Hag Tales

III. The One with the Ardent Young Lover

Alastor has heard the rumours, but he doesn't believe them.

For one thing, Min doesn't look like a sapphist, or whatever they call themselves. Granted, he only knows one, but Min doesn't look a thing like old Professor Merrythought, with her bobbed hair and the trousers she always wore under her teaching robes.

For another, Minerva seems to like sex well enough. That surprised him, he doesn't mind admitting. He'd thought sure she'd slap his face the first time he put his hand on her tit, but she didn't. Quite the contrary, he thinks, smirking to himself. She was more than receptive, and no virgin, either, which Alastor thinks puts another tick in the "likes blokes" column. Not that she was hugely experienced, he could tell she wasn't, but she was comfortable enough with his anatomy to make him certain she'd encountered at least one other stiff willy in her twenty years.

So he ignores the jokes, subtle and not so subtle, of his fellow Aurors and makes no bones about the fact that he's stepping out with Minerva McGonagall. He's proud of it. She may not be the prettiest girl in the Ministry, but she's bloody smart, and if she thinks the likes of Alastor Moody good enough for her, he counts himself a lucky sod. She's the half-blood daughter of a disgraced witch, but he's nothing but bog-Irish Muggle-born. Not that either is anything to be ashamed of.

The lads are jealous, and not just of him. They're jealous of her, too. She's got twice the brains of any of them and a quicker wand. He learned that right off when she asked him to spar with her. She'd wanted him to teach her, and he did, but by Jaysus, she taught him a thing or two in the process. How a girl ever got so good at duelling was a mystery, and Alastor liked solving mysteries, so he asked her out. They had such a good time that it got to be a regular thing; he'd pick her up after work in the Ministry's administrative offices on evenings when he wasn't on duty, and they'd spar, clean up, then go down the pub at the corner for a nosh and a pint.

They joined his mates at their regular table once, and that's when the slagging started. Minerva eviscerated Scrimgeour in an argument over the continued ban against women in the Auror corps, her calm an amusing counterpoint to Rufus's increasingly red-faced blather. She'd be twice the Auror Rufus Scrimgeour was, given half the chance—and Rufus knew it, which was his real problem with her—but that chance would never come.

There was a time when Alastor thought the same as his mates: that witches had no business in the rough trade of catching Dark wizards, but Professor Merrythought, who'd given a few lectures on the Dark Arts to Alastor's group of Auror-trainees, set him straight. The extra-curricular lessons she gave Alastor were more than worth the weeks of plain broth, pickles, and day-old bread he had to eat to save enough Galleons for them. At age 125, Galatea Merrythought was probably the most formidable duellist Alastor had ever seen, and, more importantly, she taught him more about the way Dark wizards think than any of his Ministry instructors ever had. He has a feeling that if she had been head of the Auror corps, the Knights of Walpurgis would never have set foot on British soil.

Minerva has the same intelligence, the same ferocity, and it makes Alastor smile, even if it also means they fight, which they do.

The fights are never serious until she tells him she's leaving the Ministry to take a position at Hogwarts.

He's gobsmacked, and surprise quickly Transfigures itself into anger. She's smiling and doesn't even seem to realise that she's kicked the shite out of him. Whatever this is between them, it's clear that it means less to Minerva than it does to him, and he never knew.

Rather than tell her what he's feeling, he goes on the offensive.

"And when were you going to tell me?"

She frowns. "I'm telling you now. I thought you'd be happy for me."

"Oh, sure. You're scarpering to Scotland to live in a castle because an old man and three hundred spotty children are preferable to living here with me."

Her face changes, the hard expression that usually heralds a long fight melting into surprise and then grim recognition. Later, he understands that the lack of pity in it will allow them, eventually, to be friends.

"I've hurt you," she says.

He turns away and goes to fetch the kettle for tea. She follows.

"I'm sorry, Alastor. I never realised—"

He turns on her, swiftly enough that she takes a step backwards. "You never asked, did you?"

"And you never said."

"And if I had, would it have made any difference?"

She is silent, and he has his answer.

He's taken curses, already lost yards of flesh and had more bones regrown than he cares to count, but Alastor Moody is utterly unprepared for the pain of a breaking heart. It's comical, the toughest junior Auror in the business, standing there in a tiny, dingy kitchen holding a tea tin and trying not to cry over a skinny chit of a girl who's never once said she loved him.

"Go on, then," he says when he can speak without humiliating himself.

She nods and leaves without another word.