Hermione was on her feet, snatching the book from Charlie though she still couldn't read Romanian. "Muggles," she said. "What does this book say about the effects of opalizing potion on Muggle memories? Does it fix them when they're damaged? Does it? What does it say, Charlie?"
He gasped. Of course. 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 her as the book went out of his hands. But he was sorry when he had to tell her, "It doesn't say. There's nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Yes, it's typical wizarding scholarship, myopic, hardly a word about Muggles anywhere in it. I'm sorry," he said.
She slammed the book closed, raised it even with her eye-level, and dropped it hard against the tabletop. It landed safely but with a clamorous slap on the wood. From far away, for the first time that day, they heard the sound of another human being noisily clearing their throat.
Charlie gathered her hands in his, knowing she'd come to regret it if she took out any more of her frustration on the books. "We'll find something else, love," he said. "Maybe not here, but somewhere. Maybe in Ukraine, or even New Zealand. When you're ready to get your parents, we'll go wherever we have to. We'll find something - "
"No, there's nothing," she said in a speaking voice that echoed as if it was a shout in the quiet of the library. She turned in a circle, out of his hold, pacing as if she was trapped in a cage. "This is always how it happens. Years and years of research on reversing memory modification, my own and other people's - every one of Guilderoy Lockhart's illustrious healers on the Janus Thickey Ward at St. Mungo's, for stars' sake. None of us has come up with anything. Oh yes, there are moments like this when something seems to come close, but then - nothing."
Charlie glanced miserably at the books he'd stacked on the table, wracking his exhaustive knowledge of the library's dragon resources for a book they might have forgotten to check.
She went on, pacing and ranting. "No, the only way I'm going to find something to fix my parents is to invent it myself. I won't find it in any book." She collapsed to sit heavily in her chair, her head in her hands. "I have to do it myself but - but I'm so scared, Charlie. What if I get it wrong? What if I go to rescue my parents and end up taking away from them what little I left them with the first time? As they are now, they can still practice dentistry, and love each other. But what if I..."
He knelt on the floor in front of her chair, reaching past the mass of her hair to find her hands again. She let him hold them, but he knew to keep quiet, waiting for her to catch her breath and finish.
"That bold teenaged girl who modified their memories while they sat having their tea in front of the television - she doesn't exist anymore," Hermione said. "All that's left of her is me, and I'm terrified at what I'm capable of. How could I - how did I…"
Her words trailed away again, fading into the long, dusty silence all around them.
"Let me help you," Charlie said at last. "What have I always told you, all these years? You are not alone in the world. Stop acting like you have to sort this out on your own. I can be your family for as long as you need me. Why not? For as long as you're willing to have me as a husband, your parents are my family too. And we can work this out together. All of us. I don't know how exactly, not yet, but - "
She looked up from behind her hair, slowly, her eyes wide. "My family? For as long as I want? Charlie, I - "
But he was interrupting her. "Don't answer now. Not when you're distraught like this. Just be still. Think. At least for tonight, just think about how long you want me to stay. But don't decide yet. I don't think distraught Hermione should be allowed to make important decisions that calm, sane Hermione will have to live with later."
She sniffed, almost smiling. "Distraught - that's what you called me the night I kissed you for the first time, in the Forbidden Forest, when I was still with Ron."
"I gave you good advice that night, didn't I?"
"Did you?"
They both breathed out quiet laughter as she wiped her face dry with the back of her hand.
Charlie waved toward the window overhead. "Look, it's almost dark already. I've got to get back to relieve Bogdan now that Ela needs constant watchcare. Are we alright to go back? You could apparate to the sanctuary on your own, now you've been there. But I'd rather like to go home a different way, and it means staying together."
She looked around the library one more time. The books would still be there if she thought of something else and needed to come back. She nodded. "Alright then. Let's go home, for now."
Outside the library, Charlie led her back to the copse of trees they'd apparated to when they first arrived. From his jacket, Charlie produced a paintbrush, the second one she'd seen him handle today. and just like the first time, he shook it and restored it to the size of a full broom. If the dragons torched one every few days, he must go through them by the dozen. This one was slightly longer than usual, a telling sign that it could carry two.
"Oh no," she said, both hands raised. "No, no, no."
"Come on," he cajoled. "How can you expect yourself to make a thoughtful, conscious decision about our arrangement without a tandem test flight first?"
She raised her eyebrows. "Our arrangement? This is part of some courtship display? Got some stuff to strut, Captain Weasley?"
He gave a slow hiss. "And we discover yet another variation of my name that's a problem when I hear you say it."
She swatted his arm. "Honestly."
"Fine," he said. "I won't ask you to fly all the way back to the sanctuary like this. But can I at least fly you over the city? Just a quick flight to admire the view. Absolutely no quidditch maneuvres. No strutting. Promise."
Arms folded, one foot tapping, she considered the offer. The last tandem flight she'd been on - her most recent broom travel of any kind - had been an emergency in the Room of Hidden Things, when she had clung to Ron as he pulled Gregory Goyle out of the fire that had killed Vincent Crabbe.
She cinched her eyes closed, scowling at the ghastly memory. The time had come to push it further into her history, buried under something new and perhaps not unpleasant. She answered Charlie with one sharp nod. "Alright. Let's go. All the way back to the sanctuary. Now."
It was already dark enough for them to be able to move quietly, inconspicuously over the small city. All they had to do was get away without attracting attention. Charlie straddled the broom and Hermione moved to get behind him. "What are you doing?" he asked, twisting to see her over his shoulder.
She blinked. "You're driving. So I'm the passenger, in the back."
She was about to throw a leg over the broom when Charlie grasped her wrist. "Ronnie used to put you on the back?" He shook his head. "No wonder he couldn't hold onto you."
She tossed her head. "It's not just Ron. I was in the back when Kingsley Shacklebolt took me on a thestral to get Harry out of his aunt's house for the last time. The back is where the non-pilot sits. I have it on excellent authority - "
"Oh, right," he said, nodding. "You've got no older siblings, and no wizard parents who would have flown you around before you learned how yourself. No, darling, when we're flying with someone we're responsible for, someone we cherish, we don't sit them in the back." Charlie grinned as he tugged at her wrist, guiding her around himself to the front of the broom.
"You want me up here?" she said. "But then - how will I hold onto you?"
His grin grew even wider. "You don't. I hold onto you."
He tugged harder, bumping her legs against the broomstick. She tripped more than stepped over it, her back to him, her hands throttling the wood. Her breath caught as Charlie leaned forward, his arms closing around her, his hands holding the broomstick in front of hers. Then he waited, not crowding her more than necessary, leaving her space, waiting for her response.
He was not disappointed.
"Ah, like this," she said. "No this seating arrangement never occurred to Ronald. Or to me." And beyond Charlie's fondest expectations, she crowded into him, her back against his chest, the crown of her head against his cheek, her hips between his thighs. She turned her face toward his, hearing the sharp intake of his breath as she said, "Off we go."
Steady, Weasley.
He didn't ask her to help push off as they rose into the air. It was dark but they were still low enough to be heard from below, so she bit her lip, closed her eyes, and held back a nervous squeal as they lost touch with the ground.
"Too fast?" he asked, not teasing but apologetic.
She forced herself to inhale to speak. "It's fine. It's just me. I haven't flown since - " she lost her breath again, "since the Battle of Hogwarts."
Charlie felt like his heart broke. At twenty-two years old, this woman was half made of trauma. It was what made her so strong, so miraculous, but also part of what made him so desperate to protect her and to - he nearly lost his own breath - to love her.
Did he love her? Not as he had for years, with the fuzzy, comfy affection of a family member like a sister or cousin, but as a wife, HIS wife. Did he already love her like that?
For now, he needed to reassure her. He held the broom in one hand and wrapped his arm around her waist. "I've got you," he said. "We're safe."
She turned her head toward his voice, her forehead against his chin. "Don't let me go, Charlie."
He spoke against her skin. "I won't."
As the lights of the city passed beneath them, he didn't pester her to open her eyes to look at the view, though it was lovely. Somehow she knew to look right before they would have been out of sight. She'd seen all of London from the air before, but somehow, Oradea seemed more splendid.
"It's so pretty," she said, her face still close to Charlie's. "Thank you, darling."
It was the first time her "darling" had sounded sincere to him, and his heart crashed again. "Are you sure you want to fly all the way back? I know what you said, but we don't have to."
"No, it's alright," she said. "Hold onto me, Charlie, and it will be alright."
Bogdan was on his feet and ready to head back to dinner at the settlement the moment he spotted the broom in the sky above him. He made his report already walking backward, toward the rise. Ela was lethargic but restless, refusing to eat, getting up only to try to get into the woods to hide. There was biological show too, all the signs of a gravid dragon about to lay eggs.
"I'm going to let her into the woods," Charlie said. "She and the iron-belly probably made a nest back there days ago. She'll be less agitated if she can be in it."
Hermione was alarmed. "How will you monitor her back there? You can't cross the wards and go with her."
"I can," he said. "Once she's on her nest, she won't get off until the egg hatches. That won't be tonight. We'll have to feed her in there, just like the iron-belly would if he was any kind of suitable mate for her."
Without getting any closer to the lane into the woods, Charlie slashed upward with his wand. The wards keeping Ela out tore open and she lumbered between the trees as quickly as she could move herself.
"The poor dear," Hermione sighed as she went.
"Poor you, who didn't get a chance to nap in the library," Charlie said. "Go back to the settlement, have your tea, and go to bed."
"That's what I won't do," she said. "At least, not until you've had something to eat too. I'll be back soon."
He accepted with a nod. "Thank you. In the meantime, I'll be sneaking up on a dragon in the dark woods."
Hermione didn't make it inside the mess hall. The lights were on inside, flaring warmly through the windows. Dinner service was in full swing, but Doamna Marius was waiting outside for her. She trotted forward, chattering in Hungarian, pushing a picnic basket into Hermione's hands. Once Hermione took it, Doamna Marius was forcing a pack onto her shoulder before spinning her around and pointing Hermione back in the direction she'd just come. Back to Charlie.
Of course.
Through a lot of waving and slow shouting, Hermione managed to make a case for visiting the loo before going back, but Doamna Marius waited outside the mess hall ladies' toilet for her and then walked with her, like a military escort, toward the paddock. All the while, she spoke in low, grandmotherly tones, patting Hermione's back as if comforting and encouraging her, and then getting louder, bossy again. Hermione didn't understand the words but there was a rhythm and a cycle to it.
When they arrived at the now empty paddock, Doamna Marius gave a weary sigh, crossed herself in the Orthodox way, and with a nimbleness Hermione never would have expected, climbed the fence and made for the woods, beckoning and calling for Hermione to follow her.
Hermione's eyes narrowed as she watched the old witch making her way with expert familiarity into the forest by the light of her wand. Of course she would know where the nest was. She had probably known all along.
At least her company meant Hermione didn't get lost in the dark looking for Charlie. Doamna Marius was still talking away as she brought the pair of them together again. As Charlie watched, amused, his eyebrows lifted, as Doamna Marius pulled the pack off Hermione's shoulder, thrust her arm inside, and pulled out a flat canvass square. It unfolded itself on the ground into a tent as Doamna Marius dusted her hands off with a theatrical flare. It was an odd tent, with only three walls and a floor, completely open in the front so whoever was lying in it would have a constant uninterrupted view of the dragon.
She yanked the picnic basket from the crook of Hermione's arm and laid it in the mouth of the tent. At that point, they both expected her to leave but Doamna Marius spun on her heel, wagging one finger in Charlie's face, speaking sternly to him in Hungarian while he nodded and nodded.
It was impossible to apparate in or out of any of the dragon enclosures so she left walking, still muttering to herself, undergrowth snapping beneath her tiny feet.
When she was gone, Charlie seemed to deflate, slouching to sit at the edge of the tent.
"She knows, doesn't she?" Hermione said.
Charlie just sighed.
"She knows we haven't - consummated her marriage rite. And she's cross with you over it. Isn't she?"
Charlie chuckled. "Yes, I think that's fair to say. Come sit and have something to eat." He flipped the lid of the basket open. "And be sure to turn around and take a look at the nest."
What kind of creature was Doamna Marius, that she could make Hermione forget for a moment that she was in the presence of a dragon? Behind her was a mass of splintered trees, torn out of the ground, their roots and branches tangled together to form a nest for Ela and the egg she would lay. The structure was massive, held together with moss and mud and ash. It was bigger than it needed to be. Ela looked a little lost but still content as she trembled in her sleep inside it.
Hermione raised a hand to her throat. "They made that? The dragons? It's amazing."
"It must have been him that built it for her, working on the instincts of a much bigger creature," Charlie said. "The iron-belly might not be as dangerous to her as we thought. Or he might be worse. Who can say? At any rate, size isn't the only way it doesn't suit her. The broken trees are set in the concentric spike pattern of an iron belly. I'm surprised she even recognizes it as a nest. But look at her in there. She's accepted it, spikes and all."
Hermione let herself fall to sitting beside him. "Do you really think she can survive this? Looking at her in that iron-belly nest is making it all so real and - I just don't know."
Charlie sighed heavily as he opened a crock of steaming stew. "None of us knows. Bogdan and I talked about giving her an ov-ectomy to break the egg up inside her and extract it surgically but Doamna Marius lost her mind over that. And she is right that there's enough of a chance Ela will survive that it may be worth letting it run its course. The grim fact is also that if we wait, even if we can't save her, we can at least get the egg away safely."
Hermione scoffed. "And that's what Doamna Marius really wants. That's what she planned on all along, isn't it?"
"We don't know that," Charlie said. "It's not impossible, but it's too early to accuse her. We'll see if anyone turns up tonight to try to claim the egg. Doamna Marius seems to want both of us here, for some reason. That's the bit that doesn't fit the theory that she wants the offspring for herself."
Hermione sighed, accepting the spoon Charlie passed her along with a warm bowl full of stew. If only she knew more about the settlement's society, who everyone here was and what they wanted, who they were loyal to, she might be able to better see how this all hung together.
Charlie went on, softly, cautiously. "If the offspring is opal-eyed, we'll have new research to do, on the effects of its tears on memory - on Muggles."
Hermione dug her spoon into her bowl without eating. "And then I could benefit from Ela's death. It's mad, but something about that makes me feel as if I did this to her myself."
"That is mad," Charlie agreed.
"I know. But I can't help it." She set her bowl on the ground. "I would never torture a living dragon like this, especially not this one to whom I owe my own life. She saved me, and Ron and Harry and by extension the outcome of the whole war. Even if I knew it could help my parents, I'm not sure I could have hurt her - "
"And everyone knows that," Charlie finished for her, setting her bowl back in her hands. "Hopefully we save both Ela and the offspring and find a potion we can use to help your parents. But if she doesn't make it, it's better you benefit from it than whoever set her up for this. There are worse endings we could have than that."
Hermione hummed. "Endings. We seldom get everything we want in the end. You know that. We can beat Voldemort and still lose Fred."
Charlie hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her close enough to kiss her temple. "Have something to eat, love. Whatever happens to Ela, it's not your fault, and we're going to make sure no more harm comes to her."
"We?" she said, pulling back. "You want me to stay here tonight?"
"Never mind what I want. Didn't you see?" Charlie said. He reached into the pack and pulled out Hermione's small, extendible bag. "Doamna Marius packed this too. She must have rounded up your things and thrown you out of the witches' bunkhouse. Now you have nowhere to stay but with me."
"That nosy old - "
He clamped his hand over her mouth. "Don't," he said, smirking but peering out into the trees to see if they were truly alone all the same. "Don't speak any more ill of her. Don't risk it."
As the night went on, they ate, watched the dragon, and lay side by side on their stomachs on the floor of the tent discussing the recommendations they'd make for the Ministry's white paper. When Charlie plucked the quill out of her hand to jot down a note, he yelped at the coldness of her fingers.
"Sorry, I should have built a fire hours ago," he said, sitting up to get to work.
She tossed her head, tore a blank page out of her notebook, and conjured a little flame from it herself, its edges flashing orange with warm embers, like the ones the boys used to like her to leave around their big traveling tent. "There. Now back to work, Weasley."
Charlie reached toward the flame, testing how close he could come to touching it before he felt its burn. "Well, that's lovely. Gives you a rather fetching glow too. Your hair looks positively orange in this light, like proper hair should."
She laughed and shoved at him.
"But is it actually warming us?" he asked. "Feels as if I could hold it in my hand and not be hurt."
Hermione grabbed his hand before he could try it. She was getting used to the feel of them, so much rougher with work and scars than the hands she had once been used to. She laced her fingers through his as she said, "Oh, give over. It's plenty warm. I've used these flames to heat tents loads of times before."
"This isn't a proper tent Doamna Marius has left us though, is it," he said, waving his free arm through the open space where a fourth wall ought to be. "And it's just going to get colder. There might even be frost again."
"Well, what else is in the pack?" she said. "She must have left us something to wrap up in while we lie here on guard all night. A sleeping bag or whatnot. Doamna Marius is pushy, not sadistic. Right?"
The pack held mostly food and some candles they could burn once the paper went out. Inside, as Charlie said, was Hermione's personal bag, which contained her own clothing and supplies and several enormous legal books. At the bottom of the pack, they found a large quilt, and in the space where they hoped to find a second one was nothing but a dragon flame extinguisher. It was a piece of equipment identical, of course, to one Charlie had already been carrying in his own pack.
He lifted one eyebrow. "I don't mind sharing the blanket if you don't."
"Of course I don't mind sharing," she said, whipping the blanket out of his hands and rising to her knees next to where he sat, draping it over his shoulders. "What I do mind is being manipulated, especially by someone I don't trust. Someone who takes advantage of my language deficits, and of your good respectful nature..."
She went on about Doamna Marius, braced for Charlie to hush her again, or give some reason why the old witch might not be as bad as she seemed. Nothing came. Charlie kept quiet, looking at her, their eyes level as he sat and she knelt tucking him into the blanket with meticulous care.
His expression was no ordinary look - not his usual kindness or friendliness, not his look of worry or concentration. He looked as if he was struck with wonder, slightly pained by it, barely able to contain something.
Her hands stopped fussing over him and fell to her sides. "Darling? What is it?"
Charlie opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing, closing it again.
She held his face between her hands. "Are you alright? Are you jinxed? Doamna Marius - she hasn't sneaked back and - "
"No," Charlie said. "She's not here. It's just - you. I want to tell you something. Something that came to me on our flight from Oradea."
She let go of his face, her voice low and serious. "Then tell me."
Charlie swallowed, still regarding her with that look like he was about to fly apart. What would she say if he told her he'd fallen in love with her, after years of friendship, one spark long ago, and then these two headlong days as her Carpathian husband? Did it make any sense? He knew she cared for him, but how much of that had to do with Ron, and her missing father?
But even if their connection was complicated by all of that, did that mean it wasn't real?
She hooked one finger into his palm, taking his hand again. Her voice was softer this time, but still ever so slightly afraid. "What is it, Charlie?"
He cleared his throat. He could not keep his feelings unspoken forever. But he could wait, let her have the rest of the night to think about a future together, as they'd already agreed. And so he said, "I remembered something. I remembered the first time we spoke to each other."
Her tense posture slackened and she sat back on the ground. "You remember asking me to tell Ron and Harry to stop dawdling and get to the port key on the last day of the Quidditch World Cup?"
Charlie laughed. "Fine. I remember the second time we spoke then."
"When you barely touched me on the shoulder and asked me to let you pass by me in the hallway at Grimmauld Place when we were all arriving there for our summer holidays?"
"No," he said, lunging forward to grab her and pull her into his lap, folding her inside the blanket with him. "I remember when you asked me at Harry's birthday party how I could tell Hagrid's dragon, the one he called Norbert, was actually a female. And I gave some flip answer about females being more vicious."
She clucked her tongue. "Oh, yes. I definitely remember that."
"The look you gave me when I said it," Charlie shook his head, whistling softly, gathering her closer, arranging the ends of the blanket to cover her all the way to her feet. "Scathing. Petrifying. I could see I was about to get a full lecture on the perils of sex-based over-generalizations - "
"And you would have deserved it - "
"Too right. I had to look away and make up some excuse about wondering what was keeping Dad so late at the office."
She laughed at him, nestling into his arms and tipping the back of her head into his shoulder to look up into his face. "Well, at least you knew you were being stupid."
"I did," he said, looking out to where the dragon slept in the dark. "It wasn't even true, as our iron-belly has so aptly demonstrated for you today. Norberta laid an egg, an unfertilized one. That's how we know. It was just a stupid joke like the older men around here still like to make. I was too proud and stunned to apologize for it at the time, so I'm doing it now."
She laid her hand on his cheek directing his eyes to hers. "I forgive you. For the most awful thing you have ever done to me. A careless word from five years ago. I forgive you."
Her hand slid from his cheek to the back of his neck, pulling his face toward her. He came, but slowly, watching her expression. Under his gaze, she felt her face changing, taking on a look she knew from seeing it in his face moments before. She felt open, struck with something, barely able to hold herself together. And as she took this look on herself, this rushing, crashing feeling, she knew what Charlie had wanted to tell her. It was not a memory about Norbert the dragon.
What he truly wanted to say was that he loved her. Even though he hadn't actually said it, she felt it so strongly it overwhelmed her, like a revelation. And it was made complete by her conviction that she was in love with him in return.
The thought had barely crystallized in her mind when his face was near enough to kiss. His lips nipped at hers, warm in the cold night, wet enough to seal themselves to hers. They came together. Stars, this was her husband, her loved one for the rest of her life.
Without breaking their kiss she turned herself around, their stomachs and chests pressed together, her legs behind her, toes braced against the ground. She pushed and he let himself sink to the floor of the tent, his hands on her waist as she lay on top of him. As she came forward, her jacket rode up and his hands were on her skin, cool and rough. A tiny moan sounded in her throat and her hands were tearing through the layers of his jacket and shirt, frantic to touch him with nothing in the way.
And why not? He was hers. It didn't matter if being with him like this, in every way that came after it, would make it more difficult to leave him later. She didn't want to go.
He wasn't letting her go, his fingers gripping her more tightly, pressed to her skin, ranging higher, up the curve of her waist, until he was twisting beneath her, rolling her onto her back and kissing her from above. He pulled back, as if to take a breath, and she was about to speak his name when he sat up and away.
Hermione gave a little cry of fury. "For the love of Boggarts, Charlie. What is it now?"
He sucked in a great breath. "It's that behemoth of a magical reptile tossing and turning in a nest over there," he said. He turned back to her, sorry and smoothing her hair out of her face with the hand she wanted back inside her clothes. "We need to think," he said. "What if someone did set us up like this so we'd be here but wind up - erm - too busy to notice if something happened to Ela tonight? It doesn't take a genius to know it's easier to sit and wait for us to get distracted than to concoct some reason to keep us away from here."
Hermione sat up, shoving at him, frustrated in every way. "Oh, so now you accept that Doamna Marius is manipulative and can't be trusted?"
"I didn't say that. All I - "
The rest of his words were lost. Not far off, beyond Ela's nest, was a sound Hermione hadn't heard since the Triwizard Tournament. It was the full, screeching, flaming cry of a fully grown dragon in open air.
Charlie swore as he scrambled to his feet.
Ela was stirring in her nest, pushing herself upright, leaning over the spiked edge of the nest, calling back, the air around her bright with flame, the force of her call straining at the egg in her gut.
Charlie didn't have to explain the sound. It was the iron-belly. He was here, knowing that his mate was in their nest, all his instincts raging at him to break through the wards and protect her and the offspring. He was thrashing his body against the magical barrier, tearing at it with his teeth and claws, roaring fire at it. Either he would break through and wreak havoc on them, or he would dash himself against the wards until he was unconscious, or maybe worse.