How High the Moon
.ψ.
Chapter One: Spark and Flame
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There she goes
There she goes again
Racing through my brain
And I just can't contain
This feeling that remains
There she goes
There she goes again
She calls my name She pulls my train
No on else can heal my pain
And I just can't contain
This feelin that remains
There she goes
There she goes again
Chasing down my lane
And I just can't contain
This feeling that remains
-'There She Goes', Sixpence None the Richer
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"Long time no see, huh Charlie?"
Surprise jolted through him as his old friend walked into the chaotic hospital room, all thoughts of broomsticks and buldgers now forgotten.
"Stella?" He asked as his newspaper slipped to the floor.
"Don't call me that gatito." She grimaced, setting down her wand and clip board before nearly smothering him in a warm, sisterly hug.
"It's Myra. If I tell you once, I'll tell you a hundred times, my name is Myra." She informed him with mock severity when she let go.
Yep, it was Stella alright.
Same olive skin, same aura of earthy sensibility, same warm smile that reminded him of a hot cup of chocolate.
Definitely Stella.
That grin brought back memories of the first time he had discovered her uncanny knack for fire-related charms, and the first night that she had joined him and the boys down in Geoff's Gorge for their campfires. That smile had made even the cold Romanian nights light up like dragonspark.
Charlie couldn't hold back a little yelp of happiness as he finally broke though his shock.
"I can't believe it's you, girl! What are you doing here?" He cried, returning the fierce hug and lifting the shorter girl several inches off the floor before releasing her.
She chuckled once back on solid land, tucking a stray stand of black hair back into the snood that she never took off.
In fact, when he thought about it for a moment, he had never seen her with her hair down in all of the six short months that he had known her. Stella, he had long ago concluded, was a bit of a creature of habit. The straightforward girl had always preferred earth colored robes, and wore her thin rectangular glasses and favorite silver chain like they were her second skin. Pretty skin too, he noted without meaning to.
It was hard to look at any girl these days without conjuring up mental images of snogging her in a dark corner somewhere, feeling as lonely as he had been lately, and it seemed that Stella was no exception.
Charlie spent a few minutes seriously considering grabbing her, dashing out, and doing just that after seeing that their time apart had improved her ... feminine charms.
No, make that considerably improved, he amended. She had always been a bit short and stocky, no so very unlike himself, but now stocky had matured into eye-pleasing curves that had created a bit of a lump in his throat as he tried desperately to think of something else.
Charlie began to turn red – even more red than usual – and prayed that she couldn't tell what he was thinking. Even his freckles seemed to burn with shame. She had always been a good friend to him, he thought guiltily. She deserved better than him acting like a bloody pig.
It would have been much easier if she hadn't been so easy on the eyes.
Thankfully, Stella was no mind reader, or else Charlie would have been lucky to escape the room, let alone retain his ability to reproduce.
She was oblivious to his dilemma though, and continued on with the rough side of her tongue without missing a beat.
"What? No 'hello Myra'? No 'it is wonderful to see you Myra'?" There was a familiar glint in her eyes that told him she found the entire situation entirely too funny for words.
"Not even a 'how are you Myra'? Charlie, you ass, I'm wounded!"
Her sense of humor was still the same too, Charlie concluded.
"It's good to see you too Stella." He murmured and smiled, knowing that she was no longer paying him any mind.
By this point, the others had noticed that there was another person in the room. They had, in fact, grown silent as they watched the two of them with unconcealed curiosity. Charlie felt like a particularly unusual specimen in a zoo. He hated being the center of attention like this, and wished he could sink into the ground until their attentions were directed elsewhere.
Stella, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice. Just the opposite, unfortunately. She adjusted her glasses and then planted her fists on her green gowned hips as Charlie found himself thinking that only one woman on earth could make those ugly healer's uniforms nearly that attractive.
But something dropped in the pit of his gut though, as he watched her survey the results of his parent's disharmony with ill concealed distaste. The frown on her face grew like a bad engorgement charm, and showed no signs of stopping. Even the thin lenses of her glasses had a disapproving, vengeful glare to them, giving her the air of a very disgruntled little bird of prey.
He had a pretty good idea of what was coming next, and now he really wished he could hide.
"Mrs. Weasley," She ordered, "I will thank you to stop upsetting my patient and put down that bedpan!"
The room went still.
"Mrs. Weasley," Stella positively growled, "If you don't unhand my bedpan this instant, I'm gonna boot you outa here quicker than you can say 'Fizzing Whizbees'."
Mrs. Weasley, who was unused to being addressed in such a manner, dropped the bed pan from sheer shock.
It was probably for the best that she did, Charlie mused.
Stella was used to having her commands obeyed in the medi-tent back at the reserve, and it seemed that St. Mungo's had done nothing to change that. Mum very well might have ended up sharing the ward with Bill if she crossed her in a bad mood. She was a wonderful friend, and very carefree and silly when not on the job, by the short witch was almost as protective of her patients as Mrs. Weasley was with her children.
"That's one match up I pray I never see." Charlie muttered fervently to no one but himself.
Charlie's father, who had paused with his finger still in the air, sheepishly hid his silly looking uplifted hand into the pocket of his well darned blue robe as Fleur crept out from her hiding place behind the bedside table. Mum simply collapsed into the stiff hospital chair, limp, abashed, and too astonished for words.
Stella's annoyance began to visibly fade as the room took on some semblance of order, although the portrait on the far wall portraying one Cletus Cragstone glared down at the lot of them looking like some sort of vicious, deadly breed of chicken. Once the family had settled down, Stella fell back into her normal, business-like manner.
"Thank you. Now, I'm on a tight schedule today, so I haven't got time for any more nonsense."
His mother's glare could have given a fire-loving salamander frostbite.
"However Mr. Weasley," She addressed Bill, "I understand that some of you family members are concerned."
Her sharp expression softened a bit as she looked his mother's way. "That is quite common with a procedure of this gravity, so I feel that I ought to run over the basic idea one last time before we start up the wand work. I want to be sure that everyone is comfortable with what we are doing, yes?"
Bill's quill began to skitter across his parchment again, and Fleur took his other hand in hers, stroking it nervously.
- You don't need to. I've made up made up my mind.-
"Be that as it may, Mr. Weasley," she said with a faint smile for Charlie's immobile brother, "I'd like to put your mother's worries to rest."
Bill just rolled his eyes, but Mrs. Weasley's glare relaxed by some minute fraction.
- Up to you Doc, but call me Bill. No need to be formal, I trust Charlie's judgment. – He wrote with another wink for his younger brother.
Charlie gave a little inward moan. Mom had been after him for years about 'finding a nice girl', and even his father was shooting Stella a reconsidering glance. Mum was studying her like she had just discovered the missing link, and all was apparently forgiven as far as Molly Weasley was concerned. This was all he needed.
It was all Charlie could do not to strangle Bill in his hospital bed.
As usual, Stella was oblivious to his anxious state, giving his brother a similar smile and roll of the eyes as she seemed to realize for the first time that she had forgotten to introduce herself.
"I seem to have forgotten to tell you my name." She laughed quietly, and began to amiably shake hands all around after setting her wand and clipboard down again for the hundredth time.
"Told you so." Charlie chuckled to himself as she seemed to read his mind. Stella wasn't really possessed with 'the social graces', as his mother frequently liked to call them, and her blunt and honest nature sometimes made her come across as snobbish and rude. Only those who took the time to know her learned the real truth, and he had never regretted doing so.
"I'm Healer Myra Estrella, but since you're Charlie's family," she shot him a devious look, "Just call me Myra."
"'Ow do you two know eachuzer?" Fleur blurted out the question on everyone's mind.
Stella's grin only deepened as she recounted how they had met at the Wallachia Mountains Dragon Reserve, and his family quickly seemed to warm up to her more and more. (Though Mum remained uncharacteristically silent through out the introductions, still undecided.)
"But enough about me." She said after a few minutes of chatter, "We are here about Bill."
"The treatment is going to be touch and go, I'll warn you, but I do believe I've found something that just might do the trick."
With a flick of her wand, the candle bubbles in the room dimmed and a hologramic model of Bill's head appeared above the bedside table.
"As you can see, the wounds have become infected with werewolf venom, and it is quickly causing all of the veins and capillaries under the skin to burst. The venom is also the reason that Bill's blood is having such difficulty clotting. Normally, of course, werewolf venom is delivered in such small doses that the victim is hardly affected at all … aside from the obvious reactions … but this is a complex case due to the massive toxin overdose, as well as the fact that that bloody bastard wasn't fully transformed."
Bill watched with unconcealed humor as his mother's eyes widened at Stella's profanity, but as usual Stella was quite oblivious and continued on with only a slight pause for what Charlie suspected was quite a vulgar mutter about Greyback that no one could understand.
"This is a rather unprecedented sort of injury, so I've had to be … shall we say creative with the remedy. It took me nearly a week, and I had to scour every last bloody textbook in Greasehound's, but in the end I found the solution with some adaptation of a few muggle techniques. Even muggles can have a brilliant turn or two every now and then I suppose." She said with a fond smile, one that was mirrored happily by Charlie's father.
Molly Weasley, however, did not share this opinion.
Her already dark grimace became a downright murderous thunderhead when the words 'muggle technique' were uttered. Charlie knew that she would never forget the day his father had dabbled in muggle medicine, and shuddered at the prospect of the row he knew was coming.
The violence, however, was headed off unexpectedly by Stella.
"I assure you, Mrs. Weasley, this is not some sorry half-assed attempt like what Trainee Pye pulled a few years back. Yes Mr. Weasley, you two are rather notorious around here for that stunt." For once, Stella and Mum provided a united front against a nearly cowering Dad as they frowned sternly, but Charlie watched tensely as Mrs. Weasley turned her attentions back to his friend with polite severity.
"You aren't going to use any knives, Healer Estrella? No needles and thread?"
"Heavens no!" Stella shuddered. "We are not barbarians here, Mrs. Weasley. This procedure is entirely magical. It is only the basic idea that we are borrowing."
"It's called cauterization." She turned back to the floating model, whose skin began to heat and form scabs, then heal over. "We use a very precise type of flame charm to sear the flesh and seal off the ends of the blood vessels. There will be several months of unpleasant scabbing, but eventually the skin will heal itself to some degree of normalcy."
Everyone in the room grimaced at the realistic hissing noise, including Bill, which caused a few tiny rivulets of blood to run down his mangled cheek.
"I know it's not pleasant, but I believe it will be just the thing and you will be back on your feet in no time." She tried to sound cheery as the hissing head vanished and the candles relit themselves.
"Well Bill, if you are sure that you have no further objections, we will begin."
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.ψ.
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Authoress's Notes: Gatito roughly translates to 'little (male) cat'. I'm pretty sure about that translation, but if I'm wrong feel free to correct me. I've only taken a few years of Spanish. More on why she calls him that later.
I'm basing Bill's wounds off of poisonous spider bites, as I (being a mere muggle) do not know precisely what a werewolf inflicted wound is supposed to look like, and thought that this would be appropriately gruesome. If you want a better picture of what I'm talking about, Google brown recluse spiders, whose venom causes tissue to decay in rather visually unpleasant ways if left untreated. Granted, it seems a little odd for werewolves (even partially transformed ones) to have venomous bites, but I'm working on the premise that they are magical creatures and can do whatever the heck they bloody well please, thank you very much.
The treatment I described is modeled after information provided by my wonderful mum, who happens to be a nurse, and my own imagination (scary little devil, inint it?) Obviously more imagination than fact, but see the clause in the last paragraph about magic and doing whatever I bloody well please. I am the literary goddess, hear me roar! (Sorry, the god complex gets this terrible hold on me sometimes, ha ha)
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Fenix- Glad to interest you. I hope this answers some questions … and creates more, like any good story. I'm happy to know that you find it worth the read, it makes my day to know that my stuff is enjoyed.
Possum- Thanks, glad to know you were paying attention. I – being a woman (and a muggle to boot) – am a bit worried that writing from a man's perspective won't come off quite right, so I hope that it comes off decently.
Harrypottermagic32-do you mind if I call you HPM? So much easier on the fingers. Any who, my heart is warmed when I hear that someone has taken a fancy to my stuff, so I was over the moon to get such a nice review. Thank you. Like I said to Possum, I am not a man nor am I a wizard, and thus I am a bit worried about my ability to write a good piece from Charlie's perspective. I always appreciate what you might have to say about how it goes in the future!
Fenix- Thanks for the Spanish help. I checked out your profile, and I gotta say that a 5 on your AP is no mean feat. (5 is the highest grade right? Its been a year since high school and don't posses much in the way of long term memory. Lol.) any who, kitten is exactly what I was going for. Its her pet name for Charlie, but like I said before, you'll have to keep reading to find out why. Glad to fill you up with questions, as that is any good authoress's job, no? By the way, please feel free to correct me if I ever get anything wrong Spanish-wize, as I'm not a native speaker and only took three years in high school. (I'll spoil you a little and let you in on an upcoming plot tidbit. Myra's Abuelo was from Spain, so you'll see little bits of the language coming through in the story.) Oh, and Molly got the bed pan during the argument in the prologue. I believe there was a bit in there about it being charmed to fly through the air to hit someone. Ten bucks on who did the aiming…
Possum- Yeah, she is brave …or maybe just a little dumb. Who knows? I never did say she was a Gryffindor, now did I? And I will definitely give that fic a look when I get a chance!
This is random, but I saw a dead possum on the side of the road this morning on my way to class, and was sad. It looked so … squishy. Which reminds me of finding Nemo. Can I call YOU my squishy? (I have this weird thing with finding nicknames for my reviewers, please don't be creeped out.)