Life During Wartime

Three months behind enemy lines. Presumed dead for three weeks of that time. Twenty-seven separate duels with all manner of Dark Wizards and Witches. Eight days hiding or lost, as a matter of perspective, in a Muggle sewer. Seventy-five kilometers traversed on foot without a chance to sleep. And he can’t even get a private room at the headquarters when returns.

Moody understands that they gave his old bunk room away to a handful of green recruits who haven’t even been trained as proper Aurors, including an especially annoying wizard he went to school with, who wouldn’t even say so much as a hello to him in the hallway outside. The war is going badly for them. They need more men and women to try and turn Grindelwald’s dark tide. But why they chose to quarter him with one of their former professors, here on a lark as likely as not, Alastor does not understand.

Or maybe he does. The others were all his students. Every last mother’s son of them. And they don’t feel comfortable living in close quarters with someone who knew them as lads. Changing robes in front of their eccentric, middle-aged Transfigurations professor. Showering in the corner with him right there. So they gave Alastor the room with the professor. Knowing that he had been through much worse and would be glad for a berth anywhere. Maybe they were right.

Moody opens the door and sees Dumbledore for the first time in nearly five years -- since he left school, since the war started, since a lot of things, most of them bad, have come to pass. The professor is asleep with an open book resting on his chest. He is wearing jaunty purple robes, decorated here and there with silver stars. Robes that would make him an easy mark outside the headquarters, which was formerly a brothel -- the rooms still smell of stale sex. The place had been rather conveniently emptied and turned into a something suitable for their purposes. Nevertheless, Alastor cannot remember the professor dressing any other way. He would not look like himself in more somber attire.

In fact, Dumbledore looks exactly as he remembers him. Long auburn beard with a hint of gray here and there, especially around his mouth and his half-parted lips. Alastor looks away for a moment and shakes his head. Maybe the older wizard still is the stuff of school boy fantasies, but Moody isn’t a school boy any longer. He’s an Auror now and a damn good one.

He watches Dumbledore’s long fingers twitch slightly in his sleep before walking to the other bunk, the other narrow mattress across the room, and beginning to unpack his battered duffel.

“Alastor Moody, isn’t it?” questions a sleepy voice from behind him.

He didn’t mean to wake him. Actually, he didn’t particularly care, but Moody was hoping to avoid conversation for a while at least. The hour is nearly midnight. His body and mind were both near exhaustion, and he well imagined that only leftover adrenaline kept him on his feet. His knees had shaken coming up the stairs.

“That’s right, professor,” he answers, glancing over his shoulder as he wrestles a heavy cloak out of the bag.

After everything he had been through, he was lucky to have any of his gear left. Precious little of what he had taken with him is in the bag, but somehow he feels proud that he has even that. Lucky to escape with his wand and his life.

“They said you’d been killed,” says Dumbledore. “I’m relieved to find that the rumors were...”

“...exaggerated,” snorts Moody, tossing the cloak over a rickety chair near the bed. “Though it was nip and tuck for a while there,” he adds despite himself, absent-mindedly touching a place about an inch below his ribcage on the left hand side. For whatever reason, the wound still hurts, still troubles him even weeks later. He resists the urge to curse in front of the professor.

He hears Dumbledore leave his bunk. His senses are a bit sharper than they were. But he doesn’t bother turning this time. Moody just goes about his business, rolling up his duffel when he’s finished unpacking it, and pretends that he doesn’t know that the older wizard is standing two feet behind him and slightly to his right.

“So what are you here for, sir?” asks Alastor as he tucks the duffel under the mattress. He doesn’t know when he will have another assignment, but he imagines it will be soon -- after he gets used to having a bed to sleep in again, but before his wounds all finish healing. If they ever heal. There are some that he feels will be with him for the rest of his life. But that’s better than being dead, and Moody knows it.

“They haven’t told me exactly. I’ve just volunteered. I’m on sabbatical from the school,” he answers a bit evasively, and Moody realizes that he’s standing even closer than he realized.

Looking up and over his shoulder, he finds himself staring through a pair of half-moon spectacles and into concerned blue eyes that shine with a peculiar warm light as they look steadily into his. Those eyes. As a student, he had felt that they could see into a person’s soul and know, and understand, the deepest and darkest desires of their heart. That was rubbish, of course, and still is, but Alastor always tried to avoid those eyes. He tries now, but there is little use; Dumbledore is standing too close.

“That’s nice,” he mumbles absently.

“Have you seen a mediwitch since you’ve come back?” the professor asks him in a calm, patient voice that tells Alastor that he looks injured, even to a relative non-combatant. He realizes at that moment too that he probably smells a bit ripe to the uninitiated as well.

“Didn’t want to waste her time. From what I’ve heard, she’s got new casualties from Belgium to attend to. All my injuries are healing on their own just fi...” he says with as much bravado and devil-may-care attitude as he can muster. Moody even throws his head back a bit.

Dumbledore’s eyes widen just perceptibly, and that makes him almost blush. Almost because real Aurors don’t blush. They can’t. It’s the rules. Or it should be, Alastor decides, as Dumbledore, unmindful of his dirty robes and stench, lays a hand on his shoulder.

“Alastor,” he interrupts, “you can’t possibly be serious.”

For a moment he is surprised by the use of his first name. Then he remembers how barmy the Gryffindor professor could be at times.

“I’m fine,” he insists, though as the grip on his shoulder tightens, his entire arm, much to his chagrin, practically sings with pain. That, he definitely thought had healed.

Those eyes widen again and the grip relaxes. And Alastor, who knows what to do in must situations -- hex, stun, or curse -- doesn’t know what to do or think or feel as the older wizard reaches for his left hand, which had been as good as broken three weeks earlier. He doesn’t know whether to snatch his hand from Dumbledore, curl his fingers around the long digits that were wrapped ever so gently around his, or just hold his breath and hope nothing comes out of joint.

“Broken,” says Dumbledore, only taking his eyes from Alastor’s for a moment, though to Alastor it feels as though a tremendous weight is temporarily taken from his shoulders. “You need medical attention, Alastor,” he says after looking at the slightly misshapened hand.

“Professor...” he begins to object, not wanting to go through the ordeal involved in seeing the headquarters mediwitch, or Merlin forbid, the Healer that comes round once a week. It isn’t even his wand hand. He shivers as Dumbledore holds his hand between his own and tries again to look away. Still bloody useless.

“If you won’t go and see her... I know it would be uncomfortable for you, but surely no worse than splintered bones and whatever else ... would you let me offer my assistance? I’m not a mediwitch or -wizard certainly, but you must be in such pain...” he says with a certain compassionate exasperation in his voice.

Moody nearly laughs at this because he was never a favorite student of Dumbledore’s. He had earned excellent marks in his classes; however, he doubts that he was ever more than a Slytherin who could do Transfigurations to the professor. Cautious fingers stroke the top of his hand.

He doesn’t know why, but he quietly gives his assent. Dumbledore is right in some respects. Better him than that horrid woman downstairs with her cold demeanor and parsimonious looks. Dumbledore is someone he trusts, for whatever that is worth.

“Your robes...” says the professor in a cautious voice.

Alastor realizes that he’s being asked to strip and tries to step back and object, but the heels of his boots are already against the mattress behind him. He knows that he can refuse. He knows he can half-disrobe for the professor and let him treat whatever injuries can be treated that way. It would take care of the worse of them. Or he can just take off the soiled and stained robes that have been on his back for far too long. He swallows hard as he struggles with the decision.

But the expression in those eyes convinces him that he’s safe now and that it’s all right. That it is necessary too. He flushes slightly as Dumbledore reaches to help him unclasp his robes. Alastor knows that the professor is doing it because of his injured hand and lets him do it for exactly the same reason. He cannot help but feel great relief when the once-black, now-dingy robes leave his shoulders. He steps out of them and kicks them aside, knowing they will have to be laundered and patched up at some later time. He would rather see them burned, but that would be a waste.

The shirt that he has on under the robes is dirty as well, though instead of mud and what might have been sewage, there is what was certainly sweat-stains and darker, almost burgundy stains from where Alastor had bled, and quite substantially, from his injuries incurred during those two dozen or so duels. And from other things that had happened during those months.

Dumbledore, far from inured to the horrors of war, clutches Alastor by his arms for a moment, causing the younger wizard to close his eyes. Not just from the sudden pain brought on by the touch, which was something that feels nearly alien to him, but from the expression of sheer concern in the eyes of the other man.

“Looks worse than it is,” he mumbles with his eyes still closed.

He can’t bring himself to open his eyes nor to move as his former professor carefully removes his shirt, pulling it away from his skin with great care, but opening old wounds nonetheless. Dumbledore murmurs his apologies. Alastor merely nods his acceptance.

“Your boots...” says the professor, almost as a warning, as he kneels to unlace them for Alastor.

He balances precariously as Dumbledore removes first the left and then the right with a good deal of tugging, but even more care. Alastor risks a downward glance at him as he peels away his socks too. They’re stained a dark brown color. Revolting. His feet are slightly swollen and pinched. He cannot even remember when he had last removed his boots, but his best guess would be four days. Dumbledore touches his feet, almost as though he doesn’t realize how disgusting they are, or maybe he knows and doesn’t care. Maybe he’s barmier than Alastor even thought.

The cold stone floor of the aged building feels good against his abused soles. So he closes his eyes again. He doesn’t want to look Dumbledore in the eye, if he can help it. And he is tired. So very tired. So drained. This is the first time he realizes how much has been taken out of him by his homeward journey.

“Alastor, are you able to finish getting undressed?” asks a hesitant voice almost in his ear.

“Not sure,” he admits, wrenching his eyes open as best as he is able. For a moment he thinks that he is falling toward two twin pools of blue. Then he realizes that they are Dumbledore’s eyes, full of worry and not water. And that he is swaying almost dizzily. His strength seems to have left him with his boots. He has been running on steam and mere willpower for a long time. Both were finally giving out.

“Lie down,” Dumbledore instructs, and Moody doesn’t have the strength nor the inclination to argue. In fact, it seems like a very good idea to him.

When he finds his way, none too gracefully, to the mattress, he feels better, more lucid and less dizzy, but still incredibly weary. Dumbledore removes his pants with careful hands, though if he is surprised by Moody’s lack of undergarments, he gives no indication. Alastor wants to remark, and glibly, that they were lost when he attempted to bathe in a river, but he hasn’t the strength. And he doesn’t think it matters.

“I should get the mediwitch,” says Dumbledore softly, though Alastor feels that he is mostly talking to himself.

Warm, probing fingers begin examining his side where he had received the very worst of his wounds. A magically hurled knife that he nearly managed to deflect. The blade had gone in, but not so far as the one using the weapon would have liked. A deep puncture and nothing more. The wound had closed slowly and bled a great deal. Though it still causes him pain, the injury is mending well enough. Or at least well enough for Alastor.

“Don’t,” he murmurs as he feels Dumbledore begin to stand up. He swallows and finds his voice. “That’s just a flesh wound, and it’s nearly healed. Don't trouble her on account of that,” he tells Dumbledore with all the authority he can muster. It isn’t much, but Dumbledore stays where he is.

“All right,” he agrees before summoning something, a damp towel and a bar of soap, from across the room.

Alastor finds it mind-boggling that the professor would think to bring soap into a war zone. Then he realizes that it’s probably transfigured soap ... and that Dumbledore required no wand to summon it. He is vaguely impressed by the feat.

“Alastor, I’m going to clean you up a bit. Is that all right?” asks his former professor.

He doesn’t reply for a moment. He doesn’t know how to answer that question. A simple yes seems so difficult to say, and yet, he wants to be clean again. Alastor wants the blood and filth to go away. He knows that Dumbledore can’t using a cleaning spell on his skin because of his wounds -- the scabs would be torn away with the dirt, leaving him vulnerable to infection. But he feels ashamed at the thought of Dumbledore touching, washing him, in such an intimate fashion as this. He vacillates for so long that Dumbledore puts the towel and soap aside.

“I’ll attempt to mend your hand first, but we may really need the mediwitch for that.”

“All right,” he agrees softly, and this time when Dumbledore takes his injured hand in his, Alastor’s fingers automatically curl around the longer fingers of his former professor.

He can feel the bones shifting and knitting themselves back together as Dumbledore speaks quiet incantations underneath his breath. And Alastor is truly awed by this power, which he had never before realized that Dumbledore possessed. He raises his eyelids just enough to see the expression of intense concentration on the professor’s face: a knitted brow and narrowed eyes. The ache in his hand and arm begin to diminish again immediately. He is grateful and relieved because he was afraid that the wound would prove too difficult to be healed even by a practiced mediwitch. Bone-shattering spells were not to be trifled with. Apparently, neither was Professor Dumbledore.

“Thank you,” whispers Alastor as Dumbledore pats his hand and gives it an experimental squeeze. There isn’t any more pain.

“Not at all, my dear boy,” he tells him, and Alastor is again surprised. The term of endearment he has used was once reserved only for those favorite students, those Gryffindors, whom Dumbledore prized above all of his other pupils. “May I clean you up now? Or would you rather...”

“Please, sir,” he whispers with a slight nod. The embarrassment does not leave him, but he knows that Dumbledore means well, and that he won’t hurt him, that he can help make the pain, the fierce ache, that has not left him in months, finally go away. Alastor would endure anything if only he could feel well and whole and like himself again for a few hours.

“Albus. It’s all right to call me that now since you aren’t my student anymore. Unless you would rather not...” says Dumbledore in a friendly tone of voice that continues to betray his concern.

“Albus,” he repeats softly as the warm damp of the soapy towel touches his injured side. He holds his breath until he realizes that Albus is being very careful and gentle, and though the soap stings the old injury a bit, he knows that it won’t be any worse than that. “Albus,” he says again in a sleepy murmur. He finds that he likes the name.

“That’s right,” the professor encourages, lifting the filth from Alastor’s skin with great care, taking note of each half-healed cut and scrape and every yellowing bruise that dots his flesh.

And for a few moments Alastor drowses. Everything he has ever depended upon for strength is gone -- adrenaline, willpower, duty, everything -- leaving behind a drained and sleepy sensation that fills him where there otherwise would be only emptiness. But the exhaustion fills itself, perhaps aided by the gentle hands that are scrubbing his skin, and makes Alastor feel better than before. He hardly notices when Albus rinses his skin, speaking quiet drying charms at the same time.

“Alastor, can you turn onto your stomach for me?”

Alastor manages to rouse himself enough to do as he asks, though he cannot quite articulate to the other wizard that the worst of the injuries have been taken care of and that there’s hardly any need to see to the nearly healed scrapes and bruises there. He also doesn’t think Albus would let him get away with that.

He opens his eyes just a bit as Dumbledore brushes his long, unkempt hair away from his shoulders. For an instant as Albus leans closer, he feels a faint stirring of that schoolboy longing he felt for the professor all those years ago. Alastor sees a flicker of something like surprise in Albus’s eyes and snaps his own eyes shut again. Albus tucks a few errant strands of hair behind his ear. His heart nearly skips a beat.

“It’s all right,” he assures him, and Alastor has the feeling that Dumbledore knows perfectly well what idle and foolish thoughts have just passed through his mind. His touch gentles even further as he scrubs Alastor’s back, kneading the muscles through the damp cloth, but not disturbing his healing injuries.

Despite the lingering, albeit slowly fading, embarrassment and the uncanny notion that Albus could read his thoughts and desires, Alastor finds himself relaxing again. He shifts slightly as Albus scrubs the backs of his bruised and aching thighs and finds, much to his alarm and dismay, that he is becoming aroused by the unassuming touches of his former professor. He is mortified and doesn’t know what he should do.

“Please...” he whimpers, opening his eyes again, before he moves away from Dumbledore while trying not to reveal what’s happening to him, keeping his stomach, hips, and thigh flat against the battered mattress.

Silently, Alastor begins making excuses. He hasn’t been touched in months. Hasn’t had sex since going back to London on furlough. He didn’t mean to drop his guard. He never expected that the central figure of many of his adolescent fantasies would ever be so close to him, ever touch him like this. Never. But he is aroused, and ashamed, nonetheless.

“I’m sorry, child,” Albus says to him, and in his voice there is both bewilderment and compassion. “Have I hurt you?” he questions, placing one damp hand on Alastor’s shoulder.

“No,” he answers quietly, not wanting the professor to feel guilty for his weakness and inappropriate, or at least inopportune, response. For a split second his gaze flicks upward and meets that of Dumbledore, hoping beyond hope that the older wizard won’t realize what was happening to him.

“Alastor, it’s all right,” Albus assures him with a compassionate smile. “It’s a perfectly natural response for your body to have after such lengthy privation and emotional stress. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles despite those reassurances.

The older wizard smoothes his hair, inadvertently making it worse, but trying to comfort and soothe him. He stares at the dingy mattress and tried not to think of the long fingers in his hair nor the throbbing tightness in his groin. Albus’s fingernails graze his scalp, sending a shiver through him.

“I know how you thought of me when you were a student,” the professor confesses in a tone that is much more matter-of-fact than accusatory. Alastor’s eyes dart to his again in surprise. “I was quite flattered,” he adds with what Moody takes to be sincerity.

Alastor never told a single person, not a soul living nor dead, of his feelings toward Dumbledore, but he blushes nonetheless and feels compelled to say, “I never told anyone, I swear...”

“Legilimency,” Albus informs him with the faintest trace of amusement in his voice.

Alastor blushes slightly, which momentarily takes his attention off more pressing matters, as he realizes that Dumbledore really could read minds, know what was in the hearts of his students, in a manner of speaking. All this time he had thought it had been mere youthful fancy, but, no, it was true. Which also meant that his professor had known that he wanted nothing more than to tear his robes off, bend him over his desk, and bugger him senseless. No wonder Dumbledore had always seemed so aloof.

“I’m sorry, professor.”

“Nonsense,” Albus laugh softly. “Your flights of fancy, if memory serves, were among the most interesting and varied that any of my students have had. Or that I have ever been privy to. I must say that I admired your self-confidence.”

“Anyone can be a Casanova in their own imagination,” Moody answers with a soft snort, though he does appreciate what Albus is saying. Even if he doesn’t quite understand.

“You would be surprised,” Albus replies to the assertion. And with that his eyes twinkle, which is something that Alastor cannot fail to notice. “But I suppose talking about that sort of thing isn’t helping.”

Alastor shakes his head and feels color creep into his cheeks again. He doesn’t know what to say to the other wizard.

“Would you like a few minutes alone to take care of yourself?” Dumbledore questions kindly. “I catch fetch a healing salve or something in the meantime.”

Alastor knows that his erection isn’t going to disappear on its own, not for a while at least, not without something to relieve it. And Merlin knows he could use some relief after so long in enemy territory without having the time, privacy, motivation, nor feeling of safety necessary to take care of his own needs. Now he scarcely has the energy, though he knows how much better he would feel, how much tension he could release, how much easier he would sleep. However, he doesn’t think he can manage it.

“No, thank you,” he says softly.

And despite what he knows will be conveyed to Dumbledore, he cannot keep his gaze on the mattress. He has to lift his eyes to look at Albus. And he sees compassion and understanding, a wisdom all its own, in those brilliant blue eyes. The two wizards merely look at each other for a moment. Albus knows what Alastor wants and needs without another word passing between them. Words that Alastor could not give voice. He simply nods his consent when Albus takes him by the shoulder and turns him onto his back again with surprising strength and gentleness.

Long and delicate fingers, surprisingly strong in their grip and soft in the touch, wrap around him, making him groan and throw his head back. With his other hand Albus massages Alastor’s stomach and abdomen, kneading his muscles and keeping his hips from jerking upward as he strokes him. Alastor’s breathing shallows under those expert touches. He murmurs incoherently between breathy gasps, unable to stop the flow of words that pass through his open lips. Flashes of his fantasies come back to him, and though this was never one of them, they cannot compete with the reality of what Albus is doing to him.

The experience does not last long, but leaves him panting and utterly spent. His eyelids droop as Albus cleans him up and uses a Sanitizing Charm on the mattress. He tries to formulate the right words to say to the older man as he spreads a moth-eaten blanket over him and sits down next to him, looking over his spectacles at his flushed face and sweaty brow. Alastor manages a tremulous smile as Dumbledore touches his cheek, running his knuckles over the short stubble found there.

“Those day-dreams of yours meant a lot to me, Alastor, even if that’s all they could ever be because you were my student,” Dumbledore tells him, and Alastor has the vague impression that he thought an awfully lot about the lurid images gleaned from his mind. There is a twinkle in Dumbledore’s eyes as he chuckles and says, “We weren’t exactly encouraged to bring erotic literature to Hogwarts, you know.” Alastor smiles a bit wider, though a second later he finds himself stifling a yawn. “You need your rest. You’ll not recuperate properly without it,” says Albus.

For a moment Alastor thinks he might lean down and kiss him, but instead, Dumbledore merely squeezes his shoulder and retreats to his own bed. He is too tired to question this and closes his eyes, letting sleep overtake him at last.


In the morning when Alastor awakes, he finds that Albus and all of his belongings are gone. It is as though he had never occupied the room in the first place. And if not for the lingering feeling of satisfaction in the pit of his stomach and his healed hand, he might believe that, but he knows better.

He showers. He goes to the makeshift mess in the brothel’s lower story. Alastor doesn’t ask about the professor nor make mention of his good fortune ... that he has his own berth again. He eats and allows the mediwitch to hen-peck him over his injuries without complaint. He regrets that he could not thank Albus for his kindness, but he imagines that Albus knows quite well how he feels. He goes about the business of being an Auror.

And three weeks later when he walks into his room after a long day that was harder than some, but more pleasant than most, Alastor finds the professor waiting for him. This time it is Dumbledore who needs comfort and assistance and Alastor’s hands that are willing and gentle.

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