Four Weddings and a Dragon - Charlie Weasley

Chapter 1

Charlie Weasley did not remember meeting Hermione Granger. If he did, he would have recalled the reason why Ginny had slept in a separate tent from himself and the rest of the boys at the Quidditch World Cup. She was hosting a guest: a bushy-haired girl tagging along with Harry Potter.

No, Charlie remembered none of that.

By the time, years later, when they'd all gathered at the Burrow for Bill and Fleur's wedding, under the shadow of a looming war, Charlie knew to expect to see Hermione there. She had become a family habit somehow. Charlie wasn't sure how it had happened, but he did know why. Ronnie was in love with her. Everyone knew it but her.

Still, when Hermione came into the kitchen while Molly was cutting Charlie's hair, crashing around in a flustered rush, looking for Ron's missing something-or-other, Charlie jumped in his chair at the sight of her. She was a full-grown witch, now of age. Somehow, he hadn't expected it to happen.

His jump had caused Molly to hack off a much larger chunk of his hair than they'd agreed to when he first sat down to the trim.

"Oh! I'm so sorry, Charlie! I didn't mean to startle you and -- oh, look what I've done?" Hermione said, scooping the fallen ginger lock from the floor and reaching for her wand. "Mrs. Weasley, if you'll let me --"

"No, no. no," Molly said. "You've done him nothing but a great favour, Hermione dear. No, we've no choice but to cut the rest to match this nice short bit." And with that, she took full advantage of the situation, tipping Charlie's head forward and carving deeply into his shaggy mass of red hair.

With his chin against his chest, Charlie looked sideways at Hermione as she stood beside them, helpless, still holding his severed hair. Charlie's expression was one part exasperation, one part amusement. When he caught Hermoine's eye, he rolled his eyes and shrugged.

"For star's sake, boy, hold still," Molly scolded.

They broke their eye contact, Hermione looking down to the hair in her hand. Some of the ends seemed like they were melted together.

Charlie was best man at the wedding. During the ceremony, Hermione didn't dare look at Bill. Everyone outside his family had a crush on Bill on some level, and everyone would have to give it up now that he was a married man. Bridal Fleur was too showy to look at for long, and her maid of honor, her sister Gabrielle who Ron had helped to rescue from the Black Lake -- something about her made Hermione vaguely angry. That left Charlie Weasley as the only safe place to look.

It was too bad about his haircut. He looked like he was on leave from the Muggle military. Ah well. There was no such thing as a Weasley aesthetic Hermione couldn't appreciate. Charlie was shorter than the rest -- except, perhaps, for Percy, who wasn't here. It meant he was less gangly, more classically proportioned. His arms weren't just shorter but thicker, like he used them to work, not just for gripping a broom over a Quidditch pitch. Though he had been known to do that too, if Hermione remembered correctly. Chaser -- he had been a chaser, Ron had told her. She'd wondered what that would be like. Maybe she could goad the brothers into an arm wrestling competition later, odds stacked in Charlie's favour.

She shivered, but not unpleasantly. Time to look at something else...

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Ron was taking forever to ask her to dance at the wedding reception. Maybe he had no plans to ask her at all. Maybe he was winding himself up to ask Gabrielle. She might have felt sad about it if Viktor Krum hadn't swept in, here as a guest of Fleur's, of course.

Did she still waltz as well as she did at the Yule Ball? Oh, Viktor.

She didn't see Ron reprising his role from the Yule Ball right along with them, glowering heartbroken from the other side of the tent as she turned across the floor with Viktor.