This chapter will be the heaviest it will get. TW for a rough (consensual) sex scene towards the end.
When Hermione opened her eyes up from apparition, it was so black, she had to blink for a few moments just to make out some shadows. She glanced up at the sliver of moon to orient herself. As she followed the moonlight to its settling places, she could see the tall silhouettes of trees, all around them.
"Hermione, you alright?" She turned and saw the dark shapes of Charlie and Paolo behind her.
"Yeah," she said as Charlie took her hand.
"This way," he said, pulling her along a path.
As they walked along, some peach flowers at their feet lit up, as though someone had filled them with a few fairy lights. Like a line of dominoes, the flowers lit beyond them all in a row, and soon, the path they were on glowed from either side. Hermione felt like she was walking down the aisle at a forest wedding.
"For most of the dragons, we have to make caves for them. Some like stone, some like earth. Rama, though." Charlie chuckled. "She likes to sleep outside."
"Wild woman," Hermione smiled.
They walked for some minutes, until they came upon a form. Here, the flowers lit up all around it, so Hermione could only see the dimly-lit sharpness of a claw here, or a few smooth scales there. As they got closer, she heard Rama's long, slow breaths, punctuated with the swirling smoke at her exhale.
"Alright, Hermione, you wait here," Charlie said when they were about twenty feet away. "I'll need to tell her you're coming first, see if she's up for it."
Hermione nodded, as he and Paolo approached the dragon. Charlie bent to talk gently in her ear while Paolo put a hand on her head. She stirred and opened her eyes. Hermione gasped—Charlie wasn't exaggerating that they glowed in dim lighting. Rama's eyes were the orange of a flame, and after a moment, they settled right on Hermione.
Charlie made a motion for Hermione to join him. She did so slowly, not wanting to startle Rama, whose eyes remained on her as she approached.
"Don't they spit fire, like, from fifty yards away?" Hermione whispered.
"Most of them do. But like I said." Charlie smiled. "Rama's a special girl." Rama gave a purr at Charlie's words, the vibrations of which Hermione could feel in her chest.
Hermione felt a wave of fear as Rama continued to stare. The beast's head was the length of a door! But the fear began to wane as Charlie beckoned her to touch Rama's head. Hermione reached slowly, at first stroking her scales with the tips of her fingers. Rama's eyes hooded sleepily as Hermione placed her palm down and patted her gently. Charlie nodded toward Paolo, who pulled out his wand and turned up the flower light that surrounded them.
Now she could see Rama's features much more clearly. Her skin was the color of red ochre, similar to the cave paintings she saw in Paolo's home. Her scales looked like mother of pearl in the light, giving a soft rainbow sheen. She had long, dark eyelashes that fluttered as Hermione shifted the pressure of her hand. Her eye color dulled in the brighter light, but it was no less pretty.
Several deep lines carved into her prognathic face, leading down from the corners of her eyes. "That's why she's called a Riversnout, I suppose," Hermione mused.
"Yes," Paolo said, approaching with a handful of glass vials. "But that's not the only reason why. Can you sing, Hermione?"
"Sing?" Hermione furrowed her brow at Paolo, and glanced at Charlie, who nodded encouragingly.
"Rama likes singing," Charlie explained. "But it's got to be sung to her. Not just aloud in general."
"I'm absolutely terrible—"
"She doesn't care," Paolo said. "Trust me. Anna says my voice could make birds drop out of the sky. It still works for Rama. Long as you sing to her."
"But—I don't even know—"
Charlie put his hands on hers. "Trust me, okay? Just a short song. Doesn't have to be anything fancy."
Hermione turned to Rama, who stretched lazily, adjusting her hips with a thump that trembled the earth under their feet. She sat down next to her face. Paolo sat down on the other side, handing a couple vials to Charlie, who crossed his legs next to Hermione.
"Do I start now?" Hermione asked. Both wizards nodded.
She took a breath, deciding on a lullaby her mum used to sing her when she was little.
I see the moon and the moon sees me
Under the gaze of the old oak tree
Please let the light that shines on me
Shine on the one that I love
Over the mountains and over the sea
Out where my heart is longing to be
Please let the light that shines on me
Shine on the one that I love
Rama's eyes filled with tears and began their fast migration over the grooves in her snout. Paolo and Charlie caught them with the vials, filling up a couple with just the one song. Paolo motioned for her to keep singing, and she did a couple more rounds of "I See the Moon," making sure to keep eye contact with Rama the whole while. When all the vials were filled, Paolo collected them from Charlie, placing them in a worn leather sack.
Charlie wrapped an arm on Rama's snout, bending his head. "Thank you, you gorgeous thing. That was a bloody good cry you did." Rama purred, flicking her tail so that the ground shook once more.
"What just happened?" Hermione asked. "Why did she cry? Why are you collecting her tears?"
"I can explain," Paolo said to Charlie. "You good with getting her down again?"
"Certainly. I'll meet you at the lab in a few."
"This way, Hermione." Paolo took her hand and led her a few feet from Rama and Charlie before apparating her away.
x
The reservation's potions lab was a far cry from the one in the Hogwarts dungeons. Moonlight streamed in through the open windows, and plants grew all around their paned edges. Paolo reached to one of these vines and plucked a few leaves. "Glitter leaf," he explained. "Helps us to preserve her tears."
Hermione watched as he poured the vials into a larger one and broke some of the leaves in.
"You're a potioneer?"
He nodded. "Been working here as one for almost twenty years, now." He chuckled. "Ah, now I feel like a viejo, telling you that." He noticed her puzzled expression. "Viejo. Means old man."
"Ah," Hermione said, smiling.
"When you've been working with potions long as I have, amor, you start to recognize potential in a material, even before you work with it. When Rama started crying—its' 'cause she's moved, you know, not sad—I could almost smell that magia in her tears. On that hunch, I gathered some and tested it."
He grabbed his wand and levitated the pieces of leaf out, one by one, into a towel. "You read up on the latest research on the effects of the Cruciatus Curse?"
Hermione felt a jolt in her stomach at the words and she shook her head. She could almost feel the scar on her arm tingling underneath several layers of glamour spells.
"Some British Healers have just discovered that the curse itself attacks the vagus nerve. Controls a lot in the body, but what we're interested in is when it's injured, the fight or flight responses in the victims… how do you say? It's stronger. Intensifies, that's the word. Doesn't turn off when it should."
Hermione gulped. "Like, what are the symptoms, if, say, someone's been tortured for about an hour or so?"
He looked off, narrowing his eyes. "Even a little of that torture can do a lot of damage, Hermione. We're looking at… paranoia. The feeling that something terrible is always gonna happen. Lots of unexplained phobias. Things like that. Though, of course, the researchers are interested in reversing those effects, especially for the ones for which it's too far gone. When people lose their minds, you know?"
"Like the Longbottoms," Hermione whispered. She raised her voice to ask, "But what does this have to do with Rama's tears?"
He held out his hands, smiling. "Her tears heal it. The injury from the curse. It re-stimulates the nerve right back to where it belongs. We've only tried it with one patient so far, one who was tortured by You-Know-Who firsthand. And his progress is remarkable. We're looking at something big here, Hermione.
"Thing is," he said, placing the dried leaves in a wooden container with his wand. "Some ingredients are gonna increase the tears' power. We have to do it, to learn what works, with reductive potioneering. Charlie said you had a background in it, yes?"
Hermione remembered telling Charlie about Malfoy's job offer. Her heartbeat increased and she nodded numbly.
"We're looking at hiring a dozen witches and wizards who can work with Rama's tears. The pay's good, the benefits are even better. But," Paolo sighed. "The results of this work are gonna be worth it just by themselves. I've been conducting little tests here and there. And you know what else her tears seem to be reversing, at least on the blood level?"
"Hmm?" Hermione asked, trying to calm the tremble in her hands.
He looked right in her eyes. "Lycanthropy."
Hermione gasped. "But—but that's not curable, at least, hundreds of people over hundreds of years have tried—"
"It might be curable now, Hermione." Paolo smiled. "We've just got to do a little experimenting first."
x
Hermione stared at the vial of tears, her mind and heart reeling.
A pop of apparition let her know that Charlie'd arrived. She didn't turn to face him.
"Where's Paolo?"
"He went back to Anna. Said you'd be here in a second to pick me up."
Charlie walked around, placing a hand on her arm. "You okay, Hermione?"
She finally glanced at him. Gods, why did he have to look so devastatingly beautiful right now? His hair was loose and wavy, the color of buckwheat honey in this light. His eyes, framed by those dark lashes, full of concern. The scruff on his cheeks and chin had gotten to her favorite length, just long enough to scratch in the most pleasing of ways. And his lips, Merlin, so wide and soft and gods. How she wished she could kiss him, kiss this whole freak-out away.
Instead, she took a breath. "Is this," she said, gesturing to the vial in front of her. "Is that why you had me visit you? So you could get Paolo to tell me about this job?"
He furrowed his brow. "No. I mean, well. I got the idea after you told me about Malfoy's offer. But I wanted to see you, for you to—"
"For me to just up and leave my whole life and move here? I mean, leave Harry and Ginny and the boys, my career—"
"The job you hate," Charlie said.
"The job I value," she corrected, raising her voice. "The job that gives me the opportunity to turn back hateful prejudices—"
"The job that won't let you, you mean." Charlie crossed his arms. "Did you hear Paolo? About what this can do? What it can heal?"
"What it supposedly heals, Charlie. No strenuous experimentation has been done yet, to, to confirm—"
"Which is why we need you. People like you." He placed his hands on hers, drawing them out. "Brilliant, caring, hard-working. To help make the wizarding world a better place. That's what you want to do, isn't it?"
"In England!" Hermione snapped her hands back.
Charlie took a step back, looking as though she'd slapped him. "Hermione, so you mean to tell me. All this time. This thing, between us, it was going nowhere?"
"What do you mean, nowhere, Charlie? Everything was great until you, you warned everyone about my emotional problems tonight, insinuated I had a drinking problem—"
"No," he said. "Ginny told me you drink a bit much when you're feeling out of sorts, and I didn't want that—"
"Everyone was great," she said, ignoring him, "until you attacked me with this bloody job offer."
Charlie looked down, his shoulders dropping. "So, that's it, then? All this time, I've been just a fuck to you."
Hermione's eyes widened. "You've been a fuck to me? I thought I was the fuck to you!"
"Right," Charlie said, chuckling bitterly. "I brought you all the way here, to see my place, my work, introducing you to my mates as my girlfriend. All because this is just sex to me, right?"
Hermione sighed, wringing at her hair. "Charlie. You're not just a fuck. God, you're—you're." She stopped short of it. You're everything, she thought. You are this whole world to me.
"Hermione, thing about being a dragon keeper that I learned early on? You can't hesitate. Or it could mean the end of everything." He walked to her, his ocean eyes right upon hers. "This is me, not hesitating. I want you. I want you here, with me. Is that really so awful an idea?"
She stared right back. Until she couldn't take it anymore. "I—" She took a couple steps backward. "I can't." She disappeared in a clap.
x
At Charlie's cabin, she ran from room to room, flinging her clothes and belongings into her bags as fast as she could. "Good fucking Godric," she muttered. Of course this had to end this way, she thought. The best holiday of her life, along with the best person she'd ever been with, all of it coming to a screeching, crashing, fiery end.
As she reached for the floo powder, bags wrapped all around her hastily, she felt a large, warm hand on her arm. "Oh, no you don't," Charlie growled, flinging her to face him.
"Charlie," she breathed. He reached around her and grabbed her knapsack, flinging it to the other side of the room. He kicked her rolling luggage down the hallway, tossed her purse somewhere behind him.
She put her hands on her hips, fuming. "Charles Fabian Weasley, what on earth do you think—"
And then he snogged her.
He pressed his lips to hers hard, thrusting his tongue into her mouth immediately. She froze for a second before returning the kiss, wrapping her arms around him, pulling his hair to let him know that she was still fucking pissed at him. He let out a groan and broke the kiss, their lips snapping apart loudly. He threw her coat off, pulled her sweater over her head. He shoved one of her bra cups to the side and bent to bite her nipple.
Her knees immediately buckled as he sucked much more aggressively than normal. She dragged her nails down his arms, leaving scratches through the fabric, she was certain, before she tugged his jumper over his head. He bent to scrape his teeth over her other breast as she moaned, nearly falling backward before grabbing his belt buckle.
As he kicked his trousers off, she snatched his cock in her grip as soon as it sprung out. He tried to pull her forward, but she dropped to her knees and shoved his length into her mouth.
Charlie moaned so loud, her knickers, she realized, were probably just about soaking her jeans at that point. She grabbed his hips and encouraged him to fuck her, to pummel into her throat. She wanted to feel him, every part of him, every single inch.
She stopped just to scrape her teeth ever so slightly against the underside of his cock, making him yelp like a wild animal. And maybe they were, she thought, as he pumped into her face once more. Maybe this was how uncivilized beasts fucked. Like dragons.
He grabbed his wand and with a wave, the rest of her clothing disappeared. Before she could utter a word about the loss, he guided her down roughly, spread her legs open and dropped his mouth on her sopping pussy, devouring her like a starved man.
She came instantly, her head thudding back on some piece of furniture as she arched her back. He kept licking, sucking, eating. It felt so good, it almost hurt, and within minutes, she came again, pushing her pelvis up to rock against his face.
Charlie climbed over her, but she didn't want him to have her like this. "No," she shrieked. He stopped, his face frozen on hers as she stood. She grabbed his arms, lifted him up and shoved him on the sofa as hard as she could, his cock bouncing back and forth. She leapt on him and sank him into her so fast, she nearly orgasmed for the third time.
Charlie's hands grabbed her hips and he rocked her on him like she was a rag doll. And she loved it. She loved ever moment of this sex that made their rough coupling prior appear as gentle as the skinny moon out the window. Maybe it was because her feelings for him were completely, unabashedly raw- all out in the open, all over one another. When she came again, he joined her, kissing her deeply as she screamed in her throat.
Their movements came to a stop just as abruptly as the whole enterprise had begun. And before she could stop herself, she wept into his shoulder.
"Hermione," he said, his voice cracking. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I hurt you, didn't I? Gods, I don't know what got into me, I just had to have you, and I thought you liked it—"
And his gentle apologies, punctuated with a few tears of his own, just made her cry harder. Because she knew then that she could never be worthy enough for Charlie Weasley. And fuck, that hurt to admit.
But when she could speak again, she didn't tell him this. She simply pushed herself so that she sat in his lap, rather than straddled it, and she showed him her forearm, whispering away the glamours.
There, in an ugly, marred pink. Mudblood.
Charlie looked at it, his eyes as sharp as daggers. "Who did this to you?" he asked, his voice feral.
"Bellatrix," she whispered. He grabbed her and pulled her into him in a desperate hug. "She tortured me with the Cruciatus Curse for nearly an hour, Charlie. I didn't realize it until Paolo explained it… but that's why I'm so fucked up." New tears ran down her face and she wiped them away, sniffling.
He pushed her back to look at her. "But Rama's tears, Hermione. They could—"
"They could, Charlie. But what if they can't? That means, that means—" she couldn't bring herself to say it.
He stared at her, unblinking, for several seconds. "I love you," he said finally.
She gasped. "What?"
"I love you. And I don't care if you don't feel it or can't say it back. I'm finished with all this… hesitation, okay? And I love you as you are. Whether or not Rama's tears work. Whether or not you live here or in London. I love you, Hermione."
She bit her lip and he pulled her back into a hug. "Don't say anything, love," he whispered. "You don't have to say anything at all."
She nodded. And he lifted up, with her in his arms, and took her to bed.
x
Hermione awoke early, when the light was still blue. She watched Charlie, his muscled arms wrapped around her so tight, his breath even and deep. She slowly unraveled herself from him, quiet enough that he stayed asleep.
She washed up, gathered her things, and borrowed a quill to write a note. She left it on his bedside and willed herself not to cry as she watched him for a few moments longer, before leaving by floo.
Charlie, she'd written. You deserve someone who doesn't hesitate.
Not to fret, folks, we are still on our way to a happy ending. Just have to break it all open first before we can put the pieces together again.
Thanks so much, again, for your patience, support, and reviews. Again, you're amazing.
You don't need a dragon's tears to re-stimulate the vagus nerve. Just search for it on Google, and there are many remedies. A couple of my favorites are yoga and massage.
We're about two to three chapters away from the end!
Hope you're all having wonderful weeks.