She met him on her first visit to the Burrow, when the summer sun had just started falling over the hills at dusk and it was warm enough to wear a shirt without sleeves. He had spoken very little to her; spending the majority of his time on the makeshift Quidditch field while she sat on the porch with Ginny and Mrs. Weasley sipping lemonade. It had been the summer before everything went wrong and, though she had not known it then, the summer before he would come to Hogwarts with dragons set for the Triwizard Tournament. The summer before you-know-who came back. She had spent many of the days outside in the sun with him, never speaking, just allowing the heat waves to coat her skin in dewy tan and make his even more mesmerizing.
She would never have admitted it to herself then, but Charlie Weasley was by far the most attractive of the Weasley men. While Harry and the rest of the boys at Hogwarts probably assumed her to be prim and proper, it was well known throughout the female community that Hermione Granger was anything but. She enjoyed talking to Ginny about her dream boyfriend; a man with scruffy chin hair and broad, rugged shoulders. While Charlie might not be called scruffy, he was definitely rugged, with well defined arms from years of working with dragons abroad in Romania. He had tattoos, she knew, although she never saw them. He was shorter than Ron but stockier, making up for his lack of height in muscle and fortitude. Amongst his roughness he had gracious features; a smile that was winning and a set of perilous blue eyes that she had found herself always staring at.
Hermione remembered the next time she saw him, two long years later, at Bill and Fleur's hasty wedding party in the Weasley backyard. He was older in both physicality and heart, and held himself with a noticeable limp on one side. His hands seemed larger as he clapped Ron on the back and his smile was twice as small as he hugged Harry beside her. Charlie barely caught her eye as he started a conversation with her two best friends about their previous year and the horrors that had been the attack at Hogwarts. Harry shied away from mentioning Dumbledore and Ron would barely look her way, blushing furiously when Charlie mentioned snogging in classrooms. Charlie had not been aware of everything that had happened that year, both the good and the bad. She had clasped Ron's hand tightly in hers, a symbol of their affection to each other, and had pulled him away.
They did not talk at the party, her and Charlie. In fact, as she remembered, their first conversation was almost by accident, in the last row of the night bus years later. She was almost 20 then, shortly after an attack in London that had left over three hundred dead, and they were traveling together to Grimmauld Place. Ron had been the Weasley that was supposed to pick her up from her safe location, but he had cowardly asked Charlie to do it, their departure as lovers having been anything but smooth. Charlie had started with a simple hello and, before she had known, they had delved into conversations unlike any she could have ever imagined. He was witty and kind at the same time, telling stories about his adventures in Romania and his exaggerated run in's with the worst wizards. He made her laugh in a time where very little could. Charlie told her things he had, apparently, never mentioned to anyone else. They became confidantes in their short time together at Grimmauld Place, spending the five weeks sharing with each other the secrets of their unbridled hearts.
All good things do come to an end, Hermione thought to herself, as she remembered the day he left her. He had promised to return soon from the war torn lands of Romania, where he would train to fight dragons against Lord Voldemort's toughest forces. She had promised to write continuously.
It was her writing that kept her sane throughout the war, she reckoned, although she could never be positive. His letters were always short and filled with tiny verses about himself, riddling her with news of the war and his up and coming training. They were rarely signed with anything more than "Charlie". Her letters were quite longer, filled with news of the warfront at home, his family, her struggles at work and school, and meaningless bits of information about how much she missed him and could not wait to talk in person. She signed every one with mentions of love, although she was not quite sure why. She kept every letter he sent her in a pocket in her journal and would read them continuously until the folds were worn and the pages softer than leather.
He came back that winter during one of the worst snow storms she had ever seen. He had apparated onto her doorstep covered in soft white and shivering, his Weasley red hair longer than usual and thick around his ears. Hermione jumped into his arms when she threw open the door and he sank his face into her neck, murmuring about how much he had missed her too and how sorry he was that he had never told her that he loved her.
"Hermione what are you doing?" Charlie Weasley asks, touching her hand. It lies on the cover of a very old journal which sits in her lap, just above the bulge of her growing stomach. She moves a little so he can sit behind her on the window seat, accommodating to the curve of her back and allowing her to nestle between his legs.
"Reminiscing," she murmurs, closing her eyes as he begins to massage her shoulders, his large calloused hands doing wonderful things to the tension in her neck.
"You should not be up this late darling," he mouths into her neck while kissing her lightly, "You are so far along…I wouldn't want anything to happen because you're tired." She smiles then and turns to him, kissing him lightly on the lips. Charlie smiles back at her as she pulls away, "Now Mrs. Weasley, what on earth was that for?" he chortled, pulling her in for a stronger kiss. Hermione smiles against his mouth and snuggles back into him, her hands possessively covering the journal that holds all of Charlie's letters, letters which prove that true love can leap all bounds.