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Gryffindor house is the only house in Hogwarts where the staircase to the girls dorm refuses to allow boys up. The students, and Hogwarts a History are generally now of the opinion that this was the founder's design.
As a point of fact, the fact that the only staircase to have this property is because Moody had been stopped before he could charm the other staircases. And the reason this young miscreant had done that was because everyone was tired of him having to keep asking his head of house if he could be moved to the right dormitory.
Alastor Moody was not one to mess around with.
He was sorted into Gryffindor when he came out to the entire school in the welcoming feast by correcting Dippet on his name.
Alastor. Alastor Moody. That was his name. Not that other one. He was a boy, after all.
He was scared of course—for what kind of eleven year old wouldn't be scared to correct a headmaster?—but he did it. When the sorting hat was placed on his head, it briefly congratulated him on knowing his own mind before yelling out his house. There wasn't much question to what it would be.
The staff is supportive, but centuries of tradition are hard to avoid. On his first night at Hogwarts, Moody is sent to the girls dormitories with the promise that "it would all be fixed soon." Most of the girls in the dormitory are sympathetic, though generally annoyed that a boy is in their rooms. But he's friends with all, or at least most of them, as is only to be expected.
It takes a long time for "soon" to come. The traditionalist factions of the Board are less than accepting and very good at stalling any discussion no matter how many times the teachers bring it up. And so, fatefully, Alastor is pushed, almost inevitably, into the hands of the reformists, what will become the light.
He gets to be good at dodging jinxes and hexes in the hallways, better at returning them. His teachers are saddened but ruefully realize that Moody's situation has made him aware of bullying even they weren't. All of the muggleborns and half-bloods know that if anyone is bullying them over their parentage, they can come to Moody.
This makes the jinxes and hexes come all the more.
Constant Vigilance. It's his motto now.
And soon the bullies start to run when they hear the words.
When, halfway through second year, Moody finally finishes his work on staircase, the entire Gryffindor house cheers, and almost the entire school attends the party they throw.
Moody is moved into the boys dorm "temporarily" as the teachers "try" to break the spell. For a "punishment," Moody is made the assistant to the DA teacher, which means practically teaching the class at this point.
The smile as his head of house gives him the punishment and the five biscuits he gets handed during the conversation make the situation clear enough. Besides, he'd been asking for the assistant position practically since he started school, and he'd already matched the handwriting in the books he'd been finding under his pillow, pointing out useful charms he might want to look at for the staircase project to the handwriting on his graded essays.
Besides, he's fairly certain that any teacher could have broken the spell, and later, when he looks carefully at it, he's pretty sure that most of the spells aren't even his anymore. But everyone still says it's his, to him and in passing that it's his, and so he never stop smiling about it.
He'll smile even years later when Dumbledore tells him that it's still in effect.
He loves this school.
Dumbledore finds him binding with a compression charm second year and sighs, taking him aside and showing him instead the undetectable expanding charm on a strip of transfigured cloth.
"You are a wizard, Mr. Moody. But please don't forget to use logic. Or come to one of us for help."
It could have been any teacher to help, Alastor knows, but from that time on, he's always had a soft spot for Dumbledore.
Alastor will later realize that Dumbledore must have used Legilimency on him, but he doesn't mind. Especially once he uses that fact to get Dumbledore to give him Occlumency lessons. Life is sweet.
It's his seventh year. The present is bright pink with frilly ribbons. The Slytherins smile as they held it out, but they aren't being friendly.
The words "for your birthday, princess" may have been uttered.
Moody's expression is entirely blank as he takes the present.
Slowly, without breaking eye contact, he places it on the ground in front of him and takes a step backwards.
He slowly and deliberately waves his wand over the present. It splits open with a scream of creaking wood as it slowly, painfully twists itself into ash, the ash crushing itself into white crystal grains of sand that catch a nonexistent breeze and scatter across the floor.
Moody's mouth never moves from a dangerous smile and he doesn't blink.
"I thought it was a basilisk egg." he says calmly, evenly, as the Slytherins gape in horror at the destruction. "You can never be too careful with these things. And it's all too easy to make a mistake, isn't it?"
No one follows him as he turns and walks away.
Moody graduates and joins the Aurors.
He's good.
That's all that needs to be said, and that's often all that is said when his superiors talk about him. He's proud of that. Of both of the words in that sentence.
The first time he meets a dementor, he gets a panicked feeling in his chest and he thinks he's wearing a girl's Hogwarts uniform and his hair is way too long. He can hear his parents calling him by his deadname.
But then someone casts a patronus and the creature glides away almost apologetically and he can breathe again and he's determined to beat it. After all, it's not true. He proves this by walking up to one and punching it in the face. Or what would be its face. His supervisor is horrified. It's just the beginning of his reputation.
Once the war starts, many of the Death Eaters are Moody's former bullies. And now, out of school, they aren't hesitant about using the name that Dippet yelled out to the whole school all those years ago at the welcoming feast.
Moody smiles grimly and submerges himself in the Auror's library for two weeks.
He finds what he's looking for. An odd, out-of-the-way piece of magic. Called the "Taboo Curse." He improves it slightly. Adds in a clause to get rid of wards. He is grinning as he casts it on his deadname and on the act of misgendering him.
No need to tell anyone. He catches twelve Death Eaters in the first three days alone.
And keeps three other jerks in the holding cells for a few hours "on suspicion of Death Eater activities." He probably enjoys that more than he should.
He has to get sloppy sometimes. Two weeks in he's tired because of the three Death Eater hideouts that he's been summoned to that day alone and he doesn't catch everyone. Slowly the secret gets out.
He's both grimly satisfied and oddly frustrated when six months after he cast the curse, no one in Wizarding Britain dares to use his deadname. He jokes to his supervisor that calling it his "deadname" is oddly appropriate, given the state of so many people who use it end up.
His supervisor's rapidly paling face puts him off making jokes for a while.
Eventually, Alastor seems to come to some kind of truce with the dementors. Giving them so many Death Eaters to torture seems to be a way of getting on their good sides. If they have one.
Besides, getting angry seems to work surprisingly well as a shield.
Moody doesn't ever quite like Healers. He knows that there are potions he could be using, but he prefers his charms. And if tending to his own wounds is probably why his leg and eye . . . well, he likes his eye and his leg as they are. They're useful. They're not perfect, but his body is his and he's going to keep it that way.
Even after the war ends, Moody doesn't drop the Taboo Curse. After all, no one actually can prove it exists. It's just an odd coincidence at that point that he always apparates whenever anyone misgenders him and starts cursing things. Just coincidence and no one is foolish enough to try to argue otherwise.
But even so, the war is over, so he retires. And takes up basket weaving. And experimental charm making.
And slowly he drops his Constant Vigilance. His appearance is frightening at first, but the muggles he meets are friendly. And they greet him as "sir" and respect him when he says he's fought in a war he can't talk about.
And he half believes that he's done his work, that he won't be needed and so he restricts his activism to writing angry letters to the editor of the Prophet about Lucious Malfoy.
He says yes when Dumbledore asks him to teach DA. He always liked assisting with the class in school, and Dumbledore was always his favorite teacher.
And then Barty Crouch Jr. comes.
When Karkaroff references the "basilisk egg," he'll be testing Moody. He was told the truth away from England, in a hushed tone.
"Moody"'s response is what tips him off to the fact that something is wrong. He doesn't know quite what it is, but it's what will send him running later. But he can't tell Dumbledore the truth. And he doesn't know it. Snape's too young to know the significance. After a while, almost no one knew that Moody was trans. With the Taboo Curse still in effect, it wasn't something you wanted to tell the new recruits just as they walked in the door.
And almost no one on the light side knows either. It's a secret, of sorts, now. There just wasn't a pressing reason to tell anyone. Moody will later kick himself for not talking to Tonks, but Tonks never comes out to anyone but Remus and he didn't want to push into something it wasn't his place to know.
In some ways, even trapped at the bottom of his own trunk, it's viciously amusing. Barty Crouch Jr, transphobe supreme, is forced to live in Moody's body for an entire year, that he can't out Moody, or say anything insulting about gender presentation when Dumbledore is there.
It doesn't do anything to hide the pain of Crouch taking knowledge of the improved form of the Taboo Curse from his head.
Moody will be forever grateful to Madame Pomphery for not moving him from his trunk until the room is clear. She didn't know before, but he knows she does now. He didn't quite pass then, after a year.
He wouldn't have liked Fudge of all people to know. The man was an idiot and far to obsessed with that odd sort of propriety. And it would have been bad form for his Taboo curse to destroy the wards on the Minister's house let alone for him to then apparate in to curse the Minister senseless.
He was glad he didn't have to do that.
And while he knows it's bad for everything in the long run, he can't help feel like he likes the dementor, like it has its priorities in the right place. It, after all, had to have known what Barty Crouch Jr. was thinking.
When Mundungus aparates away, he knows he's done for and he's just glad that no one else gets killed.
The Taboo curse doesn't last long after his death, and Dumbledore isn't there to renew it. But it's not worth it anymore. The Death Eaters take his eye, but that's all.
He's tired, but he's done.
And anyway, he appreciates the memorial service the kids have for his eye. It's nice to know that they think of him almost entirely in terms of one of the few body parts he controlled entirely, nice that he will be remembered as he wanted to be.
As he steps out at the train station, he looks briefly down at his body and frowns. It is just as it did when he was born. But just as soon as he thinks that, he sees his scars begin to appear, his eye pops back into place and his leg is replaced by his peg. His Auror battle robes appear with a flourish. It takes only a thought. It's nice to be in control here.
And he stomps off towards the train, excited to explore this new world and wondering idly if it is possible to win a duel with death and when exactly he will have the chance to find out.
Life—and well, not life too—is good.