A/N: Hello! This is written for The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition for the Montrose Magpies!

I am writing it about Charlie Weasley because I feel like he is the most underdeveloped character in the series who really deserves a moment in the light. The prompt is to write a story based on my interpretation of the lyrics, and include these three themes:

1. How to win
2. Freedom
3. Clipped wings

Enjoy!

~Maya

"But once you knew a girl and you named her Lover, And danced with her in kitchens through the greenest summer. But autumn came, she disappeared, You can't remember where she said she was going to."
- Perfect Sonnet, Bright Eyes

The Sky

She had promised him a forever.

From year one to year six Charlie Weasley had had eyes for only one girl.

And now, in the bitter comfort of his cramped bed, he lay numb, counting the moments he was spending without her.

Her wide-eyed smile caught Charlie's attention the moment he set foot on the Hogwarts Express. Her blonde hair was pulled into a messy ponytail, and her robes were hanging unclasped to reveal a large green t-shirt with an intricately embroidered dragon. Somehow, she seemed to notice him just as much as he noticed her.

She was leaning against the door of a compartment with her arms crossed over her chest and one foot propped up on the glass, eyeing him without bothering to hide her interest.

With a broad grin, she raised her hand high and waved. Charlie furrowed his brow in confusion and almost waved back before he was shunted aside by a gaggle of other first year students who were approaching the girl. They exchanged their hellos, and Charlie looked away and started off in search of his brother Bill.

As he passed her, though, she caught his eye again. Her piercing gray eyes seemed to be judging exactly who he was; Charlie felt extremely vulnerable, like she was seeing parts of him that he himself hadn't even known existed.

Then, she said, "You're a first year?" Her voice was strong and authoritative. Charlie merely nodded.

A moment's pause, and then, "D'you want to join us?"

He was surprised, but something about the girl made him say, "Yeah, I'd like that."

As he followed her into the compartment, she said with a smile, "I'm Leana."

"Good to meet you. I'm Charlie."

She looked too small for the broom in her hand, though she appeared to be carrying it onto the Quidditch Pitch with perfect ease. An obvious posse surrounded her, comprising second and third year boys all holding broomsticks as well, although none was as graceful as Leana.

"Charlie!" she exclaimed, breaking into a run to meet him in the middle of the Pitch.

"Hi, Leana!" he smiled. "Are you ready for the tryouts?"

"Absolutely," she said. "I can't wait to get up there and show everyone what I've got."

"Me neither," he said, staring up at the sky longingly. It was the most beautiful thing in the world to him, and flying through it was nothing short of bliss. Just then, a huge, black bird swept through the blue background, letting out an exhilarated screech. Almost unconsciously, Charlie caught his breath. Leana shot him an odd look.

"What was that?" she asked.

"What?"

"You made a sound. When you saw that bird, you made a sound." She was looking at him with her piercing gray eyes, the way she had looked at him when they'd first met.

"Did I?" he murmured, still staring at the spot where the bird had flown.

"Yes," she pressed.

"Oh…I dunno. It's just, you know, beautiful."

"The bird?"

"Yeah. And-and all flying creatures, really." Charlie had always held a great respect and fascination for anything that could fly.

Leana was silent, but she didn't look away from his face until the Quidditch Captain blew his whistle. She turned to walk away, but Charlie grabbed her elbow before she could leave.

"Hey," he said with teasing grin, "I bet what you've got isn't even half of what I've got."

A surprised but thrilled smile spread over Leana's face. "Oh, you are so going to cry after this, Charlie Weasley. Like a little girl."

"What position do you play?" he asked as they made their way to the Captain.

"Seeker," she answered instantly.

Charlie chuckled quietly. "This should be fun, then."

Stopping in her tracks, Leana punched him hard in the shoulder. "Shut up!" she cried excitedly. "You're trying out for Seeker, too?"

"Yes. Ow," he groaned, rubbing his arm. "I think you should try for Beater, though."

"Why?" she teased, "Are you afraid I'm going to beat you out of the running?"

"Not a chance in hell, Leana."

They flew marvelously; it was as though they were born to live in the sky. Everyone, even the Captain, was floored by their performances in the tryouts. Charlie, despite his stocky build, flew with the necessary agility of a Seeker, and beat everyone's speed without question. Leana was even more graceful on her broom than she had been carrying it. It was clear to the Captain that their harmony as players would make a perfect addition to the team, and he welcomed them with profuse encouragement and appreciation. To Charlie's great joy, the Captain chose him as Seeker.

When they finally touched down on the ground, almost reluctantly, the two immediately turned to each other.

"You were bloody amazing up there!" Charlie cried. "You-you fly like a dragon."

"A dragon?" Her eyebrows flew into her dark blonde hair.

"Yeah. A-a really, like, delicate dragon." Just the thought of it took his breath away.

Leana snickered. "Delicate? So I'm a…oh, how should I put this…a feminine dragon, am I?"

"No, no," he insisted, shaking his head. "Delicate…but strong. That's how all dragons are, really. Delicate, but strong."

They walked in silence for a long while, allowing Charlie's words to sink into them slowly.

"That's really nice, that is," Leana finally said.

"Yeah?" he said, one corner of his mouth rising.

"Yeah. Thank you, Charlie."

Two years later, when it was becoming just about impossible for Charlie to ignore the fluttery wings in his stomach that set off rapidly every time he set eyes upon Leana, he found himself outside the door of the sixth year boys' dormitory.

There was no doubt about it: Bill had always been Charlie's best friend, he was most definitely cooler, more experienced with girls and crushes, and much, much wiser. There really was no one better to turn to.

Still, admitting out loud his feelings for Leana was a challenge like no other.

"What's up, Charlie?" said Bill, sitting on the bed across from his own, which was currently occupied by a fidgety Charlie.

"It's…something I've been…er…thinking about recently," he mumbled, staring at his shoelaces.

"And that would be?" said Bill patiently, though not without a trace of amusement at his brother's discomfort.

"It's, erm, you know…" He trailed off, looking at Bill hopefully.

The older boy cocked an eyebrow and smirked. "No, Charlie. I don't know. Unfortunately, my mind-reading is a bit off today. You're going to have to actually tell me what you're thinking."

"Okay, okay!" he said quickly. And, without taking a breath, Charlie looked up at the ceiling, gritted his teeth, and grumbled, "Ican'tstopthinkingaboutthisgirl."

His look of surprise was brief. "I'm sorry?" said Bill, smiling broadly. "Could you repeat that? I didn't quite catch—" He broke out in laughter as Charlie through a pillow at his face.

"Shut up," Charlie said, scowling.

"No need to pout," said Bill, still laughing. "So you like a girl. What's the problem?"

He turned bright red at his brother's words and started glancing all around the room, mumbling something that sounded like, "Dunno anything 'bout girls."

Again, the older boy laughed. "Charlie, you're fourteen. Do you think I knew the first thing about girls when I started getting butterflies for Sandra Fletcher?"

Curiously, Charlie looked up at him. "Sandra Fletcher? Your first girlfriend? But…but…she was, like, mad about you."

Nonchalantly, Bill shrugged. "Eh. I think she just fancied me for the outside, to be honest."

"And that's a problem?" said Charlie skeptically.

"Not really," said Bill, grinning. "But it doesn't make for a very interesting relationship. I suppose when I was fourteen and Sandra was pretty and there, it didn't matter much. I don't think I would've enjoyed her company as much now, though."

"But that's the thing, Bill," said Charlie despairingly. "This girl…she isn't just 'pretty and there.' She's…she's…beautiful and-and very, very, like, difficult to access. I mean, she practically wears a shield to ward off anyone she doesn't want. All the blokes can only ever talk about her. No one ever actually succeeds. I-I don't know if I can do this."

"What was it that attracted Sandra to me, did I say?" said Bill, raising his eyebrows.

"'Cause of your looks?" Charlie answered, confused. "What does that have to do—?"

"And whose brother are you, Charlie?"

"Er…yours? Is that the right answer for the circumstance, considering that we have another broth—"

"And does that not mean," said Bill loudly, interrupting him again, "that you're also good-looking?"

"I don't really think that's how it—"

"She fancies you, Charlie," he said quietly, shutting his brother up at last. "Trust me. She does. Just-just find the confidence in yourself, and you'll see it too."

"How do you even know who I'm talking about?" said Charlie.

"Everyone does," said Bill, smiling knowingly. "You said all the boys talk about her, didn't you? That also applies in my year. And trust me, she's the best you'll ever find."

With a sigh, Charlie looked out the window into the clear, blue sky. "You don't need to tell me that for me to know it."

When Charlie approached her, she was sitting by the lake under a tree with a notebook and a drawing pencil, looking up at the sky every few moments. Quietly, he took a seat next to her; she didn't acknowledge him.

"Are you drawing the sky?" he teased. "You keep looking up at it."

Rolling her eyes, Leana answered, "I'm drawing a dragon. It helps to look at the sky because then I can imagine it there."

"A dragon?" said Charlie in a hushed voice that throbbed with fascination. "Can I see it?"

"When it's done," she said, eyes twinkling mysteriously.

"I can't see it now?" he asked pleadingly.

"Patience, Charlie Weasley," she replied with a hint of a laugh in her voice.

With a groan, he fell back against the tree and began shredding fallen leaves absentmindedly.

"So you like drawing?" he asked to pass the time until she showed him her drawing.

"I love it," Leana responded. "It's…a passion."

"A passion?" he repeated, smiling. "That sounds pretty special."

"It does, doesn't it?"

Charlie nodded, thinking of how absolutely great it would be to find a passion like that. Watching Leana's face, focused and contorted with concentration, he wished to feel that way about something of his own.

"So you like dragons?" she asked.

"What?"

"Dragons," she repeated. "I heard your voice when I told you I was drawing a dragon. You like them a lot."

Ponderingly, Charlie nodded. "I do, yeah. They're pretty amazing."

"I agree," she said, smiling. "I always love drawing dragons more than anything else. I'd really, really like to see one someday."

"Me too," he said. He kept watching as blonde strands fell into her face and she brushed them aside. Her piercing gray eyes were alight with excitement as her pencil streaked rapidly over the paper. It was now or never. "Leana," he said hoarsely.

"Mm?"

"I-I...er..."

"Yeah, Charlie?"

"I really like you."

She stopped drawing and looked up at his red face. "What?"

"Erm, I really do like you, Leana." He turned away from her and stared at the ground. This had been a mistake. He should never have said anything. Obviously, he was just another guy who found Leana amazing and wonderful and beautiful and just another guy who was her friend. He should have remained happy with that stature.

"I really like you, too, Charlie," she replied softly.

Taken aback, he looked up suddenly. "You-what?"

Shrugging, she returned to her drawing. "I always have. You're special, Charlie."

What happened after, Charlie only registered dimly. His mind was replaying, for hours, Leana's voice calling him special.

She met his whole family as time went by. In the summers, she came to visit the Burrow and Charlie spent every moment with her. The Weasleys adored her fiery personality, and each of his family members commented on how much happier he seemed with Leana in his life. Charlie also went to see Leana's family, and met her over-enthusiastic potioneer father and serene seamstress mother.

In the summer before their sixth year, they went to a Muggle tattoo parlor and excitedly got matching dragon tattoos. Charlie's was large and vicious-looking, curling around his arm and shoulder and coming to a rest with its head spewing flames onto his chest. Leana's, on the other hand, wove intricately around her arm and spread its fire onto her back.

Outside the parlor, as they licked huge ice cream cones, Leana looked into Charlie's eyes and promised him that she would love him forever. Her eyes pierced his soul as they always did, and he knew it was the truth.

One happy afternoon, they were tangled together in Charlie's bed in the Hogwarts dormitory.

"Why me?" he asked curiously. "You're every bloke's fantasy. There's boys at Hogwarts much more attractive than me—"

"No," she said softly.

"—and you could have any of them," he continued, ignoring her. "I'm not trying to be all girly with self-esteem problems. Like, you know I'm very in tune with being Charlie, just Charlie. I'm just honestly asking why."

"No, Charlie," she repeated, more firmly this time.

"What are you talking about?"

"There aren't any boys more attractive than you."

"Er…come again?" he said, cocking an eyebrow skeptically.

Leana rolled her eyes. "Charlie, when I first saw you on the train, I knew that you were different. You had something that no one else has. You see things that no one else sees."

"Like what?"

"The sky," she replied, looking at his window. "You see the sky. You see its beauty, and the freedom it offers you. And you're not afraid to take it."

Charlie followed her gaze and found the truth in her words. The sky outside his window beckoned him more seductively and encouragingly than anything he'd ever known.

"I'm going to study dragons," he said suddenly.

Leana pulled away from him, raising her eyebrows inquisitively. "Study dragons?"

He was running his finger up and down the tiny tail that wrapped around her small but firm bicep.

"I really love them, Lee," he said breathlessly. "I just…really love them."

She was looking at him like no one had ever looked at him before. He was sure no one would ever look at him like this again.

"It's a passion," she said softly.

"It is a passion," he replied, hugging her close to him.

"You're going to spread your wings and fly, Charlie Weasley," she whispered in his ear.

He shuddered at her words and gave her a squeeze. "Yes, I will," he joked. "We've got Quidditch in half an hour."

Leana laughed. "Yes, we do. We've got to get down there, don't we, Captain?"

"Yeah, all right. Let's get going. Slytherin won't know what hit them."

They raced to the changing room and suited up for the match. Charlie gave a spectacular pep-talk like he always did, and before they knew it the team was facing the entry to the Quidditch Pitch.

"Spread your wings," Leana whispered to him and squeezed his hand before they took off into the air.

"PASS THE BLOODY QUAFFLE, LEE!" Charlie screamed from above the action, though he knew no one could hear him. Gryffindor was up 100-90, and the energy was flowing through the sky more vigorously than ever.

As if deliberately to spite him, Leana flew even further forward with the Quaffle held tightly under her right arm. Then, like an acrobat, she ducked the huge Slytherin Chaser in front of her and dropped the Quaffle—the Gryffindor crowd groaned in agony.

"THAT HAD BETTER BE A PLAY, LEANA, OR—YES!" Their second Chaser, Marjorie Davis, fell into position several feet below Leana and caught the Quaffle easily. The Gryffindors' moans turned to cheers.

Marjorie flew towards Leana, seemingly ignorant of the two Slytherin Chasers closing in on them, and smacked her hand in a victorious high-five as she threw the Quaffle behind her and let her broom drop at least twenty feet, letting Leana zoom past her in pursuit of the Quaffle. The two Slytherin Chasers nearly fell off their brooms in avoiding crashing into each other. The action was spectacular. Then, a glint caught Charlie's eye—

He was zooming past Leana and Marjorie so fast that he only faintly heard the former call out, "GO GET IT, CHARLIE!" and he could hear the Slytherin Seeker at his toes.

Catching the Snitch wasn't a matter of seeing so much as feeling. The tiny, golden ball was there, he knew it, he felt it, regardless of how clearly he could see it. And when he stretched his arm out to seize it, he only did so when he felt its presence, and therefore its exact location. That was why Charlie Weasley only ever took one try to catch the Snitch, why he never missed it, and why he always won.

He felt it whirring in his hand as he pumped his fist victoriously in the air and spun his broom around to overlook the Pitch and the stadium. Hundreds of people were staring up at him and cheering, but his eyes locked onto piercing gray ones that were beaming their pride.

Then, when Autumn of Charlie's seventh year rolled around, it happened.

It didn't really matter why it happened. All that mattered was that it did.

Professor Dumbledore called him into his office and very privately told him why Leana hadn't been replying to his letters after she had left the Burrow. He explained how it had been an accident, that her father's Potions experiment would have only killed him had Leana and her mother not been in the same room. Charlie sat before Professor Dumbledore's desk and allowed the shock to envelop him; only after the headmaster handed him a drawing of the most beautiful dragon he'd ever seen did the tears fall.

In the bottom right hand corner of the paper, he saw a message scrawled in her messy pen – 'Spread your wings, Charlie.'

But he couldn't. His wings were no longer free, like a dragon's. They were clipped.

She had promised him a forever.

From year one to year six Charlie Weasley had had eyes for only one girl.

And now, in the bitter comfort of his cramped bed, he lay numb, counting the moments he was spending without her.

But he had to get up. He had to force his screaming body out of its corpse-like position and onto a broom, because his team needed him. Without—her—it would be doubly hard to win. And they had to win. He had to win for her.

The match was strong, and so were the players. They fought in stoic fury for their friend and teammate. Charlie was grateful that Ravenclaw at least put up a real performance; it would have made her proud.

He saw the Snitch soaring directly past his face and immediately shot after it. When he felt it, he stretched out his arm and closed his fingers—around nothing.

Then he realized that it wasn't just the Snitch's presence he needed to feel. It was Leana's as well. And she wasn't there.

The crowd's gasp at Charlie Weasley's first fumble was muted against his ears as he thrust his arm out for the Snitch again and this time seized it firmly. The cheers seemed irrelevant, even as he raised the clasped Snitch in the air and circled the Pitch like he always did.

Finally, after everyone cleared the stands and the players retreated to their changing rooms, Charlie remained alone with the Snitch. He would be alone with the Snitch for the rest of his life. His one and only love was gone. Absolutely, completely gone. Forever.

With angry and miserable tears streaming down his cheeks, Charlie allowed the fluttering gold ball to dance out of his reach before he caught it again, and again, and again. How could he even do this? How could he possibly still catch the ball whose goal was to evade him? She had told him to spread his wings. How, with his clipped wings, could he continue to fly?

A cry of rage erupted from his chest, echoing through the vast sky for nobody to hear. And then it hit him.

Like an anvil striking his face, the shock crashed down on Charlie and he looked up at the sky wildly. Its hugeness made him and his pain feel insignificant. The pink and blue color of the sunset reminded him of something someone special had once said to him.

"You see the sky. You see its beauty, and the freedom it offers you. And you're not afraid to take it."

He wasn't alone with the Snitch. He was alone with the sky. And that meant he would never be alone again. The sky, the beautiful, magnificent, gentle sky would always be there to hear his cries and his happiness. It would always be there to welcome him. Even if he did have clipped wings.

There, in that moment, he thanked Leana with all his heart for giving him that gift.

A/N: My heart broke as I was writing this, because I really like Charlie and I really like Leana. They seem really perfect for each other, and it killed me to tear them apart, but the lyric demanded it. :( Just for some added thought, I didn't want them to "break up," because as I was writing it, it seemed so unlikely that these two would ever split willingly. For some time, I toyed with the idea of their careers and passions breaking them apart, but when Leana became an artist, it was perfectly feasible for her to follow Charlie to his calling. Death, then, became the only option. I hope it wasn't too sad-I tried to make it uplifting in the end!

~Maya