Things were quiet on the opal-eye dragon paddock when Hermione and Charlie arrived. Gabriela was still nosing her breakfast, eating, but not with a dragon's usual voracious appetite. This morning, she was docile even by her own standards. It meant that closing off her access to the woods and venturing in to repair the broken wards would be easy - or at least, not likely to end in anyone being burned to death
As they'd walked from the Ukrainian Iron-belly dragon's enclosure to Ela's, Hermione had fussed over the arm Charlie had skidded across the grass on as he jumped from a burning broom.
"I've told you, it's not hurt," Charlie said as she dabbed at the green stain on his arm with a damp cloth. "And there's no point in washing it until I'm finished work anyway."
"First of all," she said, continuing with the process of delicately removing the green mark without aggravating the skin underneath it, "I'm not sure you understand how most people would define being hurt. This is a rather nasty abrasion, and it needs tending."
He rolled his eyes as she doused the cloth in dittany. She didn't hide her look of satisfaction when he hissed as she pressed it to his skin. That means it's working.
"And second," she went on, "everyone here acknowledges you as my husband. Therefore, you are my responsibility, and I can't have you carrying on, dirty and damaged, while I do nothing about it. I do have my pride, Charles Prewett Weasley."
At the sound of his name, Charlie gave a low growl and lunged, his face bowing into Hermione's neck as she worked over his arm. His mouth was hot and sweet and she tipped her head back to receive it in spite of herself, even as she scolded him. "Enough. You may have been half-killed, but you're still at work."
"Well, you watch your mouth then," he said against her skin.
She was laughing and shoving at him. "Get off me, darling. Here's Bogdan."
While Charlie and Bogdan worked in the trees, out of sight, Hermione sat outside the paddock fence, her Ministry notebook open in her lap, jotting notes for the white paper she had come here to research. It was hard to stay focused on the page with the dragon so near. Ela wasn't nearly as exuberant as she'd been yesterday. It wouldn't be long now before she laid the egg. Charlie or another dragonologist with his skills would need to be there when she did, prepared to perform a risky intervention if the egg started to turn her inside out. Hermione shuddered at the thought. Poor Ela, suffering for love - or at least, the screaming, biting dragon version of it.
Her meal finished, her scales groomed, Ela readied herself for a nap on the grass as the sun grew warmer. Instead of curling up, cat-like, in the way dragons usually favour, she stretched herself out in a long line, as if trying to expand herself to better contain the egg. As Charlie said, dragons are about as clever as birds, not capable of expressing emotions on their faces beyond sleepy and terrifying. But Hermione almost believed Ela looked sad, blinking her iridescent, milky eyes as she drifted off to sleep. Was she scared about the changes in her body? Or did she just miss that big, awful Malfoy-the-iron-belly consort of hers?
Hermione shook her head, laughing quietly at herself. All this playing house with Charlie must be making her sentimental. If she didn't know better, she'd believe Ela remembered her from that escape from Gringott's, and that was why she chose to settle for her nap so close to where Hermione sat. Sisters in arms.
When Charlie came back, the sun was as high as it was going to get. He opened his pack, handed Hermione a sandwich for lunch, and crashed down beside her to eat his own. "Well, romantic as it might have been, the iron-belly didn't break through the wards between the enclosures to get to Ela himself," he said. "Not unless he's learned how to use a wand."
Bogdan whistled, miming slashing through the wards with a wand.
"Whoever did it didn't even bother to make it look like dragon damage. It was almost too obvious that it was wand work, as if they wanted us to know. Without a doubt, wizards did it," he said.
"Or a - "
"Witch, yes," he finished, looking off into the mountains instead of at Hermione. "I know what you're thinking."
"I'm not thinking nearly enough," she said. "I can't just sit here anymore, trying to concentrate on laws that aren't going to protect these animals if someone is creeping around tampering with their enclosures. All I'm doing is taking on Ela's melancholy and not getting any closer to finding out what's really going on - or how it might be connected to you and me."
Charlie didn't argue, but he didn't rush to make any suggestions either.
"That Floo in the mess hall," Hermione continued. "It must be able to get me to the university library in Oradea. I've got a text translator with me. It's useless for speech and not much better than what the Muggles use for reading between languages themselves, but it's something. I'm sure I can use it to make a start researching in a Romanian library, even without you."
"You don't need to go without me," Charlie said. "Now that the enclosures are secure, Bogdan's got everything under control for the afternoon. Right Bogdan?"
Whether he understood or not, Bogdan gave a thumbs up, nodding.
Charlie had the Weasley talent for eating quickly, as if he was still in competition with five other boys, and he was already swallowing the last of his sandwich and reaching for an apple. "But, of course, if you'd rather I not come with you, I'd get that. I mean, I have been in your face, day and night, non-stop since you got here, so…"
"So you'd like a break," she said, her head bowed, nodding.
Charlie tossed the apple between his hands. "No, actually," he said. "But I'd understand completely if you did, since - "
Bogdan shouted something at them, getting to his feet, shaking his head and stomping away.
Charlie laughed.
Hermione took the apple from Charlie and bit it. As she handed it back to him, she said, "Darling, please come with me to Oradea. I don't want a break. I want help, if I can get it. I want a guide and a translator with a human brain, and someone to care about me in a city where no one knows me."
"You don't want a break." He confirmed, speaking cautiously again, as his good dragonologist self.
She spread her arms, waving at the mountains and trees, the green grass. "I am on a break, every minute I'm here. This is not my everyday world. This is a break from it. Having you in my face is part of this experience, part of the break. So stay with me, if you can."
Oradea was a beautiful city and Charlie seemed to know it well. He brought them there through a side-along apparation, arriving in a thicket of trees on a university campus, holding her closer and more firmly than necessary again as they went. In the library, they took a sharp turn down a stairway curving into the wall, invisible until Charlie accessed it by pulling on the handle of an old brass fire extinguisher cabinet. This was the wizarding section. It was dark and vast, stretching into shadows, extending far past the Muggle portion of the library overhead.
"Dragon breeding," Charlie muttered as they set off into the stacks. "Right this way."
Hermione followed him between tall shelves made of a dark, heavy wood, each of them lit by copper lamps that had turned green centuries ago. The place seemed deserted, no patrons and no librarians anywhere. Something was rising in her the further they went into the labyrinth of bookcases - old fantasies about snogging in libraries when she was in school. This library in particular seemed to be made for it.
She cleared the thought as she cleared her throat, trotting along behind Charlie. He was striding ahead of her, walking purposefully. He had left his leather apron and cap behind at the sanctuary, but he still looked like he was hard at work, nothing effete about him, even when he was here as a researcher. He kept all of his physical power, all the force he ever carried in his legs and shoulders, bearing him through the quiet, studious spaces.
"You must come here often," she said as he stopped and began plucking books from the shelves.
He smirked, mounting a ladder to extract something from an upper ledge. "You could say that. How's your Latin?"
She had to clear her throat again. "Not bad. I read ancient Norse and Celtic runes too."
He hummed. "Any Greek?"
She staggered slightly as he hopped off the ladder and loaded her arms with books. "A bit," she answered. "The classics."
He nodded. "Of course. This way."
They came to a table under a small window set high in the wall, illuminating the underground space with daylight. Charlie spread the books out, sorting them by category, explaining in general what she'd find in each one.
"I'd start here," he said, nudging a title toward her. "This is a comprehensive survey of all the dragon breeds raised in the Carpathians and environs since the Roman Empire. It's in Latin so you should do alright without help. I'll take another look through this one. It outlines dragon by-products you don't see anymore - the obsolete and the illegal."
She stood stunned for a moment, wordlessly running her fingers over the spines of the books he'd stacked on the table for them.
"What?" Charlie asked.
She shook herself. "Nothing. It's just - thank you. I seldom find research partners who are so…"
Charlie cringed. "Obsessive? Overbearing?"
"No," she laughed. "So knowledgeable, and helpful. When I was in school, my research partners were more interested in copying my work than in helping me with it."
"Flaming Ronnie," Charlie muttered. "And you liked him anyway."
She shrugged one shoulder. "I did. It's nice to find a boy who isn't afraid to tell me I'm smart. But I could have liked him more. All those hours in the library with him peeking over my shoulder and I never kissed him while we were there. Strange, now I think of it. It's not like libraries fail to lend themselves to - intimacy."
They were standing at the table, close enough for Hermione to see Charlie's throat bob as he swallowed.
"If Ron had been more helpful with the books," she continued, "I suppose things might have been different."
Charlie's arm was around her waist, his hand in the small of her back, pulling her in to whisper down into her face. "I disagree. School libraries are too crowded for much intimacy. Though as you may have noticed, unlike Hogwarts, this library is almost completely unmonitored - "
"Charlie - "
He covered her mouth with his palm, hushing her. "Don't tempt me, love. This place accentuates your alluring smartness. You and I could disappear here for days."
This observation did nothing to deter her. She gripped his wrist and pulled his hand from her mouth, rising onto her toes as she did, closer, her lips parted. He meant to be disciplined with himself, to kiss her quickly and withdraw, setting both of them to work. But her tongue flicked between his teeth, and he crumbled, helpless to withhold the library snog she'd always dreamed of from her any longer.
She was leaning back, over the tabletop, one of Charlie's hands holding her tightly around the waist, his other flat against the tabletop, holding them up, keeping her from pulling him down any further. Her fingers were twisting at the buttons of his shirt when he finally pushed off the table, standing up with a noisy sigh. "But we don't have days to lose here," he said, his voice hoarse and breathy. "Ela is going to pass that egg in the next day or so. And we need to find out what someone might be trying to do to her, or take from her before then."
Hermione straightened up, her hands letting go of Charlie's shoulders, sliding down his chest to hang at her sides again. She had never been this frustrated, like a teenager with a gorgeous but too righteous boyfriend. Only she hadn't had a proper boyfriend as a teenager.
And Charlie was no boyfriend. He was twenty-nine years old, strong and self-controlled, and, somehow, her husband. That was what made everything so difficult. The matter between them was too serious to turn over to raw desire. Charlie guarded it, though he was frustrated too. When he'd leaned over her, pressing himself so close just now, she'd felt it, unmistakable proof of his attraction. Part her was pleased to notice it, thrilled that, for once, he hadn't hidden it from her. Another part of her was nervous, worried about how long they could go on, how high this intensity could climb before they'd have to decide between consummation and ending everything.
But all she said for now was, "Right. Let's turn up the lights."
So they read.
The first book Hermione opened was fruitful. She nudged Charlie and he jumped as if she'd woken him up. "Look at this," she said. "There was once a species of opal-eye dragon native to Ukraine. It's been extinct for ages but it was once indigenous not far from here."
Charlie rubbed his eyes. "Right. Ural opal-eye. But like you say, it's not the same species as Ela. Quite different. Massive and with a collar of venomous spines."
Hermione hummed. "What do we know about corneal opalescence? Is it the same fluid in the tear ducts of every opal-eyed species?"
"That's a magical property more than a biological one," he said. "In Ela's species the tear ducts are like cauldrons, constantly brewing the opalizing potion. It might have been the same for the Ural opal-eye."
She frowned. "But what do the opalized tears do? I mean, what are their uses in the magic wizards practice?"
Charlie shrugged. "They can be used to see through opaque surfaces. But so can plenty of other potions. I'm not sure why anyone would risk tangling with dragons to see through something when you can squeeze a potion that will do the same thing out of a ripe grittleweed pod."
She tapped her quill on the tabletop, thinking. As she did, Charlie yawned - again. She set her quill on the table and took on the tone she didn't realize she'd learned from Molly Weasley. "Look at you - knackered. How did you sleep last night, darling?" she asked.
He covered his mouth as another yawn came. "Hardly at all. Had a busy morning too, if you'll recall. Maybe I'll go find some coffee."
She held him down by his shoulders as he started to rise. "No. Coffee is a quick fix, not an abiding answer. Here, lay your head in my lap and get some rest while I read. I need to see the book you're looking at anyway - the one on illegal and obsolete dragon products. Give it here. I'll wake you when I've finished with it."
He scoffed. "Then I'm no better than Ronnie as a research partner."
"Nonsense," she said. "You've picked enough books to keep me busy until sundown. So take some rest, darling."
Charlie sighed as he gave in, lying across two chairs, his feet still on the floor, the back of his head on Hermione's thighs.
"There," she said as he nestled his mass of dense, coarse wavy red hair against her. "How is that?"
He chuckled. "Pleasant enough."
"Good. Now sleep."
He was exhausted enough to drift off to sleep in this position. He was even dreaming, his eyes moving beneath his lids. Hermione sat back in her chair, the book held in one hand, her other hand resting on Charlie's chest, his deep breaths bearing it up and down.
Before his body settled fully into its rhythm, he coughed in his sleep, his head tossing. It jostled her out of her reading, moving her to open her hand and rub his pectoral muscles and sternum, quieting him. She looked down at him as she did. Had she honestly told him she loved something about him today? As she sat in the silent, ancient library, she couldn't remember what exactly it was she'd said she loved about him. Maybe that was because, by now, it was just - everything. She lifted her hand from his chest and caressed his cheek instead. He turned toward it in his sleep, his lips in her palm, his breath warm.
Read, Hermione, read.
This second book was a good resource as well, referring her to another one already on the table that was more specific to dragon related potions. It made a reference to the Ural opal-eye's tears. Theirs didn't just make opaque surfaces transparent. They also made occluded minds transparent. Their tears were better than Veratiserum, which only worked if the person being questioned was asked the right questions. They allowed a skilled Legilimens to read any mind without resistance by Occlumency.
She checked some other references, organized her notes, and shook Charlie awake.
He sat up, rubbing the back of his head. "Wait," he said after she finished. "So your theory is that some hostile world power is hoping that by breeding the Ukrainian iron-belly to a surviving opal-eye species, they'll come up with an offspring similar enough to the extinct Ural opal-eye to produce the same tears? Ones that can be used to overcome Occlumency?"
"Yeah. What do you think? Is it possible? Would that kind of breeding work?"
Charlie blinked. "The iron-belly ought to be genetically very similar to the Ural. That's more than plausible. One thing that contributed to their extinction was interbreeding with the more aggressive iron-bellies - "
"So someone might be trying to bring their characteristics back, by taking them from somewhere new, from Ela's gene pool," Hermione finished.
Charlie was reaching into the landslide of books on the table. "Show me that bit about Ural tears being used to neutralize Occlumency."
Hermione flipped the book open to where she'd marked it. Charlie read it himself. It was just as she'd said. "It was once used as a military potion, an espionage one, forced on prisoners to find out what they were hiding during questioning," he said.
She nodded. "It's brutal. Have you ever seen it? Seen Legilimency?"
He shook his head. "No. But Dad said Harry…"
"Yes," she confirmed. Her face was pale, her eyes wet. "All the time during the war. Waking up screaming, in pain, vomiting. Legilimency is violence. A violation. Whoever is after this potion is after a torture aid. They want to overcome, to control, to take what we've fought for all apart again - "
Charlie took her in his arms, scooting her off her chair and into his lap. "Slow down a bit," he said. "Let's look a little more. There might be another use for Ural opal-eye tears. Something less terrifying, less global. We don't need to leap to the worst possible conclusion."
She began to protest. "No, I'm not going to let myself be talked into sitting and waiting politely while evil gets its act together. Not again - "
"Hermione," he hushed her with a whisper in her ear. "You know I'm not like the people who ignored you and called you a liar when you were a child fighting to save the world. My entire family was on your side then, and we still are, always, more than ever." His hands found her face, lifting it so he could look her in the eyes as he said, "I'm not trying to undermine you. I'm trying to get you to acknowledge how badly you've been hurt, and to admit that it might still affect how you react to trouble."
She bowed her head, speechless, afraid she might cry.
"All I'm asking," he said, "is that we finish what we've started here with this research, read a bit more before we rush back to the sanctuary looking for wicked spies among the good, generous people I've lived and worked with for the past decade."
She still made no answer. Charlie held her close again. "No matter what happens, we're not going to have to save the world tonight. Just one dragon and her baby. We'll keep them safe. We can do that. We'll confound whatever plan is operating there, and it will be over as simply as that. Don't, Hermione. Don't go back to that place inside your head where nearly everything depends on you. You never have to do that again."
For the second time that day, her arms were around Charlie's neck and she was sobbing into him. He held her as she shuddered out her tears, rocking gently, his cheek pressed to her head, his hands running firmly up and down the length of her back, as if to help ease the sobs out, to send them away.
Eventually, she wiped her face and released him. She wasn't sure what to say so he spoke first, back on task. "If you're alright," he said, "I'm going to fetch another book. One on Occlumency. It will be in Romanian, so you'll have to bear with me. Alright?"
She nodded and shifted back to her own chair. "Right. Thank you."
They read on. Charlie came back with his book. Now rested and alert, he focused on the pages, flipping them almost impatiently, his forehead folding into furrows as he went. "Listen to this," he said at last. "It says here that anti-Occlumency potions, at their simplest level, are memory aids. They didn't even need to go all the way to the torture uses. They were outlawed when so many wizarding societies started their examination systems, so people couldn't use them to cheat."
She blinked. "So maybe our spies are endangering Ela's life just to pass their NEWTS?"
She meant it as a sick joke, but Charlie nodded. "It's worth considering. Rich people will pay for anything. You must have gone to school with stupid kids with rich parents. How are they ever going to get any power as Ministry officials and that sort of thing if they can't get their NEWTS?"
She thought of Gregory Goyle. What did he do for a living now? And could any amount of memory aid have helped him pass his exams? She had a moment of selfish reflection, thinking of what she could accomplish with a perfect memory.
Memory…
She was on her feet, snatching the book from Charlie though she still didn't read Romanian. "Muggles," she said. "What does it say about the effects of opalizing potion on Muggle memories? What does it say, Charlie?"
He gasped. Her parents - she still hadn't uncharmed the memories of her Muggle parents, the family she'd sacrificed at the onset of the war.
He didn't resist as the book went out of his hands. But he was sorry when he had to tell her, "There's nothing."