WHO: Chuck Mulpepper & Charlie Weasley WHAT: Making some life-changing decisions. WHEN: The morning after Fred woke up WHERE: Chuck's flat
Charlie glanced at his journal long enough to pick up that Fred was awake, before closing it again and discarding it on Chuck’s bedside table. He didn’t know why he was so reluctant to comment or engage. He didn’t know what held him back from reaching out — was it that he’d been away so long that he didn’t know how to provide comfort? Was it that all his siblings had far surpassed his experiences of pain and loss, and he no longer had anything to impart?
He had no answers to any of these questions, so he slipped his arm around Chuck’s waist and pulled her closer. “Morning.”
“Morning,” Chuck mumbled, sleepily curling her body around Charlie’s, pressing her lips to his jaw in a half-hearted kiss. She’d watched through her eyelashes as he’d set aside his journal, but it took her brain a moment to catch up to the waking world.
But she finally stirred, rubbing at her eye with one hand and peering at him through her other eye, asking, “Any news?”
“He’s awake,” he replied tacitly, not wanting to discuss it further. Not even with her. “Did we have any plans for today or can we just lie in until you make me make breakfast?”
Her forehead furrowed briefly at his answer and she moved on to rubbing her other eye. “Until you help me make you breakfast, you mean? I trust you with my coffee pot.” She paused, slinging her arm over him. “No plans, but we could swing by Mungo’s if you want after breakfast.”
“Hey! I haven’t burnt food in at least a week,” Charlie protested with a grin. “But yeah. Should drop in. Anything you wanna do after that?”
Chuck shook her head, her face half-buried in her pillow again already. “Should check in on the shop at some point, but they’ve got it.” She rolled away a little, eyebrows lifted in question. “Is there anything you wanna do?”
"You mean other than go back to Romania?"
She lowered her eyebrows, but other than that, her expression didn’t change. “Yeah?”
"I mean, only if you're coming," he added quickly.
She nodded, but unlike the other times it had come up, she didn’t immediately shoot down the idea. “Yeah, but what’s bringing this on?”
"Dunno." And then knowing that wasn't a satisfactory answer, Charlie sighed and turned his gaze to the ceiling above. "Just don't really think I belong here, you know?"
“Charlie,” she said quietly, resituating her head on her pillow. “That can’t be true.”
“But it is. I don’t know why, I just don’t feel like I do?”
It was unthinkable to her, to not feel like she belonged with her family.
Even in Tennessee, which she visited so rarely as an adult and tended to stick out like a sore quiet, British thumb, she fit in easily. There was a part of her — the same one that had kept her tied to Knockturn and Diagon Alley — that wanted to convince him to stay so they could fix whatever was broken. But there was a much larger part of her that needed to give herself the same space Charlie was suggesting. Albeit for different reasons.
“Maybe we could figure it out in Romania,” she said finally.
“Are you — we don’t have to go there,” he offered, unwilling to push her into that direction just because his heart yearned for it.
“We can, though,” she offered back. “I think dad’ll be fine without me and I think it’s time I do more of what I want to do.”
Charlie turned his head to face her, then pulled her closer and kissed her happily. “Long overdue.”