A/N: By my count, there are at least thirteen references to six of my other fics in this chapter. Bonus points for matching them up.

Thanks to OGX for the shampoo reference-yes, I know it didn't exist then, and no, I don't care.

March 2000

Charlie Weasley heard the knock on the door and groaned. He'd just got comfortable. A fire blazed in the hearth, warding off the chill of early spring in the Carpathian Mountains. He'd had a delicious dinner of pumpkin soup and the better part of a fresh loaf of crusty bread he'd charmed from Nadya, the Russian babushka who ran the mess hall on the Romanian International Dragon Reserve. One of the throw pillows his mum had knit was wedged in just the right spot between his upper back and the sofa arm, and in his lap lay Quidditch Weekly's Witches in Quidditch edition, the first in three bloody long years. He'd been waiting since Tuesday for a couple bottles of ale, uninterrupted privacy, and a leisurely wank.

The knock sounded again, a banging fist this time. Resigning himself to the fact his unwelcome visitor wasn't going away, Charlie tossed the magazine onto his old Hogwarts trunk that doubled as a coffee table and crossed the room. Peering behind the curtain, he saw a short, slim figure in Quidditch robes ... with a ginger plait down her back.

Figured. His baby sister had cockblocked him (and most of their other brothers, Charlie reckoned) in one way or another nearly all her life. Why should she stop simply because he was in another country, on another continent? Charlie opened the door.

"Don't tell Bill," she gasped, holding her left arm unnaturally close to her body. "Or Harry, or Mum, or—"

"Yes, yes, I won't tell anyone who cares about you," Charlie interrupted before she could run down the rather lengthy list. "How come that doesn't include me?"

"You played Quidditch."

Charlie raised one eyebrow at this true but cryptic statement (both Harry and their mother had played Quidditch, not to mention half her other brothers) and stepped aside to let her pass, taking the two steps necessary to reach his kitchen table and pull out a chair for her. By the looks of that shoulder, she wasn't going to be pulling so much as a hangnail anytime soon.

"What happened?" Charlie pulled out the loaf of bread he'd just put away and grabbed the knife from the sink.

"I fell off my broom."

He paused, one slice sawed halfway through, then left the knife protruding from the crust and sat down opposite his sister, one of the best flyers he'd ever seen—and he could have played for England.

"Let's try that again."

Ginny sighed, casting a longing look at the abandoned snack. Judging by her smell, her hair wasn't wet because it was freshly washed, nor was the body of her robes darkened by playing in the rain. She hadn't taken the time to shower after the match, and most likely she hadn't eaten either. She must be ravenous.

Charlie didn't care. She wanted him to keep her secret, she was damn well going to share it first.

"I'll start," he said. "I got knocked off my broom when..."

"A Bludger blindsided me and shattered my shoulder."

He winced. No wonder Bill, Harry, and Mum had been the first names out of her mouth. Bill would make the unlucky Beater wish he were dead, Harry would grant the wish, and Mum would forbid Ginny to play Quidditch—no, to fly a broomstick—ever again. Then another, darker thought crossed Charlie's mind.

"You were flying when this happened, right? That's not a euphemism—'I fell off my broom'?"

She shook her head. "The Quaffle was in play."

He took a closer look at his sister, his youngest sibling. Strands of long ginger hair had come loose from her plait and straggled round her neck and ears. The golden brooch that secured her dark green robes was more over her right collarbone than under her chin, and the dirty fabric was wrinkled, as if it had been crumpled in her laundry for a month, not smoothly billowing behind her in the wind. As she shifted to rest her injured arm on the table, Charlie noticed the right sleeve had completely ripped away under the arm, exposing her uniform undershirt.

"What happened, sprite?" he asked gently.

She made as if to shrug her shoulders, then winced. "I fell," she said simply. "I just—turned upside down, like one of you lot picked me up by the ankle. There wasn't time to grab my broom—I had the Quaffle—"

Charlie nodded. Of course she had, it would have been why the Beater targeted her.

"And I was falling, head first for the Tutshill pitch. There wasn't time," she repeated. "I wasn't that high up, and—"

Shit. Everybody was afraid of the high falls, the ones hundreds of feet up, well above the hoops and even the stands, when a player—usually the Seeker—would lose their balance in a dive or be struck by a well-placed Bludger, like Ginny had been. But in a high fall there was time: time for a teammate to fly to the rescue, time to cast a cushioning or deceleration charm, even time for other players to form a human net. No, it was the short falls that were the dangerous ones. The ones that were over before the crowd even knew there was a problem, the ones in that middle ground between a fall that knocked the wind out of you and floating down like a human feather.

"Emma was below me," Ginny said quietly, tracing the wood grain of the table with one fingernail. "She managed to grab my arm as I passed, but—" A tilt of her head to the right. "It pulled this one out of socket. Em's too."

Charlie was having difficulty remaining in his seat, every protective brotherly instinct demanding he see Ginny's intact shoulders for himself. But she sat here, in one piece, precisely because she trusted him not to overreact. "You saw the team Healer?"

She nodded. "It was humiliating," she said miserably, a blush creeping up her neck at the mere memory. "I was screaming, they stunned me and took me off the pitch on a stretcher. I barely even screamed when the Ca—" She broke off, avoiding his gaze.

Charlie narrowed his eyes. The Carrows had been two of Ginny's Death-Eater professors her sixth year at Hogwarts. She barely even screamed when they … what?

As he had many times during and since that horrible year, Charlie decided he didn't really want to know and changed the subject … or rather, didn't. He stood, resuming his earlier task of feeding his baby sister (hopefully not literally).

"How long are you out?"

"Five days, minimum. Then maybe I'll be cleared for practice."

She sounded nearly as miserable about this as the pain and humiliation of the injury itself. With that, he could empathize.

"That blows." A pause. "Bet she didn't clear you to Apparate."

"I didn't Apparate. I took a Portkey."

He snorted. "Sure you did. Keep an international Portkey to a dragon reserve in your pocket for emergencies, do you?"

"There are some advantages to having an Auror in the family."

Well, there was no way Ron would have let Ginny out of his sight if he knew she had been seriously injured, not even to send her to another brother. Which meant at some point in the last six months, Ron—or more likely Harry—had (illegally) taught Ginny how to create a Portkey. Bloody hell, but it was difficult to adjust to the idea of his youngest siblings as competent, fully qualified wizards.

"Speaking of Aurors," Charlie said lightly, ladling soup into a bowl, "where's Potter?"

"Wherever the DMLE sends him," Ginny said wearily.

"And he doesn't share that with you?"

"Bloody stupid noble streak," she muttered.

"Think you can manage a spoon?"

She nodded, and he cast a warming spell on the soup he'd planned to have for lunch tomorrow before setting it in front of her, along with three slices of generously buttered bread.

"Mum's pumpkin soup?" She brightened.

"The very same."

"I doubt that." But she dug in eagerly, giving a surprised "mmm!" of appreciation after her first spoonful. "This is good!"

"Of course it is. It's Mum's recipe." Charlie decided he wasn't full after all and swiped a slice of bread.

"Oi!" Ginny made to rap his hand with her spoon but was too late.

"How come you never learned to cook? Mum had us in the kitchen all the time."

"Get away from the oven, Ginny, you'll burn yourself. No, not the knife—you'll get hurt. Why are you standing on a chair? Get out of the way. Here, take these and lay the table. Ginny, you can wash up. Put that down before you spill it. Get out of the way, Ginny. Go pick some flowers for the centerpiece, Ginny."

"It wasn't that bad," Charlie protested.

"Even Ron is a better cook than I am. What does that tell you?"

"That Ron is ruled by his stomach?"

She scoffed.

"You did all right at Potions, yeah?"

She nodded, mouth full of bread.

"Anybody who can do Potions can learn to cook. We'll make another batch of soup tomorrow. You're eating my lunch."

That earned him a smile.

"Unless you're planning to eat and run, you're going to have to shower. You stink."

"I know. I feel disgusting. But—"

Charlie had been roped into more than a few unpleasant and embarrassing tasks by those big brown eyes—but not this one.

"Oh, no," he said, swallowing the last crust of his bread and pushing away from the table.

"I can do most of it on my own, but there's no way I can wash my hair, and that's the worst of it. It's wet through with sweat."

He shook his head.

"Please, Charlie? You've done it before," she wheedled.

"Yeah, when you were as straight up and down as I was!"

She burst out laughing. "I'm not asking you to get in the bath with me, just help me wash my hair."

He eyed her suspiciously. He'd yet to see her move her left arm; it was lumpy and thicker than usual, an obvious reminder of the bandages under her robes.

"You think you can shower on your own? Safely?"

"I can manage," she said with familiar stubbornness.

###

A couple Transfiguration charms to turn Ginny's undershirt and leggings into a modest one-piece swim costume and a trash bin into a stool, one patented older-brother death glare when she opened her mouth to protest the need for a resting spot, and a generous amount of soap had gone a long way into transforming his sister into someone Charlie could share a room with. He'd let her do most of it herself, taking off her boots and helping her into the shower before washing her back and waiting respectfully outside the open bathroom door. Then the water shut off.

"Wait, what about your hair?"

"I think it will be easier to do in the sink. Otherwise you're going to get wet too."

Charlie listened to the sounds of her getting out of the shower, the soft grunts as she twisted and reached to dry off as much as she could, the rattle as she pulled the shower curtain closed, the snap of the towel as she shook it out before hanging it up to dry.

"Okay." Her voice was slightly breathless. "You can come in."

She'd asked for a pair of short-sleeved pajamas and a jumper, and he'd found an old pair of pajamas he didn't mind ruining before using a Severing Charm to hem them to the approximate length. She stood on his navy blue bath mat, the ragged trouser hem covering half her feet and shirttails hanging past her bum. He briefly thought of offering her a pair of boxers, but she didn't seem the least bothered at the absence of underwear and Charlie wasn't going to dwell too much on that.

"Here or the kitchen?" she asked.

"Kitchen," he said decisively. "The sink is higher. It will be easier for me to reach you."

"Bring a couple extra towels, please."

What was he, a maid? But Charlie grabbed the towels and the soap and returned to the kitchen to find his sink suddenly missing a u-shaped bit from the front and his sister kicking a chair into place in front of it.

Rolling his eyes—what, he was qualified to fetch towels but not chairs?—he picked up the chair with one hand and placed it in front of the sink. "Climb on up, pixie."

Ginny scowled and deliberately stuck out her bum to emphasize her ability to sit down, then leaned back and fitted her neck in the opening.

"Clever," Charlie said, impressed.

"It's what they use in Muggle salons," she said, carefully reaching her right hand up to slide it behind her neck and flip her hair into the basin of the sink, which immediately disappeared under a curtain of red.

"Bloody hell, Ginny, how long is your hair?"

"Long enough," she said, squirming to get comfortable when the objects in his hand caught her eye. "Please tell me you're not going to wash my hair with that."

He followed her gaze to the bar of soap on top of the towels. "It's soap."

"But I already smell like a boy," she wailed. "And that will dry out my hair something awful. Don't you have any shampoo?"

"What for?"

She glared, not bothering to dignify his cheeky answer with a response.

"I know I'm not the first woman to shower here. Hasn't anyone left behind a bottle of shampoo? Or conditioner? Even body wash would be better than that—that—atrocity."

Charlie stared at his tomboy, professional-athlete sister in genuine surprise. "Ginny Molly Weasley, you sound like a girl."

"I am a girl. And I didn't say a word about the boy-smelling soap or the mold in your shower. I can live without lotion and facial cleanser for one day, but please don't make me wash my hair with bar soap. Please, Charlie."

Some part of Charlie's mind thought he ought to register the differences between Genuinely Begging Ginny and Manipulative Baby Sister, but he was more concerned with the wisdom of giving someone just as clever as the twins and twice as deceitful more reasons to take the piss.

In the end, it was no contest; he had a soft spot for his baby sister as big as a Quidditch pitch and she knew it. Sister or not, there was also no denying she had beautiful hair. A true red, neither orange nor auburn, Ginny's hair (at least when it was clean) was silky and shiny. More people than she would be upset if he ruined that. With a sigh, Charlie performed a nonverbal Summoning Charm, catching the bottle neatly in one hand … but not before Ginny read the label: Bamboo Brilliant Brunnette.

Her eyes lit up. "Wait, is that—"

Charlie ended her questioning with a blast of cold water from his wand that left her spluttering in shock.

"You know, the Muggles have a saying," he said, squeezing Amy Green's shampoo in swirls over his sister's head. "Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies."

###

"This used to be a lot easier," Charlie grumbled as he and Ginny fought for purchase on the only cushioned piece of furniture in his cabin other than the bed.

"Well, if you weren't such a great lump of an oaf," she grunted, forcing her elbow between his bicep and ribs and wedging herself sideways in the resulting space.

"Me?" Charlie said indignantly, blowing her hair out of his face for the third time. "You used to fit right here!" He indicated one forearm.

"When I grow up, I'm going to have six little brothers, and I'm going to be nicer to them than all of you!"

He laughed, and Ginny took advantage of his relaxed posture to leverage one knee under his thighs, making room for her own short legs.

"I'd forgotten you used to say that."

"Were you there when Percy oh-so-helpfully explained I couldn't have my own little brothers?"

Charlie laughed again. "No, more's the pity."

"I cried and cried, and Fred and George and Ron undid everything he did for days."

"Undid everything?" He pulled one of the back cushions out of the way, dropping it the other side of the sofa.

"Percy made his bed, they mussed it. He put the cutlery away, they mixed up the spoons and forks. He weeded the garden, they replanted them."

"How long before he cracked?" Charlie asked, imagining his fussiest, stuffiest brother being thwarted in all things.

"I don't know," Ginny said, turning onto her back as he moved over into the free space afforded by the missing cushion. "You'd have to ask—you'd have to ask George."

"Did Mum notice?"

"Oh, yeah, she blamed Percy, and when he tried to blame the twins, she'd say, 'Did I ask your brothers to weed the garden? No, I did not, Percy Weasley. If—"

Charlie joined her for the last part. "You're going to do a job, do it right the first time."

Ginny giggled. "Poor Perce. He really is the most fun to wind up." She raised up slightly, pulling her hair from underneath her back and twisting it up over her head.

"Shoulder's made a miraculous recovery, I see," he said mildly.

She froze.

"What are you really doing here, Gin-Gin?"

Her hands came down to fiddle with the hem of one of his Weasley jumpers. "I was scared," she said finally.

"You can't be scared with Harry?"

"Harry's not home."

"Mm-hmm. And if you sent him a message saying you needed him…."

"I don't want him to think of me like that."

"Like what, human? Anyone would be shaken up after a fall like that, Ginny."

"Like the little girl crying at the feet of Salazar Slytherin's statue," she whispered.

Charlie froze. Never, not once in the seven years since it happened, had Ginny spoken to him of her experience in the Chamber of Secrets. This was not his area. This was Bill's, or Mum's, or—hell, even Ron would be better equipped.

"I've never got the impression Harry thinks of you as weak. He trusts you, like a teammate or a partner."

"I know, but—he always wants to protect me," she complained. "Like, I don't know, like I'm made of glass and need to be wrapped in cotton wool or something. He didn't want me to go with them to rescue Sirius, he wouldn't tell me anything about his meetings with Dumbledore, that stupid breakup, and then—" She sat up, on a roll now. "Then the year of the war, Bill wouldn't take me to Shell Cottage, not even just to see them, and Harry backed him up, even after the fact! And the Battle—Mum was yelling at—at Fred and George for bringing me, and she wanted to send me home, and Harry was right there! He was right there, but he wouldn't stick up for me!" She was bright red now, fists clenched in frustration. "Then last summer, we had that huge row because he was shutting me out, trying to 'protect me' from finding out about his injuries and mistakes in Auror training. I didn't—I didn't want to give him a reason to think he was right."

Charlie understood now. "Oh. That."

"Yes, that!"

"That's not about you, Ginny."

"How can you say that? Hermione was there! She was the one Harry went to last summer whenever he needed help with a healing charm. Hermione did all those things with him and Ron, and Harry never told her to go home!"

"I bet Ron did—or tried to."

Still, she stared blankly at him.

A gentle tug and she lay beside him again. "See, the thing about wizards is we're not as brave as you think."

She snorted, but he continued.

"It's easy to risk your life, to do something dangerous for glory or fame or especially a worthy cause. It's not nearly so easy to risk the life of someone you love."

Her nose scrunched up. "You're saying Harry wants to protect me because he loves me. I know that."

"I'm saying Harry loves you so much, he has to protect you in order to protect himself. It's like having your heart walking around outside of your body."

Ginny jumped up, her hair fanning out around her as she spun to face him in the narrow space between sofa and trunk. "Do you think I don't know what that's like? I've been doing that since I was ten years old! With Ron, and Harry, and—and then Hermione, every blasted bloody year! Percy gone off to Godric knows where, Bill and Greyback and the Order, the twins and their stupid overconfident arrogance and even you, playing with dragons like it's another day at the office! Not only do I not know where Harry is half the time, I don't even know when to worry about him because I don't know when he's supposed to be home! My heart hasn't been inside my chest since Ron left for Hogwarts."

Charlie sat up, taking her hands in his, undaunted by her vehemence. "That's my point, love. Witches have a special kind of strength, a bravery in love. Most of us blokes—" He shook his head. "We can't manage it. It's too scary, the thought of what would happen to us without you. So we try to protect you, because it's the only way we know to protect ourselves."

She stood, breathing hard, color high and eyes blazing. "That's stupid."

He shrugged. "Personally, I thought taking a run at Voldemort for making fun of Harry when he was already dead was pretty stupid, but you didn't ask me."

She stared at him a moment, then flopped onto his trunk behind her. "Harry said something like that to me once, that first summer … after. About him having a lot to lose and wanting to do the right thing by me and my family after all we'd done for him, but he thought I wasn't taking it seriously enough."

"So, let him see you're afraid of breaking your neck. It will remind him you're a reasonable human being underneath the Harpy madness, that you're not risking his heart unnecessarily."

She pulled her knees up, propping her heels on the edge of the trunk and leaning forward, long hair hiding her face completely. "I really miss him."

Charlie, however, had become uncomfortably aware of the magazine brushing her right hip. Not that Ginny had never seen a copy of Witches in Quidditch, or would be surprised to find one in his possession. Still, if he could distract her long enough to bury it in the stack….

"Would you like to go flying tomorrow? See the dragons?"

That got her attention—her head popped up at once, expression hopeful. "Oh, can I?"

"I dunno, Ginny, can you?"

He'd thought so, especially after the conversations they'd had around her seventeenth birthday, but then again she was staring at him like he'd grown an extra head, so maybe not. The last time Ginny visited the Reserve was the Christmas before she started Hogwarts. It hadn't been safe to bring her anywhere near a dragon other than the hatchlings.

"Why didn't I take you with us last time?"

"You said it wasn't safe, and Mum and Dad agreed."

"Why wasn't it safe?"

"Because you lot are a bunch of overprotective grannies?"

Merlin, she really didn't know. "Try again."

"I dunno, because I hadn't had flying lessons yet?"

Charlie shook his head. "What do dragons eat?"

"Large mammals mostly, but their favorite food is vir—"

She broke off, brown eyes going perfectly round as the knut dropped, and then she dissolved into giggles. Rounds and rounds of them, doubling her over and rolling off the end of his trunk. Charlie wasted no time shoving the magazine amongst the nearby stack of Quidditch Weekly issues, comics, and newspapers.

Ginny was still delirious on his sheepskin rug, the emotions of the day bleeding off all at once. Charlie reached out and poked her back with one foot.

"I take it that's a yes."

"Oh, my gosh," she gasped, wiping away tears. "Yes, Charlie, I can—" She broke into giggles again. "I can go see the dragons."

"Brat," he muttered.

She was still gasping, running her sleeve under both eyes before reaching her merely formerly-dislocated arm over to rub the shattered one.

"You, um, you might want to skip pages twenty-two to twenty-five."

"Of what?"

She sat up and crossed her legs under herself in one fluid motion, giving him a dark look.

Fine. So living alone had rusted his stealth skills. "And why might I want to do that?"

"Just think about it for a minute. It'll come to you."

Charlie frowned. Ginny was giving him advice about the Witches in Quidditch issue, which implied she'd already seen it. He wouldn't have thought it her cup of tea, given it was more photographic biography than sports reporting, but she was—

Hells bells, his baby sister was a witch in Quidditch!

"Why didn't anybody warn me?" Charlie moaned, flipping frantically through the stack of periodicals for the issue in question, then thrusted it at her without looking at it. "Here. Rip them out."

She took the magazine but didn't open it. "I will if you really want me to, but you should know … Gwen's on the back."

"Gwenog Jones?"

"Mm-hmm."

"My favorite Quidditch player of all time?"

Her eyes narrowed, but he did not modify the statement. He'd fancied Gwenog since Ginny was still saying "quich."

"Yes."

"Her photo is on the same page as yours?"

"The back of one of them, yes."

"If you rip out all of your pages, I lose one of Gwenog's?"

She nodded.

Charlie stared at her, gutted. Still, none of his brothers had Floo-called or even sent an owl … maybe it wasn't that bad. Ginny was a rookie, only eighteen years old. And she was the Chosen One's girlfriend, the beloved daughter of one of the most respected wizarding families, a war heroine in her own right. Surely they hadn't done anything too risqué?

"How bad are they?"

"I told you Harry was on assignment?"

He nodded.

"He and Ron had to take the place of three wizards they sent to St. Mungo's the day after it was released."

Shite. "Why did Harry agree to this?"

A pause, then in an unnaturally even tone, Ginny said, "You're under a lot of pressure right now, and you've been nice to me this evening, so I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."

"Fine. Why did you agree to this?"

"Because they flew me and Harry to Bali for three nights. In January. And paid me a tidy sum to do it, which I donated to the War Widows and Orphans Fund."

Well, that answered the Harry question. Her boyfriend's godson, Teddy Tonks, was a double recipient: he was a war orphan, and his guardian grandmother was a widow. Along with far too many of Harry's and Ginny's friends and classmates.

Charlie sighed. "Let me see Gwenog's picture."

Ginny flipped through the magazine. "This is really embarrassing, just so you know. My grown-ass brother with a huge crush on my team captain."

"Shut it."

There she was—dark hair loose as it never was when she was in uniform, wearing a pale blue dress trimmed in silver. Gwenog stood on the turret of a stone castle staring out to sea, her shapely body revealed by the wind blowing her skirts behind her and the gossamer fabric nearly see-through with the light from surrounding fairies. The shot was taken low to the ground, creating the illusion of looking up her skirt without actually doing so, and Charlie knew he would be spending a fair amount of time trying to determine what—if anything—she wore under that dress.

"Unbelievable," Ginny muttered, and Gwenog dropped out of sight.

"What are you doing?"

"Putting a Permanent Sticking Charm on my pages," she answered, running her wand along the edges. "You'll go straight from Meaghan McCormack to Gwen."

"Cheers!"

"Shall I do Angelina's too?"

"No."

Too quick, and of course his clever sister noticed. Ignoring the heat he felt spreading up his neck, Charlie said, "I can do hers myself."

"Mm-hmm," she said skeptically, smoothing her hand over the final page before shaking the magazine by the spine to test her handiwork.

"You know, I remember when you used to cut pictures out of magazines and make collages with Spellotape."

"And I remember when you used to bring me sweets," Ginny retorted.

"Somehow I don't think Honeydukes chocolate is part of Quidditch training."

"It is when you're a Harpy!"