How High the Moon

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Chapter Two: Shadow Walks Beside Me

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I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But its home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

-Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Green Day

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Fleur and the Weasleys had been exiled to the Fifth floor visitor's tea room once the procedure began.

'The Procedure'.

How Stella could talk about something so utterly foul with such nonchalance, he would never know. So cool, so detached, as though she were discussing a half remembered novel over tea … 'the procedure'.

Charlie wanted to vomit.

He, Charlie Weasley! As a Quidditch player, he had seen his share of wounds. Had a few himself, in fact. As a conservationist, he had helped egg-laden mothers and assisted in a few emergency surgeries. He had spent countless hours of the last seven years of his life in strange, muggle originating pants called 'hip-waders' wallowing though several tons of dung every day without fail. Hell, he had had his bloody arm ripped off a few times!

But this … just thinking about the hissing sound that that ghastly head had made gave him the willies.

How in the name of Merlin did the girl do it?

It had taken all of ten minutes for Charlie to feel as trapped as a rat in a cage in the tea room, pacing and imagining the horrors that lay ahead for his brother. He knew he couldn't stay there for the four long hours Stella had predicted it would take to burn the skin on Bill's face.

Ehh… burning skin …

No, best just not to think about it, he decided.

Outside St. Mungo's, outside and caught in a swirl of muggles as he plodded despondently through the narrow backstreets of London, Charlie tried desperately to do just that … but found himself failing miserably.

"How could anyone do that for a living?" He wondered out loud to himself, only to laugh and recall Stella once saying the very same thing about his own chosen profession.

But Charlie Weasley could not imagine doing anything else.

Dragons had captivated him since he was a child. When he was four, his side of the dresser had mysteriously begun to fill with tiny, lifelike models that flew and gave occasional blasts of miniature flame, much like the muggle matches his dad was so intrigued by. Those little dragons had burned many a fascinated finger (much to his mother's irritation).

At five, (instead of paying attention to his mother's home schooling) he was rapidly digesting every book he could find on the subject. She still shone with pride sometimes when she reflected back on his early ability to read, beating even brainy Percy out for the title of youngest one to learn. Back then Dad had often brought him well-worn, second hand volumes upon returning from mysterious Order business only to leave a few days latter, just as bedraggled and tired as the day he came home.

Charlie had continued to faithfully build the library during the long and frightening absences as he tried to comfort his mother as best as a small boy could, by watching his younger brothers and helping her cook. Despite his natural urge to cause mischief, which could rival Fred and George's any day, Charlie had become the peacekeeper of the house by the time he was seven.

As he grew up under the shadow of war, worry, and his mother's half whispered midnight prayers, Charlie was Ron's minder, helped the twins learn to use the loo, and grew wise in the ways of changing little Ginny's dirty nappies. As they got older, he became Bill's conscience and Percy's shoulder to cry on when Cedric Diggory and Hector Fawcett picked on his glasses. And through every difficulty, every long hour spent waiting up for Dad to come home, he kept at that library, slowly adding to it with his meager but carefully saved pocket change and finding his escape in dreams of dragons.

With each new book carefully placed on the faded shelves, he felt somehow closer to his dad. Busy with juggling his work with the Order and two jobs to feed his family, Arthur did not know his own children. He had missed Charlie's first steps, first words … first everythings.

Despite the love that both father and son took for granted, they were practically strangers. Little Charlie felt the loss like an empty hole inside. Somehow, deep in his secret and childish heart, Charlie harbored an unspoken faith that as long as he had his dragons and as long as he kept adding to dad's books, someday Mr. Weasley would have to come home safe and sound forever.

By eleven, the collection of dragon books that had seen him through a hard childhood now took up its own book case in the library. It was there that he and his father would spend many sunny summer afternoons of his puberty getting to know each other for the first time, sharing favorite passages and reading quietly in the one sanctuary of the noisy house.

Mr. Weasley had continued to encourage his son's fascination with the beasts that Charlie had come to love (despite his own badly concealed misgivings of the beautiful things), and Charlie knew by his first Christmas at Hogwarts that there was nothing on earth he wanted more than to see a dragon fly.

He smiled to himself as he thought aimlessly about his past, his future, and about dragons. He entertained himself by idly kicking a rusted can around as he wandered through the dirty back alleys of London. It was hard not to think about Bill, hard not to flinch and murmur a prayer when he did.

Charlie tried to think of pleasant things as the twilight began to fade from the sooty rooftops.

He would never know quite what it was about them that drew his mind like a Lodstonus Notra charm, but dragons had seen him through the best and worst things in his life so far and they had brought his dad back to him. He had never been great shakes at putting his feelings into words, and had always been labeled 'the quiet Weasley' by those who did not know any better. In truth, words just couldn't convey what he felt every time a dragon shadow fell over him back at the reserve.

Their power, their grace, their rugged refusal to be tamed or tampered with ... everything about them made his heart beat faster.

The soft noise of someone clearing their throat startled him out of his reverie.

As he looked up, his heart really did do a bit of pounding.

"Stella!"

"The one and only." She quipped dryly with a little half smile playing on the edge of her lips. "And don't call me that, you troll."

"What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I like that one, I do! 'What are you doing here?', like I'm some mongrel slobbering on your mum's best rug!" She tried to affect seriousness, but Charlie knew that she couldn't keep a straight face to saver her life. "First no proper hello, now just a 'What are you doing here?' I swear, your manners are as bad as Quex's."

Her smile grew wider when he said nothing, mistaking his inability to speak for petulance at being scolded.

"I came to find you, you great dolt! I've been done for nearly three hours now. Your mum's been pacing around the tea room, wearing a hole in the …"

"Oh my God! Bill! Is he… Did he …"

Charlie couldn't bring himself to ask the question that had been haunting him for what seemed like years instead of hours. He bowed his head, leaning back against the graffiti smeared wall and preparing for the worst.

"Oh, Charlie." She said simply and sympathetically as he felt her cool hand on his cheek.

"Do you have so little faith in me?" She tried to make him laugh, but the moment that his eyes raised up to meet hers, that tiny smile vanished from her face as though disaperating, replaced by sisterly concern.

"Then he's … He'll be …"

"Fine, Charlie. Good as new in a few months." She paused a moment thinking. He could only sigh and slump back against the wall in relief.

"Well, no, not good as new. He'll never be the same."

As Charlie looked into her eyes, he saw emotions that he had never even believed her fully capable of just nineteen months earlier: Sadness, weariness, and empathy that ran deeper than a cold well. Had it really been such a short time since he last saw her?

He had met her nearly two years ago when she was putting the final touches on her training to become a healer, working one of her specialty degrees in creature inflicted wounds on the Llewellyn Scholarship. She had reattached his right leg after a nasty incident with a Moldavian Man-eater, after which they had shared a cup of tea and talked of England. When it became clear that she was a willing conspirator to the occasional (and usually pyrotechnic) prank upon his unsuspecting coworkers, it had been the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

She was a sweet, warm person, and most of the men at Wallachia had given her at least a glance or two, despite her then boyish figure. Yet not one of the twenty odd 'lifers' on staff there had gone further than that. It was odd, given the fact that WMBRF had not played host to any single woman for more than three months at a time in nearly thirty years, but Stella had exuded an … aura. It was as if someone had forgotten to inform her as a child that men were good for more than friendship, and she was so well liked that no one had wanted to press the issue.

And so it was that the men of Wallachia Mountains had come to adopt Myra Estrella as a sort of surrogate little sister. For six months, they had laughed at her absurdities and odd sense of humor, chased off unwanted suitors, and taken her domineering medical attitudes in stride. She had mothered them to her heart's content for half a year, and then she had left.

Yet here she was again like some sort of miracle, in a dark greasy alley, cupping his cheek in her hand and so different from the little girl he had said goodbye to. Both her professionalism and playfulness had vanished and Charlie saw a deep concern and worry in her eyes that he never knew she was capable of. He had seen her as a healer, a co-worker, a friend, almost a second sister, even as a beautiful girl (though he would never tell her that), but this was a new side of Stella.

It was as though he had finally peeled away the face she showed the world to see, pulled back some invisible boundary between happy-go-lucky friend and the human being she was hiding. He saw something in that brief glance that surprised him, something inside her that went down deeper than he had been prepared to find.

But before he could do anything more than glance, the old Stella was back. Her expression hardened imperceptibly, and a few drops of innocence left her features. She was sympathetic and understanding, and there was no lack of sisterly love emanating from her, but she had put the wall back up and seemed to want to keep it that way.

"I wish I could sugar coat this for you, gatito, but I you know I don't like to lie."

It was true. Stella was a terrible liar in the first place, but more importantly she was one of the few women on earth whose sole mission in life did not seem to be befuddling and confusing the every man in sight. She disliked beating around the bush, and was literally honest to a fault at times.

The best part was that she rarely realized just how socially unacceptable many of her comments were, because it provided him with endless material for taunting purposes. Just thinking about it reminded him of the time she had called the President of Wallachia Mountain Breeding and Research Facilities a pompous, egotistical bastard to his face at the staff Christmas Party.

He couldn't help but smile in spite of himself and his curiosity, but Stella had already begun to walk away and he had more important things to think about than Stella making weird faces at him. He had to get back to Bill.

Unfortunately, he had no idea where they were and could not apperate. When he pointed this out to Stella, she got grouchy and replied in an aggravated growl (which reminded Charlie strongly of Mad-Eye Moody) that he knew very well that she didn't like to apperate.

"Like having your guts turned inside out, that. Blech. I'll take my own two legs, thank you very much. Besides, he won't be awake for a few days."

After that, they walked in relative silence except for her occasional profane mutters about men and insensitivity.

By the time they arrived back at St. Mungo's and were admitted by the ugly mannequin, it was nearly eight o'clock. Stella had finally stopped grunting rude things under her breath, and slipped back into her healer's robe just as they reentered the ward where Bill lay sleeping. It was oddly comforting, Charlie decided, to have mum fussing over him and his disappearance, a sign that all was still right with the world.

Stella too, was back to normal and behaving as though nothing odd had happened. She made small talk with his parents and Fleur while they watched Bill breath through a tube that had been charmed to fit between his horrendously bloated lips. She comforted them, explaining that the swelling and scabbing were only temporary and would react well to several very simple charms over the next several days and that the wedding could still take place in a few weeks.

"He will be his old self in no time, don't worry Miss Delacour. I give him no more than two weeks before he'll be plotting on how to escape his hospital bed, if he's anything like Charlie used to describe him." She said with an encouraging smile.

"Zat is my Bill," Fleur cried proudly, "E is as stubourn as a bull."

When Stella brought up his stories, Mrs. Weasley raised an eyebrow and inquired –none too subtly- about how he and Stella knew each other.

Despite the happy confident atmosphere of the softly lit, wood-paneled room, Charlie felt his stomach sink a bit. There were quite a number things he had never told mum, knowing instinctively that she would spend endless hours worrying about his safety if informed. He secretly crossed his fingers behind his back, hoping Stella would have the common sense not to mention any of the really dangerous things that had sent him to her makeshift little tent for visits at three AM.

Sadly, Stella rarely did what people though she ought to.

She launched into a saga of epic proportions involving some of the more 'interesting cases' she had had the 'privilege of encountering' in the wilds of Romania. The worst one had to have been when she told them about the incident with the territorial disputes of two nesting female Iron-Bellies, after which she made an offhand comment that had Charlie wishing he knew how to get a time-turner past the Unspeakables down at Ministry Headquarters without getting sent to Azkaban.

"I have to admit Charlie, I'm impressed that you managed to keep your self in one piece since I last saw you. I would have wagered a couple of galleons that you'd be missing something important after a year and a half of playing with our scaly little friends. And without any proper medical aid, I might add." Her tone made it infinitely clear to Charlie just what she thought of the lax health care at Wallachia Mountains.

Mum was not impressed.

It was growing more and more obvious every minute that Molly Weasley was not fond of his bold, brash, tactless friend. Fleur had instantly taken a liking to her soon-to-be-husband's rescuer, and his father had ceased to be stiff and formal when she told him that she was currently living in a muggle apartment (it had sparked a half hour's worth of discussion on something called Elecklicity, which Charlie had never understood nor cared to learn about), but Charlie's mother could not be budged.

Once Stella had made it apparent that she and Charlie were not romantically involved -she had even laughed at the idea!- his mother no longer had a very high opinion of the woman who enjoyed reattaching people's limbs to their bodies as a means of employment.

Thus it was -with a very heavy heart- that at 1:47 in the morning Charlie heard Stella ask the fatal question.

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.ψ.

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Authoress's Notes: The principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia - for centuries under the suzerainty of the Turkish Ottoman Empire - secured their autonomy in 1856; they united in 1859 and a few years later adopted the new name of Romania, according to the CIA webpage of the world. I want to make my references to Romania as accurate as I can. I am going to base it off of factual information about Romania, and the dragon preserve off of basic premises assumed in any kind of national park or wildlife refuge. More on that later.

Charlie's age is based off of canon, some reasonable deduction, and a bit of help from lexicon. I'm trying to construct a fairly all inclusive age chart of the more important characters for my own purposes right now, so chapters may be a few days farther apart for the next update or two. (Please don't shoot me.) According to my interpretation of canon (based on the lexicon) Charlie is currently twenty three in 1996 (the summer after Half Blood Prince takes place, obviously). He was born Dec. 12, 1972, began Hogwarts in the summer of 1984, and graduated in the summer of 1990.

The Diggorys and the Fawcetts both live in Ottery St. Catchpole. Cedric was of about the same age as Percy, and Hector is a character of my own invention.

A Lodestone, the base word behind the Lodstonus Notra charm (which I made up), is a magnetic substance.

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Fenix- I thought that the 5 for highest thing sounded about right. Congrats again, and thanks for the promise of wonkiness warning. I really appreciate it. I hope this chapter satisfies your Charlie/Myra history craving. No riots here, lest I send Quex to bite your revolutionary arse. (You'll meet Quex pretty soon here, and trust me, you don't want him anywhere NEAR your bum.)

Possum (Squishy)- You still haven't told me if I can call you squish yet. You make the author sad. (sniffle, sniffle, tear) I'm so happy that you like my sense of humor. I hope this chapter makes you laugh too. And here's a little plot spoiler for you: Arthur may get to play with more muggle stuff very soon, much to the amusement of both audience and authoress. I did take a look at Crookshanks's work, and I am eternally grateful for the recommendation. Excellent reading. She's on my favorites now, even though I'm not done reading her Charlie piece yet.