A/N, I'm a glutton for reviews, I can not lie.
I know, I said not to expect an update schedule, but that doesn't mean I can't hand out chapters like they're candy and it's Halloween.
I can promise that I'll probably never post an update on a weekend, so that's something you can count on.
Anyway, I'll give you a few fun facts about me as the notes. My oldest baby is turning 12 on September First! That's right, her birthday is amazing in the eyes of this Harry Potter fanatic mother. In 2018, dressed my darling girl up as 4th Year Hermione (S.P.E.W. Badge and all) and my baby boy up as Dobby.
When my daughter was 4, her favorite movie was CoS and she memorized Ron's Howler, the tear that leaked from my eye as my daughter yelled at me in her best Molly Weasley impression. I'd never been so proud. Though, as she got older we did watch all 8 movies together.
Ever since DH p1 she has had a deep hate for Bellatrix, to the point when she realized that Helena Bonham Cater was in Enola Holmes, she started crying and mourning the loss of Dobby again.
Made for a very awkward few moments sitting in silence between her and her dad, who has *sighs* never watched or read anything Harry Potter.
For my son's 2nd birthday, he got a Harry Potter themed party with a sign that said "Oliver You Are A Keeper". I know, I make myself laugh, I really am that funny. I'm a cloth diapering momma, so obviously he had to have a birthday diaper to match his party. The print is called, "The Sorcerer's Bum" and frankly, it was the best thing that I could have ever bought!
I will add, while I could say my son is named after Oliver Wood, that wouldn't be true. In actuality my son is named for Oliver Queen, the green arrow.
Enough with trivia about me and my ramblings. I suppose we can get on with the story…
Week One
"What the bloody hell are you doing here?" Charlie had risen out of the chair he was sitting at and Hermione had to will herself to not take a step back. Even though he didn't sound angry at the sight of her, Charlie Weasley was an intimidating looking man. The scruff of his beard and the fire in his eyes was enough to make a weaker person turn and run.
Hermione was not a weak person, and she never backed down.
"Rolf had an emergency come up with Luna, so ta-da." Hermione held up her hands and shook them while shooting an awkward smile towards Charlie, still looking stunned at the sight of her.
"Oh, I thought something had happened to someone in the family. I didn't even think about Rolf not being here." A wave of relief flooded over Charlie's features.
She felt so stupid, of course he would instantly jump to something had happened to his family. Her showing up in Romania, after she had explicitly stated just the day before that Rolf would be the one coming for work.
"Oh, here is a letter from Amos Diggory." Clearing her throat she walked towards him, holding the envelope out at arm's length.
As he took it from her, their hands touched. Charlie didn't immediately take the letter from her. They let their hands linger as the tension began to build between Hermione's legs. She kept reminding herself that she was here for work, this was not a pleasure trip.
"He uh, he said that you refused his offer to come to Scotland. Hopefully something he said in here could change your mind." Hermione gazed through her eyelashes up at Charlie while he slowly moved in closer.
Her chest began to feel heavy, with each breath she took she could smell him. Firewood, musk, and fresh cut grass. Hermione was having a hard time making coherent thoughts, much less forming words into a sentence.
"What are you expected to do today?" Charlie was moving in closer towards her and slowly lowering his lips towards hers.
"Something" Hermione whispered as she lifted up on her toes and pressed her lips against his and threw her arms around his neck. Hermione was much shorter than Charlie and as he backed towards his bed, she was having to walk on her toes to keep their lips connected.
Hungerly, Hermione opened her mouth and attacked his mouth with her tongue. He tasted so good, making her want more. As they landed on his bed, Hermione crawled into his lap and tugged the sting that was holding his hair up so that she could tangle her fingers in it.
Charlie reached into the curls at the base of her neck and forcefully pulled down, exposing her neck to him. He began to attack the sweet spot at the base of her neck, making her shiver with pleasure.
"Charlie, are you in here?" A female voice sounded and Hermione jumped out of Charlie's lap at the sound. "There you are. Oh, you have company. I can come back."
Hermione could feel the blush at the thought of being caught snogging like a teenager.
"Nonsense, Casey this is Hermione. She's from England and an old friend." Charlie was still sitting on the bed leaning back on his arms. He looked so carefree and at ease.
"Hermione? As in THE Hermione?" Hermione finally looked up and was shocked to see a woman who was the tallest non half giant woman she'd ever seen in her life. Casey had blue hair that was chopped short and pulled into a small bun on the top of her head. She was wearing a white tank top and jeans with a pair of dragon hide gloves sticking out of her back pocket.
"Oh, you know who I am?" Hermione extended her hand and Casey took it with a firm grip and a wide smile of perfectly straight and white teeth.
"Of course! Every time Charlie comes back from visiting his family, he talks about you for a good month." Casey dodged the pillow that Charlie had thrown, but couldn't avoid him grabbing her and trying to put a hand over her mouth to make her stop speaking.
"Maybe you should come back later." Charlie began to drag Casey back towards the door. Hermione could hear Casey laugh the entire way out into the courtyard.
"Damn Charlie, she's even prettier than you made her sound. When you said doe brown eyes, I wasn't expecting them to be that big and round." Hermione could hear Casey saying to Charlie.
So, he had not only told his co-workers and friends about her, but he had called her pretty too.
Hermione hadn't expected that he had told anyone about her. She hadn't breathed a word about their, whatever you want to call it, to anyone. The only person that she talked to about her love life was Ginny, and she was not going to tell Ginny that she was shagging her brother once every few years.
GINNY!
Hermione hadn't had a chance to let Ginny know that she was leaving the country and wouldn't be back until Hermione's birthday. Oh, she was not going to be happy.
Hermione rushed her way back through the door of Charlie's room and couldn't see either him or Casey in the courtyard anymore. She ran back to her quarters and pulled out some fresh parchment and a quill.
Ginny,
Long story short, I'm in Romania until my birthday. Rolf was supposed to come, but something happened with Luna. Could you check on her and write me back to let me know if she's alright? Also, while I'm gone could you go to my flat and get Crookshanks II? He does fine alone, but I don't want to leave him alone for twelve weeks.
Charlie is going to be my tour guide for the next few weeks, so that's going to be interesting to get to see him in his element. I'll write back if anything exciting happens. Give Harry my love.
See you soon,
Hermione
Hermione folded the letter up and placed it in an envelope. She was going to have to ask Charlie where she could take her letter to be sent. She knew that getting mail to and from Charlie was a challenge just from what Ginny had told her.
Apparently, a lot of mail owls will end up as snacks for the dragons, so they have to be careful with them here.
Hermione stepped into the courtyard and looked around, still not seeing any sign of Charlie or Casey. With a sigh, Hermione decided she might as well go exploring a little.
Romania was breath takingly beautiful. She found herself walking on a dirt path paved with stones. As she walked, she came to the edge of a cliff, that had a walkway winding down the mountain. Looking out in front of her was a forest that had a haze of fog sitting above it.
The sky was a blue-grey, but was so thick with the clouds that she couldn't see the sun clearly. Every so often she could see the shadows of enormous dragons flying in the clouds and around the tops of the trees.
It was a terrifyingly beautiful sight. Hermione heard the snap of a stick from behind her, and whipped around with her wand drawn.
Charlie was approaching her with his hands up and a smile playing at the edges of his lips.
"Sorry bout that, didn't mean to frighten you."
"It's alright." Hermione lowered her wand and stored it back into her pocket. "No more Casey then?" Hermione looked around and noticed that the witch wasn't with Charlie and that they were once again alone.
"No, Casey has work that she needs to be doing." Charlie said with a look of amused annoyance on his face. Even away from his family Charlie seemed to still take on the role of an older brother to the people he worked with.
"She seems nice though." Hermione pressed; she was curious how close he was to the witch he worked with. When she thought back to all the interactions she'd had with Charlie since meeting him during the quidditch world cup, and couldn't recall him talking much about the people he worked with.
Now that she really thought about it, she had never really interreacted alone with Charlie outside of having sex with him.
"Casey is one of the toughest witches I've ever met. She grew up somewhere in America and went to Ilvermorny. She started working here two years after I did, so at almost fifteen years here she's one of the more senior dragon keepers." Hermione turned and was watching Charlie gazing into the sky watching the dragons fly in circles, occasionally breathing fire into the air.
"They're magnificent creatures. The way they move, the way they live in general. It never gets old working with them." The smoldering fire in his eyes had the same look that most parents had when they looked at their children.
It didn't take Hermione much to guess why Charlie had never wanted to get married or have kids. This work wasn't work to him. This was his way of life. The dragons weren't just a project that he had to find a solution for, like it had become for her. The dragons were his family.
Turning to look away, Hermione surveyed the rest of their surroundings. There was so much land that she knew she wouldn't be able to explore it all on foot. The winding mountains and the cliffs were perfect places for the dragons to live.
As much as she had studied about dragons in books, it didn't compare to actually being here with them. She was sure that she was going to enjoy her stay here a lot more than she'd originally anticipated.
"Do you want to see the rest of the sanctuary?" Charlie was looking down at her and Hermione had no idea how long he'd been watching her.
"Sure, I might as well get to know where I will be living for the next twelve weeks." Hermione said with a smile. "Oh, I have a letter that I need to send to Ginny. I left rather abruptly, and I wasn't able to tell anyone that I was leaving the country. I'm sure Amos will tell your dad if they see each other, but Amos isn't really the best at initiating relaying information. I don't want to worry anyone, and they will."
"Perfect!" With a wave of his wand, Charlie summoned a broom and climbed on, holding out a hand to Hermione. "If you didn't bring your own broom, we can set you up with your own to use while you're here."
Hermione's stomach dropped as she realized that he intended to fly her around on a broom.
"I don't ride on brooms. We don't get along." Hermione swallowed as she firmly kept her feet planted on the ground. "Couldn't we just walk?"
"Hermione, the only way to get around the sanctuary is on broom. You couldn't walk around the sanctuary and get anywhere in a timely fashion." Charlie had a puzzled look on his face. "How do you not ride a broom?"
"I have to ride a broom." Hermione was trying to convince herself and not speaking to Charlie.
"You have to ride a broom." Charlie reiterated to her.
Taking a deep breath, Hermione climbed onto the broom behind Charlie and buried her face into his back. She could feel his body shake as he laughed and kicked off the ground.
With the wind whipping past her face, Hermione decided that she was most certainly cut out for living on a dragon sanctuary.
Week Two
Ginny,
I've been here for over a week and I've already learned so much. I didn't realize, and I honestly should have, but that there are specific potions that have to be used on injuries caused by dragons.
Charlie's burns on his arms are slowly healing, and they're estimating that it'll take another five weeks before he's ready to get back into the thick of things. Until then, he's the person I'm working closely with. I never realized just how little I knew about him until we started working together. He's brilliant, and knows everything it take to run the sanctuary efficiently.
He was even so kind to look over the notes that I brought with me for the Scotland Reserve. He had wonderful suggestions and posed some questions that I hadn't thought to ask myself. Such as, making sure that certain dragons nests are so far apart. There are some that are more aggressive when nesting too closely to each other and that was something I hadn't thought of.
He took me to see Norberta, she's a favorite among the keepers. She seems to have a soft spot for Charlie, and watching them together was one of the strangest, yet sweetest things I've ever seen.
My biggest complaint is your brother flies like a lunatic. He's worse than you, Harry, or Ron. I've let him know that I would be perfectly happy walking everywhere, but he insists that the only way to get around the sanctuary is on broom. I'm starting to question how true this is.
Give everyone my love. I miss you all dearly.
Love,
Hermione
Hermione was coming out of her quarters and saw the bobbing blue head of Casey coming her way. She'd gotten to spend a few meals with Casey, but nothing too significant. She smiled and waved at the witch.
"Hermione! Good you're here. Well, we're going to party tonight. I'm not on call this weekend and me and a few of the other keepers want to make sure that you get the full Romanian experience while you're here." Casey stretched her arms above her head, and Hermione couldn't help but notice the defined muscles of her arms.
"I'd love to, but I have so much work that I need to get done this evening. I have to write up my report and get it sent off. I haven't even started it." That wasn't true, Hermione had a fully detailed notebook that she was taking to send off to Amos along with her letter to Ginny.
After the first day in Romania, Hermione had worked very hard to keep things strictly professional between her and Charlie. She couldn't risk Vlad or Ivo walking into a steamy snogging session like Casey had.
Hermione knew that if alcohol was included into the mix, she might waver on her resolve.
Casey shot Hermione a skeptical look. She seemed to realize that Hermione was lying.
"Hm" was all Casey said as she was studying Hermione. She cocked her eyebrow and looked like she was getting ready to say more, when Charlie appeared in the courtyard looking even more delicious than he usually did.
"Casey, any word on the Short-Snout eggs?" He came walking towards the women. His arms were still heavily bandaged, as the burns were not healed enough that he could let them be exposed to the air.
The last time Hermione had seen them uncovered, there was a small amount of puss that had started forming on the entirety of the burns.
"The mothers are starting to fight, so it's just becoming a huge ass mess. We don't have the room for all these nesting dragons, but it is what it is. As long as the Horntail doesn't start nesting right now, we should be fine." Casey was bouncing on the balls of her feet. Hermione had noticed that she thrived under pressure and was driven on an adrenaline high.
Unlike Charlie, Casey didn't have just a pure love of dragons that drove her to excel at her work. She was more a person who seemed to want to living life on the edge. She was also competitive; the dragon keepers had a work quidditch league that it seemed like everyone participated in.
They claimed that it was good for keeping their senses sharp, but Hermione guessed that they really just liked fooling around together.
So far, she had met ten of the fifty or so dragon keepers. They had explained to her how they had rotating shifts, where they would work for three weeks living on the sanctuary, but then they all had property elsewhere in Romania that they would spend a week off at a time at.
However, due to the influx of dragons they had taken on, they weren't able to allow anyone to have their time off. They were having to find places for each of the nesting mothers, and then also relocating some to China and Sweden.
Another task that the keepers had to attend to was the underground dragon egg trade. She had known about that from her work in the beast division and from what Harry had told her about his involvement in investigating. She hadn't thought about how important it would be to have skilled dragon keepers also working on these cases.
Casey's main responsibility at the sanctuary was the retrieval of traded dragon eggs. Due to Charlie's injury, however, Casey was now having to take care of nesting mothers and their hatchlings.
"Charlie, you up for a party tonight? Want to bring Hermione along?" Casey shot off to Charlie before Hermione could say anything else.
"Yeah, that sounds good." Charlie smiled and looked down at Hermione with a twinkle in his eyes.
Casey, look triumphant, nodded her head towards them "then I'll see you BOTH later." She summoned her broom with a wave of her wand and was off.
Hermione was left staring after the woman. How much did she guess was happening? She did walk in on them locked in that steamy kiss on her first day here.
"Mione? Hello, Earth to Hermione." Charlie waved his hand in front of her eyes.
"Oh, right. So how much do you think Casey knows about what is going on between us?" Hermione just looked up at Charlie.
"Well, she's one of my best friends, and has been for fifteen years. And she knows that when I was home for the last three weddings that there was someone I was shagging. She also knows I had just come back from Ron's wedding and then walked in on us snogging. I would say the chances that she knows are pretty high." Charlie laughed to himself.
Hermione groaned inwardly. She was wanting to look like a professional, but she was clearly sleeping with one of the dragon keepers, and not just any keeper, but the one that she was working directly with. Now she was going to be going to a party with Charlie and someone who most certainly knew they were sleeping together.
"Fantastic, well I don't think I'll be joining you tonight then. The last thing I need is to appear to not be a professional and going to a party together while we're working so closely together is highly unprofessional." Hermione walked off the front porch and over towards Charlie's broom. Looking at it, she shook her head and kept walking in the direction that she knew the office space to be.
Today she was studying how their tracking system worked. It was a lot of very complicated magic and she was going to need a clear head to be able to concentrate. Riding on a broom with her arms around Charlie Weasley and her face nuzzled into his back did not make for a clear head. Nor did finding out that someone she was working with knew about the more intimate details of her relationship – no, friendship, not even really friends were they – whatever she had going on with Charlie.
"Hermione?" Charlie was running after her, clearly not realizing just how upset she was at the entire situation. "Hermione, what are you doing? It's a two-hour hike on foot, we need to ride the broom."
Hermione squared her shoulders and turned back around to go and sit behind Charlie.
"I can't have people knowing that we slept together, that's a private matter and not something that anyone aside from us needs to know. This is a professional work trip for me, not some vacation that I'm here to have a fling while on." Begrudgingly, Hermione climbed onto the back of Charlie's broom and wrapped her arms around his waist and shoved her face into the muscles of his back.
She could feel Charlie stiffening under her touch as her words rolled over him. She wasn't willing to let it appear that she was only here in this capacity because she had slept with Charlie.
She had spent her entire professional career coming out of the shadow that was Harry and Ron. Harry being the chosen one and Ron being the expert strategist, when they had chosen to move on to be Aurors and she had stayed back to finish her schooling, the public opinion of her was that she was cleaver, but she needed strong men to help her achieve any goals she set for herself.
Then when she decided to venture into a department away from them, it had been a struggle to get into the position she was today. Every time a promotion had opened up, she was lacking in some way or another. It was utterly humiliating, and she needed to cut t
The usually chatty Charlie, hadn't said a word since they kicked off and when they landed, she noticed that he had a mask over his features and looked very stern.
Hermione rolled her eyes, and walked past him into the building that they had been working in for the last two weeks. She wasn't going to let Charlie get in the way of her work, and she wasn't going to let him make her feel bad for wanting to keep private matters private.
Okay, Charlie was getting in the way of her work. He had showed her how the system worked. He was teaching her the complicated magic that had to be used on the dragons and how they kept their system. But she was no absorbing any of it. She was even more frustrated and distracted now than she was when he was being flirtatious and overly friendly with her.
This moody Charlie was not someone that she could learn from, and anytime she had tried making a joke to lighten things between them he acted like she had said nothing. The clock in the office let out a roar to indicate that the office work day was over.
"I guess we should get back then?" She stood and stretched her arms above her head, stealing a quick glance his way.
"Suppose so" was all Charlie said before he walked out of the office. She had to run to keep up with him, even though he was shorter than Ron, Charlie was still a lot taller than her and moved faster than she did.
The ride back to their living quarters was just a silent awkward time. Hermione was coming up with something to say, when they landed. Without a word, Charlie stalked away and shut his door before she had even moved from where she was standing.
Well, if he was going to ignore her then so be it. Hermione had so much work to get caught up on that she wasn't going to let this sour puss ruin her entire weekend. She got to her desk when she realized that she had never made it to send Ginny's letter or Amos the report.
She knew that Charlie would probably take her back to make sure these got sent off today, but Hermione was hesitant in asking him. She had never seen Charlie upset before, and really didn't know how to navigate the situation. She always pictured him as the fun and carefree brother who messed around with Bill crashing tables into each other at The Burrow.
This was a whole new side to him that she just didn't know what to do about.
"Damn Charles, sorry to bother you." She could hear Casey's voice carry through her window. She jumped up and thought this would have to be her best option.
"Casey, I needed to send a few things in the post. Could you take me?" Hermione asked as she reached the witch just in time before she kicked off the ground. Casey looked at Hermione and then back at Charlie's room then back at Hermione.
"Sure, hop on." Casey gestured towards the back of her broom. Just as Hermione had climbed on and had her arms wrapped around Casey, they kicked off the ground and took off.
Hermione could feel herself screaming as Casey shot off at a much faster speed than she was used to Charlie taking her at. Casey weaved through the trees as if it were an obstacle course that she was trying to conquer.
Before Hermione knew it, they were landing in front of the owlery. Hermione sprinted towards the large bushes on the side of the building and vomited, she decided a two-hour hike back to her cabin would be better than ever getting back on a broom with Casey again.
When she stood up, Casey was still standing watching her. "What's going on with you and Charles? Whatever it is, I hope you two figure it out because I'd rather go and sleep with the Horntails right now than go near my best friend.
"And no one gives a rat's ass if you two fucked, are still fucking, falling in love, whatever the fuck is happening no one cares. So, whatever you said to get him to be so damn moody you'd better go and straighten it all the fuck out.
"He was all pissy Charles before you got here because he got hurt was got pulled from the field. He was a fucking nightmare at the thought of not being able to go and play with his dragons for a few weeks. Then you showed up, and somehow my best friend came back early.
"So, it's too easy to figure out that you're the reason why Charles is back. And I swear if I have to spend another day with Charles and not Charlie then I'm coming for you.
"Enjoy your walk back, if you hurry then it should still be mostly light out." Casey kicked off from the ground and was gone before Hermione realized what all she was saying.
Hermione quickly ran into the owlery and sent two owls, one with the letter for Ginny and the other with the report for Amos. Hermione had yet to walk around the sanctuary and had no idea where she was going. She knew the general direction, but knew that this was not a place she wanted to get lost at in the dark.
Looking into the forest ahead of her, Hermione sighed. This was not at all how she'd pictured the end of her second week here to be ending as she began her very long walk back to her lodgings.
About an hour into her trudge through the forest, Hermione was plotting all the ways she could hex Casey. She had tripped who knows how many times. She was covered in dirt and grime, not entirely convinced that she wasn't also covered in dragon poop.
Her hair was disgusting, and every time she brushed it out of her face, she felt it matting together more. She was staring at a giant fallen tree and trying to figure out how she was going to climb over it when she thought she saw someone riding a broom at an alarming speed through the forest going in the opposite direction.
If someone was moving in such a hurry, Hermione concluded that she wanted to be heading away from the source of any commotion. She scurried up the tree and threw herself down on the other side and took off at a full sprint.
She needed to get back and damnit if she crossed Casey, she was going to send the worst hexes she knew at her.
"Hermione!" At the sound of her name, Hermione stopped sprinting and turned to see Charlie racing towards her. He dismounted with his wand drawn looking around the forest for whatever danger she was running from.
"Charlie? What are you doing here?" Hermione could feel the panic starting to subside and confusion settle in.
"What are you running from?" Charlie asked looking at her with a serious expression.
"I'm not sure. I just saw someone go flying that way really fast, and assumed there was a situation. I wanted to put as much distance between whatever it was and myself." Hermione gestured towards the direction Charlie had just come.
"That was me, I was looking for you. After I saw you and Casey fly off, I got worried when you never came back. I talked to Casey and she said she'd left you to walk back from the owlery, I came to look for you." Charlie's eyes were burning with rage as he spoke, but Hermione didn't think that rage was directed towards her.
"Why would you walk through a forest that you've never been in, knowing there's dragons that live here? Casey should never have left you to walk back. I can't believe she'd be so reckless, but I can't believe you'd be so careless and actually do it." Okay, so some of that rage was directed towards her.
"Casey blamed me for your bad mood." Was the only explanation she could provide.
"Well, yeah you pissed me off earlier. That doesn't mean you should be walking through the damn forest alone. Get on." Charlie had remounted his broom, and was looking at her waiting for her to climb on behind him.
Hermione realized that this was not a request, so she just quickly did as he said. She wrapped her arms around his waist and tucked her head into his back and felt them rise into the air.
The ride back was silent and quick. As soon as they had landed, she tried to untangle herself from Charlie, but he caught her arm.
"Look, I didn't tell Casey anything to embarrass you. I never thought that you two would meet each other." Charlie was looking down at where his hand was holding onto her arm, it seemed like he couldn't meet her eye.
"I've been scrapping my way out from under Harry and Ron's shadows for years. All of my accomplishments have always been viewed as, I got there because of some man. Even though Harry and Ron have tried setting the record straight, the notion never stuck. So now, I get handed this opportunity that is career changing. If I do this right and show only my own skills here, then there's nothing that saying that I needed a wizard to get here.
"It's just, I wasn't even romantically involved with either Harry or Ron and it still got spun that way by the press. It normally doesn't bother me, but what I'm trying to do in Scotland is a defining moment for not only me in my career, but also myself personally." Hermione moved her hand so that she was interlacing their fingers. She rubbed the pad of her thumb over his large callouses and blisters that were scattered across his hands.
"Fair enough." Charlie removed his hand from her grip and walked away from her.