I'm glad you enjoyed it. My muse kind of got away from me, and I was kind of worried because the story came out much darker than I intended. You had mentioned that you really didn't like bone-crushing hopeless angst or non-happy endings and I was a bit worried. Believe it or not, this story started out as a bit of Kingsley/Xenophilius humor; I'm not too sure what happened there...
So anyway, I'm happy that it wasn't too hard to read, and that the ending was sufficiently hopeful to (kind of) make up for the torture I inflicted upon everyone.