Ashley-Rae would freely admit that she hated decorating. Even with magic, it was all a little tedious to her, not to mention she never stayed in one place long enough to actually make anywhere her own. Until now.
And apparently, Charlie loved decorating.
She'd made it very clear early on that she really didn't care much for decorating, as long as she liked the colours of the paint or wallpaper he'd decided on, and she wouldn't want to help, which he was completely ok with - until it came to the 'nursery'.
"You have to help me! Come on, just one wall, it won't take long, I promise!"
Ashley sighed, throwing her medical bag onto its hook by the door. "Charles, I'm two seconds off an eight-hour shift, can we have this argument again after I've had caffeine?"
He nodded, waving his wand, and having a cup of perfectly made coffee in front of his girlfriend in less than twenty seconds. "It's our nursery! For our babies! This is one thing you need to help me on."
Glaring, she sat heavily on the sofa, being careful not to spill her coffee. "Charlie, I told you when you moved in that I wouldn't help with decorating any of it. Why does it matter that it's the nursery? They're dragon babies, I'm not sure they care what colour their room is as long as they get fed on time."
"But I care. And when I'm on shift you'll have to be the one in there caring for our kids, so you need to like it too. I'll make dinner for a week and do the dishes?"
Ashley turned, a mischievous look in her eyes.
"Oh no, I've seen that look in the twins before." Charlie's face dropped.
"If you're bartering chores, then I'm game." She considered, sipping her coffee. "Dinner and dishes for five days and you sweep the floors."
Looking a little lost, he thought about the offer for a few seconds. "How long am I sweeping the floors for?"
"Five days."
"Done."
"Hand me a paintbrush!" Ashley laughed, making Charlie drag her to the nursery room, where there were dismantled shelves piled on the floor and they had to step over several incubators in order to get anywhere. "Ok, I know I said I'd do this, but this is ridiculous. Let's put the incubators in the spare room for now - the empty one we can convert to a bedroom or whatever - so we can walk around without fear of dying. Or falling flat on our faces."
Charlie rolled his eyes, hiding a smile, but did as she said anyway, while she opened the can of mint green paint.
"Charl, babe, why mint green? I thought you said you were going to do blue?"
He reappeared, looking a little guilty. "I liked the mint green better so I did the spare room blue instead, so I can enjoy the green."
Ashley stared at him for a few seconds before chuckling softly. "I can't argue with that. Ok, so... How do we do this?"
Blinking, Charlie frowned, looking down at the can of paint by Ashley's feet. "What do you mean? Grab a brush and paint the wall?"
"There's no particular way of doing it you just paint it?"
"You've never decorated before?"
"Never had to." She shrugged, "and it always seemed boring."
Charlie smiled softly, "ok, grab a brush, dip it in. Ok, yeah that works, but you gotta scrape some off otherwise you're going to put an inch of paint on the wall and it'll never dry." He carefully explained, walking her through it until she managed to get the hang of it.
"Oh, ok, so it's fairly simple, I guess," Ashley mumbled, painting a section of the wall. "But it's still a little boring."
"So put on some music," Charlie laughed, "we don't have to do it in silence."
Ashley blinked, flicking her wand and turning on the radio to some muggle rock station she remembered from when she was a kid with a smile.
~
Three hours and a nap later, and the two of them were sat in the middle of the room having a picnic dinner, surrounded by half-dry mint green walls and shelves that would need to be put up soon as they'd already received letters of various orphaned babies on their way over.
"Do you think there'll be enough room for them once they start to grow?" Charlie asked between mouthfuls.
Ashley looked around. "Well if not then we can always dragon-proof the apartment. It's a fairly big room, I never realised how big it really was before when it was full of junk."
Charlie nodded. "How do you mean dragon proofing the apartment?"
She opened her mouth to speak but was cut off by an owl beak tapping urgently at the window.
Standing, he made his way over and opened the window, allowing the owl to hop in, taking rest on top of the open door after dropping the pack of letters into Ashley's lap.
"Well I'm glad that didn't get in the chilli," she murmured, placing her fork down and untying the string, handing Charlie three out of the five letters delivered. "Clearly something's going on."
Charlie agreed, sitting back on his cushion, opening his letters, all giving near enough the same information: that war was imminent and things were getting worse and worse. He looked up to see Ashley's fearful expression. "What? Is there something wrong?"
Shaking her head, she replied. "No. Not exactly. But we need to find out who here is willing to come with us for the war. and we leave mid-May, they think it'll happen in June or July, we'd be more useful over there now. They need us."
He swallowed hard. Until now, it had seemed so far away, even with the Death Eater attack two weeks ago that he was still recovering from. It had seemed another world away, and yet now the war was right on their doorstep, and it wouldn't be taking prisoners. He slowly took a breath, moving over to sit beside her. "Ok, it's ok. We'll get through this together."
Ashley refused to look at him, leaning against his arm instead, staring blankly. "I always thought... maybe we were wrong, maybe we wouldn't need a war, we wouldn't have to go through this. Merlin that was naive of me. Is it too late to call everyone together?"
Charlie pulled her closer, resting his chin on the top of her head. "Let them have one more night of sleep. Tomorrow, we will figure everything out, including how the hell we're going to get there. We can't all go by portkey, that would take so much time to get done, and it would take us half a month to apparate there without splinching."
Ashley nodded, relaxing a little more now. "Tomorrow."
They fell into an uneasy silence for a few minutes before Charlie spoke up. "Neither of us are going to get much sleep tonight, are we?"
She shook her head softly. "No, I don't think so. Who did you get letters from?"
"Ah," He sighed, leaning over to grab them, "my parents, and Remus. He mentions you, do you know him?"
"Yeah, I treated him for some injuries after a full moon when I was in London. I was pretty much on call for the whole Order while I was there, so I saw him a lot." She sighed, taking the letter as he passed it over her shoulder, reading it to herself.
Charlie,
Things are getting heated over here. Harry's been gone for months now with no word, and people are starting to get anxious about it. With people getting riled up, I doubt we'll make it to the end of May without war breaking out, though everyone's hopeful it won't be until June. Tonks sends her love and hopes you're doing well.
Please give my regards to Ashley-Rae, and ask her to write to me sometimes, I miss our chats by the fireplace, though only if she has time between taking care of your injuries.
Regards,
Remus Lupin
Ashley sighed, folding the letter again. "I fear he may be right. With things getting so heated - and not to mention that Death Eater attack two weeks ago - things are getting worse by the hour, War will be here before May is up."
Charlie grimaced; this was the one thing he hated her being right about, and he hated that he agreed with her. "We'll get through it. We've got each other, we'll be just fine."