Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned
by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books,
Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made
and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
"Flaws"
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy
Paranoia. Suspicion.
A lifetime spent looking over his shoulder, watching his back. Constant vigilance, but it's never enough. No matter how he surrounds himself with light, the dark creeps in. A single mistake can cost a life. He can do a lifetime's penance, and still find no absolution.
Guilt, the weight of it so heavy that he cannot carry it- and yet he does, because he must.
Old ghosts that haunt him; friends lost, friends let down.
Memory clearer than the present, wrapping him in flashbacks, the sense of them so real he forgets he is no longer there.
Every ache, every pain, every scar, each a souvenir of a moment when he let the bastards get too close.
Turn you back on someone too long, and they will slip a knife in it.
This is what Alastor Moody knows, what he remembers.
He understands his paranoia, knows damn well it is his greatest flaw.
That makes it no less necessary.