Hello! This is a one-shot and a kind of prequel to my Rise of a New Drak Power series. You don't have to read the series to get this though, and you certainly don't need to read this to get the series. So, with that said, Enjoy!
Disclaimer- I do not own Harry Potter.
Charlie's parents had given up hope that he would ever find a good girl and settle down, and frankly, so had Charlie. He had always assumed in childhood that he would meet her during Hogwarts. This, however, was far from the case seeing as he never even had a girlfriend in Hogwarts, unless you count that awkward kiss he and Tonks shared in their second year, which he doesn't.
Charlie was labeled as a weird kid all throughout his Hogwart's school days, always preferring the company of animals to the company of humans. It came as no surprise to anyone, with the possible exception of his parents, when he took off for Romania to work with dragons as soon as he graduated.
Romania was quite lonely for Charlie in his beginning years there. His days consisted of solely sleeping, eating and dragons for quite a few years. Then he met Ursula, a worker from the United States, and they saw each other for a while but it never really escalated into anything, and the situation was just so awkward in her apparent opinion that she transferred to a dragon site in Mexico. Or maybe that was to be closer to her family and had nothing to do with him…either way, she was gone and he was alone with his dragons again.
It was around the time she left that his site received Norbert. Norbert was feisty young dragon upon his arrival, always getting up to trouble and sometimes escaping the site. On one of these escapes, Charlie was the one assigned to bring him back.
Norbert was the one who had introduced him to Rena. Rena was sitting on park bench struggling though Sir Thomas More's, Utopia, when Norbert landed beside her. Rena like anyone raised strictly muggle would when confronted with a dragon screamed her lungs off, a sound that Charlie took to mean a possible Norbert sighting.
When Charlie arrived at the scene with the screaming, back-pedaling girl and the one year old dragon he instantly sent Norbert back to the site with his wand, in his haste forgetting to check if any muggles were around. Hearing a renewed scream of terror from the girl he pivoted and walked towards her slowly, hands raised in mock surrender. She was riveted to her spot and staring at his wand with dark brown eyes as wide as saucer's.
"My name is Charlie, I come in peace." The girl snorted and said something under her breath in Romanian. Charlie had a broken understanding of Romanian and it was enough to get him around town whenever he went out, but not enough to understand whatever the girl had just said. She was still too shocked to address him however, so Charlie continued. "You just saw something that may have surprised you." Another snort was his response but he pressed on. "If you could come with me I could have one of my colleagues explain it to you." It was after this sentence that the girl finally regained movement of legs and ran, rather slowly, but ran nonetheless from the man named Charlie and his crazy stick of magic.
Charlie mentally cursed himself after she was gone. He had gone about that the wrong way. Now she'd probably be running around blabbing to everyone and anyone what she had just seen.
Charlie reported the incident to his boss Kelley, a middle-aged witch from Austrailia, later that day to see if he should do something about it. She probably wouldn't want all the muggles of Romania knowing about magic, after all. So far, they all believed the dragon site was a small forest. To keep people out of it some of the Romanian workers at the site had been asked to spread rumors about the forest being haunted and if anyone was to set foot in it would go up in flames. The rumor wasn't too far from the truth however, because when dragons feel threatened, especially older dragons, they tend to breathe fire and that fire does occasionally set the forest aflame. The muggles seemed to accept this 'haunted' forest and rarely anyone stepped foot inside of it. Charlie thought that his boss would be concerned if the privacy of the site being endangered. Kelley, however, only laughed when she heard Charlie's story.
"Oh to be young again, and think that muggles actually care enough to notice things." She said chuckling.
"She did see me though. She was terrified, wouldn't move from her spot for ages!" Charlie said.
"Even if she did see it, Charlie." Kelley responded more serious now. "Who would believe her? She has no proof." Charlie nodded considering this reasoning.
He didn't think about Rena again for months until one day he bumped into her on the way to an errand he was running to the Laundromat. The short girl with bone straight, most likely straightened, dark brown, almost black, hair and black plastic glasses framing dark brown eyes stared at him in shock for a moment before her expression turned into hatred.
"Erm, hello." Charlie said awkwardly, his dull blue eyes turning to the ground, and shifting his weight from his left to his right foot.
"My friends think I'm crazy." The girl stated plainly with perfect and most likely frequently practiced pronunciation.
"So do mine." Charlie responded with a tight smile. "I point sticks at things and pretend I'm doing magic." He preformed a very poor fake titter after that sentence. Her glare hardened.
"I want to show you something." The girl said brushing past him, Charlie took this as his cue to follow her and did so, if a bit reluctantly. When she finally stopped walking Charlie found himself looking at the forest that hid the dragon site from muggle view. "I followed you here the night I saw that baby dragon. It was a baby dragon right?" Charlie nodded. "You walked into the haunted forest and I followed you. The 'haunted' forest turned out to be not so haunted after all. It turned out to be some sort of Dragon Cult. I, of course, rushed home to repeat the news to my roommates, Jesse and Annika, neither of which believed me and both of which have been having conversations regarding my mental health behind my back ever since."
The girl, who was at least eight inches shorter than Charlie, sent him a look that had him wanting to run back to the comfort of his dragons. Charlie didn't know where to start on explaining this but seeing as she knew too much already he figured he'd better start then.
Upon arriving at Charlie's magically enlarged tent-home, the questions about the 'Dragon Cult' turned into questions about the small tent that should have contained no more that a sleeping bag and some clothes, having a kitchen, bathroom, bed, and living area questions. Charlie realized that as annoying as that night may have seemed at the time, it was well worth it in the end because that night in the tent explaining his life while she explained all the muggle intricacies of hers he made his first true friend.
The End