Fic: Wailing Like the Dragons (Bill/Fleur/Charlie, NC-17) for marseverlasting Author:abusing_sarcasm Recipient:magnus_leo Title: Wailing Like the Dragons Rating: NC-17 Pairing(s): Bill/Fleur/Charlie in every possible combination. Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended. All characters engaging in sexual activity are 16 years or older. Summary: The lips of an adulteress drip honey, and Charlie is hopelessly mired. Warnings: Very dark, incest, a bit of not-too-descriptive het, oral/anal/rimming/what-have-you, self-harm, offences to religion… Word Count: ~3,500 Author's Notes: To marseverlasting, someday I will sit at your feet like Scheherazade to tell you the story you were supposed to have (and why you don't have it) and we will throw our heads back and laugh. Huge thanks to E and M, with whom all things are possible.
"Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls." - Micah 1:8
September 1999
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned." Charlie's voice cracked halfway through the sentence and he gave a small, hiccupping laugh.
"Charles, this isn't a confession. You need to speak to me so that I can help you." The man scratched something on the clipboard he was holding. "I see here that you arrived here back in June. You'd injured yourself. Is that right?"
Charlie merely nodded.
"Can you talk about why you hurt yourself?"
"I know it was wrong," Charlie said, quietly. "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you."
The man looked at his notes again. "I also see that you've chosen to spend your time in religious devotion since you arrived. You're rarely seen without your Bible. Have you always been a religious man?"
Charlie laughed loudly and raucously. "Of course I wasn't, was I? Not exactly raised in a Christian household, was I? Now it's just one more thing I have to pay for. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."
"No one is here to condemn you, Charles. Perhaps you could just begin by telling me about the things you said when you were found. About… witchcraft, was it?"
Charlie laughed again. "Tried to tell them I didn't want to go to some Muggle hospital! Wanted to go to the wizards' hospital. I didn't want them to sew my skin together. But they did, and look now! Scars!" He held up his hands and the pinkish tracks stood out along his forearms, bright against his ruddy skin. "Little cuts like those, a mediwizard could have healed without a trace."
The man looked at him for a long minute, examining the multitude of various scars that covered his arms, many much more prominent than the newest ones, before writing something else on his clipboard.
"So, you did cut yourself. What were you trying to accomplish?"
Hanging his head, his mood changing fast as quicksilver, Charlie said, "I wanted to end it."
"Your life?"
"The guilt. So much guilt. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. Thou shalt not lie with a male as one lies with a female."
"I thought you weren't religious before?"
"Wasn't. But the guilt. The guilt was there. This?" He held up the Bible in his hand, dog-eared and worn. "This showed me why I felt it."
"Do you feel like you can tell me about this guilt? About these sins, as you call them?"
"Don't know what to say."
"Begin at the beginning," the man suggested.
"I suppose I can. Only through my confession will the blood of Christ absolve me."
"I'm not here to judge you."
"Only God can judge me," Charlie said with a nod. "Well, it began almost a year ago…"
In nomine Patris
December 1998
With the Burrow packed to the rafters with the entire extended Weasley clan, primed to celebrate their first Christmas since Voldemort's defeat, Charlie had taken Bill up on his offer to stay at Shell Cottage. Charlie couldn't help but feel as though he was intruding on newlyweds. The first part of their marriage had been full of war and death and destruction, so they were just now able to really enjoy each other. However, Bill was Charlie's closest brother, both in age and in friendship, and he wouldn't hear of Charlie sleeping on a sofa for Christmas.
Due to obvious reasons, Charlie hadn't spent much time around Bill and Fleur as a couple. He often felt like an intruder or worse; a voyeur. They were in perpetual contact, and not always of the hand-holding variety. He quickly lost track of the number of times he'd walked in on them kissing, or touching, or more.
Once, he stood quietly in the shadows as he watched Bill push Fleur up against a wall in the shadowy dining room. For a moment, he'd been afraid that they were having a row, and that Bill was getting violent, but then Bill had dipped his head down to suck on her neck and she'd moaned. As he watched them, Bill lifted her skirt and Charlie could tell that he was pressing his fingers inside her. She was making little cries and urging him on, all the while unbuttoning his trousers.
As Charlie had watched, guilt oozing from every pore, and pre-come oozing into his pants, Bill had taken Fleur by the thighs, lifted her bodily and brought her down onto his cock, slamming her up against the wall with such force that the dishes in the sideboard rattled.
Charlie looked away, then, and scuttled back to his room, burning with arousal and shame. He sat on the edge of the bed in the guestroom that Fleur had prepared for his arrival, and tossed off thinking about his brother's wife getting fucked up against a wall.
~*~
Fleur knew, of course. She never said anything, but she knew. Charlie didn't know if it was a Veela thing or just a female thing, but she knew. She gave him coy glances when they met in the upstairs hallway, he on his way to his room and she on the way to hers. She brushed up against him in the kitchen, whispering an apology as if that could erase the feel of her breasts on his back. She made sly comments, usually when they were alone, but a few times in front of Bill.
Bill was smart. He had to realize, or at the very least suspect. He had to know that his own brother, his favorite brother, the best man at his wedding, was thinking about his wife in a way he shouldn't.
There was nothing Charlie could do to stop, though. Ever since that night in the dining room, all Charlie could see when he closed his eyes were Bill's arms holding Fleur against the wall. All he could hear when it was quiet were the breathy little moans and the sound of china clinking together. All he could smell when he woke from dreams was the way they smelled after, of sweat and sex and Fleur's perfume clinging to Bill's skin.
One night, two days before Christmas, Charlie awoke in the middle of the night, with demons chasing him up from his dreams. He met Fleur as he was coming out of his bedroom to get a drink of water. She had come from the bathroom, and she wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing. Charlie tried valiantly not to look; however, she stood before him, completely unabashed in her nudity. He couldn't remember if she said anything, or if he said anything, but somehow they stumbled back into his room, and she pushed him back on the bed. Then she proceeded to take care of the erection that had been evident in his loose trousers.
When she stood, swiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she smiled at him, and he thought in that moment that she looked slightly menacing in her beauty. She told him that she knew he had watched them. Charlie blushed and stammered, but she merely chuckled and told him that she'd enjoyed it.
As she left the room, she told him that she would leave the door to their bedroom ajar the following night. Charlie didn't realize her meaning until after she'd left, hips swaying. She had offered him a gift.
~*~
Charlie was so distracted, he hardly participated in any of the Christmas Eve festivities. He mind was already at that doorway, watching what was happening inside. When Bill and Fleur finally retired to their room, Charlie took a few minutes to compose himself. Then he slipped down the hall, stepping as lightly as he could, afraid the floors would creak and betray him.
There, in the hallway, one eye pressed to the crack in the door and one hand down his pants, Charlie gave in completely. He watched as his brother and his sister-in-law undressed each other with teasing hands. He was captivated by their naked bodies and their wandering hands. How many times had be seen Bill naked, yet he'd never seen him aroused, with his cock jutting out from his body, hard and ready. He'd seen Fleur's body last night, but he hadn't seen the faces she made when Bill pressed his hand between her legs.
As he watched, hands clenched on the doorframe and on his prick, Fleur laid on the bed and spread her legs for Bill. Offering herself to him. But she knew that Charlie was there. She was offering herself to him as well.
Bill climbed on top of her, and all Charlie could see was the rhythmic clenching and releasing of Bill's buttocks as he thrust into her, and the ecstasy on Fleur's face.
Charlie thought she climaxed twice, but he wasn't entirely sure. She seemed to be in a state of orgasm throughout the entire act. When Bill finally cried out, his hips moving faster and faster, Charlie came in his hand and turned away from the door.
He went back to his room, disgusted with himself, but unable to deny that it was the most sexually thrilling thing that had ever happened to him.
et Filii
September 1999
The man looked up from his notes when Charlie paused. "So, you enjoyed watching them together." It was not a question.
"The sin of lust. Adultery, incest, fornication."
The man sighed. "Watching an act take place is not the same as participating, Charles."
"Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart," Charlie recited in a sing-song voice.
The man sighed more heavily. "Charles."
"Anyway, that's not the end of the story."
"Then by all means, continue."
January 1999
Thrice more, Fleur arranged a secret show, telling Charlie when to watch. He'd watched Bill and Fleur do all manner of salacious things that were burned into his memory. He thought of nothing else when he pleasured himself. They consumed his thoughts, both waking and sleeping.
He was supposed to leave in three days. Back to Romania, and away from this fantasy that had become his life.
The night before he was to leave, his trunks were packed near the front door. He had a Portkey ready, and he was both relieved and dismayed at the prospect of leaving. Fleur knew that, too, and she cornered him in the entryway and told him to go to their door again that night.
Charlie knew he shouldn't, of course. He'd always known that he shouldn't, but that night, he was back outside their door, watching.
They were undressed by that time, embracing and kissing each other with hunger. Charlie was about to reach his hand into his pants when Fleur, with almost inhuman speed, whirled to the door and flung it open.
Charlie froze, unable to move. He waited for something horrible to happen. For Bill to grab his wand and start throwing Unforgivables, or even to forgo the wand all together and begin beating him with his bare hands. However, they both smiled at him, Fleur seductively and Bill nervously.
Fleur had obviously apprised Bill of the situation, for he didn't look surprised, merely inscrutable. Charlie felt all the blood rushing away from his now-limp cock and up into his face. Then she'd taken Charlie's hand, pulled him into the room, and closed the door behind him.
She said that they'd discussed it and, for the last night before Charlie left, they wanted him to join them. Charlie's mouth was dry and he was growing hard again. Fleur pulled him forward and kissed him. Before Charlie remembered to shut his eyes, he could see Bill watching them with a strange look on his face. Charlie wasn't sure if it was jealousy, arousal, or both.
But then Fleur was deepening the kiss, and Charlie wasn't thinking about anything, anymore. Soon they moved to the bed. Bill and Charlie sat on either side of Fleur. She was still kissing Charlie, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Bill brush his hand across her nipple before cupping her breast in his hand.
They touched her for what could have been moments or could have been hours, before she was pushing Charlie down onto his back. She straddled him and began to ride him. He was vaguely aware of Bill moving behind Fleur's back, and then he could feel it. Feel Bill entering her. There. Their cocks were so close together, buried inside her.
When it was over, they slept. Sometime in the night, Charlie was awakened by Fleur's mouth on him again. What came next was the hardest thing to remember.
et Spiritus Sancti
September 1999
"Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity," Charlie quoted, his voice dull.
The man frowned, abandoning his notes. "It sounds as though you were wanted there. Included. Did they make you feel guilty afterwards? Did things become strained? Stressful?"
Charlie sighed. "I wish that were all. What came next…" He shook his head. "For the lips of an adulteress drip honey."
~*~
What came next was the hardest thing to remember.
Charlie told himself that Fleur, with her soft touches and erotic voice, and her requests that in the dark of night seemed like commands that couldn't be ignored, orchestrated it all like a puppet master. It was too painful to think of it in any other way.
Although, it certainly wouldn't have been his idea to end up touching, kissing, caressing him. Not him. Touching her was one thing, but touching him? So, so very wrong, and yet there in the dark with Fleur's sweet voice and sweet words and sweeter commands, it was exciting.
It was exciting to climb on his hands and knees on the bed, and feel their hands, one small and silky and one large and hard, touch him everywhere. Sometimes he arched into the touches, and sometimes he shied away, but when he felt a tongue there – how he hoped it had been hers! – he forgot to struggle, forgot to do anything but lie limp and boneless, waiting for the inevitable.
He couldn't, or didn't want to, remember all the details. He did, however, remember the stretch, the intrusion, the invasion, the burn. The thoughts were gone, but the feelings were there, haunting him. He remembered the small hand on his cock, stroking in a point-counterpoint to the thrusts. He remembered the big hands gripping his hips so hard that it teetered on the edge of pain – as most things that night did. He remembered the feel of the cool sheet pressed against his face, muffling his cries.
What he did remember, in all the vivid glory of madness, was his flight from the house.
He'd slept afterward, or perhaps passed out for a moment, but when he awoke, between them, the backs of his thighs wet and sticky, something inside him had snapped. He left no note, no sign, no trace. He pulled his trousers on over his damp and sore body, grabbed his trunk, and fled into the cold January night.
~*~
May 1999
Consciousness was slow-coming. The dream still held him tightly in its grasp, and all he knew was that his cock was hard and waiting, and he felt empty inside. He wrapped one hand around his cock and stroked, gasping into the silence. He couldn't do anything about the emptiness in his heart or his mind, but there was one emptiness he could fix. Slicking his fingers with nothing more than his own saliva, he worked two of them into his body, hardly hearing his own sharp cries, as the dream still held him in thrall.
Half asleep and half awake, he teetered, his fingers becoming something larger and smoother, his own hand becoming smaller and no longer calloused. He flipped to his stomach, pressing his face into the sheet and arching his back against the intrusion.
When he came, he collapsed onto the soiled sheets, gasping for breath and slipping back into unconsciousness.
He awoke with the cottony taste of sheets in his mouth, the dry pull of semen matted in his pubic hair, and a burning, stretched sensation in his arse. It was familiar. Familial.
Whirling off the bed, he stumbled out of the cabin, into the dark. He fell to his knees on the dirt and retched up his supper. In the distance, he saw the flash of a dragon's flame and heard the keening wail of a Welsh Green's mating call.
He was sick, sick, and needed help.
~*~
September 1999
"Excuse me? A dragon?" the doctor asked, pausing in his note-taking once again.
Charlie didn't answer.
"Is that a metaphor?"
Charlie smiled, slightly maniacally. "I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls. Owls," he repeated, chuckling a little.
"So is that when you cut yourself? Could you tell me more about that?"
"What's to tell? The dreams, they kept coming. I moved. I left the reserve. I traveled. I slept in other beds. I slept with other people. And the dreams kept coming. One night, I just couldn't take it. I couldn't take the guilt. I couldn't take the wanting. I broke a plate, and just did it… When I woke up, I was here."
The doctor nodded and jotted a few more notes. "Well, I think we can help you, Charles."
Charlie sat up, alert and wary, "What is my penance?"
The doctor smiled kindly. "You don't have to pay a penance here, Charles. If it makes you feel better, you may pray, of course, but I can't assign you a penance."
"But I've confessed my sins! I can't be free of them without the penance!" He stood suddenly, pulling at his hair and his clothes. "Give me my penance! I must be washed clean of these sins!"
"Surely you've done your penance, Charles?" the man said, making a subtle signal with his finger. Two large orderlies moved closer.
“Only through the Lord can there be forgiveness. Only through suffering can I be cleansed!" Charlie cried, but it was all he could get out before he was pulled from the room.
Amen
October 1999
It was easy enough to slip away during outdoor recreation. Just long enough to select it and slide it down the leg of his trousers. It was good. Sturdy. It would work.
When he retired to his room after the evening meal, he retrieved it from underneath his bed, and sat, carefully stripping the leaves. He finished, and smoothed his hand along the rough bark. He tested it once, waving it. It had been too long since he'd held a wooden stick in his hand and coaxed magic from it. This was much longer and springier than his previous one, but it suited his purposes. After all, this was a very different kind of magic.
He stripped naked and knelt beside the bed. "Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for me now, and at the hour of my death." He took a deep breath and slid the wood between his hands. Magic.
"I chastise my body and bring it into subjection."
The first crack was louder than he'd thought it would be. The pain was less.
"I chastise my body and bring it into subjection."
It hurt more, now, the harder he wielded his wand, but he didn't make a sound. He needed this, his penance. The mortification of his flesh.
"I chastise my body and bring it into subjection."
The backs of his thighs were wet, and the memory of another time, another place, another wetness, brought a whimper to his lips, but he didn't stop.
“He didn’t stop when the screaming started somewhere behind him. He didn’t stop until hands grabbed him, prying the switch, the wand, from his grip. He scrabbled after it, desperate. “My penance,” he whispered. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."