The nineteenth of September
The 19th of September is Hermione’s birthday, and it sounded better as a title than anything else. My first fic - please be gentle.
“So what brings you here?”
“You’re just asking, right? Not insinuating that I should just get myself to my own damn home and not force you to be awake right now?” Hermione held out her glass for another shot of firewhisky. “Because I really feel like no one wants me around right now. Kind of the reason why I’m here, Charlie. Feel free to call me a depressing whiny bitch.”
“I’d never call you a bitch, but you do seem depressed.”
Hermione just shrugged. Charlie seemed unsure what to say for a moment, then filled up her chipped glass, though only halfway to the brim. “Careful with the happifying yet poisonous effects of Ogden’s, mind you.”
“Happifying?”
“Was trying to make you smile. Worked, too.” Indeed, she was sputtering and giggling. “Or you could just really tell me why you felt bad enough to come here to sulk alone.”
“Not really alone. You’re here.”
“Yes, but you didn’t know that. I’m only here because of a slightly messed up schedule at the reserve, and I’m guessing your aim in coming here was...”
“My aim in coming to Harry’s deserted home was to light a fire, pour myself some whisky, drink it on my own, and feel sorry for myself.” Scooting up from the uncomfortable old couch, Hermione pushed herself up on her elbow and wiped the sweat off her temple. The fire and the whisky were relaxing her better than she had expected. “Today is my birthday.”
“Oi!” He straightened and grabbed her hand. “Happy birthday. How old are you now? No matter, you look better than ever. But wait - why aren’t you celebrating with the boys? The idiots forgot, didn’t they? I’ll -”
“They didn’t actually forget.” She took another sip of the whisky, a smaller one this time. Relaxing would be good, retching would not. “I made them.”
“You made them forget your birthday?” Now he was laughing. “Hermione Granger obliviated her birthday off her best friends’ already half-addled brains? Why?”
“Oh, I didn’t obliviate them, Charlie. I simply confounded them a bit at lunch earlier. They think today is next Thursday. And as for the reason, I didn’t want to be around them.” This time, she looked straight into his eyes. He stopped chuckling immediately.
“What the - what did they do? Did you fight?”
“No, it’s just. Bugger. I feel a bit guilty saying this but… they’re so happy, Charlie. Harry has Ginny, and they are disgustingly cute and this perfect textbook happy couple with two point five children and they still care about each other and snog when they think we’re not looking. And Ron has another simpering groupie with him each time we do a pub night. I don’t even ask their names anymore so I don’t get attached.”
He had started to laugh again, but forced himself to be serious. “Hey, I know it has to be tough.”
It was her turn to chuckle, and then hiccup as her gulp of air went the wrong way. “I’m not jealous! Hey, I know it would sound like that, but no - when you think about it, he and I have been apart something like twenty times as long as we were together. I wouldn’t want him back if you covered him in chocolate.” She sobered as she spoke. “But they are content and happy the way they live, and I don’t want to be the frowning, grumpy old maid sitting there making everyone uncomfortable because I’m alone and thirty-two now, and I have only my friends and my job and my flat which is embarrassingly devoid of other humans. I think they’ve started to feel guilty of being cheerful around me. Did you know Harry tried to set me up?”
“Who with?”
“I don’t know, someone Ron supposedly knows. The point is, I don’t want them to feel sorry about me at a time when I should be celebrating. I’d rather do that myself.” She clinked her glass to Charlie’s. “To me.”
“Do what? Feel sorry for yourself?”
“That was the original plan, but maybe I should rather celebrate.” She smiled at him, mentally noting that he looked as flushed as she felt. Maybe they should go easy on the fire. Or the whisky.
“All right. Here’s to the beautiful brilliant witch and her new year.”
Or maybe sit a little further away from Charlie Weasley. She frowned. “Oi, thanks for sounding about as credible in your description of me as the Skeeter woman. I’d expect better from you.” Damn. Why couldn’t she have run into someone who would let her stew in peace and Ogden’s, tonight of all nights, and not remind her of her old crush? She closed her eyes for a moment as images revived: muscles glimpsed through half-closed bathroom doors, sweaty dreams of kissing him in the shed, of running her hands over freckles and scars, soothing burn marks with her tongue -
“…Hermione? Are you there? I said I mean it. Skeeter and her entourage can go take a leap. You are. Well, beautiful, I mean.” He prodded her lightly with a calloused finger. “Woman, you are prettier now than you were as a young girl.” He grinned again, lightly grazing her knee when he pulled back. “Not that that’s the most important thing.”
“Thanks anyway,” she said, waving off memories of all the times she had stared in the mirror, willing her teeth to shrink. Odd thing, having Malfoy to thank for what was possibly the greatest physical improvement of her life. “To be honest, I’m not really grumpy about whether I’m pretty or not. Really. Ron’s girls are blonde bombshells and Ginny could still crack walnuts with her thighs and I’m cool with that.” She grinned at seeing Charlie cringe very obviously at the mental image. “What I do hate about myself getting old is that I’ve become… frankly, boring.”
“Boring? Excuse me. Are you still talking about yourself?”
She huffed. “Let’s be serious here, Charlie. I’m a woman past her - well, let’s call it past the glowing youth, whose social life consists of a get-together with school friends now and then. My greatest excitement in life is the creation of one 100% pure wool jumper on a single weekend. I draft laws at the ministry, then I go home to solve rune crossword puzzles. Not much to show for a life this long.”
She was expecting more laughter, but now Charlie had now straightened up, his face suddenly so serious that she wondered if she had drunk more than she realized, and said something very wrong. Quoted her last dream about him back at him, maybe.
“All right,” he said, after a short sigh. “First of all, I do know how that is; I’m forty and still living in the singles tent at a place where I have to line up for my dinner and work with creatures that smell like their dung more than anything else. So much for you being a failure.”
He held up a hand to stop her protests. “No, it’s your night, I wouldn’t dream of attempting to compete with you in the sacred sport of moping. Just realize you are not the only one to feel that life should be more than what it is. But what I really need to tell you is,” his gaze became more intense as he leaned down to her, “You’re being a fucking idiot.”
He jaw dropped, as one of those very rare moments in history occurred. For a long moment, Hermione was speechless, as her brain was trying to simultaneously process what Charlie had just said, and to prevent her for hexing his Adam’s apple off for it. Opting to take a deep breath instead, she slammed down her glass, but he cut off her answer before she could speak.
“I don’t mean that you’re an idiot because you should be grateful to have your job, or happy for the two idiots who obviously didn’t know a good thing when they saw one,” he explained. “I mean that it is astoundingly stupid of you, considering how smart you actually are, to settle for warming a seat in the bloody ministry and mothering your friends as if they couldn’t find their own balls without you. Which, come to think about it, they probably couldn’t.” He was speaking faster and faster. “You uncovered more secrets, learned more spells, created more ancient magic than anyone I have talked to. You’re an idiot if you don’t use all that to go after what you want, instead of - ”
Gripping his ears with both hands, which was probably less romantic than painful, she thought wryly, Hermione finally silenced with by planting a full kiss on his mouth.
“How’s that for starters?”
Eyes wide, he grabbed the arm rest of the couch for support. “I didn’t mean - ”
Fuck. Adolescent nightmare of rejection all over again. Not. Cry. “It’s all right. Charlie, sorry, I won’t try it again, it’s, well, the whisky and -”
His forehead knocking against hers when he lunged at her should not have hurt more than his ears, but the four, seven, oh, Merlin knows how many kisses he planted on her face made up for it. “Not sorry. No. I just - you shouldn’t just settle for me either. Always wanted - fuck. Well. Was never enough for that, right?” He straightened up again and looked into her eyes, stroking her cheek.
“Who always wanted what? Charlie, you better start explaining or I’ll have to… well, I don’t know what I’ll do but I suppose you hate women’s tears as much as the next bloke, and you’re in serious danger of making me cry with shame and humiliation right now.”
“I’m the one that’s humiliated here,” he said. “All those holidays, seeing you run around the Burrow, not being able to get near you? Knowing I’d never be good enough? And now you kiss me only when I try to cheer you up? I may be the most handsome one of the clan, but I’m not a slut.” He was trying to smile, she could see it, but even as she was kissing his knuckle she struggled to understand.
“Good enough? Are you, or were you, out of your fucking mind? I had a crush on you from the day I first saw you with your fresh burns!”
“You were a kid. A smart kid. You liked me well enough, but you grew into this amazing woman, and you are a war heroine, bloody hell, and famous for being the smartest witch of your generation, and you wouldn’t even take Ron although you’d practically grown up together and Mum had all but superglued him on you, and hell, I’m not the smart one, am I, Bill does the curse stuff. I’m just a bloke who has a penniless annoying family and a job that makes him scar and stink.” He was close now, her face just inches from hers, and it was easy to shut him up, gentler this time, with her fingers on his lips.
“Charlie... now you are the fucking idiot.”
And then she couldn’t hold back the tears any more, but at least she could cry sitting astride his lap, couldn’t she, wrapping her arms around him, both of them brushing off her tears and snot as, finally, frantically, they kissed.
Sniffing, she wiped over her face one last time as she leaned back to look at him fully. “All right. Now. We both stop feeling sorry for ourselves. You are here, aren’t you, and not just a figment of my over-heated imagination?” A squeeze on her bum made her aware that he certainly was there and very alive and solid. Oh. “Oh. Right. Then this birthday is the occasion to really go after what I want and fulfil one sordid teen fantasy that I’ve had for almost twenty years.”
“Hermione…” His voice, she noticed smugly, sounded definitely hoarse now, and the glint in his eyes matched the tingle in her stomach.
“Yes. Well. If you really meant what you just said, about wanting me, and since I meant what I said, about wanting you, then that, well, and not having done anything about it for so long, is enough to make us both huge fucking idiots anyway, and we should do something about it right now. So I suppose this would be a good time to shut up.”
No answer this time, only a long kiss that made her writhe against him and grip his arm with one hand, as the other fisted in his hair. And more kisses following it, which made her heat up and wrap her arms tightly around him and grind against his lap.
The bulge in his jeans, trapped under her, became even harder when she touched her tongue to his mouth, stroking along the seam of his lips, then nibbled lightly along his lower lip. His hands, hot and slightly trembling, ran along her back, her sides, dipping under her shirt, stroking the curve of her waist, pulling her closer to him.
She had to touch him, or she would surely explode, she knew. She grabbed his shirt and pulled it off, and yes - those scars and the ginger chest hair that she’d seen years ago, as he stepped out of the shower. But now the chest was even broader, there were even more scars and more hair, and Charlie gave a small groan when she ran open-mouthed kisses over the Burnished Blue tattoo close to his left nipple, up to his collarbone, and licked his earlobe, deeply inhaling a scent that she had only been able to imagine until now. Brilliant witch my arse, she thought, for her imagination had been nothing in comparison to the reality, this smell of soap and linen, and Charlie’s own aroused scent.
He had his fingers under some semblance of control by now, so that he could unbutton her shirt, kissing and biting her shoulder, making her whimper, then purr as he laved the red mark with his tongue. By the time the shirt had landed somewhere in the dark corners of the room and her skirt gathered around her thighs, her knees had become somehow numb from sitting on them for so long, and she knew his cock must be very uncomfortable, aroused by her moans and rubbing and still constricted in his pants, but when she attempted to get up, he held tight to her arms. “Don’t move. Yet. Please, love, want to see you like this…” She knew what he meant when, pushing down her bra, he buried his nose deep between her breasts.
“Haven’t your legs fallen asleep? You can’t be comfortable with me on top of you,” she mumbled, kissing his hair.
“Fuck legs. The rest of me is very awake. Just stay close to me.”
“You want my tits in your face? Just have to say the word.”
He chuckled as he sucked one nipple in his mouth, lightly nibbling. “Not done talking, then? Good. Always imagined you talking to me when I’d shag you senseless. The dirtier, the better.” His hand cupped the other breast, the thumb flicking over the nipple, and Hermione arched further into his hands.
“Dirty or not, I have to talk when I see you trapped under my weight and still in almost all your clothes. And by the way, if I’m supposed to be rendered senseless, wouldn’t that preclude talking?” With a kiss in his hair, again inhaling the dizzying scent of Charlie and lust, she got up, ignoring his protesting tweak of her nipple.
With a sigh, Charlie struggled to his feet, stumbling and trying to arrange his pants so he could actually walk in them. “So, you want to be rendered incapable of speech then? Maybe I should check my dragon-riding gear instead of my potions cabinet…”
“Ew. No potions or bits, please. Well. Just your private ones. Er. Your bits. And mine. For now.” She blushed.
He stepped close, holding both her hands and twining his fingers through hers. “So, are we really doing this, then?”
“We better.” She kissed him quickly. “We should catch up, I say. But in a bed, if possible.”
Hermione looked around the dark living room and the fire that was dying by now, the couch they had just got up from and the threadbare carpet under it. There was nothing else in the room.
Charlie turned to her. “You’re right. Don’t want rug burn. Next bedroom?”
“Race you there.”
“No.” Pecking her on the lips, he swept her up in his arms. “I can be a little cheesy at times, you know. I should get to carry you to bed at least once before I get old and rickety.”
The room was dark and cold. Charlie deposited her on the bed - none too gracefully.
“Ow!”
“Sorry about that”, he panted, grabbing for her arm. “Sorry. You might’ve been right about my legs.”
She giggled. “So at least you have me moaning already.”
He was relieved to be able to join her laugh when she climbed down from the bed and gave the old bed frame a kick. “No, Charlie, it’s just my elbow. I hit the wall. This thing is definitely too narrow.”
“And it probably hasn’t been changed or even dusted off in a long time.” He whipped out his wand. “A quick cleaning spell should do it.”
Luckily, her own wand was till in the pocket of her by now very wrinkled skirt. She grinned when she saw that Charlie, who had cleaned the bed and stepped away to allow her to enlarge it, had conjured a few candles by the time she had also warmed up the cleaned sheets.
“This looks better,” he said after whisking away the scratchy bedspread and softening the sheets for good measure. “You still want to do this?”
She crawled right in the middle of the bed “You ask me one more time and I’ll think you don’t want to.”
Grinning, Charlie dropped his wand on the bedside table and moved up to her. “The most beautiful thing I could think of. Right here with me.” As she wrapped her arms and legs around him, he ran his hand along her thigh, toward her centre, where her skin was smooth and soft, and heating up by the minute. “Want to touch you.”
“Touch me. Wait. Undress first.” Her bra still clung to her, pushed down, and her skirt was rubbing up against her thighs, no more comfortable than his pants which she now had to attack in earnest. “Let me.” So many buttons.
With an impatient huff, he reached again for his wand and flicked it at himself, banishing all his clothes. “Better this way. Get rid of socks and shoes too.”
She grinned. “Good idea. They can be embarrassing. But how about me?”
“I plan to divest you of your clothing slowly and savour it. ‘Soon as I manage to get this damn metal thing open.” With a muttered curse, he finally unclasped the bra and threw it off, licking one nipple. “Let’s see what else is there.”
Her skirt was easily unzipped and eased off her legs, and Hermione squirmed when Charlie stared at her lap with unashamed hunger in his eyes.
“Er, I bought myself a small gift yesterday. And this morning I decided to wear it.”
“No boring woman would have this under her skirt, Hermione. In fact, you look bloody gorgeous.” She gasped when he lowered his head and, gripping her thighs more firmly than was necessary to keep her still, licked her slit through the flimsy black lace. She was already soaking wet.
She could barely form a sentence when his tongue and lips were busy messing up her brain. “The gift clearly a good choice, then?”
“Both for you and for me.” He looked up to her, grinning and flicking his fingers over her clit, sending heatwaves straight into her. “Not just the lace. This swollen pink cunt, visible through it, just waiting… So wet for me…” Kissing down from her belly to her hipbones, he slowly pulled the knickers down and off, then looked back at her. “Can’t keep looking at it through material. Want to taste you. Properly. Spent too much time thinking about it.”
Her legs spread even before he began to push them apart. When his mouth again fastened on her, she threw her head back and dimly wondered if she was indeed the source of the strange moans filling the room. She had never imagined that she could sound so wanton.
Not that she imagined she could remain silent with Charlie running his tongue up and down her labia, then swirl it over her clit. Cupping her own tits and tugging on the nipples, she arched up to him as he gently took her clit between his lips and sucked on it. She felt his fingers, long and hot, dipping into her, spreading her juices, then entering her more deeply.
“Charlie, that’s… I’m.. yes. Yes. Oh…”
He continued lapping and sucking her, holding down her thrashing hips, rolling his tongue over her sensitive nub, and she heard herself, as from afar, screaming his name as heavy golden heat washed over her. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, her toes curled, her whole body cramped up before she fell back against the bed, a wet, satisfied heap of bliss.
“Mhmmm. Come here...” A whimper was all she could manage, but she pulled him to her, wrapping her legs around his waist as her hands searched for his cock. He throbbed in her hands, and looking at the frown on his face and the beads of sweat on his neck, she knew how hard it must be to hover above her, not to crush her or come before even entering. “In me now. Please.”
“In you.” Wet as she was, it took one hard thrust and he was sheathed deep inside her, hissing at the pleasure. With a sound halfway between a chuckle and a cry, she grabbed his arse and pulled him closer. “Move. Oh, fuck, this is better than I… Move. You are so big - ” It almost hurt, but didn’t, and the pleasure of being stretched by his girth nearly made her black out. “Ohh.”
“Won’t last too long,” he panted, his head in the crook of her neck, and licked the sensitive spot under her ear. “You. So wet. Tight. So damn hot, Hermione.” Long, deep thrusts, although, by the size and the throbbing, she could tell he must be so close he could barely see. “So hot. Come for me again.”
She was moving with him, pushing back against him, her nipples rubbing against his chest. “You want me to come again?”
“Yes. Come on my cock. Want to feel you. Clench around my cock.”
“Lie down.”
Pushing him off her, she motioned for him to lie on his back and straddled him, panting. “Hold my bum. Grip it.” Just that little pain, the strong, calloused fingers, and she whimpered again as she slowly impaled herself on his cock and began riding him.
He began arching up to her, moving with her, squeezing the arse moving in his hands when she stilled him. “Wait.”
Lowering herself on his chest, she stretched out her legs and closed them. Now she was lying on him, and she grinned as Charlie groaned at the new tightness around his cock. She was squeezing him with her thigh muscles. “Best if you want me to come.”
“I want you to scream, Hermione.”
As he pushed deeper inside her, she slipped her hand between them, coating her fingers in their juices and flicking them over her clit. “Yes. Make me scream.”
Her head snapped back, and she focused on the slippery hardness of his cock moving in her, the clit under her fingers, the sparks of pain and lust of his fingers gripping her arse and his teeth on her neck. “Yes. Will scream… More…”
She arched and tensed, so close, just a tiny fraction of a second more, she could already feel the glow in her cunt that told her she would soon be there, and gave a half sob, clutching him even tighter in her.
Smack.
Charlie’s hand coming down on her arse, hard, sent her over the edge. Clenching, cramping, writhing on his cock, shouting obscenities and moans and syllables of his name, biting and clawing into his shoulder, Hermione came, pulling Charlie with her, into her, and with a long, inarticulate cry, he pulled her down on his cock fiercely and stiffened..
It had been a good idea to make him lie back, she thought much later, when she was capable of thought. He looked fairly knocked out. She would probably have been smothered if he had been on top, bulky as he was. As it was, she was smothering him. Shifting a bit to the side, though she had to release him out of her, she snuggled to his chest.
“You alive?”
“Mmm. No. Dead. Heaven. Probably.”
He draped his arms even closer around her. This is the thing, she thought. The pudding-like consistency of her limbs, the pleasure still twitching inside her, Charlie’s breathing next to her ear and the smell of sex filling the room all combined to give her a feeling of contentment that had her grinning from ear to ear.
What a night. What a crazy birthday. What a mad coincidence that Charlie should have been sitting around in here today of all -
Quick as a flash, she jumped out of bed and grabbed her wand.
“You! Get up!”
He sleepily blinked, then sat up, his eyes widening at the wand she was pointing in his face.
“What did the twins call you when you got the offer from Puddlemere United?”
“Broom-arse, and I don’t know under which threat they would have told you that because I hexed their hair off the first time they tried to tell anyone, and it’s been more than two hours since you came here so any Polyjuice would long have worn off by now.” He looked into her eyes and sighed. “Why don’t you trust me all of a sudden?”
“You don’t usually happen to come home from the reserve just because of paperwork.” She had lowered her wand, but was still eyeing him suspiciously. “And I’ve hardly ever seen you here. Not even during the war, when your family was living here. Not even when Ginny lived here with Harry. Why are you here today?”
He was staring at the rumpled sheets, and she thought he was blushing in the candlelight.
“Why are you here, Charlie? Is this some sort of set-up? How did I suddenly get to shag you on my birthday?”
He rubbed his face. “It wasn’t supposed to be a shag, really.”
“Supposed? So it was planned? Someone sent you here? To cheer me up and give me a birthday flirt as a consolation gift?” She could feel tears welling up again, only now they felt much worse. Much more humiliating. “Are you the call-boy of the family, then? I thought you were no slut.”
“Hermione.” He got up from the bed and stepped towards her. “I swear I will tell you, but please. First, put away the wand, and sit down, and believe me when I say that I really, really, truly wanted to … make love to you. Still do. Many more times. But I’d never had the guts to look for a chance, well, and I’d never have had a chance because I’d never known that you’d want to, and I’d never have known that you’d be here today.”
“So what happened?”
“I got a tip.” He smiled, and she could see that it was a shy smile, and suddenly she wanted to snuggle close to him again.
Well, she could at least take a few steps towards him.
“A tip? From whom?”
“Ginny.” Now he was clearly grinning. “It seems you confounded Harry quite perfectly. But when he went home and insisted that she should get ready for a Cannons game that isn’t due for another four days, she got suspicious. I guess he had told her that you’d be having lunch together. She floo’d Ron and found out that you’d rendered him - well - chronologically stupefied, too. And she knew it was your birthday, and she said you hadn’t really been a party animal last year, so she put two and two together and figured out you must be grumpy about this date.”
She sniffed and stroked his arm. “And where do you come in?”
“Well, she floo’d me then, and said I should come over if I didn’t want to miss the one single chance not to be a bloody pathetic fool all my life. Her words. And, well, she knew to call me because of this, I suppose.”
He accio’d his jeans and fished something out of a back pocket. “But first, sit down. Come. You’ll catch cold.” Sitting down on the bed beside her, he pulled the bedspread over them and pointed his wand on the small rectangle in his palm. “I need to enlarge it. See.”
It was a photo of herself, Harry, Ron and Ginny in their sixth year, taken, she remembered, during the few peaceful days when Harry and Ginny dated, before Dumbledore died. They seemed to be studying in the Gryffindor common room, Harry and Ginny almost on top of each other, Ron sprawled on the carpet, herself buried under books and heaps of parchment.
“It’s... nice, but what does it have to do with you?”
“She developed a fancy for photo development and enlargement charms recently,” he explained and this time pointed his wand at a corner of the photo. “She said she’d found this a few weeks ago and shut up about it until she thought it could be useful, or rather, maybe I could be useful for once. Again, her words.” A circle in the picture, the spot showing her papers and books, she realized, began to enlarge until she could read the letters, first the titles of the books and then her scribbled notes on the parchment.
Hell.
The corner of a small scrap of parchment clearly read: “Charlie, I miss you.”
She dug her head under his chin and began to laugh. “I’m going to kill her. Or thank her. I remember writing that. It was such a frustrating year, and I’d gone so long without seeing you. I didn’t dare to write you, so I just scribbled random notes at you when I was distracted.”
He kissed the top of her head and threw both the photo and the wand back on the little table, then flopped back on the bed and drew her into his arms. “Well, I thanked her profusely, and then I came over here as fast as I could. And I swear I didn’t come here to get you drunk and seduce you. Just to give you your present.”
“Another one?” She kissed him, stroking his naked stomach under the bedspread. “You are enough. God. Thanks for galloping here all the way from Romania.” She kissed him again and wiped her eyes. “And sorry for sticking the wand into your face.”
“Yes, there is a present, and no, nearly putting my eye out with the wand is no problem because the sex part was really unplanned and I see how you’d get shocked at my presence once you’d sobered after the mind-blowing lovemaking session I presented you with.”
“Git.” She smacked his arm, then snuggled back into it. “So, what is it, then?”
“You have to make me accio things all the time, don’t you?” Sighing, he reached for the wand again and zoomed something from another pocket of his jeans into his hand. He enlarged it into a small, flat parcel and handed it to her. “And once more, happy birthday. Although the day is probably over by now.”
She carefully removed the wrapping paper from the gift and turned it over. “A book?”
“Yes, and it’s not another edition of that Hogwarts history tome you love. It’s not even magic. I went to a Muggle bookstore.”
She ran her fingers over the bright-coloured letters on the cover. “The Smart Woman’s Guide to Happiness. Hm. Engaging title.”
“Figured it might appeal to you.”
“It does, Charlie.” Reaching for her own wand, she conjured a quill and opened the book. “It just needs a small addendum.”
In clear letters, she wrote on the first page, “Get and keep Charlie Weasley.”
“So what brings you here?”
“You’re just asking, right? Not insinuating that I should just get myself to my own damn home and not force you to be awake right now?” Hermione held out her glass for another shot of firewhisky. “Because I really feel like no one wants me around right now. Kind of the reason why I’m here, Charlie. Feel free to call me a depressing whiny bitch.”
“I’d never call you a bitch, but you do seem depressed.”
Hermione just shrugged. Charlie seemed unsure what to say for a moment, then filled up her chipped glass, though only halfway to the brim. “Careful with the happifying yet poisonous effects of Ogden’s, mind you.”
“Happifying?”
“Was trying to make you smile. Worked, too.” Indeed, she was sputtering and giggling. “Or you could just really tell me why you felt bad enough to come here to sulk alone.”
“Not really alone. You’re here.”
“Yes, but you didn’t know that. I’m only here because of a slightly messed up schedule at the reserve, and I’m guessing your aim in coming here was...”
“My aim in coming to Harry’s deserted home was to light a fire, pour myself some whisky, drink it on my own, and feel sorry for myself.” Scooting up from the uncomfortable old couch, Hermione pushed herself up on her elbow and wiped the sweat off her temple. The fire and the whisky were relaxing her better than she had expected. “Today is my birthday.”
“Oi!” He straightened and grabbed her hand. “Happy birthday. How old are you now? No matter, you look better than ever. But wait - why aren’t you celebrating with the boys? The idiots forgot, didn’t they? I’ll -”
“They didn’t actually forget.” She took another sip of the whisky, a smaller one this time. Relaxing would be good, retching would not. “I made them.”
“You made them forget your birthday?” Now he was laughing. “Hermione Granger obliviated her birthday off her best friends’ already half-addled brains? Why?”
“Oh, I didn’t obliviate them, Charlie. I simply confounded them a bit at lunch earlier. They think today is next Thursday. And as for the reason, I didn’t want to be around them.” This time, she looked straight into his eyes. He stopped chuckling immediately.
“What the - what did they do? Did you fight?”
“No, it’s just. Bugger. I feel a bit guilty saying this but… they’re so happy, Charlie. Harry has Ginny, and they are disgustingly cute and this perfect textbook happy couple with two point five children and they still care about each other and snog when they think we’re not looking. And Ron has another simpering groupie with him each time we do a pub night. I don’t even ask their names anymore so I don’t get attached.”
He had started to laugh again, but forced himself to be serious. “Hey, I know it has to be tough.”
It was her turn to chuckle, and then hiccup as her gulp of air went the wrong way. “I’m not jealous! Hey, I know it would sound like that, but no - when you think about it, he and I have been apart something like twenty times as long as we were together. I wouldn’t want him back if you covered him in chocolate.” She sobered as she spoke. “But they are content and happy the way they live, and I don’t want to be the frowning, grumpy old maid sitting there making everyone uncomfortable because I’m alone and thirty-two now, and I have only my friends and my job and my flat which is embarrassingly devoid of other humans. I think they’ve started to feel guilty of being cheerful around me. Did you know Harry tried to set me up?”
“Who with?”
“I don’t know, someone Ron supposedly knows. The point is, I don’t want them to feel sorry about me at a time when I should be celebrating. I’d rather do that myself.” She clinked her glass to Charlie’s. “To me.”
“Do what? Feel sorry for yourself?”
“That was the original plan, but maybe I should rather celebrate.” She smiled at him, mentally noting that he looked as flushed as she felt. Maybe they should go easy on the fire. Or the whisky.
“All right. Here’s to the beautiful brilliant witch and her new year.”
Or maybe sit a little further away from Charlie Weasley. She frowned. “Oi, thanks for sounding about as credible in your description of me as the Skeeter woman. I’d expect better from you.” Damn. Why couldn’t she have run into someone who would let her stew in peace and Ogden’s, tonight of all nights, and not remind her of her old crush? She closed her eyes for a moment as images revived: muscles glimpsed through half-closed bathroom doors, sweaty dreams of kissing him in the shed, of running her hands over freckles and scars, soothing burn marks with her tongue -
“…Hermione? Are you there? I said I mean it. Skeeter and her entourage can go take a leap. You are. Well, beautiful, I mean.” He prodded her lightly with a calloused finger. “Woman, you are prettier now than you were as a young girl.” He grinned again, lightly grazing her knee when he pulled back. “Not that that’s the most important thing.”
“Thanks anyway,” she said, waving off memories of all the times she had stared in the mirror, willing her teeth to shrink. Odd thing, having Malfoy to thank for what was possibly the greatest physical improvement of her life. “To be honest, I’m not really grumpy about whether I’m pretty or not. Really. Ron’s girls are blonde bombshells and Ginny could still crack walnuts with her thighs and I’m cool with that.” She grinned at seeing Charlie cringe very obviously at the mental image. “What I do hate about myself getting old is that I’ve become… frankly, boring.”
“Boring? Excuse me. Are you still talking about yourself?”
She huffed. “Let’s be serious here, Charlie. I’m a woman past her - well, let’s call it past the glowing youth, whose social life consists of a get-together with school friends now and then. My greatest excitement in life is the creation of one 100% pure wool jumper on a single weekend. I draft laws at the ministry, then I go home to solve rune crossword puzzles. Not much to show for a life this long.”
She was expecting more laughter, but now Charlie had now straightened up, his face suddenly so serious that she wondered if she had drunk more than she realized, and said something very wrong. Quoted her last dream about him back at him, maybe.
“All right,” he said, after a short sigh. “First of all, I do know how that is; I’m forty and still living in the singles tent at a place where I have to line up for my dinner and work with creatures that smell like their dung more than anything else. So much for you being a failure.”
He held up a hand to stop her protests. “No, it’s your night, I wouldn’t dream of attempting to compete with you in the sacred sport of moping. Just realize you are not the only one to feel that life should be more than what it is. But what I really need to tell you is,” his gaze became more intense as he leaned down to her, “You’re being a fucking idiot.”
He jaw dropped, as one of those very rare moments in history occurred. For a long moment, Hermione was speechless, as her brain was trying to simultaneously process what Charlie had just said, and to prevent her for hexing his Adam’s apple off for it. Opting to take a deep breath instead, she slammed down her glass, but he cut off her answer before she could speak.
“I don’t mean that you’re an idiot because you should be grateful to have your job, or happy for the two idiots who obviously didn’t know a good thing when they saw one,” he explained. “I mean that it is astoundingly stupid of you, considering how smart you actually are, to settle for warming a seat in the bloody ministry and mothering your friends as if they couldn’t find their own balls without you. Which, come to think about it, they probably couldn’t.” He was speaking faster and faster. “You uncovered more secrets, learned more spells, created more ancient magic than anyone I have talked to. You’re an idiot if you don’t use all that to go after what you want, instead of - ”
Gripping his ears with both hands, which was probably less romantic than painful, she thought wryly, Hermione finally silenced with by planting a full kiss on his mouth.
“How’s that for starters?”
Eyes wide, he grabbed the arm rest of the couch for support. “I didn’t mean - ”
Fuck. Adolescent nightmare of rejection all over again. Not. Cry. “It’s all right. Charlie, sorry, I won’t try it again, it’s, well, the whisky and -”
His forehead knocking against hers when he lunged at her should not have hurt more than his ears, but the four, seven, oh, Merlin knows how many kisses he planted on her face made up for it. “Not sorry. No. I just - you shouldn’t just settle for me either. Always wanted - fuck. Well. Was never enough for that, right?” He straightened up again and looked into her eyes, stroking her cheek.
“Who always wanted what? Charlie, you better start explaining or I’ll have to… well, I don’t know what I’ll do but I suppose you hate women’s tears as much as the next bloke, and you’re in serious danger of making me cry with shame and humiliation right now.”
“I’m the one that’s humiliated here,” he said. “All those holidays, seeing you run around the Burrow, not being able to get near you? Knowing I’d never be good enough? And now you kiss me only when I try to cheer you up? I may be the most handsome one of the clan, but I’m not a slut.” He was trying to smile, she could see it, but even as she was kissing his knuckle she struggled to understand.
“Good enough? Are you, or were you, out of your fucking mind? I had a crush on you from the day I first saw you with your fresh burns!”
“You were a kid. A smart kid. You liked me well enough, but you grew into this amazing woman, and you are a war heroine, bloody hell, and famous for being the smartest witch of your generation, and you wouldn’t even take Ron although you’d practically grown up together and Mum had all but superglued him on you, and hell, I’m not the smart one, am I, Bill does the curse stuff. I’m just a bloke who has a penniless annoying family and a job that makes him scar and stink.” He was close now, her face just inches from hers, and it was easy to shut him up, gentler this time, with her fingers on his lips.
“Charlie... now you are the fucking idiot.”
And then she couldn’t hold back the tears any more, but at least she could cry sitting astride his lap, couldn’t she, wrapping her arms around him, both of them brushing off her tears and snot as, finally, frantically, they kissed.
Sniffing, she wiped over her face one last time as she leaned back to look at him fully. “All right. Now. We both stop feeling sorry for ourselves. You are here, aren’t you, and not just a figment of my over-heated imagination?” A squeeze on her bum made her aware that he certainly was there and very alive and solid. Oh. “Oh. Right. Then this birthday is the occasion to really go after what I want and fulfil one sordid teen fantasy that I’ve had for almost twenty years.”
“Hermione…” His voice, she noticed smugly, sounded definitely hoarse now, and the glint in his eyes matched the tingle in her stomach.
“Yes. Well. If you really meant what you just said, about wanting me, and since I meant what I said, about wanting you, then that, well, and not having done anything about it for so long, is enough to make us both huge fucking idiots anyway, and we should do something about it right now. So I suppose this would be a good time to shut up.”
No answer this time, only a long kiss that made her writhe against him and grip his arm with one hand, as the other fisted in his hair. And more kisses following it, which made her heat up and wrap her arms tightly around him and grind against his lap.
The bulge in his jeans, trapped under her, became even harder when she touched her tongue to his mouth, stroking along the seam of his lips, then nibbled lightly along his lower lip. His hands, hot and slightly trembling, ran along her back, her sides, dipping under her shirt, stroking the curve of her waist, pulling her closer to him.
She had to touch him, or she would surely explode, she knew. She grabbed his shirt and pulled it off, and yes - those scars and the ginger chest hair that she’d seen years ago, as he stepped out of the shower. But now the chest was even broader, there were even more scars and more hair, and Charlie gave a small groan when she ran open-mouthed kisses over the Burnished Blue tattoo close to his left nipple, up to his collarbone, and licked his earlobe, deeply inhaling a scent that she had only been able to imagine until now. Brilliant witch my arse, she thought, for her imagination had been nothing in comparison to the reality, this smell of soap and linen, and Charlie’s own aroused scent.
He had his fingers under some semblance of control by now, so that he could unbutton her shirt, kissing and biting her shoulder, making her whimper, then purr as he laved the red mark with his tongue. By the time the shirt had landed somewhere in the dark corners of the room and her skirt gathered around her thighs, her knees had become somehow numb from sitting on them for so long, and she knew his cock must be very uncomfortable, aroused by her moans and rubbing and still constricted in his pants, but when she attempted to get up, he held tight to her arms. “Don’t move. Yet. Please, love, want to see you like this…” She knew what he meant when, pushing down her bra, he buried his nose deep between her breasts.
“Haven’t your legs fallen asleep? You can’t be comfortable with me on top of you,” she mumbled, kissing his hair.
“Fuck legs. The rest of me is very awake. Just stay close to me.”
“You want my tits in your face? Just have to say the word.”
He chuckled as he sucked one nipple in his mouth, lightly nibbling. “Not done talking, then? Good. Always imagined you talking to me when I’d shag you senseless. The dirtier, the better.” His hand cupped the other breast, the thumb flicking over the nipple, and Hermione arched further into his hands.
“Dirty or not, I have to talk when I see you trapped under my weight and still in almost all your clothes. And by the way, if I’m supposed to be rendered senseless, wouldn’t that preclude talking?” With a kiss in his hair, again inhaling the dizzying scent of Charlie and lust, she got up, ignoring his protesting tweak of her nipple.
With a sigh, Charlie struggled to his feet, stumbling and trying to arrange his pants so he could actually walk in them. “So, you want to be rendered incapable of speech then? Maybe I should check my dragon-riding gear instead of my potions cabinet…”
“Ew. No potions or bits, please. Well. Just your private ones. Er. Your bits. And mine. For now.” She blushed.
He stepped close, holding both her hands and twining his fingers through hers. “So, are we really doing this, then?”
“We better.” She kissed him quickly. “We should catch up, I say. But in a bed, if possible.”
Hermione looked around the dark living room and the fire that was dying by now, the couch they had just got up from and the threadbare carpet under it. There was nothing else in the room.
Charlie turned to her. “You’re right. Don’t want rug burn. Next bedroom?”
“Race you there.”
“No.” Pecking her on the lips, he swept her up in his arms. “I can be a little cheesy at times, you know. I should get to carry you to bed at least once before I get old and rickety.”
The room was dark and cold. Charlie deposited her on the bed - none too gracefully.
“Ow!”
“Sorry about that”, he panted, grabbing for her arm. “Sorry. You might’ve been right about my legs.”
She giggled. “So at least you have me moaning already.”
He was relieved to be able to join her laugh when she climbed down from the bed and gave the old bed frame a kick. “No, Charlie, it’s just my elbow. I hit the wall. This thing is definitely too narrow.”
“And it probably hasn’t been changed or even dusted off in a long time.” He whipped out his wand. “A quick cleaning spell should do it.”
Luckily, her own wand was till in the pocket of her by now very wrinkled skirt. She grinned when she saw that Charlie, who had cleaned the bed and stepped away to allow her to enlarge it, had conjured a few candles by the time she had also warmed up the cleaned sheets.
“This looks better,” he said after whisking away the scratchy bedspread and softening the sheets for good measure. “You still want to do this?”
She crawled right in the middle of the bed “You ask me one more time and I’ll think you don’t want to.”
Grinning, Charlie dropped his wand on the bedside table and moved up to her. “The most beautiful thing I could think of. Right here with me.” As she wrapped her arms and legs around him, he ran his hand along her thigh, toward her centre, where her skin was smooth and soft, and heating up by the minute. “Want to touch you.”
“Touch me. Wait. Undress first.” Her bra still clung to her, pushed down, and her skirt was rubbing up against her thighs, no more comfortable than his pants which she now had to attack in earnest. “Let me.” So many buttons.
With an impatient huff, he reached again for his wand and flicked it at himself, banishing all his clothes. “Better this way. Get rid of socks and shoes too.”
She grinned. “Good idea. They can be embarrassing. But how about me?”
“I plan to divest you of your clothing slowly and savour it. ‘Soon as I manage to get this damn metal thing open.” With a muttered curse, he finally unclasped the bra and threw it off, licking one nipple. “Let’s see what else is there.”
Her skirt was easily unzipped and eased off her legs, and Hermione squirmed when Charlie stared at her lap with unashamed hunger in his eyes.
“Er, I bought myself a small gift yesterday. And this morning I decided to wear it.”
“No boring woman would have this under her skirt, Hermione. In fact, you look bloody gorgeous.” She gasped when he lowered his head and, gripping her thighs more firmly than was necessary to keep her still, licked her slit through the flimsy black lace. She was already soaking wet.
She could barely form a sentence when his tongue and lips were busy messing up her brain. “The gift clearly a good choice, then?”
“Both for you and for me.” He looked up to her, grinning and flicking his fingers over her clit, sending heatwaves straight into her. “Not just the lace. This swollen pink cunt, visible through it, just waiting… So wet for me…” Kissing down from her belly to her hipbones, he slowly pulled the knickers down and off, then looked back at her. “Can’t keep looking at it through material. Want to taste you. Properly. Spent too much time thinking about it.”
Her legs spread even before he began to push them apart. When his mouth again fastened on her, she threw her head back and dimly wondered if she was indeed the source of the strange moans filling the room. She had never imagined that she could sound so wanton.
Not that she imagined she could remain silent with Charlie running his tongue up and down her labia, then swirl it over her clit. Cupping her own tits and tugging on the nipples, she arched up to him as he gently took her clit between his lips and sucked on it. She felt his fingers, long and hot, dipping into her, spreading her juices, then entering her more deeply.
“Charlie, that’s… I’m.. yes. Yes. Oh…”
He continued lapping and sucking her, holding down her thrashing hips, rolling his tongue over her sensitive nub, and she heard herself, as from afar, screaming his name as heavy golden heat washed over her. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets, her toes curled, her whole body cramped up before she fell back against the bed, a wet, satisfied heap of bliss.
“Mhmmm. Come here...” A whimper was all she could manage, but she pulled him to her, wrapping her legs around his waist as her hands searched for his cock. He throbbed in her hands, and looking at the frown on his face and the beads of sweat on his neck, she knew how hard it must be to hover above her, not to crush her or come before even entering. “In me now. Please.”
“In you.” Wet as she was, it took one hard thrust and he was sheathed deep inside her, hissing at the pleasure. With a sound halfway between a chuckle and a cry, she grabbed his arse and pulled him closer. “Move. Oh, fuck, this is better than I… Move. You are so big - ” It almost hurt, but didn’t, and the pleasure of being stretched by his girth nearly made her black out. “Ohh.”
“Won’t last too long,” he panted, his head in the crook of her neck, and licked the sensitive spot under her ear. “You. So wet. Tight. So damn hot, Hermione.” Long, deep thrusts, although, by the size and the throbbing, she could tell he must be so close he could barely see. “So hot. Come for me again.”
She was moving with him, pushing back against him, her nipples rubbing against his chest. “You want me to come again?”
“Yes. Come on my cock. Want to feel you. Clench around my cock.”
“Lie down.”
Pushing him off her, she motioned for him to lie on his back and straddled him, panting. “Hold my bum. Grip it.” Just that little pain, the strong, calloused fingers, and she whimpered again as she slowly impaled herself on his cock and began riding him.
He began arching up to her, moving with her, squeezing the arse moving in his hands when she stilled him. “Wait.”
Lowering herself on his chest, she stretched out her legs and closed them. Now she was lying on him, and she grinned as Charlie groaned at the new tightness around his cock. She was squeezing him with her thigh muscles. “Best if you want me to come.”
“I want you to scream, Hermione.”
As he pushed deeper inside her, she slipped her hand between them, coating her fingers in their juices and flicking them over her clit. “Yes. Make me scream.”
Her head snapped back, and she focused on the slippery hardness of his cock moving in her, the clit under her fingers, the sparks of pain and lust of his fingers gripping her arse and his teeth on her neck. “Yes. Will scream… More…”
She arched and tensed, so close, just a tiny fraction of a second more, she could already feel the glow in her cunt that told her she would soon be there, and gave a half sob, clutching him even tighter in her.
Smack.
Charlie’s hand coming down on her arse, hard, sent her over the edge. Clenching, cramping, writhing on his cock, shouting obscenities and moans and syllables of his name, biting and clawing into his shoulder, Hermione came, pulling Charlie with her, into her, and with a long, inarticulate cry, he pulled her down on his cock fiercely and stiffened..
It had been a good idea to make him lie back, she thought much later, when she was capable of thought. He looked fairly knocked out. She would probably have been smothered if he had been on top, bulky as he was. As it was, she was smothering him. Shifting a bit to the side, though she had to release him out of her, she snuggled to his chest.
“You alive?”
“Mmm. No. Dead. Heaven. Probably.”
He draped his arms even closer around her. This is the thing, she thought. The pudding-like consistency of her limbs, the pleasure still twitching inside her, Charlie’s breathing next to her ear and the smell of sex filling the room all combined to give her a feeling of contentment that had her grinning from ear to ear.
What a night. What a crazy birthday. What a mad coincidence that Charlie should have been sitting around in here today of all -
Quick as a flash, she jumped out of bed and grabbed her wand.
“You! Get up!”
He sleepily blinked, then sat up, his eyes widening at the wand she was pointing in his face.
“What did the twins call you when you got the offer from Puddlemere United?”
“Broom-arse, and I don’t know under which threat they would have told you that because I hexed their hair off the first time they tried to tell anyone, and it’s been more than two hours since you came here so any Polyjuice would long have worn off by now.” He looked into her eyes and sighed. “Why don’t you trust me all of a sudden?”
“You don’t usually happen to come home from the reserve just because of paperwork.” She had lowered her wand, but was still eyeing him suspiciously. “And I’ve hardly ever seen you here. Not even during the war, when your family was living here. Not even when Ginny lived here with Harry. Why are you here today?”
He was staring at the rumpled sheets, and she thought he was blushing in the candlelight.
“Why are you here, Charlie? Is this some sort of set-up? How did I suddenly get to shag you on my birthday?”
He rubbed his face. “It wasn’t supposed to be a shag, really.”
“Supposed? So it was planned? Someone sent you here? To cheer me up and give me a birthday flirt as a consolation gift?” She could feel tears welling up again, only now they felt much worse. Much more humiliating. “Are you the call-boy of the family, then? I thought you were no slut.”
“Hermione.” He got up from the bed and stepped towards her. “I swear I will tell you, but please. First, put away the wand, and sit down, and believe me when I say that I really, really, truly wanted to … make love to you. Still do. Many more times. But I’d never had the guts to look for a chance, well, and I’d never have had a chance because I’d never known that you’d want to, and I’d never have known that you’d be here today.”
“So what happened?”
“I got a tip.” He smiled, and she could see that it was a shy smile, and suddenly she wanted to snuggle close to him again.
Well, she could at least take a few steps towards him.
“A tip? From whom?”
“Ginny.” Now he was clearly grinning. “It seems you confounded Harry quite perfectly. But when he went home and insisted that she should get ready for a Cannons game that isn’t due for another four days, she got suspicious. I guess he had told her that you’d be having lunch together. She floo’d Ron and found out that you’d rendered him - well - chronologically stupefied, too. And she knew it was your birthday, and she said you hadn’t really been a party animal last year, so she put two and two together and figured out you must be grumpy about this date.”
She sniffed and stroked his arm. “And where do you come in?”
“Well, she floo’d me then, and said I should come over if I didn’t want to miss the one single chance not to be a bloody pathetic fool all my life. Her words. And, well, she knew to call me because of this, I suppose.”
He accio’d his jeans and fished something out of a back pocket. “But first, sit down. Come. You’ll catch cold.” Sitting down on the bed beside her, he pulled the bedspread over them and pointed his wand on the small rectangle in his palm. “I need to enlarge it. See.”
It was a photo of herself, Harry, Ron and Ginny in their sixth year, taken, she remembered, during the few peaceful days when Harry and Ginny dated, before Dumbledore died. They seemed to be studying in the Gryffindor common room, Harry and Ginny almost on top of each other, Ron sprawled on the carpet, herself buried under books and heaps of parchment.
“It’s... nice, but what does it have to do with you?”
“She developed a fancy for photo development and enlargement charms recently,” he explained and this time pointed his wand at a corner of the photo. “She said she’d found this a few weeks ago and shut up about it until she thought it could be useful, or rather, maybe I could be useful for once. Again, her words.” A circle in the picture, the spot showing her papers and books, she realized, began to enlarge until she could read the letters, first the titles of the books and then her scribbled notes on the parchment.
Hell.
The corner of a small scrap of parchment clearly read: “Charlie, I miss you.”
She dug her head under his chin and began to laugh. “I’m going to kill her. Or thank her. I remember writing that. It was such a frustrating year, and I’d gone so long without seeing you. I didn’t dare to write you, so I just scribbled random notes at you when I was distracted.”
He kissed the top of her head and threw both the photo and the wand back on the little table, then flopped back on the bed and drew her into his arms. “Well, I thanked her profusely, and then I came over here as fast as I could. And I swear I didn’t come here to get you drunk and seduce you. Just to give you your present.”
“Another one?” She kissed him, stroking his naked stomach under the bedspread. “You are enough. God. Thanks for galloping here all the way from Romania.” She kissed him again and wiped her eyes. “And sorry for sticking the wand into your face.”
“Yes, there is a present, and no, nearly putting my eye out with the wand is no problem because the sex part was really unplanned and I see how you’d get shocked at my presence once you’d sobered after the mind-blowing lovemaking session I presented you with.”
“Git.” She smacked his arm, then snuggled back into it. “So, what is it, then?”
“You have to make me accio things all the time, don’t you?” Sighing, he reached for the wand again and zoomed something from another pocket of his jeans into his hand. He enlarged it into a small, flat parcel and handed it to her. “And once more, happy birthday. Although the day is probably over by now.”
She carefully removed the wrapping paper from the gift and turned it over. “A book?”
“Yes, and it’s not another edition of that Hogwarts history tome you love. It’s not even magic. I went to a Muggle bookstore.”
She ran her fingers over the bright-coloured letters on the cover. “The Smart Woman’s Guide to Happiness. Hm. Engaging title.”
“Figured it might appeal to you.”
“It does, Charlie.” Reaching for her own wand, she conjured a quill and opened the book. “It just needs a small addendum.”
In clear letters, she wrote on the first page, “Get and keep Charlie Weasley.”