How High the Moon

.ψ.

Chapter Seventeen: How Near, How Far

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Somewhere there's music
How faint the tune
Somewhere there's heaven
How high the moon
There is no moon above
When love is far away too
Till it comes true
That you love me as I love you

Somewhere there's music
How near, how far
Somewhere there's heaven
It's where you are
The darkest night would shine
If you would come to me soon
Until you will, how still my heart
How high the moon

-'How High the Moon', Ella Fitzgerald

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It was a hard, grey sort of sunlight that settled on Diagon Alley one frosty October evening. Most of the shops were closing up for the night, most of the shopkeepers casting a wary eye about as they did before hurrying off to their families. Every week or so there would be one less face in that retreating crowd, one more door boarded shut instead of locked. Yet Charlie Weasley plodded home from Gringots with his robes open and trailing out behind him, a new burn on his left ear and a mind far the signs of coming darkness. He no longer really bothered to think about such far off things … or at least that's what he tried to tell himself.

The truth was that he hated thinking about that night in the club, the night when the war became real, the night that the history books would one day call the Battle of Bricks. They would say that it was one of the first pivotal skirmishes of the War of Prophecy. But Charlie didn't know that. He wouldn't have cared even if he did.

All that Charlie knew was that he was never able to look back on that night without a vile solution of shame and guilt sticking to his ribs. He felt like a coward for running from danger and freezing in the heat of the fight. And what was worse –if anything could possibly be worse than having your arse saved by a girl- he had fainted.

Fainted.

"Charlie Weasley, pansy extraordinaire!" He grimaced to himself and tried to forget, retracing the familiar path back to his dingy little bin of an apartment.

The room was small: one window, a sink and a table, two chairs and the sleeper sofa. It felt too small, almost sinister, like it wanted to trap him and never let him out. Charlie hated being cooped up. Even as a kid he had spent most of his life outside, riding his toy broom or roughhousing with somebody. It didn't matter the weather or the hour, Charlie wanted to be in the garden. The only time he had ever really wanted to come in from playing was to curl up in the tattered old armchair next to his dad.

Nothing changed when he got to Hogwarts except the scenery, a tiny garden to the entire span of the school grounds. Finally free from his self-imposed duties of watching over his siblings, he spent every waking moment he could out in the exciting new space. There were mountains and valleys and trees (and the forbidden forest of course) and the whole place was teaming with creatures to observe.

Wallachia had just been the next logical step. Working outdoors, getting his hands dirty, flying half the day and most importantly, dragons. It had everything. Yet it only took him one night of sitting on his old school trunk and gazing out the tiny window of his new room in that drafty, whitewashed compound to feel more homesick than he ever had in seven years of school. He had peered out at the squat, ramshackle mess hall and the rough stone research barns, examining the mountains for the first time and missing his mother's cooking. Wallachia had seemed so intimidating then, so far from the things that made life tick. No Quidditch, no family, and very few people who even spoke a word of English. How many times in those first weeks had he wished that he could forget about Gryffindor courage and just go home?

And now that same ache for home was drowning him. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, moving out. That's what you were supposed to do once you graduated from your chosen training program. That's just how it worked. You left and found a life of independence and a place of your own. So he had.

And for the most part, Charlie hated it. He missed home, missed his family, missed the garden. But they were no longer his to miss.

And though the floor was full of potions stains and the walls were naked, on moving day his mum and dad had made sure that the closet and the second hand bookshelf found tenants. His robes and jeans were still shabby and faded. His books were still dog eared. The bloody room still felt like a cave or a prison cell with so little light. But it was his. That counted for something.

Didn't it?

Charlie didn't know, and frankly was too tired to care. It was much easier to push the thoughts to the back burner and concentrate on getting decent for his girlfriend. The new dragon was a finicky tyrant of an Opaleye who had an unusually persistent penchant for expressing his unhappiness in flames. Charlie chuckled at the beautiful thing's spirit, but wished he wasn't so often its target. He hunted down a fairly clean set of clothes and set out for his cupboard-sized excuse for a WC.

The door closed behind him with a creepy sort of thud, and he got to undressing as quickly as he could.

"I hate this room."

His robe –the sleeve freshly charred- fell off his shoulders. He glanced at the mirror, hoping that his burns would look prettier than they felt, lest Stella decide that he needed her professional attention instead of … other attentions.

"Today has been the day from Hades. I need her."

"Usually she's always willing to listen to my problems." He thought as he unzipped his jeans (the ones with the kneezle stain behind the knee) and tossed them on the floor as well. "Sure, she'll roll her eyes and tell me that I'm just transfiguring tea leaves into trees again, but after that she'll always really sit back and think and try to be helpful."

"Her advice never works … but she does try." Charlie rumbled out loud to no one and left his boxers on the heap of dirty clothes as he turned on the grouchy waterworks. Pipes grunted and squealed, but eventually gave over and provided a bearable temperature.

He slipped in, wincing when hot water met minor burns and still thinking about her. "I wish I knew what's wrong."

In the weeks since that night at the club, a tiny sort of uneasiness had been growing between them. She had become increasingly secretive. Charlie often walked in on her writing letters and she never spoke of them, pretending they didn't exist or shoving them into parchment tubes before he could ask.

He knew better than to ask.

If Stella didn't offer the information upfront, nine times out of ten she wasn't going to tell you at all.

There were nights when she had 'appointments' and wasn't available to converge on the tartan sofa. She never discussed them. He sometimes felt a niggling worry about another man, but tried to let it go. And then there was the way she threw herself into her work. Late nights, late hours, bringing her research home and analyzing it until he was sure she would go blue in the face. But she wouldn't talk about that either.

"Big surprise, Charlie." He muttered, blindly searching for the soap and feeling the hot water run down his tired muscles. "Maybe I could convince her to rub my back tonight…"

The hardest part was that Stella never told him where she went during the fighting. Charlie was secretly afraid to ask, not wanting to know for certain whether or not she had pulled a Slytherin and run. Those speculations were the most off-limits of all his thoughts. He locked them in an iron bound school chest and hurled them as far back into his mind as he could.

But he couldn't help himself, no matter how odd and disquieting her habits and her secretiveness. Everything about her was still wonderful. Kissing her. Touching her. Being touched. Even just watching telly with her and not saying a word. When they were together, they were happy.

"That's enough for me." He decided firmly, stepping out of the shower and shivering until he was again fully clothed.

By six o'clock, he had apparated into the kitchen of the unfinished flat.

By six twenty three, Bimby had forced two cups of tea down his throat.

By eight past seven, Quex had made his fourth assassination attempt.

Finally, at eight twenty, the sound of Stella's 'moetersickle' echoed in from a small garage behind the flat.

Charlie was on his sixth cup of tea and ready to pounce on somebody.

"Hey." She grumbled, snapping the door shut behind her. A bowl of pears on the countertop began to smoke as she passed by.

Obviously, she was far more upset than her mildly disgruntled attitude was revealing. His feelings of anger oddly evaporated. This was definitely an 'approach-with-extreme-caution' 'situation. Alright. He could handle that. Charlie was sure she couldn't possibly be as bad as the new dragon he was in charge of in the vaults. He would just have to be slow and careful about calming her down.

"What happened?" He kissed the top of her head.

"West Memorial." The bowl of smoking fruit burst into pink flames behind her just as she slumped her head down on the wobbly table. She didn't appear to notice, and Charlie became more worried. She was really getting upset about this, even if her voice wasn't showing it. He couldn't blame her. It was the fourth hospital this month to turn her down.

Still … he eyed up the charred remains of the edibles and wondered … She was always so sensible about these sorts of things: 'Life goes on Charlie' 'Rome wasn't built in a day Charlie' 'I can try again Charlie'. Stubbornly practical.

"So why is this bothering her so much now?"

"Stella, you alright?"

Sparks began to fly from one of the muggle contraptions, a square bit of metal with two slits that was called a 'tosser'.

"Fine." He muscles grew taught and she gritted her teeth quietly, not knowing that Charlie could see her even with her head still on the table. "I just had a long day."

"Stella…"

"Don't call me that!" She threw up her hands, and with her anger at an all time premium, the muggle box (Charlie was still at a bit of a loss as to why the thing was called a 'tosser') exploded in a shower of sparks.

"Err… sorry luv. I …"

"Miss Myra!" Bimby's beaky nose popped out of a small door near the windows, swiftly followed by the rest of her. "You is setting the kitchen on fire again!"

"Virgen Santa!" she yelped, joining the wizened house elf in an attempt to rescue the strange box. "Charlie, why didn't you tell me?"

He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "I didn't want to end up like the fruit. Here, let me help you with that."

Charlie really would have thought that she would have thought of this before him; She was better at charms after all…

"Wait, don't use your…"

"Aguamenti." He intoned lazily.

"…wand."

The tosser made a terrible sizzling noise and instead of extinguishing the flames, the water only seemed to encourage them. It took quite some time for Stella to calm her machine, and by then all three of them had smoky hair and blackened eye-brows.

Bimby, in an uncharacteristically uncharitable mood with her cushion cover looking nearly as wrinkled as her tiny face, smartly informed him that "Sir should mind his own business. Sir should listen to Miss." It took a little while to pacify the tiny creature with apologies and secret promises of help capturing and eradicating the flying menace. (Quex was one thing that the both of them profoundly hated.)

When the kitchen was cleaned (No Bimby, I'll do this myself!) and the sweet little elf had retired back behind the door she entered from, Stella lead him down to the drafty basement and the comfort of the ugly sofa.

"Why do you even bother with those things?"

"What things?"

"Muggle rubbish."

"Because I'm a loon. Haven't you heard?" She slumped further away from him, drawing her itchy afghan around her shoulders and meddling with the 'klickur', a device that altered the programs inside the telly.

He had heard whispers circulating in the order and elsewhere that she wasn't quite right in the head, but tried not to pay attention to them. So what if other people talked behind her back? Who cared what they thought anyway? She was perfect just the way she was.

"Nah, you're not crazy. Just a little rough around the edges." He came over kissed the top of her head. "But these muggle bits though … Stella, you're nearly as bad as my dad."

"What?" She whined.

"You and all your … thingys. You practically live like a muggle. You don't floo or apparate or do anything the normal way! Are you a witch or not?"

"I think we've established the answer to that question, gatito."

He blushed, catching her reference. Memories of the other night on the tartan sofa bubbled to the front of his mind, but he pushed them down quickly before he really started to turn redder than his many freckles.

"What I meant to ask was … why do you fancy those things so much?"

"They're … easier."

"Easier? I almost kill myself every time I get near the bloody contraptions. They're the most confusing things I've ever seen!"

"Maybe for you. You grew up with two pureblood parents. But they're not so hard to understand, ever since Ted explained them to me. They're rather interesting really."

"Ted?"

"Sure. He was muggle born. Did I ever tell you that they bought me all those appliances upstairs? They knew I couldn't cook if my life depended on it, so that was my graduation gift."

"You can't cook?" He was a bit downcast.

She only laughed. "I can't do much of anything. I don't cook or sew or bake or clean or mend. I have such a terrible black thumb that Professor Sprout actually threw me out of three of the greenhouses. Said the plants were going to tear up their roots and run for their lives if she didn't." Charlie found it hard to picture sweet, dumpy little Professor Sprout throwing anyone out of anywhere. It made her sound like one of those 'bouncy-men' at the muggle clubs. "I only do a few things, but I like to think I do them well. Even if the general population at large begs to differ…" She added sourly.

Charlie scrambled to take her mind off the subject. "But I still don't understand. What's the point of making food the muggle way? Bimby loves to cook."

"I don't really make food, it's just coffee and toast and smoothies … things like that. I like knowing that I can do something the muggle way, the harder way. I … it's good to know that there's more to me than just my magic, that it's just one small piece of who I am. I don't want it to define me or hem me in."

Charlie did not understand a word she was saying.

"I envy them, gatito. I guess a little part of me always wished that I wasn't a witch. It would be so much simpler that way, so much … cleaner. I wouldn't have to worry about … a lot of things. They don't know about any of this: war, blood prejudice, the d … he-who-must-not-be-named … not any of it.

And besides, muggles have a lot that the wizarding world has missed out on. They can make incredible machines, invent technology that I don't even understand, and oh! Their medicine! If I could get half of those ideas of theirs to work with magical patients, I would die a happy woman.

I admire them. They are at a disadvantage, but they go on anyways. It's not like they know that, but still. They may not have magic, but in a way they make their own."

"What do you mean, make their own?"

She sighed and thought for a few commercials.

"When I was really little, sometimes I would pretend that I could fly up there. Up to the moon." She pointed out the tiny basement window and into the night sky. "It was my secret place where nobody could get to me and everything always made sense. Everybody was good and kind and wonderful." After a moment she snorted good-naturedly and shook her head, as though brushing away a cobweb from her memories. "I wasn't the brightest little bulb in the box."

"Bulb in the …?"

"It's a muggle expression. Never mind. Point is, I always had this secret dream of figuring out how to actually get there. It's stupid, but like I said, I wasn't exactly a genius. I went through all of 'Buela's books, even got the poor old thing to drag me down to the Bibliotheca, but I never could find any magical means of getting there. It's just too far away, and there's no oxygen … a thousand reasons why it would never work."

"Well, every kid has weird ideas. I had an invisible Dragon named Heathcliff who chased my little brothers for me." Charlie grinned sheepishly and placed a hand over hers. "We all gotta grow up sometime Stella."

"That's just the thing." She twinkled. "My juvenile delusions were real."

"You can't be serious?" Even as he said it, he wondered traitorously about her sanity. The woman was a terrible liar so he would know if she was trying to tease him again, but there was not an ill-concealed grin in sight.

She nodded. "Ted gave me a used collection of history books as an acceptance gift the day I got my letter from Hogwarts. On the train ride I stumbled over a section about how muggles had figured out how to get to the moon."

"Muggles?" Were muggles even capable of something like that? He supposed they weren't utterly daft, but they couldn't outdo even the stupidest wizard either.

"Yeah. Shocker, huh? They invented these shuttles and spacesuits and rockets and they really did it. They've been going into space for decades now." He wasn't about to ask what 'shuttles' and 'spacesuits' were.

"Huh. They do have some bright ideas once in a while, those muggles, don't they? Bet you were dead chuffed when you found out."

"Actually, I wish I'd never read the thing." She smiled quietly, closing her eyes and faintly shaking her head again.

"Whad'you mean?"

"Oh, it's possible to go there, but only a few people have ever done it."

"That doesn't mean you can't."

She looked at him like he was five years old. "Yes it does, gatito. I'd have to be part of the American military … uh, sort of like their Aurors … I'd have to have more luck than Felix Felicis himself to get into their space program, and oh yeah, I'd have to be a muggle … unless I wanted the shuttle to blow up because of my genetic magic and kill me, that is."

"Oh."

He couldn't think of much else to say.

"That's why I wish I'd never read that book. It's one thing to dream about something that you know is impossible. You can make peace with that, you know? It's just a fantasy, a daydream.

But then suddenly it's not a daydream anymore. It's really real, it's possible, there's hope! Just … not for you."

That soft, iron tipped smile was etched into every line of her face.

"It's like trying to hold the moon in your hands. It looks so close, doesn't it? Like you could just coax it down and keep it for a rainy day." She raised a hand to the night sky and placed her forefinger and thumb around the speckle of light with cool, tangy sadness brushing her voice.

"But it never does come down. In the end, it doesn't matter how bad you want something. If you can't have it, you can't have it." She sighed and pinched her fingers together, blocking out the moon. "You learn to accept it and move on. You find something new to dream about."

Charlie thought about that for a minute. A lot of what she had said tonight made no sense to him, but that last bit struck some kind of chord.

"What do you dream about now?" He asked quietly, looking steadily into her eyes and asking for an answer that even he didn't know.

Stella smiled again, but this time it was soft and genuine and shy. She slipped over next to him and laid her hand on his arm.

"Give you three guesses."

.ψ.

A few days later, Bimby ushered an irritable gray figure into the kitchen.

"Would Sir like some tea?"

When the figure didn't answer she quietly exited, leaving it to its thoughts. The figure didn't even notice. One can hardly blame him though.

Harry Potter was a high-strung wrecking ball of tension. His friends were fighting again, Ginny was crying, and the only idea he'd had for the location of another horcrux had failed. The only good thing about the afternoon was that no one had buckled about him visiting Myra by himself. In fact, all three of them had been too shattered to do anything but crawl up the steps of Grimmauld Place and fall into dreamless sleep. Five and a half days without real rest could do that to a person.

They told him not to worry, they'd be fine, they just needed a bit of a kip. He was trying hard to believe them. He needed them.

Yet he knew that this was his fight.

Oh there were plenty of people who wanted to help. Tonks and Charlie were good listeners, even if they couldn't be told everything. Lupin was being a git –still silently implying his disapproval of Harry going off on his own and trying to act like his father or something- … but he was still Lupin. That meant something. The Weasleys were still sort of the family he'd never had, but they felt the same as Lupin. Harry didn't need that. He didn't need anyone. He could do this alone.

Then there was Ginny … well, what was there to say about Ginny? And of course Ron and Hermione would stand by him till the day Uncle Vernon cracked and went about in lipstick and high heels. Even Myra Estrella was useful as a doctor … err … healer, anyway. He tried not to pay attention to how calculating that sounded, thinking about people in terms of their usefulness. Was this why Scrimgour was such a wank? Hell, even the Ministry probably had good intentions somewhere down deep (very, very deep, the gits).

But good intentions and loyalty would only get them so far, and somehow Harry knew that he would always be alone. He had lost his parents. He had practically signed Sirius's death certificate himself. And Dumbledore … There was no one to depend on, no one to shield him anymore. This was his war to win or lose.

Once when he was in primary school, the class had gone to see the Wallace Collection in London. Harry wasn't much taken with art and really only remembered trying to doge Dudley and his gang, but he vaguely recalled hiding behind a statue of a muscly man holding the world on his shoulders. That bloody statue was probably the only other person on earth who knew how he felt right now. Pretty pathetic, huh?

There was so much to do. How was one person supposed to take all of this on? How was he supposed to win? He wasn't strong or smart or brave enough to make this work. He just wanted to get this right –had to get this right- but Harry had no idea what he was doing.

It didn't make things easier knowing that everyone was depending on him, watching and waiting, praying that their faith in him would not be misplaced. So many people thought that he was invincible, all powerful, the second incarnation of Dumbledore or something. But they saw a lie. They looked at him and saw a fantasy that they had created so that they could sleep at night. They were depending on a hero that didn't exist.

Harry wondered what the important people thought about him. Ron, Hermione, Ginny, the Weasleys, Lupin… the people that mattered.

Would Dumbledore smile with his twinkling eyes?

Would his parents be proud of him, if they could see?

Would Sirius clap him on the shoulder and tell him he was a good man?

"It doesn't matter." He told himself firmly. "They're dead, Harry. They can't see you."

He was cut short when Myra sailed into the room, her eyebrows blackened and her hair frizzled in its little hairnet. She wore an extremely tattered old robe and a pair of glasses that made Professor Trelawney's seem commonplace. The lenses were thick as the bottom of a coke bottle and dead convex, causing her eyes to appear to nearly bulge out of her head. The owlish, knobby rims and the leather straps that secured the things to her head made the whole kit look like antique aviator goggles … if aviator goggles ever flashed blue and gold diagrams on the surface of their lenses that is.

"Harry, come in!" She motioned to one of the untrustworthy kitchen chairs and he was thankful. His left shoulder was aching from the fall down the pipes in Myrtle's bathroom, and his head felt like it was full of tunneling goblins who were all trying to mine ore out of his brain.

"I wasn't expecting you so soon." She sat down across from him and folded her hands. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

The look on her face was bland but he felt her silently asking 'what were you looking for?' He hadn't told them anything. Not anything important anyway. Her just enough to see if she had any books on the subject, and Charlie … well, he'd just slipped in mentioning them to Charlie. All that the older boy knew was that they were dark magic, that the four of them were going to destroy them, and that they had something to do with death. Despite Charlie's usually calm, easy manner, even that much information had frightened him.

No one else knew anything more, except Ron, Hermione, and Gin. And it was going to stay that way.

"No. No luck." At least he didn't have to lie about that. They hadn't found anything in the Chamber except rat skeletons and snake skins. Lately lying had just been bothering Harry more and more, almost making the scars on his hand twitch every time he did it. "God a bit of a scrape though … and I need more of that stuff for my head."

He hated to admit this sort of weakness.

"Alright, have a seat. Let me look." She dragged a dubious looking chair over to the cupboards and pulled out the same packing box of supplies while he found less shaky perch and started to remove his jumper … very slowly. "Nasty scratch there Harry."

"You're not helping."

Myra tisked and shook her head. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you, kid." She started to clean out the gash. It stung like a swarm of bees.

After a little while of working in silence, she spoke up again.

"Nyms is getting married next week. She wanted me to ask you to come if you could."

He grunted noncommittally. It would be great to see Remus get married and all, but there just wasn't time! Horcruxes to find, a dark lord to kill, a world to save … was he just supposed to pull an extra hour out of thin air or something?

"I don't suppose I could get you to talk to Mr. L … Remus … for a while, could I? Maybe in exchange for pulling a few strings and getting you some more of that Frenis solution? Oh, knock it off, kid! I didn't mean that you should let him corner you and keep you from … whatever it is you're doing." She gave him that look again.

Bloody hell! Was anyone ever going to leave him alone?

"You're old enough not to need your hand held now, but the man does seem to care about you for some unfathomable reason." She rolled her eyes and went back to his wound. "And besides, he keeps hinting at Nyms that she should tell him what you're up to. It's driving her insane."

He knew it! He never should have mentioned it around those two! Charlie either! They were all liabilities!

"Oh don't frown at me like that. She hasn't said a word. I just think you ought to talk to him. Dumbledore created the order for just this sort of…"

"Leave off." He tensed his shoulders and immediately regretted it.

"Alright, fine then. But kid … Harry. Even if you won't talk to him, I … I do need something else from you." She said stiffly.

"Great. Just fucking brilliant!" Harry exploded. He was sick of being taken advantage of at every turn. "Does everybody on this whole bloody planet want something from the great Harry Potter? Ahh!"

"Would you hold still, you ego maniac? You're going to make that thing even worse, and then I'm really going to have to do a number on you!" He sat down. "And besides, that's not what I meant. I just want a bit of a … favor."

She reminded him strongly of Slughorn just then. "What sort of favor?"

"Let me fight." The words were crisp, hard edged. "I know you don't want anyone else involved … but, just let me fight when you need another wand."

"Huh?"

"I don't really want to explain this to you kid. Just … let me fight." He heard a deep intake of breath. "Please."

This was new.

Harry was used to people bullying him. He was used to people sucking up, to being fawned over and tricked and used and manipulated.

But it had been a while since someone had just asked, just said please.

"Why?"

He felt her finish tucking in the last of the bandages around his shoulder. "There you are. Should be right as rain in a few days." She commented, ignoring his question and gathering up her supplies.

"Why?"

He turned and watched her set down a roll of those long bandages. Her jaw was clenched and when she looked up at him there was determination in every line of her body.

"I have some old scores to settle." She stated in a firm, quiet voice. "I'll do anything you like in return. Get you illegal potions, pass you information from the order, harbor an army in this apartment for you if I have to, but kid … I need to fight."

"Why is this so important to you?"

"You should go get a nap while you can. The rest of them are going to be up in a bit."

"I'm not going to agree to anything unless you give me something here."

"Why am I fixated? Why do I need a reason? I'm mad, remember? Maybe I just have this crazy urge to go out and zap people. Maybe it's just how I get my jollies. Ever consider that? Cause I'll tell you, half the order thinks that's the God's honest truth anyways. Why shouldn't you?" That same bloody bitterness was back. It was really starting to piss him off.

"What happened to you?"

She smiled at him, a little offended and a little indulgent. It was a weird combination. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you're nearly as cracked as I am. People aren't just born like that."

She stared at him intensely for a split second, then sighed. "Don't be too sure about that kid."

"I am sure. Dumbledore told me once that it's our choices that define us, nothing else." It felt like he was baring his soul, talking about Dumbledore. "I'd trust his opinions with my life."

"Hmm, well that does sound like him, the loony old codger." There was a sort of distant affection in Myra's voice. "Let's walk, shall we? You'll need some sleep if you want to get back to it."

They walked down several dark hallways before Harry decided to ask again. "So what was it?"

"Why am I loony? Tit for tat with you, huh kid? Alright then. I can respect that." She thought for a little while, the sound of their steps the only noise to be heard.

"A lot of things, I guess. I … Well, I loved someone who couldn't love me back. Not the way I wanted them to. It's hard, that. Numbs you up inside, freezes you. Hard to get past. I did some stupid things when I was younger." Her words were short and choppy, like they cost dear to say out loud.

"A bloke?" The thought popped out before he could stop it. She was this worn out and tired because of a bloke? He made a mental note never to break Ginny's heart.

"¡Ojalá!" She muttered. "No kid, not a boy. Family."

"Family?" He couldn't help asking.

"Yeah."

Maybe they had more in common than he thought.

"I can understand that, I guess. The Dursleys weren't a bloody walk in the park."

She looked up questioningly.

"My Aunt and Uncle and their kid, Dudley. Took me in when my parents… Erm. Right. Nightmares, the lot of them. Compared to them, your family is a dream, even if Tonks is dead clumsy and can't keep her mouth shut."

"Hey, leave her out of this! This has nothing to do with…"

"Then who are you talking about?" Harry wasn't in the mood to beat around the bush.

She exhaled through her nose and wouldn't look at him, concentrating on the hallway.

"Drop it kid."

The topic was closed.

They soon reached a door and she opened it to reveal a bedroom. The room was very bare and smelled like sawdust. It was good enough, he figured. A mid-sized, crumple-eared little dog tried to follow them in, but Myra wasn't having any of it.

"Na-ah, ya crazy mut. This is a room for people. Go on, scat, before you make me sneeze!"

The dog was not pleased, but after a minute it trotted down the hall to find another place to sleep. Harry felt kinda sorry for the thing. After Sirius, he'd developed a fondness for dogs.

"You didn't have to do that. I could've just slept in Ginny's room."

"As I've said before kid, I wouldn't recommend doing that anywhere in the near vicinity of one Charlie Weasley unless you want to loose your ability to breathe. Get some rest, now." She closed the door briskly.

He laid there on the bed for hours just staring at the ceiling, mulling over the way Myra had talked about family. He thought about the Dursleys and what he'd learned the last time he saw them: how he realized that they weren't quite the soulless monsters he'd always thought them. He couldn't hate them, not completely anymore. They weren't saints and he certainly didn't love them, but … Aunt Petunia had a little bit of justification, even if it didn't excuse her from what she'd done to him.

And then he started thinking about his own family, his real family. His parents. About the few brief glimpses he'd gotten of them in memories and mirrors and old photographs. It was so hard, knowing that those glimpses would be the only chances he'd ever get to see them or feel their love. Even after sixteen years without them, part of him still was wishing that he'd wake up and find them alive. What he wouldn't give to see them, just one more time!

Then it struck him as sharply as the lightning bolt on his forehead:

Maybe he could…

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Authoress's Notes: To thank you all for your continued patience with my speed, I hope you enjoyed seeing our hero in the shower. (He would blush if he knew we were watching…)

I just have to say that I love you readers. That sounds so sappy (I know it) but it's terribly true, especially in the case of those beautiful souls who take the time out of their busy lives to review my humble work. Reviews just make my day. Seriously, I just get this little smile whenever I read them! So in light of my deep gratitude and appreciation, I'm going to give the reviewers something they've been after for ages: ANSWERS. Here's the deal. Y'all send me a question about the story that you're dying to have answered, and I'll pick the most interesting one to reply to. You'll actually get answers from me for once, instead of cryptic ways of saying 'I'm-not-going-to-tell-you-so-keep-reading'. This is a one time only deal and obviously I can't reply to any questions that reveal the major plot secrets, but if your questions are sensible and not 'what's the end of the story' type of things, I'm glad to provide a little joy for the readers. Be creative!

For those brits out there reading this fic, Charlie's name for the toaster should be particularly amusing, I hope. For the non-British speakers in the reading community, I'll explain the humor. According to english2american dot com: "Tossing" in the UK is masturbating. Coincidentally, to call someone a "tosser" is to suggest that they have an overly intimate relationship with Pam and her five sisters. (I found this explanation quite amusing really) Now do you understand our poor hero's confusion?

¡Ojalá! - (I wish)

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Possum- Thanks. I'm glad it came out alright. Hope you like this (longer) chapter better.

Randomisation- Hey there! Welcome to the reviewing family. Come on in, pull up a comfy chair. Drop in any time, lol. Thanks so much for your blush inducing compliments. It's so great to hear from new people, and I'm incredibly flattered by your opinion of my work. Thanks. Hmm. Ted and Stella … a very important connection there … too bad I can't spoil the surprise for you! Hard lessons? She could have been… Guess you'll just have to keep reading… (I know, I'm a terrible person grins)

Aqua- Yes, those darn cliffs … the way you put it reminds me of that scene in 'The Princess Bride'. Have you seen it? If you haven't you should! And if you have, perhaps you know what I mean? wiggles eyebrows at you No, I did not kill off Stella … this chapter. That is no guarantee of survival in any future chapters, mind you! (I love being an author; it's the god complex you see. I can just smite characters down out of the clear blue sky … muahaha!) I'm so relieved to hear that the pacing was acceptable. I was nervous about it, I must admit. Thanks for all your kind words.