Chapter 1

A/N: Nothing you recognize belongs to me. Sadly, JK Rowling came up with it first. I started this extremely old fic post-HBP, but pre-DH so the DH events aren't all reflected in this post-Voldemort story. It's AU as well, for JKR killed off all my favorite characters and paired up the survivors incorrectly.

I haven't done much fic since about 2007 (this story actually includes a 'Lucky Louie' reference!), but the movie has inspired me to finish this. It's the third in a series of fics with a Moody/OFC pairing. For a better context, please check out the first two: Constant Vigilance and Black Roses Red, both posted on TPP.

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"... a damn sight better than fuckin' hags. So anyway, then ol' Will says t' me, 'e says, ''Ere, Dung, where didja get all them toads from? 'Cos some son of a Bludger's gone an' nicked all mine,' an' I says 'Nicked all your toads, Will, what next? So you'll be wantin' some more then?' An' if you'll believe it... "

The hoarse, croaking voice of Mundungus Fletcher, punctuated by childish giggles, filtered up the stairs to where Polyxena Moody was busily working on an advert for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. "Bloody hell," she muttered, before throwing down her quill and stomping toward the staircase and down into the lounge, where she saw Dung, pipe belching its acrid smoke, seated between her two children on the sofa.

"Mundungus Fletcher," she snapped, voice rising to an almost shrewish pitch. "I will not have you turning our house into the set for 'Lucky Louie!'"

Hastily stowing his pipe in the pocket of his tatty overcoat, Dung fixed her with a toothy grin. "Beg pardon, P'lyx'na. Just keepin' an eye on things."

"Uncle Dung was showing us some toads he nicked!" piped up Emmeline, or Emma, the eldest.

"Uncle Dung?" Wresting a Venomous Tentacula seed from Albus' hand, Polyxena thrust it unceremoniously at Mundungus. "Go wash up for lunch, you two."

Dung looked at her hopefully.

"Oh, all right then." Polyxena sighed, but she was smiling. "But only if you wash your hands, too."

Dung rubbed his dirty hands together in glee as he followed the children into their small, aquarium-motif washroom just as Polyxena heard a familiar stumping across the kitchen's lino floor.

"You're just in time for lunch," she greeted her husband as he hung his bowler hat. "Will you have chicken or ham for your sandwich?"

Moody grunted and shrugged, but gave Polyxena a lasting kiss. "Missed you today," he growled in a rare spate of affection. "I assume you've heard?"

"Heard? Heard what? It's not the Dark Lord...?"

"Mummy, what's 'fuckin' hags?'" Her five-year-old son affected Dung's speech perfectly. "Why is 'screwin' the life outta button'd up ol' Ministry cows' better than 'fuckin' hags?'"

"Dung's here?" Moody focused his magical eye on the wall. "So he is. Scourgify!" he added nonchalantly and pointed his wand at the boy's mouth.

"Alastor! It's hardly his fault." Polyxena performed a hasty countercurse.

"True enough." Alastor trained his wand on the ragged form of their guest as he skulked into the kitchen. "Scourgify. No, it's not You-Know-Who; that's one we're well and truly rid of, thank Merlin. No, there's been a..."

"Daddy!" Shoving Dung aside, the little girl raced over the threshold and launched herself at Moody, who scooped her up and settled her on his good leg. "I love you!" she added, kissing his scarred cheek. "And guess what? Mr. and Mrs. Snape are coming with Toby and Monica, and they've got new toy broomsticks, and we're going to play Aurors and Death Eaters, and last time I was Tonks, and Albus was you, and Toby was Mr. Snape, and Monica was Bellatrix..."

"It wouldn't do to cast a Silencing Charm on your own child." Polyxena set a plate of food on the table. "So don't even ask. I forgot to tell you that the Snapes are coming; is that all right?"

"Whatever." Moody clenched his fists in frustration. "Can't a bloke even get a second with his wife, for Merlin's sake?"

"I'm touched, Alastor, deeply touched." She laughed. "Since that hasn't been the case for the past, shall we say, seven years, you might as well just spit it out."

"There's been a murder in Diagon Alley."

"A murder? Whose? Is it...someone we know?"

"It's...yeah. It's someone everyone knows." Alastor took a deep draught from his hip flask before continuing. "It was Minerva McGonagall."

The plate of sandwiches clattered to the floor along with Dung's pipe.

"McGonagall?" repeated Mundungus. "I'll be a son of a motherfuckin' Hippogriff. Who'd wanna off McGonagall?"

"How did she die?" asked Polyxena, after shooing the two nonplussed children into the lounge. "Was she Killing Cursed?"

"No." Alastor took yet another swig from his flask.

"Y' shouldn' use drinkin' t' solve all your probl'ms," grumbled Dung. "I been readin' a book by this Muggle by th' name Dr. Phil, an' he says..."

"She was stabbed. Knife in the back like the Muggles do, but it was in Diagon Alley. It can't've been a Muggle."

"Dung, you've been reading a book?" Polyxena shook her head in disbelief. "Stabbed? You think it might have been Harz's lot?"

"Man's gotta do somethin' on the loo..."

"That was my first thought, too." He rubbed at his one remaining ear and shuddered. "But what beef could Harz's lot have had with McGonagall? It certainly bears looking into."

"No," Polyxena said. "Oh, no. You're bloody retired, Alastor Moody, you even said you meant it this time. You can't go, you can't, please." With a flick of her wand, she swept the sandwiches and broken glass into the bin. "Dung, help with the new sandwiches. Alastor, I don't want you investigate. You've been through enough, we've been through enough."

"Harz's lot are Squibs," he said. "And You-Know-Who is gone forever. Even I can admit that."

"But you..." Polyxena squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head to blot out the pain that still rose when she thought of the months she'd spent thinking that her husband was dead, those long months when she was pregnant with Emma. "You don't know what it's like."

"I don't know what it's like?" Moody roared, rounding on his wife. "I don't know what it's like? I don't know what it's like to have the people I care about die on me?" His weathered face turned scarlet. "Or be kidnapped by You-Know-Who?"

Rather than discreetly leave the room, Dung opted to conjure a red-and-white-striped bucket of popcorn and settled in to watch the fight.

"You don't know what it's like to carry a baby and try to live for its sake after they've come back from a suicide mission and told you your husband's dead and they can't find his body." Tears began to flood her big, silvery-grey eyes. "After you came back...when the battle was over..." The seven years since Voldemort's death had done nothing to ease Polyxena's memory.

"Ah now, lass." Moody wrapped her in a brief, tight embrace. He didn't relish his months as prisoner in Azkaban, minus an ear and only well enough to escape when the battle raged at Hogwarts. "I won't go. Hush, Polyxena, I won't go."

"Knew she'd beat ya down in th' end, Mad-Eye." Dung gave the old Auror a satisfied nod. "P'lyx'na's odds are six t' one, no beatin' 'em. Aren't y' gonna kiss an' make up?"

Moody and Polyxena glowered at him, and she called the children back into the kitchen.

"Hello?" called Hermione as she and Snape entered through the back door. "Sorry we're late, we nearly didn't get out at all. Monica got hold of Severus's wand again, and then we heard the news about Professor McGonagall on the wireless."

"Dreadful, isn't it?" Polyxena dabbed the last remaining tears from her eyes, not glad, but certainly appreciative of the excuse. "I just heard as well. And to think, the Aurors thought they'd have an easy time of it now that the Dark Lord's out of the picture."

"I spoke to Ginny via Floo before we left." Hermione handed her children each a sandwich from the plate. "The Auror Office is in an uproar."

"Mummy, this tastes like pipe smoke," said Hermione's oldest, six-year-old Toby. "I want something else."

"Don't complain at someone else's house," snapped Snape.

"Dung, I told you to wash your hands," snapped Polyxena.

"I don't know how you manage with three children." Snape raised a brow at the scraggly, ginger-haired man who was hunched over the table. "Mad-Eye, can we assume that you will be coming out of retirement yet again?"

Moody snarled something and took an indelicate bite of ham.

"He won't be." Polyxena smirked and set a glass of tap water before her husband, who growled and scowled and replaced it with water from his wand. "Emmeline Hecuba Moody! What on earth do you think you're doing?"

Emma dropped her father's Secrecy Sensor and returned to her lunch. "Checking the area for possible spies."

"When I'm grown up," announced Albus. "I'm going to steal a load of thin-bottomed caldrons an' make me a decent living." He took a long pull on a stray bubble pipe. "It'll be a damn sight better than fuckin' hags."

"Scourgify," Moody said, and this time Polyxena made no move to stop him. "Are the Aurors on this yet? Who's Potter assigned to this one?" He flicked his wand at Albus and performed the countercurse.

"Draco Malfoy and Ginny." Hermione spoke through the last bite of her sandwich. "Although why, I have no idea. I'm sure he's trying to punish her for leaving, but..." Her cheeks brightened, and she left the thought unfinished.

"Trouble in paradise?" Dung began to cackle and tapped his pipe against his teeth. "'nless they're havin' more fun than anybody thought. Coupla th' hags down Knockturn want th' punishin' and th' – "

"I was rather surprised when she and Harry broke up," Polyxena said. "But not as surprised as when Malfoy joined the Auror Office."

"Hmph." Moody let out a growl that heaved through his entire body and thrummed through his slash of a mouth and bits of remaining nose. "Place gone to the Kneazles, I don't care what anyone says about the 'Chosen One.' Carries his wand in his back pocket and hires Death Eaters."

"Former Death Eaters," Snape felt compelled to point out.

"To do a serious job. And it is serious," Moody thundered. "We've been too lax since You-Know-Who died, and now look what's happened."

"A stabbing happened." Polyxena kneaded his uneven shoulders. "Alastor, your blood pressure, please. A stabbing is not Dark magic. I know plenty of Dark magic. It really sounds to me like Harz's lot."

"Who the bloody hell are Harz's lot?" Hermione asked, and Toby said in delight,

"Mummy, you said a bad word. Is Daddy or Mr. Moody going to do the Scourgify?"

"Sorry, Toby, that was very bad of me. Why don't you four go play Aurors and Death Eaters in the backyard?"

"Stay behind the fence," Polyxena said and when they had gone, continued: "Harz's lot is a band of Squibs who used to avoid detection by giving the Death Eaters credit for their crimes. It's actually Alastor's and my little how-we-met story. They kidnapped my father before the Death Eaters took him, so they could stop him from making a new wand for the Dark Lord."

"Couldn' they just read 'Constant Vigilance'?" Dung mumbled.

"Oh good heavens, Dung, we went through this in 'Black Roses Red.' It's too confusing, we have to summarize. So anyhow, we found him in the lair of Avery Harz, a.k.a. Lucretius Thurkell, a relation of the Squib-riddled Thurkell family."

"'N Harz's lot will run y' through with a knife like a Muggle," put in Dung.

"And you think that a gang of thieving Squibs killed the Headmistress of Hogwarts, do you?" Snape raised an eyebrow at the Moodys and Dung. "That theory seems implausible at best."

Moody shrugged and reached for a pinch of Floo powder. "Agreed. Best go to the source. I'm Flooing the Auror Office, not – " He held up a hand to Polyxena's forthcoming outrage. " – to come out of retirement. But I don't trust Potter. Kids are playing Aurors and Death Eaters now, they're not going to take this seriously, McGonagall or no. Nothing wrong with doing a little consulting."