Harry Potter and all characters, settings and situations in this story is © J. K. Rowling, Warner Brothers, Scholastic, Bloomsbury, and all others involved.
The Magical World is One Family
A rare moment of quiet at The Burrow: Ginny, her mother, coffee and cake.
"So how's school been?" Molly asked, spooning sugar into her coffee.
"It's a bit weird, having normal lessons after everything that happened last year. It's nice being in the same year as Harry, Ron and Hermione, though. I'm glad they came back." Ginny slid her fork through her slice of cake. "It's like there's a whole load of new ghosts there but you can't see them." She put the fork in her mouth. "We don't get food like this at school. I love your sour cherry and almond loaf."
"Charlie's favourite. It's his birthday today."
"Oh, Merlin, so it is. Are you OK Mum?" Ginny asked, peering into her mother's face, looking for signs of dried tears.
Molly spoke quietly as she cut herself a second slice, "No Percy last Christmas. I thought we might all be together this year."
There was a pause, Ginny sucking meditatively on her fork. Then she stabbed a cherry and burst out, "There must be some way we could sneak him in without Mr Malfoy finding out."
"There probably is," her mother agreed, "but would he be welcome?"
"Oh, Dad'll come round. I want another slice, but I've got to be careful if I'm going to keep my position as Chaser." Ginny eyed the crumbly, sugar-topped temptation.
"It's not just your father, though, is it Ginny?" Molly asked pointedly.
"You can't mean me! I miss Charlie like mad, like everyone else does. I don't blame him for anything!" Ginny exclaimed indignantly.
Mrs Weasley continued, calmly, "But he'd hardly come on his own, would he?"
"Why not? He couldn't expect us to give Malfoy houseroom after …"
Molly interrupted her daughter to ask, "Would you leave Harry on his own at Christmas?"
Ginny watched the big knife slicing through port-soaked cherries, avoiding her mother's eyes, as she cut herself another slice. Eventually she managed to mutter, "It's not the same thing."
Molly pulled parchment out of the pocket in her apron. She laid the single sheet on the table, saying simply, "I got this."
Ginny read. "Cheeky so-and-so! How dare he write to you?" She read on. "A recipe? Oh, for Pete's sake! You didn't?"
"Years ago I collected up some of the recipes I use a lot into a notebook. But then none of you ever showed any interest and Fleur would rather starve …"
"You sent it to him? But that's like … You can't pretend he's like Fleur, she's your daughter-in-law … Mum!" Ginny felt betrayed.
"I got a lovely thank you letter and he sent me his first attempt at the loaf cake. To check he'd got it right." Molly sighed, "It's nice to know he's looking after my Charlie."
"Looking after him? Perverting him and …" Ginny suddenly stopped speaking and dropped her fork, her face forming an expression of frozen horror. "This is it, isn't it?" she asked, staring down at the crumbs on her plate as though she'd just been tricked into eating human flesh. "Mum, did Malfoy bake this cake?"
"Yes, it's good, isn't it?" Molly could not entirely suppress her smirk.
"No, it's sick! His hands have been on the ingredients and now they're inside me! It's like having the ferret's hands inside me!" Ginny wailed.
"Don't be so dramatic, dear!" her mother reprimanded.
"And Merlin knows where his hands have been!"
Molly answered defiantly, "Well I hope they've been on your poor brother, I expect he could use some cuddles!"
"It's not as good as when you make it, anyway." Ginny muttered.
"You won't manage a third slice then?" Her mother asked, archly.
A lazy February Sunday morning in Transylvania: Charlie, Draco and a bed. For breakfast they were having each other. Their love-making was lazy and languid because they had nothing else they had to do all day and they already knew each other's bodies so well.
Draco slowly kissed his way across Charlie's shoulders, playing join-the-dots in freckles. He loved how long it took him, how broad a back it was. He liked the scars less, but now he understood that they were part of who his loved one had decided to become. He traced his tongue down the groove of an old clawing wound almost fondly.
Charlie rolled over to face him, sweeping the silver fringe to one side. He liked Draco's hair long. And his skin was perfect now - clear, pale, glowing. Charlie ran both his hands down Draco's chest, through soft hairs, feeling only a hint of the shape of the bones underneath. He leant his mouth down to nip at the perfect whiteness, to mark it as his own.
And then they kissed for a long time, lazily to start with until the momentum built and they were tussling for position, each trying to hold the other down. Afterwards they lay quietly, holding hands, hearing the rain beat on the little bay of the bedroom window.
"When did you first know you were gay?" Charlie asked. He'd been thinking of his own troubled primary school years, his epiphany the summer he was eleven and the plan he had taken to Hogwarts.
Draco answered, "The first time I saw you."
Charlie grinned complacently. Then he suddenly sat upright and stared in panic at the teenage boy in his bed.
"But that means your father's right. And Percy's right! In Diagon Alley, you were so lost and lonely, so vulnerable. And I was the first person to be nice to you in days. If you hadn't fancied men before that then it was friendship you needed and I took your innocence, which makes me a molester, a predator …" Charlie trailed off having recognised Draco's emotionless expression.
"Have we finished being melodramatic?" Draco drawled superciliously.
Charlie smiled sheepishly. "That wasn't the first time, was it? I do remember. The Triwizard Tournament."
"I wasn't spying for anyone except myself. And it wasn't the dragons I was watching." Then, with a wry smile, Draco added, "With hindsight, that may have been why I was quite so beastly to Ron. For reminding me of you."
"You fancied my brother?"
"Ron? Not much. George is pretty fit, though."
"And that's OK is it?" Charlie asked.
With narrowed eyes Draco hissed, "The difference is that I fancy your brother because he looks like you, whereas you only fancy me because I look like my father."
The pause was a few seconds too long before Charlie denied it. Draco left the room.
Charlie found him in the kitchen, fully dressed and chopping roots meticulously on a glass board. His mood was unreadable; he didn't look up.
"We need to get this sorted out once and for all," Charlie said as calmly as he could. "When I was a teenager your Dad was school governor and he came in to give out some prize or something. I was all hormones and libido. And yes, he's stunning looking. The same way you are. But it's you I love. I'm living with you, sleeping with you. He's trying to kill me. I don't even like him. It's about time you stopped being jealous of him. That's just how it is."
Draco swept everything in front of him onto the floor. The glass shattered as he screamed, "No! This is how it is: You're the only man I've ever wanted, the only one I've ever had. But for you, I'm just the end of the line, the current favourite, the one who was left after you'd tried everyone else …"
"Has Percy been talking to you?" Charlie demanded angrily.
"Oh no, nobody ever tells me anything. I just get vague warnings and advice to be careful. I don't know anything about anywhere else, though I bet it's just as bad. I only know about this village: the resentment of the baker who won't serve me and the dragon-hide tanner who spits at me; the pity from the chocolatier who slips me chocolate fish, saying, 'Only for you, you not give to him'; superior smirks from your colleague who thinks he knows things I don't …"
"Which one?" Charlie asked.
"One you've screwed! How much does that narrow it down?" There was silence. They glared at each other, but Charlie didn't answer. Finally, in a cracked voice, Draco answered his own question, "I make it five on your team alone, and there are only a dozen of you. You'd been with everyone else before it was my turn. You even prefer a man who issues regular death threats against you, who's driven us into exile …"
"We're not in exile. I live here," Charlie pointed out, but softly. "Finished? I don't prefer him, I don't prefer anyone except you. It's you I'm with now."
Draco kicked over a wooden stool and tried to scream again, but his abused vocal chords only managed a squeak: "Only because you pity me, only because I've got nowhere else to go!"
Charlie reached out to touch the trembling, dishevelled figure, but he was flung off. Draco picked up his wand and aimed it at him, whispering, "I should hex your skin off you bastard!" Then all the fight abruptly left him and he sank to the floor. He curled his long fingers round his blond head and muttered in a lifeless voice, "But it's true, I haven't got anywhere else to go."
Charlie nearly retorted that if that was the only reason he stayed the he needn't bother. But he bit that back, deciding not to prolong the row that he could see was nearly over. He dropped down to the floor, too, and wrapped his arms around his love. Draco snuggled into Charlie's chest, hiding his face.
"Can I answer now?" Charlie asked quietly. He decided to read a slight movement as a nod and kissed the top of Draco's head.
"It's true," Charlie began, "I've had sex with a lot of men. In the past. But how long have we been together now?"
Draco muttered, "Five months, two weeks and three days."
"My previous record was nineteen days. Mostly one-night-stands, a few lasted a week. I just took that first, passionate thrill, took a lot of virginities. And then dumped them without a backward glance. When I saw you outside George's shop last summer you were so lonely, lost, lacking self-esteem. Easy pickings. Just my type. 'Vulnerable' is Percy's word. He says I have an instinct for locating vulnerability, for manipulating the lost and pretty. With the others I always took what I wanted and walked away."
Draco looked up into Charlie's face. He looked sick.
"I've been a bad, bad man, angel," Charlie stated, looking into Draco's damp, grey eyes. "And then you happened. It's different. You're special. I couldn't cope if you left me. And I'm certainly not going to leave you. I didn't think I was capable of feeling this. If you were a girl I think I'd ask you to marry me. If it had been anyone else with me in the Leaky Cauldron when your Dad broke down the door, I'd have escaped here alone."
"So you're a creep?" Draco asked, but he didn't expect Charlie to answer that, so he just added, "But you're my creep."
"Am I really the only one you've ever had sex with?" Charlie asked.
The pause was just a few seconds too long before Draco confirmed it.