Entering Fire

by magnolia_shade

Summary:

Hermione Granger has always been fiercely passionate; certain in the strength of her magic and mind. But doubt begins to creep in during her year long post at the Romanian reserve. Cast adrift in a dangerous and unwelcoming landscape, the cure for her doubts might just be found in the company of dragons, and the man who knows how to tame them.

Notes:

Hello!

I am currently studying for my masters degree, and this is me procrastinating by writing anything that is not an assignment lmao. This is my first time writing fiction for other people - I don’t know if I’m any good, so apologies if you want to gouge your eyes out after reading! I doubt many people will read this anyway because charmione just don’t seem to get the respect they deserve. But if you do stumble upon this lil fic, thank you for reading. I hope you have a blast x

Chapter 1

Sometimes ideas had a way of seeming one way in a person's head, but yet being a completely different thing in reality.

For example, when Hermione had signed on to a twelve-month post in the Romanian dragon reserve, she had pictured a sunny landscape with log cabins and sandy gravel paths. There would be daisies in the grass, and silver cliffsides hanging over the valley. Birds tweeting sweetly in the early morning.

It had seemed to her the perfect way to escape the monotony of London and pushing pens as a government employee.

In fact, the image had been so certain in her mind that she'd never once thought to question it. She'd instead spent the weeks leading up to her arrival learning everything she could about dragons. She'd read everything from the Official Handler's Guidebook to ancient accounts of muggle sightings and legends. Dragons, as she knew already but had come to appreciate even more, were spectacular creatures that deserved just as must fear as they did respect.

Hermione's long dormant thirst for adventure stirred as she read of their capacity to flatten entire landscapes by the fury of their fire.

So dangerous were they that she wondered how long it would be after her arrival in the camp before she’d finally be able to see one in person.

All of which to say that she was entirely unprepared when her portkey jerked her away from the cool overhead lighting of the ministry portkey gate, and landed her inside a veritable warzone.

Queasy already from the travel, she immediately doubled over as a cacophony of sound hit her at an ear-splitting level. Men were shouting at each other in other languages while guttural roars made the earth under her feet tremble. The ground that may have once flourished with green grass and flowers was now dirt and ash, with patches blackened into scorch marks. Rather than bright sun on her face, she had to squint through clouds of lingering smoke, and the skies above looked perpetually bruised.

"Granger," a voice greeted gruffly. She looked up to see a large man, bald with a greying beard and thick torso. He was covered in ash, his skin and clothes grey and dirty.

"Mikhail?" she asked, before coughing roughly as the smoke entered her throat.

"You are late," he said, a tinge of impatience in his voice.

If he was indeed Mikhail then he was the handler she had been corresponding with in anticipation of her posting. She'd gotten the impression several times over the last few weeks that he had not appreciated being made her babysitter, and now that she was face-to-face with him, she could tell that she had been correct.

"And you are wearing inappropriate clothes,” he said. “This is not an office. This is dragon reserve."

Hermione looked down at herself, distracted by the chaos around them and the alarm bells ringing distantly in her mind. She was wearing a relatively informal work set of a blouse and slacks. "I thought I would be heading straight to the housing area of the camp,” she said, defensively.

His untamed eyebrows raised. "This is housing area."

Hermione looked around again. There were three dragons, each larger than her London townhouse, within her immediate vicinity. She frowned at Mikhail, heart beating uncomfortably in her chest. "That can't possibly be safe," she said.

At just that moment, as if to prove her point, one of the dragons closest to them let out a chilling roar that made the air vibrate in fat waves around them. Hermione's hands instinctively covered her ears as she turned to look at the shiny black creature, its scales rough with dark ridges across its back.

A Hebridean Black. One of the most aggressive known dragon species in the world.

Before she could fully process that it was inside the camp’s living quarters, the dragon suddenly reared back. The handlers around it began to shout frantically and throw themselves in every direction.

As fast and fierce as a crashing tsunami, blazing fire rolled through the dragon and into the atmosphere.

The heat of it, despite her distance, made Hermione feel like she had caught flame herself.

One of the handlers hadn't jumped out of the way in time, and Mikhail was already sprinting over with his wand trained on the young man as he tried to extinguish the fire licking along his back. As if the fire was fighting back, it took two people to finally put it out.

Hermione found herself staring, rather stupidly, at the scene with an overwhelming sense that she had taken this job a little impulsively. She forced her feet to move forward as she watched Mikhail and the other man with him subdue the beast. They managed to force it back into a rickety paddock that Hermione hoped was smothered in protective wards.

Her feet felt heavy and she moved slowly as if wading through mud. The noise of the camp washed over her and filled her head so that by the time she made it over, she felt like she wasn’t inside her own body. Mikhail was speaking to the other man as the rest of the handlers performed inspection spells on the wards around the paddock.

Mikhail's partner was tall with hair that was long enough to curl at the nape of his neck. The muscles in his back and shoulders were visible beneath the thin material of his shirt, moving as he rolled up a leather whip in his hands.

Out of it as she was, she didn’t notice her eyes becoming busy with their inspection of the large set of his biceps or the brute strength in his forearms.

So busy that she didn’t notice how his head had turned to look at her, catching her in the act. When her brain finally caught up, horrified embarrassment flooded her veins.

Mikhail was pointing at her and his lips were moving rapidly, but Hermione was wide eyed and frozen.

Charlie Weasley.

His hair was so darkened by soot that she hadn't recognised the tell-tale red.

Maybe she would have noticed if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with examining his other attributes. Something he had surely noticed her doing.

He was no longer looking at her, speaking with Mikhail again in hushed tones. Hermione felt all at once completely wrong-footed and ill-prepared.

Perhaps if she'd been more clear on what she was walking into, seeing the man she used to obsess over as a thirteen-year-old would not have phased her. But the combination of the abrupt and violent bursting of her bubble and being caught checking out her childhood crush in quick succession had the effect of making her feel less than two feet tall. She was suddenly unsure whether she should announce herself, or try to leave before they could notice her again.

Just as she concluded that she might have to attempt a quick escape, they both turned to make their way over to her.

"Granger," Charlie greeted, wiping his hands on a cloth clipped to his waist. If she had expected him to greet her as a friend or family acquaintance, his expression told her she could think again. He looked quickly at her clothing choice, which admittedly was not appropriate attire for fighting dragons, and frowned. When he spoke again, he sounded at once disinterested and frustrated. "Don't wear that again." His eyes flicked again to look af her blouse and her cheeks burned red. He merely continued, "My handlers don't have the time or the manpower to keep you safe every moment of every day, so do us all a favour and don't go running into danger. Take notes if you must, but stay out of our way."

Hermione felt her jaw slacken a little with every word.

She was used to working with people who thought her below them. She’d experienced it since she’d arrived in the Wizarding World. There was certain wording that, when used correctly, somehow made derision and discrimination acceptable. That wording was passed down in prejudiced circles, and it was what she had become used to within the Ministry.

But to be so cavalier with one’s condescension?

It caused such a fierce indignation to zip through her that her back straightened out, and despite her growing fear that she’d made a mistake coming to Romania, she stubbornly puffed out her chest. If they thought her to be weak then she would not allow them to see even a crack in her resolve.

"I am not here to take notes, Mr Weasley, nor am I here as some kind of adrenaline junkie," she said, with the kind of formality she only used for her least favourite members of the Wizengamot. Something about being made to feel weak only made her voice stronger. "I am here to correspond with my team back in the Ministry who, may I remind you, fund this entire operation. Our job is to ensure that resources are being distributed correctly and that staff have sufficient training. If I am in your way, it is only because I need to be."

Charlie’s lips twitched as if he thought what she said was funny but thought it best not to laugh at her.

She seethed.

"Just Charlie is fine," he said, raising an eyebrow. "And the Ministry may fund the reserve, but they don't know a single thing about dragons or their conservation."

Hermione easily translated his words as he meant them. She didn't know a single thing about dragons.

"That may be your opinion, Charlie," she responded, "but nevertheless, the reserve has had an increasing number of incidents in the past twelve months. Perhaps if things had been going well in the reserve, there would be no need for me to be here."

She was very satisfied to watch how his jaw clamped shut, tensing beneath his skin.

"Alas," she said, vindictive in her victory, "whether you like it or not, I am simply here to help."

There was something thrilling about dressing Charlie down. She tried to suppress her satisfied grin, but based on the way his eyes flickered to her mouth, she had been unsuccessful.

"Fine," he said, his face unreadable. He was silent for another moment, before he said, "Try not to get yourself killed, yeah?"

He said something to Mikhail in another language, and then he was walking away. The muscles under his shirt were tense, and she looked away quickly. Turning instead, she raised her brows in question at Mikhail. He looked annoyed, and she wondered if this was his base level emotion or if it was something she inspired in him.

"Boss says to get you into protective gear," he said, jerking his head and then turning in the way he'd signalled. She followed behind him, through the smoke and noise, feeling almost giddy after winning the conversation against Charlie.

But by the time Mikhail had shown her to her sleeping quarters, all giddiness seeped out of her as she remembered just how utterly and miserably screwed she was.

____________________

 

"Bunkbeds, Harry," she groaned into the floo. "Not even a room to myself."

Harry was finding the whole thing much too amusing. "Who knew you were so high maintenance?"

"It's not high maintenance to want privacy as a grown adult," she argued. "We're not bloody pirates."

Harry laughed again. "If it's so bad, why don't you just come home? I'm sure there was loads of names wanting to go out to the dragon reserve. They'd replace you easily."

Hermione looked around to make sure no one had slipped in without her noticing. She was in the common lounge using the fireplace, having woken up before any of the other women in her dorm. She didn't really want the other handlers to know just how much she wasn't enjoying herself.

It had been two weeks since she arrived, and she'd quickly learned that it wasn't just Mikhail and Charlie who didn't like her very much. It was, actually, everyone on the reserve. Apparently, as she'd picked up from one female handler who felt sorry for her, ministry workers in general had a bad reputation in the reserve. Even worse because she had soft hands.

Or so Katriona had told her. Supposedly the state of her hands were physical proof that she was just another lazy and entitled bureaucrat. Nobody in Romania seemed to care that she was Hermione Granger.

It grated her, and then the fact that she was annoyed about that made her even more annoyed. At home she was always complaining about getting special treatment for her name. Now, she was annoyed because she wasn't getting it.

Although, surely her part in the war made her just a little different than most other soft-handed bureaucrats?

"I can't leave," she said miserably. "They're all waiting eagerly for me to throw the towel in."

"And?" Harry asked. "Who cares? You'll probably never see them again."

"Well, Charlie comes home sometimes," she pointed out.

"Barely. And I hardly think his opinion will have any impact on you when he lives on the other side of the continent."

Hermione would have agreed with him, other than that she was secretly very bothered by Charlie's cold reception to her. It wasn't that they had really known each other personally before she'd come to the reserve, but they'd known each other by proxy which usually counted for something.

In this case, it counted for Charlie thinking that she was a useless child.

"Even so, I would know that there's a whole group of people who think that I'm more worried about breaking a nail than about fighting for animal rights," she said.

She decided not to include that she felt inexplicably impacted by Charlie's poor opinion of her.

"So show them you're not," Harry said, shrugging. “It sounds like you need to prove to yourself that you’re still a badass.”

Hermione laughed. She could privately admit that it had been nice to imagine herself wrangling dragons when she was looking at images of the creatures in her office in London. However, it was an entirely other thing to be surrounded by massive beasts that could turn her to dust in seconds. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been badass,” she said.

Harry tutted. “Of course you have. And it will come back to you,” he said. “Just give yourself time.”

____________

She decided that Harry was right - she just needed to give herself time. In the first fortnight, she’d been so focused on acquainting herself with her new living conditions, and her new roommates, that she hadn’t really begun working on what she was here to do.

Mikhail had been charged with putting her through the safety training course, which she could tell he didn’t believe in. Having sat through it, she couldn’t say she thought much of it either. She would be including that in her first report, feeling petty as Mikhail continued grunting about politicians being a hazard to his sanity. Although, really she wondered by now if his moaning wasn’t at least a little in jest seeing as he no longer did it in a different language.

But yesterday he’d signed her off as competent to wander the reserve without a chaperone, so she now had freedom to come and go as she pleased. It was a relief to not have some burly, often rude, dragon handler shadowing her everywhere she went. Usually complaining about it the whole time.

She’d picked up her notebook on her way out of the dorms and headed outside into the smog. The reserve was already alive with frenzied commotion and she looked around for inspiration.

An Antipodean Opaleye that had been chained up not far from her shared living quarters was turning in anxious circles, and she had an idea it was because it wanted to fly. It had been put there the evening before and she’d heard some of the handlers talking about it. She’d picked up the Bulgarian word for injured.

Watching the dragon pace in circles, she decided right here was the best place to begin her analysis.

She walked over to its paddock but kept her distance as she began taking notes of the dimensions of the paddock it was in. She saw in her periphery as the dragon took notice of her and could not stop her wand arm from shaking as she cast diagnostics to check his size and mass. The dragon huffed hot smoke at her in annoyance, and she jumped back slightly with a high-pitched yelp.

Her heart was hammering against her ribs and she quickly looked around to check that no one had seen her flinch. She was thankful for once that nobody had any remote interest in her being there.

Her pulse was loud in her ears as she continued taking notes of the dragon’s vital signs. She enlarged the diagnostic charms as she began scanning them for abnormalities. There were few texts depicting the veterinary practices for dragons, but she had filled the gaps by looking at both magical and muggle texts for diagnosing all sorts of reptiles.

One pulsing pink light appeared in the chart that gave her pause. It looked like nerve damage, and she dug into her bag to retrieve the book with the most detail on dragon diagnostics. She flicked through to the chapter on Opaleyes, and she searched the diagrams for what the light was representing. She became so focused on figuring out the puzzle that when the dragon blew smoke at her again, she just waved it out of her face impatiently.

“Yes I know you’re sick of the pen, but clearly there’s something wrong with you so let me just figure that out, okay?” she told it quietly. A rattling sound came from the dragon, causing her to look up from her notes in surprise. Its eyes were zeroed in on her, and Hermione had the bizarre feeling that it had understood her.

Opaleyes were known to be a less aggressive species and she’d read that they often imprinted on humans as hatchlings. But having it watch her with wide, unblinking eyes as if it was waiting for her to speak again was not something she could cross-reference. She shook her head to clear the silly thoughts from her mind. The dragon was just interested in her because she was a new face. It wasn’t communicating with her.

She returned to her textbook, comparing the diagnostics in front of her with the diagrams in the book until she found what matched. Then she continued, moving on to another blemish in the diagnostic, and then another, hungry to understand it all. She sat down cross-legged in front of the paddock as she began making rough sketches in her notebook.

It was a testament to how quickly people adapted as she easily zoned out the shouting and fireballs and roaring beasts that made the sky heavy around her. Just two weeks ago, she could hardly concentrate when there was too many people talking in the office.

Now, she was so oblivious to the chaos around her that it took the Opaleye slamming its tail into the sides of the paddock to get her attention. And it seemed like that’s exactly what it was trying to do, its snout closer to her than before and its eyes still fixed on her. Billows of frustrated smoke wafted from its nostrils.

“I can’t let you out,” she told it stubbornly.

It huffed smoke again, a rattling noise echoing behind the scales of its throat.

“You don’t scare me,” she lied, subconsciously bringing her notebook close to her chest.

The dragon breathed out sparks as if it wanted to test that theory, and she jumped to her feet. “Now come on,” she said sternly, trying to wipe her voice clean of fear. “We’ve been perfectly civil all morning.”

More smoke, but no fire this time. She crossed her arms in warning, wondering if it was possible for her heart to beat so hard it exploded. She felt like she was made of glass as she met the black eyes of the dragon, her pulse spiking with the adrenaline of it.

And then, unbelievably, the dragon surrendered first. It bowed its head, before slumping to the ground and looking away in what Hermione would describe - had the dragon been a child rather than a scaly monster - as a huff. She looked at it in surprise for another few moments.

Had she missed the part in her dragon fact finding mission about them being able to understand humans? She hadn’t read anything about communication between species, and yet her interaction with the Opaleye had definitely not felt one-way.

Her mind whirred with possibilities for the rest of the day and as she made her way back to her dorm that night, she knew she’d be getting no sleep. There would be something in her research that could help her understand what on earth just happened. She just had to find it.

Chapter 2

Notes:

So I tried to edit this on my lunch break but I am very very tired haha. Hope you enjoy xx

The mystery of the Opaleye continued to both intrigue and infuriate Hermione over the next few days. No matter how many times she had read and reread her research, nothing seemed to indicate that dragons communicating with humans was a known or common occurrence.

Over that time, she had become intent on developing her knowledge of dragons independently. The handlers' assumption that she knew nothing about dragons had settled like hot rocks in her gut. Rather than ask around about the extent of the Opaleye's injuries, she had become obsessed with being able to diagnose him herself.

Her research and diagnostics had revealed what looked like a few broken ribs and severe contusions on his back. She'd felt the same bubbling pride when this was confirmed by Mikhail. He refused to give her any praise for her work, but she felt smug all the same. She'd also found what looked to be a heart murmur, but Mikhail had not said anything about it. It wasn't related to his other injuries, and she would have questioned it more had Mikhail not been doing his best to make her leave him alone.

Any hopes that the crotchety handler was warming to her were dashed the moment he was no longer required to look after her.

The cold looks and rough words from the handlers had become normal. Rarely did anyone have anything to say to her, although she felt like they were saying things about her. Of course, they were saying it in languages she couldn't understand. She’d become so lonely that there were days the only words she said aloud were to a dragon. She could at least understand his little chirps.

She’d spent so much time with him that she’d nicknamed him Tiny, seeing as he was the smallest dragon she had met on the reserve. He'd rattled his displeasure at the name when she told him, so she only called him that in her head.

Without any budding human friendships to distract her from her work, she'd progressed rapidly in her analysis. Satisfied with her diagnostics, she’d since moved on from making notes about Tiny’s welfare to making mathematical calculations about his strength. She’d need precise measurements in order to assess whether the current wards were strong enough to hold him when he was at full health.

But though she felt like she'd made positive progress in the scientific aspects of her research, she remained completely at a loss for how Tiny not only seemed to understand her, but how she could understand him in return. He had even become almost friendly to her. He blew less smoke at her now, saving that only for when she told him off. When she came over to his pen, he would move closer so that he was curled against the fence with his neck and head just on the other side from where she sat. He’d slap his tail when he was getting bored, and he would chirp when she spoke to him.

It was mystifying.

Her previous knowledge of dragons was so clinical that she’d never thought much about one having a personality. She'd thought of them as wild animals who deserved the right to exist, but whose cognitive abilities oscillated between finding a food source and protecting its hoard. The idea that they could experience something so trivial as boredom had not entered her imagination.

She knew that she could, and maybe should, speak to one of the handlers. Tiny's behaviour would hardly be surprising to people who had dedicated their whole lives to living among dragons. They'd have information for her about how common the behaviour was and how far the communication could develop. It would cut down on the time she needed for her investigations, and it would make them so much richer too.

But, the irrational part of her hated to confirm their assumptions that she was a stuffy ministry employee who really didn’t know anything about dragons. She told herself that she wasn't even convinced that the handlers would be very forthcoming with whatever knowledge they did possess. They hated her enough to withhold information on those grounds alone. And even if they were open to sharing, they’d probably assume she would only use what they knew to advocate for greater restrictions on dragonkind.

So instead, she’d started a secondary (and more heavily protected) notebook to document everything Tiny did that went beyond the usual, expected behaviours. It had become a second research project for her, one that fascinated her immensely and distracted her from her primary objective. Assessing how well the dragons were being cared for was important work, but breaking ground on communication with the ancient species felt like a career-defining opportunity.

She tried not to get ahead of herself in wondering what it could mean for dragons and the laws surrounding them, or for the prejudice against them.

This was, after all, based on the behaviours of one dragon. One that was right now injured and unable to find entertainment any other way than by Hermione sitting outside its paddock and talking to it.

She couldn’t draw any real conclusions from that.

Still. It felt like it had opened up a whole new aspect to the time she’d be spending in Romania.

And at the very least, the dragon turned out to be better company than the people in the camp.

A gravelly sound came from Tiny, attracting her attention up from her notebook. He had his eyes closed and the scales on his back were quivering. He made the sound again, and it felt like it was radiating with pain.

She was on her feet immediately.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him, quickly casting a diagnostic.

The charm exploded into a large erratic sea of red scales flashing ominously over Tiny’s chest. It was unlike anything she could remember seeing in her limited reading material and she knew instinctively that whatever it was, it was a serious abnormality. It was getting progressively more volatile before her eyes. Her brain faltered as she attempted to remember anything that looked similar to this in human diagnostics. When she came up short, she spun wildly to look for someone to help.

“Oi!” she yelled at a handler a few yards away. “Get Charlie!”

Mercifully, despite pretending they knew no English when she was around, the handlers could speak it well enough to understand her. He must have heard panic in her voice as he barely glanced at the paddock before nodding and running off. She turned back to Tiny. A low rumbling sound was coming from his throat, and he had opened his eyes to look at her with wide black eyes.

She thought that he looked scared.

“It’s okay,” she told him firmly, but her fingers shook as she flipped through her notebook to the sketches she had done. She must have missed something -

She found the page where she’d traced a small glowing red orb in the diagnostic charm. Heart murmur was what she'd written beside it. Except it wasn't behaving like a heart murmur would, and it must have grown exponentially in only a few short days.

A louder chirp came from Tiny and he began struggling against the chain on its neck. Hermione watched him helplessly, caught between her notes and the dragon in front of her.

Suddenly Charlie was at her side. “What happened?” he asked, a little out of breath.

It was the first time he'd spoken to her since her first day.

“Look,” she pointed with panic at her diagnostic, unsure what else to say.

He cursed, and without hesitation, hopped over the fence into the pen. A couple other handlers that she hadn't noticed were now joining him, and she stepped back to give them room. She looked again at her notes, feeling a sick quivering in her stomach. She had been sitting outside Tiny's pen every day for long hours, and she hadn't thought to monitor his vitals. He must have been getting worse every day, and she hadn't noticed. The problem with his heart was written carelessly in her notes, but she hadn't raised it as a concern.

She could hear them casting pain-relieving charms and subduing magic, but she tried to focus on the sketches she'd completed. It wasn't a heart murmur. She tried to think of anything that could explain what was going on with the dragon. Based on the frantic shouting, Charlie and the handlers were not sure what had gone wrong either.

The thought of how quickly the problem had progressed flittered through her mind, and her head snapped up.

Mikhail hadn't mentioned a heart defect. She had assumed it was because Tiny had always had it, and it wouldn’t have been on Mikhail’s mind to mention it. But it no longer had the magical signature of a heart defect and Hermione wondered if Mikhail had not mentioned it because it had not been there when Tiny was originally diagnosed.

If that were true, the only thing to change since their initial diagnosis was where he was being kept. He would have been treated at the place of his injury, and subsequently moved.

To this paddock.

Her friend Theo was a healer in St Mungos. They had spent many nights discussing magical maladies that his patients faced, and she remembered him recently discussing oppressive magic injuries. Patients who'd been put under spells so strong that they developed all problems with their blood pressure or breathing.

Depending on the strength of the magic, problems could progress in just a few short days.

Before she could even process the thought the whole way, her body was already moving, drawing her wand with a flourish. She pointed it directly at the fencing around Tiny and whispered the spell. For the first time, she watched as the layers of warding spells became visible, slowly crawling upwards into a translucent dome shape over the paddock.

Instantly, she was struck by the sheer mess of the spell work. It was like someone had warded it a couple times over, the effect like wallpapering over wallpaper. The wards were unstable and heavy, extra spells added like patchwork anywhere that there may have been gaps. The wards looked like they had been started a long time ago, and with every new dragon moved into the pen, more were piled on top. Their ward caster never realising the strain it would be putting on whatever creature they left inside.

Every noise around her dimmed as she began ruthlessly peeling away layer after layer of protective spells. Some had been laid so carelessly that they fell away with barely a twitch of her wand. Other wards fought against their removal, but were still stripped back easier than they should have been.

When she had peeled them back till there was nearly nothing left, Charlie yelled from inside the paddock, “What the hell are you doing, Granger?”

Sweat was forming at her brow and she gritted her teeth. Unable to focus on anything other than the task at hand, she ignored him as she lifted the last of the spells. A few other handlers must have noticed what she was doing as they started shouting at her too, beginning to make their way over to her. She glanced over to see them with their wands outstretched, ready to try to disarm her.

With the strength of a dam bursting, she felt magic shooting through her arm as a new protective spell blasted from the tip of her wand and settled over the paddock. The ward shimmered with strength and then disappeared from view.

She quickly lowered her wand into her belt and raised her palms in surrender. Despite this, the handlers kept their wands trained on her.

“What are you playing at?” Charlie shouted as he hopped over the fence to her. His voice was hard with anger. “You do realise that you could have gotten someone hurt if Pumpkin had escaped while the wards were down?”

She fought the urge to shrink back as he came closer.

“Pumpkin?” she asked, her voice shaky. She crossed her arms as if she could hide it.

“The dragon,” he snapped.

She flinched at his tone.

She felt cracked open in front of him. The indignation she felt towards him mingled with her own insecurity, slipping through her bones and making her feel like they were about to shatter.

However surprised she was at the handlers' behaviour towards her, she'd been far more hurt by Charlie's. Every day, she had grown more and more unsure. No one wanted her here. And now, the one ray of sun in her day had quivered in pain as she watched him, dumb and helpless.

The handlers had been right about her.

If she had spent less time trying to understand how Tiny was communicating with her, she could have helped him sooner. Part of her assignment was to assess the wards, but she had been too distracted by her own ambition. She'd been so self-involved that she hadn't noticed Tiny becoming more and more subdued by the pain.

She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, before releasing it and swallowing back the emotions blocking her windpipe.

“You had him subdued,” she said, fighting to keep her tone neutral. It came out flat. “I wouldn’t have done anything to the wards if I thought he’d escape. But I think they were connected to the pressure on his heart. If you let me cast a diagnosis on him, I can check.”

Charlie’s jaw clenched. There was no regret in his eyes now that she had explained her actions. Instead, he seemed to be battling internally with the desire to say something nasty. She wondered if he was calculating whether insulting her openly could be justified.

Finally, he bit out, “Be my guest.”

His blue eyes were so similar to Ron's, but there was no friendliness in them. It made her stomach twist unhappily as she shouldered past him. She pushed down the rising insecurities, feeling nearly suffocated by them.

She lingered outside the paddock for a moment. Wanting to shock the handlers, and maybe herself, she slapped her palms on the fence rail. Squaring her shoulders, she vaulted herself over into the paddock.

Any fear that may have consumed her before was diluted by the other emotions fighting for space in her brain. As she came closer to the unconscious dragon, she lifted her wand arm straight and cast the diagnostic spell.

She waited for the angry red movement that had been so visceral to appear again.

She exhaled as she stepped back to show Charlie, and the other handlers, the dimming red lights. Whilst not gone completely, the pain signature around Tiny’s chest had made very good progress in disappearing.

But her racing mind prevented her from being satisfied even at the dumbfounded looks on their faces.

She made her way back through the mud, climbed over the fence, and stopped a foot away from Charlie.

“You’re right,” she said, shaking with repressed emotion. “I don’t know dragons like you do. But clearly you don’t know magic like I do. You very nearly collapsed his lungs with the amount of spells you had holding him in.”

Charlie looked for all the world like she’d slapped him across the face.

She waited for some kind of response.

An apology. A thank you.

Something to acknowledge that he was, at the very least, glad she had helped Tiny.

It soon became clear that waiting for that was a waste of time. She clenched her fists. “If you would all stop fighting me being here, maybe we’d actually be able to help each other.”

She didn’t wait for a response this time. Without looking back, she walked away, slipping back into her shared tent.

She didn’t leave her bunk for the rest of the day. She spent her time reading about warding spells and trying to push away how shaken she was from the interaction with Charlie and the handlers.

How shaken she was from seeing Tiny in so much pain, and knowing that she could have done something to help him sooner. That she should have.

If she lingered on it, a hot bubbling feeling filled her chest and made her eyes wet. So she didn't.

__________________

Over the next week, something changed. Apparently Katriona and another girl in their dorm, Maria, thought it was kind of cool that Hermione stood up to the men.

But Hermione knew that the fact Tiny's health had improved was a big help with bringing the women onto her side. She'd proven that she could be useful on the reserve no matter how soft her hands were.

Nevertheless, it was nice talking to real people again. Having someone to sit with at dinner. She learned quickly that the other women also had their grievances with the men in the camp.

"They think they are big strong men," Katriona said, "but really they are babies."

Maria nodded enthusiastically. "They don't like when a woman is better than them at something. It makes them feel less manly."

Hermione scoffed. "I don't think that's the problem they have with me."

Katriona shook her head. "They dislike you because you remind them that they are not doing good job protecting the dragons. That is why you are here, no?"

Everyone on the camp thought this. That Hermione had come in with no credentials in dragon keeping and had been given the power to upend the entire reserve. But she wasn't an auditor. She was a ministry correspondent who was here to offer help to the handlers. Identify weak spots and work with them to find solutions.

Being shown the cold shoulder by almost everyone here had made it increasingly difficult to do so.

She supposed she could blame part of it on herself. She'd threatened Charlie on her first day with the fact that it was her department in the ministry that funded this work. It had been satisfying at the time, but now she wondered whether it had been worth the thirty seconds of triumph. Maybe it had only served to confirm their biases against her.

"I've already told you," she sighed. "It's not that the reserve isn't doing a good job. The ministry recognised that they weren't as involved in the reserve's work as they felt they should be. They sent me to offer help so that we can make sure the recent incidents aren't indicative of a lack of funding."

Maria rolled her eyes. "Most of the men here are too stupid to understand politics, and even if they did, they wouldn't believe that's why you're here. You’d be better to get more involved. Then they'll start to respect you."

"Yes," Katriona said with a firm nod. As if she was agreeing to something they had not discussed. "You must learn to train dragons."

That was how, thirty minutes later, Hermione found herself outside of the paddock holding a Ukrainian Ironbelly. Katriona and Maria were entering the reinforced fenced off area together. It was the dragon's feeding hour, and they had told her this would be the first step in training her to become a dragon wrangler.

They were nonplussed by her arguments that she did not want to wrangle dragons.

The Ironbelly crouched low when the two women entered, each with a bucket in one hand. They separated, keeping themselves close to the fence with their wand arms stretched in front of them. Hermione watched as the dragon stayed completely still except for an ominous swish of his tail.

His eyes closely watched the two women, flicking from one to the other, as they came closer. She could hear a faint growl coming from him, and she stepped closer. Her heart pattered in her chest, but Katriona and Maria were unfazed by the terrifying dragon they were inching closer to. They seemed to be communicating with each other with only looks.

Hermione's eyes widened and her mouth opened to say something as the dragon prepared to strike.

It happened very suddenly.

Katriona dropped instantly into a roll just as the dragon launched at her, snapping his teeth. At the same time, Maria levitated a hunk of red meat so it slapped against the fence on the far side, distracting the Ironbelly from trying to swallow her partner. It's head snapped to the sound and then it was flapping its wings as it pushed itself across the large space towards the food.

Hermione's eyes were on Katriona again, who had stood up with a huge grin and fearlessly started banging the meat of her palm against the steel bucket in her other hand. The Ironbelly flipped the first piece of meat into the air, swallowing it whole before he pushed off from the fence, causing the entire perimeter to reverberate. He was nearly at Katriona before she ducked behind a boulder, and Maria began clanging her own bucket from the other side.

The Ironbelly turned to the new source of noise, turning a little clumsily to start chasing his new target.

Hermione watched in morbid fascination as the two women continued playing with the dragon, sometimes levitating food to him and other times making him work harder. She could tell that the dragon was enjoying the chase nearly as much as the food.

"Amazing, isn't it?"

Hermione jumped. She'd been so engrossed in watching them that she hadn't noticed she'd been joined by someone. She looked beside her to where he stood with his thick arms crossed against his chest and his hair curled at the nape of his neck.

He wasn't looking at her, and if she had to pick a word to describe his posture, she'd say it was bordering on nervous.

Yet it failed to endear her to him.

"Here to shout at me again?" she asked him, looking back to the dragon.

She hadn't seen him around the reserve much in the past week. She'd spent time every day with Tiny, somewhat obsessively checking his diagnostics and lacing her wards with other safety spells like it was a piece of embroidery. They would alert her now if any of his vitals dropped again. The rest of her week had been spent looking at the entire warding system across the camp.

In short, it was a complete mess. She spent her days tutting and muttering as she analysed the types of wards that were being cast and the calibre of magic, and she spent her evenings writing her findings into a detailed report.

She'd been so focused on the work, and warmed by her budding female friendships, that she'd nearly been able to forget that she was surrounded by men who were utterly drunk off testosterone.

Her personal connection to Charlie, however, had made the sight of him in particular set her blood to boil. Avoiding him had become a daily practice. The other men in the reserve didn't know her. They didn't owe her anything. But Charlie, on the other hand... Well, his dislike of her felt far more personal.

Charlie cleared his throat beside her. "The safety of everyone in this camp is my top priority. I wasn't thinking about anything else when I-" he cut himself off, as if he didn't want to admit out loud that he had shouted at her.

It wasn't an apology, but it was probably the closest she was going to get to one.

"Well for future reference, then," she said tightly, "my priority is also safety; the safety of your handlers and your dragons. And despite what you seem to think, I am not actually a complete moron."

He shifted beside her. "I know you're not."

She didn't bother answering him. She wasn't even sure why he had approached her. He hadn't had any interest in talking to her since she had arrived, and he was the head handler. He was the person who should have been giving her the most help to do her job, and at best he'd simply ignored her presence.

And in the last month, she'd developed enough of a dislike for him that she found no desire to fill the empty silence, or to make any effort to bridge the chasm forming between them.

The Ironbelly was getting tired, and Maria and Katriona appeared to be nearly out of food for him. Hermione watched as they made it easier for him to catch the meat, and they began moving back towards the exit.

"Pumpkin is recovering well," he said with the air of someone looking for the right words and not sure that he'd landed on them.

She nodded. "I'm aware."

She was being difficult, but she hoped he might take her hint and leave her alone. Instead, he sighed heavily.

"I want you to look at our wards," he said. He perhaps realised he had said it quite forcefully because she saw his hand come up beside her to swipe through his hair and when he spoke again, it was softer. "What you did with Pumpkin's paddock was a lot more advanced than what we have in the rest of the camp. It would really help us out if you could talk me through it so we can improve the rest of the wards around the reserve. Could you spare me a couple of hours later tonight?"

Hermione wanted very badly to tell him that she was actually very busy tonight. But after what had happened with Tiny, she agreed with him on the importance of improving the reserve's wards. And part of her knew that this was where she excelled. She couldn't deny how tempting it was to finally feel one step ahead of Charlie after feeling so out of her depth for so long.

"Where?" she asked, finally looking at him.

He seemed taken back by her attention finally being on him. His arms uncrossed and he scratched his stubble.

"Uh. My tent, after dinner?" he asked. "We can take a walk around the camp to look at everything."

She nodded once in agreement just as Katriona and Maria joined them, both puffing from the exertion of chasing a dragon.

"Okay then. See you tonight," Charlie said, nodding himself although his lips were turned down. Before he left, he turned to Katriona and Maria and said, "Nice work, ladies."

The three of them watched him leave, the only sound between them the heavy breathing of the two handlers. When Charlie was finally out of earshot, Maria let out a giggle. She turned to Hermione with mischief in her eyes.

"What did you say to Charlie to make him look so miserable?"

Chapter 3

Notes:

I just want to say a big big thank you to everyone who has read and left kudos/comments. I honestly never expected anyone to read this, and I’m amazed that there seems to be people enjoying it.

When Hermione eventually started dragging her feet to Charlie’s tent, the sun was setting and the paths were lit by the huge fire pits dotted around the camp.

Charlie was already waiting for her.

His hands were in his pockets and his eyes tracked his left foot as it kicked lightly at the dust.

The noticeable lack of dirt gave away that he had washed up while he waited for her. Her own hand moved as if by itself to quickly swipe at the grainy ash cemented to the skin of her cheeks, suddenly aware of her own unkempt appearance.

Charlie’s hair was still damp, long enough to curl around his ears and clean enough to pick out the varying shades of reds and browns. Even from a distance, his freckles stood out against his tanned skin.

She stopped where she was, still unnoticed by Charlie. With his attention elsewhere, she found herself just looking at him.

He wasn't like the rest of the Weasleys.

Charlie not only lacked the friendliness she’d come to expect from his family, but his rugged appearance made him look different too. Rather than lanky, his chest was strong and his arms were thick enough to subdue dragons. His straight jaw was rough with stubble and there were lines on his face that had been etched in over years of working outdoors. Unlike his brothers, who were soft and mostly sweet, Charlie was all hard edges.

Sometimes the differences made Hermione forget that he was even a Weasley in the first place.

But other times, they made her yearn for the family she had left at home.

After her own parents had been killed in Australia, unaware they had a daughter in England, Molly and Arthur had taken her in. They were the parental figures that she had needed as she mourned the loss of her own. It was Molly who had held her close, familiar as she was with the suffocating grief that was consuming Hermione and the obsessive thoughts of what if.

Their shared pain had been like a healing balm to Hermione’s frayed soul, Molly’s tight embrace sometimes the only thing keeping her from unravelling completely.

In the years following the war, Bill and Fleur had become close friends to her. She’d worked closely with Bill a handful of times, him as curse breaker and her as a ministry correspondent. He’d helped her to hone her ward casting and they bonded over their shared love of problems. He still sent her arithmancy problems when he wanted a second opinion, and he and Fleur had her over for dinner every few weeks. When Fleur fell pregnant with Dominique, it was Hermione who was asked to be godmother.

George had his quieter days, but he still knew how to wind her up. He was the closest thing to an older brother that she had, which meant they had a relationship built solely on sarcasm and hexing each other. But sometimes, when George drank a particular brand of muggle vodka, he would become just drunk enough to tell her (again) that she was like family to him.

Then there was Ron and Ginny, who she loved so much that it hurt to think of how far away they were from her now.

But Charlie.

Whatever love she shared with his family had not been enough to spill over into her relationship with him.

She sighed and set her feet back into motion. It would do no good to compare him to his family when he spent so little time with them that she couldn’t remember if he’d been at Percy’s wedding.

"Charlie," she greeted as she came closer.

He looked up in surprise, his cheeks ruddy and his back straightening.

"Hermione," he said quickly. He cleared his throat roughly and pushed off the tent post. "Thanks for coming."

"Of course," she said, the forced formality only coming out shrill. She looked away briefly, quiet embarrassment rolling through her. She forced herself to turn back to him and, aiming for a neutral tone, asked, "Shall we?"

He blinked. "Oh. Yeah. Sure."

His hands reached up to fumble with his jacket pockets for a moment before he pulled out a small flip pad and a pencil that had been sharpened to a nub. He gave her a tight smile, which she did not return.

"Right, okay,” he said, his smile flagging. “Let's go."

She’d expected a chilly silence to fall between them as they started moving. She’d come to expect nothing less from the dragon handlers in the reserve, and Charlie had spoken to her the least out of everyone. So she was surprised when instead of silence, Charlie seemed incapable of taking a breath.

“Thanks again for agreeing to do this,” he was saying, “I’ve been looking over the wards you cast and I can’t understand what you’ve done differently but it’s way tougher than what we have in the rest of the camp -“

His stilted attempts at conversation did not match the smug arrogance that she'd come to expect from him and it surprised her that he might be so uncomfortable with a little silence. He brought her from paddock to paddock, many of the dragons tired from the day and hiding their snouts under their wings. With each one, he tried to explain what wards were in place and how often they were recast.

It soon became obvious that Charlie didn’t really know.

In between irrelevant ramblings about different dragons’ characteristics or the mess about the camp, he was stumbling over his words and his cheeks were turning pink. He didn’t have a very detailed understanding of the wards that had been set up, and it seemed that this was the first time he had ever had to explain them out loud.

Charlie was comfortable facing up against a dragon without a wand in hand, but his confidence was rattled just by her silently following him around.

Part of her knew that she wasn’t being very nice as she kept her mouth tightly shut. But there was a wicked amusement in making him suffer just a little.

She walked just behind him, taking notes as he trailed her along. She had analysed many of the paddocks he brought her to, and she realised she had a better grasp on what protective spells had been used than Charlie seemed to.

"And what about the overall camp?" she asked, finally breaking her silence when they came to a stop beside the paddock housing a Hungarian Horntail.

His head spun around at the sound of her voice and she had to step back when she realised how close they were standing.

"Uh,” he stalled as his eyes tracked her movement, seemingly struggling to process the fact that she was really speaking to him. “You know,” he answered finally. “Muggle repellant charms, stuff to keep the dragons in. Stuff to keep the bad guys out. Invisibility. Um. Maybe sound dampeners as well."

"Maybe?" she asked, her head bent as she took notes.

"I can't remember," he said, and she didn’t need to see his expression when she could hear his embarrassment.

She continued writing, for once drawing out the silence because of her focus on the task rather than as a means to punish him.

When she'd flipped her notebook closed, she finally looked up at him again.

He had somehow managed to stop rambling and the sound of the pen scratching the paper had been the only noise breaking the silence between them. His cheeks remained pink but his eyes met hers unflinchingly.

She realised then how much he resembled Ron when he was waiting for her to shout at him. Fondness for his brother confused and tickled the corners of her brain and against her better judgment, she felt herself soften as she looked at Charlie.

"Okay,” the professional distance she’d affected in her tone melting into something warmer, “what do you need from me?"

She hadn’t noticed how tense he was until she watched the almost imperceptible way that his shoulders relaxed. He must have been prepared for her to be difficult all night, and she nearly felt sorry for antagonising him for so long.

She may not like him, but he was still a Weasley and that was her kryptonite. Even Percy could bring out something close to affection from her every now and again.

And there was something about Charlie’s nervousness tonight that made her feel like she was kicking a puppy.

So until he turned into a complete asshole again, she could at least be civil.

"Advice mostly," he replied, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "You obviously know what you're doing. The wards around Pumpkin's temporary paddock are basically impenetrable."

The reminder that Tiny had another name made a feeling of possessiveness come over her.

Pushing the feeling down, it was replaced by surprise at hearing such open praise from Charlie. She briefly thought she should check his pulse. Or wait to see if he was Polyjuiced.

"Okay," she said, uncertainly. She removed a clipboard from her satchel. "As it happens, I've been assessing your wards all week and I do actually have some thoughts."

Charlie nodded and she flipped to the section of her report that referred to the particular set of wards on the paddock beside them. As she did, the Horntail slapped its tail at the fencing. Hermione stepped away distractedly from the reverberating wooden slats just as Charlie squatted down to pat the dragon’s tail through the gap.

"This one for example,” she said, waving her hand at the paddock. As she did, the patch-work wards became visible. While they weren't as messy as Tiny's had been, they had the exact opposite problem to his. “These wards aren’t nearly strong enough for the size of the Horntail. Maybe if she was about thirty stone lighter, but as she currently weighs,” she consulted her notes again, “the force of her fire alone will be at least 1000 kilowatts greater than what your wards can withstand.”

She stepped closer to the wards, looking at the millimeter thin gaps in the spell work and slivers of damage to the magic. Rather than a clean, steady image, the translucent wards were like static energy, vibrating with instability.

If the Horntail were to have any desire to escape the paddock, it would have been simple. Slow, like wading through wet mud, but possible.

When the silence lingered, she cast her eyes downward to find Charlie staring up at her intently.

“This is what you’ve been doing in your little notebook?” he asked, wiping his hands on his trousers before standing up. She shouldn't have been surprised that he knew about her work in her notebook, but she hadn't thought that any of the handlers noticed her at all. "You’ve been calculating how hot fire is?"

Her eyes caught the way his lips twitched in amusement.

He was making fun of her.

She bit the inside of her cheek. Rather than rising to it, she stayed silent with her arms folded across her chest. Maybe if she was quiet for long enough, he would realise he was the one who had asked for her advice. Then he might actually respond to her advice instead of finding another way to belittle her.

But found one he did.

He chuckled lightly and said, “You know you can’t learn dragons out of a textbook, honey.”

For a moment, the world stopped and zeroed in on that one word.

Honey.

Her hands itched with the need to slap him as the condescension of his words bore down heavily on her shoulders.

She knew that. In fact, she'd spent the last month commiserating the fact that dragons were not at all like the creatures she’d read about.

Her heart was beating furiously but she swallowed back her vitriol and settled her expression into a scowl.

“Yes well,” she started, flipping the page on her clipboard with unnecessary force, “the centre of London is sadly low on flying fire breathers for me to analyse.”

Perhaps not hearing her frustration, Charlie huffed a laugh. Like she’d made a joke.

The sound of it only made her shoulders inch towards her ears, and she carried on more indignantly, “Anyway. It doesn’t change my point that these wards, like all of the wards I have seen across the camp, are seriously insufficient or ill-equipped to do the job they're supposed to. Who is your ward caster?”

He ran his hand through his hair, blissfully ignorant to the boiling hot blood pumping in her veins. “Don’t have one."

That stopped her short.

“What do you mean you don’t have one?” she asked, surprise taking over her anger.

He shrugged. “The reserve can’t afford it.”

"But then who casts the wards?" she asked, confused.

"We do," he answered, gesturing around at the camp which was currently scarce of people. "Everyone pitches in."

Hermione looked up at him dumbly. It made sense, she supposed. She'd spent so long judging the reserve’s ward caster for how amateur and inconsistent their spell-casting was that she'd never stopped to wonder why they'd been hired for the job. If it was true that the wards were cast by the handlers, then it would make sense that rather than singular stable wards protecting the dragons, every paddock appeared to be an amalgamation of historic and new warding spells pieced together. It also explained why some were much stronger than others, and why none of them appeared to be strong enough to prevent an outsider from deactivating them.

"And what level of training would you say your handlers have in casting protective charms?" she asked, immediately returning to formalities as she took out her notebook to begin writing this new information down.

"Just because my handlers work with their hands doesn't mean they aren't capable of performing magic," he said, defensively, causing Hermione to look at him again. "And they might not be perfect, but our wards have been keeping these dragons safe for decades."

It wasn't entirely true. The incident with Tiny notwithstanding, there had been more and more dragons being injured or kidnapped in the last year. But Hermione could tell that she'd touched on a sore spot, and she found no desire within herself to keep pressing it.

"That's not what I mean,” she told him gently. “Ward casting is really advanced magic. There's an entire department in the DMLE that specialises in it. I would have thought that with the nature of this work, you'd have someone from that department visiting twice monthly to recast."

Her response didn’t relax Charlie and he crossed his arms.

"Your wards looked fine," he said. "Couldn't you just give us advice on what our wards should look like?"

She cocked a brow.

Of course, she realised. Asking a dragon handler if another ministry official could start making bi-monthly visits to the reserve was like asking them to put their head in the fire.

"I have specialised training," she explained in the way she would to a child. "It's not something I can teach in a few days. I learnt a lot of it from your brother, actually."

She didn’t know why she tacked that on at the end. They’d gone a month without speaking about her connection to his family.

But at the mention of them, a shadow passed over Charlie’s face.

"I have a few of those," he said, tightly.

"Yes, but only one who works as a curse breaker," she said as if it was obvious. Satisfaction simmered in her belly. She hadn’t expected to take any pleasure out of reminding Charlie that the rest of his family liked her.

But there was something vindicating about it. Making him realise that he was the odd one out.

"I didn't know you worked with Bill."

She got the impression that he was being careful to keep his expression neutral at this new information.

"We've done a couple of digs together. I’ve joined his team as a ministry correspondent," she said, the meaning of her words hanging heavily between them. "Only Bill doesn't usually hold that against me."

Charlie's jaw flexed. "Bill's a nicer person than I am."

The sudden display of self-awareness caught her off guard. Despite how tense Charlie was, and that he clearly wasn’t making a joke, Hermione’s lips twitched.

It felt nearly like teasing when she said, "From what I've heard, you're perfectly nice to everyone who happens to not be me."

It was true. Maria and Katriona, while they loved to complain about the men in the camp, had little bad to say about Charlie. Apparently, he was universally liked. The men respected him, and if Maria was to be believed, he respected the women.

The best kind of man, Katriona had said.

So Hermione was left with two options. She could believe that Charlie's disdain for her was because she was a ministry suit, or she could accept that it was solely based on her as a person.

She hadn't figured out where she landed on the scales yet.

Based on his reaction to her self-deprecating joke (i.e. extra frowning and no laughter), she could probably put this interaction onto the her as a person pile.

"I'm not trying to be not-nice," he said, frowning deeply.

"Well. I must just bring it out of you, then.”

She waited for him to respond, but Charlie only stared at her like she was an intricate puzzle he couldn’t figure out. When she was starting to feel uncomfortably hot under his glare, his shoulders dropped infinitesimally.

Maybe he'd finally solved her.

He uncrossed his arms and pushed his hair back.

"Do you think you can re-do our wards? You said you have the necessary training," he asked her, as if their conversation had never deviated to his family.

She scrunched her nose, following his lead by returning to the original topic. "You want me to go around the reserve and recast all of the wards?"

"If you can."

She scoffed. "It's not a matter of can, Charlie, it's a matter of when. I do actually have a job to do while I am here."

"Which is to provide help, right? This would be helpful," he said.

"And what exactly would be your plan when I leave the reserve in eleven months?"

He shrugged. "I'll think about that in eleven months."

It buoyed her that he didn't immediately argue about the likelihood of her lasting that long. He wouldn't be the first to place bets on how quickly she’d be scampering back to England, although talk of her leaving had died somewhat since the incident with Tiny.

Still, a conversation she’d overheard that morning had proved it hadn't ceased entirely, if her stilted translation of Bulgarian was to be trusted.

She made a frustrated sound in her throat. "My job is to report on the running of the reserve. I can't redo all the wards for the next year, and then leave without any plan for the future. My report won't be indicative of the way things are being run long-term."

"Fine," Charlie said, sounding exasperated.

She was about to speak when he continued:

"You can re-do the wards for the next eleven months,” he said, before speaking louder to cut off her arguments, “over which time, you can train me in ward casting."

 

-

 

"I know that you like him."

Hermione pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She had started braiding it since she arrived on the camp, realising the humidity was doing her already semi-sentient hair no favours.

But she hadn't had the chance this morning, distracted as she was by her conversation with the grumpiest Weasley brother from the night before.

"You just don’t get it,” she continued. “He’s nice to you. You have to try and see it from my perspective. He bosses me around and waves his big muscles around and seems to think I’m still some little kid getting into trouble at school. I’m a grown woman! Who is actually quite good at her job! So yeah. If you were dealing with that, you wouldn’t like him either."

Tiny, who was blinking widely at her, blew steam in agreement. She threw him a slab of red meat in approval.

“I knew that you'd get it eventually," she said. "You see right through his nice guy act. Don't you boy?"

She had, at some point, been appointed Tiny's dedicated carer. It hadn't been an intentional choice that the handlers had made after noticing her hard work and wanting to make use of her on the reserve. No. It started when one of them was rushing to salvage a situation involving escaping dragon babies, and he thrust Tiny's dinner bucket at her with instructions to feed him.

At the time, she hadn't seen how Katriona and Maria had fed the Horntail, and she'd had no reason to suspect that feeding Tiny would be anything more than throwing the meat into the air for him to catch.

For the past five days, she'd been given his bucket by different handlers and she wondered when word had spread that this was now her job. As if she didn't have enough of those to be getting on with.

Maybe if it had been for any other dragon, she would have protested more, but she'd bonded with Tiny. Sure, he could and probably would turn her into a pile of ash in an instant if he wasn't well-warded in his little pen, but she imagined he still liked the entertainment she brought him. Most recently in the form of gossiping about Charlie.

He caught the meat in his jaw, but huffed smoke in a clear sign of annoyance.

"You find this way of feeding too boring?" she asked. Tiny blinked and swished the end of his tail. She scoffed. "You want me to put myself inside that paddock with you?"

She shook her head, ignoring his rattling and throwing him another slab of meat from her safe position outside of the wards.

Absolutely not. She might like Tiny, but she wasn't willing to test the lengths of their friendship.

Tiny caught the meat from the air but when he’d swallowed it, sparks flew as he growled in protest. She merely rolled her eyes, quite used to his tantrums by now.

She'd gotten no further with her secondary project, although it had really been demoted to tertiary now that she had been recruited as chief ward-caster. She'd fully accepted the conclusion that either Tiny was commmunicating with her, or she was completely losing her mind.

The former would be preferable.

But beyond that, she'd done nothing more to test the theory than to keep talking to him and try to decipher if his behaviours constituted a response to her words, or merely coincidence.

For example, huffing smoke had quickly been linked to frustration, and she catalogued the sorts of times he did it.

When she told him he couldn't have his neck brace removed because he wasn’t allowed to fly yet. When she was late for mealtime. Most recently, when she said no to getting inside his den just so dinner would be a bit more exciting for him.

Although, there was a niggling worry. She didn't really want Pumpkin to be bored senseless, or to become too reliant on her hand-feeding him. But putting herself in the firing line was also not an option, no matter how she'd dared to dream about it when she was wearing little pencil skirts and button-ups in an air-conditioned office in London.

"You know what?" she said as an idea came to her, tossing him the last of his food. "Maybe we can make a game of it. How does that sound?"

Perhaps she could make use of this extra job that had been dumped on her to actually move forward with her (tertiary) project, and still keep dinner times exciting for her scaly friend. It would have to be a secret. She didn't want the other handlers poking their noses into what she was getting up to, nor did she want to have to answer questions about why.

They would undoubtedly be against her studying Tiny and would jump at the chance to report her to the Ministry for engaging in unsanctioned work.

She could imagine Charlie would take great pleasure in escorting her to the first portkey back to England.

No, she would have to be careful.

"I hope you're good at keeping secrets, Tiny," she told him, his big blinking eyes full of understanding.

Chapter 4

Hermione remembered fondly how she had pined after this job. How she had imagined the excitement of the work and the chance to meet new people. It would be a lovely escape from the monotony of both London and perpetual spinster-hood.

The thrill she had gotten when she was accepted for it. The buzz of adrenaline as she'd emptied her desk and packed her cases.

How wonderful everything was going to be.

She groaned in frustration, rubbing her tired eyes.

"It is going to take a lot longer than a week , Charlie," she argued.

They had been sitting in the deserted common lounge debating this for at least twenty minutes.

Despite his insistence that she should train him in ward casting, he refused to allow her to take the lead and her own reservations against this idea had only grown until it felt like her chest was caving in with the weight of them. She wasn't convinced that Charlie possessed the patience or attention to detail that ward casting required, and she was even less convinced that the two of them working so closely together wouldn't end in a bloody mess.

"I don't have longer than a week," he said, his brow down and his arms folded. "I'm needed around the camp."

Hermione momentarily lifted her face up to the sky, eyes closed and begging for patience. When she looked back at him, she had schooled her expression. "How exactly am I supposed to train you in ward casting if you aren't there to watch how it's done?"

Charlie, undeterred by logic and fact, was unrecognisable from the nervous tour guide he'd been when last they were together. The present self-assuredness was in stark contrast to the rambling bumbler that had managed to warm her frosty attitude. Now, it seemed he was actively trying to remind her why they did not get along.

Amused, he leaned back in his chair and kicked his legs out in front of him. "Aren't you supposed to be bright?" he asked, his lips pulled upwards and the echo of a laugh on his voice. "I'm sure you could figure out a way."

Apparently he bounced between rude, nervous, and mocking, and Hermione was struggling to pick which of his personalities she least preferred. Each one of them seemed to be set just right to make specifically her outrageously angry. It was like he'd adjusted himself to the exact calibration that would drive her loopy.

Well, she was unwilling to give him the satisfaction.

Dangerously tightening her hold on her fragile clipboard, she arranged her face into a condescending smile. "It's not my abilities that I am worried about, darling," she said, sugary sweetness doing nothing to bely her disdain for him. She hoped that the moniker peeved him the way it did her when he called her honey. She didn't wait to find out as she pushed the conversation onward, dropping back to resigned formality. "But fine. You can join me for ward casting for a week, and see what you pick up. If that happens to be next to nothing, it's neither my business nor my concern."

His shoulders tensed and he pulled his legs back till he was sitting straight in his chair. After a moment where he only quietly met her stare, he shook his head and looked away.

"You're really bloody patronising, you know that Granger?" he asked roughly.

Hermione was shocked.

Her lips moved over words she was trying to say, but nothing more than used up oxygen came out. Charlie gave off so much an air of unbothered that she didn't understand why he was now shedding that like it was a veil.

She had, on occasion with Charlie, been patronising. But not without good cause.

It was her only offensive strategy for combatting his own coldness and condescension. If she'd become defensive or unkind in her time on the reserve, it was only because she'd been forced to. Other than Katriona and Maria, who had only recently accepted her, she had no friends. People only spoke with her when they had to, and often she preferred that they wouldn't just so that she wasn't subjected to their direct lack of regard for her as a person. She had enough of that from a distance with their contemptuous looks and the way she could clear a room just by being in it.

The utter unfairness of it all caused a bubble of emotion to expand her ribs, and in her panic at allowing it to burst, anger became her shield.

"Says the most haughty man I've ever had the displeasure of working with!"

It wasn't true, of course.

There were people in the Ministry who thought that because of her blood status, she was lower than muck on their shoe. Their hatred of her had less to do with what her job represented, and much more what she represented. But she didn't expect anything more from people like that. Their snide comments and their closed circles that she couldn't shoulder her way in to were painfully predictable.

But as anger swiftly burned up any rationality she may have possessed, successfully subduing any other emotion that could be tempted to spring free, it was clear to her that Charlie was the worst of them. Charlie, bearing the same name that to her symbolised acceptance, had become the very worst of her ostracisers. Even more, he now accused her of the very thing he'd been doing so effectively against her.

For a moment, her incensed mind viewed him only as something truly terrible.

And even as it did, Charlie's own annoyance made deeper lines in his face. Made the blue of his eyes fall into shadow. Too loudly for how close together they sat, he demanded, "How am I haughty?" 

With utmost clarity, his reaction made her know that her instinct was right. Charlie was terrible. And the thread her professional restraint had been hanging onto snapped violently.

" Seriously?" she cried, slamming her clipboard onto the table. "At every possible opportunity, you've diminished and humiliated me. Since the moment I arrived on the reserve, you've treated me like I'm infected with - with - I don't know, terminal bloody stupidity! And you've made it crystal clear that you're just praying to the gods that I'll realise how unwanted I am here and leave. You and every other bloody handler out there!"

She was breathing hard, her chest heaving as she stared at him wildly.

Beneath her stare, Charlie's own anger dissolved until he was no longer a thing of concrete and certainty, but of twitchy wariness. His imposing form had shrunk in response to her fury and his lips parted to speak but no sound came out.

It was in Charlie's stunned silence that Hermione's own anger drained away completely, until she was completely transparent before him and he was intimately acquainted with the shape of her mortification. She might as well have been bare for how desperately she wished to cover herself from view.

"I'm sorry," she choked out, breathlessly. Embarrassed. Her throat caught. "I'm sorry, that was completely - completely inappropriate."

She tilted her face towards the ceiling, warmth flooding her cheeks. Her heart was still galloping in her chest, but rather than anger bubbling her blood, anxiety had paralysed her muscles in tension.

Without her anger, she could see Charlie again.

Not inherently terrible. Not evil incarnate.

But now that she could see  him as he was, and knowing how she had believed him to be only moments ago, she could no longer look at him.

"It's fine," he responded, quietly, his expression unknown to her as her eyes avoided his.

In the reverberating silence between them, she could still hear echoes of her voice climbing in pitch. How loudly she had yelled. How close to Charlie's face she had been. She must have looked like a maniac.

"Hermione," he softly called after moments where neither said anything at all. "Look at me."

His words found her like a life raft in a tumultuous sea.

She looked at him as if there had never been any other choice but to.

And when she did, she thought she had never seen that expression on him before.

"It's fine," he repeated with emphasis, voice quiet so as not to disturb the heavy air hung about their heads. He was leaning close to her. "I'm sorry I made you feel that way. I didn’t realise what I was doing was making you... well I'm glad you told me and - and I'm just sorry."

It felt like stones falling in her stomach.

Until that moment, Hermione hadn't realised how on edge she had become. Living and working in a viciously unwelcoming environment had managed to get her back up so far that she'd forgotten what relaxed felt like. What confident felt like. She was all raw edges, her softness grated away bit by bit with every insult said in a language she couldn't understand. Rejected by everyone, with no reprieve from her loneliness. No one who wanted her around.

But suddenly Charlie was sitting in front of her, so like her Weasleys back home, with shining blue eyes and soft apologies.

And without her anger to deflect them, she felt warm tears pool in her eyes. 

"Shit," she whispered horrified, quickly bending her head down so he wouldn't see them fall as she wiped her knuckles along her waterline. " Shit. "

She had worked hard to be recognised in the reserve for something other than weakness. It was pitifully ironic to have been so thoroughly undone by a murmured sorry .

"Uh," Charlie voiced awkwardly. "Are you - are you okay?"

Hermione felt like an open wound sitting across from him, and he was a salt shaker.

"No," she snapped, only to immediately regret it. "Sorry."

"S'fine," said Charlie, who evidently did not know what else to say.

She tilted her face back up to the ceiling as if gravity would pull her tears back down. When she was sure there was no more, she reluctantly brought her eyes back to Charlie.

"Let's just," she croaked, trying to forget that her cheeks would be splotchy and her eyelashes wet, "get back to making a plan." 

His brows pulled together with reluctance.

Before he could argue, she asked, "Okay?" 

Translated: Please .

"Are you sure you don't want to talk some more?" he asked, something more than concern in his voice.

"I really don't," she said, trying to sound firm but still unable to shake the thickness in her throat.

He looked like he wanted to argue with her, but he only nodded his head in acquiescence. She looked back down at her notebook, taking a deep breath before trying to remember where they had been and what was left to discuss. She wanted to finish this meeting as quickly as possible so that she could take off to a solitary place and obliviate herself.

"Okay," she said, struggling for normalcy. Her voice wobbled. "What risks do you think are a priority for us to consider?"

She looked up at him, and could see that he was just as unsure about how to move forward. "What do you mean?"

“If I am going to set up a warding system, I need to know what the risks are,” she explained, thickly. "I am going to draft up a plan of what protective spells to incorporate within the wards. The ones I use and the combinations I choose will be dependent on what you think are the highest risks."

He nodded in understanding, although his eyes still watched her like he was waiting for her to start crying again. Scratching his beard, he said, “Well obviously incineration is a big one.”

Hermione, whose pen had been poised over her clipboard to take notes, was caught off guard by the sudden rush pulling at her gut. A little laugh came out on a puffing exhale.

She was unable to keep a smile from pulling at her lips. It wasn't funny really. He was only answering her question. But the tension between them and the silliness of pointing out that dragons pose a risk of fire nearly made her giggle. "Anything that I wouldn't expect?”

Charlie's own face had brightened significantly at the realisation that the crying must be truly over.

“Okay," he chuckled. "Poachers, then.”

"Poachers?” she asked for clarity, already writing it down on her clipboard.

“Honestly, most of the incidents this year have been started or aggravated by poachers,” he answered. "The dragon trade has been getting more out of control every year."

"Okay then," she said, feeling a little more herself. "Let's start there."

 

-

 

"No, hold it looser," she said, eyes fixed on his white knuckled grip.

"Looser?" Charlie asked, dropping his arm and turning back to her. "I thought you said it has to be precise."

It was the third day of her ward-casting training. She had spent the first part of the week demonstrating how to remove old wards and cast new ones as they made their way around the reserve. Paddock to paddock, she showed him the difference between a strong ward and a weak one. To recognise the shivers of an easily dismantled spell, and the difficulty of damaging a well-cast one. They were making good progress in re-warding the camp, and he was learning the theory of ward-casting on the job.

They were followed around by several handlers who would subdue the dragons while Hermione recast the wards. She got the distinct impression that Charlie had told them to be nice.

One of them had even asked how she was doing when they'd set out that morning.

Things in general had been less taut between them since the apology, and it was mostly thanks to Charlie. His hardness had been meticulously ironed out, making his company at least marginally better than being alone. He still poked fun at her, but without the raised voice and cutting words, his mockery felt much more lighthearted. Almost funny.

Although it became more constant and more annoying the longer Charlie went on doing nothing except watching. She could tell he was itching to put his lessons to the test. So she'd finally relented, and now she was trying to help him cast a protective shield over the nest of a sleeping wyvern. The amount of damage a wyvern could do was miniscule in comparison to the other beasts in the reserve, and it required simpler wards for Charlie to try on his first attempt.

"Yes," she answered him, "but if you hold it too tightly, your hand will shake a little. You need to strike the right balance."

He exhaled hard and raised his arm again, still holding the wand too tightly. "How's this?"

She pursed her lips, her hand instinctively reaching up to touch his forearm. The moment her fingers brushed his skin, he jumped and looked down at her with wide eyes.

"Sorry," she said embarrassed, pulling away quickly. She had felt the muscles in his arm flex under her fingertips. "I was going to -"

"It's okay," he said gruffly, and cleared his throat. He jerked his head, looking resolutely forward with a flush in his cheeks. "Go ahead."

Hesitantly, she touched his arm again, her fingers trailing over the taut muscles on the inside. Naturally, they relaxed under her touch until his grip was perfectly straight.

"There," she said, pulling away again. Her own cheeks were pink and she was a little breathless when she told him, "Much better."

"Okay," he said, voice strained. "Thanks."

"No problem," she squeaked, taking another step away from him.

His eyes flickered to the movement before he concentrated ahead of himself again. Regardless of his eagerness to try ward-casting himself, he looked nervous now that he was getting to. She supposed that she could sympathise with him. He'd spent so much of his adult life in the reserve, in his element , but now he was stepping outside of it and directly into hers. Hadn't she felt the same uncertainty when she came to the reserve?

"You can do it, Charlie," she told him.

He didn't respond but  it was as if her words had defrosted him. Charlie carefully curled his wand in a steady loop as he spoke the incantation. Hermione watched as a ring of translucent blue began climbing into the air, starting from the grass and slowly covering the nest like water running the wrong way until it met in a dome above the wyvern. Charlie lowered his wand, relaxing his stance a little as he observed his handiwork.

Hermione stepped closer to it to inspect it. It buzzed with energy, and she could see microfibres of the interwoven spells zipping along the shape of it. It wasn't perfect, but it was much better than the wards that had been used over the camp before she arrived. 

"It's insecure," he said, deflated. "There's too much movement."

Hermione shook her head. "It's brilliant Charlie. Especially for your first one. It is definitely strong enough to hold the wyvern."

He shifted his attention to her, but before he could respond, someone was shouting over to them.

"Charlie! Come quick!"

It was a trainee dragon handler that Hermione recognised as Jessica. She was waving at them urgently.

Charlie straightened immediately. He would know, as Hermione did now that she had been around a while, that whatever had happened must have been bad. Without another word, he slipped his wand into his vest and took off sprinting, Jessica leading the way. The other handlers who had been making sure the wyvern didn’t wake up followed, breaking into a run after them.

Hermione, heart racing, turned back to the protective wards. She believed in Charlie's wards, but without time to analyse them fully, she added some enhancements to ensure they’d stick. When she was sure that they would, she pushed her legs into a run as she followed the group into the camp.

Her lungs burned as she tried to catch up with them, unsure what help she could offer even if she did. Still, she couldn’t stand around while everyone else threw themselves into the danger.

In the short time that she had lived on the reserve, the sounds of dragons had become so commonplace that she didn’t realise how used to it she had become. But as she got closer to the group, she heard an ear-splitting roar that rose up louder than the rest. Then, above the tents, she saw the dark shape of black wings spread out. 

When she finally had sight of it, she slowed herself to a stop a good distance away.

The Hebridean Black was out of its paddock and surrounded by handlers who were pointing their wands at it. She had forgotten that they were attempting to transport it today. Something must have gone wrong during transit, the aggressive dragon no longer unconscious and instead flapping its wings as it tried to fly while the handlers did what they could to prevent it.

She could see their struggling, especially as the Hebridean threw its claws out at the handlers and rained fire on them. It dissipated in their protective spells, but it looked like the effort was exhausting them.

Then, Charlie arrived.

Had this man ever been anything less than completely confident? She couldn’t believe, as she watched him, that the had only moments before seemed nervous about casting a shield charm in front of her.

Without his wand in hand, he pulled up short in front of the dragon. His hands were in the air in front of him, and he was speaking to the dragon in calming tones. Hermione was too far to hear what he was saying, but even if she’d been close enough, her heart was beating so loudly in her ears that she was deaf to anything else.

The dragon breathed a gust of fire towards Charlie, who dodged early as if he had been expecting it.

He rolled straight onto his feet again, stepping closer as he continued trying to calm her. The dragon released another high pitched cry, rattling the air, but Charlie didn’t relent. 

Hermione watched in fear and fascination as she saw with her own eyes why Charlie was head handler. Clearly, he trusted his team to keep him safe, but there was something more in the way he interacted with the dragon.

Charlie knew the dragon. Could anticipate every decision, every attack. Knew exactly when to dodge, and when to soothe.

Her heart beat in an unsteady rhythm against her chest as she watched him.

She was so entranced by the spectacle as the dragon became increasingly subdued at Charlie’s beckoning that she nearly didn’t hear the creaking of a fence nearby.

Eyes reluctant to look away, her head turned slowly at the sound, unfamiliar to her despite the level of noise she’d become accustomed to. The fences in the reserve didn’t creak . 

But she froze as her eyes landed on the cause of it.

The Hungarian Horntail, whose wards she had not yet replaced, was climbing over its paddock fence line. 

It looked like a giant lizard as it crawled and her stomach plummeted in terror at how close it was. How agile it crept, barely making a noise as it surveilled the area. A perfectly honed killer.

She’d known the wards were not strong enough to hold, but the Horntail had been in the paddock for weeks and it hadn’t tried escaping. It seemed unbearably stupid now, as she watched the dragon rest on the wrong side of the fence, that she had assumed that reason enough not to prioritise redoing these wards. But the wards across the reserve suffered from all sorts of insufficiencies. She hadn’t thought to put them in a line of which was most dangerous.

Whether the dragon had simply been biding its time, or it had seen a chance at escape with most of the handlers in the area focused on the Hebridean, Hermione realised that she was the only one who had caught sight of its escape.

Horror electrified her as the Horntail finished its surveillance, its sights now locked on a handler a few metres away from its paddock. He was young, his back to the dragon, and oblivious to his own mortality.

The Horntail crouched lower, its head rearing back with intent. 

Hermione, suddenly commanded by instinct, threw her wand arm out - ejecting a shield charm strong enough to send the handler flying into the air just as the dragon’s fire lit up the space where he had been standing.

She sent loud, popping sparks into the air from the tip of her wand, directing the dragons attention over to her and away from its prey.

It eyes found her quickly, claws digging into soil as it crept off the fence and into the open. It roared in fury and Hermione felt her stomach fall through her shoes.

She didn’t think. She just ran. Using her wand, she sent large rocks flying towards the dragon, never looking back to check they hit their mark.

She ran and ran, until she realised she could not run anymore.

And then suddenly, all around her was fire and her skin was melting.

The darkness came quickly.

Notes:

thank you to everyone reading / commenting / kudos’ing! 🩷

Chapter 5

Notes:

I have that new Covid strain 😭 wanted to get this up last week but any time I wasn’t in work, I was either fast asleep or completing uni assignments aghhhhh. I’m really walking the line here between trying to keep the story’s momentum going, and not just churning out chapters I hate 🙂‍↔️

There was a blend of quiet voices around her. Warmth and laughter.

It lay over her like a blanket, slowly coaxing her into consciousness.

A small part of her brain recognised immediately the effects of pain potions. The world felt like it was humming with tranquillity.

In her slow waking up, pieces of memories began to swim into consciousness. But they seemed trivial when played back through the rosy lens of a calming draught.

She'd been running from the escaped Horntail.

With a distant interest, as if it had happened to someone else, she wondered how banged up she was. Other than the fatigue pinning her body to the soft mattress beneath her, she didn't feel like she was seriously injured. Although, it was hard to tell when the effects of the potions were still so strong.

The voices in the room were starting to crispen, and she blinked her eyes open. She was in a dimly lit room. A huge fireplace was lit, casting a warm glow over the room, and a duvet was tucked up to her armpits.

Her eyes landed on a head of hair tinged red in the flicking firelight. His face was out of sight.

“Charlie?” she croaked. The thought came from far away that her voice did not sound like her.

The chatter stopped immediately, and then, all of a sudden, three faces appeared in her line of view.

“Wha-” she started with great surprise, her voice, louder than before, moving up her throat like sandpaper. The shock of seeing their faces had her trying to push herself up, but only her head lifted. She settled on casting wide eyes over each of their lovely faces. “What are you guys doing here?”

Harry, Ron, and Ginny were all grinning at her.

Seeing them here, all at once, made something bubbly bloom in her chest. It felt like forever since she’d seen them all together like this. And after weeks of unfriendly faces, looking at them was nearly enough to bring her to tears.

“I told you, Mione,” Harry spoke first, looking proud. “So badass.”

She dimly recalled their conversation. “It’s hardly badass being lit on fire as you run away from a dragon,” she argued, her voice just barely louder than a whisper. 

“That’s the definition of badass,” Ginny told her, laying a hand on Hermione's arm.

Hermione wanted to argue but found herself too tired (and too happy from having them here).

"What are you doing here?" she asked again.

"Charlie floo-called as soon as it happened," Ginny said, and Hermione noticed a spark light in her eyes. Mischief. It worried her. "Mum was beside herself. Couldn't believe Charlie was calling home. And then when she found out what happened -"

"She nearly portkeyed here with us," Ron interrupted. "I barely managed to convince her not to come."

Hermione, loving Molly as she did, could not feel sorry for her adopted mother. It would have been nice to see her, and to have someone motherly to check in on her. But she'd be fussed over till she couldn't breathe, and even when she was perfectly alright again, Molly wouldn't allow her out of bed until she was sure herself that Hermione wasn't prone to spontaneous combustion or some other fatal tendency. 

"It was nearly enough excitement to give her a heart attack," Ginny said. "Especially," and with this, her face set in the very definite way of one full of devilry, "with how concerned Charlie was. You'd nearly think..."

Hermione watched Ginny's expression shift meaningfully. Suggestively. And her own screwed in response.

"Your mum cannot possibly have it in her head to try setting me up with another one of her sons," Hermione responded in her croaky voice. Molly's inability to accept her children being unattached had historically led to some discomfort for Hermione. There had been incidents with Percy, who was too stuffy even for the likes of Hermione, George, who saw her as a sibling as much as she did him, and even Ron, who she had been sure would have been her husband if only he were not so tragically unattracted to women.

That had come out unceremoniously one Christmas when Molly would not stop pestering the two of them to just make a go of it . 

Apparently the relentless woman had not sobered from her romantic notions of making Hermione a Real Weasley.

"Whatever is going on between you and Charlie can wait,” Harry interjected, frowning sternly at Ginny and further espousing the idea that there was anything  going on between her and Charlie. Hermione had no chance to tell him it was pure imagination before he asked her, “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” she replied after a moment, deciding the best course of action with Ginny was not to encourage it. Instead, she began inspecting her visible body parts as if she would get a better idea of how she felt if she could see an injury. The only skin she could see was that on her arms, which were perfectly unmarred, and the wisps of her hair that sat far enough forward to be in her periphery. “How badly injured was I?”

“Charlie said you weren’t exposed to the fire for that long,” Ginny said. “There are some burn marks on your shoulders, but your braid mostly protected your hair. The healers think your body shut down because of the pain, but your diagnostics are all looking really good.”

“Then why am I so tired?” she asked, groaning. She shifted, the new information making her suddenly imagine tingling at the back of her shoulders where they touched the bed.

“The healers said you might be tired. Your magic will have been working hard to repair your wounds while you were sleeping. It’s probably just a bit of fatigue,” said Ginny.

Hermione felt more tired than a bit of fatigue, but she nodded. She coughed as she did, and Ron lifted a glass of water to her lips.

As she sipped, Harry said, “Not to mention that you saved a guy’s life. I mean, it must have been pretty traumatising. No wonder you’re exhausted.”

The words caused a jolt to quite violently shatter Hermione’s peace.

She suddenly remembered the other events of the evening, and she spluttered on the water, which Ron pulled away quickly.

“Oh no,” she gasped, anxiety slipping through the cracks of the calming draught. This time, she was able to push herself up. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“No,” Ron shook his head. “They got it all under control pretty quickly.”

Under control .

There was a coldness to pain potions as they wore off, and as if they’d been protecting her from feeling both physical and psychological pain, she could sense what was left of them was too weak to keep her safe. She was slowly becoming very aware that she was the reason things had ever gotten out  of control.

The horntail escaping was something that she had known could happen; something that had been her job to prevent. She’d have to report the incident to her department in the ministry and declare that she’d known the risk was there. She’d have to face the handlers… She’d have to face Charlie.

His anger when she had removed Tiny’s wards would be nothing compared to how he would feel towards her now. He had been so furious at the thought of someone getting hurt because of her.

And now. Well, it had nearly really happened.

If she hadn’t been standing so close at the time, she realised. If she hadn’t looked around at the exact right moment. If she’d been slower to pull her wand… Someone would be dead and it would be her fault.

Sharp nausea rolled through her as her mind conjured pictures of what could have happened. Inescapable, unrelenting pictures of destructive fire over the camp while she stood powerless to prevent it. While she held the door open for the dragon to get out.

How could she possibly face working in the reserve again?

She couldn’t fake belonging there anymore. Not even to herself.

She'd never convinced the other handlers of it. Maybe Katriona and Maria. She'd hoped she was nearly there with Charlie too.

That one felt particularly painful to admit. Particularly mortifying to think that she’d begged him to take her seriously. That she’d cried to him over her treatment by his handlers, when they’d really been right all along.

She should leave. Go back to England, and admit that she had made a mistake coming here at all.

But then another figure crossed her mind.

Somehow, Tiny had migrated in her head from being something that terrified her, to some semblance of a friend.

No. In fact, not a semblance of it at all. A real friend.

Despite the horrible, terrible idea of continuing to work in the reserve after failing so completely and publicly, it seemed even more horrible to leave Tiny.

They had started their project, which he had fully gotten on board with. Slapped the ground with his tail in excitement and rumbled in pleasure when they played a game that he ended up enjoying. They both enjoyed it. So much so, that she’d forgotten along the way that this was science and not just fun .

She’d been shucking her other responsibilities just to spend a bit more time around his paddock.

Tiny was the most amazing thing, most exciting thing, that had happened to her in years.

“How is my dragon?” she asked suddenly, sitting up fully. She’d forgotten then that her friends knew nothing of a dragon and knew even less about her strange connection to one. It had been a secret, after all.

But now, the handlers might use the incident to send her back to England. They wouldn’t believe she had any type of connection with a dragon.

The sudden panic at being separated from him surprised her, but she didn’t question the way it seemed to renew her energy completely.

She didn’t really understand it, but she needed to see Tiny.

“The Horntail?” Harry asked slowly, brows furrowed as Hermione pulled her duvet away and slowly swung her legs out of bed. It occurred to her how nice the healers’ tent was, but her mind was soon distracted from the thought.

“No,” she said. “Tiny. My Opaleye.”

This only seemed to confuse them more, especially as they each tried to usher her back into the bed.

“C’mon, Mione.”

“You’ve just told us how tired you are.”

“You shouldn’t be out of bed yet.”

She batted away their hands. She was sluggish, but without the calming draught making her nearly paralytic, she found her limbs to be lighter.

“How long have I been unconscious for?” she asked, changing tact as she stood up.

“Um,” Ron started, automatically slipping her arm over his shoulder and taking most of her weight. “About a day and a half.”

“You never said you were actually working with the dragons,” Harry said, coming around the bed with Ginny on his tails. Ginny took her other side, all three of them clearly deciding it was best not to argue with her.

Hermione only sighed. She'd missed two mealtimes with Tiny. He was probably lonely.

“I have to go see him,” Hermione told them, starting to walk forward. It was significantly more difficult having two people, both stronger than her, managing her on each side.

“We can’t” Ron argued, just as Ginny cried:

“I can’t believe this! You’re like a proper dragon lady!”

Hermione ignored one for the other. “Why?” she asked Ron.

He turned red. He seemed embarrassed as he said, “Charlie will kill us.”

Hermione frowned. Did Charlie not even want her around the camp? Would they demand she be accompanied by a chaperone? Or had they already contacted the Ministry and were packing her things while she lay there?

Maybe she was already too late to visit Tiny.

“Don’t tell him then,” she said, her voice nearly breaking into a normal register with her indignance.

Ginny laughed. “He’s probably right outside,” she said, nodding towards the outside of the tent. “He’s been pretending to be busy, but he’s obviously waiting close by in case he can think of a good enough reason to come in and check on you. Or in case you ask for him.”

“Why would I ask for him?” Hermione asked, bewildered by this new information. She couldn’t think of any reason for Charlie to stand guard outside her tent, other than to make sure she wouldn’t get out to make more trouble. Although surely he would have someone less senior do that.

Ginny gave her a piercing look. “Don’t act dumb.”

Hermione, unwilling to entertain the conversation this was turning into, shook her head. Ginny would lose any notions of romance the moment Charlie was forced to interact with Hermione. So she asked instead, “Can’t we just try to sneak past him?”

“Yes let’s,” Ginny said, at the same time Ron said:

“It will never work.”

“Don’t you think you’d be better just resting for the day, Mione?” Harry asked.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “It won’t take long. You guys can just take me over to Tiny's paddock, I'll introduce you to him, and then we can come right back."

Harry looked very unsure, but Ginny came to her rescue. "Oh lighten up," she told him. "Let's go meet a dragon."

It was a team effort to get her out of the tent, especially with Ron's knees bent at an awkward angle.

"This is very clearly not what the healer meant by rest, by the way," he told Hermione as they left the tent.

As for her, she chose not to admit that she was already quite tired just from the short walk outside.

The camp was as she remembered it. Loud and chaotic, handlers running past and shouting at each other, smoke lingering low in the air. Unlike the first time Hermione had arrived, the heavy air felt like a welcome home . She looked around to get her bearings before directing their little group through the camp towards Tiny's paddock. There was no sign of Charlie in their immediate vicinity.

They must have made a spectacle with the way the handlers around them paused to look over. Hermione tried to avoid their eyes as if it could make her invisible.

Unfortunately, they were spotted before they’d made any real headway towards Tiny.

"What the hell?"

Ron stiffened at her side as well, but Ginny only chuckled lowly. The voice, despite coming from behind them, could only belong to one person.

When Charlie spoke again, he was much closer. "What are you playing at, Ron?"

Hermione knew that at some point she would have to face Charlie. She would have to apologise and accept his anger. But she did not want to face it right now.

So when Ron pulled away ever so slightly from her side, and Ginny whispered, "Let's go," into her ear, Hermione allowed herself to lean more heavily on her friend as they attempted a quick getaway.

"Charlie," Ron said placatingly behind them, "how's it going, bro?"

Charlie’s response was blocked out by Ginny's laughter on one side, and Harry's pink face taking Ron's place on her other side.

"Someone's having a hard time processing all those pesky feelings," Ginny cackled.

Hermione didn't know if Ginny was talking about Charlie or her or Ron, but she wouldn't know what she meant even if she knew who she had meant them about.

"Is he always so bossy?" Ginny asked. They were closer to Tiny now and Hermione could see him curled up in his paddock.

Before Hermione could respond, she was stopped by the sound of someone shouting “Oi!” behind them.

They stopped just as Charlie came around them. His cheeks were stained an angry red, and his jaw was tight as he glared at his little sister.

"She should be resting ," his first words bit the air, injecting it with venom. Hermione, tired and weaker from moving so soon after waking up, flinched.

"She's fine, Char," Ginny said, affecting a level of unbothered reserved only for youngest siblings. Hermione was impressed by how unmoved she was by Charlie’s anger. "We're just going to take a quick look at her dragon and then we'll take her back to bed. Stop fussing."

Hermione felt a pang of insecurity at Ginny calling Tiny as hers . Despite that Hermione liked to think of him that way, she would never be so brazen as to claim it in front of an actual dragon handler. Especially not Charlie.

But he seemed not to notice.

He got even redder. "She's not fine," his hand gesturing towards Hermione. "She can't even walk on her own. You're dragging her around."

Hermione, not willing to be spoken about like she wasn’t there, even if being spoken to could be quite a lot worse, finally interjected.

"I'm right here," Hermione croaked.

And as if her voice had hands of its own, it tugged his face away from Ginny until his eyes were on her completely.

She had expected him to be angry.

To tell her how unsuited she was for the reserve. How he had known all along that she would endanger the camp. That she was exactly like the other ministry officials, only causing problems for him.

She was prepared for it. She deserved it.

So when his shoulders loosened and the tightness around his eyes softened instead, her own chest began to seize with uncertainty.

She did not  expect him to turn quiet as he looked at her, his lips parted like he was suddenly all out of words to say.

Hermione felt heat climb up her cheeks. She waited for him to find something to say but even though time kept moving around them, Charlie wasn't doing anything except looking at her.

Even Ginny and Harry were eerily quiet on either side of her.

Finally, she broke the silence herself.

"I just wanted to visit Tiny. He gets grumpy with me when I don't visit enough and I haven't seen him since the... uh."

She didn't know how to describe the dragon attack other than with those words. But saying the words out loud made it real, and she had a feeling that neither her nor Charlie were ready to make that step.

"You should be resting," Charlie repeated, this time softer, his voice cracking and nearly as quiet as hers. If he didn’t know who she meant by Tiny , he didn’t say.

"I know," she said. It felt like being on a knife's edge. Unsure what might make him snap. She warily continued, "But Tiny doesn't know that. So, I just wanted to - to check on him."

If there was one way she knew to soften Charlie Weasley up, it was with dragons.

And she was right. Charlie's shoulders fell all the way, and all of the tension flushed from his body. After searching her eyes again, he nodded.

"Fine," he murmured. His eyes flickered to Harry and Ginny holding her up on each side. When he looked back at her, there was a concerned line between his brows. "Not long, though."

"Of course not, brother," Ginny said loudly, piercing the tension and making Hermione finally look away from Charlie. She realised that at some point, though she hadn't noticed him, Ron had joined them too. Ginny squeezed her waist. "Come on, Mione. Let's see this dragon of yours."

She blushed again at her wording, averting her eyes from Charlie's as Harry and Ginny led her forward. Charlie, surprising her, followed behind.

When they were finally standing outside the paddock, Hermione untangled herself from her friends so she could stumble forward to grip the fence.

Tiny was curled into a tight ball of black scales, his head covered by his wings and his tail wrapped around his body. The eyes of her friends and Charlie felt like physical weight on her back. They all remained behind her as if waiting to see what she would do.

"Hey there," she called quietly, trying to pretend it was only her and Tiny. Being near him again made something that had been buzzing in her gut finally settle.

A quiver ran down Tiny's scales at her voice, and slowly he lifted his wing to peer out from under it.

Her stomach coiled as she saw the sad set of his eyes. “Hi,” she said again, grimacing. "Miss me?"

Unsurprisingly, Tiny responded by huffing an inordinate amount of smoke at her before hiding his face again. Despite her physical exhaustion, she couldn't help the fond smile as she looked at her deadly predator acting like a spoiled kitten.

"Oh come on," she said, softly. "I'm sorry I haven't been around. I got - hurt… but I'm doing much better now."

His head came up quickly from under his wings and his wide eyes blinked at her. A rattling sound came from his throat before he retracted his wings, uncovering his body completely.

"Yes, I'm okay now,” she responded. “Just tired."

"Merlin," Ron whispered behind her as Tiny stood up to full height, eyes focused on Hermione. 

The dragon seemed oblivious, or uncaring, that they had company. He blew steam, his tail whipping around him.

"Has he been fed, yet?" she asked, looking over her shoulder at Charlie.

Part of her having forgot that she’d kept her connection with Tiny a secret, she was surprised to see him looking at her with wonder in his face.

As if in addressing him she had given him permission to come closer, he stepped forward until he was right beside her. But he wasn't looking at Tiny. He was looking at her.

"You talk to Pumpkin?" he asked on an exhale.

She felt like she’d been caught singing in the shower. It felt like a private moment that Charlie had witnessed, and with how well he knew dragons, she had the same feeling as if she was being watched by a teacher in class.

"He's a good conversationalist," she said meekly. And then she looked back at Tiny. “And I have my own name for him. Isn’t that right, Tiny?”

Tiny, despite having been against her name for him from the beginning, seemed eager to agree that this was indeed his name. He rattled happily, his neck elongated with pride.

It surprised a laugh from Charlie. She looked back at him to see he was smiling widely.

"That’ll explain why he was huffing with Mikhail,” Charlie told her. “He was unknowingly calling him the wrong name.”

Hermione smiled with pride of her own. She looked at Tiny only to find him looking curiously back at her. He must have been surprised to see her getting along with the man she had spent so much time complaining about to him.

She cleared her throat, ignoring Tiny’s knowing look. “Did Mikhail feed him?”

"Oh," Charlie said, like coming out of a trance. "Yeah, he did. Sorry, I didn't realise you'd want to -"

"That's okay," she interrupted, leaning her heavy weight against the fence. Tiny huffed smoke at her, as if he did not think it was okay. "I can get back to feeding him tomorrow."

"If you’re well enough to," Charlie responded looking at her like he had so much more to say.

But if there had been anything more, it was waylaid as Hermione's knees collapsed against the fence.

"Woah," he said, an arm catching around her middle and preventing her from landing in the dirt.

His hand was large and warm on her waist and his face was close to hers, the wonder in his eyes replaced with the concern he’d been wearing earlier. "Okay, time to go back to bed."

Tiny rattled again, but this time it sounded panicked. He came closer to the perimeter, nudging it with his snout. Ginny stepped up to Hermione's other side to prop her up.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she promised Tiny, and he rattled again. Her heart warmed. "Don't worry. Another night’s sleep and I’ll be okay again."

Charlie scoffed as he and Ginny started leading her away. She allowed them to carry her through the camp, more aware of the heat of Charlie’s side than she had been of either Ron or Harry.

From beside them, Ron asked, "Are we ignoring the fact that Hermione was just talking to that dragon? And that it understood her?"

Harry clapped his hand on Ron's back. "See, Mione’s now the queen of the dragons."

Hermione wanted to melt into a puddle of mortification as she glanced up at Charlie.

She had nearly gotten someone killed less than two days ago with her incompetency. Not to mention the ways the handlers interacted with the dragons far surpassed Hermione’s where she was safely outside the wards.

But Charlie looked amused. She didn’t know if he was laughing at her or at them.

"Stop," she warned them, but her cheeks were too warm and her throat too croaky to come across threatening.

Charlie chuckled beside her, but Hermione was suddenly distracted from her embarrassment.

"Where are we going?" she asked, as they approached Charlie's private tent.

"Back to bed," Charlie told her.

It was a poor choice of wording.

Despite all her arguments that there was nothing between her and Charlie, she saw Ginny’s head whip around to look at her from the corner of her eye. She burned red.

Shaking her head, she spluttered, "This is your tent, Charlie."

Ginny raised a brow. "You didn't care about that half an hour ago."

Hermione's lips parted. Half an hour ago? Had she been set up in Charlie's room? She hadn't realised it was his tent when they were in it or when they left it. She’d been too focused on seeing Tiny.

"Oh," she gasped. "Oh no, I can't sleep in your tent. I'm fine in my own, honestly."

Charlie tutted, pulling her forward. "You won't get enough peace and quiet in a bunk. I'm already set up with some of the guys, so it makes the most sense for you to sleep here until you're better."

"No seriously," she argued. "It's not necessary. You've already done more than enough -"

"Stop fidgeting," Ginny told her as they dragged her inside.

Being inside the tent felt far more intimate now that she knew who it belonged to. It should have occurred to her that these weren't normal hospital quarters when the entrance made way into a large living area with a sofa, coffee table, and bookcase. The shelves were crammed tightly with books, the ones that didn’t fit having been placed on the very top in a pile.

Charlie's books.

It felt like she was intruding on his privacy being here, and she quickly averted her eyes to look only at the floor.

They led her through into the bedroom, and Hermione’s face was like a tomato as she allowed herself to be tucked into what she now knew was Charlie's bed.

No wonder her friends all thought there was something going on between them. Any number of handlers had been injured since she arrived here, and not one of them had been put up in Charlie’s private tent.

"We'll get you some more water," Ginny said, before grabbing Harry and Ron by the arms and hauling them out of the room. Their protests were lost behind the separating curtain falling back into place.

Then, it was just her and Charlie.

The fire was still burning, the crackle of it breaking the silence. She listened to it for a long while, allowing the quiet to seep into her tired bones.

When she was worried that the others would return soon, she finally spoke.

"I'm sorry,” she said.

She looked up at him, her fingers busily fidgeting with the duvet sheet.

Charlie, who had been looking at her blanket-covered legs with a strange expression on his face, looked up to meet her gaze. He frowned as if he hadn’t heard her. "What?"

She swallowed. "It's all my fault."

Charlie’s frown deepened and, though hesitant, like he worried it might frighten her, he sat down on the bed beside her. It dipped under his weight, causing her to lean closer. "What's your fault?"

His voice was so warm. She wasn’t sure if she’d appreciated how deeply it resonated until now.

"The dragon," she said, looking down at his hands. Her words began falling from her lips. "I knew - knew the wards weren't strong enough - and I didn't... Didn’t fix them. Someone could have been badly hurt. I’m so stupid. And I’m sorry. I just - I - I feel so -"

He placed a hand on hers, quieting her. "Breathe, honey.”

Her cheeks burned brightly and she met his eyes again, words she couldn’t say still trapped on her tongue.

His frown softened, and he held her hand tighter. "That's what you're worried about? That you caused the dragon to escape?"

"It was my fault, Charlie," she whispered, only to find her voice wobbling. She blinked back the sudden rush of emotion threatening to wet her cheeks.

"No," he said, shaking his head slightly. "These things happen. They aren't anyone's fault. You did exactly what you were meant to do, Hermione. Paddy would have died if it hadn’t been for your quick thinking. And you alerted others to the danger with your magic. You did everything right."

Hermione sniffled, feeling a tear slip down her cheek. Charlie didn’t hesitate in lifting his hand, palm cupping her jaw, thumb gently swiping the tear from her cheek.

“You did everything right,” he repeated, his voice sure as if holding her face was regular to him. Hermione, on the other hand, was sure she had stopped breathing.

Her focus seemed to narrow down to the feel of his calloused hand and the blue colour of his eyes.

Ginny, Harry, and Ron were back but she barely noticed their knowing looks.

Charlie’s touch disappeared as he stood up to go, giving the others firm instructions not to let her out of bed again. Her face was hot where he’d held her. Her pulse ringing in her ears.

She only started breathing again when he left, his eyes finding hers one more time.

Notes:

thank you so much for all the comments and kudos love 🥹🩷

Chapter 6

"You are one of us now," Katriona told her the next morning over breakfast. "Strong to fight dragon."

Despite the fatigue weighing her muscles down, Hermione had woken early. Ginny spent the night in Charlie’s bed with her, and they’d fallen asleep after the boys had left to the sound of the crackling fire. Other than her tiredness, Hermione wouldn’t have known she had just recently been attacked by a dragon.

Ginny had offered to help her get ready, but she’d been able to walk around the tent without assistance.

She'd sent a patronus to the boys, and they met them not long after outside the food tent. Ron, so like Molly at times, fussed over Hermione being out of bed while Harry complained about being woken early.

Once they had made their breakfasts, she led them through the crowded tent towards where she usually sat at mealtimes. Maria and Katriona were already seated, and they jumped up to hug her when she came over. It was strange to introduce them to the people she had known nearly her whole life. It felt like she was exposing a part of herself that she kept hidden around the reserve, and with the physical representation of her London life before her, she suddenly realised how different things had been in Romania. How different she had been.

She wasn’t surprised when those two lives didn’t blend with each other, instead splintering into two conversations when Harry, Ron, and Ginny started to discuss the quidditch season.

After Charlie left the night before, the four of them had spent the rest of the evening gathered on his bed, gossiping about people they went to school with. She had fallen behind on what was happening back in England, and she was surprised at how distant it all felt now.

She hadn’t been gone for long, but it felt like so many things had changed. Neville and Pansy were finally engaged. The Patil twins had gotten themselves involved in a pyramid scheme, which they’d started trying to recruit Ginny into. And their Friday night quiz team had more or less abandoned trivia in favour of alcohol since she had left. She could blame Draco Malfoy for that.

Hearing about home was surreal. She had the idea that life in London had paused the moment she had left, as if nothing could happen without her there to witness it. But it rather felt like the further she had gotten from home, the quicker time in London seemed to pass. While she lived there, nothing ever changed. Nothing ever happened. It was the very monotony of her life in London that had pushed her to sign onto her year in the reserve.

She’d expect to feel sadness at hearing news from home, but instead she felt detached like she was hearing about people who were strangers to her rather than people who she had grown up with. Her whole life as she remembered it felt like it belonged to someone else. She could imagine the streets that she walked and the seats that she sat in. Would recognise the sounds and the smells, but despite knowing they were familiar to her, they didn’t feel like hers anymore. They were like a dream that became blurrier the more she tried to remember it.

Ginny had distracted her from those thoughts when she demanded to know what was going on between Hermione and Charlie. And Hermione, although she knew what she said was true, still felt like she was lying when she said there was nothing.

For the first time, she found herself feeling like the time she had left in Romania was going too quickly.

"I did not fight a dragon," she said to Katriona, the cracks in her voice having smoothed overnight.

"You did not win fight," Katriona conceded, nodding her head with severity. "But you get respect, anyway."

Hermione, unsure whether she was expected to feel grateful that she had apparently been accepted by the handlers, twisted her lips. She had grown so accustomed to being ignored that the gruff nods and grunts of acknowledgment from handlers as she passed them that morning had surprised her. She was relieved that they wouldn't use the incident as an excuse to get rid of her. But just because they'd warmed to her did not mean she had to them.

She was distracted from answering when she noticed someone arriving through the tent entrance.

Charlie was later to breakfast than usual. She rarely saw him in the mornings because he was normally gone by the time she arrived, busy working around the reserve before most people had gotten out of bed.

From the moment he came through, his eyes began scanning the tables. If he was looking for someone in particular, he stopped the moment his eyes found her looking at him. Prickly heat rose through Hermione at being caught staring. Then it spread at the thought that maybe he’d been looking for her. 

She could remember the feel of his rough palm cradling her jaw like a ghost on her skin. So gentle. Like he worried he might hurt her. The little hairs on the back of her neck stood up; the blood in her veins hot and sticky.

Yes, she had been lying to Ginny.

If Charlie’s crinkled eyes and relaxed smile at having spotted her, or Hermione’s racing heart were anything to go on.

There wasn't nothing between them.

It was only attraction, she told herself, and she couldn't know that he felt it too. Not long ago they could barely say a nice word to one another.

But she couldn’t deny that she’d noticed he wasn’t at breakfast when she arrived. That she’d been disappointed at not seeing him. That now that he was here, she wondered if he might come over. Hoped that he would.

Surely he would want to spend time with Ron and Ginny before they left that evening.

With that hopeful thought, she watched him push his hair back before turning toward the kitchen area.

Hermione exhaled the breath she'd been holding.

A gloating chuckle came from beside her, and Hermione, who felt like she had been floating above the table, was catapulted back into reality. One wide-eyed look at Katriona gave away the handler’s scheming.

Hermione groaned, pushing her flushed face into her palms as she awaited their jokes.

"Maria,” Katriona said, stretching their friend’s name out, “should we tell Hermione about how Charlie saved her?"

No less wary, Hermione’s peeked out from between her fingers, unable to hide her interest. Harry, Ron, and Ginny hadn’t known many details, and she hadn’t asked Charlie for them. Wasn’t sure what he would have said even if she had asked him.

But then she wasn’t sure that the story she would hear from Maria and Katriona would be the full truth either.

Maria's eyes met Katriona’s, and the pair exchanged wicked grins.

"I think that we should, Kat,” Maria said. Unlike many of the other handlers, Maria wasn’t usually a morning person. It took a special subject to perk her head up from where it hung heavily over her breakfast. Now, the tiredness seemed to have evaporated from her features entirely.

Embarrassment flooded Hermione, and she said, “I know what you’re trying to do,” but her words were lost beneath Katriona’s.

“Obviously, he did not notice you at first,” she was saying. “There was the emergency situation with Penny.”

At Hermione’s questioning look, Maria explained, “The Hebridean Black.”

Katriona nodded. “But then the terrible noise from across camp. That made everybody look.”

“It distracted all of us,” Maria took over as if they had practiced it. “It was like a train hitting cement. Then all you saw was Patrick flying through the air. It must have been a strong shield spell you hit him with.”

“Charlie still did not see because he was putting Penny into the harness,” Katriona went on.

“He used the distraction to get her subdued,” Maria added.

“And that’s when you –” Katriona, looking at Hermione, pretended to point a wand in the air “- sent the sparks from your wand.”

“He looked over then,” Maria said and then paused a moment, her fingers curling around Hermione’s. “Everyone was looking by that point. It was… I was scared for you.”

“You look like warrior!” Katriona interrupted, defiantly. “Staring down dragon.”

Her friends on the other side of her must have stopped their own conversation now as they leaned forward to listen to the story. Hermione found herself hanging from their words. Being inside the moment, it had never occurred to her that anything else existed outside of herself and the dragon. Now, she was imagining what it must have looked like.

“I’m not saying you didn’t look brave,” Maria told her before narrowing her eyes at Katriona. “But it was obviously bad. Charlie was the first person to move, and he looked – well, he didn’t look like himself.”

Katriona was nodding and Hermione’s eyes darted over to the man who was still standing by the kitchen but was now in conversation with another handler.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Maria’s face lit up with a teasing smile, and Hermione blushed. “Well, you know what he’s like. So calm and collected all the time. But he nearly fell over himself trying to get to you.”

“He was afraid,” Katriona said.

“Terrified,” Maria corrected.

Ginny hummed in interest beside her, but Hermione didn’t look over. She thought that her thoughts might be written all over her face, and she couldn’t send Ginny home to Molly with any proof that there was something.

“He was shouting at you to duck, but you just started running,” Maria continued. Hermione couldn’t remember hearing anything at the time but her own pulse thundering in her ears. “And then the Horntail –“

“Jackie,” Katriona said.

“She doesn’t know all of their names, Kat,” Maria said, rolling her eyes.

“She can learn.”

Hermione laughed at Maria’s sigh. “Fine. The Horntail, Jackie,” Maria said, “just kinda… lit you up. It was horrible. You just disappeared behind a wall of fire.”

Hermione could remember that, if nothing else. The clarity with which she had known she was about to die. 

Her fingers fidgeted against the fabric of her trousers.

Dragon fire didn’t take long to turn its victims into ash. She’d learned during her training with Mikhail that it was forbidden to try to save someone under dragon fire by any other means than magical. The risk of death was too high to let anyone else run into the fire. The best hope victims had was for the handlers to extinguish or contain the fire before trying to salvage whatever was left of the person inside.

So she didn’t expect what Maria said next.

"Charlie was close enough that when you disappeared, he jumped straight in after you."

Hermione’s fingers stilled and her heart caught in her chest. “What?” she asked, pressure closing around her windpipe.

"Stupid man," Katriona said. "Tried to kill himself because he is in love."

She barely heard Ginny’s excited squealing next to her, or Ron when he muttered, “Wait till mum hears about this.”

Charlie had gone against every safety protocol to save her. He could have died himself.

It made no sense. She tried to picture the same man who she had watched so easily avoiding fire – the handler who knew dragons well enough to tame them only with his hands and words – running headfirst into it.

Maria clucked her tongue. "Like a madman. He completely lost his head."

As if by magnetic force, her eyes found Charlie again. He was laughing now, and the sight of it made her tummy turn and twist within her. She felt flustered as she turned her attention back to her friends.

But before she could ask what happened next, the sound of her name tugged her eyes upward.

A young man with wavy brown hair had stopped on the other side of the table from her.  His hands were tucked into his pockets, and he looked nervous.

It was the man she had saved from the Horntail.

With her mind still reeling, she watched him give her a sheepish smile. "I thought I should probably come over to say thanks," he said with an Irish lilt to his accent, unaware that her thoughts were a minefield and he had just stepped into it.

"Oh," she said, having been quite suddenly and unceremoniously ripped out of her thoughts. She didn’t care about the man in front of her, or his gratitude. Not at this moment. But she forced a smile onto her face. "You're welcome.” She could barely force herself not to look back at Charlie for long enough to ask, “Are you recovered?"

He nodded, flexing his back. She remembered Harry telling her that she had broken some of his bones with the impact of her spell. "Much better, thanks," he said. Perhaps not noticing her disinterest in the conversation, he quirked a brow at her. "You?"

"Tired," she responded, blandly. "Um. I'm glad you're okay."

He nodded, looking away awkwardly. Maybe he had noticed her disinterest.

"Uh yeah," he started, still not looking at her. She got the impression from the fidgety way he stood there, and kept standing there, that he was trying to think of something more to talk about. He looked back towards her, and the green of his eyes was more noticeable now against the pink on his cheeks. "My name's Patrick by the way. Paddy. Just in case you're ever – you ever wanna hang out, or -"

Paddy didn't finish, but Katriona scoffed beside her.

Confusion filtered through Hermione’s impatience enough to distract her from the other thoughts threatening to drag her under.

In London, she rarely found herself as the object of someone's desire. In fact, she rarely spoke to or met anyone who didn’t know what she looked like with buck teeth. She wasn’t practiced in recognising flirting from men or spotting someone’s interest in her. But the nervousness was coming off Paddy in waves, and he had made it sound like…

"Okay, thanks Paddy," she told him, uncertainly. 

"Yeah," he finished awkwardly. He stood rooted to the spot for longer than he should have before he finally turned, walking away without another word.

Maria and Katriona instantly dissolved into laughter and Hermione looked at them with mortified confusion on her face.

"The men outnumber the women in this camp by three to one," Maria explained between giggles. "Looks like you just became a viable option."

Ginny quickly jumped in to trade her thoughts with Maria and Katriona on Paddy’s looks, but there was no room in her mind for processing Paddy’s interest in her when she still had so many questions about Charlie.

She allowed her eyes to finally look back over at him. He’d finished talking to the handler, but he wasn’t coming over as she thought he might.

Disappointment wrapped tightly around her ribs as she watched him leave instead. He hadn’t sat down at all.

Maybe she’d been wrong. There wasn’t something between them. Not something that was reciprocated by Charlie anyway. She forced herself to join the conversation, allowing the lingering questions about Charlie to go unanswered. The more she seemed to know, the more confusing it all became.

She had ten months left. She could fall very far in that time if she wasn’t careful.

 

-

 

Hermione leaned her face back against the sun, eyes closed, enjoying the unfiltered rays that so rarely made it through the smog of camp. Her friends had wanted to go out into dragon territory, where she had never been herself. The sky was clear out here, but she never came out because of her fear of being eaten alive. She’d only agreed to it when Charlie said he would be spending the afternoon with them.

Besides asking how she was feeling, he hadn’t spoken to her much. Instead, he had joined the ongoing debate about the different signings in the quidditch league and the new manager at the Cannons. She was both relieved that he kept his distance, and disappointed by the reminder that her feelings were unreturned.

Now, with the comfort of the afternoon sun on her skin, she tried to relax and allow her mind to wander, hoping to forget the tightness in her chest.

“Signing Dallard was a big mistake,” Charlie said, causing Ron to scoff loudly.

It was nice to hear Charlie with his siblings. It became so easy most of the time to forget he was a Weasley. He never spoke of them or asked about them. He rarely visited. The reminder that Charlie wanted nothing to do with England coiled tightly around her and she tried to shake the feeling off.

She forcefully turned her thoughts to her work, and then to the odd conversation she’d had with Paddy, and then to Tiny. But none of them kept her distracted for long from thinking of Charlie. Especially not with him so close.

The sun had a mystical effect of making impossible things seem true.

Sleep was creeping up on her as she became less able to stop herself from slipping into rosy daydreams.

“Gin, you could get us all tickets,” Ron said.

This, or perhaps it was the thick and heavy silence that followed, finally pierced her bubble. A dreadful sensation pitted itself in her stomach, and she prayed silently for Ron to say nothing more.

“The whole family could go,” Ron continued after a moment, with greater hesitation. Hermione nearly groaned.

The words hung like gallows in the quiet breeze.

Feeling like she was invading a private moment, Hermione kept her eyes closed, imagining that if she was unable to see them then neither could they see her.

Eventually, Charlie sighed. “I’m needed at the reserve, mate.”

He sounded unhappy, as if he didn’t like letting Ron down.

Hermione forced herself to lie still. She had the feeling that saying nothing, but also saying something, were the wrong things for her to do.

“Mum would really love to see you, Char,” Ginny said quietly.

“So would dad,” Ron agreed quickly, somewhat spurred on by Ginny getting involved. “Not to mention Bill and -”

“Look,” Charlie cut in harshly and Hermione winced. She really shouldn’t be here for this conversation – it wasn’t her business. “My life is here now. I’m not coming back to England. The family is just going to have to accept that.”

Even though his words were for Ron and Ginny, they felt like confirmation to Hermione too.

Cold disappointing confirmation.

Charlie’s life was in the reserve. Hermione’s was in London, no matter how far away it felt right then. In ten months, she would return home and whatever relationship she had formed with Charlier would be over.

He didn’t even go home to visit his family. Didn’t even like to talk about them.

And Hermione was part of that family. She was part of the Ministry, which he hated.

Would he avoid talking about her when she was gone too? Avoid thinking about her at all?

She felt foolish now at the way her mind kept wandering back to him.

With how she’d allowed herself to hope their something could be something real.

“Well, Hermione might be able to convince you to come back with her at Christmas,” Ron said, stubbornly.

Charlie didn’t respond, and Hermione had never been more tempted to open her eyes. To see if he was looking at her. But that was the kind of information she should avoid if she had any hope of surviving the next ten months without breaking her own heart at the end of them.

“How much longer are you here for, ‘Mione?” Harry said nudging her side with his foot. She opened her eyes blearily against the sun, finding him looking at her for help to move the conversation on.

She pushed herself onto her elbows, looking over at Charlie.

He was staring out at the open space around them, and incomprehensible disappointment curdled in her stomach. 

“About ten months.”

Ten months, she thought as she looked at Charlie’s unshaven stubble, was a long time. 

“Do you miss home?” Ginny asked, eyes heavy with sadness as they looked between her and Charlie.

Charlie’s jaw worked under the skin, his eyebrows drawing down.

“Um.”

Hermione thought that there were things that she missed. Her friends and her adopted family. Some of the luxuries of living in a real house, of having privacy and a soft bed to lie down in at night. But there was nothing from her life then that was calling her back.

Quite suddenly, ten months felt like sand that was slipping through her fingers quicker than she could close her fists.

“I don’t know. I guess… In some ways. But I like it here too.”

She only saw it because she was watching him, but there was a definite upwards tilt to Charlie’s lips. He turned his face away quickly as if to hide the smile.

But she had seen it.

Her heart thumped. Maybe there wasn’t something yet, at least from Charlie’s side. But maybe there could be.

After all, she had ten months left.

Notes:

thank you so much for your kind comments 🩷 I’m still exhausted but getting there. lots of love xx

Chapter 7

Notes:

Um so uni kind of took over my life for a while there. Someone please tell me it’s normal to rewrite a statistics paper over 10 times 😭

If there is anyone still out there…you get a forehead kiss for waiting 😙

My brain is mush and incapable of processing whether I like this chapter or not, but I had to get it out before I go on my holidays. Lots of love xx

"We need you back in England at the end of next month."

Hermione stared blankly at the flames projecting the Minister’s face, hearing his words like they were coming through a tunnel.

When the letter came through requesting that she call Kingsley’s office urgently, she had been sure that she wouldn't like whatever it was he wanted to say. She had asked the small group of handlers in the lounge to give her some privacy so she could take the call. 

Now, she was glad that there was no one around to eavesdrop on.

"What do you mean?" she asked, her face frozen and her mind numb.

"Things are tight right now in the DRCMC," Kingsley began, sounding tired. "Brookes needs you back in the office to look at some things kicking up with the vampires in Brighton. You're doing great work out there, no questions or concerns there. Your reports have been detailed and they’ve given the department a lot to think on. But you can carry on working on it remotely -"

"Has this got something to do with the recent incident?" Hermione interrupted.

Kingsley sighed. "Hermione -"

She cut him off. "Why isn't Brookes telling me himself if he needs me back to help with the vampires?"

She watched Kingsley's floating head tip back and he squeezed his eyes shut. He cleared his throat before looking back at her. "Look, it's not great for optics. I know you don’t care for that side of politics, but it’s important. There's been a bit of a public fuss about how little training you received before being put in the field and questions over how well the Ministry protects its employees since news spread about what happened. So -"

Hermione didn’t realise the news of the dragon attack would have spread to the public, but she supposed that’s what happened when one of the Golden Trio did something interesting. She should have expected they’d be reporting on her every move back home, and of course they had some insider knowledge about what was going on in the reserve.

"I'm fine," she interrupted, heart racing. She’d been in conversations like this before, and it felt like a large shadow had fallen over her. "I want to stay."

Even to her own ears, it sounded like pleading.

But…

"I'm sorry, Hermione."

With just three words, all of the air left her until she felt like a deflated balloon.

Of course it hadn't been Brookes to deliver this news. She would have argued with him. She had more sway with her head of department.

But there wasn't much room to argue with the Minister when you worked for the Ministry.

Not that she wouldn’t try.

"I can make a public appearance to show I’m doing okay, or I’ll agree to an interview-"

"No," Kingsley shook his head, the finality of his decision underscoring that one little word. "The decision has been made. I'm glad you've been having a good time out there, and I want to give you time to close up any business you have.” He sighed. “Five weeks is generous, Hermione."

She had worked for the Ministry long enough to know that five weeks was generous. Especially if they were fighting against a media storm about her safety. The longer she remained on the reserve, the worse the tabloids would get, and everyone loved to hate politicians.

Though, Hermione often thought there was good reason.

She nodded once. “I know.”

"Just try to enjoy the time you still have."

 

-

 

The handlers she had kicked out of the lounge were still hanging about outside the tent when she left. She ignored their questions of concern, simply nodding and walking on when they asked her if everything was okay. She clearly hadn’t done well to hide how she was feeling.

The news of her swift departure from Romania sat in her chest like a cloud of smoke, sucking the oxygen from her lungs.

How strange it was that she'd felt so alone in the reserve for so long, and yet she'd never yearned for home. Not really.

Now that she was actually beginning to feel accepted on the reserve, it was suddenly time to leave. She couldn't comprehend how little time she had left, felt like her emotions had yet to catch up with the information lodging itself into her brain. She had put London so far from her mind that she couldn't even imagine what it would feel like to live there again.

To spend Monday mornings behind a desk, and Friday evenings in a pub with sticky floors and loud music. To hear only dogs barking and birds chirping, rather than guttural roars and sizzling fires.

She walked until she found herself outside Tiny's paddock, never stopping to think about where she was headed.

Her dragon - so attuned with her, as he seemed - was already sniffing at the fence line before she'd noticed where she was.

"Hey buddy," she said quietly when she got closer, leaning her forearms on the boundary and setting her chin on her arms.

Tiny rattled, head tilting to the side. He inched closer slowly, as if afraid of scaring her away. But he didn't scare her anymore and maybe he knew that too.

She watched him draw closer, the rattling in his chest sounding more like purring to her now.

For the past few days, since the Horntail, she’d had an insistent longing to go into the paddock. Despite knowing that she could not do that, her mind seemed unconcerned by the fact that Tiny could swallow her whole. It seemed impossible in her mind that this dragon would ever harm her.

At that moment, the instinct to climb over the fence tugged her insides hard.

Had she been less cognisant, she might have just don’t it.

Tiny nudged the fence, coming the closest to her he had ever been with her face leaning into the wards. She felt the heat of him only inches from her face.

But he didn't bite, and she didn't flinch.

He waited, and she got the impression that he was waiting for something from her. Maybe the instinct to be closer was not something she felt alone.

When she didn’t do anything except look at him, Tiny eventually backed away to drop himself to the ground, mirroring her posture with his snout low.

Something about it made a sudden rush of sadness swell in her as she looked at him, and tears pricked her eyes.

"I -" she started, but found herself unable to speak.

She couldn't even think about London while she looked at Tiny.

It was impossible to imagine never seeing him again.

Tiny huffed in concern when real tears began sliding down her cheeks.

She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t explain it, but she felt like her heart had planted itself in the soil of the reserve and no matter how hard she might try, she wouldn’t be able to uproot it without ripping it in half.

"Hermione?" A voice suddenly interrupted her. Hermione wiped her eyes quickly, looking over at the speaker who, seeing the tear tracks on her cheeks, asked, "Are you okay?"

Hermione straightened, pushing away from the fence line and making Tiny flick his tail in agitation.

"Not really," she told Maria, seeing no reason to lie.

"Oh Hermione," Maria said, dropping the empty steel bucket she had been holding. She strode forward with purpose and wrapped her arms around Hermione in a tight hug. "What's happened? Did you hear about Tiny?"

Hermione let herself be held, holding Maria back as more tears spilled over. Something about the warm comfort of someone’s concern squeezed her sadness to the surface so that there was nothing she could do except feel.

They held onto each other, Maria rubbing her back until her tears dried. When, after so long that Hermione started to wonder why she was this upset, her tears finally finished, Maria took her shoulders in her hands. 

"I have something that will cheer you up,” she said, squeezing Hermione’s shoulders. “Come on."

She grabbed Hermione’s hand and without another word, began leading her back through the camp.

"Where are we going?" Hermione asked, exhausted from swimming through a sea of emotions. She found herself mindlessly following behind Maria, mental fatigue making her thoughts fuzzy. 

"It’s not far past the camp. It has to be close so we can keep tabs on it and make sure they’re safe," Maria told her.

Hermione allowed herself to be led beyond the borders of the camp and out into the plains of dragon territory.

They kept walking, Maria allowing there to be quiet between them and Hermione focusing on nothing other than the feeling of the hard ground coming up to meet every footfall.

When they finally stopped beside a formation of rocks and a shallow decline into a valley, Hermione was surprised how far into dragon territory they had come.

"Here they are," Maria said, pointing downwards.

Hermione followed the line of her arm, eyes landing on the centre of the rock formation that she only now recognised to be a dragon’s nest. Inside the nest, similar in colour to the stones that had been arranged just so, wriggled three hatchlings the length of her forearm.

“Wow,” came out on a breath.

Hermione crouched down, looking closer at the dragon babies that blended so easily into their surroundings. Watching as they crawled over the top of each other, the only change in colour when a red tongue poked out.

"I know,” Maria responded, sounding just as awestruck as she kneeled down beside Hermione. “They only hatched yesterday."

Hermione felt like she had momentarily been dragged out of water, oxygen filling her lungs. There was tiny rattling sounds coming from the tiny creatures that filled her chest with warmth, and for a long time, neither she nor Maria spoke as they looked over the babies.

But eventually, the pull of the water had nearly dragged her beneath again and an ache began forming in her ribcage. She sat down on the soil, wiping her face with the palm on her hand.

"You wanna talk about it?" Maria asked, sitting down beside her.

Hermione felt like time was moving too slowly, or maybe she was lagging while time was speeding up. Her thoughts felt too far away to access.

Finally, she asked, "What did you mean about Tiny?" 

“Oh,” Maria said in surprise. "I thought you would know. He's being released next week. Isn't that why you're upset?"

"What?" Hermione asked, the ache intensifying. "No, I didn't know."

"Well it was only decided last night,” Maria said, sounding uncomfortable to be the one breaking the news. “But you really should have been the first to know."

Hermione wasn’t sure why that would be. She fed Tiny, and talked with him every day, but she wasn’t a handler. It wouldn’t make sense to even tell her until the day he was being released.

But she shrugged and wrapped her arms around herself. "It's okay - it won't matter for long anyway."

Maria frowned. "What do you mean?"

“I've been called back to London. I leave in five weeks."

"What? Why?"

Hermione plucked a blade of grass in front of her. “The Minister is worried about the public’s reaction to the dragon attack. He thinks it doesn’t look good for the Ministry to let me stay here.”

Telling Maria what Kingsley had told her made it felt real. It was like she couldn’t take it back now. She’d just solidified it.

Maria was quiet as she contemplated what Hermione had said. Then, looking uncertain, she asked, "And you don’t want to go home?"

"No-“ Hermione began, before stopping and taking a breath. “Not yet.”

Maria didn’t say anything and Hermione plucked another blade of grass, tying it in a knot before throwing it away.

"Do you ever think about home?"

Maria leaned to the side, leaning against her hand which was splayed in the dirt. "Sometimes,” she answered. There was sadness in her voice that made Hermione’s eyes turn towards her. “I grew up in the countryside, close to Tuscany. But it was a small town. Like a family."

Hermione could imagine Maria in a place like that. Quaint and friendly, everyone knowing everyone else’s names.

"What made you leave?"

Maria met her eyes for a moment, before looking back down at the babies. "I didn't want what everyone at home wanted. It was... Hard for some people to understand." She shrugged before visibly moving on. She gave Hermione a tight smile. "And I wanted to work with dragons."

Hermione didn’t know much about the handlers’ pasts who she had become friendly with. She knew that Maria was Italian, but she didn't know anything else about her family or life from before the reserve. Katriona had no family left in Russia, but the rest of it was a mystery.

Even Charlie. She should know everything about him, being so close to his family, but his absence from England was shrouded in secrecy.

None of the Weasleys, not even Charlie, seemed to want to talk about why he left. Or why he never went home.

"You'll probably find," Maria started, pushing herself forward and putting her hands in her lap, "that a lot of the people here are running from something. I mean - not everyone I’m sure. But usually there’s a reason why someone chooses to move away from everything and everyone they know to work with human killing machines."

Hermione snorted, but didn’t respond.

Quiet settled between them but her thoughts were getting louder.

Was she running from something in England? Was that why she was so reluctant to go back?

She had been alone in London. Not physically, of course. She had her friends and the Weasleys. Actually if anything, she was sometimes overwhelmed by the amount of people in her life.

But all of those people didn’t fill the gap that had been left when her parents died. The Weasleys were like family, but it was different. It was borrowed family.

They loved her so much that they couldn't understand when she needed space. They couldn't understand when she wanted to stay at home instead of going out. Their whole lives had been spent living on top of one another, and they liked it that way. And because they loved her too, they made sure not to leave her out.

But sometimes their love was… exhausting.

Until she’d left London, she hadn’t realised how tired she was.

It wasn’t until she arrived in Romania, where she was given too much space that she realised how little she’d had of it at home. If she returned to England, she couldn’t tell the Weasleys that she needed more privacy. Not after they had taken her in when she had nowhere and no one.

But in the reserve, she didn’t have to worry about being grateful. About keeping the peace. Keeping everyone happy.

Guilt churned her stomach from the direction her mind had gone in.

Things were good now in the reserve, but she hadn’t been there long. Her family back in London had known her nearly her whole life. She was being unfair comparing them.

"What are you going to say to Charlie?" Maria asked, interrupting Hermione’s train of thought.

"What do you mean?"

"About you leaving," Maria said. "I think he'll be upset."

Hermione's tummy rolled. She hadn't really let her mind go there yet. She didn’t want to think about things between them changing.

"He'll be fine," she said.

It was herself that she was worried about. Despite her efforts, Charlie had burrowed his way into her affections and he wasn’t letting go any time soon. Rather, her affections had only grown for him every time she saw the crinkle around his eyes when he smiled at her.

Maria made a noise of disagreement, but didn't push the issue. She plucked a daisy from the ground and twirled it between her fingers.

"You don't have to leave,” she said, not looking up. “If you don't want to."

Hermione laughed mirthlessly.

"I have a job," she responded.

"Quit your job,” Maria said, looking up so Hermione could see the smile dancing on her lips. “Join me and Katriona. You could be a handler too."

Hermione rolled her eyes. She looked back down at the babies in the nest, letting her mind drift to Charlie.

News tended to travel quickly around the reserve.

Whatever his reaction may be, she knew she had to tell him before someone else did.

 

-

 

She found him after dinner.

He was reinforcing wards around a Chinese Fireball’s paddock, and for a moment she just watched him work. He’d already become more confident in his warding and the wards he set shimmered but sat tight against the boundary line, strong and unmoving.

When he lowered his wand to look at his work, she stepped forward.

His eyes lazily glanced towards the movement, but when he realised what had interrupted him, his attention swiftly dropped from the wards and focused on her.

“Hermione,” he said, a small smile picking the corners of his lips up.

Her heart thudded. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he replied, putting his wand in the holster and closing the distance between them.

Being close to him made heat ripple through her, and she forced herself to focus. She didn’t want him to hear about her departure from anyone else, and she knew if she didn’t tell him now, that she wouldn’t want to when her feelings had turned all fluttery.

“I need to - uh, talk to you about something,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. Something about his little smile made the words seem impossible to get out.

He raised a brow. “Oh yeah? Me too, actually.” He pushed his hair back, suddenly looking a bit sheepish. “I should have told you as soon as they gave the approval, but I got a bit caught up. But - well Pumpkin… I mean Tiny -“

Hermione huffed a laugh over his words. “If it’s about Tiny being released, Maria already told me.”

Charlie stopped. “She did?” He ran his hand through his hair again. “Is that why you wanted to talk, then? To shout at me?”

Hermione huffed a laugh. “No, I’m not mad Charlie. I don’t have any kind of claim on Tiny or what you choose to do with him.”

She knew it was true, but a sense that she was being disloyal slithered up her spine.

Charlie tilted his head. “Well, maybe not a claim,” he said, “but I think you’ve got some kind of bond. That doesn’t really happen. It’s special.”

Hermione pressed her hand against the ache in her chest. “It’s nothing -“

Charlie rolled his eyes. “I work with dragons every day, and none of them are as amiable to me as Tiny seems to be with you.”

“That’s just what he’s like. He’s a friendly dragon.”

He scoffed. “He’s the reason Mikhail has that scorch mark up his left side, love. Dragons as a species aren’t friendly . That includes Tiny.”

Hermione looked away. She knew her relationship with Tiny was odd - wasn’t that why she’d been documenting it?

But Charlie’s confirmation hit her hard. Because she did have a bond with Tiny, but it wouldn’t matter now that she had to leave.

And for some reason, she thought Tiny might suffer just as much as she would from their separation.

“Anyway. So you’re not mad at me about Tiny. What did you want to talk to me about?” Charlie asked, his hands sliding into his pockets.

Hermione chewed her lip as she looked back at him. “Oh. Well -“

Her stomach twisted hard as she met his open gaze, so different from how he’d been when Ron and Ginny had been over. He was so closed off with them - with her as well when she had arrived. An outsider.

But now, he trusted her. Saw her as part of the reserve.

He would stop trusting her when he remembered that she didn’t really belong there. Not forever. Not for longer than five weeks.

“I- “ she tried again, unable to look away from the blue warmth of his gaze. She didn’t want to see it turn cold. “I just… wanted to talk about what happened with the Horntail.”

Charlie’s expression immediately turned into concern and he stepped closer. When he spoke, his voice was soft.

“Are you doing okay?” he asked, tilting his head down towards hers.

The pulse sped up in her wrists. She nodded. “Yes. Um,” she matched his volume. “I just wanted to say thanks. Properly. For saving me.”

The tension in his shoulders released. “Oh.”

It wasn’t the response she’d expected.

“Kat and Maria told me what you did,” she went on, uncertainly. “I would have died if you hadn’t got me out. You could have died.”

Surprisingly, a warm flush climbed his cheeks and he pulled back a bit to look away. “I wasn’t really thinking straight. Mikhail made me sit through a safety training session after.”

Hermione’s lips twisted as she tried to prevent a smile. “Well, you did go against basic protocol.”

Charlie looked at her from the corners of his eyes, before wiping his hand over his face. His hand stopped to cradle the lower part of his face. “I didn’t really expect anyone to tell you.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” she asked, and sensing his embarrassment although she didn’t understand it, she reached up to touch his arm and gently pull his hand away from his mouth. The muscles below her fingers stretched against his skin, twitching at her touch. He looked down at her, allowing her to tug his arm down until his hand was at his side and his attention was back on her face. “It was really stupid,” she told him softly. “You shouldn’t have done it.”

He opened his mouth, but before any sound came out, she went on:

“And I’m really really thankful that you did,” she said, squeezing his arm. She felt warm all over, and she pulled her hand away when she realised how long she’d been touching him.

She didn’t want to make him even more uncomfortable than he already was.

He breathed out as if he’d been holding it for a while. “You’re welcome,” he said, and she could tell he still felt uncomfortable, but he squared his shoulders resolvedly. “I’d do it again, Hermione.”

The four words felt like they said so much more and Hermione tried not to let her heart escape its confines.

“Let’s hope that you never have to then.”

Charlie hummed, looking unconvinced. “Something about you attracts trouble, honey. I think I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for danger from now on.”

The surprise of his sudden teasing melted the tension between them immediately, and she let out a sound of protest that caused a smile to light on his face.

“Well who knows what kind of trouble you can cook up in the next ten months?” he asked in response, grinning broadly now.

But Hermione had to force her own smile not to waver.

She had somehow forgotten the entire reason she had come to Charlie in the first place. Her ten months had been shortened to five weeks.

The reminder was like a slap in the face. A brutal, stinging blow.

Because she couldn’t just pretend that she wasn’t leaving in five weeks. She couldn’t stand about flirting with Charlie when she wasn’t telling him the truth. When she was lying to him.

But she knew, looking at the brightness on his face, brightness that she didn’t want to see dimmed, that she also couldn’t tell him.

Not yet.

Notes:

thanking the angels who have given me kudos and/or commented 💘

I don’t respond to all of them because I feel weird about throwing the comments ratio way off and don’t really know what the etiquette is lmao, but I love you all and really appreciate your thoughts and support 🥲🫶

Chapter 8

Hermione wasn't sure when leaving the reserve had begun to feel like betrayal. 

Like going back to England was going to hurt more than just herself. That by not trying harder to stay, she was letting them down.

However long ago it had started, telling Charlie the truth only became more impossible as time went by. It had been nearly a week since she had received the news and she still had not told him.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t had any chance to; they’d been working on his ward-casting together every day. Training him to cast wards only reminded her that she wasn’t going to be around forever. Wouldn't be needed for much longer. She wondered if Charlie thought about it, too.

It seemed like leaving the reserve was the only thing she could think about anymore.

“You’re quiet, today,” Charlie had said to her ten minutes prior. She’d only nodded and he hadn’t pushed. She wished that he would have.

It would have been the perfect time to admit to him what was on her mind.

Instead, she merely continued to watch him attempt the spell she was teaching him, only speaking up to give advice.

It seemed like it had always been inevitable while she watched the little dent form between his eyebrows. She was always going to fall for the wrong brother. The only Weasley who didn’t fit in her life, and whose life she didn’t belong in. Molly would have been delighted had it not been so impossible. 

Charlie let out a frustrated sigh. He swiped his forearm against his forehead, his shirt lifting and showing a slice of pale skin. Hermione looked away from the burn in her cheeks.

“This is too complicated,” he told her, gesturing at the rock in front of them.

“It’s not,” she said, coming to stand beside him. “You’re nearly there. It’s all in the tilt of your wrist.”

She was teaching him how to cast tracking spells using a rock as the object. The reserve had been using a rudimentary spell that allowed them to get a general location, but her spell was more advanced. It was the same she’d used for Tiny, allowing them to track their exact location and vital signs without overwhelming the dragons.

“Like this,” she demonstrated with her wrist, and he reluctantly lifted his wand arm again to copy her stance. While her arm was straight with her hand slightly tilted towards the ground, Charlie's wrist remained stuck in position with his hand parallel to the rest of his arm. She shook her head. “Softer tilt. Don’t hold the position so tightly.”

He cocked an eyebrow down at her. “What?”

With his eyes on her, she felt very close to him and she stepped back. “Oh, um. Like this.”

Moving her wrist so that her hand moved smoothly from side-to-side. It was like running water, with no stiffness or jerked motions. But when Charlie tried to copy her, his wrist didn’t move at all so that his hand essentially moved from the pivot of his elbow. She laughed.

“What?” he asked again as he continued the movement, but a smile tugged his lips.

“Can you try rotating your hand just using your wrist?” she asked, and he tried. “No, keep your forearm straight if you can.”

No matter what Charlie did, if his hand rotated so did his entire arm. He shook his head dropping his arm to his side. “It's no use, honey,” he said. “I’m not as agile as you.”

She wasn't sure whether he continued to call her that out of habit or to get a reaction, but she was sure her cheeks were pink if the satisfied smirk growing on his face was anything to go on. Embarrassed, she went on, “It’s not about agility Charlie. You just need to connect your brain to the fact that you can move your hand using just your wrist.”

“Show me, then,” he said, and held his arm out to her.

It took her a moment to catch on to his meaning, her tummy flopping heavily as she caught his gaze again. Mischief shone in his eyes, and she knew that he knew about her developing crush. Was teasing her.

She steeled her shoulders and turned her gaze to his arm. Clinically, she curled her fingers of one hand around his arm, just above his wrist, and the other hand gently clasped his calloused fingers. She used her grip on his fingers to slowly rotate his hand in a circle, her other hand holding his forearm still.

Her voice was mortifyingly shaky when she said, “See? It’s easy.”

Before she could pull away, maybe recognising she was about to let go, his fingers suddenly curled to hold hers back. She looked up, finding his eyes on hers. Fire burned in their icy blue.

She let him go quickly. “Let's try again.”

“Sure,” he said, eyes dropping to her lips momentarily before he let her go and picked his wand back up. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and she could just about see a smile that he was pushing down. “Can you help me tilt my wrist correctly?”

Pushing her lips into a line, she held the back of his hand in hers and steadied his arm, tilting it just right. “There,” she said, for lack of anything better to say.

He nodded and tried again. As Hermione watched him, her pulse picked up as if it could hear the ticking clock on her time left in the reserve. The amount of time she had left standing beside Charlie, close enough to smell the ash on his clothes and see the lines at the corners of his eyes, was running out. She felt cold inside at the thought.

It wasn’t long before he was able to perform the spell accurately on the rock, and he smiled brightly at her but her own lips remained turned down. 

They began walking to dinner in silence, Charlie allowing her quiet even as he cast little worried glances at her. Finally, running out patience for the silence, he said, “I’m gonna put you out of a job soon. We’ll not need you round here once I learn how to make my wrist floppy.”

She could hear the smile in his voice but the words still hurt. It was true even if he had only meant it as a joke, and she hadn't stopped dreaming about what she could do in the reserve after she'd left London. But she hadn't been able to do any of it. She'd been too scared even to feed Tiny, who she knew - she knew - wouldn't hurt her. 

She tried to hide her sadness by laughing, but it came out wrong and she scrunched her face tight just as Charlie’s hand touched her arm.

“Hey,” he said softly, both of them stopping. She opened her eyes to see him looking down at her with a furrowed brow. “I’m just joking.”

She looked past his shoulder. “I know. Sorry, I’m just a bit…”

“I get it,” he told her, his hand warm and squeezing before it dropped away. “I’ve been trying to distract you from it all, but I know the whole Tiny thing is weighing you down.”

Guilt closed her throat.

It wasn’t untrue. She was upset that Tiny was being released that night. But the sadness of Tiny leaving the camp to the plains beside the camp was outweighed by the sadness of her leaving the camp to go back to England in four weeks.

“You know that I’ll need your help tonight,” he went on. “You’ll be able to keep him calm.”

“Really?”

Some of her insecurity melted in the sincerity of his expression.

Charlie nodded. “If you have the kind of bond I think you do, then he’ll not leave the paddock unless he thinks you are going with him.”

Hermione frowned. “You want me to lie to him?”

It didn't sit well with her. It was the best thing for Tiny to be released, and he would be much happier on the plains even if she wasn't there. He'd developed a fondness for her, but he'd forget about that when he could fly again. But even knowing that, she didn't think she could lie to him. Didn't want to.

Charlie picked up her hesitance quickly, and he smiled warmly. Fondly. The heat of his eyes nearly melted her. 

“Don’t worry, honey. We can be honest with him if you want.”

“I do. He doesn’t deserve to be lied to.”

"Sure." Charlie opened the tent flap for her to enter the food tent. He shrugged, before saying, "Just know that it's going to make it a bit more difficult for us tonight."

But he didn't argue with her, accepting her desire to be honest with tint. It was only when they sat down with their food that Hermione recognised her own hypocrisy.

Maria had agreed not to tell anyone in the reserve until Hermione worked up the courage to be honest with Charlie. But now, sitting with Maria and Katriona to eat, Charlie just beside her, Maria fixed her with the look. It was the look she'd been sending her all week. It meant just tell them before I do.

Hermione wouldn't have said anything at dinner, but she wouldn't have even had a chance before Katriona spoke.  

“Hermione,” Katriona said. “I need to speak to you about something.”

Hermione had only just lifted a forkful of stew to her mouth, but Katriona’s tone made her pause. She looked at Charlie and Maria, who were both looking at Katriona with different expressions. Charlie with confusion, and Maria with suspicion. Neither helped to tip her off to what Katriona wanted to talk about. If Maria had told Katriona, then she wouldn't be looking at her like she was also trying to work out what she knew.

“Do we need to go somewhere private?” Hermione asked.

“Yes,” Katriona responded, standing up. “Bring your food.”

Charlie cocked a brow at her, and she shrugged, standing up with her tin bowl to follow her friend out of the tent. Katriona did not slow until she reached an isolated part of the camp, sitting down on a patch of dry dirt and patting it for Hermione to join her.

Hermione had become used to being covered in dirt and ash that sitting on the dirty ground did not give her hesitation. She barely thought about the possibility of dirtying the back of her trousers as she joined Katriona on the ground, her stew settled on her lap where she had crossed her legs.

Hermione waited for Katriona to speak, but the other woman only pursed her lips in annoyance as if she had been the one dragged out of the dinner tent before she could even have a bite of food.

Hermione’s food was untouched as a flare of worry caught her. She couldn’t think of anything she had done that would annoy Katriona, except… But there was no way she could know unless Maria had told her. Still, she needed to know.

“Did Maria speak to you?” Hermione asked, warily. 

Katriona let out a loud noise of exasperation. “You told Maria you're leaving! Of course you did. Why would you tell me? I was just your first friend here.”

Guilt swept over Hermione, and her shoulders caved inwards. “I’m sorry Kat. I didn’t feel ready to tell people yet –“

“Not even me,” Katriona said, turning her head away. Her voice was sharp enough to break skin when she said, “You do not trust me.”

 “I do trust you. I wasn't telling anyone. Maria just - she saw me crying. I’m really sorry.”

Katriona’s face was stoic, but Hermione knew that her feelings were hurt. But in her panic for hurting her friend, another fear was growing. Katriona had been surprised that Maria knew, which meant that she had heard the news from someone else. Which meant the news of her leaving was spreading through the camp. 

She needed to tell Charlie before it reached him.

“It was stupid. Maria wanted me to tell you and Charlie. But-“ Hermione breathed in, looking away. “I don't want to go yet. I tried to get an extension, but it was rejected. I don’t get a choice in this. I either quit my job, or I go home. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I wanted to pretend for a little while longer.”

Katriona pursed her lips but still did not turn her head back to Hermione. “If you want to stay, you should just stay," but her tone was harsh.

“How can I do that? I don’t know how to work with dragons. I’m still scared to even go into a paddock with one.”

Katriona finally turned her head. “You won’t ever learn to if you go back to England.”

Hermione sighed. “My whole life is in England.”

“Your whole life?”

Hermione had spent a lot of time in the last week thinking about how she would feel if she just stayed. If she didn't go back to England. The more she thought about what remained for her back there, the more utterly terrible it became to not go back. Even if she wasn't quite ready to yet. 

But for the first time, she thought about how she would feel if she did go back. If she left the reserve behind. 

It wasn’t just Charlie. It was everything. Tiny. Kat and Maria. She’d proven herself to the handlers not by the things she did during the war, but the things that she had done here. As herself. 

Did she really believe that every opportunity she’d gotten in England had been unrelated to her status as war heroine? In England, she was Golden Girl. Harry Potter’s best friends. The brains of the Golden Trio.

In Romania, she was Hermione Granger.

“I don’t have any other choice, Kat.”

Katriona sighed and didn’t speak for a long time. By the time that she did, Hermione had finally started picking at her cooling dinner.

“I see that you will not make this easy." She watched Hermione for a moment longer. "You may think different, but you belong in Romania with dragons.”

Hermione didn’t speak as she chewed, but allowed the words to settle in the crevices of her mind. It sounded fanciful to her ears. Warm fodder for a fool to sink his teeth into.

“Um Kat. How did you find out about me leaving?”

Katriona rolled her eyes. “Gossiping men. One of them heard in a letter from his girlfriend in England that you were coming home at the end of the month. Apparently, she has a sister who works in the same department as you. I told them to stop talking about it until you have told everyone yourself, but I can’t control who they talk to. You should tell everyone soon if you want to be the one to say it.”

Hermione frowned. The British magical community was small, and she really should have expected the information to find its way to Romania sooner considering how quickly the news of her attack made it to England so quickly.

“I still need to tell Charlie.”

Katriona nodded. “He will not be happy.”

“I’ll tell him after dinner, just before we go to release Tiny.”

Nervousness made it hard to keep her food down as she imagined Charlie’s reaction to the news. Maybe he would understand. But Katriona hadn’t been happy, and Charlie’s emotions were much more difficult to anticipate than hers.

Hermione just had to make sure he knew that she’d tried to extend her time here. It hadn’t been her choice – the decision was out of her hands. That she would have stayed if she could.

The thought didn’t offer her any relief as she finished her food and started back to the food tent with Katriona. But they were only halfway back when Charlie met them on their way, grinning and waving.

“Charlie,” Hermione said, her heart beating so hard she was sure he could hear it. See it pressing against her chest. “I need to talk to you.”

Charlie frowned. “Can it wait? We need to get Tiny out and settled before it gets too dark.”

Katriona took her bowl and patted her on the back before leaving the two of them and walking back towards the tent.

“Um, it is kind of im-“

“Right, let’s release a dragon!”

She was interrupted by Paddy, who appeared at her left-hand side along with two other handlers. Paddy gave her a wide smile, which she returned in a grimace.

“Give us a moment, Paddy,” Charlie said, the muscles in his jaw tight.

“It’s nearing dark, boss,” Paddy said, oblivious to his own interrupting a private moment. “Don’t really have a moment.”

Hermione looked back at Charlie, who was watching Paddy with a dark expression – not that Paddy noticed. “It’s okay, Charlie. We can talk about it after.”

Charlie looked down at her, hesitating. “Are you sure?”

“Yep,” she said, not at all convincing. Without pause, she carried on quickly, “Let’s go release a dragon.”

Paddy whooped beside her and started hauling her with an arm around her back towards Tiny’s paddock. Charlie followed, quickly coming to her other side and giving her a look. Whether it was concern that furrowed his brow, or annoyance at Paddy’s interruption, she wasn’t sure. But she gave him a small smile, hoping he’d believe everything was okay.

His annoyance at Paddy would dissipate when she told him the truth.

They arrived at Tiny’s paddock, and Tiny happily flapped over to Hermione. Her chest soared as he enthusiastically prodded the fencing with his snout.

“Hey boy,” she said. “How are you?”

Tiny rattled happily.

“You know what today is?” she asked. Tiny slammed his front paws on the ground a couple of times, before dashing to pick up a bucket in his teeth. She laughed sadly. “You’ll not need that where you’re going, buddy.”

Tiny’s demeanour changed quickly, and it was like he had just noticed the other handlers with her. He looked around at them warily.

“Don’t look like that,” she said. “It’s a nice surprise. You’ll finally get to fly again.”

Tiny’s ears perked up very slightly, and she smiled.

“You like the sound of that?”

He rattled, but there was a note of suspicion. As she spoke to him, the other handlers began readying the harness for transport. Tiny's eyes flickered over to them persistently. He came closer to her, nudging the fence in front of her more persistently.

“I can’t come. You know I’m scared of heights.”

Tiny huffed smoke and nudged harder.

“Tiny, I can’t go with you. It’s not safe for me.”

Tiny let out an argumentative sound.

She grinned at him, leaning on the fence. “You’ll protect me, will you?”

He rattled in agreement, bouncing on his paws again.

She laughed softly. Her heart felt heavy looking at him, and it was like her emotions had gotten stuck and were creating a pile up in her chest. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

She wasn’t surprised to feel the tears stinging her eyes. She didn’t know how to say goodbye to her first friend in the reserve. He was closer to her than a familiar. But it wasn’t safe for her in his territory, and it wasn’t fair for him in hers.

Charlie and another handler, Jack, took that moment to hop into the paddock. Tiny immediately growled, and Hermione was shocked back by his sudden aggressiveness.

“Woah, buddy,” Charlie said, soothingly, his hands out in front of him.

Tiny turned his teeth on Charlie quickly, out of nowhere, and Hermione cried out. Tiny was shocked out of his own aggression, eyes turning back to Hermione quickly. He rattled unhappily. Charlie and Jack switched tactics, both wands out to subdue the dragon causing Tiny to strain against the magical cage they’d put him under. She knew this was the right thing. The best thing.

But she couldn't stop the voice in her head telling her she was hurting him.

She was shaking, and Paddy’s arm suddenly came around her again.

“You alright?” he asked, rubbing his hand up and down her arm.

She shook him off, not listening to him. “Charlie, Tiny’s afraid.”

“I know,” Charlie said through clenched teeth. His wand was in front of him, keeping Tiny low. “He needs to go to sleep. He won’t go willingly now that he knows you’re not going with him.”

Tiny rattled loudly, his wide eyes on Hermione. She felt sick.

“I’m sorry, buddy. This is better for you, I promise. You’ll love being out in the open air,” she said, sniffling. Her tears were falling freely down her cheeks now. “I’ll miss you.”

Paddy stepped up beside her again. She was worried he was going to comfort her, but instead he began casting calming spells. Tiny, despite the fear in his eyes, began to breathe longer and he stopped pressing to escape the magical bindings. Eventually, his eyes closed and Hermione knew he was asleep.

She watched as all four handlers quickly got Tiny into the transport harness, and she watched him be brought out of his paddock.

“You okay to take him?” Charlie asked the other two handlers, standing on Hermione’s side where Paddy had been. She felt claimed.

Jack and the other handler nodded and began walking away with Tiny suspended between them. Hermione watched them go, feeling like her heart was being stretched and tugged every step they took Tiny away from her.

“You okay?” Charlie asked her quietly.

She didn’t speak until Tiny was out of sight. Finally, she shook her head. “No – can we talk?”

Paddy came over just then. “That was harder than usual. He really didn’t want to go.”

Charlie and Hermione looked at him without responding, but he was undeterred.

“Better for him to get used to being away from you now, I suppose,” he said to Hermione. “Soon enough you’ll be back in England, won’t you?”

Hermione’s stomach dropped, icy dread freezing her in place.

Charlie scoffed. “It’s nearly a year before then, Paddy. Hardly soon.”

Confusion flickered over Paddy’s face at the same time Hermione’s crumbled.

“She’s leaving at the end of the month,” he told Charlie. “Right?” directed at Hermione.

Hermione found her mouth open but her throat paralysed. She could feel Charlie’s eyes on her, waiting for her confirmation, but she was unable to give it.

This could not be happening.

“Everyone’s been talking about it today. Jack got news from his girlfriend back home –“

“That’s enough, Paddy,” Charlie said, voice like fire. “Do you mind giving us a moment?”

Hermione’s stomach dropped.

“Oh – uh, sure. Yeah. I’ll see you guys later.”

Hermione watched as Paddy walked away, throwing backwards glances at them in confusion, but she still couldn’t turn to look at Charlie. Instead of waiting for her, he stepped to stand in front of her.

“Is that true?” he asked, voice low.

Hermione looked up at his face, but she couldn't place his expression. The muscles in his jaw were clenched and his brow was furrowed, but he didn't look angry. He looked hurt. Tears hadn’t even dried from Tiny, and she could feel more gathering. 

She pushed them down, unwilling to cry to Charlie as if she wasn’t the one hurting everyone around her.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Kingsley called me back after the incident with the horntail.”

Charlie frowned, his mouth tight. “You didn’t say anything.”

“I – I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“So you just didn’t,” Charlie said, his voice flat. “I thought you were starting to like being at the reserve.”

“I was!” she said. “I am. I – but I can’t quit my job and Kingsley won’t let me stay here. The decision has already been made.”

Charlie looked away. “Right. It was made a while ago, wasn’t it?”

She tried to think of something to say, but all she could think about was that unhappy downturn at the corner of his mouth. When she had been quiet for too long, he laughed. It wasn't a happy sound.

“Right. Of course." He pushed his hair back, turning away from her. "I have to go. I should probably write to the Ministry about your transfer back.”

He left while Hermione’s throat was still closed over and it was like he'd taken all the air with him.

She didn't cry, but her chest seized and she gasped for oxygen that had all but disappeared. She lost track of how long she stood there, empty paddock behind her and Charlie gone, before Maria and Katriona found her and pulled her into their tent.

Notes:

thank you everyone who is reading, it honestly means so much 🥰

I have another story about these two which is pretty much finished and I might start uploading soon but I would want to get it out a lot quicker so I’m waiting until I feel a bit more sure of it. If you like charmione and you don’t mind my writing, keep a wee eye out for it!

Chapter 9

By the time Hermione arrived for breakfast the next morning, Charlie was already gone. Mikhail was worried about a geriatric dragon on the plains that was showing symptoms of dragon flu, and Charlie was needed to assess the risk.

She needed to make things right with him, but she didn’t know how to.

And with him gone, at least for the next few hours, she couldn’t even begin to try. And with Tiny gone too… But she couldn’t even think about him without a pit opening in her stomach.

She pushed thoughts of both of them to her subconscious.

The news of her leaving the reserve had spread quickly once it got out. She’d already had several conversations with handlers who were surprised that she was leaving so early.

She’d escaped company shortly after breakfast. She’d been meaning to strengthen the wards around the entrance of the camp, where international portkeys arrived. Where she sat, far enough out of the way of handlers and dragons, she could almost hear birds singing from a distance away. The sky wasn’t shrouded in ash and smoke, and there were small but persistent patches of grass here. Wildflowers, not many but enough to make a small bunch if she wanted to pick them.

It hadn’t taken her long to recast the wards, but sitting in the quiet was quieting her mind too. Until her fingers stopped shaking, and every tick of her chest felt less like the ominous chiming of a clock.

A deep affection for the reserve ran through her.

The camp had the same effect on her that London did – moving almost too quickly and too loudly. There was something satisfying about being submerged in the rolling waves, flowing with the current as a part of the chaos.

But the quiet that existed just outside the camp, or out in dragon territory, stilled a part of her that never seemed to switch off at home.

The prospect of staying in Romania for twelve months had seemed unlikely when she had first arrived, shocked to find an environment far more like active trenches than a research site. The under-funding had a part to play in the state of the camp, but she knew better now that it wasn’t the only factor.

Having the dragons in the living quarters wasn’t just a necessity for the handlers. It was how they liked it, and she understood it now. The growls and screeches of dragons no longer elevated her blood pressure, and in fact were rarely acknowledged in her mind these days. She hardly noticed the things that had once caused her spine to stiffen under her flouncy blouse (which she had since misplaced).

Removing the dragons from the housing area of the camp would be unsettling. Too quiet.

It was hard to imagine a time that she had dreamed of visiting a reserve like that not so long ago.

The person she was when she left London felt like a different person to who she was now. She’d had to adapt - to learn to live without certain things that had made her life in England comfortable. Why did it feel like it would be a step backwards to return to that life after everything?

In the calm air of the Romanian mountains, she found that she couldn’t really recall home. Her townhouse, or her pub nights, or her stuffy too-cold-then-too-hot office. In the quietness, they were just abstract thoughts that held with them no real feeling or importance.

But her silence couldn’t last forever, and right then, she was interrupted by someone shouting her name.

“Hermione! Hermione!”

The urgency of the call had her on her feet instantly, pulling out her wand in a rush. She turned to see Paddy waving at her with one hand high in the air.

“Come on! We need you!” he shouted.

Confusion caused her brow to furrow and she didn’t move. Surely anything urgent in the camp did not require her. Saving Paddy’s life aside, she’d derailed the situation the last time. Had she not been involved, she wouldn’t have the order from Kingsley to leave this place behind despite how much a part of it she had become; how much a part of her it had become.

 With a certain amount of hesitance, she began to jog over as she slipped her wand away.

“Hurry!” Paddy shouted, turning to lead her back into the camp.

She picked up her pace, still unsure, and Paddy ran slow enough for her to catch up. Once she was running beside him, she asked through ragged breaths, “What is going on, Paddy?”

In much better shape than she was, he didn’t even sound out of breath when he laughed.

“It’s awesome. Wait till you see.”

Whatever worry that had remained in the back of her mind slipped away under his humour, only to be replaced by more acute confusion.

“What is it?” she asked again. Why was it so important that they run when Paddy seemed so utterly unconcerned?

“You’ll see,” he emphasised, his grin splitting his face. “Now come on, Granger. Pick those feet up.”

Paddy pushed their pace a little faster, which she gathered he believed was fun, but her eyes started to roam around them. Whatever had happened, it had cleared the camp from all other areas. Everyone must already be gathered where the commotion was happening. It seemed like she’d been the last one to be rounded up to come and see whatever it was.

But then they turned a corner, and nearly immediately, the situation became clear to her. Especially when she heard the sharp rattling.

Without waiting for Paddy, Hermione’s feet kicked harder off the ground towards a crowd of handlers. Paddy started shouting behind her, and individually, the crowd began looking back and then moving out of the way when they saw her coming.

Maria and a couple of others had a bubble of magic keeping him in place, but nobody seemed panicked.

Everyone was looking on at the situation with curiosity and interest.

“Finally,” Katriona said as Hermione slowed to a stop. “You are here.”

Hermione didn’t respond, her chest heaving from the effort.

Her attention was entirely on the Opaleye, a little smaller than average, that was at the centre of the crowd.

“Tiny?” she asked. Not because she didn’t know who he was. But because she didn’t know how he had entered the camp through her wards. Or why he had come back at all.

Dragons didn’t like to go to the camp, never mind come back to it.

She’d never seen him look like he did now.

Threatening.

His wings were spread out wide, his nostrils flared and a constant stream of smoke coming out of them. His front paws were planted in the dirt, back bowed forward into an offensive position as he rattled loudly at one of the handlers magically keeping him inside the shield spell.

But her one word was enough. The rattling stopped suddenly, his left ear flicking back. He turned his head towards her, the remainder of the smoke drifting away in wisps.

His eyes were large, blinking at her as his posture changed instantly. His snout lowered to the floor, wings falling too until they were nearly dragging on the ground. She heard people mumbling around her, and she stepped closer to the bubble.

Tiny’s head tilted at her movement, and he rattled questioningly. And then, as if he had forgotten why he couldn’t move in the first place, he started approaching her only to bump his nose against the shield. He pulled back suddenly, turning his head to hiss sparks at the same handler he’d been cross with before. The handler grunted, adjusting his stance, and Tiny turned his attention on Hermione again.

He let out a pitiful whining sound.

Hermione’s heart was thundering in her chest.

Her chest was a battleground for which emotion would trump the others. Relief because Tiny was looking at her like he didn’t hate her. Pride that he had come back, that she was the only person in camp who could calm him. Confusion on how he was here in the first place, seeing as her wards between the camp and dragon territory were near-impenetrable. And fear of what would happen when she had to send him away again.

That one felt like a cocoon as it wrapped itself around her, tightening with each breath she took.

“Tiny, you -” she started, blood zipping with anxiety. She released a shaky breath. Tiny rattled in question, and she lowered her voice. “You can’t - come into camp, Tiny. You’re not… sick anymore.”

He huffed smoke, and she felt the sharp sting of tears at the corners of her eyes. She knew then how pointless it was. She couldn’t explain to Tiny that he belonged out on the plains, and she belonged in…

Well. In England.

How would he react when she left? Clearly, being put into dragon territory had not done enough to make Tiny forget about her. What would happen when she had to say goodbye for real?

“Let down the shield,” a rough voice said from behind her.

Her head spun to see him approaching, but he didn’t look at her. He was looking at Maria.

“Are you sure about that Charlie?” Maria asked with the air of someone who did not want to do as she was told.

“Yeah,” he said, looking to Tiny. Tiny’s attention had drifted to him as well, but he was looking at him with contempt, no doubt remembering the night before. He spit sparks at Charlie, though not as aggressively as he had at the other handler. He looked nearly guilty about it as he turned back to Hermione. “Tiny isn’t going to hurt anyone. He’s just posturing.”

Maria hesitated, and the handlers around them began to back away. Hermione felt like her body was going in to shock. Despite the pounding in her chest, she didn’t move back with everyone else. Her mind was so busy somersaulting through all of her anxieties that her body was doing just enough to prevent tears from slipping down her cheeks.

The shield came down like a veil, folding like silk until it disappeared into the ground.

Tiny stood taller with his wings stretched outwards, though more for show than menace. After huffing smoke one last time at the handler who still had his wand pointed forward while he backed into the crowd, Tiny retracted his wings and stepped closer to Hermione cautiously.

He rattled again, and suddenly he was right in front of her. No barriers, no fence, no magic to separate them.

She could feel the heat from him. Could sense her awareness of the people around them fading.

She knew Charlie was right. She knew Tiny wouldn’t hurt anyone.

It didn’t make sense to know it, but she just did.

But despite knowing it, the anxiety paralysing her nevertheless turned sharply into fear as she felt the fire in his breath. The fear wrapped itself tightly around her throat, her tongue too big for her mouth. Every muscle in her body tightened till there was no slack anywhere.

Tiny noticed.

Another whining sound came from his throat, and he stepped back. This time he looked at Charlie, as if she was broken and he thought Charlie would be able to fix her.

Guilt simmered somewhere low in her tummy, not hot enough to melt her frozen state.

What was wrong with her? She knew he wouldn’t hurt her. He wasn’t hurting her now, when he could have.

Suddenly she remembered that everyone was watching the interaction. Waiting for her to reach out to Tiny.

Her failure to felt like failing them too.

That’s when Charlie stepped forward with his hands up in front of him, not blocking her completely but putting her behind him. She couldn’t tell if he was being protective of her, or if he was disappointed in her.

“Hermione’s right,” he told Tiny, who still was not looking at Hermione. He rattled quietly. “You can’t be in the camp. You’re scaring my handlers.”

Tiny didn’t move. His head drifted back to Hermione, eye blinking. He was waiting for her to do something, she realised. The desire to reach out and touch his snout rose quickly in her, but even as it did, she knew she wouldn’t. Knew that she couldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered instead.

Tiny must have heard. His ear flicked again. He looked away then.

Smoke billowed from his snout.

Then, like he’d never been waiting for anything at all, he turned quickly so his tail swished outwards, causing the crowd to stumble back even further, and used his paws to propel himself upward. His wings stretched out, and he took to the sky.

And as she watched Tiny fly for the first time, Hermione’s limbs unfroze but seemed to weigh more than the world itself. All she could do, as she watched her friend fly away, clearly disinterested in turning her into a pile of ash, was let everyone around her down.

Her cheeks were hot under everyone’s knowing eyes. Her fear had been written all over her face. Tears wet her eyelashes.

She didn’t wait for anyone to say anything before she pushed her way through the crowd and started running.

But it seemed that no matter how fast her feet moved, there was nowhere she could run from herself.

 

-

 

The feeling that she was losing everything was becoming harder to ignore, especially after watching Tiny take off. She couldn’t stop replaying in her mind how she had seized up.

It made no sense.

She wanted to kick herself while simultaneously digging herself a ditch to jump into.

And the other handlers had all been there to witness it. Maria and Katriona would certainly be under no delusions anymore that she could really stay here and work with dragons.

And Charlie.

She’d run and he hadn’t followed.

She hadn’t wanted him to. It would have been too embarrassing to break down in front of Charlie – again – before she’d had the chance to apologise to him.

But he hadn’t followed. Which meant he’d given up on her.

She knew it did, and it made her feel sick. Losing his friendship and Tiny’s companionship, all because she hadn’t been able to do the simplest of things. She wanted to rip herself free from the cage of her own skin.

She tried to distract herself from the obsessive anxiety by pouring over her reports. She hadn’t gotten anywhere in the last hour, her mind constantly tugging her attention back to her own inadequacy. Punishing her by making her relive it in her own head.

That’s where Paddy found her for the second time that day.

“Hermione,” he said after popping his head in.

Her head was already in her hands when he did, and she pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes viciously.

She understood that she’d saved his life, but did he have to show up all the time?

But breathed in deeply. Lifted her head and smiled tightly at him.

“I’m working Paddy.”

“You need to get a break from those,” he told her, nodding at the scrolls of parchment in front of her. “C’mon. Everyone’s in the lounge.”

Hermione’s arms crossed tightly across her chest. “I don’t feel like company right now, Paddy.”

Taking it as an invitation, Paddy pushed through the tent flap completely. He looked around curiously, before putting his hands in his pockets and looking at her again.

“Here’s the thing,” he said in that thick Derry accent, “I am pretty sure you’re sitting in here beating yourself up over what happened with Pumpkin. Or – sorry, I mean Tiny.”

Hermione had nearly forgotten everyone else knew Tiny by a different name. She’d never considered that the name she gave him would have caught on around the camp.

“Which,” Paddy continued, “would be really stupid if you were, seeing as the only other time you’ve been that close to a dragon was when that horntail was trying to kill us. So it makes sense that you were a bit nervous.”

Her lips parted slightly, and the tight fold of her arms dropped to cover her stomach instead.

“And you were a lot less nervous than the other cowards who were tripping over themselves to stand behind you and Char. Standing in front of a dragon unprotected like that is either really stupid, or really brave. And I don’t think you’re stupid,” Paddy said, his mouth lifting in a dopey grin. “So, you might as well stop hiding in your tent and come have some fun.”

Despite everything, Paddy’s nonchalant words managed to break through the dark cloud hanging over Hermione’s head and for the first time in over an hour, she filled her lungs with clean air.

By the time he is finished speaking, she feels guilty for a new reason.

She’d categorised Paddy fairly early on as little more than an annoyance. But his kind smile didn’t seem tainted by ulterior motives the way McLaggen’s comforting words were after she received bad feedback from her department head, Brookes. He seemed so young standing before her, like he’d never had a negative thought before in his life.

And somehow, his words had completely silenced the muttering fears in her mind. He had caught her in a spiral and pulled her out of it as if it hadn't taken anything from him. She wasn’t even sure he knew just how deeply his words had to go to reach the bottom of her broken self-esteem.

He didn’t have any reason to lie to her. And he was right.

She froze when Tiny was in front of her. But the other handlers, who were used to being in the paddocks with the dragons, had begun to disperse as soon as the protective shield was down.

It wasn’t a lot to know it, and it didn’t help anything with Tiny, or Charlie for that matter. But she felt something inside her starting to heal.

The fear that she really didn’t belong here. That leaving at the end of the month would be better for everyone.

Maybe if she really hadn’t messed up unforgivably today, then she could fix things with Charlie before she left.

It was this thought that made her nod.

“Fine,” she said slowly. “I’ll come for a bit.”

He was happy to help her pack away her things, and as he held the flap of her tent open for her to duck under, Paddy said, “I could come with you to visit Tiny if you ever wanted to try again, you know.”

She straightened up outside of the tent, a little smile appearing on her face as she looked back at him. “Okay. I’ll let you know.”

“Good,” he said, smiling. Then he waved her forward. “Well then. Lead the way.”

She turned to do just that, when her cautiously beating, winded heart dropped out of her chest. Because Charlie, who looked like he had been walking to her tent, had just frozen at the sight of her and Paddy leaving it together.

Paddy, stepping to her side, waved at Charlie. “Hey mate.” He took Hermione by the hand and tugged her with him until they were standing right in front of Charlie. “Coming to get Hermione?”

Charlie’s face was entirely blank as he looked between them.

“Yeah,” Charlie said gruffly.

All of the relief she’d been feeling because of Paddy’s words were washed away.

Charlie had been coming to her? He’d wanted to talk to her. To check in on her? Did that mean that he wasn’t annoyed at her? Or maybe he was, but he was willing to overlook it to make sure that she was okay?

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked, jaw tight.

Hermione tugged her hand out of Paddy’s.

“Nah mate,” Paddy said, pushing both of his now free hands in his pockets and shrugging his shoulders. “Just giving her a little pep talk.”

Charlie looked at her then, eyes unreadable. “Are you alright?”

Her heart squeezed.

Paddy’s pep talk had given her the bravery to face this with Charlie. She wanted to apologise.

She pursed her lips, steeling her shoulders, and turned to Paddy. “Paddy,” she said quietly. “Do you think I can meet you at the lounge later? I just want to talk to Charlie about everything.”

Paddy looked between them, and his face shifted as if he was finally piecing together that there was some tension between them.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, looking embarrassed. “Yeah. Yeah, course. I’ll just – I’ll see you both later.”

“Thank you,” Hermione said, at the same time Charlie said:

“See you later.”

Paddy nodded, ducking his head as he started to walk away.

Hermione, at the last moment, called, “Paddy!”

He turned his head to her, eyes questioning.

“Thank you. Really.”

Paddy just nodded with a smile and kept going towards the common lounge.

After he was gone, she didn’t have to wait long before Charlie started.

“So, this is why you told Paddy,” he said, bitterly.

Hermione frowned. “Told him what?”

Charlie’s jaw worked. “That you’re leaving.” He looked away. “I just – I didn’t realise there was something between you and Paddy.”

Hermione’s eyes widened. “What? No. No, not at all. There’s nothing between me and Paddy.”

Was that part of why he was so unhappy? He thought she’d been going round telling everyone that she was leaving except him?

“I didn’t tell Paddy that I was leaving,” she said. “I didn’t tell anyone. Well except Maria, but that’s because she found me crying so it wasn’t really my choice to tell –”

“You were crying?” Charlie interrupted. His voice was strained.

She hesitated and then nodded. She didn’t like admitting her tears to anyone, but it felt even worse to do so to somebody she had hurt. She didn’t deserve his sympathy. 

“When I got the news,” she clarified. 

“Why were you crying?”

Something softened around his eyes. That little softness bolstered something in her.

“Because I didn’t want to go,” she said, quietly but surely. Pouring as much earnestness as she could into those words. She lifted her hands and then let them fall. “I don’t want to go.”

Charlie frowned, his eyes having followed her hands’ movement only then lifting to her eyes. He searched her silently, before saying, “Just don’t then.”

She sighed. Everyone had the same response for her. “I’ll lose my job, Charlie.”

But it was a pointless exercise trying to explain herself.

“You just said you don’t want to leave,” he said, stepping closer. “You can’t work a job in London while you’re living in Romania. If you want to stay, then you’ll lose it sooner or later.”

Hermione opened her mouth, and then closed it. Pointless exercise.

“I don’t mean forever.” She tilted her head, her lips turned down. “I just meant I don’t want to go yet.”

Charlie’s eyes ran the track of her face, as if he could see into her thoughts if he looked hard enough. 

“What’s so special about England?” he finally asked.

Hermione stuttered. The question pulled her up short. 

“Well – my job. And my house. And… and family. Your family, actually.”

She knew it was the wrong thing to say before the words were out of her mouth. She rarely brought up the Weasleys, or her relationship to them, to Charlie. But he had asked, and she didn’t have long left to figure out if Charlie’s refusal to see family in England extended to her when she returned. 

Tension seeped into Charlie’s posture, and his jaw clenched.

“What’s so special about that?” he asked, stilted.

Hermione’s fingers pulled the hems of her sleeves down.

It was now or never.

“What happened between you and your family, Charlie?” she asked, voice unsure.

He didn’t respond, but his jaw worked.

After a moment of quiet, she went on slowly.

“It’s just – Ron and Gin have never told me anything except that you don’t really like visiting them back home…”

She left the words hanging between them, and she was surprised that it didn’t take long for him to pick them up.

“When have they ever visited me?” Charlie asked, scoffing. The hardness of his tone caused her to lean back slightly. But he wasn’t looking at her anymore as he went on. “How many times have I been injured, and no one came to check on me? You’re here for barely a month, and my brother and sister have to hold my mother back from coming to make sure you’re not dead.”

Hermione’s mouth opened, but no noise came out. Was that true?

“When I used to go home, mum spent the whole time trying to convince me to give up my dream. She didn’t care to ask about my job, or what I did. They found out that I had taken over as head handler three months after it happened. They never cared enough to ask.”

He shook his head, looking back at her now. His eyes were shadowed. “You and Harry made a good replacement for me. I mean, two for one. It’s a good trade. My parents never cared about me as much as they do you two. So, yeah. I don’t particularly like visiting them. If they really wanted to see me so badly, they know where I am.”

His shoulders were hard and his jaw tense as he waited for her to say something, but she didn’t know what to say.

Molly and Arthur had always been so kind to her, so supportive of her dreams. At times, Molly could be overbearing with the direction she wanted Hermione’s life to take, but… Well she didn’t ask a lot about Hermione’s career. She had taken more interest in Hermione’s love life.

But to never visit Charlie in Romania, to be so opposed to his life choices as to never encourage him for how far he’d come, seemed so against the Weasley’s nature. Their family values.

Although, the twins hadn’t been supported when they chose to open a joke shop instead of finishing school. And Ginny’s decision to pursue quidditch over starting a family was still a sour point between mother and daughter.

Hermione felt like her eyes were being opened, and she wondered how hard it was for Charlie to have her here when she represented the family he felt like he had lost. They’d turned their backs on him, and opened their arms to her.

Her heart was breaking for him, but the stillness between them had gone on too long and Charlie, looking annoyed, dragged a hand down his face.

“You know what?” he said, stepping away. His eyes seemed reluctant to find hers again. “You don’t need to worry about all that. Seriously. I just - I need to be alone.”

Hermione stepped forward, his name on her tongue and her hand reaching for him, but he stepped away again.

“I hope you’re feeling better. Everything between us is - it’s fine. You weren’t under any obligation to tell me you were leaving until you were ready. So, uh, don’t worry about it. Okay?”

His eyes flickered to hers momentarily, and her mind was sluggish and she could do nothing other than nod.

“Okay,” he repeated, turning away. 

She found her voice just in time, and she stumbled forward to curl her fingers around his wrist. 

He stopped suddenly, not turning fully but his head shifting to look at her over his shoulder.

“Charlie,” she started, unsure what to say. What could she say? She furrowed her brow. “I - Well I think what you’ve achieved here is amazing. And… whatever happens when I leave, I hope we can still be friends. I’d really like to visit whenever I can.”

Slowly, her words melted not only the stiffness in his jaw, but also the tightly wound worry in her chest that her leaving Romania might be forever. She didn’t have to work in the reserve to visit occasionally.

His wrist shifted under her fingers and they loosened just enough for his hand to slide into hers. A small smile showed on his lips and he squeezed her hand.

“You know you’ll always have a bed waiting for you, honey,” he said.

Notes:

life is busy but this is a lovely little habit that’s helping me get out of my routine, so thank you everyone for being so so kind and generous with your comments and kudos 💘