Thanks to all my reviewers.

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It was amazing how much taller Albus Dumbledore seemed when he was angry. Even his silver hair and beard seemed to radiate a fierce energy. He turned stern eyes to his former pupil and longtime friend.

“You beat him, Alastor!”

Auror Alastor Moody shrugged, unabashed. His greying hair frizzed around his scarred face like moss on a sharp-edged rock. They were standing in the empty corridor outside the holding cells. It was as good a place as any for a private chat, better than the open cubicle several floors up that served him as an office. His head twisted every few seconds, peering this way and that to check for eavesdroppers, but his eyes, small, dark and beady, kept returning to Albus. He glared back.

“Course I did, the little snake,” he retorted. “Blasted Death Eater.”

The headmaster frowned.

“When did you start torturing people for information?” Why didn’t I know?

“It wasn’t torture, just a little rough-housing to loosen his tongue.” Didn’t permanently damage him. Not as if I loosened his teeth. “If I shed a bit of his blood to save a lot of innocent blood, where’s the problem in that?”

That was what Severus had said, in different words. Albus felt sick. Had he taught them so badly?

“You’re thinking like a Death Eater.”

“I’m doing my job. Every Dark Wizard caught is one less killer on the loose. Shame he’s too small-fry to know much though.”

“Your job is to defend children, not to hurt them.”

Moody’s gash of a mouth split in a satisfied smirk.

“He’s no child, he’s seventeen. Old enough to stand trial.”

“Barely. He was only sixteen when he joined,” Albus reminded him.

“Wasn’t too young to kill and torture. We’ve got him as accessory to three murders and one of them was young Elsegood. Worth fifty of this little reptile any day,” Alastor spat.

Albus flinched and bent his head in a brief moment of remembrance. Just three years out of school and freshly qualified as an Auror, Paddy Elsegood, a fresh-faced openhearted boy with a ready smile, had been captured on his first assignment. His severed eyeless head had been dumped in a bucket outside the Ministry building two days later, its features distorted from screaming. The Muggle who found it had been Obliviated.

“Glacised his lung, he told me, wanted to see what would happen!” Moody’s face creased in disgust and his eyes blazed. “Would have liked to kill him myself for that if we hadn’t needed him alive to answer questions!”

The boy had been in no danger. The Auror was not a man to act on a moment’s impulse. Besides, death was too good for those Hell-spawn, in his opinion. Let them suffer a lifetime in Azkaban instead.

The headmaster’s lips thinned to a hard straight line.

“Listen to yourself, Alastor!” he urged sharply. “Your duty is justice, not revenge.”

“Revenge on Death Eaters is justice.”

“When you use their tactics you lose yourself. Their weapon is hatred. Choose it and you start to become one of them.”

Moody leaned forward, throwing his weight on the clawed wooden table-leg that had replaced his own.

“Nonsense!” he replied impatiently. “I’m protecting what’s important and they’re destroying it.”

Albus sighed. Echoes of Bartemius Crouch, Minister for Magical Law Enforcement. He’d been arguing this very point with him for months.

“From their point of view they’re protecting and you’re destroying.”

“Who cares what Death Eaters think? Murderers and villains. They were born evil.” Crouch’s very words.

“Not born, made! They’re still human, Alastor. They have hearts that can feel and eyes that can learn to see.”

Even Tom was an innocent boy once, Albus knew, before he began moulding himself into Lord Voldemort, scourge of Muggle-borns and half-bloods. He’d had a heart that could bleed for his Muggle father’s rejection, eyes that had tired of looking for anything but power. His Death Eaters too had made wrong choices, but they could still choose again even now. To serve him or betray him. To die fighting or screaming.

Moody was shaking his head.

“You wouldn’t say that if you stood in a burnt-out house sweeping up the leavings after one of their torture-parties. Five entire families killed in the last three months, Albus, five! And it’s getting worse.” He punched one hand with the other. “You’re too soft on them. You still see them as your children, children you taught and cared about and worried over. But I see what they’re capable of every day. They’re beyond saving, rotten to the core, the lot of them!”

“No one is beyond saving.” Not if they want it; not if they truly want to change.

“You can’t save them. Don’t know why you’d even want to try.”

Albus listened with a heavy heart. Alastor was making choices too, choices he didn’t much like, but they’d resume this argument at a more opportune time. They had arrangements to make and soon, before his friend was missed and someone came in search of him.

“I can save this one and I will,” he said quietly. “His heart is stronger than his hate; it led him back to me.” Who’d have expected a Death Eater to have more heart than an Auror? But Severus was a novice, not yet battle-hardened to callousness.

“You’re wasting your pity,” Moody warned. “He’s not worth it. We should charge him and his friends immediately. Clear out that snakes-nest of Slytherin seventh years and stop them recruiting anyone else.”

“No, I refuse to waste him on Azkaban.” The headmaster’s voice took on a note of steely command. “He has brains and ability and he’s already in place. We’ll never have a better chance to plant a sleeper. He can rise up the ranks till he can bring them down from the inside. And in the meantime he may be able to warn us of attacks in time to stop them.”

The younger man snorted.

“Do you really think that little worm is either capable or trustworthy?”

“I’ve no doubt he’s both.”

Moody raised a sceptical eyebrow but he didn’t argue. He might be an Auror, but he was also a member of the Order of the Phoenix, a secret group dedicated to supplementing ministry action and correcting ministry mistakes. Albus was the Head of the Order, Moody’s Commander-in-Chief.

“As you choose. We're not risking much. He knows that if he tries to betray us, they’ll kill him for having wavered. If he dies anyway, we won’t be much worse off and we’ll still have whatever information he’s given us till then,” he reflected. “It’ll have to be unofficial though. Crouch would never approve it, and anyway, the less who know, the better."

Their eyes met. Albus nodded.

"I can cover it up this end," Moody continued. "I haven’t filed an interrogation report yet and I won’t. I’ll see about Dawlish and Foster. Best thing would be to move their memories to a dissolving Pensieve, have them forget they ever saw him.” He’d tell them just enough of the truth to make them agree. Top secret. He was their superior officer; they’d trust his word. “What about your end? Who else knows?”

“No one. I transfigured a replica; it’s lying in an isolation unit in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing, supposedly bitten by a Dormis beetle. I told Poppy that Fawkes had led me to where the boy lay in the Forbidden Forest. No one will expect him to wake or even move for at least another four days.”

Moody scratched his chin with a claw-like hand.

“Won’t she know?”

“Do you doubt my skill?” Blue eyes twinkled under silver brows. “She can’t get near enough to check. Standard treatment for Dormis bites is protective enclosure in a symbio-box till the victim regains consciousness. I’ll smuggle him in when we’re ready.”

“We don’t have much time to train him. He’ll need Occlumency for a start or they’ll kill him next time he’s called – and since it’s only eight days till Yule break, I’d say he’ll be called soon.” That first meeting when they took the Mark had been the only time outside the summer holidays that the seventh years had been called.

“I think it will be enough. I’ll take him back today and train him myself. He can stay hidden in my rooms for a few days. And since he was found in the Forbidden Forest,” a smile curled the headmaster’s lips, “no one will be surprised if he spends most of next term in detention. That will give us an opportunity to organise the other training he’ll need.”

His friend grimaced.

“Don’t turn your back on him and be careful he doesn’t touch anything you eat or drink. And put him in a full body-bind before you go to sleep. Remember, constant vigilance.”

“Have you ever let me forget it?”

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My earlier version mentioned Moody's magical eye, but according to GoF, ch 30, "The Pensieve", he still had two eyes a few years later at the Death Eater trials. He had already lost the chunk from his nose and Harry didn't notice any differences except the eye, so I felt free to assume Moody's other injuries pre-dated this story. I've judged Moody's character from his comments at the trial and from his double's teaching days (since nobody found his behaviour out of character.)