This resides in the same universe as my fic Charlie's Choice, though it's easily read without reading that first.
Charlie Weasley
It took Charlie a long time – maybe too long – to respond when Bill sent him a Patronus saying, basically, that tonight was the night where everything was coming to a head. "It ends tonight," Bill had said.
In the end, though, the Gryffindor in Charlie won out, and he couldn't abandon his family.
Still, he figured one man wouldn't make much difference, so he'd rounded up everyone he could possibly think of and find on short notice – parents, friends, everyone who lived in Hogsmeade. By the time they came stampeding through the gates, though, things were… chaotic, to say the least. Harry Potter appeared to be both dead and missing – though how on earth the boy managed that was beyond Charlie. But then, he always had been one for defying logic.
Still, the death – disappearance? – of their hero didn't seem to have deterred the Hogwarts rebels much, as they were still putting up a rousing fight. The house elves brigade Charlie found mildly surprising, but then, he supposed, Hogwarts was their home too.
Because that's what this is really about, isn't it? Voldemort has taken over a place that has, at one point, been home to nearly every witch or wizard in Britain. And that's a line that he shouldn't have crossed, because when someone dares attack home, people get angry. People fight harder when it's home that's at stake.
And when Charlie hears his mum curse out Bellatrix Lestrange, he's quite proud. People fight harder when family's at stake, too.
He was a little bit late, he finds out later, but Charlie stuns his fair share of Death Eaters in what time he's there.
He freezes, though, when he fights his way to the table in the middle of the hall. His blood runs cold.
Tonks.
She isn't – wasn't – Tonks anymore, he knows. She was Nymphadora Lupin. Still, she'll always be Tonks in his head. Tonks, with her vibrant hair and her glowing eyes. He's never met anyone who loved life as much as she did.
She doesn't get to love life, anymore.
And next to her is her husband, and Charlie wonders about the little baby boy, who on this night lost not only his godfather, but his mother and father, too.
And then his gaze travels the rest of the table, and everything goes blurry.
Fred.
Charlie knows – because Charlie's always known, somehow – which twin it is lying lifeless on the table. It has nothing to do with the ears. Charlie can't even see both ears from where he's standing. He still knows.
Some sort of spell slices through his left biceps and Charlie is forced to acknowledge the rest of the world again. He throws a stunner at the Death Eater it came from and keeps moving.
There'll be time to dwell on the dead later.
