"Not Invulnerable"
by Christine Anderson
aka Lilly Malfoy

There's no such thing as invulnerability, and he has only to look in the mirror to see that. He's lost too much, been hurt too many times, to ever believe anything else.

Old wounds ache when it rains, sometimes even when it doesn't, and he cannot help but remember. You are not invulnerable, old man, he tells himself. You are not unbreakable.

And he could wish he were impervious to harm, but of course he is not.

Even if he were, there are other kinds of vulnerability. Try as he might, there will always be chinks in his armor. Every person he has ever allowed to draw close to him is one of them. Every person- but her, of course, more than any other.

In the way of a man who has been, until now, too long alone, he finds it strange- that she can make him feel vulnerable as not even the worst of his old war wounds ever could have, that she can be such a vulnerability for him- and yet at the same time, that she can make him feel invincible- that he is, in a way, invincible with her by his side.

On the surface, of course, it is preposterous. He is as human as ever he was, with her or without her.

And yet... And yet. Preposterous or not, impossible or not, the feeling persists. And if he's not quite certain that he understands it, he has at least stopped questioning this, how she makes him feel. That feeling, after all, hasn't changed in years now, and he does not believe it is going to.

Nor does he have any desire to see it change.

Love is a weakness he thought that he could escape when he was young. He had never imagined growing old and lonely this way, nor how pleased, how overjoyed, he would be when this woman, such a welcome enigma, had broken his silence, shattered his isolation by holding out a hand. If there was risk in opening himself to her- and he does not delude himself that there is not -he still finds the alternative, the thought that he might have turned her away, too much to bear. He is not, has never been, a great man for taking risks. But this one...

He would rather take a risk than live the rest of his years with the regret of not having done so. He carries the weight of too many regrets already, and he has no desire to bear any more.

If he were a younger man, or perhaps simply a different one, he would perhaps think more of love and its peculiar brand of immortality, the feeling of invincibility that it brings.

But he is Alastor Moody, and he knows that as long as he is alive, he's vulnerable. If it were any different it would mean that he had let his guard down and paid the price for it.

One day it will happen. It's bound to. But there is another kind of invulnerability, too; with her at his side, guarding his flank, he is far less likely to fall.

It goes without saying that he will be dead before she does. This is the ultimate vulnerability that can come from love, and it is one he will embrace willingly if he must. He accepts fully the constraints love places upon him, accepts the vulnerabilities it bestows, and gladly.