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Had it really been three years?
Charlie had always been a little bit like that. The passing of time didn’t matter to him, the days melted into months and years without him noticing the changes in his own face, and now that he was back at The Burrow, the sun dappling through the leaves of the orchard, it may as well have only been days since he was last here. Though, of course, last time he had been dressed in black, and everything had been far quieter.
But was this really the first time he was meeting his niece? He had seen photos of her, obviously, and long letters about her first words and first tooth and first steps and first curl and first everything, so he thought he knew her very well. But she had hidden behind Bill’s leg when she saw him, and only smiled shyly, and it occurred to him that they were strangers.
‘Well you should have come home more often,’ said Bill.
‘You could have had a holiday in Romania,’ he shrugged in response.
Perhaps he could have wangled some emotional excuse about it being too hard to come back to this country where he had lost his brother, about how he had made roots elsewhere. But in all honesty it was simply that the rhythm of his life with dragons suited him, and all of a sudden his mother was writing to him pleading that he come home, just for a few weeks, because it had been three years since anyone had seen him.
If you took the people out, the Burrow would have been exactly the same, but of course that wasn’t what made it the Burrow. Someone was missing, obviously, and the less said about that the better, in his opinion. Some people were achingly familiar, but different too, older, and more distant seeming, but perfectly friendly and soon slipping back into old banter. The faces like Fleur and Audrey and Angelina he recognised, but they still greeted each other with that uneasy, forced friendliness that came with people that were related but strangers.
But then, of course, as his father lit up the barbeque and Percy conjured up more wicker benches and deck chairs, Andromeda and Teddy arrived.
That’s Tonks’s son, he thought, as the little blue haired toddler squealed and ran to Bill, Fleur and little Victoire. That was the baby that wouldn’t stop crying, that was the baby that was in her swollen stomach, she was the Hufflepuff that he had played Quidditch against and joked with when they bumped into each other at the Three Broomsticks.
He was more confident than Victoire had been, more used to grown ups, perhaps, and when Mum introduced them, he peered curiously at the burns on his arms. ‘Did Voldemort give them to you?’ he asked.
Everyone chuckled.
‘A dragon,’ Charlie told him. ‘Much more scary if you ask me.’
And then Teddy smiled, and his nose wrinkled in the same way Tonks’s had, and he raised his tiny hands like claws and roared in his best impression of a dragon, and Charlie laughed back and did the same.
But then Teddy looked up at Mum. ‘Harry?’ he asked.
‘Harry’s still at work, poppet, he’s going to be a little late.’
‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ Charlie asked Ron, a little later as burgers and sausages started to be handed out.
Ron laughed. ‘Oh, mate, don’t mention it in front of Harry. I resigned last week.’
‘What?’
Ron shrugged. ‘Caught all the Death Eaters now, more or less. Done the job. I only joined up to babysit him anyway, reckon he can handle himself now.’
Beside him, George snorted. ‘Yeah, all right, Ron. You look after the Chosen One.’
Ron grinned. ‘Someone’s got to, the bloody idiot.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ Charlie asked him.
Ron jerked his head to George. ‘Helping him out with the shop more, aren’t I?’
They told him all about it, about the new product lines and new magical technologies and investments, about the rebrand and nightmare over figuring out the accounts.
Fuck, he thought. In these three years they’ve become best friends, I didn’t have a fucking clue.
You never would have imagined it, growing up. George and Fred had always been mean to Ron. And Percy. And, if he was honest, him. Even though he was much older than them, they’d always been too quick witted for him to keep up, to clever, too cutting. But here Ron was, relaxing into easy conversation with George, and Charlie realised that the whole dynamics of the family had shifted without Fred. Not in a good way, but not in a bad way either, just different.
And then, of course, was his little sister. He was always surprised that she wasn’t about eight years old whenever he saw her, he had missed that whole growing up saga, which Fred and George always assured him was lucky. But she wasn’t even in Hogwarts anymore, and her and Harry had been living in Grimmauld Place for a year before buying some little cottage about half an hour’s walk away, and here she was, greeting Teddy with a big hug and a blazing smile, looking like a fully grown woman.
‘All right, stranger?’ she’d said to him, taking a bottle opener to her cider.
‘All right, shorty?’ he said back. And then they talked about dragons and Quidditch.
Barbecues were strange because there was no clear start or middle or finish to the meal, the food came out in short little bursts that wasn’t enough for everyone, so it was more like grazing. And so it was Charlie didn’t know how late Harry was until there was a snap in the air and a figure in scarlet robes appeared in the distance.
‘Finally!’ Ron shouted, and Charlie saw the figure wave.
‘He’s been in interrogation all afternoon,’ said Ginny lazily.
‘Oh,’ said Ron. ‘The Coleman Case?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Eughr. Exactly the sort of case that’s made me a retail man.’
As Harry approached, Teddy noticed, and stopped chasing little Victoire around to run towards Harry. Charlie watched as Harry lifted him up and threw him, at least a meter into the air, catching him easily and tilting him upside down, the toddler’s blue hair rippling into black as he shrieked with joy.
‘Harry!’ yelped Andromeda. ‘What have I told you?’
‘Oh,’ said Mum longingly, and to Charlie’s amusement, Ginny growled.
‘Stop looking at me like that, Mum. I just turned twenty.’
‘Yeah,’ said Ron irritably. ‘They’re not even married.’
‘I know! I’m just saying, one day.’
Harry carried Teddy back to the patio, greeting everyone with a broad smile and easy apologies for being late.
‘Glad you showed up,’ said Ron.
‘I’m not talking to you,’ said Harry, putting Teddy down and taking the burger that Dad offered him. ‘Cheers, Arthur.’
‘You’ll get over it soon enough,’ said Ron.
‘I will not. They keep threatening to put me with a trainee.’
‘So?’
‘I don’t want some wet-behind-the-ears baby who’s never said boo to a ghost-
They laughed at him, especially Ginny who called him old, and to his credit he gave as good as he got, teasing Ron and George about their social worth, winking when Hermione told him he was becoming his Daily Prophet stereotype.
He was different too, Charlie supposed. Different from the skinny, earnest but shy child he had originally known, and different from the brooding, troubled man he had last seen him as.
Then Angelina pulled out her portable wireless, and the garden was filled with music as well as chatter and the smell of summer food, and Charlie went back to watching little Victoire and Teddy chase each other around the lawn.
And then he watched as Harry got up and went to them, swinging Teddy by the arms and making slow, lunging grabs to them, so that they really believed they had been too fast, their faces pink with excitement and breathless giggles and delighted screams. And then a song came on that Charlie didn’t recognise, because the WWN didn’t make it out to Romania, and Harry let Victoire stand on his feet as he lumbered about, singing along, while Teddy bounced around excitedly, tumbling in the grass and shout unintelligible words up at his godfather. George went and joined them, bouncing a small rubber ball that flashed in different colours, edging just out of Teddy’s reach so that he chased it desperately around.
‘I have a question,’ said Charlie casually, as he, Ron, Hermione, Bill, Fleur and Angelina watched. ‘Who the fuck is that?’
Ron looked at him as though he’d grown an extra head. ‘George, Harry, Vic and Teddy,’ he told him.
‘Don’t think so,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m pretty sure Harry Potter is some mopey teenager that hangs around my parents house every summer.’
‘Well, now he’s a mopey adult who hangs around our parents house every weekend,’ said Ron.
‘Doesn’t look that mopey,’ said Charlie.
‘Fewer people are trying to kill him,’ said Ron fairly.
‘And ee ‘az leetle Teddy,’ said Fleur. ‘And ee looks after Victoire for us too, when we want some privacy.’
Charlie felt a little revolted at her giggle, and Bill’s grin, so he switched topic quickly. ‘George is doing better too. He’s chilled out.’
‘Yeah, ‘cos Angie’s shagging him,’ said Ron.
Angelina tutted and flung a bit of fried onion at him. ‘Yeah and Harry’s happy because he’s shagging your sister.’
‘Oh, don’t,’ groaned Ron, as the rest of them laughed. Privately, Charlie agreed with Ron - his little sister was too young, too sweet-
‘No, Angie’s right,’ said Ginny, her eyes glinting. ‘It’s because I’m wild in bed.’
‘Stop, Ginny!’