Daddy's Favorite

Most people think I'm grumpy.

Most people are right.

I mean, how would you like it if you only had part of a nose and one eye? I'm always getting comments like, "It must be marvelous to have a magic eye!"

I usually reply to that one with "Give me one of your eyes and you can have it!"

I haven't found any takers yet.

As I move out of the kitchen where we had just finished our meeting of the order the damn thing plays havoc with me again. It's attuned to magical resonance more than normal light, so when I cross sudden boundaries of illumination it sometimes takes it a moment to adjust. It only takes an instant, but that is enough to be irritating. I should have rolled it backwards in my head and kept it focused on the kitchen through the back of my skull. Over the years I've perfected the trick of that and it isn't as disorienting as trying to look forward in this kind of situation. But I'm deep in thought and off guard, so I forget I have a magic eye (yes, after all these years I still forget) and find myself stumbling along and right into an umbrella stand at the base of the stairs.

Why do people always insist on putting umbrella stands in such inconvenient places?

I quickly put my hand on the banister and pull myself upright. Luckily the Weasleys have gone out the back way, and Albus and Tonks are finishing their tea. I manage to disentangle myself without embarassment (and without waking the portrait of the old biddy hanging down the hall) and make my way into the main sitting room. There is a large fireplace there and a jar of floo powder. I am supposed to be on a mission to make contact with a few old informants among the less respectable classes. But that is a job best left for later in the evening, and I think something else needs my attention right now.

I make my way to the fireplace and take a handful of powder. Naturally Albus' office has safeguards against just anyone flooing in. However as one of his oldest friends I generally have the current passwords to get past his wards. I hope he hasn't changed them lately, or I will be suffering from a severely bruised backside.

"Fig cluster honey cakes," I hiss, "Albus Dumbledore's office." I toss the powder into the grate and step forward.

I exit into a darkened room that immediately begins to brighten as the enchanted candle crystals in the Headmaster's office note my arrival. Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix, looks at me from his perch and trills a greeting. I wave to him from across the room but don't approach. Ever since losing that chunk out of my nose I am leery of things with sharp beaks or fangs.

Instead I walk to one of the windows, the drapes sliding open as I draw near. The yard is still busy despite the lateness of the hour and the waning of the light. Students are dashing hither and yon, getting in a last bit of amusement or mischief or both before heading home for the summer. The seventh years will already be getting maudlin as graduation approaches. I regret not being able to teach that year. It would have been an extraordinary experience.

I especially regret missing the tri-wizard tournament. Of course if I had been here then Crouch would not have been around to meddle and things would not have been nearly so dramatic. Or maybe they would have. Harry Potter would still have been there, after all, and drama seems to follow him like goblins follow galleons.

Potter. Now there is an extraordinary case study. Half the time the boy makes me profoundly glad I never came within a league of having children. The other half of the time I wish I had a teenage daughter so he could marry her.

I walk across Albus' office and take a seat near his desk. One thing I'll say for young Harry, he apparently knows how to throw a fit. The last time I was in this room I nearly had to shield my magic eye with my hand to get some relief from the bright magical signatures of Albus' arcane knicknacks. Tonight most of those knicknacks are gone - although the most powerful auras, like that of the Sorting Hat, remain.

With a soft roar Albus steps out of the fireplace. He regards me with an expression of mild surprise and amusement. "Hello Moody. I didn't know you missed your old school days that much. Have you come to join us at the Leavetaking Feast before making your rounds?"

Albus' smile is bright, but his face is still as tired as it was at 12 Grimmauld Place. "I'm surprised you haven't uppgraded your security here," I growl in order to remain in character - I find that, for some reason, people get rattled when I don't act like a constipated tomcat. "If Fudge and Umbridge had spent more time investigating comings and goings on the floo network and less worrying about catching people in Hogwarts' fireplaces, they might well have found out about Grimmauld Place!" Like all charms, the fidelius has multiple weaknesses. I suppose that's why Dumbledore doesn't rely on it in young Harry's case.

"If I had done that you would be complaining of bruised buttocks now Moony, and you would not be doing it in my office." He gives me his Headmaster look.

"Why don't you forget the Feast and make the rounds with me Albus? It would do you good to do some hard work for a change." I thump the floor with the twisted cane I carry and make sure I scowl dramatically.

Dumbledore chuckles, as I had hoped. "I gave up hard work long ago, old friend. Now all I'm good for is presiding at endless faculty meetings and boring student Feasts."

"Oh, I don't know, you handled Riddle reasonably well." I know that there is no good way to segue into the conversation, so I figure I might as well bull right on ahead.

"If you call getting Sirius killed and almost losing Harry handling things reasonably well, I suppose I did." Albus' voice is clipped and bitter, and suddenly his face has lost all trace of mirth.

I sigh and play with my cane. I hate having arguments with Albus. But more often than not he forces me to it. "Albus, I think we had better discuss some things."

He leans back and folds his hands, lacing his fingers together and looking at me over his glasses.

Too bad Albus. That might work on the youngsters around here. It won't do anything to intimidate me. "And don't tell me you don't have time," I continue. "The Feast doesn't start for nearly an hour and a half."

He lowers his head to stare at me fixedly over the tops of his spectacles. "This is about the meeting we just had?"

"Yes it is." I meet his gaze with my own - or with my natural eye, anyway. The other one is bobbing around rapidly building a panoramic view of the office and its contents.

"You did not really answer my question. Is the Potter boy about to come unglued?"

"If you mean is he going to collapse in the next few hours, no." Albus then moves his gaze from mine to contemplate something over my left shoulder. "If you are asking whether I think he is in danger of some kind of serious reaction to events, yes."

"I would say he's already had a serious reaction!" I wave to indicate his office. "By heaven Albus, if he was that mad he could have been dangerous! He might have attacked you!"

"I had that possibility very much in mind for a few minutes," Albus says quietly.

"I should hope so! It wouldn't do much for your reputation to explain how one of your students gave you a black eye!"

"I deserved much worse than that," he says without altering his tone.

"By all the stars and comets Albus, quit feeling sorry for yourself for a few minutes and worry about young Potter for a change!" I bang my cane on the floor for emphasis.

He glares at me with a genuine look of anger - the one that could freeze falcons in mid-dive. I just adjust my head so he has to face my bouncing eye.

"I have thought about nothing else..."

"I know, I know, you've been on about it all week." I snort. "But face it, Dumbledore, mostly you're just trying to vent your self-pity. 'Oh, isn't it awful that I made a mistake. I'm so guilty. Oh, oh, oh.' You're acting like a new auror after his first foul-up. Or a student that gets caught doing something naughty and has to go to detention."

He's really mad now. He's starting to swell. He doesn't like very regal when he swell's like a puffer-fish, and Albus never lets himself consciously look less than regal when he's angry. "Moody, do not try my patience."

"Oh save it Albus. I've spent a year in a trunk and that alters your perspective a bit. Now, as I was asking you back at Grimmauld Place, do we need to take Harry to St. Mungo's? And I want better reasons than 'we can't risk it,' or 'I don't know.'"

"What is this fascination you have with St. Mungo's?" Albus is trying to deflect me now with humor. "Are you a fan of some of their more famous patients?"

"Lockheart you mean? Not hardly. And quit trying to evade the question! The boy probably should have gone to see someone after Diggory died! You know the procedure with young aurors! You always give them counseling after they see their first death, and most of them are a good deal older than Mr. Potter."

He reaches into his desk and pulls out a sheet of parchment that he passes to me. It's in Snape's handwriting. How such a twisted man has such a clear, precise script is a mystery to me. I feel the blood draining out of my skin as I read it. It is a list of some suspected "sympathizers" at St. Mungo's. Some of the names are...shocking.

"Perival-Lanham AND Clemence? I find that hard to believe."

"So do I," Albus slumps in his chair, "but you understand the problem."

Between the two of them, Perival-Lanham and Clemence probably are the top rank of mind-healers in Britain. Their influence at St. Mungo's, at least for psychiatric patients, is absolute. If they are sympathetic with the Dark Lord, allowing them access to an emotionally wounded Harry Potter would be a disaster of the first degree.

"I want to disbelieve it," Dumbledore continues, "but we have had cruel surprises before. Now do you see what I mean when I say we can't risk it?"

I do. If even one of these two is a follower of Voldemort, getting trustworthy help for a disturbed Harry Potter will prove intensely difficult. There probably isn't an active mind-healer in Britain who hasn't trained under one or the other or usually both of them. Although even I, paranoid as I am, can't believe Voldemort has his hands on all the mind-healers of Britain, it is true that anyone we approach might be tainted. We have to assume so until we can be sure of Perival-Lanham and Clemence.

And proof of a negative is notoriously difficult to achieve.

"So there isn't anyone you think we dare trust?"

"Frankly not right now. I trust Poppy implicitly of course, but knowledgable as she is she isn't an expert in this area. And as you can appreciate, if either of these two really is on Voldemort's side, we would be handing Harry over to his worst enemies." Albus rubs a hand over his eyes.

I regret my outburst earlier. I should have known that Dumbledore always has reasons. But damn it all, he should share them sometimes!

"What about from outside Britain?" I ask.

"As I said a couple of days ago, there is going to be a Council of War at Beauxbatons. I leave Monday. I plan to make inquiries there."

"But why in the name of Merlin are you sending him back to the muggles now Albus! Couldn't he stay here in the meantime."

"It's for safety's sake Moody."

"So you keep saying. Now you will please explain." I let my magical eye roll in his direction in a way most people find extremely disturbing.

Then he does something I would never have expected in all my years. I have known Dumbledore longer than anyone except for his brother, Aberforth. I've even known him longer than Iris, the House Elf who has been with him for what seems like an eternity. But for the first time in all those long days, he reaches over and takes my hand.

And then he explains.

When he is done he just sits there. The expression on his face is bland and matter-of-fact, but his grip on my hand is so tight it's painful.

"Heaven save us all Albus, are you sure you did the right thing?" I'm so overcome with conflicting emotions - shock and pity for the boy and pity for Albus and fear and anger and several other things - that I'm surprised I can speak.

"No." And then he starts crying. Which is something I really never had thought to see.

He's a good weeper though, I'll give him that. The tears roll down his face like little diamonds.

"I love him Moody," he says suddenly. "I should never have allowed that to happen. But it did. I love him and I don't know what to do."

"What's not to love?" I ask before I really think. "The kid's a wonderful boy. Stubborn and high-tempered as a devil with heat rash, and not too bright sometimes, but wonderful as they come."

"Oh Moody," Albus looks like he's the one who's going to come apart now, "what will I do if he dies?"

"If he dies?" Now a lot of things make sense. "He isn't going to die Albus. We won't let him die, now will we? If Lord I'm-insane-and-I-want-to-make-the-world-a-living-Hell has it in for him because the kid blasted him out of a body fourteen years ago, we'll just have to part Lord Whatsit from his present body before he does anything to Harry."

I meant that to be comforting and supportive. Why is Albus suddenly looking twice as old as he really is? And when you're a hundred and forty-six that's saying something.

And then he tells me what the prophecy said. All of what the prophecy said.

They told me the tear glands next to my magic eye would atrophy. That I would never cry from that side again.

They were wrong.

"What will I do," Albus asks again, "if he dies?"

I don't know what to say. What is there to say. The kid is fifteen. He's a good kid, clever and brave. But he has not really extraordinary magical powers. Sure, in time he could be something Great. But he doesn't have time. He has to kill or be killed, well, now. And Riddle has about forty years and libraries worth of knowledge on him.

Logically speaking he doesn't have any chance at all of surviving to see his own graduation ceremony.

Logically speaking he should make out his own will.

Logic be damned to all the infernal depths.

"We will just have to make sure he wins, Albus."

Dumbledore looks at me sadly. He's been saying the same thing to himself for -how long?

"Albus," a struggle for words - and suddenly they come, "a long time ago when I was first made an Auror they used to tell us not to get close to anyone. That love was a weakness. That it would end up giving us chinks in our armor." That was in the time of Grindlewald, which Albus recalls only all to well.

"I listened to them," I continue. "I made sure I never loved anybody. I was a fool."

How to say this? How to convey the depths of loneliness? How to explain the arid years?

Then I look at Albus and realize I don't have to explain. He has done the same thing.

"I realize now I wasn't being strong Albus. I was not wise or tough. I was just afraid. I was afraid and lazy and I did not want to fight."

He is gripping my so hard I'm afraid I'm about to have some missing fingers to go along with the missing nose. But I don't mind.

"Of all the fights I fought, none was ever for me - that is for my heart. None was ever for someone I truly loved."

I take a deep breath.

"But maybe it isn't too late entirely. Albus, will you let me fight with you for your heart. For someone you truly love? You say you've made mistakes Albus. So have I. You have a chance to correct yours. Let me have a chance to correct mine. Give me a chance to fight a battle that's really important - not because it's for the Light or the World, but because it's for one heart - all right two hearts - and their chance to love."

He says nothing, but finally lowers his head in assent.

And so we sit silently through the long moments until he has to rise for the Leavetaking Feast. Anyone who saw us then would probably have laughed in contempt. Nothing but two old men. Two old men holding hands and crying.

But in fact in those long moments we were readying ourselves for the battle to come. And we wept both for sorrow and for hope. For it would be the most important battle of all.