A few moments after the Fwooper clock had screeched seven times, Charlie stepped out of Luna Lovegood's fireplace.
"Stupefy!"
The incantation was vague and distorted through the whoosh of the dying Floo connection, and he barely had time to widen his eyes before he fell heavily to the floor in a scarlet halo of spell flare.
"Charlie… Charlie, wake up!"
Charlie didn't open his eyes; exhaustion coupled with a blinding headache made him want to slip back to unconsciousness. Luna's voice usually sounded like silver bells, but this morning it was a clashing of cymbals—far too loud and annoying. He grimaced and groaned softly; he hurt… somewhere. He just couldn't figure out where. At that moment it was just a vague ache that seemed to throb through all of his muscles, a throbbing that increased in amplitude so that by the time it reached his head, it was a Boggart in his brain, rattling with all its might to get out.
"Ennervate!"
Charlie's eyes flew open as all of his muscles received a bolt of adrenaline. For the love of Merlin! Didn't she know that you don't apply the counter-curse when the person was already awake? "I was awake," Charlie grumbled. His body still felt like lead, but his mind was whizzing like he'd had ten cups of espresso.
"I wanted to make sure you were all right, that the Tetrabytes didn't get you and drag you off into the Gloom." Luna's expression was contrite and concerned. Her long, blonde hair was loose and snared in wild tangles, and she wore a white nightdress edged with broidery anglais. She took his hand in both of hers. "I'm so sorry, Charlie," she said, her eyes wide and silver and shimmering with tears. "I forgot you were coming back this morning, and I was still half-asleep when the Floo connected. It was just… reflex, you know, from the war."
Unfortunately Charlie knew all too well—for months and months after, the slightest sound behind him had set him whirling on his heel, wand tightly clenched, war-grimace in place—and his expression softened slightly. He squeezed Luna's hand. "I'll live," he said, and he hissed in through his teeth as he shifted to sit up straight on the couch.
"Oh, your elbow… I think you hit it on the edge of the coffee table," Luna said. She reached for her wand. "I can fix it for you…"
"Ah. It's fine, really," Charlie said quickly, remembering the stories about Harry's missing bones, although that had been Lockhart, admittedly. Still, he wasn't sure he trusted Luna with her wand after she'd just used it to blast him off his feet.
"Well, some tea, maybe?" Luna asked, a frown of concern still creasing her forehead.
"Yeah, thanks," he said, moving his neck this way then that so that his neck clicked with a grating sound. The utter clarity of thought that the Ennervate had given him was disconcerting, and he knew that it wouldn't last long before he crashed, falling hard down the steep side of the dizzying high he was now on. A million questions galloped though his mind, and he closed his eyes because he felt a bit queasy.
"There you go," Luna said softly as she sat down beside him again and set a cup of tea on the coffee table.
"Thanks. So, when did Snape—Severus—and Hermione…" He asked the first question to flitter into his head, catching firmly onto the thought before it whizzed away, anchoring it with spoken words. Still, he struggled to concentrate on her answer. Despite his weary bones, his mind wanted to go out and party, all night long.
"About a year ago," Luna said, drawing her knees up under her chin. Her nightgown was long and covered most of her feet, revealing only her electric-blue painted toenails. Charlie wondered what possessed a person to paint their toenails that colour. But still, Tonks wore green on her fingernails sometimes, which was infinitely worse, he thought.
What were we talking about again? Charlie leaned forward to pick up his tea, buying a moment to grasp desperately for the lost conversation thread. He caught sight of a photograph of the Secret Six on the mantle. Oh, yeah. Hermione and Severus! "I wouldn't have guessed they'd become a couple... not in a million years." To his overtaxed brain, his voice sounded slow and distorted, like one of those stretched Muggle tapes. He rubbed at his temple, and just as he thought his brain might launch to the moon, it began to slow its frenetic thought hopping, and he breathed over the surface of his tea in relief, feeling relaxation bleed into his bones.
Luna smiled. "I wasn't surprised, really," she said. "Hermione always admired him at school. I think she even had a bit of a crush on him. Although his killing Dumbledore put a dent in that for a bit." She fiddled with the hem of her nightgown. "I would have been more surprised if she'd ended up with Ron in the long-term, actually. They didn't suit each other. Hermione is so self-possessed, and I don't think that Ron has found himself yet."
Charlie was astounded by the depth of her insight.
He suddenly remembered one summer's day at the Burrow. Ron must have been about four, and he'd joined the brothers for a game of hide-and-seek in the garden. By then, Bill and Charlie knew all the best spots to hide, and the twins were ultra sneaky and good at blending in-between the weeds. Poor Percy usually ended up being 'it' every second time they'd played.
Late in the afternoon, after their mother had called them in to clean up for tea, and they'd started to scoff great slices of homemade bread and jam, Molly had said: "Ronnie… where's Ronniekins?"
Charlie had found him, in the end, down at the bottom of the garden, still hiding behind a large growth of hydrangeas.
"Did I win, Chaz, did I win?" Ron had asked. "I hidded the best, didn't I?"
"Yes. Yes, you did," Charlie had told him as he'd carried his lost brother up to the house.
How had could Ron ever have managed to find himself when even his brothers forgot he was there? Never mind being overshadowed by Harry Potter. In the shade of his siblings, Ron had never grown. Charlie felt a sudden surge of guilt for his acute impatience with his younger brother. "Yeah, I think you're right, Luna," he said after a while. In her own, unique way, Luna had cut to the heart of the matter.
Charlie took a sip of his tea, and Luna must have read the surprise on his face because she said, "Sugar will keep the Tetrabytes at bay," she said earnestly.
Charlie decided that he'd drink the syrupy-sweet tea rather than ask what a Tetrabyte was. He didn't have the energy to find out all about what the Gloom was either. It might have been the warmth of the tea or the quietly calm company or just the steep slide down the hill of an unnatural high, but Charlie settled back against the cushions, and he felt his mind slow to molasses as his eyes weighed closed.
When all of this is over, he thought drowsily, I'll take Ron on a trip, a trip free of the burden of expectations he's been weighted with recently, a trip where he can find himself…
The last thing he remembered was Luna taking his cup from his hands before he spilled the dregs of his tea all over himself.
His sleep was punctuated with dreams—brief commas of searching, searching for something he was desperate to find; exclamation marks of screaming dragons and purple blood searing his empty, empty hands; seeking the ever-elusive answer to a sharply curved and bitter question mark. And then he was in the dark, a dark with no bottom, and he was looking for Ron. But he couldn't find him no matter how hard he shouted, how blindly he fumbled, how hard he prayed. At one point the scent of sage wound into his subconscious and a fleeting touch of soft lips against his stilled him to peaceful rest.
When Charlie woke up, he was alone in Luna's flat. A haze of incense lingered, and the bright winter's daylight sparkled off a dreamcatcher hanging in the lounge window. There was a note on the coffee table, penned in a loopy script:
Dear Charlie,
Sage for cleansing and protection against negative energy.
Help yourself to lunch—I don't mind.
Luna.
He smiled, unaccountably touched that she'd wanted to still his dreams. And it had worked, remarkably. He was hungry, having missed out on Ma MacFusty's tea last night. But before that, he thought wryly, sniffing the collar of his t-shirt, I need a shower.
First, though, he unfolded that morning's edition of the Eye of Horus. A Portkey had dumped its passengers into the middle of the Bermuda Triangle; The Gimbi Giant-Slayers had trounced the Karasjok Kites and were bragging that they'd do the same to the Vratsa Vultures next week (As if, Charlie thought); Hassan El-Fayed was dead, his death attributed to natural causes, said the Egyptian MLE (Natural causes, my arse, thought Charlie, heavily disappointed he'd not even had time to bet on the lifespan of the marriage); Kingsley Shacklebolt was visiting the Egyptian Minister of Magic; the price of cauldrons had increased by twenty percent over the last year. Not one word about the dragon killings, thought Charlie bitterly. He tossed the paper back on the coffee table and hauled himself up off the couch, stretching all the aches and pains out.
After he'd showered and changed into clean clothes, Charlie stepped out of Luna's bathroom. A brightly-painted wall mural further down the passage caught his eye, and with a little twinge of snooper's guilt, he walked further into her flat to have a look. On the floor, in a neat row next to the skirting board, were little pots of paint and paintbrushes. Charlie recognized the all of the faces painted on the wall: Harry, Hermione, Neville, Severus, Ginny and… half-completed but clearly recognisable, his own face. Charlie stood open-mouthed, his heart lurching oddly in his chest.
He touched a finger to the swathe of freckles on his counterpart's cheek. He wasn't sure if it was exceptionally sweet or very creepy. In fact, he hadn't had much time to think about what his nascent friendship with Luna meant or even how he felt about her. The last few days had been so chaotic that Luna's quirkiness hadn't really bothered him. Her references to mystical and made-up magical creatures didn't aggravate him… they were bright moments of levity in his long and busy days. Her sometimes odd and meandering rationalisation about things had made a good deal of sense to him, for the most part. There was no doubt that she was a beautiful woman, that he was physically attracted to her. Merlin, she had beautiful hair! How he'd love to feel it tickle across his chest like silk… He coughed, feeling a little warm, and he dropped his hand with a sigh. But his perception of normal was so skewed at the moment. Could he really—
"Charlie!"
Something crashed to the floor and shattered.
"Ow! Fuck fuckity fuck!"
He drew his wand and tiptoed down the passage, hugging the wall. It sounded like Tonks, but you could never be too careful. Thumping noises, now, like somebody jumping on one leg.
"Charlie! Where the bloody hell are you?"
Charlie peered around the corner, surveying the living room, and he lowered his wand. Tonks had shattered a vase when she'd Floo'd in, spilling the blue and green marbles Luna had put inside it across the floor like a sea of secrets. "I'm here," he said, giving her an exasperated look.
Tonk's features were sharp with stress, and her irises and her hair were black like rage. She put her hand onto the mantle to steady herself, knocking over a domino of framed pictures in the process. Charlie groaned; Luna was going to be upset that all her memories had cascaded to the floor.
"Leave that!" Tonks barked as he bent to pick them up.
He straightened up, his eyebrows rising. "What?"
Tonks was patting each little decorative pot on the mantle, now. "Floo powder, Floo powder, where the hell does she keep her Floo powder?"
"What is going on, Tonks?" Charlie demanded sharply, reaching down to pick up the right pot from the coffee table. "Here—"
She snatched the pot from his hand and reactivated the Floo network. "Let's go!"
Charlie stood his ground, his jaw stubbornly stiff. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what is going on, Tonks."
She looked angry enough to spit flames at him, and her face twisted into a grimace of disgust. "I wanted to tell you when we got there, to save time," she said with a tremendous sigh. "I need your help." She looked sad now, and her eyes were the deep green of lifeless, lightless ocean depths. "We found a magical signature match for the blood," she said flatly. "It's Ron."
Author's Note: Thank you to Gelsey for proof-reading.