I made this a two-shot. Yup. I needed to write more (Red and Green was brilliant and beautiful ASDJKFL!) and I could write more so Annie, here you go.
Unrelated, but my school form tutor knows I write Fanfiction now. I said about my 68 chapter story, and then went on a bit about JohnLock.
HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT SHIPPING IS!
Ahem. Merry Christmas Annie. Again.
White-Less Christmas
Charlie wasn't comfortable sitting on a wall (well, perching), dressed up in pretty formal clothes. He kept checking his watch every three seconds, even though he knew that doing so wouldn't make Annie arrive any faster.
"Over here, we have a Welsh Green." Annie said, showing Charlie a huge, green dragon that would have intimidated a dragon tamer of less calibre than he. "Oh, look out, she's pretty damn pregnant."
Charlie immediately walked backwards. Dragons had a nasty habit of becoming more vicious around the time that they were having kids, and Christmas, funnily enough.
When he voiced this last wonderment to Annie, she looked at him funny and pulled a face. "Er… Are you okay?" She asked, in a voice that was admirably void of sarcasm. "Dragons have never been tetchy around Christmas that I know of."
"I think the ones in Romania ate a batch of dodgy mice pies." Charlie shrugged, although he was, in a word, thrown. "Never been the same since. My mate André once tried to feed a Hungarian Horntail a turkey, that might be the cause."
"Oh, I know this one!" Annie cut in suddenly, with a grin. "You English eat turkey at Christmas, don't you? Because it's so cold over there at Christmas-time. We just have barbeques. What's it like, having a cold Christmas-time?"
"Um." Was all Charlie could really say. "I'm used to it, I guess."
Annie grinned again, and nodded, gesturing to one of her colleagues as she began to move Charlie on to the next dragon. "Ooh, I doubt you've seen one of these before Mr Weasley-"
"Charlie." Charlie corrected, with a charming – he wished – smile. Annie giggled slightly, but nodded, and turned the key in one of the gates.
The gates were huge, wrought iron structures, floor to ceiling in length, and positioned in a large, clean starch white room. There were noticeably little to no scorch marks around the huge room, but as there was at least thirty people standing to one side with buckets of water, Charlie was somehow not that surprised.
"You know, most of the Ministry is underwater." Annie explained, pulling a cord for one of the blinds on the windows. Charlie swallowed, and then stepped backwards when she pulled to cord, revealing a perfect view of the water outside the window, complete with a swarm (was it a swarm?) of fish. "Including this room. We have one or two levels above sea level, it's just easier due to being on the coast."
Charlie nodded, peeling his eyes away from the fish. "What's the land route then?" He asked, looking around hopefully for a set of stairs marked 'Land Route' or something similar. "I mean to this Ministry."
Annie shook her head. "No, visitors mainly use the diving school." She began to explain, pulling the cord again. "Especially visitors to this area-"
"Watch out!" Charlie grabbed her hand and yanked Annie down, just as a jet of flame came soaring out of the Welsh Green's cage and missed their heads by inches.
"Thanks." Annie said, with a smile, as she nodded at a few of the other workers, who were working on subduing the Dragon. She dusted down her jeans with her free hand, and then paused.
"Oh, yeah." Charlie corrected quickly, dropping her hand and managing to smirk just in enough time to look sexy.
"Don't worry about it." Annie smirked too, and Charlie let out a low whistle as he watched her blue eyes light up. "Remember, you're picking me up at seven."
Charlie nodded to himself, checking his watch one more time for luck before leaning backwards on his hands and looking up at the clear night sky, which still carried a hint of purple from the magnificent sunset that had occurred not an hour ago.
He had been more than correct when he had said that the birds were fit in Australia. And being able to score one in… What? An hour, tops? Boosted his ego considerably.
"Hey."
Charlie sat up remarkably fast, and smiled when he saw (finally) Annie standing there. "Hey." He said back, not realising how dumbstruck he sounded. "You look beautiful."
Annie smiled; making her eyes light up again, and then took the arm that Charlie was offering, laughing when he tripped up on a slightly loose stone.
"So," Charlie finally said, after a few moments of silence. "Barbeques then."
