Chapter Text
Everyone did a great job when preparing everything for the wedding. It was modest, yet lively and joyful. Almost everybody was now standing and dancing to their heart’s content. Everyone but an old great-granduncle from who knows whose side of the family, and Charlie.
They were playing a slow song now, too mellow for his liking, and he could see Bill and Fleur dancing, smiling at each other fondly. He was happy for them, he really was, but he couldn’t help that small, uncomfortable feeling deep in his chest. He was never one for romance, it didn’t interest him much during his youth, really, but he would lie if he said there hadn’t been someone in his life too.
If he had been a boy obsessed with dragons (not that he wasn't anymore), then they had been a child obsessed with secrets. Secrets so dangerous it would cost them everything, but they didn’t know that at the time. Nobody did.
They met by chance when he found them and his brother trying to decipher a message (which he later learned they found at a Cursed Vault) in the library. He still remembers the way their eyes used to gleam and how their smile widened with every step they took as they attempted to approach the truth.
He joined them in their quests. He wasn’t so sure about it at first, but there was something about them that seemed to keep pulling him to them, like a magnet. “You shouldn’t, it’s dangerous. Actually, I wish I could do this on my own, for everyone’s sake,” they told him one day, when they were tired and probably had no idea of what they were saying.
It had been fun, if he was honest. Yes, there had been more than one brush with death, and he used to feel the rush of adrenaline through his veins every time they prepared themselves to enter another vault, but he would be lying if he said he hadn’t actually enjoyed it.
He liked them, he realized when Tonks came up to him one day and told him they were going to Hogsmeade with Jae that evening. He really liked them, he figured as the thought of them finding someone made him feel what he recognized as jealousy for the first time.
Charlie later found out they had actually gone to Hogsmeade because Jae wanted to ask them tips to get Penny to notice him. He definitely didn’t come across this information by spying on the two of them along with Tonks.
Charlie’s feelings were complicated. Not even he could understand them on their entirety, but he was aware of one thing, and one thing only. He wanted to be by their side and he wanted them to be by his side, together and as something more than just friends. It didn’t matter what it was, from the bottom of his heart he just wanted the two of them to be ‘the one’ for each other.
That’s why he told them, when they came to visit him at the Hospital Wing after a nasty fall during a Quidditch game (they won though). They were both in their last year, a few weeks away from the end of the term. They were sitting on the chair by his bed, and it was too late for them to be out of their Common Room, but he figured they would find an excuse if they needed one. They always did. It was then, at that moment, that he told them- asked them to come with him to the Burrow after the year was over, all while holding their hand over the hospital bed sheets.
“Of course,” they didn’t hesitate to answer. He didn’t think they would, they had been to his home before, mostly because Bill had invited them to talk about the vaults, curses, their brother, you name it.
“No, I mean,” he knew he had to explain or nothing would change. “I don’t want you to come as Bill’s friend, nor as ‘Hogwarts’ Youngest Curse Breaker’. I want you to come as yourself- with me .”
He wasn’t sure if they had actually blushed, the room was too dark to know for sure, but for the sake of his speeding heart he wanted to believe they did. They agreed again, without any hesitation.
And then the day had come. That fateful day, their very last day attending Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Not a soul had expected it. Nobody thought the ice would come back, tougher than ever. At that moment, no matter how many spells they casted, it wouldn’t recede enough for all of them to break through.
“I’ll stall for time!” they had called behind the wall ice. “Tell the other students to dispparate out of here, and take as many others with them as they can!”
And he, along with everyone else, did just that, believing everything would be fine. It was always fine in the end. Until it wasn't.
Something went wrong.
A powerful spell had been casted, and by the end of its effects the ice was gone- along with everything else. When several curse breakers arrived later at the scene they found their wand, and it was determined the final spell it casted was Incendio. The investigation revealed they may have tried to use the spell at the very core of the cursed ice, successfully melting it away and making it die down, however the cast had been too powerful, and they had been too close. They didn’t make it out in time.
It was Dumbledore who explained what had happened to the rest of them, since he didn't let them back at the scene. They all cried, Merula shouted and cursed, and Charlie felt as if someone had taken his heart in a fist before ripping it out of his chest. He could only wonder how things had gone so wrong, so fast. Or maybe it hadn’t been fast, maybe things had been going awry for a long time, but nobody noticed it until it was over.
And now, Charlie sits at his family’s table while looking at the people laughing and dancing along to the music with their loved ones. He thinks that, if they were here, the two of them could join everyone else. Maybe they would joke about how the music was overly cheesy. Maybe they would end up marrying too at one point in time, or they would have already been married by then. Maybe they would come along with him to Romania and work as a curse breaker while he took care of his dragons.
Sitting alone, Charlie could only wonder about what could have been. About what never was.