Written for The Houses Competition, Year Two, Round Ten

House: Hufflepuff

Year: 5th

Category: Themed (Yellow)

Prompts:[Emotion] Sadness

Word Count (Google Docs): 2509

Betas: Aya Diefair, MissBookworm1704, cosmictrap!

Interhouse Dare: include pumpernickel bread

Title: It's All Yellow

Summary: Just like the song by Coldplay, but more like the music video. Let me know if you need tissues.

"I'll be here if you need me."

It wasn't a plea for more time. Charlie Weasley hoped she wouldn't need him. She needed something, but it was most likely not him anyway. He didn't want it to be him, really. He wanted her to need something more, so he could move on.

She was yellow like summertime, a smile as bright as the sun, and everytime he touched her, he was scorched with her brightness.

It wasn't fair to want something and not to want it at the same time.

Luna Lovegood believed certain truths about relationships. If she looked at a person and could see the end before it ever began, they weren't worth the pain. If she looked at a person and could see herself happy, then it was worth the risk.

If she looked at a person, and couldn't tell whether the story was happy or tragic, it was a weighted risk, but Luna always considered herself an intuitive witch and never thought that it would come to this.

But it had.

He had a brightness within him, something that glowed deep and secret. He was the flash of a burning star behind her eyelids when she blinked. She was drawn like an insect to that flame. He was bright and hot and she couldn't convince herself to stay away for too long.

It was Fiendfyre in a bookstore. A burning wick without wax to slow it down.

For one hot moment, she'd thought she'd been in love, and then she wasn't. She didn't know how to say goodbye to the one thing that felt right when it was there, and wrong when it wasn't.

It left her confused and bothered.

Infatuation could do that to a person. Luna felt that it was much like a disease or an addiction. And she wasn't sure how to get rid of it without breaking something within her.

Charlie Weasley hadn't been very good at very many things, but he was good at one thing, so he took that one thing seriously to the point of abandoning all else in his life. He moved to Romania and tended dragons, rarely saw his family, took very little time keeping up his little house in Romania, and only shaved once or twice a month, when he felt like he couldn't see as much of his face as he was accustomed to.

When winter came, he found himself having little to do with the dragons, so he helped out in the local bakery. He dedicated himself to becoming as good at the kneading and the punching down and the rising as he was attending to the dragons. On the days that he didn't shave, he made as many pumpernickel loaves as possible. On the days that he did shave, he allowed himself to make Challah and rye. And he also thought about Luna.

Painting the egg wash on the braided Challah always got him thinking about her hair. Luna had the most brilliant hair, matching her brilliant spirit. If Charlie hadn't been so single minded, he might have made room for her in his life, but he didn't want to smother her. So he held her at arm's length and told her things that she didn't want to hear.

"It's too cold in the winter time, your heels will crack."

"You'll miss the great butterfly migration next month. Isn't that what your next article is supposed to be about?"

"Those Ashwinder eggs won't incubate themselves, and they'll never survive the portkey to the mountains."

For three months out of the year, he could forget about Luna Lovegood, but then when he reported back to the Ministry every quarter, there she was, and there went his reason. And then they began again.

Winter always brought out the melancholicy side of Charlie Weasley, and so he cracked more eggs, separated more yolks, and painted more braided Challah twice a month on the days that he shaved.

It always seemed like they were saying goodbye. In the long winters of Romania, that wasn't a very warm thought at all.

Luna wasn't good at saying goodbye. Her mother had left her too early, and ever since then, she avoided getting close to people. But when she did, she held onto them with both hands.

She hugged her father every night before she went to bed, even if it was only in her dreams.

He'd had a hard passing. He'd lost most of his mind in the end, and she'd had to take over his work, his house and his Golden Retriever. She'd smiled through it all, and hugged him more in person than she ever had, but the end was hard, and still she wept and hugged the dog until it squirmed out of her reach. Her couch was full of blond dog hair, and she refused to spell it off, even after she'd found him a new home.

After the funeral, the Ministry suggested to her that she should take her three days of bereavement leave. They hadn't demanded it immediately. Sometimes grief took longer to settle in, and some sensitive witch in Human Resources understood that. Luna held out until day five, waking up sobbing so hard that she couldn't stop. When the grief hit, it hit her hard, and three days wasn't going to be enough. She sent a watery message by owl on yellowed parchment, accepting her bereavement leave and tacking on her saved up vacation. Two weeks. If anyone asked, she told them that she didn't know where she wanted to go. Maybe someplace sunny, where her sorrow could be absorbed by the fair weather. In her head, she knew it was a stupid idea, but in times of grief, her head wasn't the thing she should be listening to.

It was the middle of winter. The absolute worst time to go to Romania.

Charlie didn't know how to keep himself warm. He baked bread in the afternoons, he's stoked the incubation fires for the dragon eggs at the reserve, and he invited Svetlana, the baker's cousin, over for dinner one night. Even after heating each other up in the ochre glow of the fire, there was still a chill in his bones that he couldn't shake. Svetlana warmed his bed, but she couldn't warm his heart, even when she stepped out of his house in the harsh winter morning, unaffected by her cousin's judgement or Charlie's own indifference.

Her hair wasn't yellow. Her laugh didn't sound like tinkling bells. She only absorbed the brightest of the sun, and didn't reflect it back into the world.

She would never hold a candle to Luna Lovegood, and that made him think more about the distance between them and less about why he had put it there in the first place.

He missed her like springtime.

Svetlana did not come back for another dinner, but Charlie still baked the bread, owning the distasteful looks from her cousin, the baker. That week, his one hundred loaves of pumpernickel weren't left for the baker as an apology, because remorse always had a way of souring the dough. They were a promise not to make the same mistake twice, which the baker accepted. Charlie was a very good baker.

When Luna showed up on his doorstep that night, he was very glad that Svetlana had been a mistake.

"My father's dead," she said. It was the first time Luna had said those words out loud, and it shocked both her and the man standing in front of her equally.

Charlie ushered her in and fed her pan-toasted pumpernickel with butter. He cleared off his threadbare couch and fluffed up the sunflower embroidered pillows and held her close until she couldn't breathe.

"You can stay as long as you like," he said, and gave her a honey-colored blanket and a cup of chamomile tea.

She was grateful for his kindness, because it was why she had come. But inside, she felt like her father's Golden Retriever, when she'd treated it as a thing to be loved because that's what it needed. Luna remembered the satisfaction and relief when she'd found her father's dog a good home, and wondered if Charlie would brush her blonde hair off his couch as soon as she was gone.

Charlie woke in the morning, still cold, and he found Luna asleep on his couch. She'd needed someone, and he was happy to be that person for her. The snow was piled high around them, and so for the first time in a long while, he didn't bake bread.

But he shaved.

When he checked on the golden haired girl later, still asleep on his couch, he missed her less, and so came to the conclusion that maybe he needed her more than he first thought. He frowned as he picked at a stray hair of Svetlana's and carried it to the rubbish bin.

He showed Luna the incubated eggs, and she helped him stoke the fires to warm them. He pointed out the baker's house, but they didn't go inside because the baker didn't easily forget Charlie's transgression with his cousin. When the afternoon shortened, Luna wanted to stare at the snowy fields at the edge of the village, and Charlie left her there.

"I'll meet you back at the house," he told her.

As he walked through the snow to his home, he felt warm inside, knowing that Luna would be joining him later. It felt as if Winter was starting to thaw.

"He needs something, but it isn't me," Svetlana said, coming up to Luna at the edge of the village.

There was no wind today, which caused quite a few of the village people to come out of their homes and stretch their legs and do the things they would normally do outdoors when there wasn't a snowstorm. Luna had perched herself on a fencepost that promised the best view of the shimmering fields which the cows had abandoned, letting the sun have a place to lay its head. The afternoon glow put a golden halo around Svetlana's head, but Luna knew she was no angel.

"Maybe it's you that he needs," Svetlana said.

Luna didn't say anything, mostly because there wasn't much to say, and partially because she had once thought the same thing. She was quite sure that Svetlana had thought that very thing about herself not long ago too, and so the two of them sat in silence, watching the sun set and thinking about how wrong they both had been.

The thing about Charlie was that he loved in the moment, but he changed with the seasons. It was hard to keep up with him when Luna was in a summer mood and he had moved on to autumn. His feelings settled around him like leaves, and he often raked them up into piles and burned them when he was ready to move on. It felt to Luna like Charlie was always moving on.

When it was too dark to keep sitting on the post, but still light enough to see the path back, Luna and Svetlana walked back to the village and said good night to each other.

"Charlie needs the Spring," Luna said to her before they parted ways.

It wasn't that hard to remember why Luna had caught his eye to begin with. Charlie welcomed her into his home, in a rare, joyful mood, finally allowing himself to take pleasure in someone else's company. She brought warmth and light with her wherever she went, and it made him lighter inside when she was around. He felt like he could get used to this.

When she had first started at the Ministry's Department of Magical Creatures Division, she'd delighted in all of the assignments they'd given her. She eagerly awaited the great butterfly migration. She wholeheartedly kicked on her mudboots and waded into the deepest streams to observe the plimpy population. She never let the heat of the desert hinder her progress when it came time to take detailed notes of the rare Sand Ashwinders and their lifecycle. Everything she did, she did with joy. Her joy matched his when they spoke about their work together, and to him, it was the best feeling in the world.

Charlie had only ever felt that joy when he worked with dragons. It wasn't the same when he could only tend to the egg incubators through the harsh Romanian winters.

There was more pumpernickel and fresh cream from the baker's cow, who liked Charlie now more than the baker did. Luna brought her glow with her into his home after her afternoon by the fields, and it made Charlie wonder if every day might be like this one.

"You can stay," he said, hoping that she would smile.

Luna did smile, but it wore a sadness behind it, and made Charlie's newfound warmth diminish, just a degree.

"You've been very kind," she said. "Thank you for having, me, but I've got to go."

Charlie's warmth fell a full two degrees, even when he was standing in the yellow glow of his fireplace.

"I think I might need you," he said.

She smiled, and he warmed. But the smile only lasted as long as the flicker in her eyes.

"I think I might love you," he said.

This time she smiled wider, and she hugged him with a quiet strength that still allowed for him to breathe. He felt the world shift, but it wasn't in the direction that he had anticipated.

"I love you too," she said, "but I still have to go. The butterflies are migrating again, and Winter has begun to thaw."

She sat him down on his threadbare couch and gave him a sunflower pillow to hold. That was when he knew that she had something to say and he wasn't going to like it very much.

"You love what I do, but not who I am," Luna said in her lilting, kindly voice. It was the voice he could have loved if they had been talking about scales and steam, or Ashwinder eggs.

He hugged the pillow until the pillow couldn't breathe. Luna was right, and the truth did nothing to warm him.

Her yellow hair shone in the firelight, and he reached out to touch a strand of gold.

"You'll feel better in the Spring," she said. "Most people do."

"I'll be here if you need me," Charlie said, and meant it. He hoped that one day she would need him again, because she was going to move on, and this time, he didn't want her to.

But as Winter thawed and Spring returned, he knew that in a season or two, he'd be sweeping up leaves and burning them to make way for another season. If she stayed, she might get swept up too. She might glow bright in the yellow flames, but then she'd turn to ash and never forgive him.

It was only fair to let her go.