NOTE: Winner of Hermione's Haven's 2022 awards, best family story. Thanks for voting!!!
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Hermione was early, very early. She was pacing in the atrium of the International Portkey Terminal, glancing at her watch. It was better than waiting at her desk down in the Ministry, in the damp and dark, too agitated to work. At least there was sunlight in the terminal, lots of high, white late autumn light as she waited for -- for her husband.
Hang it, Arthur.
Yes, it had started with Arthur Weasley. He and Molly kept trying to parent her even after Ron ran off to France with Gabrielle, the quarter-Veela all-grown-up little sister of Fleur Delacour. All the times Hermione saved Ronald's life paled to one time Ron had play-acted at saving little Gabrielle in the school's lake.
Hermione was over it -- mostly. But Arthur and Molly were not, and she hadn't been surprised when they came clamouring through her Floo with a gift for her, something secondhand, of course, but not in the usual way.
"We've finally sorted through everything confiscated from Death Eater houses during the pre-war raids," Arthur had explained, laying what looked like a very small, very fancy napkin ring on the kitchen table in Hermione's London flat. "And since no one has claimed this, I made an application to have it lent out to you for research purposes."
Hermione had nudged the thick ring with one finger. "Me? It's for Magical Creature management then?"
"Oh no," Arthur had said, beaming for some reason. "I don't mean for your professional research, This is for personal research."
"You see, dear," Molly had said, taking it over. "This is a De-bliviator. You know. It reverses memory spells, any and all of them, and with just a little wand work as long as it's in the hands of the person who cast the spell in the first place. It's what finally fixed up Gilderoy Lockhart, once they managed to explain to him how it worked."
Hermione's pulse had quickened with the queasy hope she knew well by then, the hope that had only ever led to disappointment. "De-bliviator? I've looked everywhere for one with no luck at all. And now -- my parents -- oh! Arthur, thank you!"
"Yes well, wait now, wait now," he had said, as Hermione hugged him. "It's not as simple as all that."
She'd slumped into a chair. "Of course it's not. It never is."
Molly had sat beside her, patting her hand. "We'll get it sorted, dear. Now listen."
Arthur had leaned over the table. "Like I said, this De-bliviator was taken from a Death Eater's attic. So naturally, it was damaged. You could even say adulterated, perverted -- made to only respond to members of certain old wizarding families."
"Purebloods," Hermione had said.
Arthur had scoffed, taking the De-bliviator in his hand, showing Hermione how it glowed with a steady blue light against his skin. "We all know there's no such thing. Blood is blood no matter what evil, lying snobs have said about it. No, the De-bliviator doesn't respond to biology, but to history, genealogy. It responds only to people with certain family connections."
He'd dropped the gadget into Hermione's palm and its blue light instantly faded away.
"Well, then connect me," she'd said, taking Molly by the wrist, watching, hoping for the ring to light up again. "Adopt me once and for all, and make me formally family."
"We've looked into it, dear," Molly had said, caressing Hermione's face with her free hand. "After coming of age, formal adoption isn't permitted. But there may be another way..."
That was when they suggested Hermione make their Charlie into her paper husband for the sake of the De-bliviator's damaged magic. Of course, it would be a family connection in name only, a sham marriage. But with him living permanently in Romania and not interested in marriage for his own purposes, what would it hurt? What would change? Nothing. And after she got the De-bliviator working and un-charmed her parents, the paper marriage could be annulled, easy as you please.
"Charlie has already agreed to this?" Hermione had said, her fingers pressed to her temples as if her head was hurting.
Molly had pursed her lips. "We've struck a deal. He'll go through with it on the condition that I not say another word to him about marriage or grandchildren for the length of ten years or the duration of your -- er -- arrangement, whichever comes last."
It was an impossible decision to make on the spot and Hermione had to send the Weasleys home so she could think it through. Arthur had left the De-bliviator on the table, an open invitation.
She'd sat beside it, drinking tea as the sky outside grew dark. Charlie Weasley. He'd always been pleasant to her, but he had all but ignored her until she came of age and the war ended. Then he'd started to speak to her as a friend, not as a child, when they met at the Burrow on his holidays -- summers, Christmas, the family weddings, which were not a few.
He made sure to ask her to dance at the receptions and parties, a firm, rough hand in hers as the music played, fast or slow. Their best conversations came after the dancing and feasting, while they both worked at some kitchen duty, damp aprons over their dress robes or Christmas jumpers.
She had picked up the De-bliviator and slid it over her wand. Its inside diameter was small enough for it to nest against the base, like a ring on a finger. She gave it a spin.
Charlie Weasley was good company, boundlessly interested in hearing about her Ministry work with Magical Creatures. He was full of experience not only with dragons but other creatures too. As for his looks, she found them quite nice because, truth be told, there was no Weasley man of her generation whom Hermione did not enjoy looking at. Even Percy looked rather dashing now that he had taken to wearing specs. Yes, a paper marriage with Charlie might work.
Though the way Arthur and Molly described it, she and Charlie would hardly see one another during the arrangement. They didn't even truly set eyes on each other for the ceremony. It was performed over a registry office's fire call connection, with Charlie's head speaking out of the grate from an office in Romania, flaming for real not just with red hair.
That had been in the spring. It was November now, and all through that time, the De-bliviator would not respond to Hermione. After all these months of waiting for it to sense her new family connection, it had never lit up for her the way it would for Arthur.
Which was why Molly had owled Charlie and told him to come back to Britain, just for a few weeks or maybe months to get close enough to fool the De-bliviator into accepting Hermione as a true Weasley wife. It wasn't convenient, but he arranged for a research sabbatical in London, and now he was on his way.
In the International Portkey Terminal, a bell sounded and a serene witch's voice announced the arrival of transports from Bucharest. Hermione's pulse quickened again with a beat of hope, followed closely by the dread of looming disappointment that always came with everything she'd ever done to try to restore her parents' memories.
"No, it is going to work," she told herself as she moved toward the arrivals zone. "This time, everything is going to be perfect."
She boosted herself onto her toes, searching the crowd for any sign of red hair. Unlike Ron and Bill, Charlie wouldn't stand head and shoulders above the rest of the people in the station. She knew that. He'd be shorter, more average in height, but sturdier than his brothers and, if the Weasley family arm wrestling contests were any indication, stronger. His facial features were like Bill's before the werewolf attack only rougher and sunnier, less like the rounded cuteness of Ron's face, or Percy's effete sharpness, or the twins' showy impishness.
She was still on her toes when the masses parted and there was Charlie, not average at all, fit as anything. Through the crowd, he was advancing slowly, reading parchment bound between the covers of a journal she knew well, the International Review of Pyro-Pneumology. He hadn't seen her yet and she could tell he was trying to finish up his reading before fully stepping back into Britain. She understood completely, and she waited, watching.
When did Charlie start wearing eyeglasses? Maybe they were just for reading. Behind them, his expression was serious, almost stern, not the laughing good-time older brother she knew best, but an exacting scientist. She'd never seen him dressed this way before either. He wasn't racing around the garden in sweaty quidditch gear, or lounging in Christmas pyjamas or a handknit jumper. He wasn't in fussy, best man's dress robes either (Charlie had been best man to all of his married brothers so far).
He was dressed as a traveling researcher in a dark, heavy great coat, the lower edge of his hair curling over its high collar. It suited him extraordinarily well, and when he closed the journal and raised his head, Charlie Weasley found his fake wife staring at him rather intently.
He grinned, pulling the specs from his face and slipping them into a pocket of his coat as he strode toward her. She was suddenly shy, her mouth dry and her cheeks hot. What was the matter with her? It was only Charlie, her kitchen mate, here as a favour, and to keep his mother from pestering him. She willed herself to not to fall back into her old habit of being a Weasley fangirl, though it got harder the closer he came.
"There you are," Hermione said, her voice light and friendly as she extended a hand to him. "Welcome home, Charlie. Thank you so much for coming."
He smirked at her over-politeness, determined to end it. His arm had slipped under hers, curving around her waist and pulling her into a hug. With her and Ron's relationship over, Charlie was less guarded about keeping a physical distance, and let the full length of her body press into his. She could smell his skin and feel his whiskers as he pecked a quick, dry kiss on her cheek.
A little breathless, she watched as he reached for her wand hand. With a gentle rotation of her wrist, he checked the De-bliviator like an experimenter reading a meter.
He held her waist as he hummed. "Well, affectionate greetings between old family friends don't automatically set this mangled De-bliviator off," he said, releasing her hand and smiling down at her. Old friends as they may have been, he had never looked at her with such open attentiveness before. "Chin up, Mrs. Weasley. We'll trick it into working yet."
She tapped her wand against the front of his coat, falling easily into her old pattern of sassing him. "Not if you keep calling me 'Mrs. Weasley' we won't. Honestly, Charlie. Who greets their wife as Mrs.?"
He laughed. "Right. Sham marriage detected. Sorry, I'll do better."
"Yes, well, if you're not willing to have your sham marriage detected all over the press you'd better take your hands off me in public," she smirked back at him, glancing over her shoulders.
His arm dropped and he inched away. "Right again. Sorry, I'm pleased to see you after so long and a bit out of touch with British celebrity."
Hermione huffed. "No, now that you mention it, I'm not so very famous anymore. Look, there's no one watching." She proved it, waving at the masses milling about the terminal around them, no one waving back.
"Yes, the press cooled on me once Ron moved to France and I didn't have a spectacular public breakdown or a disastrous rebound fling." She rolled her eyes. "And now I'm a boring old Ministry researcher who doesn't date at all. I haven't changed so much as my wardrobe in three seasons. No, there's nothing to see here."
Charlie palmed the top of her head. "Well, I'd take your picture."
She tossed her curls over her shoulder. "You don't need to keep up the flirting, you know. You'll wear yourself out."
"What are you like?" he teased. "No flirting? Isn't it the whole point of my being here, to trick some mindless magical object into registering me as mad for you? No, the flirting must go on."
"Incorrigible," Hermione said, smiling at him all the same.
She was taking his hand, but in a business-like way, preparing to side-along apparate. "I'll bring you back to mine so you can find it on your own once you've finished -- whatever your actual business in town is for today."
Her flat was really only large enough for a single person or for a couple who was very, very close. It meant she'd reducio-ed and packed away what felt like half of her belongings to clear some space for him. There was no second bedroom so Hermione had used the same extension spell she cast on her handbags to make her broom cupboard large enough to fit herself and a bed and a clothes rack.
"Absolutely not," Charlie said when she explained that she'd be sleeping in the cupboard and giving him her bed.
"Give over, Charlie," she argued. "You've come as a favour to me. I can't get your mother to summon you all the way here and then stash you in a cupboard."
He was shaking his head. "No. Under no circumstances would I put you out of your bed. I'm the one sleeping in here. That's the end of it." He tossed his duffle bag into the closet and slammed the door, turning to her with a grin. "There, that's my room now. Don't you set foot in it again until I'm gone."
It was gallant of him but she folded her arms across her middle and lifted her chin. "Bluebeard's chamber, is it?"
He frowned, feeling his face. "Blue? Has my beard been hexed?"
She laughed and patted his arm. "No, it's as red as ever. Bluebeard is just a bit of Muggle folklore."
"Oh," he said, smoothing his beard, relieved. "Well I hope he is a generous and considerate husband, like I am determined to be."
Hermione snorted a laugh that made Charlie laugh himself. "Never mind any of that," she said. "Just be sure to be back here by half six for your tea. I'm cooking for you. Something wifely that might spark the De-bliviator into action."
Charlie saw that this was a compromise, Hermione's way of making herself feel better for having nowhere proper for him to sleep. He sighed. "Alright, but don't go to too much trouble."
She nodded. "No trouble at all. Now go ahead and see to your business. I've got a meeting at three o'clock myself."
"Right," he said, raising the collar of his coat, about to apparate on his way. Then he paused, taking her hand to check the De-bliviator again, his eyes still open as he pecked a parting kiss on her forehead. There was no trace of the blue light as his mouth touched her skin. He sighed his disappointment. "This thing is not impressed in the least by the dry Great Aunt Muriel style kisses I've been giving you. I wonder if it works at all."
Charlie shook Hermione's wand hand, jostling the De-bliviator.
"Arthur said to be sure we give it a good, long chance to start working," she said. "So I wouldn't give up on it yet. At least not until after we've spent the night together."
Charlie's eyes widened, his brows lifting as he released her hand, momentarily gobsmacked beyond banter.
"A night in the flat together," Hermione rushed to say, her face scarlet. "Sleeping in your chamber. By yourself, I mean. Not sleeping together. And certainly not SLEEPING together. No, I don't mean -- "
"Alright," Charlie said, laughing. "Glad to see you're coming around to flirting, but maybe start off a bit slower."
"I was not -- "
"No, of course you weren't. Now I'm off to work."
------------------------------------
For their tea, Hermione made a curry, something from outside Molly Weasley's cooking repertoire. It came off well, but still, she regretted it, cradling her after dinner coffee and scolding herself aloud.
"I should be cooking exactly like Molly, because the whole point of this exercise," she said to Charlie, "is to seem properly married. What's more like Molly Weasley than a proper marriage? I should be cooking all her recipes."
Charlie smirked. "Her recipes are for massive quantities. They'd leave us with enough leftover food in this little flat to feed an army."
She shrugged. "Whatever it takes -- in the kitchen, that is."
He drained his cooling coffee like it was a stiff drink. "Look, my parents are a fine pair, but they aren't the only happily married people in the world. We don't have to do this their way, with a bunch of cooking and nagging."
"Why not? Maybe we should," she argued. "It's a standard we're both familiar with and an excellent one at that."
"Excellent? That is very kind of you indeed," Charlie answered, in an eerily accurate imitation of his father's voice.
Hermione squawked a laugh. "That reminds me. I've decided I am going to call you 'dear' while you're here. And you should do the same with me. At least when we're alone." She finished in her best imitation of Molly's voice. "What do you reckon, dear?"
Charlie faked a shudder. "That's a bit unsettling. But if we must..."
"What about couples' hobbies?" Hermione went on, back in her own voice. "What do your parents do together for fun? Arthur doesn't knit and Molly seems nothing but annoyed by Muggle artifact collecting. Where do they connect?"
Charlie ducked his head. "I should think it's obvious."
Hermione tapped her finger on her jaw as she puzzled over it. "Obvious? Is it? It's not quidditch."
"True. It's..." Charlie scrubbed his face with his hands. "You're thinking too hard, dear. My parents managed to have seven kids over the course of nine years. For most of their marriage, with all of us to care for, they had very little free time or energy. But they still managed to keep having babies on the regular. The monster twins were only a year old when Ronnie was conceived, for stars' sake. Which tells us that when Mum and Dad did get a private moment together, they used the time for..."
Hermione's face blanched. "Oh my."
"Yes," Charlie said. "THAT is what they did in their alone time together when they were our age. If you want a marriage modeled on theirs, then -- "
Hermione threw herself back in her chair. "Now that wasn't my flirting gone wrong this time. That was you who went and made it awkward."
"Did I?"
"Yes."
He set his empty cup on the table and reached out to pat her hand. "It's only as awkward as we make it my, my dear. And may I say, you are rather darling when you're a little bit embarrassed. It makes me like you more and more. Keep the accidental innuendo up and we'll have that magical gadget fooled in no time."
Instead of pursuing Arthur and Molly's favourite couple's hobby, they spent their first night talking about their research and recommending articles to each other.
Charlie had come to Britain to develop a dusting powder that could be applied to items coming out of Gringotts bank to detect any signs of renewed dragon captivity inside the vaults. The board of directors had sworn all the dragons were liberated after the war and the vaults purged of all traces of them, but rumor had it that some of their wealthiest families insisted new ones be put in place as soon as the Ministry inspectors left.
"The dusting powder is a potions project at its heart, and I'm not keen on it," Charlie explained. "But neither is anyone else in dragonology, and someone's got to do this. May as well be me."
"It needn't be you alone," she said. "I can help. We can be partners on more than paper. How far have you got? Do you have a prototype yet?"
Charlie raised his hand and summoned a small glass vial. It came sailing out of his broom cupboard chamber, whistling by Hermione's head and into his palm.
She swallowed, remembering. He had been a seeker at Hogwarts, the team captain. She'd spent years and years listening to Ron banging on about how his big brother Charlie could have gone pro. What would that have been like? A familiar shiver ran through her. Blast that game and all its leather and clingy trousers.
"This is what I've got so far," Charlie said, swirling the vial full of fine dark grey powder. "When it's done, it should fluoresce when exposed with something that's been in close contact with dragon breath and never been purged. Which means I have to take care not to get any on myself."
It was Charlie who was remembering something now. Hermione had not only rescued but had ridden a dragon. He'd spent years listening to Ronnie banging on about how he and his friends had flown over half the country on one. Charlie stole a glance at Hermione's hands, the ones she'd used to anchor herself to a dragon escaping the bank at full speed and rage. They looked so unassuming, even delicate as they rested prettily on her knees.
He swallowed, too solemn for flirting. "The same will apply to you, of course," he said. "If you touch the powder, you'll be all aglow."
They agreed it was safest to put the powder away for now. Hermione sat beside Charlie on the rug in her lounge, the coffee table now covered in parchments. Charlie had been wearing his specs again, but he took them off now to yawn.
"Look at you. Even mighty dragonologists and quidditch captains get portkey lagged," she said, tousling his hair as his head slumped forward. "Go to bed, my dear. And maybe in the morning, the De-bliviator will be convinced you live here and I'm a Weasley for real."
Charlie nodded, reaching between them for her wand, tapping the De-bliviator against Hermione's hand. It still did nothing. He grumbled at it. And then he moved to give her another Great-Aunt-Muriel-kiss goodnight.
"No, it's my turn to be the great-aunt," Hermione said, her hand on his chest to stop him inches from her face. Her palm on his pectoral muscle, his face hovering so close without touching her, it felt somehow more intimate than if he'd planted one on her. Hermione's voice had a husky sound to it as she said, "Hold still, my dear."
He stayed close, but she was suddenly conscious that her lips were dry and she flicked her tongue to wet them. When they touched his face, her lips were soft and dewy, overlapping the smoothness of his cheek and the raspy upper edge of his short, neat beard. He seemed to startle at it, his hand rising to touch his face as she drew away.
"That was nice," he said, as if surprised. "Not much like Aunt Muriel at all."
Hermione punched lightly at his arm. "Nice? Honestly, Charlie, when was the last time anyone kissed you?"
He blew out his breath. "I can't even say. Must be ages, and it was probably just Mum, honestly."
"There, you see?" she said, leaning back, her hands on the rug behind herself, away from him. "That's why it was so nice. It could have been anyone kissing you and you would have liked it just as much."
His brows crowded together over the bridge of his nose. "Why do you say that? Why wouldn't I like a kiss more if it came from a beautiful, brilliant woman who I'm lucky to know and who's just cooked me dinner?"
His voice was oddly earnest, no tone of flirting. But she clucked her tongue and said, "Because that same woman has doomed you to sleep on a transfigured ironing board in an extended broom closet for the foreseeable future."
Charlie rolled his shoulders and laughed. But later, when Hermione stood alone in her room, listening to his footsteps in the hall outside her door, she repeated his words to herself.
"Beautiful, brilliant, lucky..."