Thanks to MysticDew for all her contributions to this story!


Chapter 8

Tales Of A Dragon Tamer

-oOo-

8PM, the 12th of April 2005– The Marigold, Bermondsey Street, London

Ron had started referring to them as Hermione's Muggle years; he seemed to be the only person to show any interest in where Hermione had been, between being sentenced by the Wizengamot at eighteen and returning to the wizarding world at twenty-five.

Sadly, there wasn't much to tell.

Predictably, Ron's interest in hotel politics and Muggle celebrities turned out to be limited; what really piqued his curiosity were her travels. Early in her career in the hotel industry, Hermione discovered that the benefits of working as much as possible were twofold: she didn't have time to spend any money, and she was paid time-and-a-half at the same time. When she did take time off, she could afford to go almost anywhere she fancied.

For a long time, that was what made Hermione's life in exile bearable. Only rarely did her knowledge of the magical places hidden somewhere down the back lanes of Paris or in dusty corners of the Assyrian desert mar her enjoyment of the Muggle destinations she visited.

Usually, she would stay in hostels; partly to save money, and partly because it was an easy way of meeting people. Holiday friendships and romances didn't require much back story, beyond being Jean from London who liked history and skinny-dipping in the moonlight. And, as things inevitably came to an end, goodbyes were easy and expected.

At home, Hermione found out the hard way that being evasive only worked for so long, before questions started to accumulate quicker than leaflets from local takeaways built up in her letterbox while she was on the other side of the world.

She wasn't in touch with any of her relatives. Seemingly, she was content to work in a hotel reception, despite having a posh accent and a bookshelf crammed full of books, and surely could have gone to university if she had wanted to. Hermione had never heard of Fargo or Alanis Morissette, and for years a car backfiring in the vicinity made her duck and take cover. All the peculiarities she had acquired by living in the wizarding world since she was eleven, and then by fighting in a war invisible to those she lived among now, were simply too much to explain away. Hermione didn't intend to push people away; her past did it for her.

Far too many friendships; with her flatmate Caroline, with Stephen who started at the hotel at the same time, with too many others, crashed and burned when faced with the many things that didn't add up about Jean Taylor. Lying didn't work either; Hermione was a much better liar these days, but she could never quite know when something seemingly innocuous would trip her up. According to the terms of her sentence, a breach of the Statute of Secrecy could send her back to Azkaban, so the truth was out of her reach.

In time, Hermione learnt to cultivate a shell around her; she was friendly and professional, but she did not make friends. Coupled with her insistence on high standards and an intolerance for playing fast and loose with the rules, it earned her a reputation as a cold-hearted battle-axe with the more transient hotel staff. The long-timers mostly got on with her, but found her rather withdrawn and lacking in personality, which she liked to think would have astounded her old friends.

Having friends again, real friends who knew mostly everything about her, was in equal parts unnerving and a blessed relief. It helped that she hardly was overwhelmed with social overtures; a few weeks after her return, the only people from the wizarding world she had met up with were Ron, Malfoy, Charlie Weasley and Luna Lovegood.

The second time she had arranged to see Ron, Charlie had tagged along and the three of them went for a drink down at Hermione's local pub in Bermondsey Street, the Marigold. Hermione often slipped in there if she was off work on a weekday afternoon, to have a glass of wine and read a book. She liked being surrounded by the soothing murmur of voices, even though they mostly were talking about the Premiership and last night's soaps if you listened closely. She also liked that the Marigold was a real pub, nothing like the pretentious gastro pubs that seemed to be spreading over the area at an inexorable pace.

The Weasley brothers fit right in; the look of surprise on the barman's face when they entered was entirely due to Hermione bringing company, for once. He quickly served up her usual red wine and two pints of ale. After some good-natured arguing about who would pay for the first round, all three of them squeezed into a corner booth where they could use some surreptitious magic to ensure that they weren't overheard.

Charlie was slightly stockier than he had been the last time Hermione had time to really look at him, at Bill and Fleur's wedding. Mrs Weasley must be happy now; his hair was impeccably short, but any suggestion of neatness was ruined by the unkempt beard covering his chin. It was even redder than his hair, and made him look less like a standard issue Weasley. Perhaps that was the point.

With relief, Hermione noticed that Ron's beard had disappeared since she last saw him. His face was still thinner than she remembered, the cheekbones more visible than they had been when he was a teenager, but this was the Ron she had known since she was eleven. No longer did she have to laboriously trace the remains of the boy he had been on a stranger's face to find him again.

Charlie won the argument about who would pay for the first round, by pointing out that he was older than either of them, and had missed out on too many chances to do his duty as an older brother and get Ron drunk while he was still underage. Once he had pocketed the change, Charlie immediately dispelled any awkwardness in characteristic fashion.

"I'm glad you're back, Hermione. I'm sorry about how things were for you all these years. There's nothing I can say, except that I should have done something."

"There's no need to apologise. You're as bad as Ron; you really have nothing to be sorry for." She smiled at him. "It's great to see you, though."

"Naturally. After seven years as a Muggle, clearly the thing you missed the most was my ruggedly handsome face!"

They all laughed, and Hermione remembered how nice it was to be around Charlie, who never got wound up about anything and seemed to be able to defuse most situations. Maybe it came from spending so much time around dragons; everything else must seem fairly easy to handle in comparison.

"So are you still in Romania?"

"I moved on to Sweden after the war, actually. I'm running a breeding project to cross the Swedish Short-Snout with the Norwegian Ridgeback in Miekak up north." Seeing Hermione's blank look he added: "Not to worry, you wouldn't have heard of it."

"It's at the back arse of nowhere!" Ron said. "Sometimes they go to have a look at the Muggle motorway in Norway for kicks, to convince themselves that there's still other people in the world."

"That was once! I never should've told you about that," Charlie groaned, but Ron's wide grin informed him that it wouldn't be forgotten in a hurry. "The winters get really bloody long up there," Charlie explained to Hermione, "The first year there were only three of us and I got cabin fever, after two months in the dark. So I took my broom to the nearest gas station, just to see something different and get a bar of choccie."

"As opposed to Apparating somewhere civilised, like normal people do!" Ron interjected.

"I hadn't been anywhere close enough to Apparate to! It's halfway to the sodding Arctic, Ron. It's not like England, where you can Apparate back home for the afternoon."

They continued to squabble and the argument comfortably morphed into talk about Sweden. Ron made a determined attempt to find out if Charlie had landed himself a Swedish girlfriend yet. Hermione couldn't help laughing at him, but went bright red when he asked her what was so funny. Charlie took pity on her.

"Contrary to what people may think, I'm not actually gay," he explained.

Hermione blushed even more, even though she didn't think it was possible.

"I'm sorry," she said in a very small voice. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable or imply anything-"

"I think we can all see who's uncomfortable here!" Ron interrupted, laughing at her discomfort.

"Shut up, Ron," his brother said. "Hermione, I don't give a toss; it's just that I'm really not gay. Promise. It would be absolutely fine if I were; our uncle Gideon was, actually." She gratefully grabbed the lifeline with both hands

"Really? I never heard much about him, except that he was killed in the first war. Did you ever meet him?" Goaded beyond her endurance, she turned around. "Ron, would you ever stop snickering?"

"No!" he answered happily.

They left the pub at closing time, long after they lost track of whose round it was next. Hermione had to hush Ron and Charlie so they wouldn't sing "A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End" loud enough to wake the neighbours. She was relieved to find that Charlie had brought enough Sobering Up Potion for the two of them to Apparate home to the Burrow from her flat. It wouldn't eradicate the inevitable hangover, but anything that kept them from Splinching was fine by her.

"Watch and learn, little brother; watch and learn," Charlie admonished Ron, who was clinging onto Hermione's bookshelf for dear life and looked for all the world like he never had even heard of potions before.

Charlie chugged back the potion and shuddered all over, before straightening his back and making Ron swallow his dose.

That night Hermione realised that Charlie was her favourite Weasley, after Ron.


After years of lying about her past, Hermione found it unnerving to meet people who knew her all the way from when she was an over-eager girl with teeth too big for her face, to the weary fighter arrested at the battlefield with her hands covered in someone else's blood.

It did save time, however.

When she sent an e-mail to Charlie asking him if they could meet up for a drink without Ron, he didn't ask any questions. Thankfully, he also seemed to be under no apprehension that Hermione was asking him out on a date. It had surprised her when he handed her an e-mail address, but apparently living in the sticks in Sweden was sufficient to persuade at least one Weasley that Muggle communications sometimes beat owls.

When they were ensconced in their usual booth at the Marigold and fortified with drinks, Charlie leaned back to let Hermione start the conversation. She was busy pondering what a reassuring person he was to be around; the exact opposite of Malfoy, with whom you needed to keep your guard up every moment. Charlie was not only charming in a thoroughly non-manipulative way; he also gave the impression that he would have your back if the situation ever required it. With some force Hermione ejected Malfoy from her thoughts, and brought her mind back to the business at hand.

Initially she had considered asking Charlie to come to her apartment instead, but eventually decided against it. Like Dementors, bad memories always seemed worse in solitude; surrounded by other people going about their lives, it was easier to remember that they belonged in the past.

"I was hoping you could help me understand how things were for your family, after…" Hermione began, picking her words with great care.

"After the war, you mean?" Charlie smiled wryly.

"Yes." She seized gratefully on his impersonal way of describing it; Hermione didn't know him well enough to know how he was dealing with the loss of his father and brother, and she certainly didn't want to offend him or bring back bad memories if she didn't have to.

"Especially since at least two members of my family still are hell-bent on punishing you for what to all intents and purposes amounted to saving Harry, I guess?"

She raised her chin to answer that.

"I can't- Look, that's none of my business. And I guess the rest isn't either, I'd just really like to find out what happened, and since Ron wasn't there…" she trailed off. It did sound rather nosey, put like that.

"Right. Don't worry, I'll tell you. You definitely have as much right to find out as- as Ron has. I'd be grateful if you'd keep it to yourself for the moment, though. We're still kind of spoon-feeding him at the moment." Charlie omitted to mention that this was mostly due to Ron taking a dim view of the aforementioned reaction to Hermione's return and the ruptures that had caused in the family, for which she was grateful.

"I was in the battle too, of course, but you'd remember that," he continued.

"All of you were," she said under her breath; some days you never forget, as long as you live.

"All of us," he agreed, "and it could have ended worse, but that's hard to remember when you're in the middle of it."


Charlie found himself in a huddle with Ginny, George and Percy in the Great Hall, where the bodies were laid out. Their mum was with Ron at St. Mungo's; Bill and Fleur had followed her there as soon as they found out what was happening.

Faced with his younger siblings and their grief, Charlie felt entirely inadequate. Bill was so much better at this sort of thing, and Charlie wished that he could have stayed; but of course Bill had to go. It didn't help that what Charlie wanted most desperately in the world was for his dad to tell them everything would be fine.

Ginny sounded shrill as she demanded to go to St. Mungo's too, right this minute. When Charlie explained for the fifteenth time that they couldn't, that it was jam-packed with people already, Ginny's mouth turned into a thin line and she stared right ahead, ignoring him. George was almost catatonic and refused to talk to either of them. It was Percy who, with endless patience and understanding, finally made him eat something and clean up a little.

It really didn't help that the bodies of the fallen were there with them. Charlie was immensely grateful when Professor Sprout organised for them to be moved, in the no–nonsense manner of hers he remembered from when he was a student at Hogwarts, long before he became a soldier there.

The long, miserable day eventually turned into night, and Charlie was hard pressed to find any reason for cheer. Yes, they had won; but the price seemed too steep – except that the price for losing would have been unimaginable. He thought of Remus and Tonks, stretched out on the cold flagstones, and their orphaned son, and how the ranks of his fellow Order members were gaping empty.

In the quiet hours before morning, as his younger siblings finally succumbed to their exhaustion, Charlie wept for the dead.

He would always regret not finding a way of making sure the younger students couldn't sneak back into the castle. The responsibility for attacking them lay firmly on Voldemort's side, but what sort of people were the rest of them, that they allowed children to get entangled in this? As he looked at Ginny, remembering that she was only eleven when she first got mixed up with Voldemort, Charlie realised the irony. If he couldn't keep his own little sister safe, who was he to think that he could have managed to save the others?

With dawn came Bill, bearing news of Ron, or rather no news – his state was unchanged.

For days the Weasleys lingered at Hogwarts, before they all went to Shell Cottage together. After being abandoned for months and being ransacked several times, the Burrow was hardly fit to house the hens in, and none of them could face staying with Aunt Muriel again.

Nobody suggested splitting up. It was quite clear that their mum would find it even harder to cope if she didn't have them all under the same roof. To her eternal credit, Fleur made no fuss at all when she realised that she would be staying in the same house as all of her surviving in-laws for the foreseeable future.

After the first day Charlie felt stifled; he got used to having his own space long ago, and it was only now he realised the extent he had come to rely on it to clear his head. There was nothing for him to do at Shell Cottage, except getting in the others' way, as they grieved and quibbled and tried to find a way to live on. For want of anything better he would escape to the garden, where he usually ended up by Dobby's grave. For some reason it seemed easier to remember out there, with the fresh wind from the sea whipping his hair.

Their mum was worn ragged by flitting between Ron in hospital, sorting out funeral arrangements and trying to attend to those still living. As time wore on, the Healers began to sound less and less optimistic of Ron's eventual recovery, but Molly still insisted on not leaving him alone for a minute. The others reluctantly gave in; it was easier to go to St. Mungo's and spend a few hours staring at Ron, than having another fight about it.

One morning, on his way back from some precious moments of solitude in the garden before everyone else woke up, Charlie came across his mum in the kitchen.

She was baking.

The achingly familiar act reminded him of all the mornings when the same smell of bread had wound its way up the stairs, waking him up, when the Burrow still was the only home he had ever known. He would sneak down the stairs to get some tidbits and his mum's undivided attention, before his brothers woke up and shattered the busy silence of the kitchen.

This morning, two loaves were baking in the oven and invisible fingers were kneading another four, while Molly was mixing the dough for more. Small, desolate tears were rolling down her cheeks as she measured up the yeast, landing in the mixing bowl and creating little craters in the flour.

"Oh, mum," was all Charlie managed to say. He hugged her as if he would never let her go, letting the yeast pour into the dough mixture unchecked and quite ruining it.


It took Charlie years to realise that something was wrong with Ginny, apart from the obvious.

That first year, they all concentrated on just getting through and picking up the pieces of their lives again.

George had become a moody stranger who kept lashing out at anyone within earshot, and consequently he consumed most of their attention. Percy rose to the occasion heroically, bottling up most of his own regrets. When George had regained some interest in life again, it was Percy's turn to break down in a storm of self-recriminations.

After a year, Charlie managed to extract himself to Romania again. He didn't think it would help anyone if he lost his marbles completely, and he simply had to get some space for himself. He did, however, go back home every single weekend. After a few years, when his employer ceased to be understanding of family issues caused by a war long past, Charlie had simply handed in his notice and transferred to Wales. The dragon reservation in Glasfynydd was within easy Apparation range and with time the claustrophobic cloud that had hung over the Burrow had dissipated, so he figured he may as well make his mother happy and move home.

That was when he finally noticed that his sister wasn't acting like herself anymore.

His mum, Ginny, Percy, George and himself were living at the Burrow. Bill, Fleur and Victoire called over often, as Victoire spent her days at the Burrow while her parents worked. During the war, both Bill and Fleur had left Gringotts to work for the order. After Ron broke into the bank, they had abandoned all hope of being rehired and set up their own freelance curse-breaking outfit in France and Britain. It was slow to get off the ground, but they persevered.

George had started up Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes again with Lee Jordan, but on a much smaller scale than before. Under Voldemort's reign the Diagon Alley shop had been closed down and the contents confiscated by the Ministry. Compensation was not forthcoming from the new regime. George and Lee ran the business out of the garage at the Burrow, providing much needed Galleons to the family coffers.

Percy had to start over within the Ministry for the third time, which he actually had mellowed enough to joke about; it still didn't bring in much money, though.

Charlie never made that much money in the first place, and he had to take a significant pay cut to get work in Wales. For some reason, dragonkeeping never attracted the galleons that seemed to flow to other areas of magical research. Charlie reckoned it was because anyone would want to work with dragons. You would want to get some serious compensation to waste your time on less interesting creatures, like Flobberworms or Crups, however.

In the past, the Weasleys would have considered themselves fortunate to have three adults bringing in money to the household. However, there was the small matter of Ron's hospital bills. For as long as anyone could remember, care at St. Mungo's had been free of charge. However, in the wake of the war the Ministry declared that it no longer could afford to subsidise the care of long-term patients and families were told that they had to assume responsibility for their relatives.

The Weasleys had been informed that Ron's survival was contingent on the integrity of the healing spells keeping his organs functioning. They either had to find the money or accept that the spells could fail, if they choose to care for him at home. Truthfully, some of them had abandoned hope that he would ever wake up, but Fleur, George and their mum managed to persuade the rest not to give up on Ron yet.

A year after the war ended, Ginny went back to Hogwarts to sit her N.E.W.T.s. The Ministry had appointed a new Headmistress after the death of Professor McGonagall; previously a member of the Governing Board of Hogwarts, Professor Margaret Sprigmore was an unknown quantity when she assumed the reigns at Hogwarts.

She quickly made a name for herself as a staunch bureaucrat and loyal Ministry supporter, with the capacity of boring a room to tears in less than two minutes. And that was only the teachers, who had a considerably wider attention span than the students.

However, she had claws, according to the rumour among former Order members, as Professor Sprout found out to her cost when she tried to challenge Sprigmore on the exclusion of several dangerous plants from the curriculum. Pomona Sprout found herself under a disciplinary investigation and was fortunate to retain her post.

After that, even when Sprigmore had departed after a short tenure, there was little resistance among the demoralised Hogwarts staff against the general cleansing of anything that may conceivably be considered Dark on the curriculum, however wide the definition of Dark. Severus Snape would have been turning in his grave, Pomona Sprout ruminated darkly. Even if he were a traitor, at least the man had understood that you cannot fight what you have no knowledge of.

Ginny poured most of her energies into the Gryffindor Quidditch team, which was a shadow of its former self. By the end of the year, she managed to scrape together five N.E.W.T.s and a victory in the Quidditch Cup, which was enough for a contract with the Holyhead Harpies. Had things been different, this would have earned her a screeching lecture from her mother about her lack of dedication in life. As it was, they all gathered in the garden at the Burrow to celebrate.

George had invited Angelina, and their mum was giddy with the prospect of her son finally bringing a girlfriend home. Wisely, she managed to say nothing at all about Angelina's presence, except to assure her that she was very welcome and thanking her for bringing a lovely lemon tart, a contribution that made her no harm at all in Molly's eyes. No one told her it was actually from Marks and Spencer.

Andromeda Tonks and Teddy Lupin were there, too. Teddy was just old enough to walk and hence needed to be minded every second, but mercifully he fell asleep just after they started eating.

While they would never be the same as they were before the war, something fragile that looked suspiciously like happiness finally seemed to be within reach again that night.

The only discordant note was struck by Ginny. She refused to stay after dinner and disappeared to join her friends at The Three Broomsticks, where the Quidditch team had organised a leaving party for the seventh-years. It was too much of a coincidence for the party to be scheduled the very same night as the family celebration, and Charlie couldn't help raising his eyebrows at her premature exit.

Later, as he plonked himself down next to Bill under the gnarled oak by the pond with a bottle of Firewhiskey between them, he mentioned it to his brother. Bill sighed.

"I don't think anyone of us has paid nearly enough attention to what Ginny really thinks about things. At least not since she went to Hogwarts."

Charlie raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"I don't really think that's true. I know Ron felt he was getting the short shrift sometimes, and Percy – but not Ginny…" Speaking as a middle child, Charlie was trying very hard not to point out that the first female Weasley for generations certainly hadn't experienced any shortage of attention growing up.

"Oh, there was no lack of people looking after her! But I don't think anyone really knows what she's been feeling for a long time now…" Bill counted backwards under his breath. "You'd have been what, twenty? when she was possessed by Voldemort."

They both shuddered at the reminder.

"I wasn't that old either, but I did hear more about it. Remember when you all came to see me in Egypt? Ginny refused to talk about it. At all. Mum and dad were really concerned. The year after, they made her go and see Madam Pomfrey at Hogwarts, but I don't think she kept it up." He took another sip of Firewhiskey. "If she'd been Muggle, there would have been trauma counselling and- and I don't know what else. She was only eleven, for pity's sake!"

Charlie couldn't remember if he had ever talked to Ginny about the diary. To his shame, he only remembered trying to cheer her up by letting her join the rest of them in a game of Quidditch, or cramming her full with chocolate from Romania.

"I think that's when she stopped telling any of us what was going on with her. You know what she's like, she's always been hell-bent on doing things herself," Bill continued.

"Yeah," Charlie agreed, remembering carrying his screaming sister down the stairs when she was two years old and determined that she could make it all the way down on her own, without falling. If she hadn't fought to get to do things on her own every step of the way, she probably would have ended up entirely useless - a bit like that cousin of Harry's, who by all accounts had been spoilt completely rotten.

"And then," Bill sighed, "there was the war, and being barred from Order meetings, and not really being part of whatever Harry and Ron and Hermione were up to. So she was left at Hogwarts the last year of the war – did you ever hear many stories from her about that?" No, Charlie hadn't, except what he had heard from Neville and Luna already.

"I've wondered if it was right to leave her there that year," Charlie said; he had never mentioned his doubts to anyone else in the family before. "With Snape running the place and Death Eaters everywhere, and Voldemort flying in for a cuppa whenever he fancied..."

There were too many regrets from the war: over the estrangement from Percy, over losing track of Ron, and just not having spent enough time together before it was too late. He didn't want to rake up any more guilt than necessary, but looking at it from Ginny's point of view it did seem like a daft decision.

"Ginny insisted," Bill told him. "She would've been seventeen, so there was nothing Mum and Dad could've done to stop her either. Whatever about Hogwarts, there was no bloody chance Mum would have let her join the Order when the Ministry was hunting us down, and Ginny knew it. They had screaming matches about it. "

"I'd no idea about that."

"Well, mum was hardly going to tell you that she was threatening to put Ginny under house arrest with Auntie Muriel in her weekly letter now, was she?"

"I s'pose."

"And then Fred and Dad were killed, and Harry… D'you know Harry and Ginny were together before he left Hogwarts?"

"What? She was sixteen!" Charlie was belatedly outraged, but Bill could still make him feel like a naïve teenager with a simple chuckle.

"Calm down! They were only going out, you dolt," he explained patiently to his daft younger brother.

"Oh."

Charlie poured them another glass of whiskey, for good measure.

"But she was really in love with Harry, and he with her. I don't know if you ever noticed?" Bill asked and Charlie blushed; he had never been very good at noticing these things, even when he wasn't away in Romania. At school he had been lucky to be friends with Tonks, who would clue him in when it was patently obvious that something was going on. Good old Tonks. She hadn't been the best at reading social clues either, but she had been much better at it than Charlie was.

"I guess not – but they were. So it's hardly surprising it's been hard on Ginny, is it?" Bill asked him, and Charlie shook his head in response. "What I'm really worried about is that she's bottling it all up and won't talk to anyone. I've tried. Mum has tried, even Percy tried once – but she won't."

In the faint light, Bill looked far older than his years, and Charlie fancied that some grey hairs would have been shining among the red if it had been daylight.

Had Ron been there, Ginny might have talked to him. He wasn't, and as the years went by, the rest of them had little success. Somehow, Ginny seemed to get through it alone, but she was more brittle nowadays, quicker to take offence and she kept herself at a slight distance. She was still playing professional Quidditch, now for the Ballycastle Bats; Charlie had a vague suspicion that her choice of team had something to do with the fact that you couldn't Apparate across the Irish Sea, but he had never brought it up.

Eventually, Ginny had moved out of the Burrow, in spite of their mum's tearful protests and her brothers' entreaties, with a calm insistence that had seemed utterly unlike her old self. She brought a few boyfriends home over the years; the latest had been Seamus Finnigan, who was living in Dublin and apparently had hooked up with her again recently.


The loss of their father had been at once more pervasive and less obvious than that of Fred. Losing Fred was like losing a limb; losing Arthur had nearly caused the whole edifice to fall.

When they were growing up, Molly managed the house while Arthur seemed to be slightly detached from the rest of them, with the long hours he worked at the Ministry, his tinkering in the garage and general absent-mindedness. It wasn't until he was gone that they realised how much they relied on him, being there in the background; the steady anchor to their stormy sea.

Charlie would always be grateful that he had the last few years in the Order, and got to know his father as an adult. Before that, he hadn't fully appreciated that behind the slightly eccentric façade was a man who fought with courage and determination for his beliefs in two wars, and suffered for them in between. He was proud to be his father's son, and he knew that his father had been proud of him in return.

It helped, when anniversaries rolled around and his mother needed them all around her to get through. She was mostly the same; more anxious, which was understandable, but able to summon enough determination to carry on despite her losses. Ron's return was an unexpected stroke of grace; Molly had kept up hope for the longest time, but the last few years even she was becoming more resigned to his fate.

Percy was happier with his Audrey than he had been for a very long time. For so long, he had been shouldering all the burdens of their family to make up for his lengthy absence. Only the last few years did he seem to realise that the only thing that mattered was that he was there now. He was still the same Percy, genuinely worried about cauldron thickness regulations and patiently toiling in a not very important position at the Ministry, but he was making an effort to avoid getting caught up in details and not seeing what was really important.

George… Well, George was never going to be the same after Fred died. Once they all accepted that, it seemed to be easier to appreciate him for who he was now. He still had the same creative genius and delight in his creations, but he would no longer effortlessly light up the mood around him. George was a father now, too – young Fred was another reminder that the war had been over for a long time.


"I think…" Charlie twisted his pint glass around on the beer mat in his seat opposite Hermione in the Marigold, in a movement reminiscent of Ron. He wasn't the kind of man who spent a lot of time analysing others, but the last few years had taken their toll on him too. Since Bill had showed him what he had let go unnoticed, he had spent a lot of time thinking about his family. It was surprisingly easy to put it all into words for Hermione. "I think the different ways we've dealt with the war probably have something to do with what was going on when we grew up."

"Bill and I both knew something was going on, especially when our uncles died," Charlie continued. "But when Voldemort fell, it was all over. Done with. We could go to Hogwarts and get on with our lives, and he didn't come back until we were grown-ups and could deal with it." He threw his head back as he was emptying his glass, and Hermione gave the barman a nod to bring out the same round again. The Marigold was quiet today; they hardly needed to have bothered with a Muffliato.

"Sometimes," Charlie continued, "I think that's why Percy couldn't deal with Voldemort coming back. He was only five when he was defeated the first time, so to Percy it was almost like a nursery tale. Not real." Charlie remembered catching a glimpse of his father coming back late at night, with spell-torn robes and blood on his face. He remembered sneaking downstairs with Bill, trying to overhear whispered conversations in the kitchen. Most of all, he remembered how he hated being dressed up and admonished to behave himself at funeral after funeral. It had been real for him, all right.

"But for us, it was always there…" Hermione nudged Charlie forward, thinking aloud.

"Yes, because of Harry, and what happened to Ginny with Riddle's diary. And then, you lot went out and fought in a war before you were even sixteen." The ill-fated battle of the Department of Mysteries. It was obvious from her pained expression that Hermione still wished that she had tried harder to stop that particular excursion.

"Yes," she agreed, clearly not wanting to return to old regrets again.

"You were all forced to take sides in an actual war, before you had a chance to work out who you really were, or what you believed in. It's not very strange that it's hard to deal with what happened, especially for those of you who were in the thick of it."

"It's no wonder we're a bit messed up, really," Hermione said pensively, presumably considering her contemporaries. She wouldn't have spent a lot of time with them since her return; Charlie thought he must know many of them better than she did nowadays, despite spending most of his time abroad.

"We're all a bit messed up after the war, Hermione. But I still think it was much harder for you young ones."

"We're not exactly teenagers anymore, you know," she corrected him.

"You're still young," Charlie scoffed. "Wait until you turn thirty, then you'll find out what it means to be old!" He smiled and the laughter lines around his eyes crinkled, but his eyes were still serious. The barman delivered one pint of Guinness and a glass of Shiraz, and they fell silent.


Afterwards, Hermione found that it didn't hurt so much that George and Ginny still wouldn't entertain the thought of meeting her.

Ever since she first noticed the profusion of redheads at King's Cross station, the Weasleys had seemed to live a charmed existence to her inexperienced eyes. Even Percy's defection had seemed bearable, compared to dispatching her own parents to Australia.

It wasn't until Ron had walked out on them during the Horcrux hunt that Harry finally told her about seeing Mrs Weasley's Boggart at Grimmauld Place, turning into one dead member of her family after another. By then, there wasn't much she and Harry still were keeping from each other; anything was usually preferable to spending another night in silence.

Somehow, it hadn't dawned on Hermione until now that the Weasleys had been extremely exposed in the war. Their power and vitality had masked how very vulnerable they were.

Maybe it was fortunate that she was the only Granger left, so neither Malfoy nor the Ministry could use her parents against her.

-oOo-


"A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End" is borrowed from Terry Pratchett; it's definitely rude enough for the Weasley brothers to sing on a night out.