Charlie flicked his glasses off his face and onto the tabletop. "I've done it, Hermione," he said. "I've hit my limit. I can't read another word until after Christmas."

From her armchair, she tutted as if to scold him. "Pace yourself, Weasley. Shake it off."

He did just that, leaning backward in his wooden chair, growling into the stretch of his spine.

Hermione glanced up from the book she was reading in time to catch a glimpse of his bare flank as his uplifted arms pulled his shirt out of place. Like a reflex, she hid her face behind her book again. It was an old habit she had adopted thanks to Ronald, this quickly looking away whenever too much of any of his brothers' skin was showing.

It started the summer they'd all gone to the quidditch world cup. The lot of them had come back to the Burrow dirty and worried and hot. Everyone was terribly in need of something to cleanse the bad feeling of seeing the Dark Mark in the sky the night before. Bill and Charlie understood this. They exchanged a knowing look, nodded in unison, stripped off their shirts, and tossed their younger brothers and Harry into the pond before leaping in to swim themselves.

Without any violence, Ginny coaxed Hermione to change and get into the water too. The nine of them spent the rest of the afternoon in the pond while Arthur explained what had happened to Molly, and held her as she wept over it. It was up to Bill and Charlie to nag their siblings about sunscreen spells. As they did, they raved with exaggerated jealousy at how nicely Harry and Hermione's tans were coming along.

Overstated as it was, Hermione was still very pleased with the compliment, smiling to herself and examining the colour of her arm in the sunshine. That was, until Ron pulled himself out of the water like a vengeful kraken and sprawled beside her on the grassy shore. They hadn't been anywhere near dating at the time but he was still red-faced and blustering about what he called Hermione's "ogle-fest" of his grown-up older brothers.

"What's got into you?" he'd fumed at her. "I've never seen you look at anyone the way you've been eyeing up Bill and Charlie today. You're even worse now than you were with Lockhart two years ago. It's indecent."

Instead of arguing that maybe Ron should take it as a compliment that the men whose looks she admired best were the people who looked most like him in all the world, she hissed at him to shut up. "It is perfectly normal, healthy even, for a girl my age to have an appreciation for the male physique," she'd said, cringing inwardly at how much she sounded like an article from one of the magazines in the waiting room at her parents' surgery.

"Male physique, is it?" Ron squawked before she covered his mouth with her damp, gritty palm. He lowered his voice as he tugged her hand away. "Yeah? It's about males, is it? Then how is it I've never seen you look at Harry that way? Or me?"

At this she'd scoffed so loud it was a shout that sent Harry flinching and diving underwater. "You? Ronald Weasley, I would hardly expect you to notice if I was ever boggled enough to look at you."

And with that she had stormed back to the house.

It was all very regrettable, especially when Ron threw her "healthy" comment back at her as justification for when she caught him leering at Fleur Delacour at school a few weeks later.

But Ron had nothing to say about who she looked at anymore. And Charlie was legally her husband, for stars' sake. She snapped her book closed and looked back at him, fully prepared to stare straight at whatever part of his torso he might have exposed. But Charlie had already stood up from his chair, his clothing neatly in place, all his lean, freckled skin modestly covered.

He was, however, coming her way, grinning. Even without his specs on he was giving her that same slightly dizzy feeling as when he'd walked toward her in the Portkey Terminal.

"Up we get, my dear," he was saying. "Let's start our holidays with a little fresh air. It feels like we've been shut up inside with this research for ages."

"But it's cozy season. And it's so dark outside. It's inside time, reading time," she said.

Charlie might have shuddered. "It's also holiday time," he insisted. "If you're going to be reading, it should be something fun, like a dragon adventure story, or – "

"A Veela romance?" she said, one eyebrow lifted.

"Sure. Anything that doesn't have the word 'policy' in its title," he said, plucking the offending book out of her hands. "And by this time tomorrow, I'll be off to report to my mother for Christmas Eve kitchen duty. I'm running out of chances for fun."

As he coaxed her out of her chair, he tried to make going to the Burrow sound onerous, but Hermione was struck with a pang of envy all the same. The truth was it was her who was running out of fun. She was about to spend Christmas alone for the second time in as many years, a prospect that had been troubling Charlie more and more by the day.

"So if we want to do anything Christmas-y together," he went on, "it has to be now. Anyway, I've seen your head nod over that book three times already tonight."

She followed him across the lounge. "Were you really reading, or were you keeping an eye on my reading?" she said, sliding her arms into her coat in spite of her protests.

"Bit of both," he admitted freely, stretching her knitted cap like a cat's cradle across his fingers to better ease it down over her curls. "Now, how are you at ice skating?"

She frowned. "My family was into skiing, not skating."

"Skiing?" Charlie repeated. "You mean, when you put a broomstick on each foot and jump down a hill?"

She sniffed a laugh. "Something like that. My parents were mad for it. They had synchronized moves and matching ski jackets, turquoise and violet."

Charlie raised his eyebrows. "Is that normal for Muggle couples?"

"No," she said, laughing a little sadly this time. "They were fanatics. Everyone stared and smiled at them. I wonder if their love of skiing was one of the things they had to forget when they went to Australia. Does it ever snow there? I should have found out before I sent them. Maybe I should have picked Canada instead so at least they could keep skiing. I should have…"

Charlie hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her into a hug that was rather like a headlock. "Alright," he said. "No melancholy couple's skiing for us, yeah? Instead we'll try to make an impression on your De-bliviator with an honest to goodness Yuletide date. And the worse you are at skating, the better. It'll mean you'll have to hold my hand the entire time, romantic as anything."

She sighed against his chest. "Fine. Skating," she said as he unlocked his hold and began to turn on the spot.

Charlie had taken them somewhere out of London, somewhere less bustling, and with better ice and snow and less light. Glittering snow banks lay like clouds along the perimeter of a meadow a village had flooded and groomed into smooth, white ice. Overhead, there were lines of electric light bulbs strung between poles, lighting the rink for the small crowd of skaters. Some of them darted about, quick and agile, turning and gliding. Others held hands, moving as couples and families, not quite dancing.

With the twinkling of the snow and the Christmas music rattling out of a single frosty speaker, the scene was a little like a ball. One Hermione felt sure she was about to crash.

Just off the ice was a stand where a man sat renting skates and selling hot cocoa in paper cups.

"Welcome back to Scotland," Charlie grinned at her. "The quaintest, wintry-est part of it I know."

"It is a rather darling place, isn't it," Hermione said. "How did you ever find it?"

"I've been coming here for the ice for ages," he said. "Ah, right. You're too young to remember when Hogwarts had an athletics exchange program with Tamarack Composite School of Wizardry."

"Tamarack? In Canada?"

"Yeah, that's it," Charlie nodded as they crunched over the snow toward the skate rentals, pawing through his pockets for the Muggle money he'd exchanged especially for the occasion. "Tamarack is famous for their ice quidditch program."

"Oh yes, like the Russians and Scandinavians play," she said. "I've seen it in the paper but never in person."

"It is a sight to behold," Charlie said. "Fast and rough, lots of sticks and blades and a quaffle made of harder stuff than we use for our bludgers in Britain. Lots of timeouts to put people's teeth back in. Loads of fun."

Hermione groaned. "More ways to be maimed. That's just what quidditch needs."

Charlie stopped in his tracks. "I thought you liked quidditch."

She sighed out a cloud of white breath. "A quidditch match is an alright way to pass an afternoon," was all she said. There was no way she was going to confess her appreciation for the sport was mostly as a fan of its male players – Fred and George, Ron, Viktor, even awful little Draco Malfoy looked better when he was dressed for quidditch. She was clearing her throat, changing course. "So the exchange to Canada, you were on it, no doubt."

He was moving again, leading her by the hand. "Yeah. They selected a few of us for full scholarships to a winter training camp at Tamarack. Didn't cost Dad a thing."

"Well done, Captain Weasley," she said.

He gave a modest shrug as he watched his feet, picking a path through the snow. "It was fun, and it gave me a taste for living abroad and for skating. Now what size are your feet?"

Charlie insisted on sitting on a bench at the edge of the rink with Hermione's feet in his lap as he laced her skates. "They need to be done properly or your ankles won't have the support they need. Skating's all in the ankles. Don't forget."

"Ankles, yes," she nodded.

Charlie stood in front of her and pulled her to standing, somehow moving himself backwards on the blades on his feet. Hermione rose slowly, clutching both of his hands. "I don't know, Charlie," she said, her voice as shaky as her ankles. "Are these blades sharp enough? It feels like I'm not cutting into the ice at all. Let's take them back."

She sank toward the ice, as if she meant to sit on it.

"The skates are perfectly fine," Charlie said, his tone even and calm, as if he was speaking to a skittish dragon. "You'll only cut into the ice properly if you move."

"Move?" Her voice was rising. "Already?"

"Yes," he said, still calm. "I've got you. And now I'm going to push off, and bring you with me."

"Don't let go of my hands."

"I won't."

"Charlie – "

"Ready, steady – "

He pushed himself backward but Hermione's feet didn't move. She bent over at the waist and extended her arms to keep hold of his hands but her skates stayed rooted in place.

"Stop – you're going to slide right onto your face," he said, laughing gently as he came back to her, standing her upright again. "You need to trust me, my dear, and come with me. Romantic as anything, remember?"

"I'm sorry, Charlie. I don't know what to do. I need detailed instructions."

"Start with relaxing, with breathing," he said. "Come on, our once and former belle of the Triwizard Yule Ball. Same rules. You have to stop watching your feet and look at your partner, right?"

She nodded, still not raising her head.

He came closer, almost whispering. "So look at me, Mrs. Weasley. Right here, eye to eye. I'm your partner, and I need you to come with me or we're just going to stand here shivering until they turn out the lights."

She sucked in a huge breath and blew it out before she raised her head. The electric light behind Charlie's head lit the waves of coarse hair around his face, as if he was a magical, maned creature, as sure footed as a centaur on the icy ground. She blinked, focusing on his face. His expression was more concerned than amused, truly taking care of her rather than taking the mick.

Not moving yet, they held one another's gaze. "You still scared?" Charlie asked.

"Yes."

"You trust me anyway?" he asked.

She nodded and told him the truth. "Yes."

The lesson began with more of the explanations she wanted. Charlie compared the mechanics of skating to those of skiing. "Push your foot forward and to the side, as if you're making your way to that – that contraption with the chairs that carries people up the ski hill."

"Like this?"

"Yeah, but slightly more diagonally."

"Diagonally?"

"Yes, but don't shout it with so much determination or you'll end up apparating us back into town," he said, skating backwards in front of her as she hacked away at the ice with her feet. "But you're doing better. So much better."

Hand in mittened hand, Charlie led her in a slow, clunky circuit around the rink, cooing praises as they went, the rest of the skaters veering wide around them. The sound of his voice was low and soothing over the clunking and scraping of her skates. She tuned her ears to it, like a meditation.

"There," he said. "That's one full lap. Now this time around, I'm going to let go of one of your hands and we can both skate facing the same direction."

"I don't know if I can do it with one hand," she said, her voice rising again.

"Yes, you can," he said. "And even if you can't, I'll still be right here. I won't let you fall. I promise."

She glanced away from him for just an instant, looking out over the ice at the other skaters. They were all Muggles, which meant neither she nor Charlie could use magic to save her if she needed it.

"Let go now," he said, still in that sonorous skating coach voice of his.

Stars help her, she might follow him anywhere he asked her to go as long as he used that voice. She let Charlie release one of her hands, and move to stand beside her.

"Good girl. Here we go."

She gave a slight cry as he tugged her forward by one hand, waving her free hand at her side to find her balance. Charlie waited before leading her any further. Skating side by side was more fluid and by their fourth circuit Hermione was standing up straight and her free hand was no longer flailing like she was drowning.

On their fifth circuit, Charlie let go of both of her hands, keeping close as she alternated between gliding and stomping over the ice. "It's not beautiful, but I really am getting it," she said.

"I knew you would," Charlie cheered. "Look at my lovely, graceful wife, her first time on ice. An absolute snow angel."

She scoffed but said, "I'm going to do it, Charlie. I'm going to skate all by myself, at a careful but confident and consistent speed all the way to the end of the rink."

"Brilliant. You want me to race you?" Charlie said.

"Do what you like, as long as you don't tip me over," she said.

"Alright, go!" Charlie launching himself across the ice before she could change her mind. He vaulted forward with a hop, leaving in a burst of the speed he'd been holding back all night.

She didn't mean to chase him. There was no way she could have caught up with him, but he drew her after him, so powerful and joyful as he charged away. She pushed off harder than she ever had before, and by the time she was two hockey stick lengths away from him, she was struck with a terrifying truth. She was skating faster than she ever had in her life, and she did not know how to come to a stop.

Charlie realized it the same time she did, his eyes growing wide. His coach voice was loud and nervous as he called out to her. "Sideways! Turn your skates sideways!"

"What? Sideways?"

It wasn't making sense, but he had no idea how else to tell her what to do. There was nothing for it but to hold his arms out and catch her as she came closer. Her impact would be a lot less than a hit from a 15 stone Canadian beater on a quidditch rink. Charlie was sure he could stop her without either of them falling. He ground his back skate into the ice, ready for her.

He was just about within reach when she called out, "Oh, sideways!"

She turned sharply away from him, changing direction but not stopping. Instead, she was careening into a snowbank. She was already falling when Charlie got hold of her. By then, he was falling too, rotating in the air. He landed on his back, Hermione falling on top of him, their combined force coming to rest in the snow with a heavy crunch.

"Hermione!" he said, rolling her onto her back, compacting more of the cold powder beneath her. He hovered over where she lay. "Are you alright?"

Staring past him, she blinked up at the dark, starry sky. She didn't try to move, lying as if stunned. "Yes, I think so. I was braced for a hard impact but it never came."

"No, not when I caught you," he said, falling back in relief to lay beside her, panting up at the stars.

She was laughing. "Charlie Weasley, you set this up on purpose so you could look heroic for the De-bliviator. Admit it."

"I did not," Charlie protested, laughing himself now. "It would have been brilliant and maybe I should have. But I swear I didn't. Honestly, I just – I forgot what it's like to not know how to stop on skates, I guess."

She was still laughing but also starting to struggle to get up, pushing at the snow.

His hand was on her wrist. "Don't go stumbling off yet. That was harrowing and you're safest flat on your back, you mad thing. Give us a moment to recover before we get you on your feet again."

She clucked her tongue, smirking. "But we'll get cold – "

"Then come here." With that, Charlie tugged her close, bringing her into the crook of his arm, her head resting on his shoulder, her face on his chest. He opened his coat and tugged it as far over her as it would reach, taking her inside it, into his warmth.

Maybe the skating had given her body more rein than usual, but it was reacting faster than her mind could stop to question it. Tonight, at the Scottish village rink, Charlie's warmth and his smell had the same effect as his voice, calming her, guiding her. She gave up trying to stand and let herself be stilled and soothed by him. Her arms were holding him in return, slipping between his jumper and the satiny lining of his coat. Her cold, rosy cheek was nestling into his front. Through the thick knit of his jumper, she could feel his heartbeat. It was strong but too fast.

She swallowed hard. "You were actually scared for me," she said.

She felt him take a deep breath. "I was afraid I'd have to break my promise. I couldn't do that. I couldn't let you fall."

She perched her chin on his shoulder, watching his face. "Even if you had, we would have got through it."

He patted the arm she had inserted into his coat, his face still turned up to the sky. "Yeah, but it's better that we didn't have to. You don't deserve to be let down. You never have."

She buried her face in his shoulder again. He meant what he said in a kindly way. Of course he did. But she couldn't help feeling pitiful all the same. Who did she think she was, holding him like this? Their marriage, including this date, was part of an elaborate act to hack that broken De-bliviator. But the act didn't have to be unpleasant. It certainly wasn't for her. And Charlie seemed content enough to lay back in the snow and keep them warm. Her mind was convinced to keep her hold on him, and her body was running ahead again, nestling closer to him as the cold threatened to seep in.

She needed to say something light before either of them thought too hard and ruined it.

"So what's Canada like?" she said.

"Huge," he answered without a pause. "I only saw the prairie side of its western mountains and even that one region was big beyond comprehension."

She hummed. "Was it terribly cold?"

He pulled her deeper into his coat. "During ice quidditch season? Yes. Also beyond comprehension."

"Did you not like it then?" she said, her voice somehow smaller, tremulous, as if Charlie's feelings for Canada weren't all she was asking after.

"I did like it," he said. "I liked it immensely, even though Canadian winters are not particularly likeable. Not like you, my dear. You've been very easy for me to like."

She couldn't help but giggle, nervous, happy. "Of course you like me. What's that you always call me? Your old family friend?"

Charlie huffed. "That was accurate enough before this arrangement of ours got underway. We've got to know each other so well that you are now my personal friend. No family ties, no history needed."

"Agreed," she said. "You are also my dear friend, all on your own, independent of any other connections."

"Right, but we shouldn't be talking about it so openly," he said, tipping her head off his shoulder and onto his arm as he propped himself up on one elbow, leaning toward her. "No, it wouldn't do for us to be gushing about our friendship," he said, smirking, rolling almost on top of her. "Not in front of the De-bliviator I'm trying to convince that I'm in love with you."

Hermione lay partly beneath him, her head on his arm, his face over hers, as he spoke quietly to her about their secrets. He let a little of his weight rest on her, chest to chest. Cold white stars flickered in the dark sky over his shoulder. She blinked furiously back at them, speechless. Charlie was joking with her, flirting as always, and she ought to laugh. What he'd said was hyperbole, exaggeration for dramatic, humorous effect. But the last phrase of Charlie's sentence had shaken her to the core of her heart all the same.

…I'm in love with you…

It wasn't what he meant, but it was a bit of what he'd said, spoken in the voice she now knew was her favourite voice left in all of Britain.

Her silence was too long, too fraught. Once again, she needed to find something light to say. But what was there to say to her 'friend' now? She had never planned on feeling anything for him but camaraderie and gratitude, maybe some of the harmless physical attraction she'd been successfully suppressing since she was fifteen. She wasn't supposed to be thinking of how the impression their bodies would leave in the snow would look exactly like that of a real couple, a real marriage, people truly in love. She wasn't supposed to care who Charlie fell in love with, for real or otherwise.

And she wouldn't. Of course she wouldn't, but…

"Y'alright?" someone said, hidden behind Charlie.

He sprung to his feet, hauling Hermione to stand shakily on the ice. The person speaking to them was the man from the skate rental stand. They hadn't noticed that the music had stopped. It was the signal to return all the skates so the rink could close up for the night. Theirs were the last ones the man needed back. He could have been annoyed with them, but he wasn't, offering them the last of the evening's cocoa to make up for disturbing their important conversation down in the snow.

They followed him to the bench, Charlie towing Hermione behind himself, her ankles locked as she clung to one of his hands with both of hers.

She fought to make small talk. "When exactly will you leave for home tomorrow?"

He sighed. "Not sure. Sometime around sundown, I reckon."

"Right."

When they reached the bench, Hermione made sure to unlace her skates herself.