Sometimes people called Moody 'paranoid'.
Moody always told them to survive a hundred years of hunting Dark Wizards and then get back to him about that.
Mad-Eye Moody had once worked out how long it had taken him, in retrospect, to achieve what he now considered a decent level of caution - weighed up how much experience it had taken him to get
Yesterday, Albus Dumbledore had told Mad-Eye Moody that the Dark Lord had used unspeakable dark arts to survive the death of his body, and was now awake and abroad, seeking to regain his power and begin the Wizarding War anew.
Someone else might have reacted with incredulity.
"I can't believe you lot never told me about this resurrection thing," Mad-Eye Moody said with considerable acerbity. "D'you realize how long it'll take me to do the grave of every ancestor of every Dark Wizard I've ever killed who could've been smart enough to make a horcrux? You're not just
"I redose this one every year," Severus Snape said calmly, uncapping the third flask of what the man had
Moody watched the fluid spiraling out of the vial and vanishing, to appear within the bones where marrow had once been. "But you think it's worth the effort of the trap, instead of just Vanishing the bones."
"He
"Who else knows about this trap?" Moody demanded.
"You. Me. The Headmaster. No one else."
Moody snorted. "Pfah. Did Albus tell Amelia, Bartemius, and that McGonagall woman about the resurrection ritual?"
"Yes -"
"If Voldie finds out that Albus knows about the resurrection ritual and that Albus told
Snape's hand paused on the fifth bottle (it was all Disillusioned, of course, the whole operation was Disillusioned, but that meant less than nothing to Moody, it just marked you in his Eye's sight as trying-to-hide), and the former Death Eater said, "You don't need to know."
"You're learning, son," said Moody with mild approval. "What's in the bottles?"
Snape opened the fifth bottle, gestured with his wand to begin the substance flowing toward the grave, and said, "This one? A Muggle narcotic called LSD. A conversation yesterday put me in mind of Muggle things, and LSD seemed the most interesting option, so I hurried to obtain some. If it is incorporated into the resurrection potion, I suspect its effects will be permanent."
"What does it do?" said Moody.
"It is said that the effects are impossible to describe to anyone who has not used it," drawled Snape, "and I have not used it."
Moody nodded approval as Snape opened the sixth flask. "What about that one?"
"Love potion."
"Not of the standard sort. It is meant to trigger a two-way bond with an unbearably sweet Veela woman named Verdandi who the Headmaster hopes might be able to redeem even him, if they truly loved each other."
"
"Agreed," Severus Snape said calmly, his attention focused on his work.
"Tell me you've at least got some Malaclaw venom in there."
"Second flask."
"Iocane powder."
"Either the fourteenth or fifteenth bottle."
"Bahl's Stupefaction," Moody said, naming an extremely addictive narcotic with interesting side effects on people with Slytherin tendencies; Moody had once seen an addicted Dark Wizard go to ridiculous lengths to get a victim to lay hands on a certain exact portkey, instead of just having someone toss the target a trapped Knut on their next visit to town; and after going to all that work, the addict had gone to the
"Tenth vial," said Snape.