Charlie Weasley has no clue what you're on about (dragoncatcher) wrote in regulation, @ 2008-04-20 18:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | backstory, charlie weasley, harry potter |
Who: Harry Potter and Charlie Weasley
When: Spring 2007
Where: Woods near the Burrow
What: Fraternal bonding and older-brother mentoring
Charlie gave Molly a wave goodbye as he closed the back door of the Burrow behind him, shutting off a litany of advice on where the boys should go and how they should be sure to eat all of the lunch in the picnic basket Molly had handed him on his way out of the kitchen. In Diagon Alley, Charlie and Harry might be grown men with responsible Ministry positions, and war heroes to boot, but in the Burrow they were still Weasley boys, subject to Molly's mothering. From the good-natured look he gave Harry, Charlie didn't seem to mind much.
He offered Harry the picnic basket and, when Harry had taken it, dug into his pocket. They headed out the back gate, looking for all the world in their jeans and jackets like a pair of young Muggle men planning for a day hike, until Charlie pulled out a practice Snitch and set it to whirling round the two of them. Mircea barked and chased the Snitch, which was out of reach even when he jumped for it, as it led them onward toward the rolling hills near Ottery-St.Catchpole.
As they were walking, Harry found himself breathing deeply and steadily, not for lack of breath, but in attempt to fill himself with the rich, clean country air. There wasn't air like this in London, nor had he found anything quite like it in the United States. The fresh, green, and slightly flowery scent mixed with a drying mud smell didn't overpower their lunch, however, and Harry's stomach gave a loud grumble. Furrowing in the basket, he ganked a still-warm buttermilk biscuit from the basket, already well spread with butter and homemade jam. "Just following him today, or do you have a place in mind? I know your mum likes the village overlook... but I'm in the mood for someplace wilder."
Today he felt weary, in need of an adventure that wasn't likely to get his forearms covered in manticore stings and gashes. There had been several cases of magical creatures behaving strangely in Scotland, and he had not needed to discuss with he superiors how he already knew the location- how he had fought and stalemated with the Carrows there years ago, just before their reinforcements had rushed in and he had fled with his life, quite wrong in his belief that he would find a Horcrux there...
The snitch came whizzing back suddenly, and Harry leapt lightly, catching it in his fingers. He laughed. It was loud, but carefree. He threw it out again, demonstrating with his arm why he was a Seeker and not a Chaser.
Charlie grinned as Harry grabbed the Snitch out of the air and turned it loose again. "Wherever you want to go. As long as Trimble's owls can't find me. And if the scones get cold, well, that's what warming charms are for."
He reached into the basket himself and took a jam-filled scone. He started to say something, remembered his manners, and swallowed "Mum's outdone herself." From the heft of the basket, they could snack all the way to their destination, wherever it might be, and still have plenty left for lunch when they got there.
The Snitch flew by again and this time it was Charlie who caught it, his empty hand reflexively snatching it out of the air. He managed to do it without losing the half-scone in his other hand, to the disappointment of Mircea, who'd dropped back by him. "Oh, hush, you," he told the dog. "You wouldn't like it anyway. There's a hambone in there for you, wrapped up, Mum said." By habit, Charlie always fed Mircea animal products: meat, particularly organ meat, and real bones for chewing. He'd mentioned that he thought it was better for animals to eat their native diet.
Charlie released the Snitch again and Mircea dashed ahead with it. Maybe he hadn't been interested in Charlie's scone after all.
"How old is Mircea?" Harry asked idly, "Never runs out of energy, does he?" His free hand fell. Charlie's reflexes were excellent, of course. He'd played his fair few games of Quidditch with the Weasleys, and Charlie made him work harder for the Snitch than any Seeker he'd played at Hogwarts. The walk felt good, he thought suddenly. It felt as though he was finally living normally. He'd recently been promoted in the Obliviators, given his own department because the head of Muggle Affairs thought that the hot spots left over from the war required more direct monitoring, particularly when Muggle civilization encroached. Though some of the cases that came in were truly horrific, rarely did he feel himself in the sort of acute danger that he'd been nose-to-nose with daily at Hogwarts and after.
"I do love it here after all," he said suddenly, unaware that his thoughts were spoken aloud. "The States has its thrills... but it's no place to settle down."
"I'm glad you came back too," Charlie replied, oblivious to the fact that Harry hadn't been talking to him. "Sometimes I feel the same way about Romania. I miss it, and I miss working with the dragons. But Mum needs me." He didn't add that Bill needed him too--Harry knew and there was no reason to add to any guilt Harry might feel. Not that any of it was Harry's fault, but Charlie worried sometimes about Harry taking on too much.
"Mircea's four now, I think. Still frolics like a pup, doesn't he?" Charlie pulled a second Snitch out of his pocket and released it. It zoomed low, and stayed close to the ground. Mircea immediately set to chasing it instead of the one Charlie and Harry were playing with.
There was no reply from Harry about Romania or the dragons, but he didn't think it necessary. "Yeah, he does," Harry commented absently. "That's an unusual dog y'have there." It was difficult for him to feel truly connected to the conversation, even out in the open and away from the Ministry. There was a review at work hanging over his head, of his department specifically. About his behavior specifically. He had never meant to put the SOR unit in jeapordy- Supernatural Obliviation Recon.
He raised his free hand before his eyes; it was as thin as ever- no, it was his legs and arms that were swathed in material now that revealed the most. His face was unchanged, but every so often he checked the web of cartilage between his nostrils to be sure that they hadn't rotted away. "Why do you think that?" Harry said suddenly, without explanation, but he was referring to the comment about Molly.
"Someone has to keep my little brothers in line. Ginny, too. And," Charlie shrugged. "And then there's Bill," he added reluctantly. He walked along in silence for a moment, kicking a small rock out of his way on the path. "It's not so much that she needs me, I guess, as that it's a lot to ask her to do alone. She's not as young as she used to be."
The Snitch zoomed by and Charlie snatched at it. It was close, and he definitely knocked it out of its path, but he didn't quite manage to close his fingers around it. Charlie frowned and toed another small rock out of his way.
"And I do like working for Trimble. It's just not the same as Romania. Maybe one of these years I'll ask him to farm me out part-time to the Welsh preserve, or to the MacFustys. Can't do everything, though, and what I do is fine for now."
Charlie grinned at Harry. "What about your job? I hear you're moving up in the ranks."
Harry wondered why Charlie thought that any of it was his responsibility when he didn't think the other Weasley children had any such notions. He didn't know how long it had been since he'd spoken to either Ron or Ginny. He wiped his nose. "Yeah, they gave me a unit," Harry offered helpfully. "The regulators need some special attention from us, so I head that up... I'm out a lot. Don't see home too often, except on weekends." He told himself that he liked it. He told himself that it wasn't because he had nearly beaten a Muggle man to death on an assignment because Harry thought he was seeing him cast the Killing Curse when he was turning on a flashlight out in Kent.
"So, I have three people working under me, but it's not really... y'know, a matter of superiority. I'm just the one who reports to Liat."
What Trimble had actually said to Charlie was something about being Harry pushed sideways. And then he'd given Charlie that vaguely sympathetic look he'd always given when Charlie had politely but firmly refused another promotion into management. It had taken Trimble about five years to get the point that Charlie didn't want to be responsible, except in the field. Not any more.
It would be nice if Harry trusted Charlie enough to open up about whatever was bothering him, but Charlie understood that if you pushed at some scars too hard, you opened old wounds that were better staying closed.
"I reckon you have a have a right load of paperwork to do for that. Better you than me; my penmanship's shit." Charlie thrust a comradely elbow in Harry's direction, careful not to do anything to the precious picnic lunch Harry was carrying. "Invest in a Quick-Quotes Quill now. Your fingers will thank you later."
Ahead of them, Mircea leapt into the air, surprisingly high and fast, and brought down the Snitch.
"Honestly, I'm out of office often. Our missions are indeed dictated by Quick-Quotes Quills, though that's not me doing it- I usually send in a Patronus and someone jumps on it and sends it to my boss." They reached the top of a hill and Harry set the basket down as he looked at Charlie. He didn't know Charlie that well, admittedly, but just the sight of a red tuft of hair was comforting enough.
There was a boy- well, a grown man- sleeping on his couch. There was a drawer full of white powder beneath the lamp on his nightstand. Harry had the best stocked liquor cabinet of anyone he knew, which was admittedly far fewer people than he'd associated with in school. He'd arrived at The Burrow today by vehicle, perhaps one of the first cars to pull into the Weasley's driveway that had no gizmos attached to it because everytime Harry brought his wand home, he'd be up the whole night climbing the walls from nightmares, and he was afraid, in his daytime life, that one night he might release his clutching grasp on his sanity and try the Killing Curse on himself before daybreak.
"I think I've hit a rough patch, I'm afraid." Quietly, very quietly did he speak, but his tone suggested that it was a passing trouble. He could not quite bring himself to tell the truth, even in the sounds that chewed his words.
Mircea ran back to Charlie and offered him the Snitch, which Charlie took and tucked away in his pocket. He murmured something in Romanian to the dog, who settled obediently as Charlie knelt by the basket to help unpack it.
Charlie's voice was calm, even if he'd heard underlying trouble in Harry's tone. "That's too bad, Harry. Anything I can give a hand with? If it's work, Ministry office games can be rough, but I know a few people." Not as many as Harry Potter, war hero, but Charlie could approach them in a different way.
Spreading out the blanket before them, Harry glanced at the dog and said, "I'm thinking about getting a greyhound, and Mircea only encourages the notion." Harry shook his head, and paused, about to speak. In the end, he said, "I'm just tired out. It's my own fault. I'm the one running myself to the edge of things, and sometimes it's just too difficult to forget and refuse to think about... all that's happened. Sometimes I want to... go away again, but that didn't work out the first time- and I would miss you lot and... London. And my team. But sometimes it is a lot. It's... the things you remember sometimes are ghastly."
"I know," Charlie said. And he did. He unwrapped Mircea's bone and tossed it to the dog, who had been waiting with perfect discipline if visible impatience.
"I don't like to think about it either. How many people I killed, how many I sent out to die and didn't come back, or came back in pieces. And I know I had it easier than you."
He handed Harry a plate and sighed. "Bill's Healer said something about there being a Muggle therapy, where they talk about this kind of thing and do exercises of different sorts, and it helps you get it out of your system. Sounds a bit dodgy to me, but maybe it would help. I could talk to him more about it; I know he figures I'm in, I don't know, denial about it all."
Laughing suddenly, he accepted the plate and placed a sandwich on it promptly. "It wasn't any worse for me than it was for anyone else. I just- fuck, Charlie, I just do stupid things sometimes. And I know about Muggle psychologists and psychiatrists." With a sort-of grin, Harry said, "Have you considered going? I'm not making fun at all, I just... the Weasley family in the Muggle world. I don't know."
This was not the time to mention where Ginny was and what she was doing.
Charlie shook his head to the question. "I don't need that. I mean, I know it changed me, a lot, and not all to the good. I have bad dreams sometimes, I remember things. It's just, and no offence to Muggles, I can't explain it to any of them. I can't explain it to anybody who wasn't there, so how could I explain it to someone who doesn't even know anything about magic?" He waved a hand dismissively, then picked up his own sandwich.
"What kind of risky things? I mean, everybody at the office thinks I'm crazy sometimes, but I don't do much that's really risky. I'm just not afraid of letting myself get hurt when I know they'll patch me up."
"No, I agree that they couldn't. But..." Harry said thoughtfully, "Muggles know how to do horrific things to one another, in their way. They know how to do horrific things to themselves." Sinking his teeth around his sandwich, Harry sank in a similar fashion into the blanket. "I think... that I'm being melodramatic. Overwork, exhaustion, staying out in the field until I can't think about anything but sleeping..." Harry's look was careful. "Perhaps a vacation is in order."
He set the sandwich down. "What do you dream about?"
"Heads and boxes," Charlie said shortly, and took a bite of his own sandwich to forestall an immediate further answer.
It was a stupid question, one that Harry ought've known the answer to. Charlie moving back to live in the Burrow made sense, with a sickening flash of a lightbulb lit too late in his head. Thoroughly ashamed of himself, of how self-absorbed he'd become, he contemplated his sandwich, but his mouth was dry. He hadn't spoken to Ron or Ginny after the war was over because he hadn't wanted to deal with their grief, or rather, he hadn't wanted to help them to deal with it. Setting down the sandwich, he looked out at the clouds in the distance. Pure white. "It was a stupid question," Harry said finally. "I'm sorry, Charlie."
The shadow passed from Charlie's face. "Don't worry about it. There's nothing to be done for him now." He regarded Harry with an open expression. "I have to take care of the living."
That was probably an invitation, but Harry hesitated to take it. He laid a hand on Mircea's great head, stroking the hair between the ears. A greyhound, he thought. "I came into the office last week so wasted I couldn't stand up straight. I'm on probation- another foot out of line, and I'm out." He pulled up a clump of grass by the blanket, then sank down onto his stomach, enjoying the fresh heat of sunlight in his dark hair, which absorbed it naturally. "When the war ended, everyone wanted to give me a job, but I wanted to be like... normal. And now I am, and I'm going a piss poor job of it. The money my parent's left me is... gone to gambling, gone to drink... to blow."
It was unfair to have said these things to Charlie and then to consider wiping them from his memory. It was unfair, and unethical, but Harry hadn't brought his wand anyway. He left it in his flat everytime he wasn't at work, and if his enemies got wind of it, he'd be dead. "I... how do you do it, Charlie? I've wanted to be one of your siblings my whole life. How do you cope with it?"
"Well, like I said, Bill's Healer thinks I'm not." Charlie gave Harry kind of a lopsided smirk that showed his close kinship to Fred and George. "I don't know how to say. I keep busy, and I don't dwell on it. If I sit and think of it too much, I get--" Charlie trailed off, obviously searching for a word. "Well, I guess I get sort of like you." He swallowed. "Or maybe Bill."
Charlie took another bite of his sandwich and used the moment for pondering.
"Instead I get out in the sunlight and go running with Mircea, or get on my broom and fly, or something. I think about other people instead of myself. But you've always had to do that, haven't you, Harry? I mean, you say you want to be normal. But nobody's ever shown you what normal is, not really." Charlie frowned thoughtfully.
He didn't know what to say to that. Had he lived by thinking about other people? If so, after Voldemort died, he began thinking about himself so completely and so utterly that he began to vacuum himself in like a black hole. "I... maybe I could do a Quidditch league. Like a amateurs Quidditch league, beneath pro level... I..." But that meant magic, and brooms. He had lived for so long like a Muggle in the United States, magic had become an occupation to him only.
"Mmmff..." He said around an overlarge bite of sandwich- the rest of it, in fact- and chewed for a long time before he was able to swallow. "Do you ever take volunteers out working with dragons? Is there anything I could do to just... get out of London? Could I help you?"
Charlie brightened visibly at the idea of Harry working with dragons. He finished demolishing his own sandwich while he considered the question. "Maybe. I mean, obviously it's not something that people usually do, working with dragons on a volunteer basis. It takes a lot of training to work with dragons. But I've got some friends. Maybe we could take a week off or summat, go up to the MacFusty place, and teach you some things. And if--well, there wouldn't be much whisky or whatever up there, if you see what I mean. It'd be hard work. You'd sleep like a log." He grinned at Harry, not a knowing grin so much as one of kinship: they were in it together.
Slightly startled by the degree of Charlie's enthusiasm, Harry felt a twinge of apprehension mixed with his own excitement. After all, why not? Matt was off traversing Europe, and Harry might as well try and experiment for a while- he'd managed to keep it reasonably well from his friend until a year or so ago, but it hadn't begun really affecting him until this year. If there was one thing Harry was good at, it was endurance. "I like dragons, and I work hard... I think they'd be glad to give me the time off, frankly... as long as I promise to use it to get myself in shape... Would I have to bring a broomstick?"
"It'd be good if one of us had one. Better if both of us did, just in case, but if yours is out of commission, mine will do." Charlie was already in a sort of pragmatic planning mode for this. If Harry's finances were bad, well, Charlie understood that, and understood brooms being in bad repair as well. "Might be able to lay hands on a spare." One of his brothers had to have one, or maybe he could owl Ginny and ask her where hers had gone. Weasleys knew how to make do.
"The Firebolt's good as new," Harry replied, sounding more defensive than he'd meant to. This, too, was a triumph- he had not thought about Quidditch or brooms in years, though he'd sunk back into the habit of trimming and caring for the broom despite his lack of interest. "It has slightly more of a drag than it used to on the tail end, but it's still the best broom I've ever had." Technically, it was only the second broom he'd ever owned, but he did not invite disputation of this point. "Just tell me when and where to bring it." Lunch was tasting better by the moment. "Your mum's outdone herself."
Charlie nodded. "She's a fantastic cook, isn't she? And people wonder why I don't live in London when Mircea and I can be out here in the sunshine every weekend and eat like this." He shook his head at the silliness of whoever it might be that had suggested he might want to do that. "I'll owl MacFusty this evening when we get in, and let you know as soon as I can. All right?"
Instead of reaching into the basket for the apples he knew his mother had put inside for himself and Harry, Charlie pulled his wand out of his jacket and summoned them. Remembering his manners, he offered Harry his choice of the two.
"That sounds smashing," Harry said as he took an apple and a scone from the basket and began juggling them promptly. He had to be careful with the scone so that he didn't end up with a fistful of jam. "Is MacFusty a friend of yours?"
Charlie had bitten into the crisp red apple about the second after Harry had taken the other one out of his hand. He swallowed the bite and said, "All of us who know about dragons sort of know each other. But I knew the old man's son pretty well back in the day, and I think he'd be happy to do me a small favour. It's kind of a family preserve up there, and I think he'd be happy for competent help for a bit, honestly. He's not young."
The apple missed his hand and clapped him on the top of the head. He was forced to take a large bite out of it in revenge. He continued juggling the scone with one hand. "I didn't realize that there were private dragon preserves. That seems like a might dangerous business to get into. What made you do it? Go to Romania? That's a long way from home, even for a wizard who can apparate. The dragons?"
"The dragons. It was all I ever wanted to do," Charlie replied simply. "Even more than Quidditch. The preserves in Wales and Scotland aren't very big. In Romania it's wild and there are a lot of dragons out where nobody goes. It was a long way from home, but it was a big adventure, too, and it wasn't one Bill had done first. I guess we all had wandering feet, what with Bill going to Egypt and Percy going into international whatsits at the Ministry." He took another bite of his own apple and contemplated that. Then he added, around his mouthful of fruit, "But I'm happy enough to be at home now."