This was originally written for the 2012 Charlie Ficathon on LiveJournal by rillalicious for me. I asked rillalicious for permission to post this story and they graciously said that I could. I honestly cannot thank them enough for this absolutely brilliant story and for letting me share it here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

rillalicious's author notes: gaeilgerua, I hope you like this. I really, really, really loved writing it. You mentioned that you wanted plot, so I kind of ran with that. Thank you so much to my betas for your ability to put up with my incessant babble while I work these things out. And thank you to the outstanding mod for her tremendous patience!

Morning broke over the craggy mountains like a splash of milk, whitening the overcast sky, spreading outward with steady imprecision. The low-hanging clouds felt ominous, heavy, as if they were bearing down on her. Guilt sometimes felt like that, Hermione thought.

"Hey-oh!" Charlie clapped her shoulder lightly and strolled out past her and onto the dewy grass, a thread-worn satchel swung over his shoulder. "You ready for this?"

"You've asked me that three times this morning," she said, plucking up her own small bag from the front step of the cabin and following him along.

"Yeah, well, Ron just stuck his head through into fireplace again to make sure I knew what I was getting you into. I'm only passing on the message." He shot a look at her back over his shoulder. He had this smile that lit across one side of his face, crooked and devilish.

"You can tell Ron that it's been five years since I've had any obligation to give him explanations."

"Tell him yourself. You'll probably see him again before I do," he said. It was true, she'd be back in London as soon as they found the dragon, and Charlie would be back here, in Romania. "Seriously, though, Hermione. I need you to realize we could get ourselves killed out there, doing this."

"Honestly, Charlie. I'm hardly a stranger to nearly getting myself killed for a good cause. And this is certainly a good cause."

"That's what I said, too." And the right side of his face lit up again. "All right. Let's get a move on, then. This dragon's not going to keep forever."

"No," she said, and she slung her bag over her shoulder, "I suppose not."

She caught up to Charlie and walked beside him down the path to the place where they'd find their portkey. The dragon-Ella, Charlie called her, because he said every dragon had a name, or needed one-had been missing for seven years. Hermione had been one of the last three people to see her. She and Ron and Harry had clung to that pale, broad, slippery-scaled back all the way from Gringotts to the wilderness, until they were flying low enough to drop into the water.

She'd thought about it then, but only in passing: where had the dragon, mostly blind and completely dependent, gone after that? But there had been a dark army on the assault, and horcruxes to find, and the dragon faded into her periphery until some years later.

When she heard mention of it again, she was working at the Ministry, untangling a legal nightmare for the Department of Magical Creatures. The sightings were rare at first, and quickly dismissed as superstition, or a trick of the light. But as they became more frequent, and Obliviators were sent to Muggle villages to alter the memories of farmers who had seen the dragon hobbling along the edge of their land, or travelers who claimed the dragon landed on the road right in front of them, it became impossible for the Ministry to ignore.

It had been Hermione who recognized the description. Every sighting had been within thirty kilometres of the place they'd left that dragon and she knew deep down in her gut that it was the Gringotts dragon all those people had seen. That was how she found herself attached to the case.

The portkey was a teapot, dull copper caked with mud around the handle, sticking up out of the grass at an odd angle.

"Not exactly inconspicuous," she said.

Charlie shrugged. "No one comes out this way." He checked his watch. "Forty-five seconds. Ready?"

She took hold of the teapot's spout and braced her stomach.

In another few seconds, they were gone.

"If you want me to set up the tent..." Charlie trailed off when he turned around, one hand on the back of his neck. The tent was already standing, and Hermione had moved on to double-checking his wards. "Ah, right. All the camping. Ron told me about that."

"Yes," she said. "All the camping." Her lips twisted, a kind of half-smirk of amusement. "Your cloaking charms are excellent."

"They'd better be," he said. "Would've got myself burnt to a crisp otherwise."

"Oh," she said. "Right."

"Right," said Charlie, levitating large stones from the area into a ring to make a fire pit. "So... Heard you broke up with my brother."

Hermione laughed. "Five years ago," she said.

"You'll have to forgive me. Social skills are a little rusty these days. Only people I see on a regular basis are the other handlers and their expectations aren't all that high for niceties and whatnot."

"It's all right," she said. "I often prefer the company of books to people."

"So I've heard." Charlie cast the fire, then tucked his wand away, rubbing his hands together. "Getting chilly now that the sun's going down," he said.

Hermione waved her wand once, with a precision he hadn't seen since taking Charms at Hogwarts, and a rush of warm air swept out from the fire.

"Better," he said.

"I'm not finished." She cast another charm and tiny, hovering blue flames lit up the camp all around them.

"That's nice."

"Thank you." She stood there for a minute, as if she was unsure what to do next, and then she said, "I'm going to change out of these clothes. They're filthy from traveling."

"Ah, yeah," said Charlie. "I'll stay out of the tent then." He winked. "Why don't I get supper started out here?"

"That's all right," she said, her brows turning in, as if she didn't quite trust him. "I can do it."

"No, really," said Charlie, "despite all appearances otherwise, I'm a decent cook." He grinned. "Mum taught me and Bill before the twins made her give up on the idea of raising a brood of sons who can cook for themselves."

"That explains Ron."

Charlie snorted and watched her disappear into the tent.

He was crouched over the fire when she reappeared sometime later, wrapped in a warm blue coat and grey scarf that wound once loosely around her neck.

"Still cold?" he said over his shoulder, watching as she tucked her hands in her pocket upon her approach.

"I haven't had the luxury of leaning over a cooking fire," she said. "That smells good, Charlie. Really... good."

"You don't have to say it with such surprise, you know."

"I'm sorry. It's not that I didn't expect you could cook-all right, I didn't expect you could cook. But I don't mean to insult you like that. I just-"

"You like to do it all yourself," he said. "Because you do it the right way, and it wastes everyone else's time when you let them do it the wrong way first, then have to fix it. Sound about right?"

She waited a breath before answering. "Something like that."

Charlie began dishing food onto their plates. "Yeah, I've got an assistant at the research center, Cal. She's just like that, too. Keeps me honest most days, if you want to know the truth." He rose to his feet, ignoring the faint cracking sound his knees made (years of flying and landing too hard and fast, that) and handed her a plate.

"Dinner is served," he said.

Hermione examined the plate, then tucked her scarf down beneath her chin as she sat on the log. Charlie came to sit beside her.

"I'll wait for you to start," he said. "That way I'll know if it's worth eating."

She stabbed a bit of potato with her fork, then slowly raised it to her lips, casting him a sly look out of the corner of her eye as she tasted it. He knew he was a decent cook, but he'd spent years cooking for no one but himself and his coworkers in Romania.

"It's excellent," she said, after swallowing. "I'm more than impressed, Charlie."

Charlie beamed and set about eating his own meal.

"So what made you take up this cause in the first place?" he said, after a long while. "Dragons are a bit removed from house-elves and hippogryffs."

"Is there nothing Ron didn't tell you?" she said.

"Probably a little," said Charlie. "But we've got plenty of time to find that out, don't we?"

"I suppose. All right, well, ever since we freed her, I've worried about this dragon. She was kept in deplorable conditions, and she's blind... I know she's survived seven years out here, but it's really only a matter of time until something dreadful happens. I'd hate to see her destroyed after all she's been through already. I've been petitioning for years."

"So I've heard," said Charlie. "And I appreciate that. I've wanted to go after her since day one, but getting Ministry approval... You know how that goes. It doesn't make sense, really, but when she basically disappeared into the ether for the first few years, the powers that be lost interest. I reckon they thought she'd died out there, and wasn't their problem anymore. And then it just became a mess of red tape and backlogged requests. You're the one who finally pushed it through. Thank you."

"I did what I could," she said, looking at her plate, though her smile told him that she was pleased with his appreciation.

"Well, when we get her back and she's safely at the sanctuary, she'll appreciate it as much as I do."

"I'll look forward to that," she said, and she held his gaze for a moment, her dark eyes searching out his face, as if she were looking for something. He didn't know what it was, but he found himself wanting to give it to her.

"Oh! Almost forgot." He finally broke eye contact and reached into his satchel, pulling out a dark bottle and two glasses wrapped carefully in tea towels. "Pants at cushioning charms," he said. "So I always add a little reinforcement."

"You brought wine?"

He frowned slightly. "You don't drink wine?"

"Oh, of course I drink it. It just..." She looked around the camp. "Seems... out of place here. Somewhat."

Charlie followed her gaze and shrugged. "Yeah, I reckon it is. I just thought it might make things a little more... comfortable. You know, first night out here and all? It's only going to get harder from here."

"That was thoughtful," she said. "Thank you. But you should know that you don't have to worry about my delicate constitution."

"Oh, I didn't mean it like that. I just-Aw, hell. I would've brought beer but I reckoned you'd think that lacked sophistication."

Hermione laughed. "I dated Ron, Charlie. Sophistication is not a watermark for me."

"Thought maybe you'd learned your lesson there," he said, and he uncorked the bottle. He started to pour, then felt a little sorry for what he'd just said. "You know I'm just taking the piss, yeah? About Ron, I mean. I give him shit, but I love him."

She took a glass from him and nodded. "Of course I know that. He loves you, too. In spite of all the wretched things he's said about you."

He opened his mouth to respond, but caught just a hint of a smile as she sipped her wine, and he smiled back.

Charlie hadn't been exaggerating when he told her it was only going to get harder. The next morning saw them hiking at the onset of dawn, through rocky, uneven mountain passages and along the edge of sheer cliffs. They seemed to Hermione to be heading in entirely the wrong direction; this was nowhere near the last dragon sighting.

By ten a.m., she could no longer hold her tongue.

"You do have a map with you, don't you?" she said, hoping that she sounded merely curious.

"Of course," said Charlie, but he made no move to reach for it, instead taking hold of a sapling with one hand and reaching back for her with the other, pulling her up over a loose pile of rocks.

"Should we... consult it?" she said. Her hand felt so small in his, and he raised her to the higher path with ease, letting go a little too soon.

"We could," he said, "but that wouldn't get us there any faster."

"Get us where, exactly? You do know where we're going, don't you?"

"I do."

"Because the last time I looked at the map-"

"Hermione." He stopped and turned to face her. "Trust me. I know where I'm going."

"But you're not going to tell me?"

He smiled, cocked his head at her as if she'd said something funny, and turned away. "You're going to have to see it for yourself," he said.

"Charlie?"

"What's that now, Hermione?"

"We're still looking for the dragon, aren't we?"

"Ella? Of course we are. S'our whole reason for being out here. Like I said, you've got to trust me on this one."

Hermione pressed her lips together, but continued hiking behind him, deciding to focus on the winding dragon's tail that curled up from beneath his shirt, green and shimmering on his skin, and wrapped around the side of his neck.

He paused when they reached their destination. There was a flutter of something low in his belly. Apprehension, maybe, or self-doubt. He turned his head, grinned at her over his shoulder. She pressed her lips together, her smile strained though there was something indulgent about it. He knew she thought this was a waste of time, this detour through unfriendly paths and over rough terrain. Maybe this would convince her otherwise.

Using a slicing spell, he cut through the bramble that blocked the entrance to the shallow valley, then led her inside. Months had passed since he'd last been out here, but the timeless quality remained, as always. The green of this meadow was a different green than he'd seen anywhere else in Romania. It was a gentle, constant, old green. The color of wisdom, maybe. For Charlie, anyway. A stream wound through the meadow, curling like a blue ribbon, flanked by a rocky embankment.

"We want to go over there," he said, pointing to a grove of beech trees just this side of the stream.

She stepped through from the forest with reverence, as if the act of taking it all in was as sacred as a prayer. He watched her eyes as her gaze set across the landscape, committing every detail to memory. He knew that later she would question him about it all. There was something different about this place, something magical and special, though not even magical folk could put their finger on just what it was after visiting. She had pulled her hair back tightly this morning, but after the long walk, wisps of it had come free all over her head, and it caught the morning sunlight, creating an aura of deep gold that hovered around her.

Charlie coughed into his hand and looked away. This place... It was like it was under a spell.

"What are we doing here?" she said, walking beside him down the grassy slope.

"Call it insurance," said Charlie. "Ella might be sick, she'll definitely be scared. She's lived a whole life of fear and torture, and then another life of scavenging and uncertainty. Our likelihood of getting burned is? Oh, I would say five hundred percent higher than if this were your run-of-the-mill escaped dragon scenario."

"There's such thing as a run-of-the-mill escaped dragon scenario?"

"Oh, yeah," said Charlie. "But if we're doing our jobs right, you never hear about them."

They reached the grove and he found a beech with a dark, open hollow at the base. He lowered himself to one knee and Hermione followed suit. There was a tin in his satchel, oval-shaped and nondescript, and he pulled it out. Then he took his wand and cast a simple charm. The leaves on the trees above them shifted and rustled, coming together to form a dark green umbrella that blotted out the overhead sun.

"You're not in class, you know," he said, glancing up at her without raising his head. "There won't be a test at the end of term."

"I find this interesting," she said crisply, a slight pink rising to her cheeks as she spoke. "Besides, you've hardly given me a word of explanation since we arrived, and the curiosity is killing me."

He opened the tin and set it on the ground. The scent of smoke and death wafted through the air all around them.

"Ashes," she said. "From what?"

"Bones," said Charlie. "Scorched by dragon fire." There was a flash of disgust across her expression, and he added, "Bones of the already deceased. They just have to be bones."

He dipped his fingers into the tin, coating his fingertips in soot. "This is the only thing that'll draw them out," he said.

"Draw what out?"

"Just watch."

Charlie placed his hand, palm down, on the knot at the root base of the tree. A tiny nose appeared from the hollow, then sharply pointed ears tilted forward. This one was chubby, its roly-poly body wobbling forward on short legs with inadequately small feet at the end. The dish brush tail curled in toward its backside. The creature skittered all the way out, climbing onto the back of his hand, then running up his arm and onto his shoulder.

Hermione leaned to the side, her eyes following its movement. "What is it?" she asked.

"He. He's a Long-Eared Moonshadow," said Charlie. "Generally nocturnal, hence the umbrella charm."

"Are we taking him with us?"

"No. He lives here. But he has something we want, and if we're nice enough," he stuck a hand in the satchel again, fishing around until he found what he was looking for, "he'll give it to us. In my bag, I stashed some of the bacon from breakfast. Get it out, put it on the flat of your palm and hold it out for him.

She complied without a word, though he was certain he could see more than a thousand questions bubbling just below the surface. He had a feeling their walk back to base camp would be filled with Hermione picking his brain about Moonshadows and their idiosyncrasies. When she had the bacon on her hand, she held it out to the creature.

"A little closer," he said. "And don't curl your fingers up. They have teeth like razors."

She gasped and her hand trembled, but she moved it closer.

"Did you forget to mention that before you had me rub bait on my body."

The little part of Charlie's brain that knew where the filter to his mouth resided tried valiantly to fight what was surely a losing battle. The Moonshadow lunged for the bacon and Charlie spared a glance in her direction, looking her over in a way he hadn't allowed himself before. She'd still been "Ron's girl" in his head when she arrived, and even now he felt a little dirty for checking her out as if she'd never been with his brother at all; that feeling excited him just a little bit more. Charlie was no stranger to indulging in a little hedonistic pleasure, even if he had been trying to clean up his act in recent years.

"So thick," Hermione said, her voice breathy, and the sound of it ran straight down Charlie's spine, made his cock twitch.

It took him a few lust-murky seconds to realize that she referring to the Moonshadow's fur. The creature had crawled onto her palm and was sitting at the base of her wrist, hungrily snapping up the bacon from her hand.

"What next?" she said.

"Uh... right. Next." Charlie reached out and tucked a finger beneath the Moonshadow's chin, seeking out just the right spot and stroking gently.

The Moonshadow reared up suddenly and hissed, and Hermione let out a little shriek of surprise, but kept her hand steady. Charlie withdrew his finger, the Moonshadow leaned down to lick the remnants of bacon grease from her hand, then it leapt to the ground and dashed back into the tree hollow.

"That's it?" she said, her hand still outstretched.

"Give it a minute." Charlie pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped her hand clean. He was still holding it when something emerged from the tree.

A large, pale blue egg surfaced from the hold and rolled the distance it took to reach Hermione's feet. Then, another egg, this one grey and speckled. The third egg was larger still, with a shimmering green surface and dark blue veins.

"That's the thing," Charlie said, his focus now entirely on the hunt for the dragon. "What we've been waiting for."

He picked up the third egg and examined it. Perfect condition.

"Reckon you could conjure me a towel?" he asked.

She conjured it absently, with that same textbook wave of her wand, and Charlie took it to wrap around the bottom of the egg.

"That's a dragon egg," she said. "The Moonshadow had it?"

"Yeah," said Charlie. "Egg hoarders, they are."

"Where... Where would he get a dragon egg?"

"Tunnels," said Charlie. "These little guys have tunnels that run all the way to Nepal and back."

"That's impossible."

"Maybe a slight exaggeration then. But they tunnel everywhere."

"And steal eggs?"

"Not the useful ones. The ones that were never going to hatch. Still smells like a dragon, though. Ella's blind. She'll seek it out by scent if we can get it close enough. Then I can get a good look at her to evaluate what kind of team we'll need to bring her in."

"Remind me why it took the Ministry seven years to come to this conclusion?" she said dryly.

The Moonshadow chattered and Hermione rubbed her knuckle over the soft fur between its ears. "You steal eggs," she said softly, "and hoard things? I think we should call you Templeton."

"You're naming it?"

"You name your dragons, don't you?"

"True," said Charlie. "Templeton. Any reason for that?"

"Children's story, from when I was very young," she said. "A Muggle book."

"I see," said Charlie. He began carefully tucking the egg in his satchel.

Hermione set the Moonshadow-Templeton-down and pulled out her wand.

"Luckily for you," she said, "I'm not pants at cushioning charms. We wouldn't want to show up with a broken egg now, would we?"

"No," said Charlie, and he buckled the strap on his bag. "We wouldn't."

The next week was spent camping and waiting, scouting out all the places sightings of Ella had been reported, only for Charlie to discover that she was long gone when he took stock of all the signs. Instead of feeling frustrated, however, Hermione felt herself enjoying their mission more and more. Charlie's increasingly frequent flirtations probably had more to do with that than she wanted to admit. She had no business entertaining an attraction to Ron's brother.

Last night after dinner, they'd been talking whilst he did the washing up (she'd insisted that he didn't have to do everything around the camp, but Charlie had been equally insistent that it drove him crazy to leave his hands idle for long), and when he'd finished, he had come to rest his hand on her shoulder, watching the fire from behind her, his thumb rubbing gently up and down the base of her neck. She knew it had been an unconscious touch because as soon as he became aware of it, he pulled his hand away. But she'd spent the rest of the night thinking about the warm ghost of his hand on her shoulder.

She swallowed and turned her attention back to today's hike. "A week ago I don't know that I would have believed something so big could be so hard to find," said Hermione.

"There's a reason they've lasted for so long," he said. "She's still got instincts, no matter what else the goblins beat out of her."

When Charlie mentioned the goblins, it was with none of the hesitant respect she'd heard in Bill's voice. Charlie's tone was full of loathing and mistrust. From what she'd seen of the Gringotts dragon, she couldn't entirely blame him.

A sound up ahead stopped them cold. Voices, and the rattle of chains. According to every map they'd consulted, there was no human habitation anywhere near here.

"Poachers," Charlie said. "Fuck. Fuck."

"What are they doing here?"

"We're not the only ones who read all those Quibbler reports about dragon sightings," he said. "They're coming this way. I reckon that means we've found another dead end. So that's the upside. The downside, however..."

He reached down for her hand as the footsteps grew closer (and there were many of them, so many that they blended together into a low rumble), and he darted suddenly back up the path, pulling hard on her wrist.

"Is that poachers are fucking dangerous."

Hermione ran after him, her ankle turning in on a loose rock. She hopped a few steps, then forced her foot to carry her weight, running full force up the mountain behind him. They scrambled up an embankment, coming to a flat path, and at the first sign of an open cave mouth, Charlie jerked her inside.

A rock stood just inside the shadows, barely higher than Hermione's knee, but Charlie caught his shin on it, hard, as they raced inside.

"Motherf-" He never reached the expletive; Hermione's hand was clamped over his mouth, silencing him, as they tumbled to the ground.

She pinned him down with a knee to the chest so he couldn't protest, and pulled out her wand with her free hand, thanking every law on the wizarding books that she'd practiced casting spells with both hands until she was equally adept. She set a do-not-notice charm, and then a complicated ward, sealing them away from the world outside that cave.

By the time the band of poachers passed through, cursing coarsely and issuing loud threats to the dragon they hoped to find, the cave itself was expertly hidden. Hermione exhaled and pulled her hand away from his mouth.

"Fucker!" Charlie finished, drawing his knee up behind her. "God, that hurt."

"I can well imagine," she said, crawling off him and sitting down beside him on the cold floor. If she'd spent another second straddling him, she would have lost her focus completely. "Let me see."

Charlie sat up with a groan, rolling up the cuff of his trousers and showing her the angry, purpling bruise.

"Oh, it's nothing," he said. "Caught my shinbone just right to make it hurt like fuck, but-whoa."

In the time he was talking, she'd cast a spell to relieve the swelling and take a bit of the throbbing away.

"That was good," he said, rubbing his hand over the spot. "Thanks."

Hermione smiled. "Like you said, it wasn't that bad."

He watched her for a moment, until she felt self-conscious enough to look away.

"How's your ankle?" he said.

She stretched out her leg and rolled her foot. "I think it will be all right," she said.

"Let me see." He took it in her hand, rubbing his thumb gently over her ankle bone.

"Mmm," she said. "It's just a little sore. I barely twisted it." She bit down on her bottom lip as he continued massaging her leg, a bit higher than her ankle now.

He slid his hand up beneath her calf, and Hermione shuddered, unable to suppress it. His hands were incredible.

"Charlie," she said quietly, "should we be... Is now really the time for this?"

He looked up at her, his eyes dark with intensity. "We have to wait until they've passed, but... I'm sorry." He let go of her leg. "If you want me to stop."

"No," she said, and she reached for his hand.

Charlie smiled lopsidedly, took her chin with two fingers of his other hand, and guided her closer. His kiss was everything she had expected: gentle but insistent, slow but experienced. She reached up to touch his cheek and he let go of her hand, sliding his fingers up her arm. It felt as though they were in the Moonshadow's valley again, a place out of time, with no dragon to find, no menacing poachers lurking outside their wards, only Charlie's mouth on hers, his tongue pressing tentatively past her lips.

She pulled back, looking from his eyes to his mouth, then back again.

"They're probably gone by now," he said.

"Okay." She licked her lips. They tasted like Charlie. "We... we should probably talk about this. After we find Ella."

"That sounds... hopeful?"

"Hopeful," Hermione agreed. "I like that." Her smile faded. "Do you think they'll find her before we do?"

Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose. "I think they're going to find us before anyone finds Ella. It's the egg. If they've got dragon sensors, they'll know it's here. The Moonshadows have a musk that masks the eggs, but out in the open..." He shook his head.

"Can't we use a spell? Or some kind of potion?"

"Then Ella wouldn't be able to detect it, either. No, it's best that we destroy the egg."

"No," Hermione said quickly. "We'll hide it. We'll mask its scent and hide it, just like Templeton did. Just in case."

"Yeah," Charlie said. "Yeah, that's brilliant, actually."

"Good," said Hermione, squaring her shoulders. The kiss had been perfectly lovely, but they had to focus on the business at hand. "Then we can figure out how to get those poachers off Ella's trail."

Hermione had been able to shift her attention back to the search for the dragon with such ease that Charlie found himself wondering if the kiss had occurred at all. He'd known this about her, that her tenacity to finish a project was unmatched, and he was glad of it, for both his sake and Ella's. She'd hidden the egg well, and they spent the next two days searching for the poachers, with Charlie growing restless over time lost from their original mission.

They knew they were close when they reached the warm embers of a campfire. Hermione picked up and banished the poachers' strewn litter with disgust. Charlie searched for signs of the poachers trail.

"Got it!" he said finally, relieved that they had a lead, though a sick seed of apprehension had taken root in his gut.

"What's the matter?"

"We have to hurry. I think they're headed in the right direction this time. Or at least they've stopped pursuing the wrong one."

They were a day behind, and that meant hiking through most of the night to catch up. He knew Hermione was exhausted, though she never complained, and by the time the sun came up, the pack on his back felt like lead. They'd stopped for breakfast at the edge of a glen, far enough into the forest growth that they were shielded from the open meadow. They ate cold cereal bars, avoiding any chance that the poachers would catch sight of smoke billowing from a fire. The poachers themselves had no reason to take the same precaution.

Hermione spotted the fire first, off in the distance, where the meadow dipped into a valley.

"Christ," Charlie murmured, shaking his head. "We're nearly back where we started from. Over the rise on the other side of that valley? That's where the Moonshadow clutch is burrowed."

Hermione swung her bag over her shoulder and stood. "Then we should hurry," she said.

"Right," said Charlie, and he stood to follow. Under his breath, he added, "Do we even have a plan yet?"

The lack of a plan didn't deter Hermione, and they rounded on the far side of the valley, hoping to get ahead of the poachers, and possibly shield Ella from detection if they could find her first. Otherwise, they would try to get a good beat on the poachers so Charlie could call in reinforcements from the Dragon Research and Restraint Bureau. What they hadn't expected (all the blame Charlie would place on his own shoulders later would start with this small oversight) was that the poachers were careless enough to leave their campfire burning when they left their campsite.

Charlie had just stepped through a thick overgrowth of brush covering the trail proper when he found himself looking down on the band of poachers coming up the path. Luck seemed to be in short supply. He recognized one of them from a run-in they'd had in Romania six months previous.

"We've got a problem here," the poacher-McGovern? Had that been his name-said to the man next to him, and suddenly there were wands at the ready everywhere.

Charlie turned and shoved Hermione back through the bushes and off the trail, covering her back as they took the side of the hill that would lead up to the Moonshadows' meadow.

"Hermione!" he called after her, but she was running as fast as she could manage up the steep incline, scrambling over rock and root.

She stopped when she reached the apex and turned, shouting down to him, "Charlie, toss me your bag!"

"Why?"

"Just do it!"

He could hear the poachers approaching, though they were still a decent distance behind, and he swung his arm hard, launching the bag up in her direction. It skidded along the rocks at her feet and she plunged her arm into it, feeling around until she pulled out the tin of ash.

"Make a-" She had begun to shout, but caught herself, furrowing her brow. Then she began to look around wildly, until her gaze came to rest on a tall, crooked oak. She pointed up urgently.

The nest was prominent, and Charlie spotted it at once. The poachers had reached the trail head, but he couldn't help smiling.

"You're brilliant," he called, and then he began searching for the most plausible spot on the side of the mountain to build a dragon's nest. The poachers would have to believe that it had been here all along.

He knew these guys weren't experts; they were in it for the quick and dirty profit, and they didn't care about the dragons enough to know their habitats. That was why they preyed on sanctuaries and preserves so often. It was easier than poaching in the wild. If these dragon sightings panned out, though, and Ella was the lost Gringotts dragon (and Charlie had no doubt she was), there was more at stake than the sale of outlawed dragon parts.

It didn't take long to construct a reasonable facsimile of a nest, and the poachers were on the bend just below him on the mountainside when Hermione surfaced at the top of the path, sooty fingers clinging to a cement-colored egg. She smiled triumphantly, her whole face alight with the achievement, and hurried down the hill.

"I think Templeton remembered me," she said.

"Of course he did." He carefully took the egg and placed it in the nest.

Hermione cast a warming charm, leaving the impression that a dragon had been there recently, and then cast a violent hex that blasted a path through the trees into the distance. The rough impression was that something had scared the mother away. The egg would throw them off; they would know it couldn't possibly belong to Ella and reckon that either they'd found the wrong dragon, or that someone had set them up.

"Do you think they'll believe it?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said, honestly. "I can't think of a better plan at the moment." He grabbed her hand. "We have to get out of here, now."

She pulled her wand and slid her arm around his waist as he readied himself for Apparition. Instead of the spell however, the only sound she made was a gasped, "Oh!"

They'd come out of the trees, nearly a dozen poachers.

Charlie's "Protego!" fended off three spells, but not the one that struck Hermione from behind, knocking her forward. With one strong arm, he dragged her up against his body and hesitated for only a second. A dangerous, foolish second. Then he tamped down on it. Years had passed since he'd had any trouble with Apparition.

Another spell narrowly missed his head and Hermione wound her arms around his neck, shooting off a hex from behind him. He held on tightly and Disapparated them.

They reappeared on the sandy soil just outside Shell Cottage, and Hermione's grip loosened, but she didn't pull away.

"All right?" he asked. Her arms went completely slack around his neck and she started to fall.

He saw the blood as he started to lower her, soaked into his sleeve where his arm had been pressed against her side.

"Shite!" He lowered her to the ground. It could have been the hex, or it could have been his fault. He pulled open her coat to find her shirt soaked through, the vibrant stain on the pale blue fabric rising and falling shallowly with her quick, panting breaths.

"BILL!" Charlie bellowed, tearing off his coat and pressing it to her side. "FLEUR!"

It took them so long to get there. So long. A lifetime had passed before he heard the door open, Bill's racing footfalls coming up the path. Her face was so pale.

And then Bill was finally there. Bill, with an arm around Charlie and a low voice in Charlie's ear.

"What happened?"

"I-Poachers and it was... A hex or-I dunno. Splinching maybe." He felt like an idiot. He'd warned her about the danger, but he hadn't really thought that she'd get hurt. Not with him. He didn't let these things happen to the people on his watch. Not after Fred.

"Who did the Apparition?" said Bill, and when he received no answer, "Charlie! Who did the Apparition."

"I... I did."

"All right," Bill said, and he conjured a stretcher. Charlie should have thought of that. Hadn't he done it a dozen times at the sanctuary? "Fleur saw all the blood from the window. She's making an emergency call to the nearest hospital. Let's get her inside."

Charlie nodded and watched Bill levitate her onto the stretcher, then guide it to the house. As they passed through the door, Bill said, "You all right, mate? Is this shock or did you take a hex?"

"I... Uh, didn't get hit," said Charlie.

Everything went slow and fuzzy then, sounds all blending into a low constant ringing. Someone wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. A mediwitch stepped through the crackling green flames in the hearth and Fleur ushered her to the room where Bill had taken Hermione.

He didn't know how long had passed, Fleur curling his fingers around warm cups of tea that went cold between his palms. It could have been the lack of sleep, or the fear that this had been his doing, but he could only sit there blankly, watching Bill and Fleur fuss around the kitchen, then disappear into Hermione's room.

Charlie stood up, walked to the window, found that he couldn't see anything outside but that spot in the distance where Hermione's blood soaked the ground. Someone should clean that up, he thought. Can't just leave it there.

When Fleur surfaced ahead of Bill, she didn't look Charlie in the eyes.

"Charlie, mate, sit down," said Bill.

Fuck. He shook his head no and braced one hand on the table.

Bill frowned, but didn't push, only looked at the table as if he were concerned Charlie would break it. "Look," he said, "the hex they hit her with, it looks like it was supposed to be a pretty serious dark spell, but the wizard who shot it off was an amateur. The impact was minimal, but it's going to require some special care. We can't move her to St Mungo's right now because... Well, that's the other part. All that blood." He paused and pressed his lips together. "That was a splinching injury."

"Fuck." This time out loud.

"Charlie, you can't blame yourself. Anyone would've been under a fuck-ton of stress in that situation. You did the best you could, and you got the two of you out of there."

Charlie ran a hand through his hair, fingers curling into a fist at the nape of his neck.

"How long have you two..." Bill let the question trail off.

"Been on the dragon's trail? A little over a week," said Charlie.

"No, not that," Bill said. "I meant... You and Hermione." His gaze darted away.

"We're not-We haven't been. I kissed her once, Bill. And I know I shouldn't do it again, so you can spare me the lecture."

"It's fine." Bill was still looking at his feet.

"What?"

"Charlie, it's fine. Really. Ron, he just wants her to be happy. And I just want you to be happy." He caught Charlie's gaze as he spoke, his eyes all sincerity and hopefulness.

After a moment, Charlie nodded. "Thanks, Bill. I don't know what's going to come of it. I'm in Romania, and she's... Well, fuck. She's unconscious in a bed in there because I fucked up."

"She's going to get better," Bill said. "The mediwitch is very optimistic. She said she knows a healer who specializes in this sort of thing, reversing the effects of dark magic."

"You said we can't move her," said Charlie.

"I did." Bill smiled a little now. "But I'm not convinced that will be a problem. I'm going to have a little talk with the bloke, see if I can't talk him in to making a house call."

"You know him, then?"

"We all know him," Bill said. "In name, anyway. It's Draco Malfoy."