How High the Moon
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Chapter Three: Hard-Headed Creatures
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"Is something wrong, Mrs. Weasley?" inquired a sleepy looking Stella from underneath one of the warm blankets that Charlie's dad had conjured up earlier in the evening.
Charlie should have known then and there that the conversation had taken a turn for the worse, but he had been a bit distracted for the past two hours by how nice his friend looked now that she had taken off that ugly robe.
"I suppose we ought to get back to the burrow." His mother said with obvious reluctance.
Fleur, who had been arguing against leaving Bill's side for most of the night, folded her arms and glared at everyone she could. "I will not leave 'im alone here. What if 'e wakes up, and we don't know eet?"
"Stella said he won't be awake for days." Charlie interjected tiredly, trying to hold off the inevitable row for as long as he could.
Stella merely sighed, the professional edge to her voice returning. "Visitors are not allowed to stay in the wards, Miss Delacour. I don't like to repeat myself."
This, if anything, only inflamed Fleur's obstinate streak.
"I will not leave 'im! Your 'ouse, eet is too far from 'ere."
"That one could out-stubborn an Iron Belly." Charlie thought to himself. He desperately wished that his father was awake, if only to have the company of another man for the duration of what had all the makings of another irrational argument amongst the women in the room.
Unfortunately, Mr. Weasley had fallen asleep not long after conjuring the blankets, and was now snoring loudly in a dark corner of the room (much to the disapproval of all of the portraits, who were shooting him dirty looks by turns and trying to sleep themselves).
"Well dear, I wish that we could stay too," said Mrs. Weasley, shooting an irritated glance at Stella, "But I don't know anyone in town that I would care to call on at two in the morning to ask about a place to sleep."
"We could stay at zee Leaky Cauldron." Fleur replied offhandedly, not realizing at first that the expense of a few nights in an inn were not within his parent's modest means.
By the time she figured out why his mum was giving her the patented glare of doom, there was no taking back what she had said and the tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a severing charm.
Charlie should have known from the beginning that this would lead to no good.
He should have taken his father's unconscious state as some sort of ill omen. But while he settled down and prepared to ignore the battle to come, Charlie merely began to wonder if all women had no higher goal in life than to confuse, upset, and generally irritate men. It really did seem like it at times.
Lost in thought, he was unaware of the lurking danger as Stella quietly contemplated the situation for a few moments. Had he been paying attention, he might have recognized the silence for what it really was: The calm before the storm.
At the sound of her unexpected voice, his head jerked up in time to hear the fatal invitation.
"Well, I suppose you lot could stay with me for a few days."
Yes, he should have known from the beginning that something was about to go very wrong.
Both his sister-in-law and his mum immediately began to thank her and politely decline while hiding their true feelings, but Fleur's excitement was as obvious as his mother's hostility.
"What a kind offur! Eet would be perfect, but I could not…"
"We wouldn't dream of imposing on you, Healer Estrella. Apperating from the burrow is not taxing enough to impinge on your hospitality."
Maybe it was the mention of apparation that triggered Stella's bullish nature, but whatever it was, she was soon quite insistent on the matter.
"Come now, you two. I won't have you running back and forth like mindless little flutterbies every morning and night. I insist. And any how, I've been needing some guests at the place to play guinea pig for me. I've been fixing up some extra rooms on the flat I'm renovating, so that families of long term patients have a place to stay."
Charlie's heart began to plummet down to somewhere past his toes.
"I don't often have guests who can tell me what they think of it so far. It runs on muggle technology, since I don't have the foggiest clue about how to convert the thing to magic, but it's really quite…"
Fleur, mum, and Stella? In an apartment? A muggle apartment? For Merlin only knew how long?
"Besides, Bimby would be so happy to have visitors. I'm afraid she gets a bit lonely, the poor thing, with only me and Quex and the birds for company."
Fleur looked delighted, radiating waves of victory next to a satisfied Stella. His mum glowered at the both of them and futilely tried to reject the offer, while Mr. Weasley snored on, blissfully unaware of the terror to come.
Charlie would have willingly walked into a cell in Azkaban before setting foot in that house.
Not that he really had much choice.
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Stella's flat was only a ten minute walk from St. Mungo's, but every step felt like a mile to Charlie.
His mother was not helping the situation one iota, hurling directing dirty looks at the rapidly worsening conditions of their surroundings. A glare for an overflowing trash bin here, a sniff for a greasy bum there … if looks could kill, the entire neighborhood would have been crumbling to dust at their feet.
Stella and Fleur quietly discussed the details of Bill's care after he was released, and Charlie absently thought that he would have to tell his brother about their plans once the man was conscious again. He suspected that Bill would rope him into more than one escape attempt in the coming days, as it seemed that the women had no intention of letting him out of that hospital bed till he was old and grey.
Dad just spent the entire trip goggling at the muggle surroundings, looking very much like a Japanese tourist couple that had once visited Wallachia Mountains, save for the fact that he didn't have a camera strung round his neck. Then again, Arthur Weasley would probably venture into Hell itself if given the chance to wonder at muggle inventions. Neither his wife's silent death threats, nor the noisy alley brawls they passed caused Charlie's dad to bat an eye.
Charlie had to admit that there were several aspects of the graffiti caked back streets that he could have done without himself, namely the prostitute that had trailed them for a few blocks back there trying to proposition him. Charlie had a sneaking suspicion that the lady was not as lady-like as she would have had him believe.
Stella simply ignored everyone's opinions, occasionally chatting more with Fleur as they neared her apartment.
It was hard to tell what Stella thought of their reactions to her neighborhood.
"Either she's gotten pretty good at ignoring mum," thought Charlie, "or she really doesn't notice. Who can tell with women?"
Why had he ever thought that she was not confusing? What had he been thinking? There was no such thing as an uncomplicated woman!
By the time they finally reached the flat, which turned out to be an entire small apartment building, everyone was glad to hurry inside despite its decrepit exterior. As they climbed the crumbling brick steps up to the front door, all Charlie could think about was the hot food and warm guest beds Stella had described and getting inside, away from the cold and the fog.
Charlie was the last one in. He closed the door just in time to hear Stella light the lamps with a tired command of liatamen, and the hall was immediately full of a deafening roar of chirping, twittering, and squeaking.
He was a bit surprised to see Stella jumped on, perched on, and otherwise generally greeted by a motley assortment of odd looking animals and a tiny, frail looking house elf. Charlie vaguely recalled her having said something about her pets one night back in Romania, but hadn't thought about it since. In fact, he hadn't really given any thought to how Stella lived, or with whom, or ever bothered to ask after the first few days.
It was another one of those subjects that every Wallachia resident had quickly learned to let lie when it came to Stella. When pressed about her family or past, she had either avoided the question with a fuzzy answer and changed the topic, or gotten outright hostile towards the inquirer. Even the slowest man at Wallachia Mountain Breeding and Research Facilities had caught on eventually. Charlie was proud to say that he was not the slowest, and that his curiosity about the matter had been pretty short lived because he disliked prying into other people's business, but now felt kind of guilty about not having pressed her about her personal life.
To Charlie, Stella had always just been the kind friend with a stale sense of humor, the one who was good with fire charms, the playful prankster. She was the girl with the happy smile. Stella had never been anything more than one dimensional in his eyes, and he had never done anything to change that.
But as Charlie watched her introduce her pets to his family and tell the house elf to show them to their rooms, he recalled the events of that afternoon in the alley. A wave of embarrassment washed over him as he realized that he hadn't considered that she might be more than just a pretty face and a grin. He had never really stopped to think that she was a real person, someone with pets and a home and emotions that could affect him.
Suddenly, Charlie was jolted out of his deep concentration as something slammed into his forehead.
"Quex!" Charlie heard Stella screech as little silver stars blinked in his vision. "What was that for, you sodding idiot? He's a guest, not an intruder! Come back here this instant, or I'll wring your scaly little neck!"
Charlie heard an angry hiss, followed by Stella stomping out of the room. It took him a few minutes to regain his sight, and by the time he had, he found his family and the little herd of animals gone and Stella no where to be found.
"What was that all about?" He asked grumpily. He had been looking forward to food and sleep, not to getting pummeled.
He didn't get a chance to make any guesses, because just then Stella burst back through the door with one of the strangest creatures he had ever observed trying to wriggle its way out of her death grip.
It was a beast that Charlie had only seen once before, and then only in a nearly prehistoric textbook his seventh year. He felt his jaw drop in shock.
The entry from Frances Fangtooth's 'A History of Rare and Mysterious Beasts' replayed over and over again in his head:
Buto- An ancient and extraordinarily venomous winged serpent, whose origins are lost in the sands of time. It is thought to be a distant relative of the Occamy. Highly elusive and extraordinarily cunning, several Buto were well known for having been able to speak in human tongues. Buto are said to have reached a length of only three to four feet, and are deeply associated with the dark arts and what was referred to in antiquity as 'black magic'. Some myths cite its appearance as early as the old kingdom of Egypt as an elusive companion of several court magicians, including Melampus Cammer, one of the first recorded dark lords. Many of their body parts were used to great effect in potions pertaining to the…
"Apologize, you little ingrate!" She barked at the squirming snake as it vainly tried to free itself by flapping its wings.
"Is that a…?"
"Buto? Yep. Pissy little bugger, innt he?" She grunted, obviously having trouble controlling the thing. "I'm serious Quex, that was a rude…"
Stella never got the chance to finish. She was interrupted by another vicious round of hissing from the little black snake before it managed to poke her in the eye with one of its long, silvery pinions. Once she was distracted, the Buto quickly escaped through an open doorway.
"Bastard!" She called after it, looking about ready to bite something.
"Sorry, Charlie. He's not fond of new people. I probably should have warned you, huh?" She said with a tired little grin as she helped him to his feet.
"Probably." Muttered Charlie, not nearly as amused by the situation as she was. "Does he do that to everybody?"
There was a potent gleam of sarcasm in her eyes as she led him down another dark hall of the creaking apartment.
"No. He must really like you." She snorted.
Charlie didn't think it was very funny, but was too tired to think of something witty to say. Instead, he tried hard to stifle the yawn that was threatening to escape.
It seemed like ages before she took him up a flight of doubtful looking stairs and down yet another hall to the promised and long awaited bed. The room was chilly, and smelled faintly of fresh paint and sawdust, but the bed was the only thing he could see.
"Will this do?" Stella asked with an air of pride.
"It's wonderful."
"You're only saying that because you're too tired to see straight, you great lummox."
"Mff." He grunted as he flopped onto the mattress and pulled up the covers, not even bothering to change.
Stella just snorted and turned out the light.
"Sleep well, gatito." She said, quietly closing the door.
He yawned and smiled. "Night, Stella."
"Don't call me that!" Came a yell from down the hall.
He curled up under the covers and lay there exhastedly. But as drowsy as he felt, Charlie could not seem to fall asleep.
Dim echoes of his parent's conversations could be heard in the hall, and Fleur's stifled weeping floated painfully on the air in the next room. Thoughts raced through his mind at break neck speed. Worry for Bill clouded his mind for nearly an hour according to the little muggle clock, whose bright red numbers glared accusingly at him from the bedside table.
Despite all of Stella's assurances, a seed of doubt and fear had taken root in his mind. What if something went wrong? What if her cure didn't work? What if Bill … What if he …
Charlie couldn't imagine a world without Bill. His older brother had always been there for him (if in his own irresponsible, party-happy big brother way) guiding him and cheering him on. Bill had taught him to ride his first broom, had coached him on how to talk to girls, smuggled him his first butterbeer.
How could life exist if Bill wasn't in it?
Charlie tried desperately to think of something else, but the only other subject his traitorous brain could come up with was the one that he wanted most to avoid just then.
Her face flooded his head; her voice lingered in his mind's eye. Again and again, Charlie cursed himself for feeling attracted to her. She would never understand, and would probably be hurt and upset if she ever found out. And if he knew anything at all about women (he still wasn't quite sure if he did or not) getting one hurt and upset was probably as smart as asking that poisonous Buto to take up residence in his pants.
Knowing Stella, explaining how he felt might very well cost him a limb or two.
He punched the pillows in irritation and threw one at the little demonic clock, knocking its knowing red smirk out of sight.
Why was it that he, Charlie Weasley, could not find any sort of lasting happiness beyond his dragons, his books, and his broom? Why did he always end up the odd man out? It wasn't like he didn't have anything to offer. He had made good marks in school. He was a nice guy, with a job he loved. Heck, he was a Quidditch captain!
"No," said a little nagging voice, "You used to be a Quidditch captain. Who cares if you had good marks? So what if you're a nice guy? What girl wants to date a nice guy, anyway?"
The voice had a point.
He really wasn't anything special. He wasn't good looking like Bill, or brainy like Percy. He wasn't funny like the twins, outgoing like Ron, or determined like Ginny. He was just nice, boring Charlie Weasley.
Laying there staring at the dark ceiling, Charlie could hardly keep from crying. Frustration and loneliness ricocheted inside him, leaving him sleepless and discouraged. And still, thoughts of Stella haunted him. He remembered when they first met, and all of the times they had had in those short six months. If only he had had more time with her! Maybe something could have happened. Maybe he would not be in this cold, quiet bed all alone. Maybe … if only …
Suddenly, Charlie sat bolt upright grabbing the sheets in his tense fists. Uneasiness cut into his stomach like a knife as he realized that he had missed something important about Stella, something he should have known from the beginning.
Why had he never asked before?
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Authoress's Notes: Don't you just love cliff hangers?
Quex and Butos are my own creations. The notes on the research behind them are as follows:
Both Frances and his book are my own creations. The Occamy is a creation of J.K.R. A description of it can be found on the lexicon website, as well as many other Harry Potter sites. There are quite a few myths around the world involving winged snakes that I used as the basis for Quex and his species:
Most obviously, there is the Christian belief that before the advent of original sin the devil (Lucifer) took the form of a winged snake and convinced Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, but was then condemned by God (Genesis, chapter 3) to crawl on his belly and eat dust all his days.
In South America, the Aztecs believed in a god called Quetzalcoatl, who was described as a feathered snake and was one of their chief deities. Human sacrifices were made to him in order to appease him and hold off the coming end of the age. He was a symbol of the totality of heaven and earth. It is also believed that Quetzalcoatl is the source of all divine powers and thus all evil and good things in the world are because of him. This is where I got Quex's name from.
The name Buto comes from ancient Egyptian religion, and wow, are there a lot of myths about snakes and winged serpents! The ancient Egyptians were really fond of snakes because they got rid of rats, so there were several goddesses that often appeared in the form of a hooded cobra connected to the fertility of the fields, granaries, and vineyards. Oddly enough these goddesses were also associated with nursing and breast-feeding. (Voldy-poo, anybody?) In one religious text, a high priest named Ank-af-na-khonsu calls on a "winged snake of light, Hadit" during a very sacred fire ritual called (and I kid you not here) the Mass of the Phoenix. (Creepy, huh?)
The other really important snake in their religion was the cobra (Naja haje) that was worn in the front of the king's headdress along with a vulture. The two animals represented two very important and very powerful sister goddesses that guarded the pharaoh (Egyptians saw him as God on earth). The vulture goddess was called Nekhebet (more to come on her in later chapters). Her sister (the cobra) was called Wadjet or Buto, and she was a goddess of justice, the hunt, battle, hell, and protecting the righteous. She was often shown rising up to smite down the pharaoh's opponents with fire or spitting venom.
In regards to the wizard I mentioned named Melampus Cammer: In Cambodia, there is a family called Cammer has great regard and faith in a Nag (serpent) god, whom they claim they are descended from. According to them, the Nag father gave the island of Cambodia to his son at his wedding. In mythology, Melampus was a man who cared for animals so much that the snakes licked his ears and gave him the priceless gift of being able to speak in the tongues of animals.
On a reviewer's recommendation, I took a look at the work of an extraordinarily talented writer named Crookshanks22. After being enthralled by her excellent Charlie centered fic, A Romance, with Dragons (Which has some astonishingly ironic coincidences with my own. And I mean freakishly coincidental coincidences!), I then was utterly compelled to read its sister story: Autumn into Spring. Both are above and beyond my highest praises, and I would eagerly recommend them to anyone who asks. Both stories can be found in my favorites.
Well, what are you waiting for? Go read them!
NOW!
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Fenix and HarryPotterMagic, an important note! Because I combined two of my chapters after you guys had reviewed the first posting of chapter four, you won't be able to comment on this chapter four unless you sign off and review anonymously. If you would be so incredibly kind as to do that, I would be forever grateful. I appreciate hearing what you guys have to think of my chapters more than words can say, and every review really puts a ray of happiness in my day. I do understand if it is too much trouble to do that though, I know it is a big bother just to leave a review. Either way, thanks for your input so far.