Note: Lemon ahead!
Hermione followed Charlie into his old quarters, which was now a gorgeous, cozy guest room, centering a giant bed topped with pillows and throws, complete with a fireplace. Charlie flicked his wand it its general direction until it cackled with warm glow.
"So you're teaching a toddler class?" Hermione asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Yeah, well. After I broke my hip, my employers had me at the desk a few too many days a week." He grimaced at the word desk. "So I noticed that all these biologists and potioneers and and dragonologists coming 'round often brought their children, who were beyond disappointed to find we weren't keen on letting them near the beasts. So I decided to start teaching some classes, let 'em feel like they're getting a real experience. Learn a bit, visit some eggs and babies. They adore it. Plus it makes me feel useful as I heal up."
"Wow," Hermione said, watching him rummage through the large box Molly had labeled 'CHARLIE, HERE ARE YOUR DRAGONS.' "That's such a great idea."
"Yeah, it's worked so well that they're thinking of putting in a small educational building just for the kids. They'll hire some proper teachers once I'm back in the field full-time."
"I'm sure you're an amazing teacher, Charlie."
"Yeah?" he grinned at her. "They like me enough, I suppose." He pulled out a small, sleeping replica of a golden-scaled dragon. "You know what this is?"
"That would be—" Hermione paused, eyes narrowed. "The Sumatran Spiraltongue."
He gave her a wide, lopsided grin. "Of course you'd know that. What you probably don't know, I reckon, is this is also a Dragonatia Relic 3.0, collector's edition. Vintage by now." He rubbed the beast's head and it sprang to life, curling its tail around his finger. It glanced at Charlie and flew to his shoulder and curled up, releasing a tiny roar that revealed its namesake: a fiery red tongue that curled in on itself twice.
"That's just gorgeous!" Hermione breathed.
Charlie laughed and ran a finger down its head again and it went back to sleep. "The little ones are going to lose their minds over her." He gently placed it back in the box and turned his attention back to Hermione. The glint in his eye sent a flurry of butterflies into her stomach.
"So how'd you break your hip, anyway?" she asked, wringing her hands.
He shrugged and plopped down on the bed next to her, so close that their bodies aligned. "Long story short, got stomped on by an Ironbelly. An enormous one. Snapped a fair amount of my bones, but my hip in particular was crushed to pieces." He gestured to his right side.
"Your hip seemed, ah, just fine the last time I saw you."
He laughed and turned so their faces were just inches apart. "Well, it's just about good now. They just want me to be careful for another month or so." He leaned over, pushing a tendril of her hair behind her ear. He dragged his lips down the side of her neck, mumbling in a voice like gravel, "You smell really good, love."
He pushed her back on the bed and worked his way down to her cleavage, sucking and licking until she gasped. He carefully untied the waist straps of her dress and opened each side, giving a low whistle upon the reveal of her lacey underthings.
"Charlie," she said, a slight warning in her voice. He looked up, concerned. "You've led your mother to believe I'm up here consoling you and helping you work out your issues, but instead we're—"she gestured to her red lace and the bulge threatening to break the zipper of his jeans. "It's unethical."
He stared at her for a moment before roaring with laughter. Hermione felt a bit miffed until he said, "I'm sorry, Hermione, but please, don't feel bad about this. I don't want you to be my mind healer. I just want, well, you." He dropped his head down, taking a nipple into his mouth through the lace, scraping with his teeth as she cried out, then releasing. "Besides, you are helping me. Just not the way she's assuming. I'm supposed to be stretching my hips every day, after all." He winked. "But if you want to enlighten her, by all means." He pulled her bra straps down and licked each nipple slowly, until Hermione moaned and arched her back.
"Well," she sputtered. "I suppose I'll spare her the details. But you could at least lock the door. We can't have her walking in and finding me riding your face or some such."
Charlie lifted his head up fast. "That's the best idea I've heard all day."
"Surely you're referencing the door locking."
He chuckled and locked it with his wand. Hermione added a wandless muffliato. She pulled up his top, desperate to run her fingers over his muscles. After he dropped his shirt to the ground, he flicked his wand so her knickers slid down her legs and onto the floor. He then flipped her over so she straddled his chest.
Reading the look on his face, Hermione shook her head. "No."
Charlie grinned. "You don't even know what I'm propositioning."
"I absolutely know it. I just suggested it in jest and you, you with your dirty mind—"
"My dirty mind? You just admitted you thought it up!"
"We don't have time for foreplay. Someone's going to come—"
"Exactly," Charlie interrupted, pulling her up until her clit rested between his lips. She gulped and stilled her body, but it betrayed her by jerking deeper into his mouth.
"Oh, Godric," she whispered as he licked her, hands on her hips, encouraging her to move. She grabbed the headboard for balance and worked her pelvis into a rhythm with his tongue. He controlled the speed of contact while she worked on the pressure, all until she found herself riding his mouth slowly, moaning obscenities all the while.
The first orgasm was so soft she wasn't even sure what she was experiencing at first—a warming, a tingling. The next one was stronger, the one after stronger still, and on and on until the final one felt like it might kill her. She screamed and collapsed into the side of the bed, afraid she was suffocating him with the carelessness of her pleasure.
"Oh, fucking, fuck," she said between hyperventilated breaths. "I've never come so much in my life."
Charlie chuckled. "That's what a man likes to hear," he said, reaching for her.
She slapped his hand away. "I'm serious. Don't," she inhaled, "…touch me yet. Or else I'll burst."
He cocked his head slightly. "How many times did you come?"
Hermione had finally gotten a handle on her breath. "I lost count after eleven."
"Eleven!" Charlie leaned back and laughed. "And here you were, trying to tell me we didn't have time—"
"We didn't! We don't!" Hermione narrowed her eyes.
"Worth it, yeah?"
Hermione didn't respond. She crawled over him and started unbuckling his belt. He helped her by kicking his clothes off, after which his erection, so hard and thick and long, bobbed for a bit. She positioned herself so that her mouth was just above it, but he grabbed her by the arms and lifted her up. "None of that, love."
Hermione put her hands on her hips. "And why not?"
He gave her a half smile. "Well, it's been a whole month, yeah? And I have a hard enough time lasting longer than three minutes with you."
"I beg your pardon?" She wasn't expecting that and looked at him deeply to see if he was joking. His face remained earnest.
"Please, Hermione. Let me savor you." His voice was so husky and pleading, she couldn't help but give in.
She straddled his hips and lowered herself slowly. His hands were on her waist but she pushed them away. "I'll tell you when you can touch me."
"Payback?" he asked, sounding hopeful.
"Yes, payback, you dragon taming perv." She rode him slowly at first, probably torturously, but she needed to ease into it after what he just did to her. She could tell he was desperate to touch her as he finally placed his fidgeting hands behind his head.
He watched her with such an intensity, it was as though he'd never had a woman on top before, when Hermione knew he'd had his share of witches before her. His eyes lingered over her body as it bounced and jiggled about and she felt positively bashful, despite having just straddled his face. Eventually, she forced herself to focus on him: how his eyes rolled back when she dropped a little more forcefully, his groans when she tilted her hips to let him in even deeper, the clench in his abs as he forced himself to hold back, to give her control.
Finally, she said, "Touch me, Charlie."
His flung his arms forward, first to her breasts, kneading with thumbs on her nipples, then her hips as he guided her up and down faster and harder. As she came, he finally led his hands to cradle her face, pulling her forward so they could kiss. And when he unraveled just afterward, she kept kissing him until their final thrust.
XXX
Hermione and Charlie went their separate ways after returning to the party. He stayed near Bill and Fred while she did shots of 'glacierbourbon,' a new sort of firewhisky from the States that turned ice-cold in the throat, along with Ginny, Harry and Arthur. (They transfigured their beverages into mundane objects whenever Molly neared, but she caught on as it gradually became more difficult in their inebriation and Arthur turned his into an enormous, singing pumpkin.)
As things started winding down, Hermione wrapped herself up in a cozy red throw at her favorite spot at the Burrow: a cushioned bench adjacent to a huge bay window that overlooked the garden. She'd spent hours here reading as a teenager, and something about it had always made her feel calm and at home.
Charlie dropped down next to her, throwing her extended legs over his lap. She glanced around to see who might've witnessed such a casual display of affection, but luckily, it was that time of the party in which everyone seemed to be moving toward the general area of the floo.
"You look tired, love," he said, his voice husky from talking all evening.
"Not exactly what a girl likes to hear, Charlie," Hermione said, stifling a yawn.
"Well, you're still lovely. As usual." His eyes lowered to where her wrap dress had opened slightly, revealing a sliver of her thigh. "Just a bit sleepy, yeah?"
She pulled the fabric shut and said in a whisper, "I was shagged senseless not two hours ago. Of course I'm spent."
His eyes twinkled. "Ginny says you're overworked."
Hermione sighed and leaned her head back. "Yeah. That's a bit of an understatement at this point."
"Working on any big projects?"
"Pick a card, any card," Hermione said with a smile. Charlie gave a quizzical look and Hermione realized he'd probably never seen a card trick before in his life. "I mean," she said. "Yeah, dozens of them, it seems."
"Tell me about one."
She blinked. "Why? My work is infinitely boring, especially compared to what you do."
He ran his fingers up and down her calf absentmindedly. "Let's just say I like the sound of your voice."
Hermione smiled. "Well, when you put it that way." She paused. "The name of the department."
"The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures?"
"That's the one." Hermione took a deep breath. "Well, I was really looking at it when I was first promoted. Each word, like it were a poem or something. And I realized how ethno and wizard-centric it is. Who are we to assign ourselves lords of all magical creatures? Many of them are just as sentient as we are. And in the case of certain species, satyrs and centaurs, for instance, their cognitive abilities potentially outweigh ours, by light years, really. Especially if you really look at the cultural, architectural and magical accomplishments of the veela." Hermione straightened her back.
"Moreover, the idea is that we weigh the value of each species according to how much they measure up to our arbitrary beliefs of what's normal. And if they don't measure up, we value what we can get out of them. That's how it's been historically, anyhow."
She stopped as she realized how intently he looked at her, as though he'd never heard anything more fascinating in his entire life. "Anyway," she added. "I thought if we changed the name, perhaps it'd help traditional wizarding ideas on co-existence evolve."
"What name were you thinking of?"
"Actually, I was inspired by Hagrid's course at Hogwarts a bit. The Care and Census of the Magical Population. It'd include all manners of creatures, including wizards and witches."
"Doesn't that last bit, though, fall under the Administrative Registration Department?"
"Yes. My proposal, if approved, would merge the two departments."
Charlie let out a whistle. "When do you present the proposal? Or however that goes."
"I'll put a motion out at our next head meeting. Then everyone will vote on it. In about a month and a half."
"You nervous?"
Hermione smiled. "I don't have very high expectations. Two-thirds of my colleagues see me as an annoying, know-it-all kid. They think I just got my job because of my efforts in the War."
Charlie snorted. "Anyone who's ever met you knows you've got the brains to be running the bloody Ministry."
Hermione laughed. "That's a very kind endorsement, Charlie."
"It's the truth."
"Hey, kids." Arthur stumbled toward them, already dressed in flannel pyjamas. "Just here to let you know that your mother and I are off to bed."
"Alright," Charlie said, stretching his arms out. "Surprised Mum's not here to lecture me about disappearing before breakfast."
"Well, she's still… unhappy, we'll call it, about the, ah, American firewhisky. I was actually all warm and cozy in bed, but she sent me down as punishment, I presume. And yes, she wants you to know breakfast will be served at eight sharp, and if you skip this one, she'll have two inches off your hair."
Charlie frowned. "Well, I'll be there, then."
"Fantastic. Good night, Hermione. Thanks again for the muggle time counter."
"You can just call it a watch if you like, Arthur. And you're welcome. And happy birthday."
Arthur smiled and waved as he left.
"You're spending the night?" Hermione asked, turning to Charlie.
"Yeah. It's gotten a bit late for international travel." His fingers that were previously grazing her calf immediately made their way up her dress, to about mid-thigh.
"Stop that!" Hermione said, smacking his arm. "That tickles." He winked and lowered his hand back to her shin.
Hermione lifted her legs off him to the floor and stood. "I think I better be off, too. Work early and all."
"I'll walk to you the floo."
He held his hand on the small of her back until they reached the fireplace. "So, Miss Granger. When might I see you again?"
Hermione pulled out her smartphone and clicked on the calendar icon. "Let's see. Two weekends from yesterday, it looks like there is a celebration of George and Ron's business accomplishment of exceeding their yearly goal by 60%."
Charlie shook his head. "Can't make that one. I'll be working like mad all next month, to make up for my injury."
"Okay." Hermione scrolled to the following month. "There, the sixth, Fleur's birthday."
He glanced at her phone. "I think that one works. Yeah. I'll make it work."
"Another bloody birthday," Hermione said, chuckling under her breath as she added a star icon to the sixth's square.
"Come again?"
"Nothing." She turned to him. "Have a good night, Charlie. A good month, really," she said, gesturing to her calendar.
He waited until she dropped it back in her purse before bending her backwards in an old-style Hollywood kiss. She wrapped her arms around his neck and moaned into his mouth, shocked at how ready she was for him once again, despite having had him just a few hours prior.
He lifted her straight again, then said, "Good night, Hermione." He grinned as she walked through the floo with a wave, half-wanting to fling herself back and jump his bones.
"Work tomorrow," she reminded herself as she stepped into her flat. "Stupid, stupid work."