Wow, this was updated sooner that I expected it to be! I'm not sure when I'll be able to get the next chapter out because my laptop, which has the main version of this story on it, is having some bad problems right now and I'm not sure when it will be fixed.

Ron titled his head at Meg in confusion. "I know a little about her," He said. "She was linked to some disaster here, wasn't she? I was pretty young when it happened so I don't remember it very much."

"So, you don't know what lead to the disaster?" Meg asked.

"No," Ron said.

"Then I will tell you," Meg said. She lowered herself down onto the seat before the vanity. "I knew Christine since she was little more than seven years old. My mother brought her here to stay in the ballet dormitories after her father died. He wanted her to become a brilliant singer, one that could bring Paris to its feet. And his dreams were hardly unfounded, for Christine did have an exquisite voice. But for quite sometime after his death, her voice remained utterly empty of inspiration, even though it was absolutely perfect in every other way.

"Then one night, she went down to the Chapel to light a candle for her father, and returned completely enraptured. She claimed to have heard a voice speak to her from above; voice with a beauty like no other. She said that it belonged to an angel."

"An angel?" Ron echoed.

"Yes," Meg said. "You see, before her father died, he promised that once he was in heaven he would send her the Angel of Music to guide her. And she was convinced that the voice she heard had to be the angel that her father had promised her. I had my doubts, of course, but after that night her voice regained the motivation it had once had and grew steadily in power until by the age of seventeen she had the voice of an angel."

"But was it really the work of an angel?" Ron asked.

"No, of course it wasn't," Meg said. "It was nothing more than a man masquerading as one. A man known as the Phantom of the Opera."

Ron stiffened at the sound of that title, remembering the note that had been delivered to him the night before and the solemn expression on Madame Giry's face when she had given it to him. "Who is the Phantom of the Opera?" He asked. "I've heard about before from the mangers and the ballet girls… Why is it that everyone seems to be so afraid of him?"

"The Phantom is the one that really runs this opera house," Meg said. "The mangers use to try to defy him, but ever since the incident with Christine…" She trailed off with a shake of her head. "They cave to nearly every one of his demands. Even the request of a salary of two thousand francs!"

"Two thousand francs?" Ron said. "What does a ghost need with that much money?"

"Oh, but he's not really a ghost at all!" Meg said. "He is nothing more than a man, but he lives down bellow the opera, in a home that he built for himself around the underground lake."

"Down bellow?" Ron frowned. "Why does he live there? Couldn't he have built his home above ground?"

"No, he couldn't have done that," Meg said. "He wears a mask at all times so that no one can see his face."

"A mask?" Ron said. "Why does he wear that?"

The words had hardly left his mouth, however, before all the color drained from Meg's face. "That's not important!" She said hurriedly. "It's his relationship with Christine that is!"
"What relationship did they have?" Ron asked. "I thought he was just her teacher."

"Oh, that's what he was to her," Meg said, "but it wasn't the same for him. He had come to love her to the point of near obsession and he believed that she could come to feel the same for him. And perhaps she could have if not for the return of her childhood sweetheart, Raoul de Chagny."

"The Vicomte," Ron said.

Meg nodded. "He recognized Christine at her debut in the performance of Hannibal. The Phantom had arranged for her to take the role from Carlotta, who had stormed off in one of her usual rages, and she excelled beyond what anyone could have imagined. She became what her father had dreamed for her to be. But her success was to be short lived." She closed her eyes with a sigh. "Raoul began to pursue Christine for her affections and though she denied him at first, she eventually gave in."

"I suppose the Phantom didn't take too kindly to that," Ron murmured.

Meg opened her eyes and shook her head. "Raoul wanted to elope with Christine right away and flee from Paris with her, but she refused. She wanted to perform one last time for her teacher. I believe that she did love him in her own way, it just wasn't in the way that he wanted her to." She gave an almost thoughtful pause before she continued. "But just when she made her entrance, the Phantom arrived on the stage to sing the duet with her!"

"What did she do?" Ron asked.

"She sang with him as if in a trance," Meg said, "until it came to the final part of the song. The she snatched the mask from his face without any warning at all." She gave a slight shudder. "That face…I have never seen anything like it. It gives me chills just to think about it even after all these years."

"What was his face like?" Ron asked.

Meg waved his question away. "It is not my place to say," She said. "The Phantom became furious once he had been unmasked. He grabbed hold of Christine before she could flee from him and disappeared with her through a trapdoor in the stage. My own mother lead Raoul down bellow to rescue her. No one knows quite what happened down there, but Raoul did return with Christine quite some time later. They looked as though they had been through hell and refused to speak of what happened down bellow. All they would say was that there was no need for anyone to go after the Phantom. They claimed that he would no longer bother anyone ever again."

A silence descended upon the room after she spoke as Ron took in all the information that she had given him. However, once he understood all of it, a question rose in his mind.

"Meg…why did you tell me about this?" He asked.

Meg did not answer him right away. She rose from the vanity seat and wandered over to him. She reached out to take his hands in hers and he was surprised by how cold her hands were. "I told you became I am suspicious of this admirer of yours," She said. "His actions seem far too familiar for my liking."

"What do you…" Ron trailed off, his eyes widening. "Oh, no! Its not like that!" He assured her. "It was just a gift from a friend that I made when I first came to Paris as a child."

Meg tightened her grip on his hands. "What kind of friend?" She demanded. "What guise has he appeared to you under? Is he your angel now?"

"No!" Ron snapped. He pulled his hands away from Meg. "He is nothing more than a friend! One that promised to become my teacher."

"Your teacher?" Meg stumbled back from him with her wide eyes full of horror. "That is what he appeared to Christine as! Ron, you cannot trust him!"

Ron opened his mouth to answer him but was interrupted by a knock on the door.

"Ron!" called Hermione from the other side. "Why aren't you backstage yet? The curtain will be going up in a few minutes! Are you alright?"

Ron gave Meg one last glance before drawing himself up straight and turning to face the door. "I'm fine, Hermione," He said.

"Ron, please, think about what I told you," Meg said. "I don't want you to have to go through what Christine did."

"Its not the same, Meg," Ron murmured. But on the inside, there was a small part of him that wondered if what she said was true.

I'm sorry if this chapter had less action than people were hoping for but it seemed to make sense to end it there. The next chapter should have some more action in it.

And the reason why Meg didn't tell Ron about Erik's face is because I thought it would make more sense for him to discover it on his own.