DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling, who isn't me. The only profit I get from this is personal satisfaction.
Three's a Crowd
Sirius was worried. The one-eared fellow—who still hadn't bothered to introduce himself properly—usually came to give him some food every night like clockwork. It had been two days since the last visit. Sirius became a dog again so he could wander the streets without notice. He found a Daily Prophet and read the leading article.
BARMAN CONFESSES TO HELPING BLACK ESCAPE
James Oliver a few days ago was known as a light-hearted, one-eared assistant barman at the Hog's Head. He has now confessed under Veritaserum to coercing an unknowing Mundungus Fletcher into providing Sirius Black with a charmed parchment that enabled the first ever escape from Azkaban.
"He led me to believe he was secretly an old friend," Fletcher said. "I thought he wanted to scare some Death Eaters or something, not get one of them out. When I found out he wasn't who I thought he was, I realized he'd manipulated me and I cornered him and got him to confess."
Unfortunately, James Oliver (or whatever his true name is) experienced mental trauma before he was able to divulge full details of how he did it or the whereabouts of Black now. He will be in the spell damage ward of St. Mungo's until a trial can be performed.
So Sirius was safe, but only for so long. He'd have to try and get James out and hope whatever had happened to him was something Sirius could reverse on his own but would take long enough that James would be out before they started questioning him again.
I really should call him Oliver. Sirius thought to himself. He's not the James I know and love, so Oliver shouldn't use that name unless it's really his.
Tonks had put it together: James Oliver was either the Saintlike One or very closely associated with him. She visited St. Mungo's with the intention to confront the evil Saint once and for all.
Tonks disguised herself as Mum—while Andromeda Tonks wasn't exactly a full-time healer, she did volunteer frequently—and went to the ward she knew he'd be held. She walked confidently past the guards and found one of the healers examining a sleeping James Oliver—Dorsi, if she remembered his name correctly.
"Andromeda?" Healer Dorsi asked. "What brings you here?"
"My daughter," Tonks said in her best Mum impersonation. "She visited the Hog's Head frequently and she wanted to know if what the Prophet said was true. She doesn't think of Mr. Oliver as being capable of breaking someone out of Azkaban."
"Honestly, I don't think I'll be able to give you or her any satisfactory answers," the healer said with a sigh. "James Oliver has gone quite insane and I have no idea if he will ever recover. I will say that when he showed up here about a year ago looking for a job, he didn't strike me as the criminal sort either. If anything, he seemed...naïve? Not exactly that—he's definitely seen war—but perhaps he was a bit too eager to prove that he knew what he was doing when he didn't. And there's his narcolepsy."
"Narcolepsy?" Tonks asked.
"He fainted for a few minutes during his job inquiry and when he woke up, he acted like it was nothing new for him."
Maybe it was, if the fainting coincided when the Saintlike One possessed George, Tonks thought to herself. "Has he had any attacks since he was admitted?"
"He's in one right now, I think," Healer Dorsi replied. "Either that or his natural sleep patterns are having him sleep in the middle of the day. Which, for all I know, might be the case."
"Can you revive him?" Tonks asked. "Just so that I can give Nymphadora a first-hand account?"
"Just for a minute," Dorsi said as he pointed his wand towards James. "Rennervate."
James' eyes flashed open and he looked over at Tonks. "Teddy says hi. Or he would if he was born yet. That's hard...not being born. You haven't met Moony yet, have you? He was my favorite professor, you know. You love him, despite his badly behaved rabbit."
"What exactly caused this?" Tonks asked.
"My best guess is that the Confundus and Veritaserum—both of which are of questionable origin—mixed wrong so that he now tells the truth about things that make no sense. Individually both should have worn off by now, but together...for all we know, he might be like this for the rest of his life. As I understand it, he confessed to helping Sirius Black escape Azkaban while like this, so I'm going to refute Fletcher's claim in court. Even if he was saying something true, James Oliver as he is now isn't guilty, merely mad."
"You know, you should go pink," James said to Tonks. "Black doesn't suit you at all. It's so sad. Like Harry. His life was so sad. The Dark Lord marked him as his equal, but he had power Voldy doesn't know about. One had to die at the hand of the other since neither could live while the other survived. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies... Hey, I can't believe I remembered all of that. Tell Dumbledore...wait, Snape killed him. Is Snape dead yet? I always wanted to see his doe. That and to ride Norberta sometime, but she won't be born for a couple years, I think."
"Does he respond to questions at all?" Tonks asked.
"Sort of. Like I said, his logic is skewed."
To James, Tonks asked, "were your actions in Azkaban what one might call Saintlike?"
"I'm Holy, Fred," he said as he pointed to his ear. "Geddit? Holey?" He started laughing like the maniac he was.
"That was an unfortunate choice of words," Healer Dorsi muttered. "Now he'll always be referring to himself as 'holey.'"
"What are Fred and I? Next-door neighbors?" James—who Tonks was now almost certain was the Saintlike One—asked. "I've always thought Fred and I should've got E in everything, because we exceeded expectations just by turning up for the exams."
Merlin's beard, he really thinks that he's George Weasley, doesn't he?
"Maybe he should try sleeping some more," Tonks suggested.
"We can try, but I cannot say whether it will do him any good," Dorsi said as he administered a sleeping potion.
"Let me know if anything changes," Tonks said as she left the ward and went to visit some other patients, like Mum would have done on an actual visit.
If the Saintlike One ever recovered, then Tonks would either get her revenge or just let him be tossed into Azkaban. But now, with his brain all garbled with George's, he wasn't worth vengeance. He was just pathetic.
At least now she could tell the twins all about this little visit and that they didn't have to live in fear anymore. The Saintlike One could never hurt anyone again.
Sirius snuck into the Hog's Head—fortunately there was no one there but Aberforth and he wasn't watching for stray dogs at the moment. He found the scent for Oliver all over, but there were a few spots that seemed abnormal in strength or placement. Nothing special was in the room that belonged to Oliver except for trace smells of various potions that must have been moved earlier. The first tangible thing he found was a piece of parchment left in between a tiny space between the counter and a table in the pub. It would be hard to grab it without fingers and thumbs, so Sirius kept looking for anything useful. A wand Sirius recognized was stuck in an empty bottle behind the counter. Since a wand meant everything to a wizard, Sirius grabbed the bottle with his teeth and ran before the barman could shoo him out.
The black dog returned to the Shrieking Shack through a tunnel he dug and broke the bottle open. Sirius changed back into a human and tested Oliver's wand. The wand didn't really want to cooperate, but as long as Sirius got it back to Oliver, it wouldn't really matter. He Apparated to an abandoned alley near St. Mungo's and slowly shifted back into a dog. He started with the tail, and stuck the wand to the underside of it before his hands became paws. It felt completely unnatural, but at least he would be able to conceal the wand until Oliver could retrieve it—if he was sane enough to do so, anyway.
Sirius snuck in with a large family with kids moving every which way. He figured out where Oliver was by the security guards posted outside the door—and the scent, of course. Sirius ran into the room and kept a random path, as if he were chasing a small critter no one else could see.
"Oh what a cute puppy!" Sirius froze. Oliver was approaching him like he was half a madman and half a kid in a candy store. If there was a perceivable difference between those two things, that is. "Can I keep him? I want to call you Snuffles and keep you forever!"
Sirius growled. He was not going to be called Snuffles by a man who'd obviously lost his marbles.
"It's okay, boy. Or is it girl? I should check." Sirius felt the Oliver remove the wand from under his tail. "Oh, you're a girl. I think. Maybe I'll call you Elvendork? It's unisex." Oliver silently confunded his guards and hid his wand up his sleeve—apparently he was at least somewhat sane. "Come on, Elvendork! Let's go for a walk!"
Sirius pretended he saw the small critter again and "chased" it out, with Oliver close behind yelling after him. Soon they got all the way downstairs and Oliver grabbed him and they Apparated out.
"Thanks, Padfoot," Oliver said, not a hint of insanity left in his face—he was a better actor than Sirius gave him credit for. "I owe you one."
"You owe me two days' worth of meals," Sirius retorted once he shifted back into human form. "And Elvendork? Honestly!"
"It was the first name that popped into my head," Oliver replied.
"After Snuffles," Sirius said flatly.
"I my defense, that name was totally you. And I'm almost positive you made up the name Elvendork in the first place, so it's your own fault."
"Maybe I should take you back," Sirius threatened. "You're clearly insane."
"Okay, I surrender!" Oliver said before Sirius could clobber him—in the friendliest way possible, of course. "But now that we're both on the run, we need help. And unless you have friends willing to take you in while they still believe you killed Pettigrew and those Muggles, I suggest Dumbledore."
"I thought we were avoiding him," Sirius said.
"I was, but it's too late now," Oliver said.
Dumbledore was in his office when the raccoon Patronus came to him, then went downstairs. The last time the raccoon did this, the diary was there waiting for him. There weren't any other Horcruxes besides Harry, so the Headmaster assumed something else would be waiting for him. This time it was a large black dog. Dumbledore stared at the dog a moment before inviting it into his office.
"Thank you, professor," a familiar voice said when they got to the top of the stairs. Dumbledore turned to see Mr. Oliver remove his disillusionment. "Sirius," Mr. Oliver told the dog, "it's okay."
The dog morphed back into the human form the Headmaster recognized to be Sirius Black. So that's how he did it all, Dumbledore mused to himself.
"We come seeking asylum on behalf of the Saintlike One," Mr. Oliver said.
"Do you know who he is?" Dumbledore asked.
"The Saintlike One?" Mr. Oliver asked. "Yes."
"Are you, in fact, him?"
Mr. Oliver smiled, but did not answer.
"Oliver," Mr. Black asked, "what is he talking about?"
"I'll explain later. Headmaster, will you give us asylum until we can get the legal issues straightened out?"
"I am willing, but I do not know where to place you."
"That's fine," Mr. Oliver said. "Sirius knows everything about this place and the Room of Requirement should be quite suitable for our purposes."
"Except, of course, nourishment," Dumbledore noted.
"Tell Aberforth I'm innocent and I'm sure the castle will make a passage between the room and the Hog's Head," Mr. Oliver replied. "Or you can just have one of the House-elves help out if your brother still has a grudge against me."
"Did you orchestrate Mr. Black's escape?" Dumbledore asked.
"I enabled an innocent man's escape from the least humane place on the planet," Mr. Oliver corrected. "Pettigrew was the Secret Keeper, not Sirius, and it was he who blew up that alley and ran away in rat form. I left Wormtail in a jar somewhere Sirius doesn't know about, since this ol' mutt needs a little more persuading before he understands that the rat will have to be properly revealed and made to confess to his crimes. I don't have a good way to do that, but you're brilliant—you can figure it out."
"I think it would have been wiser to bring new evidence to light before removing Mr. Black from Azkaban," Dumbledore said.
"This way was faster," Mr. Oliver said. "And besides, I didn't want to risk the possibility that the Ministry would try to cover up their mistakes instead of living up to them. This whole 'escape' mess has ensured that everyone knows that Sirius was locked up in the first place for supposedly killing Pettigrew—it would be much harder to deny the truth if Peter were witnessed to be alive by lots of people who know the 'official' facts."
"Point conceded, Mr. Oliver," Dumbledore replied. "I can see that if you are not the Saintlike One, you certainly have at least been influenced by him. Speaking of, there is something that I have been meaning to tell him that I have currently been unable to do since the Weasley twins took my Saintlike Parchment: the locket has been resistant to destruction."
Mr. Oliver raised an eyebrow. "How so?"
"It projects an invisible shield that even Gryffindor's sword cannot penetrate," Dumbledore explained.
"Huh. I guess opening it really is necessary."
"Pardon me?" the Headmaster asked.
"The only way to destroy it is from the inside," Mr. Oliver said. "You're going to need a Parselmouth to open it for you."
"I would rather not expose Mr. Potter to such matters at his age."
Mr. Oliver scoffed. "Harry's going to be swamped with things he's 'too young for' the moment he finds out he's a famous wizard-killer—if you don't count the Dursleys, of course."
"The Dursleys?" Mr. Black asked. "As in Lily's sister?"
"Young Harry hates his life with his aunt's family, but Dumbledore has his reasons for leaving him there," Mr. Oliver said. "I can't tell you if it'll really worth it or not, but at least Harry shouldn't have anything truly scarring happen to him from them. But back to the locket: as it so happens, I think I know exactly enough Parseltongue to open something protected by Slytherin. The Saintlike One's brother-in-law had the gift and a couple of family members used it on occasion successfully."
"Well, then," Dumbledore said as he retrieved the locket and the sword. "By all means, open this."
Mr. Oliver placed the locket on Dumbledore's desk and gave the sword to Mr. Black. I suppose someone else should have the opportunity to destroy a Horcrux, the Headmaster mused to himself. Mr. Black deserves the chance to deal a blow to Voldemort if anyone does.
"Whatever happens," Oliver said, "don't let anything stop you from using that sword on the locket. Do it as quickly as you can."
Sirius nodded and held the sword at the ready. Oliver made a hissing noise.
The locket erupted open.
"Sirius Black—you who have no right to be alive. You will be mine."
"Stab!" Oliver said.
Before Sirius could, the form of his brother Regulus emerged from the locket. "You let me join the Dark Lord and you did nothing to stop me. You always knew I would get myself killed because of it. And even when I did die, you didn't care because you thought I was still on his side."
James—the real James—emerged too. "We were best mates. Why did you kill me and betray my family? You were like a brother to me and you betrayed us all."
"That's Voldemort!" Oliver cried. "Voldemort is the one who wants to make you feel like a failure—not your friends!"
Peter came out of the locket next. "You never realized—when we sealed the Map, I made the test for rebelling and keeping secrets at any cost. I kept secrets from you, rebelled against you and the Marauders, to become a Death Eater. And you were so stupidly optimistic that you ensured that You-Know-Who found out where they were hiding." He chuckled madly.
"He's right," Sirius whispered as he started to lower the heavy object in his hands.
"Don't you dare give up, Sirius," Oliver said. "You're fifty times the man Wormtail ever was!"
Sirius' screeching mother arrived. "You don't deserve to call yourself a Black! We should have drowned you when you were born!"
"Now it's us that are all dead," Regulus said. "The only scrap of family you have left is a House-elf that you abused for no reason at all."
"That's not quite true," James said. "The Dursleys are keeping Harry barely alive right now because you abandoned him."
"Sirius!" Oliver screamed as the shadows continued to taunt him. "Harry has been waiting for someone to show that they love him and you are the person to do that! Give Harry a life where he doesn't have to live in fear of losing every good thing in this world and kill that piece of Voldemort in front of you!"
Sirius roared and shoved the sword into the void of the locket.
"That...was not very fun," Sirius muttered.
"Tell that to my brother," Oliver said as he pulled Sirius to his feet and patted him on the back.
"Your brother had to destroy another Horcrux?" Sirius asked.
"Something like that," Oliver said. "You know, I'm surprised it knew anything about you—it's not like you held onto it for very long. Though it might have been drawing on its experiences with Kreacher a bit, and it was probably listening to us talk..."
"Would you be needing anything else from me?" Dumbledore asked.
"You took care of the diary, right?" Oliver asked.
"Of course," Dumbledore replied.
"Then you'll be the first to know when the Saintlike One needs you again," Oliver said. "Come on, Sirius. Let's get settled in our new home."
Lee had the Marauder's Map in front of him. He was working on trying to figure out which twin was which and having the labels from the map helped. It'd probably still be a couple of years before Lee got it, but at least he had a consistent benchmark. He looked between the two twins and down at their dots every five seconds, just in case they mixed themselves up.
Then it caught his eye: up on the seventh floor, there was a Sirius Black and a George Weasley moving down a hallway.
"Fred, George, I think you should look at this," Lee said.
Fred grabbed the map. "Sirius Black? He's in the castle?" Lee was about to point out the second George Weasley when the Sirius Black dot also disappeared.
"What in Merlin's name just happened?" George asked.
"Let's go see if we can catch a mass murderer," Lee suggested as he got up from the bench. "Well, come on. We've done far more dangerous things than this and we have the Map. What could go wrong?"
"Um, did you forget that Black is working with the Saintlike One?" Fred asked.
"So you think we should just tell someone about him being in the castle because we saw his name on a map? They'd never believe us. And besides, he's getting away, so let's go find him!"
Lee started running before the twins could stop him. With some luck, they just might finally meet Old George as himself. Or the twins might just murder Old George on the spot, but Lee was feeling optimistic.
Tonks flew her broomstick back to Hogwarts. She went towards the Great Hall, but couldn't help but notice the twins and their friend hurry up a hallway. They could be doing something normal, of course, but she didn't want to take the chance that the Saintlike One could have fooled her. She grabbed Charlie Weasley and the two of them went after the trio of second-years.
George heard voices outside the Room of Requirement. It sounded like Fred, Young George, and Lee.
"Sirius, we've got company."
"Friend or foe?"
"Sort of both: they'll probably panic at the sight of either of us. Let me try something first." George cast his Patronus and had it pass through the hidden door out into the corridor.
"The Saintlike One!" Fred cried. "He's back!"
A voice that sounded like Lee tried to calm him down, but it didn't work.
"George? Are you Saintlike again?"
"No."
"Prove it!"
"It's our fault Ron hates spiders," Young George said.
George decided to use that moment to make his grand entrance. "It was your idea to turn Ron's teddy bear into an Acromantula, Fred," he said casually as he opened the door.
Fred and George stared at him while Lee just grinned.
"Come on, you three," George said. "If I wanted you dead, it would have happened a long time ago.
"You broke out Sirius Black!" Fred cried out.
"Sirius broke himself out," George corrected. "He's inside if you want to say hello."
Lee happily went in and the twins, since they couldn't very well leave their friend in danger alone, followed—though with a very firm grip on their respective wands.
Just as George began to close the door, he noticed Tonks and Charlie running down the hallway. "Hi, Tonks. Nice to see you made it back okay. And Charlie, nice to see the big-brother instinct is still strong, but I'm not going to hurt anyone today."
Inside, George heard Lee talking. "Hello, Mr. Black, I've heard you actually didn't betray the Potters. Is that true?"
"I betrayed them, alright," Sirius lamented.
George poked his head back in the Room of Requirement. "Stop that!" he snapped. "You telling them to switch Secret Keepers at the last second does not make you a traitor, it just makes you too clever for your own good!"
"What." Fred and Young George said it at the same time.
George smiled. They were a thoroughly confused captive audience and it was an opportunity he probably wouldn't have again. "Give me a second. Your seventh-year protectors are here." He looked back outside and Tonks and Charlie were both shooting curses at him. "Please stop," he said as he threw up a shield—actually the third or fourth one, since he'd been unconsciously casting them even when his focus was inside the Room of Requirement. "If you don't stop attacking me, I'm going to leave you out here and you'll never find out why I decided to possess Young George in the first place."
They weren't convinced.
"Let them go!" Charlie roared.
"I will," George replied. "Just not right now. But I think you'll be able to eavesdrop through this door and hear everything just fine. See you soon!"
With that, he shut the door and it locked itself.
"Okay, boys," George said as he turned back to the twins (who were still pointing their wands at him) and Sirius and Lee (who were making themselves comfortable on the chair the Room had provided) "it's time to tell you the full story of how I lost my ear. Back in '97—"
"You mean '87 or '77," Sirius corrected. "Or '67 if the nine is upside-down. It should only be 1990 now, right?"
"Who's telling this story?" George asked. "Me. Now, back in '97, Voldemort was rising again and had spies all over the Ministry. Voldemort wanted to kill Harry Potter the moment his Mum's blood magic wore off, so we decided to break her enchantment early. To do so, thirteen witches and wizards joined Harry Potter at 4 Privet Drive and seven Harry Potters left. I was one of them. Severus Snape, at this point, had officially sided with the Death Eaters while unofficially his loyalty rested with the Order of the Phoenix—Dumbledore's team, I mean. Snape tried to cast Sectumsempra at his Death Eater buddy, but it accidentally hit me. Mum and anyone else who looked at it couldn't heal it so it stays like this 21 years later."
"Wow," Lee whispered. "That's amazing."
"How can you think that story is at all believable?" Fred scoffed.
"I read the Saintlike Parchment unlike some people," Lee retorted.
"Yeah, and you're bewitched," Young George said.
"A few months later," George continued, "Harry Potter returned to Hogwarts in search of the fifth Horcrux: the diadem of Ravenclaw. Witches and wizards from all over came to protect him and the school. Once again, I was one of them. Harry was able to defeat Voldemort once and for all, but not without a price."
"Fred," Lee said.
"What?" Fred asked.
"Yes," George said. "That's when Fred died."
"You are insane," Fred said. "I'm very very not dead right now."
"Not now, but in eight years you were," George said.
"I'm with the red-headed kid on this one," Sirius said. "Insane."
George stuck his tongue out at Sirius and continued his story. "In 2018, I was visited by a globe of light. I don't know who it was—they only called themselves 'The Trickster'—but they offered me a chance to go back in time and make sure Fred didn't die this time. The catch was that I sporadically possess my eleven-year-old self."
"No!" Fred and Young George cried as they realized just what George was saying. Sirius and Lee quickly grabbed Fred and Young George, respectively, before they ripped George's face off.
"No!" Young George cried again. "I am not you! I am nothing like you!"
"You've definitely changed by my being here," George admitted, "but our first eleven years and five months are identical. I would have told you everything immediately, but the Trickster said that the universe would have noticed that its messing up on counting how many Weasley twins there are was not its fault but an interloper from an alternate universe. A year was the minimum amount of time before I was permanent enough to reveal where I came from and since I'm officially a part of this place, I'm staying until I'm dead."
"LIAR!" Young George screamed. He got out of Lee's grasp and cast a spell at George. George instinctively cast one of his own before he realized what he was doing.
The wands connected.
"Our wands are brothers—identical twins, in this case," George told his younger self as he watched the Priori Incantatem that was just like what Harry had gone through, albeit without the phoenix song and reviving ghosts. "They refuse to fight one another."
George allowed Young George's spell overcome his own. An Incendio burned George's chest with a heat much stronger than it had any right to have.
Sirius let go of Fred and went to heal George's searing flesh. "I have no idea if anything this guy says is true," Sirius said, "but he's helped me when no one else would and he let you hurt him just now. At the very least, I don't think he's done anything to warrant this kind of anger at him. So grow up!"
Young George froze. Then he broke down and began to sob. Fred soon followed suit.
"Come over here," George said as he pushed Sirius away and reached out his arms to the young twins. "Pretend I'm Mum." Fred grabbed him on the left and Young George on his right and neither would let go. "You're doing it wrong," George told them gently. "Fred's always on Mum's right side."
"It's him," Fred said. "It's you."
"It's me."
George wiped the tears from his own eyes and motioned to Lee to open the door and let Charlie and Tonks in.
"You...you can't be him," Charlie said.
"Why not?" George asked as he ran his fingers through the twins' hair. It looked like they weren't going to stop crying anytime soon, which was probably a good thing. They needed to get rid of all the awful things they'd been feeling since last year.
"Maybe because you were absolutely crazy at St. Mungo's earlier today," Tonks suggested. "You were acting like you were actually George because you spent too much time in this head."
"It's much better for me to pretend to be insane than to go to Azkaban and really go insane—I've still got to make sure you lot turn out alright," George said. "It's just easier to convince people of your insanity by telling them the truth."
"You, tell the truth?" Tonks scoffed. "You've lied to them for over a year. Why should we believe you now?"
"Just look at my face, Tonks," George said. "You understand human anatomy better than anyone I know. What would I look like 29 years ago? Although maybe this will help: Scourgify," he said as he pointed his wand to his hair. The black vanished and bright ginger replaced it.
Tonks looked back and forth between the still sobbing twins and George. "You'd look like them," she gasped. "Exactly like them. Even I couldn't imitate someone to the last pore, let alone age them decades too."
George nodded and looked at everyone around him, his friends and family that now knew for a fact that George was exactly who said he was. Of them all, only Charlie still looked uneasy. "Charlie, if anyone in our family was going to fall to the dark side, who would it be?"
The question threw Charlie off-balance. After a moment, he said, "no one."
"Actually, Percy did," George said, "but that's because he's the World's Biggest Prat and believed the Ministry when they said Harry was crazy for claiming Voldemort came back. The rest of us, though, allied ourselves with Harry Potter so closely that he is a part of our family. But even Perce came back to us before Harry defeated Voldemort. That's how you know you can trust me, Charlie: we Weasleys have too strong of an instinct to fight for the side of everything that's right and good. And that's exactly what I'm doing, even if I have made some the worst mistakes of my life in the process—I never wanted to hurt any of you. I hope you all can forgive me for what I did."
Charlie sighed. "You would bend space and time just to save Fred, wouldn't you?"
George laughed. "He's Fred. Of course I did."
Author's Note:
I'm going to take a hiatus on this story for a little while. I've got ideas of where I'd like to go with it next, but I'd like to make sure that I have a satisfactory ending in sight before I share here. If I can't finish the story adequately between now and January, I'll be sure to post an epilogue that will hopefully give this thing a halfway-decent conclusion.
If there are any pressing questions you want answers to, let me know and I'll try to cover them when I start updating again.
Also, I'd like to express my gratitude to all of you who have had such positive feedback for this story. It's been awesome and I hope I can keep writing the stuff you want to read.
All my love,
pisoprano