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“Bloody hell!”
With a start, Charlie Weasley was immediately awake despite having worked all night babysitting a broody dragon. He jerked his boots on and stumbled out of his room to the common area of his cabin.
“What is it?” He demanded in a sleep-roughened voice. He rubbed at his face trying to wipe away the fatigue of a 24-hour shift. “Is it Titania?”
“What? Who is Titania?” Charlie’s bunkmate, Tancred Bulstrode looked up from the parchment clutched in his fist to stare at Charlie in utter bewilderment. “Do you mean that Welsh Green that stumbled onto the reserve last week? Merlin’s bollocks, mate. You know the Chief Wrangler hates it when you do that.”
“It seemed rude to keep calling her ‘hey you,’” Charlie muttered. He gestured toward Tancred’s parchment. “What’s going on?”
“My father has finally lost his mind,” Tancred snapped as he read over the parchment once more. “I have to go home, immediately. I’m going to go talk to the Chief Wrangler.”
Later that day, Titania began to finally lay her eggs and Charlie ended up spending the next 48 hours with her until she had completed her nest. The Romanian Reserve didn’t generally have Welsh Greens, but no one had wanted to move a dragon that was already broody and ready to lay eggs at any time. As she seemed to tolerate Charlie and the last thing the dragon handlers wanted to do was upset a mother dragon, they reluctantly allowed him to stay the entire time.
Once the nest was secured, a four-person team was assigned to make sure that no one interfered with the new mother dragon and Charlie staggered back to his cabin for a well-deserved sleep. The Chief Wrangler had ordered him to stand down for the next 72 hours. Charlie wasn’t allowed to return to duty until he’d been cleared by the Reserve’s Healers, and they refused to even look at him for the next 48 hours.
The cabin was unusually quiet with Tancred gone, and for a moment Charlie allowed himself to feel lonely. Living on the reserve was all he’d ever wanted. He loved his dragons, and he loved working as a dragon keeper, but lately… lately Charlie wished he had someone to come home to aside from Tancred. Someone who would be happy to see him. Someone to hold in his arms. Somebody that would love him—dragon obsession and all.
With a heavy sigh Charlie pushed all that away and stumbled into his bedroom. He staggered to his bed and stared at it in silent reproach for a moment. Then Charlie collapsed onto his bed with a groan. He loved dragons. He really loved dragons, but he did wish the gorgeous little blighters would allow him to sleep a bit more often. He groaned again as he lay his head on his lovely, soft pillow and let sleep claim him.
When Charlie finally woke, he was still slightly groggy. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, and his muscles were stiff and sore. A shower first to ease the muscle strain. His belly growled so loudly that he could feel his cheeks flush. Shower first, and then something to eat. He doubted the cold cabinet in the cabin had anything in it, which meant he would head to the Reserve’s cafeteria.
Years of Quidditch and living with a large, boisterous family meant that Charlie had never really suffered body shame. Living as a dragon keeper on a remote reserve reinforced that—too many times he’d had to rip burning clothing off himself or a fellow dragon keeper. He stripped off the filthy clothes he was still wearing and tossed them at the bin in the corner. He scratched absently at the scars on his chest as he wandered down the hall to the shower.
The sound of the shower made Charlie stop and frown to himself. Had Tancred returned already? How long had he been asleep? Surely it hadn’t been that long—the longest that Charlie had ever managed to sleep at any one time had been 16 hours. The shower shut off and Charlie blinked slowly, still frowning.
“Tancred? You in there, mate?” Charlie called through the door.
The door whipped open, and a stunning creature stood in front of him, steam billowing out of the bathroom around her and into the hall. Long black hair was wound in a bun on the top of her head leaving little tendrils to curl in the damp heat. Droplets of water glistened on her pinkened skin and she clutched at the towel that strained to contain her magnificence.
“Hello,” she said in startled surprise.
“You are not Tancred,” Charlie blurted out.
“Neither are you,” she replied with wide eyes.
“What… who…,” Charlie sputtered.
“Millicent. Bulstrode,” the beauty replied. She bit her lip and shrugged her shoulders. The towel strained even more, and Charlie swallowed. “Tancred is my older brother. I thought he… I thought it would be safe here.”
“Safe? From what?” Charlie asked raising his eyes to hers.
“My parents are being… difficult,” Millicent admitted. She sighed and her shoulders slumped making the towel slip an inch. Charlie swallowed again and willed his body to ignore the gorgeous creature in front of him.
“Difficult? Is that code for something?” Charlie asked.
When they’d first become roommates, it had taken Charlie awhile to get used to the way Slytherins always talked around everything. Eventually, he’d just started calling Tancred on his poncey Slytherin ways.
“I’m… I’m me, all right,” Millicent sighed. She clutched her towel tightly in one hand and used the other to wave at herself in a general way.
“I can see that,” Charlie muttered and flushed when Millicent blinked at him in surprise.
“I haven’t gotten any offers,” Millicent explained. She sighed gustily. “I don’t care. Really, I don’t. I mean, I’d rather not, especially with the gits my parents keep inviting to the Abbey. It’s… I want somebody to love, you know?”
“Yeah, I do,” Charlie replied.
That seemed to surprise Millicent. She stared at him for a long moment.
“You do.” She said flatly.
“I do,” Charlie agreed.
Then the stunning beauty’s eyes flashed, and her nostrils flared, and Charlie was immediately and strongly reminded of a dragon. He grinned fondly at Millicent who stared back at him with an arched eyebrow. She took a step forward and Charlie could feel the residual heat from the shower that had turned her lovely skin pink.
“You… you’re a Weasley, aren’t you?” Millicent demanded with an expression of horror.
“Charlie Weasley,” he agreed. Then he grinned at her again and winked. “At your service.”
A flush spread over her cheeks.
“Right,” she muttered. She took a deep breath, which Charlie appreciated very much, and looked him in the eye. “Which bedroom is Tancred’s?”
“Down the hall, on the left,” Charlie replied.
With a decisive nod, Millicent turned and stalked down the hall. Charlie watched her walk away and then walked into the shower, whistling.
Once Charlie was done showering, his stomach suddenly protested its empty state. He wrapped a towel around his hips and padded down the hall to his own room. Quickly, he dressed in a clean uniform and pulled on his boots. He walked cautiously down the hall and knocked on Tancred’s door.
“I’m headed over to the cafeteria,” Charlie called through the door. “I’ll be back in about an hour.”
The door opened and Charlie was mildly disappointed that Millicent was no longer wearing naught but a towel. She was wearing a warm jumper, jeans, and knee-length sturdy boots that probably cost more than Charlie’s annual salary.
“There’s a cafeteria?” She demanded. “Thank Merlin! Your cold cabinet would make our Flossy shriek in horror.”
“I’ll escort you there,” Charlie said and held out his elbow like Aunt Muriel had drilled into all of them except Ron.
By the time summers at Aunt Muriel’s had been on the schedule, Ron had brought home Harry Potter, and Mum never mentioned it again. She’d probably been afraid that the poor lad would have died of fright. Aunt Muriel was more frightening than Voldemort when she got on a tear about ‘a young wizard’s responsibilities to his family.’
“Thank you,” Millicent murmured as she automatically took his elbow and allowed him to direct her to the large stone structure that housed the cafeteria.
The noise volume of the cafeteria was always a steady buzz of talking, laughing, and spoons clanking against the sturdy metal trays. Almost everything on a dragon reserve was made to be durable. Even if the dragons didn’t ever get near the cafeteria, the dragon keepers often had to drop a tray in a hurry or were so tired that they fell asleep at the table and accidentally knocked a tray off the table.
A cafeteria on a dragon reserve was never quiet, but there was a little ripple of interest that spread out when Charlie opened the door and led Millicent into the room. He took her over to the queue and grabbed a tray for each of them. He eyed the day’s offering and shot Millicent a pleased smile.
“Stuffed peppers,” he told her happily. “The cooks are all locals, so we end up eating a lot of Romanian and Transcarpathian dishes. Delicious stuff,” he added.
“Really?” Millicent peered around Charlie. “Do they have that meatball soup?”
“Ciorba de Perisoare?” Charlie asked. When Millicent nodded, he shrugged. “They usually do. Either that or Ciorba de Burta.”
“Oh lovely,” Millicent said with a smile. “Tancred took us to some restaurants in Brasov and there was a tiny little place where they made that meatball soup.”
Once they’d loaded up their trays, Charlie led Millicent to a mostly empty table. He lifted his mug of tea and Millicent lifted hers in response.
“To finding somebody to love,” Charlie said solemnly before winking at her.
“To finding somebody to love,” Millicent repeated and took a healthy swallow of her tea.
The two of them ate in companionable silence. Charlie took a bite of his stuffed pepper and hummed in happiness. His loved his mum, truly he did, but she never added seasoning and spices the way the Romanian cooks at the reserve did. In his ten years at the reserve, he had come to love the local food almost as much as he loved dragons. Across from him, Millicent closed her eyes in bliss at her first taste of the meatball soup she liked.
“Incredible, yeah?” Charlie grinned at her.
“So good,” she replied.
The walk back to Charlie’s cabin was cosy and quiet. He had slept, showered, eaten, and there was a fantastic witch on his arm. He was feeling rather happy about the world in general. They entered the cabin and there was the faintest whiff of dragon smoke, which had come to mean home to Charlie.
“Feel free to do whatever you wish,” Charlie said as Millicent released his arm. “I’m not on duty for the next—mmph!”
In the span of a moment, Millicent had launched herself at him, and his arms were filled with eager witch. She had pressed her lips to his and was kissing him enthusiastically. Since Charlie was not an idiot, he returned her kiss and began to tease her with his lips and tongue. They broke apart, panting at one another.
“You like me,” Millicent gasped at him, trying to catch her breath.
“What’s not to like?” Charlie countered. “You’re a magnificent witch—a gorgeous beauty of a woman.”
Millicent flushed, but she leaned forward and kissed him soundly on the lips.
“I like you, too,” she admitted. Charlie snorted in amusement.
“I figured that part out,” he teased her gently and she swatted him on the shoulder. He couldn’t even feel it through his thick uniform.
“Do you think that we… that you could…,” Millicent stumbled over her words and then huffed in frustration. Her lower lip jutted out in an adorable pout.
“Yes,” Charlie blurted out, not really caring what he was agreeing to if it meant that she stayed.
“What?” Millicent blinked at him.
“We’ll probably need a different cabin. I can’t imagine living with Tancred while I’m shagging his baby sister,” Charlie said with a shudder.
“Shagging his baby sister,” Millicent repeated and turned bright red.
“Is that not what you meant?” Charlie felt his heart stutter in his chest.
It had been too perfect, he supposed. Finally, he had found somebody that was as intoxicating as a dragon. Somebody that made everything in him stand up and take notice. Somebody that he could… that he might…
“I…,” Millicent began and then paused, her lovely blue eyes trained on Charlie’s face. “Tancred and my father will expect me to marry.”
“What do you want?” Charlie asked curiously.
“You,” Millicent breathed, eyes shining. “I want you. The shagging, the cabin that we most definitely do not share with my brother, the smell of dragon smoke on everything, and meatball soup—I want all of that. With you.”
“Marriage?” Charlie pressed and Millicent shrugged helplessly.
“I don’t know,” Millicent admitted. “Everyone expects it, but I just want somebody to love.”
“I can do that,” Charlie promised. “I can be that, for you.”
“We’ve just met,” Millicent protested. “How can it be this easy?”
“When you know, you know,” Charlie countered. Then he grinned at her. “That’s what my older brother Bill says, anyway.”
“Bill is a genius,” Millicent decided.
This time, when she launched herself at Charlie, he was ready.