Chapter 12:

Trust

"Why do you keep checking the clock?"

Lily looked back at Edith sheepishly: apparently she wasn't subtle. They were sitting down in the Healer's break room for their floor, and Lily was supposed to be doing paperwork, and Edith was supposed to be doing research. It was a rather small room, crowded with several desks (all of which were heaped with paperwork), a camp bed in the corner, and shelves on every wall, filled with reference books.

"I'm just ready for the night shift to be over. I want to go home and sleep," Lily lied.

"You don't seem especially tired."

"What?"

"You normally have at least one dose of Lucitrum by now when we're on the night shift, but you haven't taken anything."

"After what happened last time, I've decided to go off of that for a while," Lily said with a grimace. This seemed to pacify Edith, and she went back to flicking through Silencio No More: 101 Translation Spells, occasionally scratching something down on her running list.

For once, Lily didn't feel tired. She felt like her mind had become infested with Devil's Snare: vines of anxiety coiled around each of her thoughts, slowly strangling them till all she could think about was the potential danger she had created. Soon Hestia and James would be meeting, and Hestia would attempt to dive into James's mind and obliviate his nightmares. Lily was surprised James had agreed to it. He found a way to continually avoid the subject whenever she brought it up, and it was only when Sirius finally talked to him (with the aid of Ogden's Finest Firewhiskey), that he had finally agreed. Lily should have thought it through more carefully, but instead she had merrily brewed up some calming draughts and delivered them to Hestia once she heard the all clear from James. But now she couldn't help but think of the consequences. She'd left them utterly alone, without any support. If something went wrong, if James attacked, or if Hestia re-triggered his coma, it would be hours before Lily would be able to know. She should be there. Or if not her, someone else. But the Order was stretched thin as it was between those guarding the invaild Phoenixes, those shadowing Knapton, and those on their own unique missions from Dumbledore, so any kind of extra support was impossible.

Lily blinked and realized that she'd been staring blankly at her paperwork with only the first part of her report finished. She dipped her quill in the ink bottle and continued to finish her sentence about the woman who attempted to charm her hair into a perm, but instead ended up transfiguring her hair into snakes—venomous snakes. She came in right when Lily's shift began, and fortunately, they'd been able to vanish the snakes, treat the bites, and send her home with a hair growing potion.

"Lily, I need you." Dorcas burst into the room, looking, this time, like herself: long brown hair pulled in a tight ponytail, sharp nose, and dark eyes.

"Dorcas! I didn't know you were still here. Let me just finish this sentence."

"It's urgent." Lily put down her quill.

"Right. Okay, let's go."

"Can I come?" Dorcas and Lily looked back at Edith, blinking up from the large tome of Silencio No More!

"Not this time," Lily answered.

"I could help though! And this isn't going anywhere," Edith gestured to all the textbooks and notes she'd been working her way through.

"I know research isn't always the most exciting part of our job, but think of Ms. Klipteron—to her this is the most urgent and important work you could be doing."

"Alright," She said, clutching the textbook tighter. Lily and Dorcas closed the door, and Lily had to jog to match Dorcas's fast pace.

"She's a tich nosy, isn't she?"

"She's just curious. But tell me: what's happened? Is it—" Lily hesitated, but Dorcas cut her off before she could ask about James.

"There's been a development. You should see it for yourself," Dorcas said. The tightness lessened somewhat in Lily's chest. They hurried down the stairs, ignoring the cries of "sleeping" portraits till they came to the third level. They went to the Laboratory and pushed open the door.

"Why did you bring her?" Hefin Erwood, the head of the Potion and Plant Poisoning Ward, said with a sneer. Lily had avoided him since their last confrontation. He looked more haggard than before: his perfectly coiffed hair was disheveled, he had a brown stain of something down the front of the bright green robes, and, above all—he looked exhausted. Lily didn't care. All of the old rage began to bubble inside her again, but Dorcas quickly commanded the room before Lily could let her anger get the best of her.

"As the Ministry's Liaison, I'm authorized to bring whoever I want. I told you already that I wanted a second opinion, and she's on call tonight."

"Fine." Healer Erwood said shortly. Obviously he hadn't forgiven Lily for the spaghetti explosion either.

"Explain to her what you told me." Hefin let out a long suffering sign, but began:

"We've been systematically putting the poison under a number of tests—"

"Which means he's been shoving everything he can think of down Johnathan Wells's throat—" Lily interrupted, unable to stop herself.

"Which means my team has been doing our job. Yes, part of that has been testing our subject, but we have also been running experiments with the sample of the poison that you," he nodded to Dorcas, " were able to procure for us."

"What kind of tests?" Asked Lily, moving closer to inspect one of the tables laid out with petri dishes that contained a variety of shriveled black shapes—some looked like dried out peas, others like leaf fragments, and some of the specimens weren't solid forms at all, but black, coarse dust.

"You're looking at the results of Specialis Revalio. The poison seemed built to resist the spell, and effectively obliterated any of the ingredients we managed to separate out. My team has been trying to identify what we can, but it has been nothing but dead ends. We've moved on to experimenting with its stability and its reaction to organic and inorganic material."

"And what have all your tests discovered?"

"That we are dealing with a very unstable poison with a half-life of a day, maybe two. It started decaying before we got it, which—we theorize—is why Specalis Revelio utterly failed. It deteriorates faster when exposed to direct sunlight or when heated to an extreme pressure. It causes greater damage to organic materials, but due to its decay, we can't be certain of what this poison is truly capable of outside of the muggle's reactions. We anticipate all of the samples being untestable in another week if we cannot find a way to stabilize it."

"It sounds like whoever created this position is experimenting," Lily said slowly.

"Or they purposely created it to decay quickly." Lily and Hefin stared at each other. Dorcas smiled her real smile, the one that revealed her fang-like canine, making her appear slightly wolfish.

"Show her your most recent test." She ordered.

"Do you trust her?"

Dorcas didn't hesitate.

"Absolutely."

With a flick of his wand, the lights in the room were extinguished. But they were not in total darkness. Moonlight washed over the laboratory with a dim, silvery glow, spilling out of the large windows along one wall. Lily could just make out that Hefin was using tongs to place a vial of the blood red poison in a direct beam of the light. It happened in a second: color bloomed from the center of the potion outward, brightening it from dark red to a glowing, sunset the transformation was complete, Hefin re-lit the lamps in the room, and moved the vial away from the light; it automatically dimmed once again to a bloody red.

"Does it get any lighter with prolonged exposure to moonlight?" Lily asked quickly, moving over to inspect the vial up close.

"No it doesn't, but be careful! Don't touch it." But Hefin didn't need to remind Lily. She levitated the vial, inspecting it from all angles.

"Does its viscosity change as well?"

"No! Just—will you put that down?" Lily obeyed, turning to examine Hefin now.

"And you said earlier, that direct sunlight sped up the rate of decay." Hefin nodded.

"We think—" He began, but Dorcas interrupted.

"I want to hear her opinion first. See if it matches with your theory," Hefin shut his mouth quickly, clicking his teeth together in disgust.

"I think it's obvious. At least the base of the potion is affected by moonlight. For it to cause the color to change, not just the iridescence, I think multiple elements must react to moonlight. That dramatically narrows down the potential ingredients. If you could stabilize the poison, it would be interesting to see how it reacts during the full moon."

"Precisely what we have theorized. We plan on testing herbs tomorrow on our subject—"

"He has a name," Lily broke in.

"And seeing if this new category changes any of his reactions. Now is that all? Can I get back to my work?" Hefin asked peevishly.

"Yes, thank you, Healer Erwood," Dorcas said. Lily's mind was buzzing as Dorcas led her back out of the lab.

"Well this is a development! I guess Hefin Erwood isn't as incompetent as I had thought. Did you really need a second opinion?"

"I didn't need one, but I wanted one to check Healer Erwood's findings. See if you interpreted them differently. And I wanted you to be able to see first hand what was going on."

"I need to tell Dumbledore and James. This is wonderful news." Dorcas didn't say anything but smiled again as they carried on up the stairs, walking much slower this time. Lily caught her smirk: "What?"

"Just—it's so weird to hear you talking about him again."

"It's weird for me too. But, not as weird as it is to see you more at work than at home!" Lily changed the subject, eager to delay the return of her anxiety. She threw her arm—or tried to—around the much taller girl, nearly toppling them both over. The stairways were empty at this time of night, except for the portraits who were "sleeping" and now shouting angrily at the pair of them each time they bumped into one of the frames, but Lily ignored them.

"At least we're seeing each other more!"

"Yes, but think of your poor plants. I don't think I've done much watering this week."

"Are you trying to guilt trip me into moving back in?"

"I've got to have some kind of bargaining chip." Dorcas laughed, and they continued to chat about Dorcas's orchids which continued to refuse to bloom, and the succulents that Lily swore were browning up.

"Fine, fine. I'll try to come home soon," Dorcas was saying as they neared the door to the break room.

"Good! I'll make some Pain au Chocolat to celebrate," Lily said as she pushed open the door.

"If you're making Pain au Chocolat, I'd like some too! I think I'll deserve it after all this," said Edith, who was now skimming through Tongue-Tied with Trollish. Lily laughed. "So the secret thing was a good thing?" Edith asked.

"It was something," said Lily. She checked the clock once more: it was midnight. Hestia and James surely had met up by now. Edith was frowning at her again, so Lily tried to clear all thoughts of Hestia and James. They're fine, she told herself. Aloud, she said: "It's about time for me to make rounds, do you want to come?"

"I'm close to finishing my research with this one. Fortunately, there's only one chapter in it about translation spells. I'll catch up with you in a bit. Just don't start with Ms. Klipteron. I think I have an idea I want to try out." Lily nodded and double checked her Healer's kit, making sure it had the right potions and bandages she'd need before she headed back out into the dimmed hallway. Instead of turning right, and heading to her ward, she turned left, and found a portrait of a rather ugly man, whose nose resembled a squashed tomato. He stood in the forefront of the painting, partially blocking his patient in the foreground, whose face was obscured by layers and layers of bandages. She tapped her wand on the frame, and the ugly man opened his eyes.

"Rex Leonum," Lily whispered to the man. If Lily were to blink, she would have missed it, but in a moment, the wall itself seemed to soften, looking almost transparent before firming up again. She closed her eyes and took several steps forward, and instead of running into hard stone—like her mind always warned her of—she met no resistance. When she opened her eyes, she was standing in a blindingly white hallway, with nothing hanging on the walls, and only one door. When she opened the lone door, she stood face to face with Frank Longbottom, his wand pointing directly at her chest.

"Name?"

"Lily Evans."

"What was the spell you cast after Lestrange found us following him?"

Lily had to think for a moment. It had been one of her first official missions with the Order, and they had paired her with Frank, someone more experienced. It had been Frank who realized that Randolfo Lestrange had spotted them, and realized that they weren't muggles. They began running—no point for subtlety, as Lestrange began blasting curses, not caring about the muggles in the street. They had run—ironically—into a cemetery, and dove behind two headstones, just before Lestrange had entered, and Lily, her mind racing, did the first thing she could think of to hide.

"The Disillusionment charm." Frank lowered his wand, and stepped aside. It struck her how much he had aged since Alice had been attacked: his brown hair was streaked with a few strands of grey, a new wrinkle etched permanently in the furrow of his brow, and most strikingly, his large muscular frame seemed somewhat shrunken."How are they?" Lily asked, moving past him to take a closer look at her three patients.

"The same," Frank said gruffly, sitting back in his chair, eyes turned back to the door.

On the surface, the Phoenixes looked better than when they had first arrived. All of their burns had healed over with pink new skin growing in. The slice from the base of Fabian's neck to his midsection was now a raised scar, almost dashing rather than the gruesome, oozing wound it had been. Alastor Moody's scars weren't dashing; they twisted his grizzled face, and divots ran along his skin where the bits of ceramic and glass had been dug out, but at least his wounds had finally closed. Alice, who had received the least physical damage, looked like she was sleeping. Like all Lily had to do to wake her would be to call her name. Perhaps that explained Frank's gray hair. While they all needed a haircut, their color had returned, no longer looking like pale, bloodless corpses.

Lily forced herself to remain in the present as she carefully levitated their bodies—starting with Alice— and applied a salve and new bandages to help prevent bedsores. As she measured their vitals, she realized that what Frank had said earlier was true: they were the same. Their color was better because they still had a raging fever, precariously on the border of dangerous. Their breathing was deep like one would expect with sleep, but the rate was irregular. Sometimes they breathed steady and slow, but in another minute they would be hyperventilating, then not breathing at all. Their heart rate mirrored this, continuously speeding up, then slowing down.

It all left Lily feeling frustrated. After what happened last week, she'd changed their treatment, adding a daily dosage of the same poison antidote she gave Jonathan Wells to their prescription. While the antidote had been ineffective for Wells, it had at least done something, caused some slight improvement; but in the Phoenixes, there was no change at all. At first, she wondered if the antidote needed time to build up into their blood streams to take effect, but after a week of nothing, she had to admit defeat. Either it wasn't poison that caused this damage to Alastor, Alice, and Fabian, or the poison had caused so much damage that a simple antidote wouldn't have any impact. Whatever the answer was, this result wasn't encouraging.

Lily gave them all a new injection of fever reducing potion, and a double dosage of Calming Draught. She recast a cooling charm over their bedding, and put in a new IV for hydration. Frank remained eerily quiet during her procedures. Normally the two chatted when he was on guard duty; he always seemed so desperate for distraction. To strengthen security, Alastor Moody's personal suite didn't even have a window. The isolation and the perpetual quiet left one too much time for thinking.

"Well?" He finally asked, when she had finished fidgeting with one of the IVs.

"They're stable, but you're right: nothing's changed." Frank shut his mouth tightly, bitter. "But," Lily continued, feeling the need to give him something, "there's been a breakthrough with the poison from the muggle attacks."

"What kind of breakthrough?" Frank asked carefully.

"It's a small one; they haven't cracked it yet, but they've narrowed down the list of ingredients considerably. We're getting closer, Frank." He let out a long breath, and finally turned around not to Lily, but to Alice. Her blonde curls were well washed (thanks to him, Lily realized), her cheeks slightly rosy, her expression pained.

"Closer," he repeated. Did something happen today? The way he was looking at Alice was different, somehow. Less tender, less sad. Just blank. Numb.

"Yeah. Look, I need to finish my rounds, but I'll be back here later. I've doubled some of the dosages, but really keep track of the fever. If you feel like they have gotten hotter, cast another cooling charm." Frank nodded, and the movement made him look a bit more functional. Lily left, shutting the door behind her, back in the empty, white hallway. She tapped on the wall in front of her three times, stepped forward, and was back in the hall of her floor. Fortunately, none of her patients or Edith were walking around the halls. Lily checked her watch and hurried. She might have taken too much time in Moody's personal suite.

She was midway through the vital scans of her first official patient when Edith rejoined her, a scroll of parchment in her hand. She let Edith take over, grateful for a moment to calm her mind. She kept seeing Frank's empty eyes.

"What do you think?" She asked Edith, as they left the patient's bedside, after injecting him with another dosage of pain relief.

"His fever has reduced, and the inflammation is better. I think the infection is gone."

"Good. What would you prescribe?"

"A skin growing salve, and then we should talk about prosthetics." Lily nodded, but was quiet. They continued through the rest of the ward—gently waking up their patients to get a rating of their pain levels, to check the vitals, then discussing their further treatments. When they got to Ms. Kliperton, the woman who Edith had been researching for, Lily let Edith try out one of the spells she had discovered.

"Reverti Vicis," Edith said. A purple light bloomed from her wand and twirled around the woman. Lily and Edith waited for the woman to try speaking. She opened her mouth warily, and then let loose a stream of something vaguely Mermish. Edith deflated, and the woman slowly trailed off, realizing that she was still not speaking English. She grimaced back at Lily and Edith.

"You've changed something; at least she's not screaming in troll anymore." Lily said, trying to be consoling.

"That should have worked though! I cross-checked it in so many different texts."

"That was our fifth attempt, right? I think she's not telling us something. She must have used multiple fluency charms, causing the magic to fuse together or something. We'll keep trying." Edith was still grumbling when they made it back to the breakroom. Lily checked the clock: it was 2:00am. Surely Hestia and James had finished by now. She had about four more hours left on her night shift. Four more hours till she would find out how everything went.

"Merlin help me, if I have to look through another textbook, or have to learn Mermish myself to find out what this woman did to herself..." Edith continued ranting, slamming a particularly heavy book down on the pile she'd been searching through.

"Edith, we won't have to do rounds again for another hour. I can fill out the paperwork—why don't you take a break? It's a pity the tea room closes for the night shift. But, you could go for a walk, or take a nap?"

"Would that be okay? Maybe I could use a walk. I think I need some space from everything. I won't be long though."

"Yes, go. Get out of here. I shouldn't see you again for an hour!"

"Thanks Lily," Edith said, giving her a tired smile as she headed out of the room. Lily began scribbling out a change of treatment form for the patients she and Edith had discussed, but soon she felt the tendrils of anxiety growing once more. The paperwork managed to keep her thoughts from spiraling, but once it was finished, she was left with her questions. Should she owl Dumbledore? Ask him to check in at Headquarters to see if something was wrong with Hestia and James? Or owl Gideon, and see if he could give Frank a break from the sickroom? Maybe she was overreacting. But something was off with Frank when she visited.

Determined to resist owling anyone at 2:30 in the morning, she began searching the shelves for a reference book on plants. It was partially a fruitless effort; she worked on the Spell Damage ward, but she did manage to find an old Hogwarts textbook: 1001 Magical Herbs and Plants. She flipped to the chapter on Night Blooming Plants, and started reading, chewing the end of her quill.

She was midway through the chapter, a small pile of feathers next to her, when all the lights turned red.

"ATTENTION ALL PERSONAL: WE ARE UNDER CODE RED. I REPEAT, CODE RED. PATIENTS: PLEASE REMAIN IN YOUR ROOMS."

Lily knew what this meant: Death Eaters. This was the reason St. Mungos trained them in defensive magic, the reason the Ministry had Dorcas guarding Wells, and why the Order had Frank guarding the injured Phoenixes. Lily sprinted out of the breakroom, pointing her wand at the stairwell, and cast a protection charm. It created a barrier, effectively sealing everyone in on the third floor. She was supposed to begin evacuations after setting up the barrier, but the most likely targets wouldn't be anyone from her ward; the Death Eaters would be after someone they thought was valuable, like Johnathan Wells or the Order members. She couldn't reach Wells while the sealing charm was up—she'd have to trust Dorcas to handle whatever came her way till backup arrived. But Frank. She could reach Frank even with the barrier. Could she trust him? He had seemed so odd, so distant. She hadn't bothered checking if it really was him when she visited: stupid, careless mistake.

She sprinted to the ugly man's portrait, and didn't bother whispering when she gave the password; no one would hear her over the repeated announcements. If Frank was an imposter or under the Imperius curse, she was the only one who could stop him. She had to make it in time. This time, she didn't flinch as she passed through the wall into the empty, white hallway. Once again, Frank pointed his wand at Lily when she opened the door, surprised to see her again so soon, but as she aimed her own wand back at him, he frowned and moved to block her line of vision into the room, so she couldn't see the others. Was she already too late? Had he killed them all? Lily tried to calm down enough to think of a question.

"When you were a Seventh Year, I caught you and Alice after hours while on my prefect patrol. Where were you?"

"The broom closet on the third floor. My turn: what did you do when you found us?"

"I still took off points for Gryffindor, but then I shut the door, and let you carry on."

Both of them lowered the wands, but Frank still didn't open the door any wider.

"You heard the alarm. We have to get them out of here, Frank. They're not safe. They should be stable enough to travel, but we can't apparate out of this room. We'll have to hurry—"

"Lily, this is my job," Frank said firmly. "I can manage on my own. You need to do yours."

"But—"

"You have to trust me." Lily into his eyes. His gaze was confident, no trace of the numbness she saw before.

"If something happens, and you need help, send me a Patronus," she finally said. Frank nodded once, sharply.

"Go!"

Lily left, running back through the wall to her hallway. Everything was bathed in a reddish glow. Silent except for the echoing "CODE RED" warning. She came into the first room with the man with severed arms and a woman whose mouth had been cursed closed. The woman lowered her wand as Lily came in, though both she and the man still stared at her warily.

"What's happening?" The man asked.

"We're evacuating. Step into this portrait, and it will take you to a safe place. Don't try to contact anyone yet. We'll come get you when the danger is gone." Lily tapped the picture frame of a seascape painting on the wall, and it expanded. She helped the man with the severed arms find his balance as he stepped over the lip of the painting, and then tapped the edge of the frame once more, letting it shrink back to its original size after the woman made her way through..

She needed to keep moving. She had to focus. The sealing barrier Lily placed was strong, but could be blasted away eventually. She could save more people if she kept moving. She didn't know where Dorcas was, didn't know where Edith was; but Edith knew the procedures, and Dorcas was clever. They had to be safe. Frank and the others were safe. Room 131 was safe. Lily had to take it step by step, not let her anxiety take hold of her mind. She moved to the next room and repeated the process.

"... WE ARE UNDER CODE RED. I REPEAT, CODE RED. PATIENTS: PLEASE REMAIN IN YOUR ROOMS." The warning continued to boom throughout the halls, the red glow of the lights washing out any other color, making everything less distinguishable. Lily had to squint to read room numbers, to recognize who her patients were. She felt paranoid that a Death Eater was hiding among them, unmasked, preparing to strike.

In the last room, Ms. Kliperton, who was now speaking Mermish, spoke so quickly and panickedly that Lily couldn't do anything to comfort her, but repeated, as loudly as she could over the blaring alarm, that they were all going to be safe. Ultimately, Lily had to push her physically through the portrait. Per their training, Lily was supposed to evacuate as well and wait for a signal to return.

But Lily was never good at waiting.

With a slashing motion, she performed the counter charm to the barrier, cutting it apart. She began carefully stepping down the stairs: wand out, hexes at the ready, listening for any sudden creak or sound. The portraits which lined the stairwell were empty, leaving behind blank amorphous backgrounds. Perhaps they had fled to their other homes, or maybe they rushed to where the fight was. As she neared the third floor, she finally heard something over the trumpeting warning, but it wasn't the screams and blasts of battle: someone was crying.

They were lost. The images had fragmented, rushing past them: A pair of vivid green eyes, blood bubbling out of a woman's mouth, the pulsing, blinding light of Avada Kedavra, a Gryffindor tie, a white arm twisted at a sickening angle, the clattering of chains. Everything was painfully bright—they wanted to close their eyes, to make it go away, to stop.

"Obliviate!"

Hestia was kneeling on the ground, her hands flat against the wooden floor. Her rasping breathing stung her throat. Had she been screaming? When had she fallen off the chair? Had she been kneeling here for hours or days or just seconds? Nothing made any sense, and so she made herself stare at the wood grains. She traced them, feeling the slight ridges in the floor, how they gradually curved. She breathed in and tried to identify everything: the musty dust of old fabric, sulphuric smell of a potion brewing, smoke from a fire. It helped to ground her. Dimly, she realized that the ragged breathing wasn't just her own. She looked up, and saw James Potter in the same posture as her, almost as if they had been begging for help.

"James?" She called to him.

"What the bloody hell was that?" He asked hoarsely.

"I-I don't know. I must have obliviated my memory too, but it must have been bad."

"I feel like...like there should be something I need to run from, or fight, but I can't—I don't…" He trailed off. Hestia felt steady enough to get off of the ground. All of her muscles were trembling, but she made it back to the chair. She needed a potion. Something to force her body to stop reacting. She shakily dumped out the ugly yarn, the needles, and heard the clink of glass in her lap. She pulled out the stopper awkwardly, and tried to down it in one go. The taste of peppermint burnt her sensitive throat.

James had leaned back on his heels, still sitting on the ground, his glasses askew.

"I can't remember it. It's just gone."

"Take another potion, James. I think it helps," Hestia said, feeling a pleasant numbness spread through her body.

"Will it come back?" He asked her, his tone of voice so strange that she couldn't tell if he was scared, relieved, or angry.

"It might. Memory charms aren't perfect; they can always be broken, but at least it will be harder for it to return..." Hestia trailed off uncertainty. She wasn't even sure how to talk about what happened. She'd never obliviated herself at the same time as someone else.

Suddenly, a burst of light shot toward them, and solidified into a doe. It spoke with Lily's voice:

"St. Mungos was attacked. Johnathan Wells and Hefin Erwood were killed. Dorcas is injured," and then disappeared in smoke. The names sounded strange to Hestia, but James apparently recognized them as he shot to his feet, slightly wobbly.

"James?" Hestia called.

"I have to go." He said, without looking at her, focused on straightening his glasses. Everything about him spoke of unsteadiness: his shaking hands, his tight voice, his wrinkled clothes. Hestia wanted to convince him to take another calming draught, but he left before Hestia could find the words.

A/N: This was the longest chapter yet, but that feels fitting because it is now officially 11 years since I started working on this story, and we are now past the halfway point of it. Crazy! I'm getting excited to finally finish it, and (hopefully) do it justice. Thank you to everyone who has kept reading and to those of you that have reviewed, favorited, and followed this story! It's been really encouraging to know that I am not just sending this into the void.

Also-if anyone is interested in BETA-ing this story, send me a PM and let me know!