In his quarters at the dragon sanctuary, Charlie Weasley stepped back, releasing Hermione's hands. "We did sell our souls," he told her. "We sold them to each other. Hermione, you and I are married."
Her eyes might have widened, her brows might have lifted, but her chief reaction was to laugh.
"No. No, we're not." She kept laughing even when Charlie didn't join in. "It can't happen like that, Charlie. I repeat something in a language I know nothing about to a person who knows nothing about me and then I'm married? No. We didn't apply for a license, no one in particular stood up as a witness. We didn't even have to swear we weren't brother and sister first. The old witch can't just - I mean - she can't."
"Well, she has done." Charlie threw his hands up. "Welcome to Carpathian mountains wizarding society." His hands came to rest on the top of his head as he paced in a circle. "Like I said, I'm almost sure it means nothing outside this region, but - try telling them that."
Hermione spun away from him. "That's exactly what I'm going to do. You may all be terrified of that Baba Yaga, that Doamna Marius, but I am not. I'm something of a formidable witch myself, you know." She had reached the door and was tugging hard at it. "If we were strangers, I might actually impress you."
Charlie crossed the floor to stand beside her as she hurled Alohomora spells at his door. "Of course I'm impressed with you," he said. "Everyone here knows you broke the opal-eye out of Gringott's. There isn't anyone, even way out here, who isn't impressed with you."
She ignored the compliment, refusing to stop working on the door, defiant at being pushed around and penned up and married off without her consent.
"Look," Charlie said. "Marius managed to tell me that when Doamna Marius came in here after work today, the first thing she did was indeed to scream at me for having a woman in my bed. And I answered, not inappropriately, though accidentally, 'I'm sorry.'"
Hermione gave up on opening the door and switched to trying to charm it to knock itself down instead. Still nothing.
Charlie went on. "And then, she demanded to know whether I intended to marry you, and I replied with the next Hungarian word i know, 'yes.'"
Hermione paused in her spell casting, uttering a groan. "And don't tell me, Charlie. She then offered to marry us after dinner, to which you blissfully, ignorantly replied, 'thank you,' and now we're locked in here for our honeymoon. Is that it?"
He slouched against the wall beside the door. "Yes. It turns out I agreed to it not once, but twice. And it's - "
He interrupted himself, sniffing and stepping back, alarmed to find the wood of the door was now smoking as Hermione continued to fire spells at it. "For stars' sake, Hermione, they've charmed all the exits shut until morning and there's nothing much we can do about it. Is being stuck in here for a few hours really worse than burning ourselves alive?"
He was right. She stopped her magical attack on the door, but gave it one final parting kick, yelping as she smashed her toe harder than she knew she could against the old oak boards. Charlie reached out to brace her as she doubled over, one arm around her shoulders, his other hand holding her elbow.
"I'm alright," she said, still hissing from the pain. She moved to step away from him, toward a chair, but he was turning her around, holding her against his chest. The furious edge left her posture, and she slumped against him, letting him hold her up along his frame. "What do we do now, Charlie? How can we let this relationship sort itself out when we've been meddled with like this?"
He answered with a sympathetic groan and a slight swaying, side to side, almost like a dance.
She went on. "We were supposed to talk about us tonight, like a pair of reasonable, sensible adults in complete control of our own lives, away from your bed and with you fully clothed."
He snickered into the top of her head. "I promise I'll stay clothed. Can't do a thing about the rest of it, I'm afraid."
She lifted her face from his chest. "My bag. If they've really locked us in here for the night, then I don't have my bag or any of my things."
Charlie could see how she was coping. She was reaching for the practical, taking command of their small environment, taking stock of it, solving what problems she could to regain some control. She let go of him to inspect the counter and sink that served as his tiny kitchen. "Do you have spoons in here? I could transform one into a toothbrush for the night. Yes, here. This will do. And I should be able to survive one night without my moisturizer - "
"I should hope so, at age twenty-two."
"And as for sleeping, I'll engorgio that cushion from the chair and sleep on the floor," she said.
He scoffed. "You will not."
"Charlie - "
"I'll sleep on the floor. You take the bed. Can you imagine what my mother would say if she knew I made a guest, a lady, a visiting officer of the Ministry sleep on the floor? No, I'm not arguing about it," he said. "And, I'm not going to let you sleep in your street clothes either."
"If you knew how many times, and in what sorts of places I have slept in my street clothes - "
"I can well imagine," he said. "And unlike some Weasleys, I'll have no more of it. Let me get you something perfectly modest and decent to change into for sleeping."
The room was quiet but for the sound of Charlie rummaging through his chest of drawers, reaching for what was tucked in the back, his smaller clothes from when he was living here just out of school.
"He was good to me, from time to time," Hermione said. "Ron, that is. The night of Bill's wedding, when we ran to London and slept at the abandoned old Grimmauld Place, Ron wouldn't let me sleep on the floor either."
Charlie sighed, not turning around. "You don't have to convince me he's a good, loveable person. I've loved him since before he was born. I still do and always will. But it was hard not to be angry at him when he left you. It was hard for everyone, and we're still working it through. Bill felt worst of all, I think. Blames himself for having a part in it. He let mademoiselle come stay with them knowing Ron is a full-on arse when it comes to Veela ancestry. What he didn't count on was her actually taking whatever attention Ron paid her seriously, but - "
"Enough," Hermione said. "Of course I don't want someone who doesn't wholeheartedly want me too. Ronald and I - it was a near miss, a lucky break. He can have his Veela. He'd better have her. I'll wait for someone who wouldn't leave me for any magic."
"Someone who smells like Amortentia itself?" Charlie suggested, turning to face her, a neat pile of clothing in his arms. He looked in time to see her defiant expression fall into sadness again.
"No, actually. I - Ron, he - " Her chin was quivering.
Charlie tossed the clothing on the bed and rushed to take her in his arms again. He was swearing under his breath as he gathered her up and held her tight. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry again," he was saying. "I forgot they brought Slughorn back for your year. He would have been showing off Amortentia for you, and when you were sixteen it would have smelled like - of course - hang it, I'm sorry, Hermione."
She made a sound somewhere between a cough and a rather teary laugh. "It's alright. Amortentia's smell changes over the lifecycle. I know that."
"Still, how awful it must have been for you," Charlie said. "I know well what Ron can smell like. Getting a nose full of that out of Amortentia - I can see how you're traumatized by it now."
She couldn't help but laugh quietly as she beat one fist weakly against his chest, grateful for the teasing. She lifted her chin and asked him, "So what did your Amortentia smell like when you were sixteen? Some sweaty quidditch hussy?"
Charlie scoffed. "No. The same smell I imagine it would have now: brimstone and fir trees, and maybe," he dipped his head to inhale deeply against her throat, "what is that? Ink?"
She swatted at him again, her laughter trailing into a sigh. "I'm sorry, Charlie, that sorting ourselves out means sorting your brother as well."
He dropped his forehead to touch hers. "It's not like I didn't expect it. And if I didn't think it was worth it, I wouldn't have bothered. But I have."
"You've got no choice, what with that lot having their way." She jerked her head toward the window, where they could hear voices outside again.
Charlie let go of her. "You go get changed, I'll put the kettle on. We may as well be comfortable in here."
She went to the bed to collect the clothes he'd found for her: a pair of plain grey track pants, hopelessly oversized, and a shirt in a familiar red. She beamed at the sight of it. "Your Gryffindor practice quidditch T-shirt, is it?"
"Uh, yeah. It's smaller than my other ones, left over from when I was a skinny schoolboy."
She unfolded it to read the writing on the back. She had been wrong about him playing as a chaser. The patch on the sleeve confirmed that he was a seeker, like Ginny and Harry and, she winced, like Malfoy. "It's got your name on it. And you still want me to wear it?"
"Of course."
"C Weasley? Why did they need to include your first initial when Bill and Percy weren't on the team?"
He cleared his throat and answered in a mumble. "It's not C for Charlie."
Hermione pursed her lips and looked at the writing again. Not C for Charlie, not C for chaser. It was C for… "Captain," she said aloud.
Stars help her.
Charlie's voice came back over his shoulder again. "If you'd rather wear something else, I'm sure I can find - "
"No, no," she said as she began to close the bathroom door. "This will do nicely."
When she came out again, lost in Charlie's clothes, her teeth freshly cleaned, she found him standing over the bed he'd made for himself on the floor. He was dressed in pajamas bottoms and a clean white vest, a cup of hot tea in each hand and peering anxiously at the window.
"What is it?" Hermione asked, taking her tea from him.
He hushed her just as the sharp cracking sound of a handful of pebbles clattered at the window. There was chanting outside, the loud but muffled Romanian of a group of men who sounded all too happy to have a reason to be drinking and celebrating in the middle of a work week.
"They're demanding we turn the lights out," Charlie said. "They're watching the building and think it's high time we - consum - uh - went to - erm - called it a night."
There was nothing for Hermione to do but laugh. "Right. We can talk in the dark just as well as the light anyway. Go ahead."
He took his wand from his pocket to douse the lights, but paused. He raised his teacup, smirking as he clinked it delicately against Hermione's. "Happy anniversary, darling," he said.
She raised hers in turn and they both sipped a toast, careful not to burn themselves.
Hermione's eyes had adjusted to the low light in Charlie's darkened room. From where she lay, pressed as close to the edge of the bed as she could get, she looked down at the transformed cushion he had made into a mattress for himself, his pale face visible in the dim moonlight.
"I want to know," she said, curling into a ball. "When was the first time you noticed me. I was at the Quidditch World Cup with all of you but I don't think you realized I wasn't just part of the crowd."
Charlie laughed and covered his eyes with one hand. "Yes. I have no memory of you being there. Nothing. Though, I can't imagine you were too interested in me either."
Hermione scoffed. "Of course I was. I was a full Weasley fan-girl by then. Your family was my hobby, my collection. And up until then, you'd been the missing piece. No, it was a great moment for me, meeting the complete set, whether you knew it or not."
He laughed again, covering his eyes with both his hands, and she wondered for a moment if perhaps she should be embarrassed to have admitted all this.
"Right. The first time I took notice of you was at Bill's wedding," he said, dropping his hands for his eyes.
"When I interrupted your haircut?"
"Well, yes. There was that. But then, during the ceremony, you were totally checking me out. It was hard to miss."
She uncurled from her fetal posture. "I was not!"
"Yeah, you were."
She lay sputtering on the edge of the bed. "I had to look at something during the service. It doesn't mean I - " She reached out and slapped at his arm as he continued to laugh. "Oh, stop it, Charlie. Stop laughing at poor teenaged me. Listen to you. You are awful, Charles Prewett Weasley."
In flash, the laughter stopped. Charlie's hand was on her wrist, pulling her over the edge of the bed and into the short fall onto his mattress. She felt like a caught snitch, plucked from where she was to come quickly and effortlessly to him. She was on her back, lying next to him, looking at his face as he propped himself on his elbow, keeping hold of her wrist with his opposite hand.
"You know my middle name?" His voice was low, rumbling with vibrations she could feel on her arm against his chest.
She swallowed. "Of course I do. Haven't you been listening? Your family was my teenaged hobby. I know all of your brothers' names. There's William Arthur, Percival Ignatius, Fredericton Gideon, George Fabian, and of course Ro - "
Charlie stopped her mouth with a kiss, the first one between them since Doamna Marius had married them to each other. It was different. It wasn't that the two other kisses she'd shared with Charlie hadn't been thrilling. But this - it was scorching, electrified, wild. Still gripping her wrist, he moved to hold it against the mattress, their hands beside her head. The rest of him came to rest on top of her. She arched upward to meet him, her free hand finding his waist, her fingers curving over the hem of his vest. She shifted her knees to fit on either side of his legs and he groaned as he tore his mouth away from hers.
She thought he might speak but he didn't. Maybe he couldn't. She spoke instead. "Charles - Prewett - Weasley," she said, pressing soft, wet kisses to his throat between each name. "Yes, that's the only one of those names I can remember right now."
Charlie cleared his throat and let go of her wrist, using the hand that had held it to brush her hair from her forehead. "We've got a problem. With my name," he said. "After what you said yesterday - about conjuring me with it - it does things to me, when you say my name. I go all wild."
Her mouth curved into a wicked smile. "Charlie, you can't fetishize your own name."
"I know, but - "
"How will you live like that?"
He dropped his forehead on the mattress, next to her ear. "I don't know. I was thinking of asking you to call me by one of my other names but - well, you just proved that won't work either. It's just as bad, if not worse."
She giggled beneath him. "Is it when anyone says your name, or just - "
"Just you," he said. "And here I don't even know your middle name."
She sighed. "It's Jean. Just Jean."
He hummed, considering it before he seemed to decide that if he couldn't cure himself, at least he could strike her with the same affliction. Charlie closed in on her neck, alternating words and kisses, just as she'd done to him. "Hermione - Jean - Granger - " He paused, drew in a deep breath, and finished with one last name of hers, a new one. He whispered it against her throat.
"Weasley."
Her hands were on either side of his head, pulling his mouth back to her. She was devouring him, mad frantic kissing, her fingers in his hair, her legs clamped around his waist. She was left gasping as he pulled his mouth away and tracked down her throat, his face pushing back the wide, oversized collar of his shirt she wore, descending to her sternum, his hands bracing either side of her ribcage. Her hands were back at the hem of vest, pulling it up, baring his stomach. She dragged her knuckles against his skin as he pulled it all the way to his arms, about to slide it free of them so she could have all of his torso, and then -
"Wait," Charlie said, pushing himself off her, sitting up in the dark, his vest falling back into place. "Please - just wait."
She listened to his heavy breathing in the darkness, taking a moment to catch her own before smoothing her shirt and sitting up next to him. She hung her head. "I'm sorry. I was about to break our promise about leaving you fully clothed. It's just that it - it felt right, natural."
Through the darkness, she saw him nod. "It did. It was. Don't be sorry. But - " He took her hand in his. "We're not dragons acting on instinct. We're people who have to think and choose - "
She groaned. What was happening to her? She loved thinking. How could she forget and let herself go so feral?
Charlie had a theory. "That ceremony in the mess hall tonight - the wedding, I guess it was - it happened through Doamna Marius's magic. Old magic. Ancient and a bit wild. And for that kind of spell, consummation tends to be extremely significant."
She sat back. "So you're saying, if we wanted to get out of this - arrangement - it might be more difficult if we'd already consummated it. And therefore we shouldn't..."
"Yeah," Charlie said, squeezing her hand. "Listen to yourself, Hermione. You just called it an arrangement. You can't even say the word 'marriage' in front of me. And I think that's a way of telling us both you're still not sure about it, and about me. So I'd like you to take a little more time, make a thoughtful, conscious choice before we make it any harder for you to undo this."
"Harder for me to undo this?" she repeated. "What about you? Are you just lying here passive to Doamna Marius's magic, waiting for me to decide what happens next? That doesn't sound like Charlie Weasley to me."
He blew out a breath. "I'm still going over it. I'm slow at decisions. Cautious."
"So I've noticed."
He raised their joined hands to his face, and kissed hers. "I definitely want you. That's clear enough. But the rest is - overwhelming. I want to be sure we're not like dumb prats pushed into something by magical attraction instead of by choice." He didn't mention Ron and his Veela at this point, but he could have. "I want you to choose me, Hermione. But I only want you if you'll always see me as - how did you put it - someone you wouldn't leave for any magic," he said.
She sighed. He was such a grownup. She both admired and despised it.
"Tomorrow, let's get our opal-eye settled, and head off to the university in Oradea to research old Carpathian marriage rites. How's that sound?" he said.
"Or maybe we could find the nerve to speak to Doamna Marius ourselves," she said.
Charlie shuddered but said. "Yes, perhaps there's that too. Whatever we do, there is really no rush to work it out right this moment. There will be other nights. Maybe all of them."
It was sweet enough, hopeful enough that Hermione was able to boost herself back into bed without being too cross or sad. She ruffled Charlie's hair as she lay down. "Goodnight, you who must not be named."
He gave a quiet laugh through his nose and lay down himself to watch the stars creep by the window until dawn.