Title: Learning To See
Author: smallbrownfrog
Characters/Pairings: Charlie Weasley centric (also Professor Silvanus Kettleburn, MarcusFlint/Terence Higgs, and Donaghan Tremlett -- future Weird Sister)
Rating: Mostly PG-13 with some NC-17
Kinks/Themes Chosen: mysophilia: arousal from soiled or dirty objects or places
Other Content: voyeurism, frottage, asexuality, homosexuality, heterosexual flirting, 16 year olds being sexual
Word Count: 4,026
Summary/Description: Even as a grown man Charlie never thought of it as spying. It was simply learning to see and to see clearly.
Author's Notes: This fic began with inspiration from the Weasley meme hosted by writcraft. It started out as a very different story, but Charlie Weasley has a mind of his own. I hope you enjoy spending time in it.




When people talk about Charlie Weasley they make it sound as though he was born to work with dragons and came out of the womb already a great naturalist. Like many well known truths, this one hasn’t got all that much truth in it.

He was a perfectly average little boy, and when he came to Hogwarts there wasn’t anything that made Charlie Weasley stand out in a crowd. Like most eleven year old boys, Charlie dreamed of dragons and quidditch. Like most eleven year old boys, he planned to ride wild dragons and win the World Cup. And like most boys his age, he had never gotten closer to a dragon than the photographs he posted on the dorm room wall.

Unlike most of his classmates, Charlie did turn out to have a real talent for flying. By second year he was playing quidditch for Gryffindor. But talent as a naturalist? No. There was not the slightest reason to think that the young Charlie Weasley was good at anything besides reading Dragon Age magazine under the covers at night.

Charlie, of course, was blissfully unaware of his utter averageness. All through first and second year he waited for third year classes, which would surely make him a master of dragons. For it was in third year that he would finally be allowed to study Care of Magical Creatures.

When his third year finally rolled around, Charlie could hardly sleep the night before classes began. Most of them would be the same boring lectures and labs as the year before, but Care of Magical Creatures was special. This was the only class that taught about dragons. Therefore it was the only class that mattered. In fact, other than quidditch, it was the only reason to come to Hogwarts as far as he was concerned.

The classroom smelled like mold. It smelled like dust. It smelled like preserved specimens. It smelled oddly like shoe polish and very old leather. Mangy pelts hung on the wall. A much faded, hand drawn map claimed to show the migratory patterns of the Tebo. Several creatures were stuffed and mounted in a far corner.

Charlie’s first reaction to the room was the desire to sneeze. His second reaction was pure joy that he was finally going to learn something real, going to master the creatures at the heart of magic. He grinned at the big stuffed yeti. At least he thought it was a yeti. It had been stuffed and stitched in a lumpy, haphazard sort of way that made it hard to be sure; but he didn’t know of any other magical creatures that were quite so shaggy,

However, that first class was not what he expected. Instead of introducing them to actual creatures and beasts, the professor gave them endless lists to memorize and endless inches to write. He found he didn’t care about the seven warning signs of the Greater Nundu. Not even the assignment to write seven inches on variations in scale thickness of the Romanian Longhorn could capture his attention.

Then when they finally started working with live creatures, their first magical creature was the flobberworm. Charlie was not remotely sure it qualified as magical. He stared out the window as Professor Kettleburn discussed the seven incorrect ways and one correct way to kill a flobberworm. Charlie wasn’t sure there was any significant difference between a dead flobberworm and a living one. He sighed and dreamed of dragons.

Charlie stared out the window through flobberworms, skrewts, shrakes, plimpies, murtlaps, jobberknolls, horklumps, chizpurfles, and bundimuns.

He began to think that the entire purpose of the class was to make them hate magical creatures and beasts. Or maybe it was to make them hate Professor Kettleburn.

He even began to think it might be succeeding.

Finally, on a particularly dreary day after a particularly spiritless lecture, Charlie ventured up to the professor’s desk.

“Sir?”

“Yes, boy?” asked a puzzled sounding Professor Kettleburn, with his eyes still on the parchment in front of him.

“When will we work with dragons, Sir?”

“You want dragons do you? And what makes you think you have the skills for dragons? Do you know anything about fire creatures? Do you even know what the salamander in your common room looks like?”

Charlie looked down. “It’s, umm, fire colored, Sir.”

“So you can’t describe it. Can you sketch it? Can you tell me the sound it makes late at night? It’s a creature you’ve lived with for over two years. Have you ever actually looked at it? If you want to learn about creatures you first need to learn to see what is around you.”

Charlie didn’t answer, and maybe that was just as well. The professor sighed as though Charlie had spoken an answer and it had been found wanting. “If you want to really learn about creatures, the first step is to start looking. Take notes on everything. Absolutely everything. Sketch everything. Then when you are done sketching, draw it again.” Professor Kettleburn opened a drawer and pulled out a bound volume. “This journal should get you started.”

Years later Charlie suspected that this was merely a way of getting a particularly annoying student out of his office, but at the time the journal was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He had gazed on the blank pages with all the awe that he usually gave to quidditch heroes. They were lush and creamy and anything could be written on them. They said that anything was possible.

That night he sat up late watching the common room fire. He was determined to show Professor Kettleburn that he was a capable observer. The log had burned itself nearly to charcoal. Yet it wasn’t quite exhausted. The dead and blackened rind had veins of molten fire running across it. Charlie stared at the vivid and fiery cracks. He imagined that this was the way dragons smelled: ashes and smoke. He felt conflicting urges: to look away to protect his stinging eyes and at the same time to stare at the fire forever.

Just as he despaired of seeing anything before morning, a shape made out of blinding blue-white light slid gracefully out of a fiery crack. It was painful to look at, like a lighting charm cast too close to his eyes. It shone with a terrible blue heat. The fire salamander gazed back at him with eyes of blue flame before flowing soundlessly over the log and resting atop it.

Then the salamander watched Charlie and Charlie watched the salamander. The salamander mesmerized him. Even contained in the hearth, it was still wild. He had no illusions that it was tamed. It would be as happy to burn down Hogwarts as to warm his feet. Fire was loyal to no one, wild and fierce.

After a few moments of mutual observation, the salamander closed its eyes and appeared to snooze on its log. Gradually its color shifted to a brilliant white, then yellowed and reddened until it glowed a darker red that was only dark compared to its former brilliance.

Charlie felt a deep happiness like a warm fire of his own. For a while he sat staring. Then slowly he reached his hand inch by inch towards his blank page and began to sketch.

Suddenly the world was full of things to draw, to describe, to note down in painstaking detail. The owls in the owlery, a classmate’s toad, a line of ants marching across the floor, the scraggly little kitten that followed Filch.

How had he never noticed any of these things?

He had soon filled that first notebook with sketches of salamanders, toads, owls, and cats. Many of his sketches had more inkblots than lines, but Charlie persevered. When he wasn’t in class or up on a broom he was squinting intently at the inky pages. He carefully tried to describe and illustrate a dominance display given by a tiny but furious doxy, and he took notes on the pecking order of garden gnomes.

Sometimes he showed a page to Kettleburn, who always said, “Wonderful stuff. Wonderful. Keep it up my boy.”

And keep it up he did.

Charlie was 15 when he had a revelation that changed his nature journal forever. It was the spring of his fifth year. Rain had washed the sky until it shown a pale new blue. The sunlight promised warmer days ahead and plants raced each other towards the light. Green was coming back everywhere, first shy and creeping, and then rioting in an explosion of life.

Each year as spring came, Charlie stormed out of the castle in a burst of pent up energy, and this year was no different. He hiked places he had no business hiking. He plunged into the icy water of the lake. He climbed walls that weren’t meant for climbing. He flew like a boy possessed.

So it was no surprise that Charlie was out on the quidditch pitch hurtling through the sky. He was racing nobody but himself, caught up in the sheer joy of flying. The world had narrowed down to just the rush of wind in his ears and the easy turn of his broom across the sky.

When Charlie saw the owl come tumbling down the sky, corkscrewing end over end, he didn’t know what he was seeing at first. Then, realizing that the owl was hurt, he sped to catch it, all the while looking wildly for the cruel wizard who had hexed the bird. But then the owl pulled up just short of impact and resumed its corkscrew dance. Charlie just stared. Then he burst out laughing. The bird might be insane, but it was clearly healthy.

Charlie finally landed his broom and lay back on the muddy turf looking up at the crazy bird. It flew like it was dodging imaginary bludgers. It flew like a mad acrobat doing somersaults down the sky. He had never seen anything like it.

It repeated the same broken twists and turns, until Charlie was forced to shake his head and believe that the bird was doing exactly what it meant to do. Crazy, cocky thing. Charlie grinned up at it. The mad thing clearly believed it was flying correctly. And who was Charlie to argue? Maybe the bird was right.

The next day he asked Professor Kettleburn about the lunatic bird.

"Ah, the grey ghost," said the professor. "It does look a bit like an owl, but it’s properly considered a hawk. You've been lucky enough to see his courting display. Wonderful thing. Purely non-magical beast of course, but wonderful all the same. Hmm. I don't usually make this a part of the curriculum. A bit too -- well a bit too real for the smaller boys, but I dare say you're old enough. Care to join me for a field trip?”

And so Charlie discovered the amazing world of courtship among the world’s creatures. He fell asleep dreaming of the fierce courtship battles of unicorns and the miniature dances of fairies searching for a mate. He wanted to explode from the sheer rich pageantry of it all.

There was so much to see and each day filled more pages in his journal. By now he had twice had to expand it with wizard space, and there was a small library between the covers of his journal.

Yet, as much as Charlie had sketched and taken notes all over the castle, as much as he had observed the rhythms of life unfolding all around him, as much as he believed he had a front row seat on the pageant of life: he hadn’t noticed something crucial. It wasn’t until sixth year that Charlie finally realized that wizards were no different from the creatures they studied.

It was the strange behavior of a few of his classmates that made him first realize this. Some of his classmates had always been showoffs, but now some of them were positively sickening. Quidditch players flew crazy acrobatic stunts without a snitch to motivate them. Musicians struck strange poses and played riffs in the hallway. Somehow even dueling club seemed fiercer and more intense.

It was as though everything had become a performance. He noticed girls (and a few boys) staring at him when he flew, but he had no idea what they wanted.

It was against this background of confusion that he made his discovery. He was heading to his dorm late one evening when he noticed the music club seemed to be meeting late. However, when he glanced in the door there was only a single musician with an audience of one.

He had a wispy beard and brown stringy hair that seemed to show an aversion to scissors more than any attachment to old pure-blood traditions. A girl was gazing at him like he’d hung the moon, though Charlie couldn’t see anything about the boy that merited that sort of look.

It certainly couldn’t be the music. He had some sort of stringed instrument slung low on his hip and he was moving with much more energy than it could possibly have taken to finger the strings. It was more a full frontal assault on -- on something. It didn’t make sense. Why would anyone waste all that energy?

Charlie knew that sport often required economy of motion, careful restrained hovering before the explosion of motion. People who flailed all over the quidditch pitch for no reason were not invited back. Surely music also required directed motion and not a big explosive display.

“Display.” The word caught his attention. He was witnessing a display. He looked at the face of the girl camped in front of the guitar stand and suddenly he understood. He was witnessing a courtship display! Inside the castle!

Everything that had seemed bizarre and stupid settled into place. Humans were simply one more magical creature to be studied. Charlie wanted to take notes. He wanted to sketch. He wanted to collect every detail in the pages of his journal.

Why didn’t anyone talk about these things? Why hadn’t Professor Kettleburn ever mentioned these human displays? But then he had been telling Charlie to look, really look. So maybe he had been pointing all along.

Charlie sketched long into the night trying to capture the musician's extravagant body jerks, the way he pushed his instrument low over his groin. Then there were the female’s head bobs. Were they a response? Were they part of a mutual courtship display? What would they do next? Would the female do a courtship display of her own? Would they mate? Would there be nesting behaviour?

Charlie watched everyone around him with new eyes. He didn’t want to miss a moment. However, it was unexpectedly difficult. Apparently you weren’t supposed to go to the Astronomy Tower and watch.

No one had ever seemed to mind his sketches of the salamander in the common room fire or his careful step by step explanation of the doxy mating dance. Yet the very same humans who gathered to see a hippogriff foal didn’t like it if someone saw them mating. Instead, everyone talked about the need to “find a bit of privacy.” People hid behind bushes, ducked into classrooms with the doors jammed shut, and tucked themselves away behind bed curtains.

It was driving him mad.

Finally he asked Professor Kettleburn: what did one do to study skittish animals? They had been studying unicorns in class that day so Professor Kettleburn simply chuckled and said, “Ah yes, it becomes a bit harder to study unicorns at your age, doesn’t it?”

Charlie couldn’t imagine why Kettleburn thought Charlie should start to have trouble with unicorns. The unicorns were as gentle with Charlie as they had ever been. Still, he had learned a long time ago not to contradict a professor. So he remained quiet while Professor Kettleburn said, “Here, I’ll show you the hunting blind charm. It was originally made to help hunters hide in plain sight, but it’s a good trick for our field. You have to promise not to use it for things beyond observing nature though. The spell recognizes intention and it won’t hold for other sneakier purposes.”

Kettleburn’s wand work was as jagged as his handwriting, so it took Charlie a little while to separate out Kettleburn’s wand style from the heart of the spell motions. Once he had finally grasped it though, it was a surprisingly easy spell.

Charlie was thrilled. Now he would be able to hide in plain sight. While he had no plans to use it on unicorns, he wasn’t lying when he promised to use the charm for nature observation. Now he would finally be able to watch a human courtship to its conclusion.

Charlie practiced the hunting blind spell every weekend. He drew what came to him and didn’t worry about who or what it was. What mattered was seeing clearly. To Charlie sketching was just a way to focus his vision, not something he valued for itself. Yet his sketches were gradually starting to have a beauty of their own, and he was proud of his growing skill.

He didn’t understand how anyone could find the world ugly or want to hide any part of it. Everything was so beautiful: the curve of a thestral’s neck, the sharp angle of Bill’s wrist when he worked his cock, the outline of a tree against the sky, the curve of a girl’s breast. They were all part of the big current of endless energy that moved through all life on the planet.

However, it wasn’t until his final year at Hogwarts that Charlie felt he had finally learned to see the world as clearly as he desired. It was a subtle turning point, and not one anyone else ever seemed to notice. Yet it mattered intensely to Charlie, and he never forgot the joyous feeling of the world coming into focus that night.

The quidditch pitch was still a sea of mud, but on a whim Charlie had positioned the blind charm on its edge. He expected to discover which small animal was leaving footprints there each night. Instead he heard the approach of human footsteps and saw two boys sneaking onto the pitch.

He immediately recognized the big burly body of Marcus Flint, but he couldn't place the other boy until he stepped into the moonlight. He supposed that he shouldn't be surprised that it was another Slytherin. Yet somehow he was still surprised to see the wiry little seeker who he'd been flying against these several years. Higgs had never seemed the sort to sneak out at night.

For a long time the two of them stood there in silence. Higgs kept shifting his weight and making fidgety little motions. Flint was simply there, unmoving as a statue. Charlie couldn't imagine what they were doing here. Neither one was carrying a broom, and it was a strange time for them to be on the pitch.

Then Flint crouched down in the wet, sucking mud and gently lifted the hem of Higgs' black robe. There was a slow ponderous grace to Flint’s motions. Charlie could hear Higgs breathing, a harsh gasping sound that seemed to come out against his will. His mouth was open. He had the strangest expression on his face. Charlie would have sworn it was pain, except that Flint was barely touching the other boy. Flint slowly raised the hem centimeter by centimeter up the dark, slim legs. From the way Higgs twitched, Charlie wondered if he was ticklish. Higgs raised his arms as the robe came off and flew into the mud.

Flint squatted down once more. Charlie didn't know what he expected, but it was definitely not what happened next. Marcus Flint scooped up a handful of dark mud and rubbed it up one of Higgs' legs and onto his belly like a stroke of dark paint.

"Please," said Higgs. "Please."

Flint didn't answer, just crouched down for another handful of soft mud and began to work it over Higgs' other leg. Slowly he added layer over layer of soft wet earth. It was like watching a potter at work. When he had finished coating Higgs' legs on all sides, he began to knead mud onto his back and the rounded curve of his arse. It was a slow, quiet process and the only sounds were the wet sounds of mud and Higgs' shallow gasps as the cold mud touched his skin. Finally, Flint moved back to the front.

Higgs was practically vibrating in place by now. Little whimpers were coming out of his throat and he was clearly putting great effort into staying mostly in place. The only part of Higgs’ anatomy which he could not keep in place was his cock, which was slowly rising. Flint simply worked around his groin, seeming not to notice the growing erection.

When Higgs was wearing a veritable clay suit, Flint paused and looked him over. Apparently satisfied, he stepped out of his own mud streaked robe.

As he saw the broad shoulders and solid body, Charlie remembered the persistent rumors that Marcus Flint had trolls in his family tree. Indeed, anyone who saw him like this would surely see the troll in him. The broad flat planes of Flint’s solid body had a grey shimmer that contrasted with both the rich blue-black of Higgs’ skin and with the brown of the mud caked over him. In fact, Flint’s skin was almost a beautiful pale silver in the moonlight. It was as though he was carved of grey stone.

Flint uttered a long slow growl and ran the back of his hand over Higgs' cock. Then before Charlie could register what was happening, Flint landed on Higgs and sent him sprawling on his back. Flint’s hands were around Higgs' neck and at first Charlie thought he was trying to kill the smaller boy. Charlie stared in horror, torn between noting every detail and leaping into the fray to protect him. As he hesitated he realized that if Flint had meant to kill Higgs it would already be over. Instead, the two bodies were sliding over each other, cock against cock. At first they moved separately and at cross purposes, but gradually they hit a mutual rhythm.

Finally spent, they lay side by side staring up at the moon. Charlie couldn’t help smiling as he sketched the pair. He finished the drawing just as they got up and cleaned their robes. Then they walked off as though nothing had ever happened.

That first notebook was lost somewhere many years ago, probably thrown out for the juvenile scribbling it was. And even if somebody had found it, it wouldn’t have taught them to see what Charlie saw. You don’t learn to see by watching someone else look.

Still, that book, the essence of that book, was still alive in Charlie to the end of his life. He still dreamed of the slow stately mating of a young part troll and a human boy. And sometimes in the flight of dragons he saw the courting display of a grey bird of prey.

But most important of all, he never stopped looking. He looked at everything, and he truly saw what he looked at. He looked at trees, people, and all creatures with the same wide eyes. His fellow dragon wranglers would have been shocked by the extent that they featured in his sketchbooks and notes, though they would have approved of the dragons and wild beasts that swirled across other pages.

In later years academics went on to write tone deaf biographies about him that treated him as a piece of dry scientific history. Some of them commented on the sad fact that Charlie had never seemed interested in relationships, had never been in love -- which just goes to show that you can know every fact about someone and still fail to see them.

None of them saw that Charlie had been in love all of his life, and would never be lonely as long as he could see.