Chapter Six: A Picnic –of Sorts

I locked the shop from the inside. It's easier that way. Charlie looked slightly confused, then nodded knowingly.

"Best not be seen leaving by Gred and Forge," I reasoned aloud. "They'll just follow and play tricks."

"Have they done that often?" Charlie asked, following me to the back entrance. I smirked ruefully.

"Once, so far."

"Really?"

"Yes. Lee Jordan, of all people. Apparently they did not like the idea of their best male friend hanging around their best female one…puzzling sentiment."

"Well…having met Lee, I'm not entirely certain I disagree."

"Really?" I tried my best not to laugh at that. "So you'd be scaring guys away from me with exploding cocktail nuts also?"

"Of course not." Charlie smiled gently. "You're capable enough. If the guy were real trouble, though…"

"Then you'd spring for the exploding nuts?"

"Jessie, what do you take me for?" I really did like his smile. "I'd use Norbert."

I sighed in mock disgust, then turned the key in the lock of the back door. Carefully, I hopped down the old back stairs. They're incredibly rickety and you have to skip the next-to-topmost and fourth one down, as they have a bad tendency to fail under weights in excess of a kilogram. I would fix that, but considering my location, it seems like a better idea to just leave my back door a little less vulnerable.

"Careful on the stairs…skip the ones I skipped."

"Which were –oof!"

Charlie's right foot went neatly through the fourth step down. Quickly as I could, I was back up the flight, next to him.

"Here. Lean on your left foot so's you dinna fall…" Fortunately, Charlie already had, and his foot was only a little of the way through. The step, being metal, as are most of the external fixtures, had caught him as he'd instinctively tried to pull his foot away from the failing surface. I put his left arm over my shoulders and leaned on the banister. "Count 'a three, pull your foot out." I crouched down, bending my left knee, and carefully pressed down the broken step with my right. "One…two…" I waited, pressing slowly until his foot was free. "Three." He lifted his foot and I let go of the bad step. "You okay?"

"I'm fine …dangerous steps you have, though."

"Yes. I would fix them, but-" I gestured to the neighborhood we were now in.

"Ah," Charlie seemed to agree with me.

I know it must have startled him. My shop is near the corner of Diagon and Knockturn Alley, and my back entrance opens into the back alley of the most back-alley Alley (does that make sense?) in all of London. He wasn't so naïve as to visibly gulp upon seeing just where it was I lived, as some people I've known have, but he was quite clearly on edge.

Hermione had an interesting little theory on why that is. Dark or Light wizards, regardless, all seem to get a little case of the twingy-guts and the shivery-spines when they go into Knockturn Alley, with two exceptions. Muggle-born people, who after a point expect anything anyway, usually have to be told what a dodgy place it reputedly is. Being told something is dodgy after you've gotten a look usually doesn't leave much room to be intimidated.

The other exception is tradespeople, like me. They're perfectly used to living in Diagon or some other Alley, they keep their shops, and generally see more or less everything in the course of long careers. Knockturn Alley is merely the next street over from me, and for some reason it fails to scare me. I'm not stupid, of course, I wouldn't go there alone after dark; but it by and large doesn't bother me. I leave the steps the way they are as a backup, though I'm really as likely to be burgled as Gringotts –but that's a long story. Charlie had grown up with scary tales of Knockturn Alley, and as much as such a forbidden place slightly fascinates most wizard children, he also had the sense to be a bit worried.

"It's not so bad," I remarked coolly. A touch of mindless bravado there, I admit, but it seemed to make him feel a little better. "Come on. We can get back to Diagon through the break two stores over."

"That's alright. We could just Apparate from here."

"Oh. Good point. …Where are we going?" I glanced at a rat near the rain gutter, hoping I didn't have to do any long-distance Apparating. I'm really quite bad at it.

"Hmm…know what?" Charlie gave me one of those mischievous grins again. "Hold still. …and shut your eyes."

I complied. Why not? Soon, however, I felt a weird pulling near the waist of my jeans. Good lord! Weasleys didn't usually…they weren't the sort who'd…

I felt the strange pull of the Apparating next. It was very strange. Finally, Charlie touched my hand and told me to open my eyes.

"Oh." I realized what the funny pulling was -nothing 'funny' at all. Charlie had simply hooked our belts together with a clip-ring. "How clever!"

"It's how we move tranquilized dragons," was the oh-so-flattering explanation. "Only that takes about nine people and we have to put the dragon in harness."

"I had wondered how you moved them long distances."

"Yeah…you can't just levitate or lorry an unconscious dragon through a Romanian village …unless there's a parade on, then you just shake some glitter on him and dress up a friend as St. George."

"Are you serious?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

We were both smiling as we stepped out of the alley into Muggle London. It was early evening, and the sky was doing some very pretty things as it got ready to put the toy sun away. The buildings and streets are really different in many ways from the Alleys and Hogsmeade, where I grew up, but I had visited often enough not to be startled. A little bus, only double-decker, came to a stop and Charlie took my arm, leading me onto it.

It occurred to me that I had five Galleons and ten Sickles in my pockets. Unless the Muggle driver was some kind of numismatist… but it turned out to be okay. Charlie had gotten some of his changed before leaving. It only cost two little coins apiece, actually, somewhere between Sickle and Knut in size. We took a seat in the back of the lower level, and sped slowly (well, in terms of, say, the Knight Bus, we were slow, in terms of walking it was quite zippy,) toward wherever it was we were headed.

To my surprise, we blended in rather well with the Muggles. Charlie had on jeans like mine, only more masculinely cut, black boots that looked like just ordinary leather, a white shirt with buttons, and a green suede vest. (I knew it was suede –no scale marks.) Our outfits were similar in design, jeans, collared shirt, vest, boots, but very different in substance. To my surprise when I glanced in the bus window, I looked unusually girly. Charlie looked handsome, but then, in my opinion he always did. I didn't quite know what to make of it. Did we look like a couple? Were we, for the purposes of the evening?

I didn't want to think about what Fred and George would say.

"How's the shop been lately?" Charlie asked. I woke up from the little reverie and answered:

"Pretty good. I got some new materials in awhile ago, but it looks like I short-ordered micro-grain solder again."

"Micro–what?"

"Micro-grain solder –you know what solder is?"

"That kind of meltable wire you use to connect bits of metal with?"

"That's it exactly. Well, grain solder is just like that, only instead of coming in big rolls of wire, it comes in little grains like metal pretzel salt. Micro-grain solder is like little grains of metal table salt."

"Oh. So, you just put a grain or two where you need to join up some really tiny parts, and then you make it hot and it solders 'em?"

"Precisely! Have you been reading up on this or something?"

"No…just seemed kind of logical. That, and Dad's forever messing with Mug- you know, antiques and stuff." We were, after all, surrounded by Muggles. –Well, not quite surrounded, there were only four or five other people on our floor of the bus, but we were 'on their turf,' as my brother says. I changed the subject.

"How's the writing going?"

"Well…I'm a little stuck, but it's just a question of the bleeding 'R' key getting tangled with the 'D.'" I must have looked fairly blank. "Dad found me a tap writer. It's quite nice."

"What's a tap writer?"

"It's a little machine for writing, very neat. You put a piece of paper in the top, and scroll it down, and then you just tap the key for each letter, like playing the piano."

"Sounds hard."

"Not really. The letters are all printed on the keys." Charlie took a piece of white, smooth paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. "And see how nice it looks."

I looked at the neat, even letters and careful, exact numbers –he had tap-written what looked like a train schedule, but the letters all looked like something out of a book, they were so regular. Muggles really do have some neat ideas.

"It does look good…I should likely look for one for keeping the books and such."

"They aren't hard to find. Dad got mine at a rummage sale for a pound." He didn't dare give me the corresponding amount, but I knew it was something like a Galleon and a half or so. "We're nearly there. Do you like fish an' chips?"

"Of course!"

As much as my stepmother disapproves, especially since Grandfather's heart attack, I adore fish an' chips; fried to perfection, sprinkled with salt and coated in vinegar. It's apparently somewhat lower-class in Muggle terms, but then again, their best things are lower-class. Like drinking that soda stuff out of those adorably crunchable aluminum cans. I find that fun. It's likely my favorite dinner, fish, chips, and soda …which is likely what the boys or Ginny told Charlie. He had done his research on me. The strange thing was, that sort of thing didn't seem creepy from him. Whenever guys had gone to the trouble of feeling me out with my friends beforehand, it had seemed vaguely stalker-y. With Charlie, it just seemed…logical.

We got off the bus at a stop on a busy street and Charlie had to point out how the crossing lights worked –and prevent me getting run over by a lorry. That's the only dodgy thing about Muggle London, the damn cars and lorries. Really, they're a mess. They smell funny, they go too fast, and if you don't put witty enough stickers on the back, they can get gremlins in. Horrible. I have ridden in one once or twice, but it never really made much sense –unless it could fly. That'd be neat. There was a fish an' chips restaurant just across a four-lane, and we had to stop on the midpoint and wait for the lights to change. That was interesting, especially considering Charlie and I had both run rather fast across. I was behind him and he got up on the midpoint first, and as I got there, he reached out and helped me jump up onto the curb of it -with both hands.

I don't need to go into the logistics of standing, out-of-breath, with both hands in each other's, on a very narrow midpoint, now, do I? He smelled rather nice, though. I'm fairly certain I still reeked of liquorice garrote-wire –after all, I still had the necklace on, a mistake I realized as we crossed the second half of the street.

Charlie ordered two fish an' chips to go. I felt kind of guilty not being able to offer to pay, but it occurred to me –I could ask him out somewhere and do all the paying, and not only would it balance things out, it would be an excuse to see him again. …If he wanted to go. If tonight went well. Oh, I was not good at this!

"We're almost there, Jessie," Charlie explained, ducking into the alley between the fish an' chips place and what looked like a kind of picture store. He held the white bag of dinner in his left hand and got the clipring out of his pocket with his right. "Can you connect us up?"

"Sure."

I don't know how I did it. Belts, after all, are very interestingly located. What I do know, my hands never shook that much before in my life.

In a few seconds, we were somewhere else. I opened my eyes-

All right! I will explain this properly. I am terrified, more or less, of Apparating. I Splinched my right foot two feet away from me the first time I tried it alone. Fortunately, it was in a Ministry-sponsored Apparation class and there were wizards right there to fix it, but it's still a scary thing. Even now, I usually shut my eyes.

Anyway…

I opened my eyes. We were next to the Thames and a convenient bench. Charlie unhooked the clipring and we were about to sit down to eat when he stopped me.

"Wait. Shut your eyes, Jessie."

I bit my lip and complied. After all, I had just opened them. Charlie set down the bag on the bench and put two hands on my shoulders. "Turn around, but don't open your eyes." I did, and he had me wait that way a second. He was close behind me, and I could feel how warm his hands were. I could even feel his breath near my left ear. "Okay…now."

I opened my eyes just as the biggest, most impressive clock in all of England, 'Big Ben,' the Muggles call it –struck nine. We were close enough to actually feel the vibrations of the huge, bass chimes, and the lighted face was bigger than the newly risen moon. I watched the minute hand move into place as the chimes sounded, unable to breathe from the sight of it.

I'd never seen it before at night, or as close, or with anyone even remotely like Charlie. And I'd definitely never done what I did as the last echoes of the chime died away.

I turned around and kissed him.