A/N: Hello Charlie fans!
OK, this one-shot is for Sarapha who has recently informed me that Bill Weasley fanfictions are rarer than a fireproof tree, I thought that - as Charlie's older brother - Bill deserved a little adventure of his own and decided to write him one.
Of course, there had to be a little bit of Charlie in there for good measure so look out for the little reference to his life in Romania. ;)
Fighting for Fangs
"Oh, Bill, what must they think of you at the bank? With the long hair and the fang! You'll never get a nice girl to fall in love with you with that thing in your ear." Mrs Weasley complained as she – once again – took in the appearance of her oldest son.
"Mum, the people at the bank couldn't care less what I look like so long as I bring home a boat-load of treasure!" Bill replied, rolling his eyes at the age-old conversation. Despite his mother's insistence that his hair was too long and he looked ridiculous, he knew she wouldn't be happy if they didn't have this conversation at least once a week.
"I think it's cool!" Piped up Ginny, looking up from one of her new school books. It was the end of the summer holidays and the Burrow was packed with activity and people – just the way Bill liked it! At that very moment, Fred, George, Ron and Harry were playing two-a-side Quidditch in the garden. Crookshanks was chasing a filthy Gnome through the kitchen and Percy was leaning out of his bedroom window telling everyone and his grandmother to shut up.
"I remember how I got this fang, it's a real vampire fang, you know? I knocked out of the bloodsucker's mouth myself. Never seen a vampire look as stupid, there's a reason they have two fangs and not one!" Bill laughed, his mother had dropped her wand on the floor and was staring at Bill open mouthed and he realised why he had never told this story in the house.
"Vampires!" She hissed under her breath, "I don't even want to know." Mrs Weasley left the room before she could hear anything else she didn't want to know.
"I want to know!" Ginny said, closing her textbook and looking at her oldest brother with wide eyes. She got comfortable on the sofa and looked expectantly at Bill who grinned and plunged into his favourite story.
"I was really happy because the bank had sent me to Romania to deal with a particularly tricky group of wizards who owed the goblins gold. Let me tell you, if you owe goblins any money you're likely to pay for it in more than gold. Of course, I got to see Charlie whilst I was in Romania and he was quite happy for me to stay with him for a couple of the days. Showed me some of the dragons and what-have-you. We had a nice catch up whilst I familiarised myself with the wizards in question. Asked Charlie if he knew anything about them. He told me that they used to be involved with a black market, buying and selling dragon meat and stuff which shouldn't be sold. The ministry over in Romania ha shut them down for illegal activity and so they had gone to the goblins for gold to buy back into the black market.
The goblins didn't care that it was illegal as long as they got some gain out of it. That was the problem, the goblins didn't see a knut of the gold they loaned out and decided that these wizards needed a bit of a reminder. They sent three howlers in succession telling the wizards that, unless they coughed up, they would be getting a one way ticket to Azkaban. The wizards wrote back to them and told them that they weren't getting paid in gold so the goblins would have to wait until they could get their earnings converted back. Three months later they hadn't heard anything form the wizards so they sent a team of us curse-breakers out there to see what was going on. We were told that we had to capture the wizards and bring them back to England for a ministry hearing before they went to Azkaban and take all of the gold and treasure we could find.
So for the first few days we watched the wizards coming and going and found all of their secret hideaways, picking them off one by one we managed to find out who they were working for and what they were doing. They weren't selling dragon meat, it was worse, they were supplying a brood of vampires with fresh victims on a daily basis. We caught the wizards and sent them back to the ministry but we couldn't find any treasure. Being a curse-breaker, it's kind of important to bring home treasure.
So most of the other curse-breakers came back home, me and this one other guy stayed behind to see if we could find anything leading to the treasure. It took a good fortnight but we tracked down one of the vampires they were supplying. Lucky for us, the brood had kicked him out because he was a complete idiot – thought it was a good idea to become vegetarian, told us that he tried broccoli the other day and could see why kids didn't like it! Anyway, he was more than willing to dish the dirt on the others. He said that the vampires never actually handed over any treasure to the wizards, they kept it hidden away in a vault under their crypt with the promise that they would pay the goblins directly. So me and this other guy felt sorry for him and let him go on his way. I figured that it couldn't hurt to let him try and convert a couple of the bloodsuckers to vegetarianism.
We spent another two days staking out their crypt before we acted, we waited until midday and then we crept in whilst they were asleep. Do you know how creepy it is to have about a dozen fully grown men hanging from the ceiling above you and about another ten laying around in coffins? Well this other guy froze up and started screaming and the bloodsuckers all started to wake up. One of them shut the door to the crypt and they started moving. There was no sunlight in the crypt so they were as deadly as they would have been in the dead of night, there were about 22 of them all circling around the two of us. Surprisingly enough, the other guy managed to take three of them down with him as he died but that still left me with 19 of them to kill.
I punched the first one in the stomach and broke my hand in the process, so I had 19 angry vampires to kill and a was one hand down. So I broke a leg off of the table stuck it through the first vampire – the one I'd tried to punch. He vanished with a little scream and I knew I was onto something. I used my improvised weapon to swipe through two more bloodsuckers, sending them the same way as their friend. Three of them came at me in a group, backing me into a corner and I used the wooden stake to back them off, they wouldn't get too close to it, with a sudden lunge forwards, I stabbed one of them, pushing my new weapon through him so hard that it went through the vamp behind him as well.
I was feeling very cool by then and thinking that I just might have a chance – as long as too many of them didn't come at me at the same time. Then the two who had been circling me dived at me, one of them caught me and pinned me up against the wall whilst the other tried the bite me, it yanked my arm upwards, snapping the vamp's own arm off in the process, and shoved the wooden stake through his ribs into the spot where his heart should have been. The other vampire let go of me in and took a step back wards, giving me enough space to reach forwards and rip another leg off the table, it was sharper and less bloody so I threw my other weapon down and began fighting off the thirteen remaining vampires – careful not to jostle my broken hand too much, it hurt quite a bit by that point.
I rounded on a group of five of them, attacking rather than waiting to be attacked, before they could do anything I'd sliced the first two in half and used the blunt end of the table leg to bash the skull of the third. One of the caught me by surprise and knocked me over, as he was about to lunge, I kicked out and tripped him over, sending him flying, and he landed on my discarded weapon with a muffled scream, impaling himself on it. Unfortunately for me, the remaining nine vampires decided that it was time to work as a team; I knew I couldn't take on all nine of them at once. I grimaced and glanced upwards, looking for a way out, but something else caught my eye. There was a window, higher up in the wall than I would have liked it, with a thick black curtain hanging around it. I looked down at my watch, trying to make the motion seem as accidental as possible, there was still an hour or so until the sun was due to set. I began to think, rather than just fighting, there had to be a way to get to that window. A snarl brought me back to reality and I managed to dodge a vampire flying at me, it clicked, this vamp wasn't going to give up because I'd managed to dodge him, I let him run at me again. This time I ran at him, dodging to the side and catapulting off the far wall, meeting him again in mid-air I used him as a lever and forced him back to the floor of the crypt. I grabbed the end of the curtain as I flew up wards and as I began to drop back down, it ripped. I let it rip so far before swinging to the window; as I let go of it it fell.
Sunlight filled the room, making me blind but not deaf, I could hear the screams coming from below me as the vampires were eaten by the last rays of sunshine for the day. Grinning to myself, I dropped back to the floor and found the entrance to the vault containing the treasure. It wasn't difficult to get into and once I had all of the treasure loaded into back I sent them back to the ministry with the news that I would be back shortly.
As I was leaving the crypt, a figure jumped out at me – one of them had survived the sunlight. He snarled at me and ran at me with all of his anger, I punched out again, like I had with the first vampire, but this time my knuckles were wrapped in wood from the table leg and he gave me one horrible look of shock as I pulled my hand out of his mouth. This very fang was buried in the wood. The vampire was holding his hand to his mouth, feeling the damage I'd done to him. I put him out of his misery and sliced his head off as I left.
I didn't even know I still had the fang, I thought I'd dropped it with the piece of wood but as I was getting ready to apparate home I checked my pockets and it was still in one of them." Bill concluded his story with a smile and he touched his ear – where the fang hung.
"So you made it into an earring to remember it?" Ginny asked happily.
"Nah, I did that just to annoy Mum!" Bill laughed.
"Bill Weasley I heard that!" Came a disembodied voice from the kitchen, Bill and Ginny shared a look and laughed, leaving the room together to play Quidditch with the others.