The next Weasley weddings were George's and Percy's. Hermione attended both of them as Ron's official girlfriend, leaning on his arm and beaming through the ceremonies, then following Molly's orders, managing the festivities during the receptions. Charlie was at each of the weddings, of course, but Hermione danced with no one but Ron, and not until the end of the night, when everyone else was gone, and she was exhausted, barefoot and hardly moving as Ron held her up and whispered promises into her work-frizzed hair.

Ginny and Harry's wedding was different.

Ginny had put off the engagement until she'd finished school, and the wedding until she'd played Quidditch with an elite team for a year. Even so, she presided over her wedding as a very young bride. Fleur and Bill were there with their war celebration baby. George and Percy were there with their pregnant wives. And Ron was there with Bill's sister-in-law, once the little girl from the lake, Gabrielle Delacour. She had come to stay at Shell Cottage to help with the baby. And Ron, exceptionally vulnerable as he had always been to the charms of Veela ancestry, had fallen for her. He seemed heartbroken about leaving Hermione for her, but he did it all the same.

Hermione sat at Harry and Ginny's traditional wedding at the Burrow with Hagrid and McGonagall and a squad of Aurors on Harry's side of the aisle, away from the Weasleys. As a sign of her resilience and fierce independence, she had come without a date, but she came to regret it. She should have brought the most obnoxious date she could think of.

She should have brought Krum. No, he was too polite.

What about one of those Slytherin gits from school? She could have rung up Gregory Goyle. He owed her a huge favour after that fiendfyre rescue. But he owed Ron too. It wouldn't have worked.

No, Draco - she should have turned over whatever rock Draco Malfoy had been hiding under since he denounced blood purity at his trial, and put his fine new ideals to the test by bringing him here as a Mudblood's date. She could just see him, sneering at all of this, awful but fit and shining, dressed all in black, no doubt. Ron would have lost his mind. Next time...

But there would be no next time. The next Weasley wedding would be Ron's, and she knew he would send her an invitation, and she would politely decline. It would be expected of her. She'd claim it was in the middle of a non-refundable trip she'd already had booked or something. Maybe she'd send a gift of a Muggle toaster for them.

Applause was jarring her out of these fantasies. While she hadn't been paying attention, Harry and Ginny had promised themselves to each other for life. Ron, the best man, was standing at Harry's elbow as he kissed Ron's sister, clapping as if he believed in such things.

With the ceremony over, Hermione rose from her borrowed folding chair, turned around and collapsed it flat for transport back wherever it came from. When she finished with her own, she moved on to the rest, working to clear the floor for dancing. She was on her sixth chair when a pair of rough, freckled hands closed over hers.

"Hermione, don't bother with that." It was Charlie Weasley, his face open and worried.

She snatched her hands away. "Why? Because I'm not family anymore?" Her voice was louder than she'd intended.

Charlie stepped closer, whispering. "Come, now. You don't want to make a show of yourself. Come with me and we'll get you something to drink."

She huffed. "And how did you get stuck with managing-the-ex duty, Charlie Weasley? Is it your secret official role in your sister's wedding party? Is it jotted on a list somewhere in your mother's wedding files? They figured they'd need to enlist a dragon tamer for it?"

By the time she'd reached the words, "dragon tamer" her voice was loud enough for everyone under the tent to hear it. All of the Weasleys cringed at once, pained at the sound of a description for Charlie they all recognized as offensive to him.

It took a moment longer for Hermione to cringe herself. Charlie had withdrawn his hands from hers, but she clawed him back, dropping a hand on Charlie's shoulder, her fingers curling into the fabric of his dress robes, clenching into a fist. "By the stars, Charlie, I'm sorry," she said, her voice quieter now, cracking with tears. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me. It slipped out - "

He took her hand from his shoulder, holding it in his, spinning her around, his other hand at the small of her back, leading her out of the tent.

"Oi, is she alright?" Harry whisper-called over his shoulder as they passed him on their way out.

Charlie nodded and nodded. "Yeah, fine. Just needs some air. No worries, Harry. Gin."

Outside, her quick breaths became sniffles, which became tears. Charlie walked her to the end of the little wooden dock at the pond and tugged at her arm until she sat beside him.

"I'm sorry Charlie. I know what it's like to be called names. I was angry, but for no good reason. And even if I was, it's unforgivable - "

"It's not," he said. "I forgive you, of course. Honestly, it sounded more like a slip of the tongue than anything else. Just forget it." He passed her a clean handkerchief.

She dabbed at her face as Charlie stared straight ahead, out over the still water. "You don't have to stay out here with me," she said. "Ginny will want you inside. I'm going to apparate home in just a minute. Go ahead and enjoy yourself with your loved ones."

He sighed and patted her knee. "Not yet."

"I'm done crying. Honestly. I will never cry over Ronald Weasley again," she said. As if to prove it, she Scourgified the handkerchief and passed it back to Charlie.

He folded it into his pocket, pinching each crease between his fingers. "Well, good. Because now that you've finished with Ron, I'm the one who needs to be seeing you."

Her face flushed instantly and deeply red. "What?"

"I mean," he hurried to say. "I mean to say, I need to see you in Romania. We just got a request from the British Ministry of Magic for input on a white paper on the ethical treatment of dragons and related fire lizards."

Her face broke into a genuine smile for the first time that day. "Oh, Charlie, that's wonderful."

"Yes, and I'd like it if we could work together to make sure the thing is written properly. It shouldn't just cover care and feeding. It needs to expose the black market trade, and the use of dragons as watchdogs in Gringotts and places like it. So look for the message when you're back at work. Then come to me in Romania. You and I might never get a chance like this again."

"Chance to…?"

"To have input on shaping the national policy." Charlie stammered to a conclusion.

She sprung forward and pecked a kiss on his cheek. "Thank you, Charlie. You will definitely be seeing me in Romania." She was standing up, taking her leave.

"You're going home anyway?" he asked. "After I succeeded in cheering you up? You're going to send me back in there empty-handed?"

"Well, yes. I've got notes to make. Statutes to pull from the library. Cases against Gringotts that suggest dragon involvement - "

"Fine, fine," Charlie said, satisfied that she was feeling like herself again. "Go take care of yourself. I'll be seeing you in Romania."

The international portkey from London to Bucharest was easy enough to use. Getting from Bucharest to the Carpathian Mountains where the dragon sanctuary was hidden was something else entirely.

Hermione spoke no Romanian - none that anyone could understand. It was something like Italian but all shot through with Russian. She had learned before leaving that she would have to travel inside Romania by something like the British Floo system. It would work once she found it, but the hard years in Romania had driven the wizarding world deeper underground than it was in Britain. The country's surviving Floos were mostly in very old churches, and she went from one church to another, all over Bucharest looking for the right one, hoping she'd be able to pronounce the name of the sanctuary intelligibly enough once she found it.

Eventually, she gave up. There was too much at risk and she needed help she couldn't find.

"Sorry to disturb you, Charlie. I need you to send me a map or some such guide to get to the Floo church." She spoke the message into her patronus as she cast it into a dim, smelly alleyway. With that taken care of, she ordered herself what she hoped was coffee and sat at a tiny table outside a cafe, exhausted, slightly embarrassed, waiting.

Just minutes later, he appeared, coming through the crowd in leather dragon armour like a Muggle tourist cos-playing a Romanian vampire fantasy.

"Hermione!" he called when he saw her.

She lifted her gaze from contemplating her coffee to see him striding toward her. He looked like Hephaestus himself, which is something she'd never thought of a Weasley before. He wore knee-high protective dragon hide boots, dark trousers and shirt with the sleeves rolled over his elbows, baring his forearms.

Ron's best physical features were his arms, and he knew it. Charlie's were even better.

Over everything, he wore a full, heavy leather apron tempered to the contours of his chest, tied snuggly around his waist. His head was capped with more tight, scorched leather, his hair flaring from underneath it, the redness of it more conspicuous in Bucharest than it would have been further north, or at the Burrow, where she usually saw him. There was soot on his face, giving his eyes a flashing, ice blue look by contrast. His hands and arms were clean, as if he'd thrown off a set of large gloves to rush to her.

"Charlie?"

He vaulted over the low partition the cafe had set around its tables on the pavement and took both her hands as he sat beside her. "Hermione, I'm sorry. I should have been here to meet you. I don't know what I was thinking. This city is the devil for wizard newcomers to navigate."

"I'm fine," she said, though she had felt a flush rise up her throat at his appearance. She couldn't look at his eyes and watched his mouth as they spoke instead, the good, white teeth visible between his parted lips as he waited to hear she was alright. She was remembering the last time she'd come to him to see a dragon, and what had passed between them that night.

She cleared her throat. "Honestly, Charlie. All I needed were some directions. You didn't have to come all this way yourself, interrupting your work. Look at you. You look quite involved." She raised a hand to swipe at the smear of soot on his cheek. It was hopeless and she laughed. "I hope whoever you left in charge is alright."

"Bogdan? Yeah, he'll be fine. You, on the other hand - "

"I am enjoying a coffee, in a beautiful foreign city after a long trip. It's no hardship. You are sweet to fuss, but there's no need."

Charlie's shoulders relaxed, his head hanging. "I meant to be here. A proper host. Waiting all cleaned up and set to bring you back as an honored emissary of her Majesty the Queen of England's Ministry of Magic."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Stop it. And there's no need to apologize for your," her throat was suddenly husky, "appearance."

"Fine, but I do apologize for getting caught up in my work and forgetting the time. It's a fault of mine."

She huffed. "I do the same. Only I consider it a strength, not a weakness. And I reckon it is for you too, Charlie Weasley."

Charlie lifted his head, leaned toward her and kissed her quickly and dryly on both cheeks. "Yes, well welcome to the continent, Granger. I'll apparate us back to the sanctuary whenever you're ready."

In the same alley where she'd cast her patronus, Charlie clamped an arm around her waist and pulled her into the front of his apron to prepare for side-along apparation. She laughed and held onto his torso in return. "Is this firm a hold on me really necessary?"

He didn't answer, but said. "Loved the otter by the way. I'm sure you know they're classified as mustelids, just like - "

"Weasels, yes," she said.

He had almost turned on the spot when he stopped and whirled her back to the position they'd started from. "What's Ronnie's patronus? You must know it."

"Dog. The twins were magpies, Ginny, a horse"

He gave a sharp nod. "Well done, children."

"And what is yours?" she mused lazily as Charlie wound up again, with much more force than was necessary for apparation. "Don't tell me: a dragon."

He didn't tell her, but simply smirked and spun them away.

In an instant, they were standing in a gravel courtyard rimmed with stone buildings, each of which could have easily been a thousand years old. Tall trees rose up all around them, as if they were standing in the bottom of a bowl. In the distance were the rocky peaks of mountains.

"Here we are," Charlie announced, making sure she was steady on her feet before letting her go. "Shame we couldn't come by broom. This is the country's most beautiful area, if you ask me. Maybe later?"

She shuddered. "Not much of a flyer myself."

"Not even tandem flying?"

She bowed her head and shook it.

Charlie smirked. "Maybe you just haven't found the right pilot yet."

She breathed a laugh, not sure if he was flirting with her. How was she to know when he was acting as a caring older brother sort who knew all the kindest and wisest things to say, and when he was acting as the man who'd kissed her back when she pounced on him underneath a tree in the Forbidden Forest?

If his face hadn't been so sooty, she might have seen him blushing at himself. "Come on then. The witches' quarters are this way," he said. "There'll be no one staying in them but you. You can rest there until you're feeling up to seeing the dragons."

He opened the door to one of the buildings and stepped out of the way to let her pass. Instead, Hermione tossed a small bag through the door and onto the narrow bed inside without stepping in. "If it's all the same to you, Charlie, I'd like to see them now."

She followed him out of the courtyard, along a path climbing the rise of the bowl, and into a green paddock beyond it. Two men dressed a lot like Charlie sat on opposite sides of the field, like cowboys in one of the Western movies Hermione's father liked. They called out to Charlie in Romanian, waving their arms and pointing into the trees at the mouth of a narrow lane.

Charlie clucked his tongue. "He's sulking again."

Hermione looked at each of the men in turn. They seemed in good enough spirits to her, shaking their heads and laughing.

"The dragon we were working with when I left," Charlie qualified. "He's a real Ukranian Iron-belly. And there's been something off with him for the past few weeks. He keeps hiding in the woods and only comes out to bully us. He must have got offended when I left to find you."

Hermione hummed. "So I'm off on the wrong foot with him."

Charlie huffed. "Everyone is. Always. Come meet Bogdan and Marius."

Introductions were made, Bogdan and Marius eager to practice their rough English, Hermione embarrassed by her all but nonexistent Romanian. Once they realized how unskilled she was, they fell back into laughing and chattering with Charlie in Romanian. They seemed to be teasing him about her being there, and he seemed to be ignoring it.

Hermione made a mental note to intensify her study of Romanian.

Eventually they stopped and Marius took up a hose to soak the paddock, part of its fireproofing.

"Neither of them wants to risk death going into the woods to get him, so there's nothing left to do here right now. How about we catch up with your old friend instead?" Charlie said, leading her away.

"The Anitdopean Opal-eye from Gringott's? She's still here?"

Charlie sighed. "Unfortunately, yes. She's not nearly as old as we thought she was at first. They must have taken her into captivity before she reached maturity. Now she's healthy, she's a lovely specimen, and fiercely intelligent, in her way. But her chances of survival if released into the wild are - well, they're not good. She wasn't socialized by other dragons and relies on humans for just about everything."

"That's tragic," Hermione said.

Charlie was nodding. "It is. But it also means, now that she's come to trust us, she's uncommonly docile. Everyone's favourite."

They were just about to mount another rise, into another dragon paddock when Charlie suddenly turned to face Hermione, halting her steps. "Now, before you see her, you should know that the boys here have given her a name, a name that's very common among young Romanian women. And you may not like it."

"Common name? Well, then I reckon it's not Hermione."

"No, it's not," he said. "They call her Gabriela. It's carved into a wooden placard fastened to the fence. I didn't want you to see it unprepared."

She pursed her lips but otherwise her face was stoic as she said, "My dragon. They call my dragon by the Romanian version of the name of Ronald's new fiancee."

"I couldn't have possibly known when I brought her here - "

"No, of course you couldn't have. It's no one's fault, Charlie." She patted him hard on the shoulder. "Thanks for the warning. Let's press on."

Just like the first paddock they visited, the opal-eye's paddock was empty when they arrived. Charlie sauntered to the fence, stuck his fingers in the corners of his mouth, and whistled hard.

Hermione stood in silence, listening. She waited until Charlie gave a grunt. "Taking longer than usual. What's keeping her?"

Hermione smirked. "Maybe she's gone off with your Iron-belly."

He shook his head. "No, since she was imprisoned in the bank before reaching maturity, she's not - erm - receptive to male dragons the way she should be, so we keep her separate for her own well-being. And even if Sir Iron-belly was madly in love with her, her enclosure is securely warded. He wouldn't stand a chance - I mean, he shouldn't. Dragons - you just never know."

He took a deep breath and gave another whistle.

This time there was rustling in the trees, a rumbling and creaking.

"Here we go," Charlie said, taking Hermione's arm and pulling her behind him. "A docile dragon is still a dragon. Keep quiet and follow my lead."

Hermione Granger had seen a lot in her twenty-one years, including this very same dragon. The sight of it emerging from the trees took her breath away all the same, and she tightened her grip in Charlie's arm. The dragon's own momentum seemed to be too much for it and it ran off its excess speed by charging in a circle around the perimeter of the fence enchanted with wards to deter it from passing over them. She finished her entrance by rearing up on her muscular hind legs before crashing to rest on the grass.

It still seemed impossible to Hermione that the milky pupil-less eyes weren't blind, but the dragon was clearly fixed on Charlie, seeing him and lunging toward him.

"Ela, darling, hello," he sang to her.

She was boisterous, like a badly trained dog. Clambering in front of him as if she'd like to pick him up in her jaws and shake him like a toy. "Don't get the wrong idea. She's only using me for treats," he explained over his shoulder to Hermione. He flicked a wooden crate open with the toe of his boot, speared a hunk of mutton from inside on the end of a long pole, and pitched it onto the paddock for her to devour.

Hermione watched from behind his bicep, both hands stilled gripped on his arm. "Charlie, she's beautiful. And so happy. You've done a marvelous job with her. She's certainly filled out since I last saw her. She looks almost - fat. Well done, you lovely girl."

But Charlie was frowning. "It's not fat. Look at the tone of it. Her abdomen is distended but…" He swore and bent to look at her belly as she ate. He speared another piece of meat and tossed it high so she had to leap to get it, baring her silver-white underside. "If I didn't know better..." he muttered.

Hermione stepped out from behind him. "She's gravid, isn't she," she said, a declaration more than a question. "Broody. About to lay an egg."

"That son of a…" Charlie trailed off. He took a protean galleon from his pocket and mashed it between his fingers. "We'll see what Bogdan thinks. He'll be on his way. But she certainly looks - " He couldn't yet bring himself to say it.

"Do you think it's the Iron-belly?" Hermione asked. "Could he have been the one to get her to produce an egg, and maybe fertilize it?"

Charlie let out a long breath. "I hope not. The pair of them wouldn't be a good cross. They're similar in colour and scale texture but that's no sign of compatibility. Their size difference, on the other hand - it's untenable. Dangerous, especially when the opal-eye is the one who has to carry the egg."

Bogdan was racing into the paddock, coming in too hot, setting Ela clambering against the fence line again. He skidded to a slower pace and came to stand with Charlie, clearly worried. They spoke quietly to each other before Bogdan went running back over the rise.

"What does he think?" Hermione asked. "Are we right?"

Charlie was grave humming and nodding. "He's gone to get the test potions. They'll tell us if there's an egg and the variety of the father. She's the only opal-eye here, so it's going to be a mixed-breed, whatever it is. Hang it, Ela."

Bogdan returned with two buckets sloshing with potions. He dropped more mutton into each of them and stirred. When the meat had taken on all of the bright green colour of the first potion, he tossed it onto the paddock, just as Charlie had done. The dragon nudged it once with her snout before flouncing away from it.

Charlie swore again. "Right. Looks like we're doing this the hard way." He took up the feeding pole, and used his wand to carve a slit in the paddock's wards.

Bogdan muttered something to himself that might have been a prayer. He held up a pair of gloves, but Charlie waved them away as he stepped into the dragon's habitat, leaving the small slit he'd passed through open behind him.

Ela the dragon came bounding toward him. Hermione bit back a scream, but the dragon pulled up short of him. Charlie stood still, his empty hand extended, speaking to her not in the language of her English captors, but in the low, rolling Romanian she associated with her new life here. It seemed to be going well but then the dragon puffed jets of smoke out her nose.

Bogdan called out a warning. His wand was drawn and so was Hermione's, both of them stepping closer to the opening in the wards. The air was rank with sulfur and waving with heat.

Charlie went on, spearing the potion-soaked meat and slowly lifting it towards the dragon's mouth. She vented more smoke but didn't turn away. Charlie kept up his low, gentle talk, and with his free hand, he stroked the end of her nose. Her jaws cracked open and he eased the meat into her mouth, leaving his hand on her snout until she ate all of it.

Bogdan sprinted around the fence to see the dragon's abdomen. It was now lit with green light, and through it, they could see the outline of an egg. No one overreacted, everyone calm, quiet with worry.

Charlie called for the second dose of potioned meat, the purple one. Bogdan was transfixed by the sight of the egg, so Hermione fished it out of the bucket herself, staining her hands. Charlie speared it from where she had rolled it onto the grass, and returned to Ela to coax her to eat it. She was less inclined to cooperate than ever, her head tossing and smoking. But she was quicker to let Charlie touch her the second time, and eventually, the potioned meat was gone.

Charlie backed away while the magic was still working in her gut. He didn't turn his back on the dragon, kept his eyes focused on her as he felt blindly for the opening in the wards. Hermione couldn't bear it, and she thrust her hands in after him to tug him out. The sudden movement made the dragon lunge after him, but he had got clear of the enclosure and Hermione had zipped it shut with her wand before the dragon closed the distance.

Charlie was drenched in sweat, standing in Hermione's arms watching the green light on the dragon's belly darken into a steely, luminous grey. "You're right, Hermione," he said. "She was definitely off with the Iron-belly."

The three of them left the paddock to go back to the courtyard. Bogdan went off to let everyone else know there would be a meeting later that night. Charlie was exhausted, his blood full of stress hormones, all his free energy burned away. "Go get some rest, Hermione," he said. "It's going to take me until dinner to wash up. You may as well get yourself settled in during that time."

"Right," she said. "But tell me the best way to get this off my hands."

Charlie gasped at the sight of her purple-stained skin. "You touched it? Without gloves or a pole?"

"Of course I did. We had to get you out of there. There was no time to be ginger about it." She flicked a glance at his hair. "Sorry."

He took one of her purple hands in his and led her to his building. "I suppose it's not like I wasn't warned you were prone to heroics," he said. "Let's see what we can do with you."

The small stone building seemed to contain nothing but Charlie's personal quarters. It was neat enough, but not at all decorated. Once inside he kicked off his boots and whipped the cap from his head, shaking out his hair, raking his fingers through it with one hand while pulling the end of the tie that unbound his apron. He sent both of these articles flying to rest on hooks beside the door. The relief of getting out of the hot clothing seemed to overcome him and he was tugging the tails of his shirt out of the waistband of his trousers and reaching for the buttons of his shirt.

He was standing in the centre of the room in trousers and a soaked vest that may have at one time been white, looking like he was about to peel it off too, when Hermione cleared her throat and said, "I'll fetch you a towel, shall I?" She wouldn't look at him, but scanned the rest of the room, looking for a cupboard to hide her face in, looking for towels.

Charlie jumped. "Oh," he said. "No, I'll just - sorry. Never did get used to having girls in the house."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Girls?"

"Ladies," Charlie hurried to correct himself. "Women. Witches."

"That will do," she said. "Now if you don't want a towel, can we please clean my hands?"

Charlie shook himself. "Right. Right." He went into the bathroom and returned with a wide, flat jar. He motioned for Hermione to sit on the bed behind her as he kicked a stool across the floor to sit in front of her. "Here, we'll rub this on and let it sit while I'm in the shower. That should take care of the stain." With that he scooped out a handful of what looked and felt and smelled like lard and smeared it over both her hands, holding them between his own, his palms and fingers sliding and gliding over hers.

Hermione fought back a shiver, willing herself to concentrate on the greasy ickiness of the balm. "What is this muck?"

Charlie hushed her. "I have no idea. Marius's mother makes it herself and it fixes everything. Don't let her hear you complaining about it or she might cut off our supplies of it."

"I thought I was the only witch here."

He raised an eyebrow, the sliding motion of his hands turning into kneading. "Are you disappointed about having to share all of us with a one hundred year old woman?"

"I'm not sharing anyone with anyone," she said, trying to sound indignant. To sound anything but like she was about to moan with contentment at Charlie's care for her hands.

"Not sharing. Well, that's good to hear," Charlie said. "There, I think that's properly rubbed in. Now all you have to do, is wait."

He was standing up, heading back to the bathroom, wiping his hands on his filthy vest and pulling it up and over his head before he had quite finished kicking the door closed, giving Hermione full view of his spectacular back for one flashing instant. By the time she heard the water turn on, Hermione had slumped sideways on his bed. Charlie Weasley - kind, brave, compassionate, smart, curious, fit as anything, rolling those Romanian Rs. She was absolutely doomed.

But how could she be, when his littlest brother was Ron, the man she had given up everything for only to have him betray and humiliate her? Jumping Charlie in his own bed when he stepped out of that bathroom would drag her right back to the emotional orbit she'd been locked in since she was twelve - to the Burrow, to little pining Hermione wishing she was a Weasley at any cost. Pulling away from them had been excruciating. And if she let herself, Charlie could coax her to abandon all the progress she'd made, like a female dragon getting her snout rubbed and opening up to him.

Hermione stood up. "Sorry, Charlie," she said into the empty room. "Maybe someday, but not yet." She tiptoed to the door, the balm on her hands softening and melting, greasy drips falling to the floor. How was she going to turn the doorknob? She'd have to charm it open, an easy spell even without a wand. "Aloho - "

"Hermione?"

It was Charlie, finished already, standing in the bathroom doorway in pajama bottoms and a dressing gown, toweling his hair. "Sorry to keep you so long. The balm should have worked by now. Come here," he said even as he approached her.

She raised one greasy hand. "Charlie," she said. "Charlie, please. Get the door for me and I'll leave you in peace."

He wasn't getting it. "It's no trouble," he said, snagging her hand in his towel and beginning to wipe the balm off of it, leaving the scent of his shampoo behind on her skin.

"Charlie," she said, almost pleading.

"You know, I've noticed something odd, about the way you talk to me," he said. "You say my name a lot - like, a lot."

"I do?"

"Yes, Hermione. You do. And so I've been wondering," he said, finishing with one hand and taking up the other. "Is it about him? Do you say my name over and over to remind yourself that I'm not Ronnie. Like you're not over him?"

She blew out a long, pained breath. "I'm not in love with him anymore, if that's what you mean. He will always be a part of me, but Ronald is - " She didn't know how to finished, not after Charlie had just caught her about to slink of our here in order to save face in front of Ron by not falling for his brother. She closed her eyes, gave her head one firm shake, and felt Charlie release her hand. She opened her eyes to examine her hands. He'd made them perfectly clean.

"Charlie," she said. "I say your name like an incantation. Like a spell that keeps conjuring you. Keeping you where I can see you. Because you - as wonderful as you are - you can't be real."

He said nothing, regarding her without meeting her eyes, like a careful dragonologist sensing a situation that might be dangerous, exercising caution when the stakes were high.

But he held the tension for a moment too long. Hermione sighed. "And the spell breaks."

She was leaving, reaching for the door when he closed his hand around her wrist. "Hermione," he said, turning her to face him again.

His finger combed through the hair over her ear. "Hermione."

His hand moved through the curls without snagging. "Hermione."

His palm moved to the back of her head, cradling her skull, pulling her forward, her lips brought to his. He spoke into her mouth, "Hermione."