A/N: References are made in this story to Theo having been arrested after the war. This is a reference to Cursed Child, but it's never explicitly said what he was arrested for. No knowledge of Cursed Child should be necessary to read this.

This was written for two events on the Hogwarts Challenges and Assignments forum. The first is Slash September, where it was written for Charlie. The second is Pirates of the Black Lake for commandeering a ship: Troubadour - Charlie/Theo.

CN: Minor violence, references to pureblood supremacy ideology, mentions of dragon droppings (in a dragon keeping context)

Word count: 1,772

Not Alone

Charlie's decision to transfer to the Welsh dragon reserve hadn't been made lightly. He had debated with himself for months before he decided it was the right thing to do. His parents were getting older, and his mother had never been happy about him leaving Britain. With that in mind, he had decided that he would move to Wales for the foreseeable future. The rest would be decided later.

There was nothing wrong with Wales or its dragon reserve, but Charlie was homesick for Romania from the moment he landed.

To distract himself, he took to wandering the land, wanting to learn the ins and outs of this reserve as he had the one back home in Romania. He catalogued the dragons and the other keepers over the course of his first week, searching for a reason to care for Wales as much as he had Romania.

He'd been at his new home for four days when he first encountered Theodore Nott while he was monitoring dragon droppings for signs of dietary problems. Charlie stopped in his tracks, taking a closer look at the man's face to make sure he'd identified him correctly.

Nott's father had been a Death Eater, but Charlie knew the other man's face from Nott's own arrest years after the war. He hadn't known that Nott had been released from Azkaban, but perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised that he'd come to a dragon reserve once he was free. They'd had several former inmates working on the reserve in Romania. Not one of them had been deeply entrenched in the blood purity ideology like the Nott family though.

Whether it was from prison or his time spent among dragons, Nott was quick to note Charlie's presence. He looked up from his sample, eyes narrowing once he realized who Charlie was.

"Weasley," he drawled, looking down at his clipboard and scrawling on it with his quill. "I knew I'd run into you sooner or later."

"I didn't know you work here."

"Yes, well, I wasn't given a full employee roster when I joined either. I suppose they don't consider it a priority."

Nott turned back to his work, but when he realized that Charlie wasn't leaving, he looked up again, one eyebrow raised.

"Can I help you with something? Need help finding the toilet? Your clue: there are no walls."

Charlie shook his head.

"I was wondering what made you want to come work with dragons."

Distrust emanated from Nott. He leant back to distance himself from Charlie as much as possible. Charlie was surprised when he got an answer.

"Dragons don't know I spent time in Azkaban, and they wouldn't care if they did." He tapped his wand against his clipboard, and it vanished. "Besides, I've always liked putting myself in inadvisable situations."

He disappeared with a pop.

Charlie knew it wasn't smart, but he couldn't stop himself from watching Theodore Nott over the next several months. He was fascinated by the man who did nothing but scowl at his co-workers while showing a proficiency with dragons beyond what someone with his experience typically possessed. A few conversations told Charlie that said proficiency was the only reason Nott had been hired in the first place considering his background.

Charlie's interest didn't come from surprise that a former Azkaban inmate would be drawn to dragon keeping. His interest initially came from the readiness with which Nott performed the unpleasant parts of the job despite his privileged upbringing and formerly voiced prejudices.

It didn't take long for Charlie to learn that it was Nott who monitored the dragons' droppings for signs of illness, a task that had been reluctantly delegated between all of the keepers back in Romania. Not one of them, no matter how committed to dragons they were, wanted to spend more time with their droppings than they had to.

Nott traversed the reserve once a week, clipboard in hand, to write notes on the droppings he encountered, and he was always the first one called to answer questions when something was off with a particular dragon.

If it weren't for Nott, it might have taken them ages to realize that Rosalina, one of their youngest Welsh Greens, was sneaking into a local Muggle farmer's fields and eating his sheep. A potential sighting (and potential Muggle death) were avoided when they began paying closer attention to her daily habits and redirected her intended escapes.

The director of the reserve had thanked Nott profusely for speaking up while Nott had merely nodded along until he was left alone, not showing one smile in response to the praise.

It was enough for Charlie to conclude definitively that Theodore Nott was far more fascinating than Charlie had expected him to be. For once, Charlie found himself more interested in the behavior of a fellow human than a dragon. Though the reserve was large, making it easy to go most of the day without seeing another keeper, Charlie would sometimes position himself to make it more likely that he would see Nott.

It took him more than a month to be confident that his interest was about more than detached interest in Nott's behavior. There was something about Nott that was drawing Charlie to him, and it was only a matter of time before his interest in the other man came back to bite him.

There wasn't a cloud in the sky as Charlie patrolled the perimeter of the reserve, checking to make sure the anti-Muggle wards were holding. When he came across Nott, he slowed down and became more thorough in his inspection, watching from the corner of his eye as the other man took notes on the number of baby rabbits in a nest on the edge of the reserve.

Suddenly, Nott disappeared. Not second later, there was a pop, and Nott was two meters away from him.

"Merlin!" Charlie exclaimed, stumbling backwards. "What the hell was that for, Nott?"

Nott had drawn his wand, and Charlie felt a momentary rush of fear as he yanked his own wand from its holster. Working with dragons was great for one's reflexes.

He waited to see if Nott would make a move or provide an explanation for the sudden standoff. His eyes didn't leave the other man's, and for once, the man wasn't concealing what he felt. Charlie's stomach twisted at what he saw there.

"When can I be forgiven?" Nott asked, voice trembling with emotion.

Charlie, in his shock, let his wand arm fall slightly. His brow creased together in confusion, and he cleared his throat.

"What are you on about? I'm only doing my job and inspecting the perimeter."

He gestured towards the boundary of the reserve behind him, but Nott began shaking his head, his breathing heavy.

"I see you watching me, Weasley. Every day, you stand around and stare while I'm just trying to do my job. Leave. Me. Alone."

Charlie gaped at him. He knew that he'd become enthralled with Nott, but he hadn't thought he was conspicuous enough for others to notice. He only observed the man from a distance, and he'd always made sure there was a pretense of work being done.

"I'm not monitoring you because I think you're going to do something wrong. Though I'm a bit weary of the wand you currently have pointed at my heart."

Nott blinked twice before lowering his wand, keeping it gripped in his fist at his side. Charlie followed his lead and went as far as storing his wand back in its holster.

"Then why?" Nott asked, voice pained. "Why can't you leave me alone?"

Discomfort gripped Charlie's heart as he grappled with how to answer.

"You have a gift with dragons," he said. "Out of everyone on this reserve, you work the hardest. If you're not named as the director once Williams retires, it'll be a damn shame."

The words didn't receive the response he'd expected. Nott scowled and took a step backward.

"I don't have any desire to be director," he said. "Ordering people around isn't for me. I'm here to work with dragons, not people."

"Look, I understand that you don't want compliments from a Weasley—"

"I don't care who your family is." Despite the words, there was venom in Nott's voice. "Caring about blood never did anything but cause me trouble. You could be a Muggle or a descendent of Slytherin himself. I don't care. These days, I just want to be left alone."

Charlie frowned.

"That seems like a lousy way to live."

He didn't tell Nott that part of the reason he'd left Britain for Romania years ago was a desire to get away from the people he knew. He thought—still thought, actually—that it was a necessary step towards understanding himself after a life of being defined by his family, by his house, by his blood status, and by other things that were parts of him but not the whole picture.

Nott wouldn't want to hear Charlie's story and would probably call it whining after what he had been through himself. Charlie could understand that.

"I'm living just fine," Nott growled. "What would you know about it, Weasley? You come from a huge, happy family. Sure, for you loneliness may seem like the worst thing in the world, but some of us are used to it."

"You know what I'm used to? Getting colds every winter. I'd still appreciate a winter without one."

Nott's eyes narrowed, but Charlie had foolish hope that his words were making an impact.

"Have you been to that coffee shop in town?" Charlie asked, prompting Nott's eyes to widen before narrowing in suspicion.

"The one owned by the older woman who tries to speak Welsh to me even though she knows I don't speak it?" Nott asked with a frown. "I've been."

"Do you want to meet me there? Saturday morning at ten?"

Nott watched him for several seconds. Charlie's heart pounded in his chest. It had been a long time since he'd invited someone out for anything.

"That sounds an awful lot like a date," Nott said with a frown.

Charlie forced himself to laugh.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," he said carefully, trying not to think about the stray thoughts that had begun creeping into his dreams. "For now, we can stick to coffee and conversation."

He couldn't believe it when Nott gave an affirmative nod in response.

When the coffee became a routine, Charlie was surprised. When, much later, hand holding and, far later, kissing were added to that routine, Charlie could only shrug and say he'd known for a while.