The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

CXXXIV: The Other Moody

The Other Moody shook his head.

"And maybe because my hope is ye'll be so thankful fer the advice that ye'll consider sharin' some of the balm as a mercy... That phantom pain, it comes real strong when ye're layin' on the floor chained up in the dark for hours, yeh know. The nerves ache with or without the damned leg."

Make them see you as a human.

The Other Moody considered and then stood up, wincing, loping over to the work bench and lifting the heavy book. "What's it called old man?"

"Capsaicin," Moody said.

The Other Moody flicked until he found the page and stared at it.

"Takes naught but an hour ter make it," Moody intoned. "If yeh have it to spare. Merlin knows I have."

The Other Moody stood silent for a moment, then turned and plucked a second cauldron from a shelf of them next to the work bench and put it on the second burner on the bench before clunk-stepping over to a cabinet of supplies. Moody watched from under his thick eyebrow.

"Now be sure the boswallia you select's real good and golden - too brown and it's better off being sent to the old bat in the divination tower to burn." The Other Moody scowled but Moody noticed he shook the boswallia and looked it over closely before adding it to his pile of ingredients. He kept on injecting helpful hints along the way as The Other Moody worked on the mixture.

Fifteen minutes later, the stuff was bottled and thickening, needing to sit another forty-five before it would be ready for use. 

Moody noticed it'd been split into two containers, which he thought might bode well.

The Other Moody sank into the chair again.

Moody sighed and closed his eye. 

"Harry Potter can throw off the imperius curse."

Moody opened his eye again.

The Other Moody was staring at him. "You ever seen a fourth year that could throw off an imperius curse?"

"Don't generally see a fourth year get the imperius curse put on him," Moody grumbled. "How do yeh know that he can throw it off? Yeh seen him throw it?"

"Yeah," The Other Moody nodded.

"Maybe the caster was weak."

"It was me."

Moody considered this, then leaned back against the wall.

"Not a single other one of 'em could do it," The Other Moody said. "Had them kids doing all sorts of ridiculous things durin' their Defense class today. Had one of the little prisses imitatin' a squirrel... Made the Longbottom boy do a donkey-kick up into a handstand." The Other Moody chuckled and shook his head, his tongue darting nervously out of the corners of his mouth. "Ain't no way that boy could do it without the imperius on him. Utterly useless. Not a thing like his father, that one."

Moody took deep breaths, trying to steady himself as an anger seemed to simmer within him. Doing illegal, unforgivable curses? On kids? On the students who were supposed to be in his own care, the kids he was lettin' down by having let down his guard for even one single second? Cursed be those damned fish fingers and ketchup that Tonks had come 'round his place to share. Curse them and their retched smell - that's what had him out putting the rubbish in the bins on the car park that night. If he'd not hobbled out there on his one damned leg with that damned bag, he wouldn't've been caught off guard, wouldn't be here, in this damned room, listening to this damned imposter brag about cursin' them poor kids that were supposed to be learning.

"But Harry Potter. Just like his daddy. He near to cracked his knee caps off resisting the curse," The Other Moody grumbled. "Impressive. I've never seen a curse resisted so well since --" he paused, a look of amusement playing over his own grizzled features.

"Since --?" Moody asked.

The Other Moody looked over at him and shook his head, "Ah-ah, classified information, that is."

Moody shrugged as though he hadn't gotten his hopes up that he'd hear a name, a clue, some bit of information that might give him an identity to the person who was pretending to be him.

Again, The Other Moody sat staring at the prosthetic, knocking the knee with his fist. His tongue darted out of the corner of his mouth yet again and Moody's eye narrowed at him thoughtfully. The Other Moody spotted his narrowed expression and he reached into his jacket and pulled out the old silver flask, clicking open the topper and taking a swig of the polyjuice Moody knew was inside.

When he'd finished the sip, he muttered, "Best to refill this while I'm down here... Save myself the trip tomorrow." He got up, walked over and reached for Moody's head, yanked off a clump of hair before he clunk-stepped to the work table and grabbed one of the wax-sealed vials. Biting off the cork and spitting it out, he shoved a couple bits of the hair into the vial, tossed the rest onto the counter, and poured the vial out into the flask. He gave it a good shake and slid it back into his pocket.

"Amazing how like to our fathers some people are, and how unlike them others are, innit?" He kept his back to Moody, as though waiting for the polyjuice to take effect to do away with the distinguishing trait. "You like your father, Moody?" he asked.

"My father was a carnaptious man," Moody answered. "Never seen an argument he wouldn't pick. I probably am more like him than I like to believe. How about it? Are yen like ye're old man?"

The Other Moody turned around, stared firmly at Moody, and said in a very final, decisive tone, "No."

Moody nodded. 

He wondered if it was a good thing - if the father was worse than this demented soul who had kidnapped the ex-head of the department of magical law enforcement and kept him captive in this mysterious room, undetected, even surrounded by some of the greatest minds of the Wizarding World - including Albus Dumbledore. Was this somehow an improvement over some older version who had somehow manage to commit some even more terrible crime?

Likely, given he was dealing with a Death Eater.

And that belief that this was certainly an improvement was only deepened when the Other Moody clunk-stepped over with one of the vials of Capsaicin and dropped it onto the floor beside him before clunk-stepping up, up, up, and out of the room. 

The stairs thundered away as the light went out.