Chapter 13: Sub Rosa
After completing her own errands and Snape's, Meli returned to Hogwarts and didn't leave again for the better part of a week. As promised, Snape kept her plenty busy with cleaning up after his students, and she kept herself occupied the rest of the time by visiting Poppy or reading. Her clandestine brewing was finished for the time being, and all of her medicines were carefully hidden where she could get to them easily in case of an "episode". Kwippy had been pleasantly surprised to find the wardrobe dust- and cobweb-free when she had been allowed to clean it again, but she had still scoured it from top to bottom, just to make sure.

Snape mentioned once that Moody appeared entirely ignorant that anyone had found him out, but beyond that he said nothing to Meli that wasn't for Dumbledore's ears, as well.

She had parted company with Crimson Fell having made an appointment to meet again in a week, and Crim had said that she would speak with Collum in the intervening time. Meli's only task, since she had mentioned that her freedom of movement was somewhat limited, was to arrange for Andrea and Kalimac to be at the meeting, as well.

Since she had no guarantee that a message sent by owl would be truly secure, she Apparated to Ariel again on Friday, arriving just after classes ended for the day. Andrea was nowhere around, but David Kalimac was easy to find—all the more so since he found her first.

"So your hair really is black," he commented, crossing a pathway to stand beside her. As promised, Meli had altered her glamourie just enough to change her hair color.

She sighed. "Good afternoon to you, too."

He shrugged. "Sorry. I didn't expect you to say hi—that's something friends do—so I figured I'd save you the trouble of skipping to the next part of the conversation."

She rolled her eyes. "How efficient of you. Is Andrea about?"

"She went back to D.C. on Wednesday."

"I see." Meli gritted her teeth. "I was hoping to talk with both of you, but my time is rather limited."

Kalimac sobered abruptly. "Did something happen?"

"No—not in terms of major events, but there is a meeting I was hoping you and she could come to." She cleared her throat. "Andrea explained what's going on?"

"As much as you told her," he said. "You were able to contact the others, then?"

She nodded. "One of them, but I expect the other to follow."

"Where and when do you need us to be?"

Meli only somewhat hid her surprise. Kalimac could actually be a decent conversationalist when he wasn't trying to irritate. "The equivalent of six tomorrow morning here," she replied. "Do you know of Oxford?"

He gave her an amused look. "We're not that backward over here."

She ignored him. "In the town nearby, there's a Muggle pub called The Eagle and Child. Stand in front of it, looking across the street, and you'll see a sign for The Rose and Thistle. There's a corner room inside called The Cosy. We'll gather there."

He nodded, and she turned to leave, but he neatly sidestepped and came around to face her again, his expression intent. "Do you mind if I ask you just one more thing, Miss Sable?"

She stopped and raised her eyebrows expectantly.

"Did my—equivalent, I guess you'd call him—do something to piss you off in some way?"

Meli sighed. "Mr. Kalimac, I never knew your counterpart; I don't even know if you had one. Any irritation or annoyance your presence evokes is your own accomplishment to claim." She looked at her watch. "I have to go."

He nodded again and watched her leave, and only after she was well out of sight did he say out loud the first word that came to mind.

"Ouch."

ooo

Meli arrived at The Rose and Thistle exactly on time and found everyone else already waiting for her. Collum, who was meeting her for the first time, stared openly at her, as if he half-expected her to disappear in a puff of smoke; Meli was tempted to do the same, though for more substantial reasons. He, like Crim, had gray eyes and wavy brown hair, and the last time Meli had seen him, he was bleeding to death from a horrific curse cast by someone he had once called a friend. Seeing him alive and with all of his blood in his veins where it belonged was a bit of a shock, though less of one than it had been with Crim.

I must be getting used to this, Meli thought darkly. How comforting.

Kalimac sat quietly across the table from the Fells, staring at what looked like a cup of unrefined petroleum but what must be some toxic form of coffee. Meli felt a brief stab of sympathy for getting the two Americans out of bed so early on a Saturday, but Andrea looked chipper enough. She and both Fells had pints of stout in front of them, so when the attendant dropped by a moment later, Meli requested a lager. No one had ordered food yet, but everyone had a menu.

"I do apologize for the inconvenient time," she told Andrea and Kalimac. "Thank you for coming in spite of it."

Andrea shrugged. Kalimac didn't move a muscle and didn't look up, which drew a keen glance from the Auror, and Meli wondered if his behavior was out of the ordinary.

Of course it is, she thought. Even when tired to death, a proper smart-aleck can always find something to say. Maybe he's hung-over.

She cleared her throat. "I suppose it's best for everyone to know from the outset who we all are. You all know, to varying degrees, my history—at least the pertinent part of it. The name I've chosen to use at this time is Neshdiana Ailsa Sable, or just Ailsa." She indicated each of the others in turn. "Crimson Fell works for the British Ministry." Crim had made it clear that she had no wish to be known as an Unspeakable just yet. "Collum Fell is a mediwizard at the main Wizarding hospital in Britain. Andrea Underhill is an American Auror. David Kalimac teaches Potions at Ariel Academy in America and holds a Mastery in that field."

Even at the sound of his name and credentials, Kalimac didn't react, and the look Andrea gave him this time was longer and sharper than before. Meli furrowed her brow and glanced at Crim. "Security?"

"We swept and warded before you got here," the Unspeakable replied. "No bugs, no beetles, and no eavesdroppers allowed."

The attendant, ironically, came back then to drop off Meli's pint and to ask about food orders. Kalimac spoke for the first time—just enough to order a bowl of lamb stew—and promptly lapsed into silence again.

Andrea glanced at him after the attendant left and then looked back to Meli.

"You've said, I think, that you know what's going to go wrong and how it's supposed to go right?" When Meli nodded, she asked, "So how much, exactly, do you know?"

Meli took a deep breath. These were the only people to whom she'd admitted any specific knowledge, and she had spent the past few days wrestling with just how much she should tell them. In the end, however, she had to trust them; she needed their help too much to do otherwise.

"I know all of the details of the chain of events, from his return to his destruction three years after." She flicked her eyes from one to another of them, gauging reactions, but even Collum, the only Gryffindor among them, betrayed no surprise. "I also came by detailed information on the counterparts of several people I knew, though not all of them. That's how I was able to find you and to know that you're trustworthy."

"Are there any others we could look up?" Andrea asked.

Meli shook her head. "Not to my knowledge at this time," she replied. "Raven Vlad, for instance, will probably not be able to help here as she did in my timeline."

Kalimac dragged his eyes away from his coffee to stare at her. "Raven Vlad?"

"In my native timeline, You-Know-Who forged an alliance with Raven's uncle, Morden Vlad, who was head of the clan; she acted as a liaison of sorts, all the while reporting on both the vampires and the Death Eaters to Dumbledore." Meli shrugged. "As nearly as I can tell, however, no such alliance is being considered."

"For good reason," Andrea said, with a satisfied smirk. "Morden Vlad's been staked and gone for a good twenty years; his brother Turin's calling the shots now, and he won't make alliances with other vampires, much less mere humans."

"In that case, there's really no point, as you see," Meli said. "I can't pretend to be sorry; Raven had the worst time of all of us, and I would be glad to spare her this time around." Severus and Zarekael had done their best to shelter Raven, but she had had two vicious masters to please and so had taken twice the punishment when things had gone wrong. One failure had apparently warranted being drizzled from neck to ankle, shoulder to wrist, with holy water, branding her at the age of seventeen with scars she would bear for the rest of her life.

No, Meli had no regrets about leaving Raven out of this war, and she would mourn Morden Vlad's death about as much as she was ever likely to mourn Voldemort's.

"So what is going to happen?" Collum asked, but he had to wait for the answer; the attendant was back with everyone's food.

When they were alone again, Meli sighed. "In eleven days, You-Know-Who is going to return, but he's going to keep things quiet for awhile. Dumbledore will warn Fudge, whose idiotic tendencies will lead him to think that Dumbledore is trying to undermine him and take over the Ministry. As a preemptive strike, he'll place one of his toadies in the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, eventually naming her Grand Inquisitor and then headmistress when Dumbledore is removed. Several of the students, led by Harry Potter, will form a sort of auxiliary Defense class, which will eventually be condemned as a more or less criminal enterprise. As a redeeming quality, though, they'll manage to flummox her a bit.

"You-Know-Who, meanwhile, will engineer an escape for his faithful followers from Azkaban and will then manipulate Potter into breaking into the Department of Mysteries to retrieve the record of a prophecy regarding You-Know-Who's downfall. The prophecy will be destroyed, some of the Death Eaters will be arrested, and one or two key people from the Order of the Phoenix killed at the end of it." She sighed. "And Potter, thank God, escapes unscathed, in spite of richly deserving otherwise.

"You-Know-Who's return now being obvious, Fudge and his Grand Inquisitor will be removed. The Dementors will choose the obvious side, and a long, dark summer will ensue. You-Know-Who will assign the task of assassinating Dumbledore to a Hogwarts student whose father failed him. Dumbledore, meanwhile, will do his best to teach Potter everything necessary for defeating You-Know-Who." She managed somehow to keep any hint of sarcasm out of her voice, but it was a near miss. "Professor Snape will move over to teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Horace Slughorn will emerge from retirement—"

"Oh, God," Crim groaned. "Teaching Potions again?"

Meli nodded. She had never met Slughorn—Snape's predecessor in her world had been an obsequious twit named Brewer—but from the information Avallach had given her, she gathered that Slughorn was more liability than asset to his students. "I'm afraid so."

"Surely that's one of the problems we're meant to fix?" Collum's tone was pleading. "The man's a bloody coward menace!"

"I think I might be able to help with that." Kalimac's voice was low and dull, but he drew all eyes to him. "If you want me to."

Something in his tone cut through Meli, and she had the sudden inexplicable impression that she was somehow responsible for his present mood. "Anything you can do, and are willing to do, is welcome," she said.

One eyebrow quirked briefly, but otherwise he didn't react. "I'm a potions master," he reminded them, "but I also trained at Blackwing. If I apply this year to teach Defense at Hogwarts, they won't hire me, because the fix is in for this toady chick, but my name'll still be in the system. Then I reapply next year, and no matter which position I teach, they won't need this guy Slughorn."

"It'll almost certainly be Potions," Crim said. "Snape's been applying for a position transfer to Defense every year since we were students. If he finally gets it, it's because Dumbledore says it's time, which means it'll be part of some plan."

"Even if it doesn't work in the end—and I don't know why it wouldn't, unless the fix is in for Slughorn—it's still a brilliant plan," Meli said.

The eyebrow quirked again. "I'll get started on my application today, then."

"Thank you." She shifted uncomfortably. "I honestly don't know how much of a wartime liability Slughorn would be, but I do know that he's no good at all for Slytherin House's reputation—or students."

Crim narrowed her eyes. "Which makes it sound suddenly as if he, not Professor Snape, is the Head of House."

Meli cleared her throat. "Yes." Now came the part she really didn't want to tell. "At the end of the school term, a group of Death Eaters will invade the school, assisted by the student previously mentioned. They'll be defeated… but not before Dumbledore is killed." She bit her lip and fell silent.

Andrea eyed her sharply. "By Professor Snape?"

"At Dumbledore's order ahead of time!" Meli snapped, seeing Crim and Collum's stricken expressions. "It's all part of some brilliant, all-encompassing plan for the greater bloody good, as he thinks of it! Left to his own devices and apart from what amounts to emotional blackmail, Severus Snape would never even have considered, much less done, it!"

Her words came out much more heatedly than she'd intended, and she saw all four of them reevaluating her in light of them. Well, let them; Snape was more than a friend to her, he was a mentor and the closest thing she had to a father. The fact that his counterpart here had no such history with her didn't prevent her being defensive in his behalf.

"That… explains why he would no longer be Head of House," Crim said after a moment, and the evenness in her voice sounded forced. "Go on, Ailsa."

Meli closed her eyes briefly and sighed. "That summer," she continued, looking up again, "with so little warning as to be almost improbable, You-Know-Who will assume silent control of the Ministry and launch a campaign against Muggle-borns and half-bloods. Potter and everyone associated with him will be branded as wanted criminals, so he and two of his friends will go into hiding and attempt, using the information given him by Dumbledore, to destroy You-Know-Who."

She took a deep breath. "The key to his immortality is in the existence of seven horcruxes—"

She was cut off by several gasps from the group and a colorful bit of profanity from Collum.

"Seven?!" Crim breathed, horrified. "You cannot be serious!"

"Even one is insane," Andrea said numbly. "What goes into making them—"

"It gives a whole new meaning to calling him practically soulless," Kalimac murmured, but the look on his face made it clear that he wasn't joking. "Why in God's Name—?"

"He thinks he is a god," Meli replied quietly. "That's the whole point. There is no higher purpose than himself, no greater pursuit than his ambition, and no one above or beyond him to tell him he is wrong."

Kalimac took a deep, ragged breath. "You seem to know a bit about the workings of his mind."

"I went to Muggle university," she said without batting an eye. "My best marks were in Logic and Psychology; the two disciplines combine nicely when it comes to analyzing the thoughts and activities of an enemy."

Collum shook his head. "With seven horcruxes in addition to himself, he practically is immortal."

"Only if they remain hidden and intact," Meli countered. "One has been destroyed already, though, and Dumbledore will destroy another before his death. The other five will be left for Potter to discover and destroy, and in theory, Dumbledore will leave him enough clues to follow toward that end." She buried a quick flash of resentment at the memory of Bane's stern demand.

"Will he succeed?" Collum asked.

Meli nodded. "Yes. But not before the meaningless deaths of far too many good people." She glanced at Crim. "Including Professor Snape."

"Is that something we're meant to fix?"

"No," Meli replied, "but I intend to fix it anyway."

Collum grinned. "You can count the Fells in on that quest, I'm sure."

"It's two or three years away yet," Crim reminded him coolly. "There's no way to move up Potter's timetable?"

Meli shook her head. "Not without Dumbledore knowing about it and probably becoming rather unpleasant. With him I have been… shall we say, less readily forthcoming with regard to what and how much I know. He's under the impression that my knowledge of people and events is limited to what I experienced in my own timeline, and even that has caused him extreme alarm. Why he chooses not to tell Potter about the horcruxes until well into the war is a question I can't answer, but he does choose it."

"I have to say," Andrea remarked darkly, "I'm liking Dumbledore less and less, the more I hear about him."

"But the unsettled question of the moment," Crim said, "is what to do now. Professor Kalimac can apply for a position at Hogwarts, but the earliest he'll take it is a year from now. Potter won't start looking for the horcruxes until after that, and it'll be some time yet before Professor Snape's life-and-death situation occurs. Meanwhile, You-Know-Who's about to come back, and The Fudge is about to take over Hogwarts. What do we mean to do about that?"

"We could get a head start on the horcruxes," Collum suggested. "Dumbledore may sit on his hands, but why should we?"

Meli's throat tightened, and she inwardly muttered viciousness in Bane's general direction. "We can seek them out and perhaps make them easier for Potter to find," she said aloud, "but one thing that's been made quite clear to me is that Potter must destroy them, or order them destroyed, himself." She paused as a new thought struck her. Surely Bane couldn't object to that… "I do know how they can be destroyed, though, and I don't see that we would be forbidden to help Potter by delivering to him the means for completing his quest."

"That'll make a fun little summer hobby," Crim said sardonically.

"What about Fudge's toady?" Andrea asked. "It'd be a crying shame to let her wreak unanswered havoc."

Meli nodded. "True enough. As a former problem student, I must admit that the only thing coming to mind is some sort of harassment inflicted from the safety of the shadows."

Kalimac raised his eyebrows. "You were a problem student?"

She glanced at the Fell twins then back to him. "Well, I had help."

He seemed skeptical but nodded. "If this chick's anything like others who've held the title of Grand Inquisitor, she'll freak out over anything she can't either control or crush. Rear-guard harassment might just be the way to unravel her."

"If it doesn't get the antagonist killed first," Andrea muttered.

"Fortunately," Meli said, "we wouldn't be the only ones pushing her buttons. Several students are going to make it their lives' mission to make her life as difficult as possible, and most of the faculty will at least be sympathetic to the cause."

"And there's Peeves, too," Crim said. "Never underestimate how helpful a poltergeist can be in such a situation." She raised her eyebrows. "Do you know the most effective buttons to push? After all, if you want to make someone's wig flip, you have to know what puts their natural hair on-end."

Meli smiled. "Mr. Kalimac has hit upon it already. Dolores Umbridge's downfall is loss of control."

Crim's eyebrows shot up, and Collum let out a snort of laughter. "Dolores Umbridge," the latter snickered. "This is going to be fun."

Andrea looked from one twin to the other. "I take it you know her."

"She was in our parish briefly before Mam and Da ran her out," Collum replied.

"I think Father Cute-Little-Old-Guy had a bit to do with it, too," Crim added reflectively. "Although I'm sure what happened to her cat didn't hurt, either."

Three pairs of horrified eyes immediately glued themselves to the twins.

"You hurt her cat?" Kalimac demanded.

Crim sighed. "We damaged its psyche, that's all. I don't believe in physically harming animals."

"It was a Persian named Fru-Fru," Collum said, his tone unrepentant. "We dyed it electric blue and gave it cornrows."

Crim grinned slowly. "I think old Toad Woman's wails of outrage could be heard in Australia. Gave the wombats a nasty shock, I'm sure."

"Never saw her at Mass again after that." Collum shook his head. "But… if it's Umbridge you're talking about, Ailsa, we've an idea how to make her crack."

"Oh, do we," Crim murmured, a plotting sheen in her eye.

Meli rolled her eyes. "What is it with you two and giving animals extreme hairstyles?"

Collum sighed feelingly. "If you're referring to the incident with the poodle, I was barely involved. All I did was—"

"Spray-paint it pink and give it a Mohawk," Crim finished for him. "I see her point, anyway."

Andrea looked from one Fell to the other with a sardonic smirk. "I s'pose it's too much to hope You-Know-Who has a pet?"

"A snake," Meli replied. "There's nothing to dye, braid, or shave, and in any case, I wouldn't recommend trying it. Petty harassment will work for Umbridge, but a strike against Himself had better be decisive and devastating if made at all." She raised her eyebrows. "And since that snake happens to be one of the horcruxes, I don't think we're likely to have a crack at harming either its person or its psyche." Although, given some of her childhood run-ins with that damned snake, she wouldn't have minded getting a crack at it; she and Nagini had never been on friendly terms.

"You know what all of the horcruxes are, then?" Crim said.

Meli nodded. "And I've a good idea of their locations. Unfortunately, several are in places none of us can get to."

Kalimach arched an eyebrow. "For example?"

"Well, there's the snake, of course, which is with You-Know-Who. There's also a locket, which ironically enough, is presently hidden in the house that's soon to become the Order of the Phoenix's headquarters. And then a cup, which is being kept in the Lestrange vault at Gringotts." She cleared her throat. "The seventh horcrux is more easily accessible, but destroying it is a matter of timing."

Andrea's eyebrows were at her hairline. "A time-sensitive horcrux?"

Meli smiled tightly. "Harry Potter himself."

Silence fell over the table while they processed that. Collum broke it first with a single word.

"Damn."

Crim looked narrowly at Meli. "And Dumbledore's not going to tell him. Is he."

Meli shook her head. "No."

"God." Kalimac closed his eyes and pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. "Tell me again how he's on our side?"

"I'm beginning to doubt he is," Crim said grimly. "We're fighting a common enemy, sure, but otherwise we seem to be entirely at odds."

"I have no intention of either fighting or undermining Dumbledore," Meli told them. "Where necessary, I don't mind acting behind his back or under his nose, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, whether I like it or not."

Kalimac cleared his throat. "Maybe a good question at the moment, then, is what Dumbledore does think you're doing. Reading between the lines, he's keeping a close eye on you, but what's he seeing?"

"So far, I'm running errands and doing grunt work for Professor Snape, socializing with the school's mediwitch, and nicking Muggle literature from the library to read in my spare time." She shrugged. "He's convinced that Snape doesn't like or trust me, but beyond that, I'm making myself useful until I've proven myself trustworthy enough for less routine tasks. He has asked if I'd be willing to infiltrate the Death Eaters, but I turned down the opportunity—I've seen to clearly what happened to my friends who took the Mark."

"Do you think he'll press the issue?"

Meli shook her head. "Only if he's stupider than he appears. It would alienate me further, possibly even push me off his side altogether, and it might even earn me sympathy with Snape. I think he'd prefer to keep minimal any chances of my cooperating with the potions master outside of his direct control and supervision."

"Probably just as well," Andrea murmured. "So he makes an errand girl out of you, and as long as you bring him his Starbucks on time and don't paint your nails on the clock, you have some free rein to do your real job."

Collum looked amused at Andrea's assessment of things, but Crim's intent expression showed that her thoughts had taken a completely different turn.

"I don't care if Potter's the reincarnation of Merlin himself," she said suddenly. "Only a deal with the devil will get him into a Gringotts vault.

Meli considered that Griphook wasn't too far removed from at least a lower-order demon. "Agreed. So what do you suggest?"

Rather than replying, Crim merely grinned. Collum and Kalimac caught her drift at the same time. The mediwizard also grinned, but the potions teacher stared at her, flat-out gobsmacked.

"You have got to be kidding!" Kalimac breathed.

"Five adults, fully trained in magic, and each with more cunning in our pinky fingernails than the Boy Who Lived has in his whole body?" Crim shrugged. "I'm not suggesting we try it tomorrow, but with two years to plan and act, I don't see why we should disregard it out of hand." She glanced to Meli. "And if we hide it again, with appropriate precautions and a few cryptic clues leading to it, I think we'll be satisfying the discovery-and-destruction requirement."

Kalimac shook his head wonderingly. "This is absolutely insane."

Meli glanced at him. "Which may very well be the key to our success," she countered. "Convention says that Gringotts is impossible to hit successfully, so who would expect an attempt?"

"An undetected break-in's preferable, of course." Andrea's voice was musing. "Do you really think it's possible?"

Kalimac sighed. "Et tu, Brutus?"

The Auror shrugged. "I like an intellectual challenge. Don't worry—when we get up to actually doing it, I'll freak out and demand to know what we were thinking."

"Thereby leaving the Slytherins in charge, as it should be," Crim added, sounding satisfied. "Come now, Professor Kalimac—haven't you ever done the impossible simply for the joy of proving that you're devious enough to manage it?"

"Only once," he grumbled, looking back into the depths of his coffee, "and that was for a very noble cause."

Collum snorted. "Destroying You-Know-Who's not noble enough for you?"

Kalimac withered him with a glare. "I fail to see how suicide accomplishes that objective, Dr. Fell. Do I believe someone could pull this off? Sure—with months of planning and a team of crack commandoes. I know Andrea well enough, at least, to know the planning's covered, but—no offense—where's the commandoes? All I've heard so far is that three of you have a history as problem students, whatever you might mean by that, and two of you have a weird fascination with cosmetically altering ugly animals. I think the craziest thing Andrea's done is develop an obsession with Eighties hair bands, and I've never had a reason to do anything more than keep my head down in a dorm filled with vampires and Slayers.

"So fine. You want to hit Gringotts for a noble cause. I'm asking how you know we have a snowball's chance in hell of doing it."

Collum was red and seething by the end of Kalimac's speech, but Crim nodded slowly. "Fair enough," she said, drawing an incredulous glare from her brother. "Do you have any objection to working out a plan just to see if it is workable? We have two years—plenty of time to recognize and abandon a hopeless cause if it proves to be one."

Kalimac snorted. "Whatever. I'm only one voice anyway."

Collum glared at him resentfully. "And I'm starting to wonder how you're an improvement over Slughorn."

"Collum, that's enough!" Meli snapped. "There was no call for that." From the corner of her eye, she saw that Kalimac had gone back to a close scrutiny of his coffee, a bitter smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. "I think we've all overstayed one another's patience."

"Agreed," Andrea said coolly, once more flicking concerned eyes to her fellow American. "How 'bout if we spend a few days mulling over what we know so far and reconvene with cooler heads and some workable ideas. Same time, same place, next Saturday?"

"Splendid idea," Crim said. "And in a transparent attempt to make up for my brother's poor manners, I'll be happy to settle the full bill myself. Come on, Collum—before you shove your other foot in your mouth."

She collared her twin one-handed and, with apologetic nods to the others, hauled him out of the room.

ooo

AUTHOR NOTE: Just a leetle heads-up: I will be moving in about three weeks, which might disrupt my posting schedule while I'm getting Internet re-hooked-up. In hopes of making it up to you, I'll post an extra chapter or two before the time comes, with a warning at the end of the post that it is, in fact, the last one before The Move.

Sorry this chapter was so long—I guess they all had a lot to say for themselves! And excessivelyperky, I can't make any promises for Harry's listening abilities; the Harry Meli knew and the one JKR gave us are just different enough to cause some potential problems there. If it's any comfort, though, he'll have the joy of meeting up with two very terrifying ducks in a couple chapters' time.
AE