He woke to the sound of his husband softly snoring beside him and the insistent tap-tap-tap of his owl at the window.

Groaning, Harry grabbed his wand and lifted the sash on the window wide enough for Lady to squeeze through and fly over to the bedside table. It was she, more than their other pet, who understood that he was unable to move to her.

"Charlie," he said and poked a freckled shoulder. "Charlie. Prophet's here."

A low groan, the creak of bedsprings. The muffled - "Fucking hell, Harry. Give me the highlights. I can't be arsed at this time of the morning."

He shuffled himself to a sitting position in bed and shut the window with an absent wave of his hand. Lady remained perched on his alarm clock, possibly wanting to hear the news herself.

"It didn't make the front page."

"Thank Merlin for that." Mumbled.

"But only because that witch from Pontypridd finally got cornered. She tried to attack the Aurors who got her with a mutated Venomous Tentacula and three of them were bitten before she was restrained."

Silence.

"Poor Neville."

Charlie snorted with laughter.

"We made page three."

"Goodie."

"Shut up you miserable bastard. Listen to this. 'Potter, twenty eight, married his long term lover Charlie Weasley late last Friday afternoon. Our sources say the ceremony was conducted in private with only one witness present. When approached, none of the Weasley family were available for comment.'"

"Ha. Good."

"It goes on to describe my 'sordid past' and our 'turbulent history' but we don't need to go over that. You were there."

Charlie finally removed his face from the pillow and rolled over. "Yeah. I was."

"You're still here now."

A small smile. Under the covers, where Harry couldn't see, Charlie rubbed his thumb over the smooth metal on his ring finger, turning it around and around. He liked the way it felt.

xXx

Molly Weasley had eyes like a hawk.

The local school had been closed for the day, so all of Bill and Percy's children were running wild around the gardens of The Burrow. It was they alone of Molly's children who had settled in the local area, wanting their children to grow up in the small, friendly town where they too spent their childhood. The others had scattered to London, mostly, with the exception of Ginny who was starting out her Quidditch career in Liverpool.

Despite all of this, everyone seemed to gather in Ottery St Catchpole; it was the heart of the family.

Uncle Harry and Uncle Charlie had to dodge the questions and delighted pleas for attention and games as they made their way up the path, still loosely holding hands.

"After we've spoken to Nanna," Charlie said as he detached a hyperactive child from his leg. "In a minute."

"Arthur called and said you were coming," Molly called out to them. Charlie held the kitchen door so Harry could make his way in to a seat at the kitchen table. Family always sat at the kitchen table. The living room was for guests. "I put tea on."

She turned and regarded them with those hawk-sharp eyes. "What's that?"

"What's what, mum?"

"Don't play smart with me, Charlie. That on your finger."

After only resting his legs for a moment, Harry pushed the chair back and rose to his feet, taking Charlie's hand to steady himself. They had not discussed how they were going to do this. He started to regret that.

"Molly... Charlie and I got married."

She raised her eyebrows and planted her fists on her hips.

"You did what?" she asked, her voice low and dangerous.

Through the open window, the sounds of children playing drifted in. Harry suddenly wished he had stayed out there... surely this was a mother/son sort of conversation?

"We got married, mum," Charlie repeated.

"When?"

"This afternoon," he said quickly.

"Oh," she said and turned back to the tea.

"It's not like that," Harry rushed to explain. "We didn't plan it."

"You planned it enough to buy rings," she said with a tiny edge to her voice.

Harry looked to Charlie for help, his eyes pleading.

"Mum, sit down." She did, and didn't look at them. "I bought the rings years ago. This was the right thing for us," Charlie said, his voice no longer pleading but strong, confident. "We would never have been happy with all the fuss of a big family wedding. We did it this way..."

"Because it's what we want," Harry finished for him. "I want for us to be married."

"I'm not upset," Molly said. "You're both adults. You're old enough to make your own decisions. I'm just disappointed in you."

Laughing, Harry dropped his head to the table, on top of his folded arms. Charlie groaned and rubbed his hands over his face.

"Mum," Charlie said, grabbing Harry's hand. "Please be happy for us. He's a properly part of the family now. Harry's my husband, now."

Her face softened. "Charlie, you're an absolute bloody muppet if you think he hasn't been a part of this family for years. It just took you two a time to make it official, is all. Do you want cake or biscuits?"

xXx

Harry carefully folded the newspaper and set it down on his bedside table, then shuffled down the bed and rolled onto his side to face his partner.

"Hi."

"Hi." Charlie smiled. "You're looking rather..."

"Horny?"

"I was going to go with smug, but now you come to mention it..."

Harry laughed and thrust his hips forward. "Want a shag? Blowjob? Handjob?"

"How about a kiss?"

It was the sweetness of the request that had Harry responding in kind; with his hand gently cupping Charlie's cheek he leaned in to brush his lips over soft, pink lips. Kissing satisfied for only so long, then they progressed - hands moving, touching, stroking to make throats vibrate and spines arch, toes curl.

Abs clenched, fingers dug into soft skin and fingers laced together.

Harry marvelled, as his body moved within his partner's, at the way two people's hands could link together. It was smooth and perfect and it connected them in a whole other way. Intimacy. Perfection.

Orgasm, with his face pressed tight against the side of Charlie's neck, feeling a day-old growth of stubble against his cheek, the thumping rush of blood through his arteries, a wet rush of air at his ear as Charlie came too.

"If this," Harry gasped, "If this is being married, I like it."

Chuckling, Charlie splayed the fingers of his spare hand wide across Harry's faintly sweaty back. Held him there. There was no rush to move, after all.

A/N: A flashback within a present-time chapter of a story told in a series of flashbacks.
It's a wonder anyone reads this shit, it really is.

Real Life Update: Remember when I went a little bit nuts and wrote a whole novel last November? That's now being published. The editing process is as crazy as the writing one was. I've finished the sequel-novel I was working on before (yay!) and although that should now mean more FF writing time, I've actually got something else in my head to get started. Ah well. No rest for the wicked, after all! Thanks for all the support and I'll update again just as soon as I write the next bit.