Triptych: Mea Culpa

If he'd had a motto back then, it probably would have been "carpe diem."

He hadn't exactly lived a wild life, but compared to his present Spartan existence it had been absolutely debauched. That was back when he still drank in the pubs with his coworkers, and when he could still sleep through the night. He still had all his body parts then, too. Some had even called him attractive.

It was drinking with his mates in the pub that had changed everything. Because everything changed the night that he met her.

As he had raised his glass of firewhiskey to his lips, the door to the pub had opened, and professional habit made him look up to identify who was entering the room. A group of frilly, fluttering females breezed in, and he almost went back to his drink and conversation. But the girl who appeared suddenly in their midst caught his attention with her daunting presence. He never even saw the faces of her entourage that night; she stood out among them, dark, silent and mysterious, the motionless black eye of a multicolored hurricane swirling around her. She commanded her friends like they were sycophants, with the grace and surety of one born to power.

He couldn't take his eyes off of her.

It took him a long time to work up the courage to send a drink over to her. He watched as the bartender placed it on the bar in front of her; she raised one thin brow as she studied the glass and the bartender pointed over his way. She tilted her head slightly, every movement slow and languid, and appraised him through the hazy room. Then one corner of her mouth lifted slightly, her bright lips parted and mouthed an invitation.

He excused himself from his friends, and walked over to sit next to her, giving her a charming smile as he introduced himself. "My name is Alastor."

She tossed her hair back from her eyes, and regarded him smokily. "Bella," she purred.

That he was old enough to be her father never crossed his mind that night, and he often looked back with disgust at how enthralled he had been then. They chatted inconsequentially for a while; he talked about his job in general terms, while she discussed various career options that she was weighing, although he felt sure that this woman had no need of a job. This was the type of woman who would never want for anything; the kind of woman that Moody had never imagined to find himself seated with in a dim bar.

And yet here they were, and she was hanging on his every word as he described a raid that he had been on. It had been written up in the Daily Prophet a week or so back and little that he had to add was new, but her eyes were gleaming as she leaned in to listen, one corner of her mouth curving upward as she caught his eyes drifting toward the pale swell of cleavage that her dress exposed. She was intoxicating; he had never before been so consumed with giddy, strutting foolishness, as well as an underlying lust. There was a strength and challenge in the depths of her dark eyes that he had never encountered in a woman, and it drew him to her irresistibly. He abandoned his friends, staying by her side for the remainder of the evening until the pub's owner finally shooed the last of the patrons out so that he might close.

He offered to escort her back home; she laughed huskily and replied that it was a perfect night for a walk through the Alley. And of course there was no way that he could resist her company.

The night air was clear and still, the firmament arching above as dark as the eyes of the girl pressed at his side, and as spangled as his own eyes were, looking down at the vision hanging on his arm. The night had taken on the feeling of a lucid dream, a soap bubble fantasy that an ill-timed move could burst, and he scarcely dared breathe as they strolled the darkened streets and peeked surreptitiously at one another in shop windows.

Before long they had reached the end of Diagon Alley, and Bella turned to small, dismal walk between two buildings. Heedless of cobwebs or rats, she strode a few paces into the darkness and turned to him. "Follow me," she smiled, beckoning to him.

He did, but when he reached her he grasped her shoulders gently. "Lass," he said cautiously, "this leads into Knockturn Alley. And a lady such as yourself shouldn't have to deal with the villains and ghouls that haunt that place at night."

Those perfect lips parted, and she made a noise a little like a cat's chirp of excitement. Leaning into him, he could feel her body quivering slightly against his as she purred in his ear, "But you'll protect me, won't you?" And then that delectable, kissable mouth was pressed against his own, warm and soft, her tongue sliding teasingly between his lips. He gasped softly, reaching for her, but she slid away from him in a silken rustle of fine robes and his fingers merely grazed the slick fabric.

"Follow me, Alastor," she called again, from down the narrow passage, and he hurried after the mellifluous laughter that echoed off the leaning walls. She danced like a windblown leaf through the little walkway, always just beyond his reach and giggling like a little girl. At the tiny alley's end she turned and waited for him to catch up, her eyes gleaming with anticipation, and flung an arm around his shoulders so that she could place her mouth beside his ear.

"We can see most of Knockturn Alley from here," she breathed, "and no one can see us."

Her voice in his ear, husky with exhilaration, set his heart racing and she turned back to the Alley, tongue tracing delicately across her lips. Almost eagerly.

A heavily cloaked figure swept past the edge of their little walkway, gone before they could see catch sight of his face, although Moody had the impression of a vampire. Out on the street, a leprous looking old witch was crying her wares; by the looks of the crowd gathering, the prices of her foul merchandise were good. A pair of goblins were walking and talking with a burly man, and a small cluster of hags scurried by, their shrill voices like magpies. "The dregs of society," Bella whispered.

"I don't want you to run off at the first sight of wrongdoing, Alastor," she said softly, her dark eyes studying the scrofulous crowd teeming on the street beyond. "Stay with me, no matter what." Without looking at him, one hand was tracing delicate patterns across his chest and when she finally raised her face back to his, the scent of jasmine in her perfume wafted up to tickle his senses.

Slipping his arms around her narrow waist, he murmured, "You know that I would have to do something, depending on what I saw. It's part of being an Auror. If we saw a murder..." She gave a little gasp, clutching his arms, and for a sudden, disquieting moment he thought that it was a little cry of excitement. But then she was pliant against him once more, and the slight feeling of discord was swept away before the heat building within him.

"Stay," she commanded, nipping at his earlobe with tiny, sharp teeth. "Watch them with me..." She turned her head back to the street, trembling slightly as Moody ran his hands down her back. A shout erupted from Knockturn Alley as the two goblins and the man apparently came up at odds; in only a moment's time, hexes were flying, and one of the goblins drew a knife. Moody tensed, but Bella restrained him, saying, "What will it solve? They'll only go and fight elsewhere. Stay and take care of me, Alastor."

Cool fingers were sliding up his neck and twining in his hair, and she drawled, "I like to watch them. I love to see that hideous display, here, where no one would suspect..." She drew his head down to her throat, and the tang of her skin on his lips whipped the heat in Moody to a raging inferno; he was suddenly crushing her mouth with a passionate kiss. His lust was so strong that it frightened him a bit, but the violence of his attentions seemed only to inflame Bella, for she arched her back, shrugging her breasts free of her bodice for him to grope and taste, as a ragged shriek rang out from the street, and beyond the scope of his mind.

He wondered later if she could possibly have drugged him; it would have made his resulting actions easier to deal with, some nights. For the utter absurdity of the situation never entered his mind then; the foolishness of indulging in such wanton, carnal behavior within an arm's reach of some of the most heinous characters in Wizarding London, and with a girl no doubt only half his age.

But no, Bella was no girl; nimble fingers expertly freed him from his constricting clothing, handling him in a way that had the blood pounding in his ears and his hips bucking into her hand uncontrollably. No inexperienced girl would guide him into her, sliding a hand between them as he plunged inside, rubbing and teasing them both while he pinned her to the dingy alley wall with his desperate thrusts. Her head thrown back, mouth open wide in a rictus of pleasure, she arched and crooned and rode him with a fever equal to his own, biting his shoulder until blood flowed when she came. The twinned pain in his shoulder and pleasure as she throbbed around him made him erupt, spilling into her with a hoarse cry that she echoed in panting gasps.

It was only afterwards, with her head resting against his chest, that she told him about her fiancé, to whom she had been betrothed for years. "But I don't love him, nor does he love me," she said in an almost bored tone.

He was stunned. "How could he not love you?" he asked her, and she crowed with laughter.

"You're so naïve, Alastor."

That was the last time in his memory that anyone called him naïve.

~*~*~

After that night, he could no more stay away from her than an improvident moth lured to a flame. But the time he had to give to her dwindled quickly, much to his chagrin, as the demands of his job soon swelled to staggering proportions.

When he had first become an Auror, the worst thing that he might encounter was an old minion or two of Grindelwald hanging on to old ambitions, mainly because they knew nothing else and couldn't imagine doing otherwise. They knew terrible Dark magics, bu he was clever and bold, and brought in every one he could track down.

It was this flawless record that put him in charge of the investigation into an alarming series of crimes against Muggles. Obliviators had been working overtime for months, trying to repair the damage of a string of Muggle baiting events, but it seemed to have escalated to terrible proportions recently as more and more were now being found dead, and the deaths were becoming increasingly brutal.

Then came the day he wouldn't forget, the day he had both dreaded and expected, when the report finally came to him that a wizard and his children had been found murdered in the same manner.

An oily cloud of green smoke still hung over the house in the shape of a serpent and a deathshead, making his hackles rise as he stared up at it. He couldn't help the impression that it gave him, that it was leering down at the officials below and only waiting for them to relax so it might strike. He couldn't imagine what it must have been like for the wife, returning home to find this forbidding manifestation, and the remains of her family beneath its brooding gaze. Forcing himself to ignore the silent presence above, he concentrated on entering the home, wand poised and his senses tuned to painful sensitivity.

Just like the Muggle homes he'd investigated, there was little sign of violence within the house, although a few murmured incantations showed the remains of strong magic used recently. The house was deceptively neat; only a busted lamp, lying scattered across the floor where it had been knocked from a table, gave any indication that there had been trouble at all, and he found himself staring at the incongruous mess in the floor. That was where the man had been found, unmarked and cold.

Although the bodies of the family had been removed already, he fancied that he could still smell the sickly-sweet miasma of death hovering in the room, tickling his nose with its foul perfume. Shaking his head to clear it, he recalled himself to the task at hand and began reconstructing the scene in his mind as it must have played out here. Apparition into the home, a moment of shock, and then scarcely a struggle as the father tried in vain to reach his children. He imagined the man stumbling as he careened toward the stairs, knocking the lamp to the floor as he flailed for balance, only to be felled a moment later by a curse. Opening his eyes, he thought again about the dead man's unblemished appearance; taken alongside the evidence of the magical residues, the only possible explanation was Unforgivable.

Turning from the innocuous site of death, he stalked up the narrow stairs, deliberately ignoring the other crime scene off to the right in the children's rooms. The deaths of children angered him beyond measure, and bitter, helpless rage burned in his chest as he hurried past the doors, wishing that he could so easily separate himself from the imaginary sounds of youthful laughter as he did from the sight of toys scattered across the playroom floor. Back stiff and with nerves on edge, he walked into the master bedroom to stared dispassionately at the message still glowing luridly upon the wall over the bed.

The fate of all Muggle-lovers and Mudbloods- consider yourself warned.

The wizard had been Muggle-born; his wife was pureblooded. Later, he sat with the grief-stricken widow in his office as she sobbed bitterly, railing against her pureblooded family, who, she said, was certainly behind this. Threats had come her way in the past, and from those she seemed to have been expecting an attack against herself, but it was obvious that she had never considered her husband or children at risk.

"It's him; it's all his fault!" she wailed, clutching fistfuls of her long, auburn tresses. "He's turned their minds, and made them do this to me!"

"Who?" he implored her, "Only tell me who, and I'll find them."

She shook her head, keening louder. "It's because of Voldemort- that's why my family is dead!"

It was the first time he had heard the name.

~*~*~

It wasn't long before such scenes were hideously familiar to him, and as the pressure continued to mount, he would seek out Bella's company to relieve the burden created by the horrors of the day, letting her fill him with his old courage once more, and enabling him to return to work with renewed enthusiasm. The first time that he did so he told her the story of the wizard and his family in steady, measured tones, ready to reassure her if she became distressed at the alarming news. But she listened unflinching, only the tip of her tongue darting as she moistened her lips unconsciously, eyes unnaturally bright in a pale face.

It bothered him, sometimes, that she often seemed fascinated by the details from which he most wanted to shield her. While his thoughts would squirm and twist away from recounting the grotesque reality of what he had seen, she would lay her head upon his shoulder, sweetly plying more particulars from him. But despite this slight dissonance their time together reinvigorated him, and he was at least smart enough to realize that he was lucky to have a woman like Bella in which to confide. Each time, after he had finished confessing himself to her she would come to him, eyes glowing and her soft mouth hungry for his. His pain dissolved in her embrace, and she would grant him sweet release with her groping, clever little hands. But although she teased him mercilessly with her body, she never again allowed him to make love to her

Smiling coyly at him, she said, "I can't let you plow Rodolphus' land until he's had his chance to sow there." But that didn't stop him from trying, and she didn't seem to mind.

~*~*~

One cool autumn afternoon, when her parents were away on holiday and her sisters had gone out for the evening, they lay locked together on her bed, almost as intimate as the night they met. His breath coming in sharp gasps, Moody fought to keep himself under control, for Bella was making him delirious with desire. His fingers ached as they clutched her through her slick silken robes, and he wrestled with an animalistic urge to rip the flimsy garments from her body and have his way with her right there. She arched against him, crooning deep in her throat as the added pressure against his crotch forced a strangled moan from him and made his hips convulse.

"Oh yes," she panted through scarlet lips, baring her teeth as she raked her nails across his skin. "Yes, Alastor, yes..."

One nail scraped roughly across his nipple, and the sensation was like fire through him; she chuckled gutturally as his vision clouded with uncontainable lust. He was on top of her in an instant, his mouth ravenous as it moved from her mouth to her neck and lower, to her breasts. It was only the snarl of ripping silk that brought him back to his senses, and he stared down in surprise at his hands clenching the ruins of her bodice.

Expecting censure in her eyes, he glanced up cautiously, but Bella's face had grown flushed and wild as well, almost feverish as she pulled him back atop her. She was writhing beneath him, sinuous and lascivious, and he nearly lost his head once more as she ground against him urgently. But all thoughts of possessing her body fled as she raised an arm to draw his head down to her face.

Burned into her forearm was a snake protruding obscenely from the mouth of a skull. The mark of the killers and torturers. The mark of Voldemort.

He jerked away from her as though scorched, his voice breaking into shards as he gasped, "Bella, no..."

She laughed, arching her back and beckoning for him with the arm bearing the foul tattoo. "Come back to me," she sang, dark glee dripping from the words. "You know you want to."

"No," he croaked, nearly falling backwards from the bed in his haste to retreat from her. Pain stung in his heel as he stepped on something unknown, but the feeling was distant beside the searing betrayal that filled his head. Disbelief and incredulity were drowning the smaller voice in his mind, screaming that she must be arrested, that she was one of the killers...

He couldn't go down that path; his mind was threatening to break as he stared at her, smirking at him from the bed. She hadn't bothered to so much as sit up, mockery glinting in her narrowed eyes as she hissed and shook with mirth. "No," he repeated. "Why? How can you touch me? You know...oh Merlin, I've told you...Why, Bella?"

She threw her head back and laughter rang raucously through the room, the sound raining on him like a hail of stones. "Don't you know, Auror Moody? Can't you guess, you clever man?" She stretched vulgarly, splaying her legs to expose herself, taunting, and another peal of laughter assaulted him.

"Because I wanted to. Because I can."

He stumbled backward, away, feeling as though he had taken a Bludger to the solar plexus, and her unholy merriment pursued him. Rising to her knees on the bed, Bella crawled to the edge, her eyes glowing ferally. "Come back, Alastor. Come back here, and I'll fuck you like you've dreamed since the night we met. Even better than you've imagined..." Heavy lidded eyes regarded him with fierce desire, and in a horrible instant he realized that he still wanted her; part of him wanted to return to her, to turn a blind eye to the evil stamped into her and spend himself in her flesh once more. Appalled, he snatched his wand from where it lay atop his coat, Apparating from her room without even bothering to gather his clothes.

Appearing in his own home, he immediately set the strongest wards and charms over his house that he knew, and laid a few nasty traps just in case. Shaking and ill with shock, he only then became aware that he was still half-undressed; once he realized, he ripped the clothes from his body, incinerating them with a charm. He couldn't bear to have anything that might bear her scent touching him again.

He then hastily penned a letter to his superiors at the Ministry, alerting them to Bella's alliance with the Dark wizard who was steadily growing in power and menace. But he paused as he was coaxing his barn owl out of its cage for the delivery, weighing his wording, before finally deciding that the message was too sensitive to be sent by owl. He put it off again the following day after reporting for duty at the Ministry, for fear of exposing his own foolishness and indiscretion in associating with her. And the message was soon forgotten as more crises arose, demanding immediate attention, and none showing any hint of Bella's involvement. Thankful of what he saw as a reprieve for his conscience, it wasn't until much later that he was able to wholly acknowledge the stupidity of that action.

But for now, he vowed, never again. Never again would he give his trust so freely, nor would he allow fickle emotion to cloud his thinking. And constant vigilance became his watchword thereafter.