The following days also seemed darker. It was difficult to adjust to coming home to a silent house, sleeping alone in a double bed and eating alone at the kitchen table. Things that he had never given much thought to before had begun to really bother him. Time crawled by and he almost counted the hours until the end of his shift on Christmas Eve. He found himself, for the first time in his life, actually glad to leave the reserve.

For Hermione, time didn't pass quite so slowly, there was no time for anything really at the burrow. From the time she arrived in the kitchen, she was surrounded by people, it was almost overwhelming. She was hugged fiercely by Harry, Ron, Ginny and Mrs Weasley and felt suddenly that she was home. She had always loved the affection and warmth of the Weasley family and suddenly felt less isolated.

After the first day, though, that feeling had started to wear off. She was still deliriously happy to be back with her best friends and back in England but it was ridiculously difficult to get a moment alone. She was surrounded by couples, all of whom seemed to be obsessed with babies and yet there never seemed to be a moment when she was needed to help cook something or make up a bed or help to carry suitcases upstairs or back somebody up on something. After months on the reserve with just Charlie and a handful of other people for company the crowded noise and heat of the Burrow was overpowering. She found herself going to bed early just so she could spend some time in a quiet room to gather her thoughts.

Even so, she had been allocated Charlie's old room again but the bed was too big and too cold when you were the only person sleeping in it. Hermione didn't want to admit it, but being without Charlie was just as difficult as being without Harry and Ron had been. More than anything she wanted a hug from him now. She had assumed, rather foolishly she now realised, that everything would have been more or less the same as it was when she had left England. It wasn't though, Harry and Ron were living very different lives to her and, for the first time in nearly 13 years of friendship, it was difficult to find common ground. That hurt more than anything. They were still close and they had fun and she knew that they would always be best friends, but she was less of a priority now, second to their wives and future children and their careers. This was how it should be, she knew that, but she couldn't help feeling that she had somehow been left behind.

So it was that she found herself clock watching on Christmas Eve, everyone was gathered in the sitting room by the fire. Nearly every possible preparation for Christmas had been made and they had finally allowed themselves to collapse into armchairs.

5 o'clock came and went. Hermione wasn't worried, Charlie was normally a couple of minutes late, it was a Weasley thing. The minute hand crawled around the clock. By quarter to 6, Hermione was starting to worry. She had always been one of life's worriers, assuming the worst in every scenario. By 6 o'clock she had started to chew her nails.

She knew it was irrational to worry like this, he had probably just been delayed at work, he would be here soon. And yet the little bit of her mind that slipped beyond her control when she was nervous began to play out images of Charlie being attacked by a rogue dragon. Though, she tried to block it out she saw Charlie being wheeled into the hospital tent on an emergency bed, wounded and bleeding.

As the clock began to near quarter past 6 she began to mentally calculate how long it would take an owl to get to her from Romania to tell her that Charlie had been hurt. She moved to look out of the window and had just reached it when there was a noise behind her that made her jump. Charlie had appeared about 6 inches behind her, un scathed but looking embarrassed.

"Sorry I'm so late, the Swedish shortsnout threw a bit of a fit" he grinned crookedly at Molly; he staggered backwards slightly as Hermione flung her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder.

She smiled "that's quite alright dear but it's Hermione you should apologise to, she's been in a state of panic, convinced something awful had happened to you"

Charlie looked down at the brunette who was now hugging him purely as a way to hide her blush "What?"

She shook her head, laughing at herself "I don't know why, it was all I could think about"

"I'm fine, just a little late" he smiled gently and pulled her back into a hug, ignoring the glances the twins exchanged.

For the rest of the evening, Charlie was commandeered in much the same way as Hermione had been all week. She wasn't bothered in the slightest and took the opportunity to finally grab the book she had been reading and curl up with it in a corner.

Charlie found her there, just before midnight, asleep in the armchair nearest the fire, book open on the floor next to her. He scooped her up easily, silently thanking heaven for the muscles given to him by dragon taming. She wasn't heavy but she was a dead weight when she was asleep and that was never easy to carry.

He tucked her into the bed, changed into his pyjamas and climbed in next to her. Immediately, in her sleep, she wriggled across the bed to be as close to him as possible, she was always cold at night. With the sound of her soft breathing against his chest and with his arm around her waist, he had the best night's sleep he'd had in nearly a week.

A/N: Thank you so much for all the reviews, they're so useful to me and they're honestly the reason I've kept writing despite getting writer's block. So I really appreciate it :) Also, I think I've recovered the plot (stupidly I hand wrote it rather than saved it on my laptop and it managed to get wedged between my desk and the wall, hence last week's panic) so updates should be faster now, especially since we're getting nearer to the end.