How High the Moon

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Chapter Nineteen: A Heart Full of Brimstone

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Well we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out and
Show ourselves
When everyone has gone
Some are satin some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on

Well we all fall in love
But we disregard the danger
Though we share so many secrets
There are some we never tell
Why were you so surprised
That you never saw the stranger
Did you ever let your lover see
The stranger in yourself?

-'The Stranger', Billy Joel

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The metal demon toppled sideways with a sickening fwamp that echoed in the darkness.

Charlie paid no attention to the contraption.

"Come back Stella! We're not done talking!" He shouted angrily into the night, fully expecting her to send a charmed tree branch hurtling towards his head for yelling at her.

An owl hooted softly and the sound of rustling feathers signaled its departure.

He ground his teeth in frustration. "I'm gonna have my say in this too! You're not the only one with an opinion, you know!"

The wind was his only answer.

"Stella!"

His eye fell across the abandoned machine and Charlie realized that if she wanted to leave, she could have just hopped on and rode off. She wouldn't have left it behind. Suddenly, he was gripped with fear and terrible possibilities. His mind raced, his heart pounded, and his thoughts were an incoherent babble.

Did she really mean to leave?

Where on earth could she have gone?

Did they have her? Death Eaters? He could hardly breathe, thinking about her in danger. No. No, it had to be something else!

Calm down. He just had to calm down. "Think, man, think!" Charlie scrubbed his fingers through his hair, trying to focus.

Could it just be a case of vanishing sickness?

He had to take his time, had to be careful. It would all make sense if he was just careful not to overlook anything … wouldn't it?

Maybe it was just another one of the twins' pranks. Of course, that was it!

But… the twins wouldn't have done this. It wasn't their style. If they were going to embarrass you (and he should know) they did it publicly and extravagantly, not quietly in the middle of the night, and not with only one witness.

And it wasn't vanishing sickness. Charlie had seen that first hand his third year at Hogwarts when his favorite teacher, Professor Kettleburn, caught from his latest shipment of pixie spikes. He went missing for three months, turning up somewhere in Kenya during the Christmas holidays. (He returned, to Charlie's great delight, with a pair of hyena pups named Jackal and Hide.)

She couldn't have just left. She wouldn't! Would she?

No, she couldn't have. Even if she had been powerful enough, it was dead near impossible to be accurate from distances like that of the trip from Ottery St. Catchpole to London. Not to mention that the woman would rather have gnawed off her own arm before apparating anywhere.

That really only left one option, but he was definitely not going to even consider that she might be …

And what about that strange mist? She had looked so surprised to see it. Yes, that must be it, he reasoned, walking over to examine the scene of her disappearance.

A faint, sulfuric odor hung around the spot where she'd been standing just moments before. He knelt and found that the mist had in fact been a fine silvery dust. Just as he was about to run his fingers through the tiny grains of sparkling particles that lay scattered in the damp grass, the pungent smell became familiar. He drew back his hand as though almost bitten by a venomous snake.

Brimstone.

No wonder he recognized the deadly substance! Brimstone was a common substance in the keeper's arsenal, essential in curing fire-related problems for most species. Since a dragon's health was largely dependant on a stable, healthy flame temperature in the organs near the heart muscles, only a substance as magically potent as brimstone or something comparable could hope to mend any problems that arose there. He had handled the rock form of this powder more times than he could count (always with extreme caution and a sturdy pair of lethifold hide gloves), but most people never came into contact with something so dangerous.

So why did Stella have it in her possession?

And what did it have to do with her disappearance?

Most importantly, where was she?

Doing the only thing he could think of, Charlie snatched up the dented motersickle and raced back towards the burrow. Mere moments later, he found himself crawling out of the kitchen fireplace in Stella's flat with a frantic mouthful of soot.

"Stella? Bimby? Is anyone home?"

He didn't even bother with the 'lite swiches', another muggle concept he had never quite grasped. He was sure that his eyeballs were going to explode out of his skull the way they kept racing around, looking for clues of Stella. Light was hardly important, just a hint that she was here, safe and alive, not…

Silence.

"Stella? Stella, where are you?"

She had to be there. She had too! If she wasn't home, that meant that … no. She was home. That was all there was to it.

"Stella, please answer me!"

"Sir?"

Charlie flew several feet in the air, landed on his bum, and whipped out his wand, only to find that the sole other occupant of the dark room was Bimby.

"Bimby! Thank Circe! Where's Stella?"

The small creature's careworn white brows slid together first in an expression of confusion, then one of worry.

"She is with you, Sir."

His heart stopped. The whole room went completely still. His chest cavity felt like an empty, gaping hole.

"No." He struggled to breathe. "She's not."

His soul was crumpling softly.

There were so many things he still wanted to share with her, so many things they'd never seen together or talked about. He found himself wishing that he had told her everything, even the mistakes and the secrets he kept from everyone. So much he should have…

No. He would not jump to conclusions. Just because she wasn't here didn't mean she was-

She couldn't be.

"Bimby, she…" He swallowed again. "She disappeared. I have to find her."

The elf's eyes grew wide with what he suspected might be a very well controlled sort of fear, and she scurried from the room calling out loudly.

"Snake! Snake! Heeeere, snake!"

"Wait, Bimby. Come back! What does the sodding Buto have to do with anything?" He made to follow her out the kitchen door, but a severe jolt at the base of his skull sent Charlie flying into it instead.

His vision blurred for a moment, but he knew what he would see when he got up off the floor and turned around. A tiny trickle of unease slid up against his mounting anger and he called out for the house elf. "Bimby, I think I found it." If she really thought it could help him find Stella, then just this once he would put off on trying to kill the thing.

Sure as sugarquills, when he righted himself and turned around there was an all too familiar hiss and sharp flutter of wings accompanied by a faint smoky sent that he had come to associate with the evil little creature. There were very few animals –magical or otherwise- that Charlie could honestly say he hated, but this one was an exception to the rule. It was a shame really. It would have been fascinating to study something so rare and powerful if it hadn't been hell bent on his demise since the first time it met him. They glared at each other from across the room until Bimby hurried back, squeaking for air.

"Snake!" With her hands on her tiny hips, she firmly eyed the reptile hovering over her head. "Miss is gone. Snake will take Sir to find her."

The creature seemed disturbed to hear that Stella was missing, fluttering back and forth in such an agitated fashion that Charlie would have almost said it was worried, but when it was informed that it was to take Charlie to her –however it was supposed to manage that was beyond Charlie- the Buto hissed and glared in his general direction.

"I think I'll look for her on my own, if that's alright." What good would the reptile be in finding Stella?

"No, it is not! Sir will go with snake."

The hissing increased.

"Bimby will have no more nonsense. No nonsense from Sir, no nonsense from snake. Snake will take Sir, and snake will do it now." He was about to object when she seemed to read his mind. "And Sir will not complain."

He closed his mouth.

The Buto shook its head, -a strange, almost human reaction for a serpent- and barred its fangs in disgust. Despite his bravado, Charlie had gooseflesh. Even the most courageous keeper knew when it was a good idea to let sleeping dragons lie (especially when that particular dragon had enough poison in one drop of venom to kill an entire herd of Ironbellies) and this was probably one of those times.

Bimby had other ideas.

"No arguments. Snake will take him now! Miss is in danger, stupid scaly wings!" Charlie felt just as great an urge to find Stella, but he doubted that insulting the flying concussion was going to get them anywhere. If the bloody thing pummeled him just for existing, what would it do if it somehow got him alone? Besides, calling it names probably wasn't the way to get what they wanted.

But for some reason, the Buto stopped hissing and gave him one last glare of defeat, then silently flapped its dimly shimmering gray wings and came to rest on the table next to him, coiling its lower body and relaxing its feathers.

"That is better." The house elf reprimanded sternly, turning to Charlie. "Sir must touch snake's tail, and snake will take him to Miss."

"That's all? What will…"

"No time for talking. Sir must find Miss. He must do it now! They could have her." Fear clouded her quaffle-sized eyes and he did as he was told, realizing that the tiny elf shared his darkest unspoken fears. Why had he ever let her become a recruiter? He should have said it was too dangerous, he should have … there was no time for that now.

At first, nothing seemed to be happening. Then he felt a tingling jolt of warmth run up his finger. Then another, and another. Suddenly his whole body felt like it was on fire and in a flash the kitchen was gone, only to be replaced with a room he had never seen before … and hoped he would never see again.

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The entire chamber was made of smooth, grayish stone. One wall was covered with sterile-looking green curtains, and the space was lit by pale green torches that gave off a harsh, intense light. Other than that, every available centimeter of the walls was covered in intricate runes that he could not decipher. (Runes had been one of his worst subjects by far.)

The room itself was not remarkable, but the focal point was. In the center lay a perfectly hewn stone table, etched with more runic symbols. On the table lay a body.

A very dead body.

Charlie inched forward nervously, unable to stop coming closer in disgusted curiosity.

The man was balding and round, perhaps in his middle-ages. Not so much older than Charlie's dad, really. But this man's chest was a wide, gaping hole. Ribs and organs had been neatly removed from the y-shaped incision in his abdomen, leaving a gaping red and blue emptiness that contrasted ghoulishly with his placid, rubbery, greenish features.

On an ancient set of scales suspended from the ceiling, one of the bloke's organs was being weighed in a crystal tub. If human anatomy was anything like a dragon's, it could have been the heart. Next to the table there was a tray of wicked looking cutting tools suspended in mid-air. You didn't have to be a potions master to know what those were probably for.

Charlie wanted to look away, to close his eyes, to sick even, but he couldn't stop staring at the terrible sight in front of him.

Fixated against his will by the gruesome horror of it all, he barely realized that Quex had slipped away from his fingers and was flying higgledy-piggledy for a doorway to his right. Trying not to think about what lay only a few feet away, he stumbled towards the soft yellow light that reflected off the doorknob. Stella? Oh Circe, please let it be Stella!

In the split second that it took to open the door, her face was the only thing he could see. Warm smiles filed his thoughts, dark soil eyes wrapped around his heart, and low, throaty music thrummed in every part of him. The ugly tartan sofa, the night of Bill and Fleur's wedding, the way she looked at the moon. So many good memories, so much that he still wanted to share with her. She had to be there. She just had to! He couldn't loose her now!

He found himself in a cramped little room with some sparse office furniture and far too many people for the space, most of them in need of a bit of mending. Harry, Ronnie, Ronnie's girlfriend, and … he was so relieved that he nearly fell over. They all turned to stare at him, but as soon as he regained us of his limbs, Charlie could have sworn that he flew to Stella, taking her in his arms and holding her as tightly as he could.

"Thank Circe, thank Circe…" was all that he could manage to choke out. He whispered into her hair, eyes closed tight as if opening them would show that he was mistaken.

"Charlie? What? How did you get here?"

"I'm sorry, Stella. I'm so sorry." He babbled out, not caring where he was or what was in the next room or that everyone could hear them. "I don't care about any of it. You were gone- and then the Buto- and there's a dead… Oh Merlin, I thought I'd lost you!" He closed his eyes even tighter, trying to will away the thought of ever being apart from her, trying to forget that terrible moment when he had almost given in to despair. It was so hard to imagine life without this woman in it, so painful and bare.

"What are you going on about?" She murmured, stepping back from him and blushing under the intense scrutiny of the others in the room. "I'm fine; I just had some business to…"

"Bloody hell." He whispered, seeing past her for the first time.

He hadn't realized that there was someone in the bed.

He hadn't realized that someone was missing from the little band of adventurers.

He hadn't realized that it was…

"Ginny."

The indescribable high of finding Stella safe and alive crashed straight down through the rough stone floor as he fell to his knees next to his baby sister's bed. Her wild hair was limp and dirty and one of her arms was bandaged. Charlie could hardly see her chest rising, but her breathing was a shallow and painful sound that rattled through the room like a dementor's hiss. Bright, inquisitive brown eyes were closed and her skin was a faded yellow color of parchment left out too many years in the sun.

"Is she…?"

"She isn't dead yet, Weasley." A dry, chime-like voice answered. "Won't be either, so long as I have any say in the matter."

He turned to see fish-face step ease out of a swiveling chair in a shadowy corner of the little room, her eyes too big for her face and glinting in the light of the few candles. Her green healer's uniform was crisp, her short blond hair pulled back sharply from her face, and her features thin and jagged like an underfed vulture. Everything was precise with her, from her fingernails to her cool, clipped way of speaking.

Except tonight the edges of her robes were tinged with flecks of red. Flecks of blood.

"What's wrong with her? What happened?" His voice was rising. "Why isn't she awake?

He looked back and forth from Stella to Harry, who was sitting on the other side of the bed holding Ginny's limp hand.

"Calm down Weasley."

"Why should I listen to you?" He could feel panic shooting through his heartbeats.

"Weasley, if you don't shut up I'll boot you out of here."

"Why do you have blood on you? Is she bleeding? Did you do this to her?"

"Right, that's it. All of you, out. Now. I dropped what I was doing," she coldly thrust a thumb in the direction of the door, "to see her for you, so let me get to it."

There were a few soft protests from Ronnie and Hermione, but Harry –determined, foul-mouthed Harry of all people- just gave her a hard look and herded the other two out. All of them looked almost as badly off as Ginny and tired enough to fall over where they stood.

"You too, Myra, and take your boyfriend with you."

"Moi, he's her brother." Stella said uncertainly.

"He's getting hysterical, that's what he is. I don't have the time or patience to deal with that sort of nonsense."

"Come on, gatito."

"No!"

"Don't argue. Just come." She said quietly, leading him by the arm out of the tiny office.

"But Ginny!"

"She'll be fine. Moi's the best of the best, or we wouldn't have brought her here." As they stepped into the light of the bright greenish torches in the stone room, Stella looked ten years too old and dead tired to boot. "If she has any hope of making it, she's found it."

"She's found hope in a little shack of an office that would shame the name of broom cupboards everywhere? What is WRONG with her? Why is she here?" Suddenly he saw the stone table out of the corner of his eye and realized just exactly which room they had walked back into. "Merlin's beard, Stella! What is this place?"

"The morgue." She replied absentmindedly, as though she didn't even see the large tank of what he was trying very hard to convince himself was NOT blood.

"The where?" No getting around it, that had to be blood. His vision began to swim.

She must have seen his half-stumble of a step. "Oh, gatito! I forgot that you're afraid of…"

"I'm not afraid!" His voice trembled and he could feel vomit creeping up his throat.

"Of course you're not. Let's go and talk somewhere else though, hmm?"

She ushered him down a wide corridor where several medi-stretchers waited patiently in mid-air for … no, he was not going to think about what they were waiting for. A short flight of stairs led them up and out into the main lobby.

"Stella, where are we going? Gin…" He couldn't find breath to choke out the words.

She didn't falter in her steps for a moment, dragging him past a frail, elderly witch with a growling krup firmly attached to her left leg and a very bored looking receptionist. Soon they were out in the muggle streets, and following a path only Stella knew. He was too numb to think, much less figure out how to ask the questions that plagued him, so he followed in blind, uncaring silence. After what felt like a dragon's age, she ushered him into a quiet booth in a little muggle pub and ordered them both some fish and chips.

Food was the last thing on his mind.

"How can you eat at a time like this? Ginny is… what happened to her, Stella?"

She sighed and steepled her fingers. "I'm not sure. Harry called me, and when I got there she was already like that."

"But why?"

"Poison. Don't know what kind yet, but she will be fine. I trust Moi."

"How did she get poisoned?" Panic tinged his thoughts. They should not have let those kids do this by themselves! They should have gone to the order about Harry's mad plans! Now Ginny was lying in a hospital bed thanks to his irresponsibility!

"I don't know, and I have a notion that none of them are going to tell us either. She'll be alright, and that's all that really matters, no? Try to think about something else." Charlie was never going to understand how she could be this calm. Gin was his sister! "Oh look, food's up. I'll be back with it in a minute."

He tried to think about something else, anything else. Unfortunately, he could only find one other topic for conversation that would keep any small portion of his brain from thinking about Ginny's pale, unmoving features.

"Was that a … real … body … in there? In that room?"

She laughed. Laughed!

"Gatito, do you have any idea how many corpses were in that room?"

"You mean there were more?" Suddenly his stomach was a bit dogy, but he tried to keep eating.

She snorted loudly, and several of the other patrons shot her glaring looks of disapproval. (Stella was oblivious, as usual.) "Of course. Do you really think that only one person dies a day? In a city the size of London? Think gatito."

"I only saw one." He shuddered, for a moment seeing Ginny's face on that dead, rubbery body. Seeing Ginny naked and pale. Seeing Ginny's insides in a tub.

"Did you see the curtains on the wall behind the autopsy table? That's where they keep them until a family member comes to claim them for the death rites. Actually, it's another idea that we owe to muggles, believe it or not."

"Oh." He considered that for a moment, trying hard to down one of his chips while Stella doused hers in a healthy bath of lemon juice.

Would they put Gin in a wall until Mum and Dad could come and take her to the family burial grounds? He'd been to funerals before: Gammy, Great Uncle Algie. There had been flowers, and a gentle, white haired old man, and he vaguely remembered someone singing. He numbly considered the idea that someone would have to pick out flowers.

Roses, probably. Daffodils. Ginny liked daffodils.

No, he had to think about something else!

"Stella?"

"Mmh?"

"Are they all … butchered … like that?" His lips twisted in disgust. Charlie had never really given much thought to what happened to the body before it went into the ground. Would someone do that to him someday when he was dead?

Would they do that to Gin?

"Butchered? You mean the autopsy?"

"The bloke who had his bloody chest pried open! Pried open, Stella! I could see his … inside bits." Mental images of Ginny on that tabletop kept attacking his every thought.

"Oh, don't be so melodramatic! It's just body parts. We can't exactly use magic to open them up like we can when they're alive, so we have to fall back on more primitive methods of medical inquiry." She slashed a chip through the air, punctuating her point. "Besides, you must've worked on a few dozen dragon surgeries, gatito. You can't use much magic on creatures either, can you? It shouldn't be such a shock. We all have the same basic components. There's not much difference except shape and size."

"But we're people!" Merlin, Ginny! If she died … no. She wasn't going to die. He wasn't even going to think about it.

It wasn't going to happen.

"You're being very silly." She went back to her food with a look that said he was completely off his head, continuing to speak in between mouthfuls. "Besides, autopsies are only preformed when neither the coroner nor a staff healer can determine cause of death, or if there is the possibility that the death was not natural. The only reason that that bloke had his 'inside bits' taken out was to see if any dark magic was involved in his demise."

"Why can't they just leave it all where it's supposed to be and cast a few spells to figure out what went wrong?" He asked in a panicked, queasy voice, wanting nothing better than to stop thinking about Ginny's face on that body.

"Autopsies let the coroner and the investigator from the ministry know exactly how the deceased got that way. Much more thorough investigation, really, and it's much easier to use diagnostic spells when you can keep eye contact with the organs, especially when it comes to the charm work."

"Do you do that? Have you? I mean…"

She leaned back in her chair and pondered Charlie's question for a moment as unease grew more and more restless in his gut. "Yes. I had to take my apprenticeship rounds down in the basement just like everyone else. But I didn't do it as part of my job, no. Back when I had a job." She grimaced a little. "Moi has just been filling in down there lately because our coroner was killed by the d… by the death eaters."

He could understand why she stuttered, talking about those people. Only an hour before, Charlie had been out of his mind with worry that they might have had her. "They killed the hospital coroner?"

"Sad, innit? I think they've taken out most of his family, even his sister out in Aylesbury. It's not like anyone's immune to death, gatito." She rolled her eyes. "I must say though, I'm going to miss him. Mr. Bulstrode was a very nice man. I think the one who's going to miss him the most around here is Moi. She's had her hands full day and night, and I think all she really wants to do is get back to working full time in Peds."

"Peds?"

"Pediatrics. Err, it means she specializes with children."

"Moira Herman? With little whelps? Well bless my Hipogryphs if that isn't a mad picture of the world!"

"Leave off Charlie. She's the best sort of friend a girl could ask for."

He rendered her a puzzled look, trying to concentrate on the present discussion and forget about what they'd just delved into.

"Ever since Hogwarts, we stuck together, all of us girls. We were the loners and the losers and the ones who didn't care, but those were some of the best years of my life, gatito. I wouldn't trade them for all the gold in Gringots, even if I did do some stupid things…" She smiled, a little half grimace.

"Stupid things?" Was this why people whispered about her?

Stella grunted in response and mumbled an answer. "Yeah, no one ever seems to want to let that sort of thing go with me though. Not something I talk about."

"Why won't people let it go?" What did you do, Stella?

"Say I'm a bad egg." She wasn't looking him in the eye, and started to fiddle with her sleeve. "Hey, are you going to finish that?"

"Why would they say that?"

"My parents weren't good people." She said haltingly, barely picking at her food now.

"What do you mean, not good people?"

She crossed her arms defensively and looked out the window. "I mean they weren't good people."

"You're still not making any sense, Stella."

"You don't get to pick and choose who gives birth to you, you know!"

"Keep your voice down girl."

"Not everybody gets to have wonderful parents, Charlie!" She lowered her rumbling outrage to a rigid hiss. "Some of us just weren't granted that particular luxury!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Why do you have to push this?"

"I just want to…"

"Death eaters, alright! My parents were death eaters!" She screamed, irate.

Silence lay thick in the air for what seemed like a year. She wouldn't look at him, wouldn't look at the stunned and confused patrons of the pub.

Stella shook her head and seemed to curl in on herself in the corner of the booth. "Are you happy now?"

He stared at her flabbergasted, like she was a little green 'aeleein' from one of the more bizarre of the sitkoms he'd seen inside the telly. A small part of his brain registered the fact that his jaw was hanging slightly ajar. Charlie simply could not process what he had heard.

Stella?

Her parents were…

They were…

This was impossible.

Just then, a soft trilling noise trumpeted inside Stella's jacket. She reached inside and retrieved a tiny black box, analyzed it for a moment, then stood and laid down some muggle currency for the food. When she grabbed his unresponsive hand and tugged, her voice was barely audible.

"Cumon, Charlie. That was Moi. It's about your sister."

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Authoress's Notes: So… reactions? Predictions? Did anyone see that coming? Was it too obvious? How do you think Charlie is going to take it?

Did anyone catch the oddity in Charlie's thoughts? You all did so well with Stella and her slip up on 'the d… you-know-who…' that I'm hoping you'll spot this one too.

Don't judge Moira too harshly. She is very harsh and rude, but deep down she really is a very nice person … even if she can be a little creepy sometimes … alright, a lot of the time… oh well, we all have our faults.

I got all the details about the morgue and about muggle autopsies from my mum, lovely woman that she is. She is a nurse, thought she does administrative work now, and used to be very good friends with a county coroner. When she taught nursing classes, he used to invite her and her students down to the morgue whenever he had an interesting case and let her assist on autopsies sometimes. I find it incredibly creepy, but to each his own I guess. My mum is rather odd, haha.

To all my faithful readers and dear friends out there in reviewer-land, thank you for sticking with me even though I wasn't able to post for a while there. Finals, birthday plans, writer's block, and a dead awful cold conspired to keep me from getting this chapter up, but I hope that it was worth the wait!

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Possum: Charlie? Thick? You think? (course, he is a guy… so we can't judge too harshly… grin) You have a point about Neville, thanks for pointing that out! I was thinking along the lines of him working under something like a student-work program for herbology, hence Prof. Sprout. But you may really have a better point. I will probably change that when I go back through and post the second, final version… eventually. Yes, they are evil, but man are they FUN TO WRITE! I'm hoping that means that the 'jibber jabbers' are believable pranks?

Random: Thanks. I'm glad you liked Tonks. You should enjoy her if she comes back once or twice more, I hope. I will continue –even if I'm slow once in a while- so have no fear.

Ctc: Hello there. I'm not sure what you mean. This is chapter is chapter nineteen.

Cynthia15: Hello! Another new reviewer pops out of the woodwork! You are most welcome here anytime, haha. It's wonderful to hear that you were so understanding about waiting for this chapter. Thank you for the high praise, I feel so very loved! Too true about the lack of Charlie, he really is one of the great, untapped characters for possible fanfiction. We aren't told much about him blatantly, but if you look closely in the books, JKR give us a lot more detail about him than meets the eye. It's an honor to know that you found this worth the hours to read, and I was so proud to hear that Myra has found another warm reception (yeah, she can be a bit gloomy, but you'd be gloomy too if you were her… more on that to come, you see, but I must leave you hanging on the details till a later date … mauhaha!) Well, the 'bomb' has been dropped. How did I do?

HarryPotterMagic: Thanks! I'm so happy that Tonks got such a nice reception from all the reviewers. And you found her more cheerful! BRILLIANT! That was exactly the sort of character I was trying to get across with her, so my job is well done. Huzzah! Yeah, there's a reason she calls Myra Ace, but that's part of their history, their back-story that I have laid out in my head. You might actually get in on that particular fact if you read the sequel-ish sort of companion story that I'm considering writing to this one. It just happens to be about Moira … but that's a little ways down the road (I only have four or five chapters and ten pages or so of extra bits written for that one) Ah, but I digress… Yeah Forge and Gred are quite the pair, aren't they? I had an absolute gas inventing jibber jabbers … which reminds me, I really do have to continue that little bit with Moody and his furry friends, don't I? Yeah, old Chuck can be a blockhead, but what can you do?