Hermione awoke in her new husband's, Charlie Weasley's, bed to the sound of the shower running in the bathroom. His mattress on the floor next to her was empty, the blankets tangled in a knot like a statue he'd hurriedly sculpted in commemoration of last night's restless sleep.
As for herself, Hermione had slept rather well. Frustrated or not, she had traveled from London to Bucharest to the Carpathians, helped administer a gravidity detection potion to a dragon, accidentally been married in a ceremony that was more like a brawl, unsuccessfully fought to escape a lock-up, mourned her a ex a little more, been on both sides of failed seductions, and done all of it in one day. She couldn't help but be quite worn out.
It was still early enough in the spring for there to be frost in mountains in the morning, and the grills on the window next to the bed twinkled in the early sunlight, the only diamonds she'd ever seen as the newest Mrs. Weasley. She raised her arms above her head and stretched between Charlie's sheets with a muffled squeal. The moment her spine curved with her stretch, it was back. Last night's feelings - the butterflies in her stomach were moving again.
Through the closed bathroom door and the sound of streaming water, she heard Charlie clear his throat. Any moment now the water might shut off, and Charlie could appear, dewy in his dressing gown, just like yesterday, before dinner, when…
She sat up. It was best if she left. All her things were still in the deserted witches' bunkhouse anyway. It was plenty of excuse to cross the courtyard and get ready for the day over there. She rose and tried the front door of Charlie's place, the one that had been charmed shut all night, and it swung open as freely as it ever had on its heavy iron hinges. She jotted a note explaining where she'd gone and telling him she'd see him at breakfast in the mess hall. Without taking the time to cloak herself in a Disillusionment spell, she gathered yesterday's clothes and crept away still wearing Charlie's quidditch t-shirt.
Whatever happened, she was keeping that.
The witches' bunkhouse was cold, as if there hadn't been a fire in it for years. Frankly, cold, empty space was exactly what she needed. Hermione stood in the stream of the shower, wishing the water could be just a little warmer, trying to do what had been so difficult to do while lying under Charlie last night: think.
Thinking, as she well knew, was best begun by assembling what she already knew, and looking for gaps, finding the vacant spaces where what she needed to know ought to be. She'd been married to Charlie by an old Carpathian witch who, thanks to a language barrier that had done enough damage already, she could not question directly, without an interpreter. And with all the possible interpreters acting like they were scared of Doamna Marius, that route to finding anything out was closed - for now.
The wedding had every indication of being a bizarre but not altogether implausible misunderstanding. But Hermione had seen enough conniving and machinations in her day to look at every misunderstanding with an eye for subterfuge. Had Doamna Marius truly misunderstood, or was there something about getting them married and locking them away together that served some other purpose? And what would it be? Charlie hadn't been at the meeting about Ela's egg last night. From the sounds of the crowd, it might not have happened yet. As far as they knew, no one had yet decided how best to care for the relatively little dragon carrying an enormous egg.
Charlie had said something the night before connecting their wedding to the breach in the wards that allowed the skittish opal-eye and the bully of an iron-belly to mate. He thought Doamna Marius had something to do with it, but how could she? Someone who'd lived at this settlement for a hundred years would understand better than anyone what a wildly dangerous risk it was to breed that particular pair of dragons.
Though Ela might have become receptive to the iron-belly eventually, she was still in danger, carrying the egg of a mate that size. She could suffer a prolapse of her cloaca, the passage from her body that the egg would have to pass through as she laid it. An accident like that could be fatal. Though in the end, Hermione observed with darkest cynicism, whoever planned this situation would still get their hatchable egg whether Ela survived or not.
She turned off the water, immediately shivering with cold, drying her hair with her wand as quickly as she could and wrapping herself in the thin, dingy but clean towel she'd found in the bunkhouse cupboard. There must be something to be gained from the offspring of an opal-eye and iron-belly cross that made it worth the risk - something that might yield a lot of money on the black market. But what did Doamna Marius want with money? If she never left the sanctuary, never went out to where money could be spent, what good would it be?
Hermione sighed and pawed through her bag for something to wear. If there was a mystery here, it might be a boring one, something about Doamna Marius helping her son, the squib with a Muggle education in finance, get his hands on pricey dragon contraband. Hermione wouldn't even have begrudged them doing it so much if it hadn't put Ela in danger. And then there was the trouble that had been caused when the plan made her married. Even if it was to Charlie…
She shook her head. Stop, she told herself. Being married to Charlie is a problem to resolve, not a fringe benefit of this mess. She tried to force this tidy, practical thought down into her heart but it bobbed back up, along with the words Charlie had spoken just before she'd gone to sleep last night.
"I want you to choose me."
Her heart thudded, and she knew she wanted to choose him - maybe not as a husband, but as someone to be with for as long as it lasted. But what she wanted wasn't always what she needed, and defaulting to her old teenaged infatuation with all things Weasley was too easy, and also too complicated. Think, Hermione, think.
She had finished dressing and smoothed her clothes against her body, turning in front of the polished silver mirror fixed to the stone wall. She felt no more beautiful than she ever did, but she did feel powerful in her body. The only man who'd ever had an attraction-at-first-sight reaction to her was Viktor Krum. And Ron had never ceased to believe that it was anything but an attempt to spy on Harry during the tournament. She turned in the mirror. Maybe he was right.
Charlie was a beauty though - wasn't he? Her interest in men wasn't usually about their looks, but she had a feeling Charlie would be beautiful to most people, not just to someone with a longstanding fancy for Weasleys. And their chemistry was like nothing she'd ever experienced before. She didn't have to bicker with him in order to feel herself rising toward him. She was already there with just a look, just a casual word muttered at her over his shoulder.
Did he feel it too? She laughed at herself. If he did indeed have a "problem" with her speaking any variation of his name, then he must. All at once, she wanted to see him more than she was shy of seeing him. She pulled a shawl around her shoulders and dashed toward the mess hall.
Charlie was seated where he had been yesterday evening, and his comrades had been sure to leave the place next to him empty. There seemed to be a collective murmur of relief when Hermione came in, trotted to Charlie's side, and sat down, kissing his cheek and telling him, "Good morning, darling."
Charlie couldn't hide a look of slight surprise.
"What?" she said. "It's what they're all expecting of us, and calling you 'darling' gets around any problems we might have with me saying your name."
He laughed and tousled her frizzing, freshly air-dried hair. "Brilliant, darling. Brilliant as always." He speared a flat, squashy looking pastry from the platter at the centre of the table and eased it onto the plate in front of her. "Eat this. It's called a cheese placenta, or something like that."
"Delightful."
"And this one is apple - " Charlie broke off as Doamna Marius drifted by on the opposite side of the table. He made a slight bow in her direction, which she appeared to ignore.
Hermione cleared her throat. "So, we check on our mother dragon, and then do some research today?"
He nodded. "If that's what you need to do to make a thoughtful, conscious choice, then yes."
"It is," she said. "Only I don't need to research Carpathian marriage rites."
"No?"
"Did you hear me just now, darling?" she said, as if interrupting herself. "I just said 'marriage,' not 'arrangement.' And I said it right to your face."
He grinned as he cut up her pastry. "You did indeed. Now start eating. Having me feed this to you piece by piece is a bit too much newlywed doting, even for this lot."
She ate, but quickly, fighting back the urge to talk through her mouthfuls. "No, I don't think the answer for what's been happening here is to be found in marriage rites. We need to look into the history of dragon breeding instead."
Charlie gave a nod almost too subtle to see. His eyes shifted around the room. "Let's wait to talk about it until we're on our way up to Ela's paddock."
When they were outside and alone, she continued, speaking low and watching for anyone close enough to listen. "I think Doamna Marius and her son might be trying to get some lucrative contraband by breeding the opal-eye with the iron-belly."
Charlie frowned. "Breaching the dragon wards and endangering the creatures' safety for money? No, Marius and his mother are already wealthy. They're paid a huge lease for the use of all this land of theirs."
She scoffed. "Since when did already having money ever stop rich people from trying to amass more?"
He shrugged. "All I'm saying is that I don't think it's like that. I've worked with Marius my entire adult life, and if there is really deliberate, dangerous dragon cross-breeding happening here, there's some other motive besides money and some other perpetrator besides Marius. Someone driven by power, either political or magical"
"In my experience, those tend to be one and the same," she said. "Powerful dark magic serving powerful dark ends."
He heard the sadness, the wounded tone of her voice and dropped an arm around her shoulders, hugging her into his side. He wanted to tell her that things could never go back to the way they were when she was in school, that wizard civilization had moved past that kind of grasping depravity, that he was sorry for coming so late in the end, and he would never let that happen again. But who can promise anyone that? All he could do was press a kiss on the crown of her head.
She drew in a shaky breath. "Well then tell me, as a dragonologist, what kinds of special properties do the offspring of opal-eyes and iron-bellies have? What powers do they advance in wizards?"
Charlie released his hold on her, frowning as his mind worked through possibilities. "I'm not sure anyone knows. Their natural habitats are so far apart they've never mated under anything but artificial conditions. And under those controlled conditions, the father is usually an opal-eye and the mother and iron-belly, to make the size difference moot since the egg is carried in the larger of the parents."
Hermione gave a triumphant little cry. "Big mother iron-bellies like smaller mates? Just like Ginny and Harry. Good for them."
"I can't speak to what they like, but I know what they get. And in the wild, and it's not actually smaller males to mate with," Charlie cautioned. "Smaller male mates are something the breeders engineer. Natural dragon mating seems rather awful to us. It's not achieved through 'chosen one' charisma and true love. No, it involves pain and domination. So in the wild, successful males are usually larger than their female partners. It's how they get them to submit without a breeder's potions and spells. There is no natural, wild breeding of female opal-eyes and male iron-bellies, to my knowledge. And that leaves me without a guess as to what someone might be looking for in a cross-breed like this."
"Morbid curiosity?" Hermione mused.
"From someone who was trying to exterminate dragons, maybe. But there's no one like that here." He stopped in the middle of the path. "You know, the more I think of it, the more I think we need to do this research in Bucharest rather than Oradea. It's complicated, and the libraries are bigger in the capital. Plus, there would be more in English - "
"No," Hermione said, grabbing his hand in both of hers, her eyes wide, her expression verging on frightened.
Charlie waited for her to explain. She said nothing more, standing still, clutching his hand. "Why ever not?" he prodded.
She looked at her feet. "Let's try Oradea first. Alright? They might have local archives that can tell us about dragon breeding that went on here centuries into the past. We can go to Bucharest eventually, if we have to, but…" She fell silent again.
With two fingers, Charlie tipped her chin, trying to get her to look up at him. "What's wrong, Hermione? Tell me honestly. Why not Bucharest?"
"Please, Charlie," she said, the first time she'd spoken his name to him all day. "You said we couldn't be sure that whatever magic Doamna Marius used on us yesterday would have any effect outside the Carpathians. I suppose I'm not ready to test that yet. And if we don't go any farther than Oradea, we won't have to find out."
Charlie dropped the pack he'd been carrying and scooped her up, lifting her feet off the ground as he held her close against his front, her legs bending at the knees and gently kicking behind her. He leaned back to make her slant toward him as he spoke into her face. "You don't want to risk accidentally divorcing me by leaving these mountains before you've made your thoughtful, conscious choice."
Her eyelids were low, hiding her eyes from his. Still, she nodded her head, agreeing. Charlie bobbed his head forward, kissing her on one cheek and then the other before she held his chin in her hand and brought her mouth to his.
He smiled against her lips. "Hey, I'm on my way to work, darling," he said as she tugged at his bottom lip with her mouth. He couldn't play at not kissing her back for long. That surge of overwhelming connection to her, desire for her was back again. It wasn't just a fluke of one night locked up together in his house with her dressed in his clothes and wrapped in his sheets. It was something more enduring, commanding.
Instead of teasing, he held her tightly and returned the sweetness she gave him until he wasn't feeling sweet anymore but tense and heated. They had to stop, and he set her feet back on the ground, leaning against her as he worked to quiet his breath. He opened his eyes to see hers were still closed, her cheeks pink. "You alright?" he asked.
She nodded against his forehead. "Yes, let's go see our dragon."
He picked the pack up off the path and started walking again. "We need to go see the iron-belly before Ela. If we're lucky, he'll be on his paddock eating breakfast and we'll be able to keep him penned in there. Want to make sure we won't stumble into him once we're in the woods. We've got to get that breach in their wards mended whether the pair of them like it or not."
Hermione took his hand as they walked on. "What does everyone here call the iron-belly? He's got to have a name."
"No, not really. He's just the iron-belly. There's only one, so no one's bothered."
She tossed her head. "Well, I think he needs a name. There's only one opal-eye here and they gave her a name, after all. I'll claim it as the sanctuary's wedding present to me, the right to name this dragon." She'd said it just as they crested the rise, bringing into view the large paddock where the iron-belly was feasting on something very bloody.
Charlie chuckled. "Call him whatever you want, darling. It may catch on."
"Alright," she said. "If the opal-eye is named Gabriela, one of the last things I wish to hear her called, then I'm naming this one the last thing Ronald would want to hear it named."
Charlie smirked. "Krum?"
She shouted out a laugh. "No. This dragon is hereby named Malfoy."
Charlie pulled his head back in surprise. "After that nasty pureblood family Great-aunt Lucretia's niece Narcissa married into? Why?"
Hermione hopped toward him and squeezed his cheeks between her hands. "Oh, Charlie. You really are above all our childish foolishness, aren't you? Maybe that's what I love about you."
A moment of shocked silence passed between them. Hermione stepped back, her smile transformed into fright, her hands still held in front of her in the shape of Charlie's jawline.
"That's what you - you - what?" he said.
She launched into more of the uncharacteristic sputtering she'd been doing since she came here. "Oh - what I said was - well, of course - as a - you know - what I meant was - "
"Weasley!"
It was Bogdan, calling up from the paddock. Malfoy the iron-belly dragon was sauntering away from the skeleton and hide of his meal, making for the forest. In seconds, he would be gone, off to terrorize the woods for the rest of the day.
Charlie swore as he tore into his pack. He grabbed something from it that looked like a paintbrush, gave it a hard shake and restored it to the size of a broom. In an instant, he was flying, racing down from the rise, over the paddock, grasping the broomstick in one hand, brandishing his wand in the other.
The dragon sensed his approach, narrowed its silver-grey eyes, lowered its head, flapped its wings, and sprinted toward the lane leading into the woods.
Bogdan was shouting, waving his arms and shooting off flares, trying to draw the dragon's attention from Charlie. It would not be fooled. Charlie was almost in range of the far perimetre of the paddock, almost close enough to seal the wards all the way around, cutting off the forest access. He was sitting upright on his broom, gripping it with his legs, the wandwork almost complete.
He wore no protective gear, not so much as a cap on his head, just the clothes he'd worn to breakfast. This made it all the more horrifying when the iron-belly, enraged at being penned in the paddock, sucked in its breath. The sound was like the roar of a Muggle jet engine about to thrust itself into the sky.
Charlie heard it and glanced behind himself as he dived toward where Bogdan stood. The wards would keep the fire inside the paddock fence but Bogdan had slit them open, low against the grass, and wide enough for Charlie to crawl through once he hit the ground.
Hermione saw it all from where she stood on the rise. A part of her mind was back in the Room of Hidden Things in Hogwarts castle. Vincent Crabbe had conjured Fiendfyre, and she was watching from above as he tumbled into the flames, consumed.
She heard her own voice as if it was someone else's, someone mad with grief. "Charlie!"
The iron-belly was exhaling, a great plume of orange fire ripping through the cool mountain air. The bristles of Charlie's broom were aflame. It careened toward the turf and he jumped off of it, rolling over the grass, skidding toward the fence, disoriented. Bogdan was shouting, his hands clawing through the slit in the wards. He caught hold of Charlie's leg and yanked him out of the range of a second blast of dragon's breath. Together, they got him clear of the paddock. He rolled onto his back on the grass outside the fence as Bogdan sealed the wards shut.
Hermione arrived, falling to her knees beside him. "Where are you hurt? How? Show me. Tell me."
Charlie panted up at the sky, shaking his head, barely whispering. "Not hurt."
"How can you not be hurt?" she shouted at him. "The fire. And you fell."
He lifted his right arm, smeared green and black. "Bit of a friction burn from that skid in the grass, maybe," he said. He ran his hand over the back of his head. "Might have singed the ends of my hair again, but we can trim that off. I was about due for a haircut."
Bogdan grasped Charlie by the wrist, their hands locking, and pulled him to sitting. He patted Charlie hard on the shoulder and they exchanged words of thanks and relief.
Hermione watched Bogdan walk away, apparently unconcerned. He was calling out loud chastisements to the iron-belly as it crushed the charred remains of the broom into splinters between its jaws.
She looked back at Charlie. "You're really not - ?" she began.
Charlie nodded, still breathless. "Yeah, I'm not particularly hurt. Just the usual."
She flung her arms around his neck and choked a sob into his neck. Charlie slumped against her, the closest he could come to embracing her for the moment. "I'm sorry," she said, still sniffling. "I always knew your life was like this. The first time I saw you, there was a huge half-healed burn on your arm, for stars' sake. I shouldn't be like this now. I'm not usually such a mess."
"I know," he said, speaking softly into the side of her head. "I've read all the news reports about you and Harry and baby brother. You're brave and brilliant and impressive. But today, you've still got portkey-lag from all your traveling yesterday. And someone very inconsiderate kept you up too late last night."
She ignored the excuses he offered her. "You're so good to me, Charlie. Every time I'm near you, you're caring for me. All these years. No - no one else will do it. No one even tries. Harry and Ron are looking to families of their own now, my parents are gone - "
"I'm here, I haven't gone," he crooned, rocking gently.
She hitched in a breath to say more. "You don't have to get yourself incinerated while I look on. Alright? If you have to, if you want to, just leave me, like everyone else does."
There was strength in his arms again and he closed them around her and pulled her to sit in his lap. "I am not incinerated, and I am not leaving." He brushed a kiss against her cheek. "Now help us up before poor Bogdan has to watch me rolling around in the grass snogging you."
She almost laughed making a faint mewling sound instead, her tears ended.
"Does your throat hurt from screaming that loudly?" Charlie teased.
She shrugged one shoulder. "A little."
"Let's go quietly then," Charlie said. "Come along. Ela is waiting."