8. Family
A/N: This plotline (Charlie/Cho) is a play on my story, The Patient In Room 17. Give it a read, if you are intrigued!
Charlie entered the Three Broomsticks, and found himself looking around, full of hope.
Crikey, he thought, chuckling to himself and shaking his head. This was getting serious.
There was no sign of her though, and, acknowledging that his heart felt considerably sunken, he made his way over to the unmistakable table of his brothers.
Ginny was working behind the bar, and he frowned after her, scanning the crowd for anyone who might be giving her trouble. His brotherly instincts did not like her being, let alone working, in an atmosphere like this. Things seemed relatively copacetic however, so he satisfied himself by catching hold of her when she got near enough- squeezing her in a hug and ruffling her hair; making a mental note to keep an eye out for any wizards he may have to curse by the end of the night.
She squirmed away from him, but when she looked up, her face was indignant, but her eyes held only love, and he grinned back at her.
His baby sister. Working in a pub. Crikey.
He walked up to his brothers, and was instantly leapt upon, in a mock-dog-pile, in the middle of the bar. He realized that George was the one crushing his ribs and hollering in his ear, and his heart leapt as he hollered right back. George, out on Christmas Eve!
He greeted Hermione and Fleur with slightly less rowdy hugs, and clapped Harry on the back fondly.
"What are we drinking?" he asked, the obvious and only appropriate question.
"Firewhiskey!" several voices shouted back, and he grinned, feeling a tickle in his heart. Firewhiskey would always remind him of her, now.
He accepted his little glassful, and raised it in cheers, mentally cheers-ing Cho Chang before he brought it to his lips and knocked it back.
It burned brightly, as it had that night, five months ago, when he had been a post-war patient in St. Mungo's on Cho's first day tending to the ward. It had been a lucky coincidence- luckier still when she had found an abandoned bottle of fire whiskey, and brought it to him in the night, in the hopes that it might raise his crushed spirits. It had. Or rather, she had.
But he had been too stricken with grief to appreciate it properly then.
Now that his grief was ebbing ever so faintly, he found himself spending his dreams with her, re-living their short and emotionally charged conversation at odd times during the day, and dreaming of fresh ones during the night.
He tore his mind away from his own school-boyish thoughts, to join in the rowdy game his brothers were playing.
They were exuberant and celebratory as he had feared they might never be again, and it warmed his chest ten times more than any brand of fire whiskey ever could.
They were a family still. When Fred had died, he had felt sure that the crack would shake them for good, that they might never be whole again.
But like a broken bone heals stronger, so were the Weasleys. They were far from healed, the pain was still enormous every day, but as he stood in the roaring circle of his brothers, he felt the strength of their combined spirit shake the ground underneath him.
They were a family still.
Ron started belting a drinking song that Peeves had always sung around Hogwarts, and they all joined in. Charlie found himself gripped by arms around his back, and immediately gripped the boys on either side of him as they sang. The girls watched with bemused horror, and he found himself laughing.
They were a family, still.
