would catch sight of a Dark Wizard lurking in the hedges.

Minerva surveyed the little house, something she hadn’t done for some time, and never with an eye to habitation. She hadn’t visited him here for nearly a decade--since she had healed his wounds, he had taken to visiting her at Hogwarts, frequently under the pretense of delivering some piece of information or other to Dumbledore. Minerva still felt a slight twinge of regret whenever Albus gave her a particularly gallant word, but had essentially managed to stop herself from making a further fool of herself. And if it wasn’t her imagination, the Headmaster had become more comfortable with her as a result, until she felt secure in calling him not only her superior, but her friend, as Alastor had done since he first graduated.

“Come to stay, have you?”

Minerva nodded. “Until September. Then school starts again.”

He smirked at her, and she was glad against her will to see that he hadn’t changed all that much. “Funnily enough, I remember that about school.”

She gave him a scathing glance, which he laughed off, and set about stowing her things in whatever detritus-strewn corner could be cleared for the purpose. There was something sinking in her stomach at the thought of spending two and a half months in this dingy little place, and she considered for a moment walking out and apparating back to the castle.

Then Alastor’s arms were around her, his body comfortingly strong pressed against her back. He was shorter than she was, she realized with a little smile. He wasn’t tall like Albus, or precise, or terribly kind, but she accepted their differences, the men in her life. In fact, they were very important to her.

Alastor didn’t wait, give her a chance to settle in, or speak sweetly into her ear. His hands were touching her already through her robes, and she leaned into the touches. “What did you think of me in school?” he asked, and she shrugged, feeling his hands moving to cup her breasts.

“I thought much the same I do now. You were uncivil, discourteous, churlish, and I didn’t like you a bit.”

“And you don’t now either, is that correct?” he murmured in her ear, finding her nipples with his fingertips and giving them a pinch through her shirt.

Minerva gasped and shook her head a little. “N-not a bit,” she agreed. “Couldn’t stand you then, and my opinions haven’t changed at all.”

She could feel the hardness of him pressing against her buttocks, even through two layers of fabric. “What did I do to you?” he asked, breath hot on her ear. “Did I make fun of you in the halls? I only remember you as an annoying Little Miss Know-It-All.”

With anyone else, his words would have sent her into a rage. But for some reason when Alastor said such things, she was both angry and aroused. “You never talked to me,” she countered, reaching back to rub him through his trousers. “I couldn’t stand you because you always lost Gryffindor points.”

He laughed as harshly as ever, and attacked her neck with his mouth. “I hate it when you do that,” she told him huskily.

He murmured against her neck, “So stop me,” and she shivered. She turned in his arms, pulling the shirt from his back and stopped, staring.

His body wasn’t as she had remembered it from years ago. He rarely removed his clothing--in fact, she thought that the last time she had seen him totally nude had been more than a decade earlier, in this very room. Then, he had been stocky and muscular, his skin pale but smooth.

It wasn’t smooth anymore. There were welts healed over on his chest, pink and angry. A deep scar she recognized as the one she had tended cleaved a bumpy line from hip to armpit on his right side, mirrored by a the shiny mark of an old burn on his left. A couple deep grooves on either side of his navel looked barely healed, still red and a little scabbed, and his left forearm was crisscrossed with fine, webbed scars that were obviously years old. Minerva swallowed hard. Knowing that Alastor had a dangerous job especially in these uncertain times was one thing. Seeing the proof of it written across his body more permanently than in ink was quite another. “Alastor,” she breathed, “what on earth have you been doing to yourself?”

He shrugged, looking unconcerned by her perusal of his marred torso. “It hasn’t really been me doing it, to be honest. Besides, at least I’ve still got all my parts attached.” He gave her the same lopsided grin that she didn’t seem to hate quite as much anymore. “I wasn’t much of a looker to begin with anyway.”

When still she didn’t move he asked impatiently, “Are you just going to stare at me, or are you going to get to work on kissing it better?”

That brought the frown back to her face, and she pushed him hard enough that he fell on the bed with a short laugh. Minerva almost didn’t want to take off her own robes, knowing that she boasted only one scar the size of a dime on her left buttock, where she had fallen on her mother’s wand as a child. But if Alastor didn’t mind, she thought finally, then neither would she.

His eyes moved appreciatively over her form as she disrobed. She still felt self-conscious when he stared at her that way, but endured nonetheless. Grabbing her wand, she performed a quick “Scourgify” on the bed before she deigned to join him on top of it, ignoring his snort of annoyance as the covers soaped and rinsed themselves beneath him. They were still a faded tan instead of the white they had undoubtedly begun, but at least they were clean. And dry, after another spell from Minerva’s wand made sure of that.

Alastor had a soap bubble stuck to his hair, she saw in amusement, and didn’t attempt to pop it just yet. He grabbed her wrist--she hated that--and pulled her down on top of him, then rolled them over.

He kissed her, deep and harsh, and this time she let him. His tongue was instantly in her mouth, thrusting and stroking, and she bit down on his lip just enough to make him groan, almost enough to make him bleed. His hands were everywhere on her body, up her stomach, squeezing her breasts, down her back, fingertips digging into her buttocks. Though she had mentally sworn not to mention it again, Minerva couldn’t help herself from tracing her hands over the scars crossing his body, letting them lead her up and down his pale skin to end, tangled in his hair. Only once did he react to her touch, hissing when she grazed the gouges in the front of his stomach.

She pulled away from the kiss with actual reluctance. “What happened here?” she asked quietly. The wounds were even worse up close, unrecognizable to her.

Alastor looked at her, not down at his own stomach. “Gored,” he said after a moment. “By a Chimera, a month ago. Right after I saw you last, actually.” His voice went quiet, but not soft. “Albus thinks Voldemort’s turning loose all sorts of creatures, trying to cause mayhem without implicating himself. There was another giant attack yesterday, did you hear?” At her startled look he assured her, “None of our people dead, but a few Muggles bit it. But you didn’t come here for war talk, did you?”

She hadn’t come for war talk, hated that there was such a thing when everything could have been fine. Neither of them wanted to admit that the wizarding world was no longer safe. “No,” she said, “that isn’t what I came here for.”

She let him kiss her again, let him touch her all over, leaning into his touch and sighing. He kissed her neck, her chest, then slid his fingers very softly between her legs, and she let out a breathy moan.

Alastor pulled away abruptly. “Get out.”

Minerva sat bolt upright. “I beg your pardon?” she asked incredulously.

“This isn’t you,” he said curtly, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side. “If you’re going to want softness and sweetness from me, or think that I need to take comfort in romance, you’re not the woman I asked to live here with me.”

Minerva stared at him for a moment in outrage, feeling her face grow hot and only dimly noticing the scars on his back as well, before she spun him around and slapped him across the face. “How dare you?” she demanded. “This wasn’t about what I wanted from you, it was about--”

“About what you thought I needed,” he shot back, hitting the nail on the dot. “You were wrong. I don’t want that, and I sure as hell don’t need it. I go to see you, I let you move here because you want it. I hate girls who play games, and I hate liars, so if you’re not going to take what you want you can get out right now.”

He stared at her, challenging her glare with his own. She wouldn’t have wanted to be on the other side of that glare as a Dark Wizard, she thought, and certainly understood why he had been hired as an Auror. His admonishment to take what she wanted had brought her up short, forcing her to ask herself a difficult question: what did she want?

Why was she here?

Why had she ever come here in the first place?

A decade and a half earlier, she had apparated here almost without meaning to, furious at herself for feeling the way she did about Albus and with a fierce longing to give herself up totally, surrendered to the one person she could think of who she both loathed and trusted. Loathed, because he was the antithesis of everything she admired and liked. Trusted, because he was a Gryffindor, and an Auror, and Albus’s friend. She had come because he would oblige her, and because she was punishing herself.

She had stopped coming because, quite simply, she had stopped hating Alastor. It wasn’t that he became kinder to her, or easier to deal with, but they had reached a somewhat amiable understanding. It hadn’t hurt anymore; she hadn’t felt angry at herself for giving in to him. So she had stopped seeking him out, until he had arrived at the castle in such poor condition.

She had started seeing him again because she had accepted what Albus meant to her, accepted him as a friend, and wasn’t nearly as eager to punish herself. And being with Alastor was no longer a punishment, for either of them (she hoped). It was...solid, in a time where neither of them were certain what the next day would bring, where some of her former students were old enough to be part of the solution or the problem, where many of her old friends had vanished without a trace, where a man employed as an Auror would either end up dead or looking like a rag doll that had been carelessly torn apart and inexpertly sewn back together.

Minerva saw herself then, as Alastor must see her--a woman, not so young, but whole, proud and angry, and suddenly gone soft as soon as she saw his scarred body. Yes, she thought, she would have been offended too.

She could leave. She could walk out this moment, grab her things and hurry back to the sheltering walls of Hogwarts, behind which nothing could touch her.

No one would touch her.

Or she could stay in Alastor Moody’s dingy rooms with a man who probably didn’t hate her.

It took her only a moment to make up her mind. She stood up and walked away from the bed, pleased to see that he looked disappointed. Instead of heading for the door, however, she perched herself on the edge of the table, and his eyes lit up.

As he took her then, swift and ungentle, she whispered into his ear, “I hate liars too.”