Written for the Hard, Loud and Fast Challenge at The Teachers Lounge. M for sex, drugs and not-quite-rock 'n' roll. You have been warned.
To Forget
No one had told Charlie she was dead, so when he walked into the Great Hall it wasn't his brother he saw, with his twin kneeling at his head looking stunned and his mother crying, it was Tonks, with her bubblegum hair and her hand reaching out to her husband lying next to her. And it wasn't Fred he saw in his nightmares of that day, but Tonks – his Dorie – and the goddamned werewolf she had married and her mother crying and clutching the blue-haired baby that should have been his to her chest.
He could come to terms with Fred dying, however bad a brother that made him. He couldn't come to terms with losing Dorie. It wasn't supposed to be like that. Sure, they had split up when they were eighteen, done the sensible, practical, rational thing, but dammit, they were supposed to get back together later. Dorie falling for a man nearly old enough to be her father wasn't in the plan. Nor was her marrying him and having his child for fuck's sake.
He tried to tell himself that it was war, and war did things like that to people. Rushing off and marrying a werewolf half a generation older than yourself was a perfectly reasonable reaction to knowing you might die any day soon. But it didn't help. Even if he got past that, he couldn't help feeling that the end of the story was wrong. Dorie was supposed to survive the war. Remus wasn't. Then he could have had his happy ending.
Home was a nightmare, his mother sopping with tears, his father trying to put on a brave face for everyone, Percy creeping around as if he couldn't quite believe they'd welcomed him back, and George being George-on-his-own. He'd tried staying at Shell Cottage for a while, but that was almost worse. Despite everything, Bill and Fleur were happy, and that kind of wrapped-up-in-each-other happiness was more than he could stomach. So he went back to Romania as soon as he decently could and tried to find some sort of solace in his work.
It wasn't enough. More and more he found himself after work in Alin's bar at the edge of the village where he could hide himself a corner, drink until he began to forget, and – if he had money enough in his pocket – find a kind of comfort in the arms of one of Madame Dalca's willing girls. Those girls were as unlike Dorie as they could be, tall and blonde, all sultry looks and hair-tossing, with something in their way of walking and the way they patronised him that reminded him of his sister-in-law. Still, they served his purpose, which was to buy forgetfulness for at least part of each day. They were warm and alive, and sometimes, when he lay spent on the soft covers of Stela's bed, or Violeta's or Ilinca's, he almost felt alive again himself.
Evenings faded into nights, which faded into mornings, and his work began to suffer. He was late so often that even his best friends grew tired of covering for him. Accidents happened. A young keeper sustained an injury because of his inattention. A valuable clutch of eggs was trampled. It could not go on.
Which is why Bill Weasley found himself in mid-November in a bar in the wizarding section of Bucharest sitting opposite two of his brother's friends.
"I know he's grieving, I know you all are," Raj Patel shrugged apologetically as he looked at Bill earnestly, "but he can't go on like this, really he can't. We've covered for him enough. The Old Man's beginning to notice. He won't have his job much longer."
Idris Llewellyn was older than his colleague and considerably blunter. "Him losing his job would be a good outcome right now," he asserted. "Someone's going to get killed sooner or later, and it'll only be Charlie if we're lucky. I don't want someone else to die because of his stupidity."
Bill frowned and sipped his drink. There was no mistaking the air of relief in the two men opposite him. They had a distinct air of having passed the Sickle. Sorting Charlie was his job now. Well, he was his brother – when hadn't it been his job? He drained his glass.
"Where do I find him?" he asked. Alin's bar, they told him, on the outskirts of the village.
"It's a bit dodgy," Raj told him with that apologetic look again. "Illegal potions as well as the drink, and a brothel upstairs. They say the girls there are part Veela. Do you know about Veela?"
Bill told him mildly enough that he did, and asked for directions to the bar.
He found Charlie there the following evening, a blonde girl draped around him, and an empty glass in front of him.
"What're you doing here?" Charlie demanded, while the girl smiled and played her fingers across his back and kissed the angle of his jaw.
"I need to talk to you." Bill looked pointedly at the girl, who glowered at him. Charlie turned away from his brother quite deliberately and made a show of kissing the girl, one hand running up between her legs, the other under her skimpy top. Then he whispered something to her and she giggled and stood up.
"Shall I find a girl for your brother?" she simpered and Charlie laughed.
"No need," he said. "He has a Veela of his very own at home."
Bill's fist came down hard on the bar in front of him, rattling his glass and causing a sudden silence in the bar.
"You do not," Bill hissed, as a girl giggled shrilly and the level of talk around them picked up again, "You do not ever, compare my wife to a girl like that. Is that clear? Is it?"
Charlie shrugged and pushed his glass forward to the bartender, who refilled it and looked a question at Bill. He shook his head.
"What's got into you, Charlie?" he asked in a milder tone. "This isn't like you. What would Mum say?"
Charlie shrugged. "She isn't going to find out, is she?" he asked. "You're not going to tell her? Give her something else to cry about?"
Bill shook his head. "No. But… Charlie, you can't carry on like this. You'll lose your job. You'll get hurt. Someone else will get hurt."
Charlie looked at him shrewdly, sipping his drink. "Who've you been talking to?" he asked. "No, don't tell me; I can guess."
"They're worried about you, Charlie," Bill said, putting a hand on his brother's arm. "I'm worried about you. I know it's hard, but this isn't the way to deal with it. Come home. Please."
Charlie shook off Bill's hand and glared at him. "You think this is all about Fred, don't you?" he demanded, getting to his feet and putting his glass very carefully onto the bar. "You, playing happy families with your Veela girl and not giving a damn about the other people who died?" His voice was rising alarmingly and he took a step towards Bill, his fists clenched.
Bill held up his hands placatingly and moved back a little. "Sit down, Charlie," he ordered. "Finish your drink and don't yell. I know you're mourning Tonks too, but she's dead. And she was married. She loved Remus." He knew he had gone too far as soon as the words left his mouth.
Charlie subsided onto his stool and looked up at him.
"She loved me," he insisted, his eyes wet and his voice icily calm. "She would've come back to me if bloody Voldemort had given us the chance. And now she's gone and nothing I can do can change that and I have to live with it." He drained his glass and motioned the barman to refill it. "Go home, Bill. You can't help. No one can. Let me live my life the way I choose."
The girl was back, hovering in a corner, and as if that was her cue she came forward and put an arm around Charlie's shoulders. He pulled her onto his lap.
"Go home, Bill," he repeated. He did not watch him leave.
Things got harder. Forgetting had been hard, but soon it became impossible. Charlie spent more time drunk than not and barely noticed when his boss gave him the lecture of his life and a final warning about his behaviour. The girls were soft and warm, but they were not his Dorie, and he could no longer pretend that they cared for more than the money he gave them. Alin, assessing the situation shrewdly and accurately, offered him the potions he kept for his "special customers", and for a while they helped.
But they were expensive, and there came a day just before Christmas when Charlie found himself alone in the bar, with just enough money for one Firewhiskey and one girl, and none for the potion his body was craving. He was shaking already, and there would be no more paycheques. The Old Man had sacked him that morning.
"Come upstairs with me," Violeta cooed, not caring that the money he pushed into her lacy bra was the last he had. "Come and wish me a merry Christmas." He downed his drink with a shaking hand and followed her.
He was astride her in her tiny room at the top of the stairs when he heard it. As the girl who was not Dorie moaned and twisted beneath him and he shuddered to his own climax, the all too familiar tones of Celestina Warbeck floated up from the bar below. One of his mother's favourites:
Come home for Christmas
Put the past behind
Come home for Christmas
Where the magic is kind
Come home for Christmas
We're waiting for you
Come home.
He rolled away from Violeta and tried to smile at her, but he couldn't manage it. She protested and put a hand out to him, but he ignored her. He pulled on his clothes and descended the stairs as fast as he could.
He was going home.