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A/N: It wouldn’t be a proper British Christmas Eve without a trip to the pub. This chapter is for @thethreebroomsticksfic’s Yule Bash prompts ‘Hogsmeade’ and ‘mulled mead’.
Warnings: alcohol and references to war/character death.
24th December, 1998
There always was something special about Hogsmeade at Christmas; the thick blankets of snow that covered the roofs of its buildings and the twinkling lights that shone from their windows, the sound of carollers somewhere in the distance, and the smells of hot sugar and mulled wine wafting through the air from Honeydukes and The Three Broomsticks.
The snow crunched under Artemis’ feet as she made her way down the cobbled village street in the direction of the inn, which had been decorated in boughs of greenery. A wave of warmth from the hearth washed over her as she opened the door, and behind the bar, Rosmerta put down the tankard of Butterbeer she was halfway through pouring.
“Merry Christmas, love,” she said to Artemis. “You look half-frozen. Let me just serve this and then I’ll get you something to warm you up. You like mulled mead, don’t you?”
Artemis was not going to say no to mulled mead, not when her fingers were as cold as they were now. She gratefully accepted the mug Rosmerta offered her, holding it in her hands to heat them before she took a sip.
“So,” said Rosmerta, leaning on the bar to talk to her, “is this a flying visit, or have you decided that you do want to stay here for Christmas after all?”
“I’m just dropping in to give you your present and say hi. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry. It won’t be a very relaxing Christmas here, it rarely is. Too much work.”
“I know, and I would have helped, but Charlie asked me to go to theirs,” Artemis said, raising her mug to her lips. “I get the feeling he sort of needs me there more than you need me here.”
That feeling might have been wishful thinking on Artemis’ part. With the way things were between her and Charlie at the moment, she wasn’t entirely certain that he needed her at all anymore. To others, their friendship must have looked the same as it always had, but it was obvious to her that something had changed. Their conversations had become stilted and their pauses awkward, the easiness they had always felt in one another’s presence replaced with something fraught, something tense and self-conscious. And it was her fault. It was all her fault.
Rosmerta smiled kindly. “Don’t you worry.” She conjured a cloth from thin air and started to wipe down the bar as she spoke. “I’m not surprised you want to be there for him. It’s only fair, all those times he’s been there for you when you needed him.”
That was true. Artemis had lost count of the times Charlie had been there for her when she needed it — when she needed him — most. On every path she took through the world, no matter how far from him she had been in distance, he had somehow been at her side each step of the way, stoic and solid and sure, making her feel like she belonged, like she mattered, like she was worthy of care, of…
“Love?” Rosmerta’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Is everything okay?”
Artemis wasn’t sure how to answer that question. The truthful answer was ‘no’, everything was not okay. Her memories of the war continued to haunt her, she panicked whenever she entered a room and the door closed behind her, Tonks was gone, Fred was gone, she couldn’t stop thinking about those too-few kisses she had shared with Charlie, and she couldn’t bring herself to start thinking about what that might mean. Thinking about it was too hard. If Artemis was being honest, it scared her.
It was easier not to think, and it was easier to lie.
“Nothing’s wrong, Ros. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
Unfortunately for her, she had never been a good liar, and Rosmerta had always been good at discerning what was true and what wasn’t. Artemis could tell from the way the landlady put down her cloth and stared at her that she didn’t believe her in the slightest.
“You know,” said Ros, summoning another cup and filling it with more mead, “they say that if you have something on your mind, the best person to talk to about it is either your bartender or your hairdresser.”
Artemis wrinkled her nose. “I don’t have a hairdresser.”
“That’s a shame.” Madam Rosmerta picked up the second mulled mead and carried it with her as she walked out from behind the bar to the stool next to Artemis’ own. “Looks like you’ll have to make do with me, then.” She sat on the stool and took a sip of her drink, before placing it down on top of the bar and raising her eyebrows at Artemis. “Spill.”
The look on her face made it clear that Artemis wasn’t going to be able to avoid this conversation. Still, she couldn’t tell Rosmerta everything, after all, it was not only her secret to share. She sighed heavily, her breath rippling on the surface of her drink.
“I dunno,” she said eventually. “I just thought that with the war being over, everything would be sort of simple again. Easier and less scary, but that’s not how it is at all. Everything is just as hard, and everything keeps changing.”
“Things do change. But that’s not a bad thing. Change can be good.”
“It can be, but it isn’t always. And there are some changes, even if they are good, that are just…” She swallowed, despite the fact that she had barely touched her mead. “I’m still so frightened, Ros.”
Rosmerta’s eyes were wide and sympathetic. “What are you frightened of, love?”
“Lots of things. More things than I ever even thought to be frightened of before. Maybe it’s just me that’s changed. Maybe I’m just not brave anymore.”
Artemis was being serious, but Rosmerta chuckled.
“Now, that I’ll never believe,” she said. “You, love, are the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
Her words should have made Artemis feel proud, but instead they only made her feel like a fraud. They echoed in her ears, acutely familiar.
“That’s what Charlie said,” she told Rosmerta.
“Well, he’d know.”
But Artemis shook her head. “He’s wrong. Maybe I used to be, when I was younger. I hardly even got scared at all back then.”
“I remember. You were fearless,” said Ros. “But fearless doesn’t mean brave. I’d say that being afraid and still carrying on and doing the right thing is braver than not being afraid at all.”
“Yeah, I know. And I know I was probably a bit too bold and reckless, and I got into all sorts of trouble because of it, but… I miss it. Being fearless, I mean. I want that back.”
“You can’t get that back. I’m sorry. Everyone loses their fearlessness when they get older. It’s just one of those things that happens with time.”
“I’d rather be fearless than brave. Fearless is easier.”
Slowly, Madam Rosmerta raised one hand, using it to tuck a loose strand of Artemis’ hair behind her ear. Artemis looked down at her own hands.
“The things you’ve done and seen and been through… It’s no wonder you aren’t fearless anymore. You’d be mad if you were. But you aren’t mad, you’re just bold. Bolder and braver than anyone I know.”
“But—”
“You can take it or leave it, love, but brave is what you have now.” She leaned forward and gave Artemis a conspiratorial smile. “It’s good, I promise. Much better than fearless. Give it time, and you’ll think so, too.”
Artemis didn’t feel like she’d ever think that. Then again, she never had been much good at thinking. She still wasn’t good at thinking, even now.
She left the Three Broomsticks despondent. The snow was falling thick and fast, the way it rarely did in Ottery St Catchpole. She walked through the village without purpose, and before she realised it, she reached the fork of the path where a signpost pointed in the direction of Hogwarts School up the hill and Hogsmeade Station down it.
She looked up at the castle that stood watching over Hogsmeade, the castle that had been her home for almost seven years during her youth and a hell on earth for over seven hours earlier in the year. She had loved and she had lost, found friends and fought foes, had been challenged and been changed, all within its walls and on its grounds. Now, the castle itself had changed, had been half-destroyed and rebuilt again, and yet, it was still recognisable as Hogwarts, right down to the Thestrals she could just about see in the distance, frolicking in the snow in the shadow of the turrets and towers.
For a moment, she considered walking up there to get a closer look, but instead, she followed the path downhill, towards the station. The platform was empty, almost eerily quiet. The station clock read ten past ten, the way it had done for years. It was as if the station were…
Frozen in time.
Tears pricked at Artemis’ eyes. Years ago, when she was young and bold and reckless, she had stood here with Rowan, her best friend, even now that she was gone.
Now, Artemis was Charlie’s best friend. If it weren’t for her lingering love for Rowan and out of respect for her memory, perhaps she would call Charlie her best friend in return. She cared about him enough. He meant enough to her.
So, why couldn’t she just do as he asked and think about what it meant to kiss him, to want him to want her, to feel this new pull towards him that had never been there before?
Because, thought Artemis, she wasn’t ready to open the door to the truth of what she was feeling. She was afraid of what those feelings might mean, and what might change as a result. Facing that required bravery, but she had never needed to be brave before. She had only ever been fearless. Could she ever be that brave, as brave as Charlie and Rosmerta believed her to be? Could bravery really be better than fearlessness?
The sound of a train whistle echoed down the tracks, piercing through the cold air. Artemis jumped, and hastily rubbed her damp cheeks with the heel of her hand as the Hogwarts Express pulled into the platform. But though the doors opened, no one disembarked.
She was still entirely alone. The clock still read ten past ten.
Perhaps, if Artemis had been brave instead of fearless, Rowan would still be alive, would still be here, still with her.
Her breath caught in her throat. Once upon a time, she had lost her best friend to thoughtlessness. She couldn’t afford to let that happen again.
Turning her back to the station clock, Artemis walked down the length of the train, peering through each and every open door as she passed by the carriages until she saw the ticketmaster.
“Is this one going back to London?” she asked him. He nodded in response. “How long does it take?”
The ticketmaster hummed before relying, “Eight hours, give or take.”
It was nearly sunset. By the time that the train reached its destination, it would be gone midnight. It would be Christmas Day.
“It’s a Sickle for a single journey,” the ticketmaster told her. “You want a ticket or not?”
It took longer for Artemis to find a Sickle in her pocket than it did for her to answer. Once she had been handed her ticket, she found an empty compartment and opened the window. She took the seat nearest the open window and leaned against it, her breath fogging up the glass in front of her face.
Another whistle, and the train pulled away from the station, the tracks leading it away from Hogsmeade village and into the vast, snow-driven wilderness, the sound of the engine steadily chugging away. Artemis closed her eyes and took a breath of the cold, smoky air.
It was time for her to be brave. It was time for her to think.
“What about a drink, ickle Ronniekins? I‘m not letting you sit in this bloody piece of orange shit feeling sorry for yourself.”
Ron scowled, his guard slowly crumbling. “I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself!”
“If self-pity was a game, mate, you’d be better at it than you are at chess,” George teased, standing up and extending a hand toward Ron. “Come on, little bro.”
Hi, I wanted to know if we can still submit a fic even if the day has passed, or is it strictly on those days we should be posting on? I’ve been having difficulties with time management, with my job and going to school and I really want to participate but like I said I don’t want to disregards the rules
Thanks and I like the stories and moodboards that have been made
Thanks for the ask! We don't have specific prompts assigned to specific days! Post for any of the prompts you like. 😌❤️
for @thethreebroomsticksfic Twelve Days of Yule Bash
Rating: Teen & Up
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Ship: Tedromeda
Word Count: 2,485
Prompts: holiday party, baubles
Summary:
The Christmas tree at the Slug Club party is decorated with live fairies in clear glass baubles. Ted Tonks has a soft heart, and glass is not that hard to vanish.
Sometimes, Andromeda feels like a fairy in a glass bauble, trapped and on display, subject to rigid expectations and scrutiny.
A/N: I am unabashedly a massive fan of Phlegm Fleur, and I was so happy to have a reason to include her in this story. That being said, I was not prepared for how much fun it would be to write dialogue between her and Charlie. This (admittedly loosely) follows the prompt ‘Blue Christmas’ for @thethreebroomsticksfic’s Yule Bash.
17th December, 1998
It was morning. Outside, the sky was the palest shade of blue imaginable, so pale it was almost white, and the sunlight was bright and cool as it flooded through the windows of Charlie’s brother’s marital home.
In the kitchen, Bill and Fleur Weasley were the picture of matrimonial happiness, sharing quiet jokes and chaste kisses as they prepared breakfast together. Charlie would normally have offered to help out, but he felt as if in doing so, he would be getting in their way. Instead, he had taken a seat at the table and tried to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible.
“Will you two get a room?”
Charlie turned in his chair at the sound of Artemis’ voice. She walked into the kitchen with her eyes on Bill and Fleur, scowling slightly. Bill removed his hands from his wife’s waist and leaned on the countertop.
“It’s our house, this is our room,” he told Artemis with a smirk. “The question is, will you ever pay us rent?”
Artemis pulled a face at Bill and went to take a seat. Clearly, Charlie had been doing a better job of being inconspicuous than he realised, because it was only then that Artemis appeared to notice him. She visibly stiffened, and her lips tightened to a thin line.
“Good morning,” she said. There was a forced breeziness to her voice. Charlie inclined his head.
“Morning.”
He reached up to the window behind him and pushed it open, earning himself a quizzical look from Bill. Charlie nodded his head in Artemis’ direction and shrugged, and his brother pulled the sleeves of his jumper down his forearms. Fleur said nothing, but she tightened her dressing robe around herself as she made her way to the table, four plates of eggs benedict floating through the air in her wake. When Artemis looked from Charlie to the open window and back again, he offered her a small smile. She did not return it.
Charlie couldn’t help but feel disappointed. He’d hoped that their argument would have been forgotten about after they’d both had a day to calm down, but apparently that had been wishful thinking on his part. With the way Artemis had flown off the handle the night before last, he shouldn’t have been surprised that she still needed to cool off, that she would still be cool towards him.
He could barely remember the last time they’d fallen out, it was so long ago. Nine years ago, give or take. Their sixth year at Hogwarts, the year that everything changed, the year that Rowan died. Charlie felt a pang of guilt. He should not have mentioned the idea of losing a best friend to Artemis, as real as the possibility was, as much as that possibility terrified him. If it weren’t for that fear, he would have been content in that moment to have said nothing at all, to have allowed her to kiss him and to kiss her back, and to follow her wherever she led him. A part of him wished he had done just that, but he knew that putting a stop to it was the right thing to do. He couldn’t risk losing her, and even more than that, he couldn’t risk her losing him. After Rowan and Tonks, she wouldn’t be able to cope without him and his family as well. It was better this way. No, they weren’t talking right now, but they would. Everything would be alright again, once Artemis had gotten over it. He only wished he knew when that would be.
“I won’t need to pay you any rent for much longer,” Artemis told Bill as she tucked into her breakfast. “Once I start work I’ll be moving out.”
“Good riddance.” Bill laughed. He used his wand to pour himself a glass of orange juice as Artemis rolled her eyes. “Dare I ask where you’re going? Please don’t tell me you’re moving to Cardiff with some bloke you broke up with six months ago. I don't think any of us can cope with that drama again.”
As surreptitiously as he could, Charlie reached over to pick up the jug of juice that had been floating in the air beside Bill. This was a conversation he did not want to get involved in.
“No, I was thinking of going back to the Three Broomsticks for a bit. I’ll have to check with Rosmerta first, but I can ask her while I’m there for Christmas.”
Charlie’s glass was still half-empty, but he stopped pouring.
“I thought you were coming with us to Mum and Dad’s for Christmas,” he said, before he could stop himself.
In twelve years, he had spent one Christmas without Artemis, the one just gone. It had been the worst Christmas of his life, even worse than the one immediately following Rowan’s death, or the one he had spent in the knowledge that his father was lying in a hospital bed hundreds of miles away from him. This coming Christmas was going to present its own challenges, but he had assumed that he’d be facing them with Artemis at his side. He wasn’t certain that he could get through it without her. And what about her? If she wasn’t coming…
“Well, you thought wrong, didn’t you?” Artemis’ voice was sharp, but when Bill and Fleur looked at her, she became breezy again. “I just think it’s better if I’m not there this year. Y’know, because of Fred.”
She was lying. Charlie would have been able to tell that she was lying, even if he hadn’t known the real reason for her sudden change of heart. He lowered his head so that Bill and Fleur wouldn’t see the look on his face. This was exactly the sort of thing he had wanted to avoid.
“You’re still more than welcome to come to our family’s for Christmas,” said Bill. “If anything, Mum might be glad to have more company. It’ll be less quiet that way.”
Artemis made a non-committal noise and put a forkful of egg into her mouth.
“Ros needs someone capable to help her behind the bar,” she said through her food. Bill frowned at her.
“You have egg on your face.”
At Bill’s comment, Artemis swallowed and used her hand to wipe a spot of yolk from her chin. She looked at her palm for a moment, then licked it.
“Really?” Bill blinked at her. His eyes flicked towards Charlie momentarily, so he wasn’t sure who his brother was addressing when he asked: “What is wrong with you?”
“What?” Artemis asked. She pushed herself away from the table. “Whatever, I’m finished. Thanks for making me breakfast.”
“Thanks for putting me off mine.”
In response, Artemis narrowed her eyes at Bill, picked up her empty plate, and licked it, before placing it back down on the table and leaving the kitchen entirely. Bill shook his head as he watched her leave.
“Over two billion women in this world, Charlie, and that is what does it for you,” he muttered, once she was out of earshot. He sighed and rose from his chair. “I’d better get to work. Love you.”
Bill kissed Fleur on the cheek before he left her alone with Charlie. Charlie cleared his throat.
“I guess there’s probably no way that you didn’t hear him say that, is there?” he asked. “Because it’s not… That’s not what it is. And whatever Bill has told you—”
“‘Ow do you know zat Bill ‘as told me anything?”
Charlie’s eyebrows furrowed. “Has he not told you anything?”
“No, ‘e ‘as.” Fleur’s sea-blue eyes glittered over the top of her cup as she took a sip of coffee. “‘E told me everything, in fact.”
“Great. That’s just great.”
Charlie exhaled loudly, but he struggled to feel annoyed. Fleur looked so amused that he struggled not to smile. He placed his head into his hands and laughed at his own expense.
“I mean it, though. The way Bill will have said it, it won’t be right. He doesn’t get it.”
“No, I suppose ‘e wouldn’t.”
“It’s not about anything ‘doing it’ for me, it’s not anything to do with… She’s my best friend, y’know? That’s what it is. He doesn’t understand that.” Charlie shrugged. “I’m not sure if anyone does. The more I hear people speak about this sort of thing, the more I feel like I am a bit different when it comes to this.”
Fleur put down her mug. She nodded, slowly and thoughtfully.
“Yes, I zink so,” she said.
“You’re really good at making people feel better, has anyone ever told you that?”
“I am not trying to make you feel better, I am just saying ‘ow it is,” Fleur told him. “Because of my grandmuzzer, most people react when zey first get to know me. Either zey are drawn towards me, or it is like zey are angered by me. You ‘ave noticed zat, no?”
Of course Charlie had noticed the effect Fleur had on people. How could he not have? He nodded his head.
“But you do not understand zis,” said Fleur. It was a statement, not a question. “Some people don’t react. I can always tell when zey don’t.”
“Why don’t they?”
“I suppose because zey are just a bit different. Did you meet my parents at our wedding?”
“Yeah.”
“In zat case, you must ‘ave seen that my muzzer is much better looking zan Papa,” Fleur said. Charlie wasn’t sure how to respond. “It is true. When I was young, people used to say it all the time. Zey used to make jokes about it.”
Charlie could imagine the jokes. He didn’t need to imagine them, his brothers had made them at the wedding.
“Once, I asked ‘er why she loved ‘im, when zere were so many more ‘andsome wizards she could ‘ave loved. And she said zat she ‘ad never noticed zem. She said zat for some people, love comes in by the eyes, but it never ‘ad for ‘er. For ‘er, it was because of everything else zat she fell in love, and it was only zen zat it got to ‘er eyes.”
“That makes sense.”
Fleur smiled. “I was zinking it might. It never made sense to me until Bill got attacked, but now I understand it, too. I’d like to zink zat if it ‘ad been me, zat Bill would ‘ave understood it, but…”
“He would,” Charlie tried to assure her, but she did not appear to need any reassurance at all.
“Per’aps. Per’aps not. It does not matter now, does it?” She waved a dismissive hand. “What I am saying is, I zink zat you are like my muzzer.”
“Only not quite as good looking.”
“Well, no. Obviously not.”
Charlie was too tickled by the bluntness of her response to even be remotely offended by it. He chuckled, before raising his eyes to the ceiling.
“I should go and talk to her. Artemis, I mean, not your mum.”
He found Artemis in her room, the door to which she had left open. He knocked on it anyway.
“Is it alright if I come in?” he asked. Artemis glowered at him for a moment before shrugging her shoulders. Charlie took that as an affirmative response. “Thanks.”
He hesitated by the door. Fleur was still around, and he would have preferred to have this conversation in private, but he knew that no good would come from him closing it completely. He left it slightly ajar and joined Artemis on the bed.
“What do you want?” she said.
There were many things that Charlie wanted. He started with the simplest thing.
“I want you to come to Mum’s for Christmas. Please. It’ll be rubbish without you. You should come.”
“Really?” Artemis muttered. “Because I wouldn’t have thought you’d want me there, seeing as I don’t really care that much.”
Charlie just about managed to stop himself from sighing.
“Yeah, alright. I shouldn’t have said that. I know you care. I’m sorry. For that and for the whole ‘losing a friend’ thing. I honestly wasn’t talking about Rowan. I wasn’t even thinking about Rowan, if I had thought about it, then I’d never…” He paused. “But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Well, I didn’t think about what I was saying and what that meant, and so I ended up hurting you. You see?”
Artemis said nothing, just stared at Charlie with her lips pursed.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want anyone to hurt you, honestly, but I definitely don’t want to be the one who hurts you,” Charlie explained. “And I know you don’t want to be the one who hurts me, either. I mean, do you?”
It felt like an age before Artemis answered, “No.”
“That’s a relief.” Charlie was only half-joking, but Artemis’ lips twitched anyway. “So, you get it, right? Why I was asking you to think before—”
“Did you think before you kissed me?” asked Artemis. “About what might happen after?”
“I thought one of us or both of us might die after. I didn’t really have the time to think much past that, I’m afraid.”
It was true, in a way. Over the years, Charlie had spent a lot of time thinking about what might happen after, but that night at the battle, he hadn’t thought at all.
“It’s different now, though,” he said. “There’s all the time in the world. That’s why it’s better to take some time to think about this, isn’t it?”
Artemis was silent. Her front teeth grazed her bottom lip, her eyes stared at her hands in her lap. When she finally lifted her gaze to look at Charlie, he could see that they were filled with such deep apprehension that it bordered on fear.
“No,” she said, with a little shake of her head. “I don’t want to do that.”
Charlie shrugged his shoulders. “Alright.”
“It’s not…”
“No, I know. I get it,” Charlie told her. “Really, it’s alright.” He meant it. He understood that fear. He had felt it himself. “Still friends?”
“Of course.” Artemis gave him the smallest hint of a smile. “Still friends.”
For a moment, Charlie considered hugging her, but it felt almost inappropriate to do so now. Instead, he held out his hand for her to shake, a decision he immediately regretted. As Artemis’ sceptical eyes travelled slowly from his face to his hand, his insides curdled with embarrassment.
After an excruciating few seconds, she shook his hand. Once she had let go, he rubbed his fingertips against his own palm. It felt distinctly empty without hers pressed against it. And, maybe it was the open bedroom window, but the air between them felt distinctly colder than he could remember it ever being.
Neither of them spoke. For the first time in years, Charlie wasn’t sure what he should say to Artemis. They were still friends, but the stillness between them had never been this stiff before, their companionable silence so uncomfortable.
Something had changed, somehow. It didn’t matter that Charlie had been trying to do the right thing, something had gone wrong, or had just gone. He didn’t know where it had gone, or how, it just had.
Worst of all, he didn’t even know if he’d ever get it back again.
A/N: I’m a sucker for the yearning. Hopefully, you guys like it, too. @thethreebroomsticksfic’s Yule Bash prompt: ‘family dinner’.
Warnings: angst, references to character death and strained family relationships, ALL the sexual tension.
15th December, 1998
Shell Cottage had been illuminated by dainty white lights, but the house was completely quiet. Artemis was starting to think that she might be the only one in the building, but as she walked through the sitting room, she found Charlie perched on an armchair, Fergus stretched across the back of it behind his shoulders and an open book on his lap.
“Oh.” Artemis stopped in her tracks. “You’re here.”
Charlie didn’t even look up from his book. “Good evening to you, too.”
“That’s not… Good evening. Where are Bill and Fleur?”
“They’ve gone out. I got the feeling that they wanted some time on their own.”
Which meant that she and Charlie were also on their own, Artemis realised. She was suddenly all too aware of the fact, all too aware of him: the way one of his feet rested on his knee, the noise his fingertips made as they turned a page of his book, the fabric of his shirt stretching over the muscles of his chest as it rose with his breath.
Artemis wasn’t sure why she had started thinking about Charlie in this way. She only knew when she had started; that night they swam in the sea together. Until then, he had always just been Charlie, ever-present and consistent, so familiar that he was more like family than he was a friend. Noticing him like this, wanting him like this, it was wrong.
And yet, she couldn’t stop.
She had assumed that kissing him would make these strange feelings subside. After all, he had kissed her before, only once and in the spur of the moment. It had been so sudden and quick that she had barely noticed what it felt like. She reasoned that this was why she was so curious about it now, and she had thought that kissing him again — just once, to make it even — would get it out of her system.
She had been wrong. If anything, it had made matters worse. Now, not only was she more aware of him than ever, but she also couldn’t help but wonder if he was as conscious of her as she was of him.
“You alright?”
Charlie’s eyebrows furrowed as he looked at her over the top of the book. She had been staring. Artemis blinked and shook her head.
“I’m fine, I just…” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “I’m going out as well. It’s the last night of Hanukkah, so I’m going up to Dorset for dinner with Newt and Tina.”
She had managed to avoid visiting her relatives for a week, but after eight nights, she could put it off no longer. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see her great-aunt and uncle, it was more a question of who else she might find at their house.
“Looks like it’s just you and me tonight, Fergus,” said Charlie. He reached up behind him and scratched Fergus beneath the chin. The cat leant into his touch, and Artemis felt something tighten within her.
“Unless you want to come with me?”
At the look on Charlie’s face, Artemis realised that she had spoken out loud. He tilted his head slightly at her.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I mean, I don’t want to intrude on your family’s dinner.”
“You won’t be,” replied Artemis. Charlie looked unconvinced. “Why would you be intruding?”
“Because I’m not Jewish—”
“I don’t think I am, either.”
“— and I’ve not been invited.”
“I’m inviting you now,” Artemis said. “You should come. It’ll be more fun if you come.”
“What actually happens at Hanukkah?” Charlie asked, once the two of them had Apparated to the front garden of Newt and Tina’s house overlooking the cliffs, where a Knarl was rummaging in one of the hedges. “I don’t really know anything about it. What is it celebrating?”
“Oil.”
“Oil?”
Artemis nodded. “Yeah, I’ve never really got the oil thing. Then again, I’ve never really got why Christmas is all about one baby, either. But basically, it’s just eating food and playing games with your family.”
Though his face remained passive, Charlie stiffened ever so slightly. “With all of your family?” he asked, a note of concern in his voice. Artemis bit her lip.
“I dunno. I didn’t ask.”
“So, your brother might be there?”
“That’s sort of why I’ve been putting off going,” Artemis admitted. “And it’s why I’m glad you’re coming, too. If you’re there I won’t have to talk to Jacob so much.”
“Great.” Charlie shrugged his broad shoulders and put his hands into his pockets. Artemis fought the urge to touch his arm as it brushed past her own. “Alright, let’s do this.”
They walked up to the front door, and Artemis raised her hand to the thunderbird-shaped door knocker. She knocked three times, and the door opened to reveal an elderly witch with bobbed grey hair and wrinkles around her sparkling dark eyes.
“Happy Hanukkah, Aunt Tina,” said Artemis as her great-aunt enveloped her into a hug. “I hope you don’t mind, I’ve brought a friend with me. You remember Charlie, right?”
“Of course, honey. Gosh, it’s been years since I last saw you,” Aunt Tina told Charlie, brushing away his outstretched hand and kissing him on the cheek. Charlie’s freckled face grew pink, and Artemis averted her eyes. “You’re a lot taller than I remember.”
“Trust me, I’m not.” Charlie laughed as they stepped inside. “Wider, maybe.”
“Oh, shush.” Tina closed the door behind them. “I’m just starting on the latkes. Do you both want some?”
Charlie glanced at Artemis, his brown eyes filled with confusion. Artemis nodded her head.
“We’d love some,” she told Tina, who turned towards the kitchen. Lowering her voice, Artemis leaned in towards Charlie and added, “You’ll like them. They’re potatoes, they’re good.”
Walking through the dining room, Artemis noted that only three places had been set at the dinner table. She breathed, feeling the tension leave her. It was only her that had been expected. Not Jacob, not her mother, just her. Her and Charlie.
Charlie was also looking at the laid table, but his eyes were not on the plates. He was looking at the centrepiece in the middle, where nine candles stood on a gold branched candlestick, all but one of them alight with a small flame.
“It’s called a menorah,” Artemis told him. “You light one each night for eight nights. You can light the last one now, if you like.”
“I dunno if that’s…”
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
Artemis pulled her wand from her pocket and pointed it at the middle candle. It flickered, and then a spark flashed into the air, igniting to form a tiny flame that hovered over the menorah.
“This one lights all the others,” she explained, guiding the tiny light with her wand towards the final candle, where it came to rest on the wick. “The story is that the candles burned for eight days. The lights should have all gone out after the first night, but they never did.”
“Like in the song,” murmured Charlie. Artemis frowned. “You know, the one with the bus.”
He hummed gently. He was standing so close to her that she could feel him humming as much as she could hear him. She turned her face from the candles to look at him, her eyebrows still knitted together.
“You like that song, don’t you?” Charlie asked. His face was close to hers. She could count every freckle on his nose.
“Yeah, but how do you know…”
“Tina said you were here,” said a voice from behind them, and they both stepped away from one another. The voice was that of Artemis’ great-uncle, who was standing in the corner of the room, leaning on a stick. He held his free arm out and Artemis strode across the room to be hugged by him. He sighed. “I suppose I’ll just tell her I said you could light the menorah without her again.”
On the table, the nine candles continued to flicker without fading, bathing the room in a warm glow as dinner was served and eaten. The four of them talked easily, sharing stories about the distant places they had travelled to, and the creatures they had encountered along the way. In the chair beside Artemis, Charlie appeared to be well within his comfort zone, almost entirely at ease. Artemis, on the other hand, was restless, unable to keep her hands or feet still. One leg bounced against her will, and every time she looked down at it, she could see how little distance there was between Charlie’s knee and her own. Even through the stiff material of his jeans, she could see the muscle of his upper leg, and when the plates had been vanished from the table, she sat on her hands to stop herself from reaching out and placing one of them on his thigh. She was relieved when the plates were replaced by a dreidel and pile of chocolate coins, and even more relieved when her great-uncle’s Niffler appeared out of nowhere and scampered away with the coins. Anything to keep her mind and hands busy, so that neither could come to rest on Charlie.
By the time the evening had ended, and they left the warmth of the house for the bracing chill of the clifftop garden. The wind was stronger and the waves crashed louder here than the did at the beach of Shell Cottage. The path that led away from the gate was right on the very edge of the cliff. Artemis could see the way the rocks dropped down sharply, though the beach and the sea below were cloaked in the darkness.
“That was fun,” Charlie told her. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“Thanks for coming with me,” said Artemis. Her words were followed by a pause she felt desperate to fill. “How did you like Hanukkah?”
“It was interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“Good interesting,” Charlie clarified. “I feel like I learned a lot.”
“About Hanukkah, you mean?”
“Yeah. And about you, which is a strange feeling. I thought I had run out of things to learn about you years ago.”
He half-laughed, but Artemis stayed silent, unsure how to respond.
“Right, who is Apparating?” asked Charlie.
“I can.”
Artemis held out her arm, and Charlie placed his own on top of it. Artemis did not Apparate. Instead, she stayed still, more still than she had been all night, her eyes on Charlie’s thumb, which was now resting on the knuckle of her little finger.
“What’s wrong?” she heard Charlie ask. She said nothing in response. “Artemis?” He lifted his arm away from hers, and she lifted her face to look at him. “Artemis…”
“Charlie.”
Months before, in the midst of a battle, Charlie had kissed her. Days before, during a quiet respite from a celebration, she had kissed him. Right here and now, standing on the edge of the world, she wasn’t sure who kissed who. All she knew was their lips pressed against one another’s, her hands on the back of his neck, his on the base of her back. She didn’t know who had Apparated, but the next thing she knew was that they were crashing through a shell-covered door into the kitchen of Bill and Fleur’s house.
She had thought she had known everything about Charlie, the boy who had called her his best friend. She had thought, like he had, that she had run out of things to learn about him years ago, but now there was so much more she wanted to learn about him, that she needed to learn about him, this man who was kissing her like his life depended on it.
Without her even realising it, he had grown taller and wider and stronger, and now every part of her longed to learn more about everything she had missed, every muscle in his body and every freckle on his skin. From the way that he pulled her closer to him, she assumed he felt the same way about her. She wanted him to feel the same way about her. She wanted him to want her.
CRACK!
Only a noise that loud could have pulled Artemis’ attention away from the kiss that was captivating her entirely. It was as if a firecracker had gone off outside the door, and both Artemis and Charlie turned towards the noise, which was followed by the sounds of hushed voices, which she recognised as those of Bill and Fleur. Without saying a word, she and Charlie jumped back away from one another, as quickly as if they had been burned. It was barely quick enough, for the door opened a split second later, and Charlie’s brother and sister-in-law entered the kitchen, hand in hand.
“Didn’t think you two would still be up,” Bill said. Artemis made a non-commital noise and Charlie shrugged his shoulders.
“‘Ave you been ‘aving fun?”
Charlie paused for just a moment before answering Fleur’s question. “Yeah, I’d say so. Yeah.”
Artemis bit the inside of her cheek and lowered her eyes to the ground, trying her hardest not to laugh. As soon as Bill and Fleur had retired upstairs, she allowed the mask to slip, stepping closer to Charlie and bursting into quiet giggles that were muffled by his chest. Charlie stayed stock still, and when Artemis looked at him, she saw that he was not even smiling.
“What are we doing?” His voice was so soft that it was almost a whisper. Artemis smiled.
“‘Aving fun?” When Charlie didn’t laugh at her impression of Fleur, she took a step away from him. “Honestly, I dunno.”
“I think I need you to know,” said Charlie. His head was lowered, his eyes on his feet. It were as if he were talking to the ground rather than to Artemis.
“Why?”
“Because,” Charlie shrugged, “this isn’t a game, is it?”
“Obviously not.”
To prove it to him, Artemis raised her hands to Charlie’s face, but he picked up her wrists and lifted them away from him. She felt a knot tighten in her core as he shook his head.
“Then what is it? What does this mean?”
“I told you, I don’t know,” Artemis replied. She could feel her patience wearing thin. “I don’t see why it has to mean anything. Why can’t it just feel right and good and be fun?”
The look on Charlie’s face was one of resignation. “You know that’s never been enough for me.”
Artemis couldn’t help but be irritated by his words, by the unfairness of them. After all, he had kissed her first. It had been enough for him when the world had been falling down in pieces around them, what was different now? She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
“Not with anyone, and definitely not with you,” Charlie continued. He looked at her and sighed heavily. “You’re my best friend. I care too much about you to—”
“And you don’t think I care?” Artemis asked.
“— risk anything. That isn’t what I said. Of course I think you care.”
“Well, it doesn’t feel like it.”
“In all fairness, Artie, it doesn’t feel like you really do care all that much when you invite me for dinner with your family, kiss me like that, and then say it’s all just a bit of fun to you.”
Charlie hadn’t raised his voice, but his tone was short. Enraged, Artemis’ arms dropped to her side and her mouth fell open. Before she could argue back, Charlie held up both his hands.
“I’m not trying to be an arse, I’m just trying to… I can’t…” Charlie’s voice tailed off and he screwed his eyes shut, as if he were in pain. “I’ve already lost enough people this year.”
“Why does that have anything—”
“Because it means that I’m not prepared to go about my life doing whatever I want without thinking about what might happen, not when what might happen is that I lose my best friend.”
Each word from Charlie’s lips felt like a knife cutting into Artemis, twisting painfully in her sides, her stomach, her heart. She shrunk away from him.
“Like I did with Rowan, you mean?”
Her question came out as a hoarse whisper and it hung in the air between them like a shroud.
“No,” Charlie said, gently but firmly. “That is not what I mean.”
Artemis wasn’t sure whether or not she believed him. She didn’t know what to believe, or think, or say. She wanted to scream, but her throat had closed and all the air had disappeared from her lungs. She glanced at the back door, but it had closed behind Bill and Fleur when they had come in, and now she was trapped here. Her heart started racing,each beat coming faster than the one before it.
“Artie…”
A hand on her shoulder. Even if he hadn’t been the only person in the room with her, she’d have known it to be Charlie’s. She flinched away from it, and when it reached for her once more, lashed out at it once more with her own hand.
Pushing past Charlie, she went deeper into the house in the direction of the stairs. She could hear him quietly calling after her, but she didn’t stop until she was in the guest bedroom she had been calling her own, though it wasn’t really hers at all. She pointed her wand at the window and watched it fly open before shutting the door behind her.
The noise it made was so loud it caused Fergus to jump awake on her bed. Artemis bit her lip as she crossed the room to get to him.
“I’m sorry,” she told the cat, picking him up and holding him to her chest.
Fergus did not try to escape from her arms. He purred softly as Artemis cradled him, burying her face in his fur until she felt her pounding heart start to slow and ache.
It had been a long time since Charlie had spent a birthday at home. He hadn’t wanted to make much of a fuss about it — it was hardly like twenty-six was a great landmark, after all — but when his mother had suggested throwing a small party to celebrate, he had felt obliged to agree to it. It had been a harder year for her than it had for anyone, and he could hardly begrudge her something that would make her happy.
But of course, one thing had led to another, and now Shell Cottage was filled to the brim with friends and family.
It wasn’t that Charlie wasn’t grateful. These days, he was grateful that he still had enough friends and family left to fill Bill and Fleur’s home, but he had never really enjoyed being the centre of attention, and he still wasn’t comfortable with it now. Still, if it made everyone else happy to string up some balloons and watch him blow out two dozen and two candles, he’d grin and bear it. There had been enough cause for misery this year; it was nice to have something to celebrate instead.
Even so, putting on a fake smile and trying to ignore the missing faces in the crowd was taking its toll. Not only that, but the noise and the stuffy heat and the several shots of Firewhiskey he’d been poured by his brothers and friends were starting to get to him, causing his head to pound and making him feel dizzy. He longed for some quiet and fresh air, but with all the focus on him, he was finding it hard to get either, especially when the party had now started to spill out of the house and onto the beach.
Instead, he excused himself to use the bathroom, and having splashed some cold water onto his face and wrists, sat by the open window in the room of the house he had been calling home for just over six months now. Back at the Burrow, he would have snuck out onto his secret spot on the roof, but tonight, this would have to do.
It may not have been the roof, but watching from the window as some of his guests danced on the beach, Charlie’s mind started to ease. He was used to looking and loving from afar. He had been loving from afar for as long as he could remember: loving his parents from Hogwarts, loving all his family and friends from Romania, loving the dragons he worked with from a safe distance, loving Artemis more than she would ever realise.
He could cope with watching his loved ones from a window. Perhaps he could even cope with going back down to join them. It was his party, after all.
“I thought I’d find you up here,” a voice said from behind him. Charlie smiled, and turned away from the window to see Artemis leaning in the doorway, holding a small and haphazardly wrapped parcel in her hands. “Your mum went looking for you outside.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. She just thought you’d go out there.”
Charlie shook his head. “I mean, why is she looking for me?”
“She wants to do the cake before you have any more Firewhiskey. I think she’s worried that the candles might set alight rather than blowing out if you have another drink.”
“I’m not that drunk,” Charlie told her, though in truth the world around him seemed to spin a little.
“Shame. I was quite looking forward to it.” Artemis giggled. She began to fiddle with the parcel in her hands, passing it back and forth, from one hand to another. Charlie nodded his head at it.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“A birthday present.”
“For me?”
“No, for the other person whose birthday it is today.” Artemis rolled her eyes. “Of course it’s for you.”
“But you already got me a present.”
“Yeah, well. This is another one.” With a shrug, she walked across the room to him, pressing the parcel into his hands. “Here you go. I’d open it now, if I were you.”
“Why?”
“Because your mum and brothers might have some comments if you open it in front of them, that’s all.”
There was a mischievous look in Artemis’ eyes that made Charlie frown and smile at the same time. He unwrapped the present, his smile widening as he held up the item.
“That’s amazing,” he said, laughing out loud. “I can’t believe you managed to find these in adults’ sizes.”
“You can find anything if you look hard enough,” Artemis replied. “Obviously, I didn’t know what size to get you. And I didn’t know what the original ones looked like, but—”
“These are great. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Just don’t let your brothers bury these ones on the beach.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Charlie, and he folded up the pair of dragon-patterned boxer shorts. “Really, though. Thank you, Artie. This is really thoughtful.”
“Yeah, well. You never know when you might need a pair of lucky pants. Let’s just hope these are luckier than the last pair.”
“I think they are, you know. I have a good feeling about these ones.” Charlie nodded. “I guess I’d better go downstairs and blow out these candles and make a wish, then.”
He made to move, but Artemis shook her head.
“Wait a second,” she said.
“Why, what—”
“Just hold on,” Artemis told him, frowning slightly. Charlie opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, but she shook her head. “Just don’t… Don’t say anything, okay?”
Charlie shrugged silently, not sure why exactly he had to be quiet, or what was going…
On.
Artemis took a step closer to him, placing her hands on his shoulders, and bringing her face so close to his that he could feel the slightly shaky breath she drew. He held his own, scarcely daring to move as she brought her lips to his.
It took a moment for Charlie to realise what was happening, and several more to believe it. But no, his hands were on her waist, and he was pulling her closer to him, and she was responding in suit, her fingers moving up the sides of his neck and burying in his hair as her mouth parted his own.
But as soon as he’d accepted the fact that it was real, the hands at the back of his head had moved away, and so too had Artemis. Charlie blinked, and let his hands fall away.
“Hm,” said Artemis. She stood up straight and nodding, an unreadable expression on her face.
Charlie wanted to ask her what she was thinking — in fact, there were many things he wanted to ask her — but he’d agreed not to say anything, and besides, he was lost for words. Artemis stepped backwards, her thoughts still unfathomable.
“Happy birthday, by the way.”
With that, she walked out of the room, leaving Charlie dumbstruck. He watched until she was out of sight, before taking a deep breath and standing up. He had candles to blow out.
It was only as he got to the door that he realised he was still holding the folded dragon boxers in his hand. He turned back and put them down on his bed before retracing his steps, a small smile playing on his lips.
A/N: One night last November, my friend decided that it would be fun to go swimming in the sea. In my naïvety, I went along with it, thinking ‘how cold can it be?’. Turns out, pretty cold. It was horrible, and I hated almost every second of it. In the one second after the initial shock had worn off but before the mild hypothermia set in, the world went still. And in the stillness and darkness, a little voice in my head went “oh”. I went home, and I wrote the first draft of this chapter in the early hours of the morning.
This edited version is being submitted for @thethreebroomsticksfic’s Yule Bash, the prompt being ‘Frozen’.
Warnings: partial nudity and discussions of grief.
6th December, 1998
Night had fallen fast. It was not yet late, but still the only light came from the houses along the bay, from the village harbour to Shell Cottage, perched on the dunes at the top of the beach.
Artemis shivered through her knitwear and coat as she wandered along the darkened shore, the gently ebbing waves not quite reaching her feet. At least she was well wrapped up; the weather had turned decidedly wintry, despite it only being the start of December, and being so close to the ocean made it even colder. The wind that blew in over the sea was gentle but chilling.
The high tide made the beach smaller at this time of the evening. Artemis was grateful for that, it made it easier for her to find what — or rather, who — she was looking for in the dark. It was not long before she encountered Charlie standing at the water’s edge, looking out to where the sea blended seamlessly with the night sky.
“I thought I noticed you slip away after dinner,” she said as she approached him. “Mind if I join you?”
“Of course not,” Charlie replied, his face still turned towards the invisible horizon. “It’s cold, though.”
“I don’t mind. I’ve got layers on.”
Charlie exhaled, and Artemis squinted to see him better. He was always quiet, but had been more reticent than usual since their encounter with the Boggart the day before. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she could see the tears that were threatening his eyes. She stayed silent, somehow able to tell that if Charlie wanted to talk, he’d talk.
“I can’t believe it,” he said eventually. “It’s almost Christmas.”
Artemis nodded, though she doubted he could see her. “Yeah.”
“I mean, I knew that it’s almost Christmas, but I’ve been so busy with doing stuff to the house, and now tonight everyone won’t stop talking about it.” Charlie swallowed. “It just seems like we keep hitting all these horrible milestones, that’s all. One week, one month, six months. Now it’s going to be Christmas and then New Year and birthdays, and a whole year, and… I don’t know.”
Charlie might not have known, but Artemis did. Grief wasn’t new to her. It might have been nine years ago that Rowan had died, but she still remembered every emotion she had felt after losing her best friend, even now.
“I do. I know,” she told Charlie, and he looked at her for the first time, an apologetic look in his eyes. “Don’t, it’s fine. You’re right, though. The first year’s the hardest.”
“So another six months and it’ll get easier?”
The hope in Charlie’s voice made Artemis frown.
“Not exactly,” she said. “The reminders just get less frequent, that’s all.”
“Does it ever get easier?”
“Sort of, yeah. Well, no. Maybe? It’s more that you just get used to how hard it is, so it doesn’t hurt quite so much. Life goes on, and so do you, somehow.”
“Great,” Charlie muttered. “Lots to look forward to, then.”
“Would you prefer it if I lied to you?”
Charlie sighed before replying.
“No. I’d only be able to tell that you were lying, then I’d feel twice as bad,” he said. “Sorry, I know you’re only trying to help. You are helping, it’s just… It’s going to be tough. Lots of reminders. I’m guessing they never go away.”
“Sadly not.” Artemis took her hand out of her pocket and linked arms with Charlie, resting her head on his shoulder. “And you never really know when to expect them, either. They just pop up out of nowhere. They can be nice, though. Sometimes you remember things that you’d forgotten even happened before.”
She hadn’t been expecting Charlie to laugh, but he did. She lifted her head to look at him quizzically.
“I had that tonight,” he explained.
“Did you?” Artemis asked, and Charlie hummed in response. “What did you remember?”
“It was earlier, when we all walked over the beach before dinner. It reminded me of one time when we were younger,” he said, half-smiling as he looked back out at the black expanse of sea. “My aunt used to own this house, and we came here every summer for a holiday. One year — it must’ve been our first or second year at Hogwarts — we came here for Christmas as well, and on Christmas Eve, Mum sent us all out for a walk so she could get everything ready in peace.
“Well, we were just walking down the beach and everyone was getting bored because it was cold, and moaning that they wanted to go back in, and Mum really wanted us to stay outside for as long as possible. So, Bill had the great idea of having a competition as to who out of him and me would be ballsy enough to get into the water naked and stay in there the longest.”
“In December?” Artemis wrinkled her nose. “Wouldn’t that be—”
“Freezing? Yeah, it was.”
“You did it?”
“Of course I did. Couldn’t lose face to Bill in front of the others,” said Charlie. “But, as soon as we were in the sea and not looking, Fred stole all my clothes and buried them on the beach.”
“He didn’t!”
“He did. Little git. I never saw my lucky pants again, they’re probably still buried in the sand dunes somewhere. Lost forever.”
“How could they be lucky if they got stolen and lost?” Artemis asked, before giving Charlie a knowing look. “Did they have dragons on them?”
Charlie pulled a face. “Is that the only thing you think I care about?”
“They had dragons on them, didn’t they?”
“Yes, they did.”
“I knew it.” Artemis grinned. “Did you at least win the bet? Did you stay in the water longer than Bill?”
“Of course I did. You know I’m tougher than Bill.”
“That and you were probably too embarrassed to get out of the water without your clothes.”
“Rubbish. I just didn’t mind being in the cold water, that’s all,” Charlie said. Artemis raised one sceptical eyebrow, and he shrugged. “No, really. Once you get used to it, it’s really not that bad.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
“It’s true. Try it if you don’t believe me.”
“Very funny. I’m not falling for that.” Artemis laughed. “You want me to believe you, you get in and prove it yourself.”
To Artemis’ surprise, Charlie nodded.
“Alright. I’ll go in if you go in,” he said, his eyes meeting hers. Artemis looked at him sceptically, and a daring look flickered in his eyes, visible even in the dark. “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me that Artemis Hexley is scared of a little cold water.”
“I’m not scared, I just can’t tell if this is a trick.”
“It’s not. I promise.”
After nearly twelve years of friendship, Artemis knew that Charlie wouldn’t go back on a promise. So, she nodded.
“Fine. But I’m keeping my underwear on,” she said firmly. “And don’t look while I take the rest off.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
More out of principle than anything else, Artemis waited until Charlie turned away before undressing herself. She doubted that he would have been able to really see anything, it was too dark for that. It was just as well, as by the time she had stripped down to her pants and crop top, Charlie was just in his boxers. Artemis didn’t really fancy checking to see whether or not they had dragons on them.
Her clothes now strewn on the sand, the cold night air was flush against her skin, and she was covered in goosebumps. She picked up her knitted hat and put it back on her head, in a futile attempt to recover some of the warmth she’d already lost, knowing that she was only going to get colder from this point forward.
Both shivering, she and Charlie fixed their eyes determinedly on the water that they were about to brave.
“It’s better if you run and go in right up to your shoulders,” Charlie informed her. “Ready?”
“Always ready. Born ready.”
“Alright, on three. One, two, THREE!”
The pair of them ran into the sea, shouting and screaming and swearing at the top of their lungs as they plunged into the icy water, so cold it was almost painful. As the sea around her got deeper, Artemis’ breathing got shallower, the water making her chest tight.
“Not that b-bad?” she said through chattering jaws. “This is-s horrid!”
“Just swim a bit,” Charlie said, already swimming away from her. “You’ll soon warm up.”
“Liar,” Artemis muttered, but she followed suit, paddling after him through the inky icy ocean.
They swam deeper into the sea before returning to the shallows. She couldn’t tell if the water had gotten warmer, or if she had gotten used to how cold it was, but by the time she was back in her depth the pain had subsided. She was still cold, but at least she could breathe a little easier.
It was darker in the water than it was on the shore, and by the time she could see Charlie, they were right beside one another, facing each other, so close they were almost touching. Their eyes met, and for a brief moment it was as if the whole world no longer existed. It was just them, together in the endless expanse of darkness.
Artemis realised that she wasn’t breathing, and she raised her face skywards, where at least the stars gave the tiniest specks of light against the otherwise pitch-black backdrop. There really were a lot of stars tonight. A multitude of stars.
“You’re frozen,” she heard Charlie murmur, and she dropped her gaze from the skies to his face once more.
She had forgotten how cold she was, and now that Charlie had pointed it out, she could feel how badly she was trembling. She instinctively stepped even closer to him, the fabric of her sodden crop top against his bare chest, and a great shudder went through her whole body. Charlie placed his hands on her upper arms and rubbed them with his thumbs. His touch was as gentle as his fingertips were rough. She could only assume that he was trying to warm her up, but it was no use. Charlie was shivering almost as much as she was.
“I thought you said it wasn’t that c-cold,” Artemis whispered.
“No, I d-didn’t,” Charlie replied, his shaky voice also quiet. “I said it wasn’t that bad.”
Artemis’ quivering lips curved into a small smile. Charlie had a point. It was strange, but there was something about this that wasn’t that bad at all.
Day 3 of @thethreebroomsticksfic Twelve Days of Yule Bash! Today was inspired by the prompts Auld Land Syne and New Year's Kiss.
A recently dumped Teddy Lupin is fully prepared to spend his New Year's Eve alone.
Thankfully Vic is there to keep him from wallowing too much.
Read on AO3
Snippet:
‘Gee Teddy, got enough room out here with all your friends?’
Teddy couldn’t help the way his mood lifted at the sight of Victoire’s strawberry blonde head as she scrambled through his window. Once she was on the roof, she straightened up with a flick of her hair and proudly held out a bottle of pilfered champagne for his inspection.
‘What are you doing here? I thought you were at Sarah Anderson’s.’
Vic shrugged as she settled next to him. ‘It was all just people trying to find someone to snog at midnight while getting drunk on cheap booze.’ She skillfully opened the bottle of champagne with a smart pop and took a swig before handing it to Teddy.
‘So you decided to come here and steal Nan’s instead?’
Victoire took the bottle from Teddy with a roll of her eyes. ‘You know Mama always says Andromeda is the only Englishwoman she has ever met with good taste in wine,’ she said before taking a long swig of her own.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
A/N: Things take a scary turn when Charlie and Artemis go looking for Christmas decorations. This chapter matches @thethreebroomsticksfic’s Yule Bash prompt ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’.
Warnings: discussion about survivor’s guilt and PTSD
5th December, 1998
Charlie had always liked doing things by hand. There was something to be said about doing things the hard way, the Muggle way. He had made a point of learning to put up a tent without magic, to fix his own clothes with a needle and thread, and to make necklaces with hand-carved wooden pendants. In doing so, he had developed rough fingertips, a lot of patience, and a sense of unmatched satisfaction at seeing his finished work.
He found that keeping his hands busy kept his mind at ease. After the war ended and the funerals of those he had loved and lost — Tonks and Fred being the two that most affected him — he had quickly attempted to return to work. His work had sent him home. He needed time, his boss had told him. Time to heal, time to be. Charlie had disagreed, but his arguments had been dismissed.
He didn’t need time. He didn’t need to be, he needed to do.
That was how he had ended up with his current project: rebuilding his parents’ house. It was a project that was taking longer than he anticipated, even with the help of his younger brothers. Having never renovated a house before, Charlie had no idea how much he had taken on until it was too late. He had wanted it finished by Christmas, but had realised in October that he would either need to rethink his schedule or resort to doing everything by magic. He had chosen the former.
Now, at the start of December, the Burrow was still nowhere near to being the perfectly imperfect home Charlie remembered from his childhood, but that didn’t matter. Much of the house had originally been built by magic, and so he had needed to use magic to reconstruct its skeleton, but he had promised himself that he would do everything he could by hand, and he had stuck to his promise.
It was now a case of making sure that the Burrow would be Christmas-worthy in the next two weeks. It had been Artemis who had suggested to him that no one would even look at the unfinished parts if there were enough decorations up to distract people from them.
“It’s called a missed erection,” she had informed him, with the utmost confidence in her convictions.
She had made a good enough point that Charlie hadn’t bothered to correct her on her mistake. The following day, the two of them had ended up venturing into Diagon Alley, the key to Charlie’s brothers’ old shop tucked into the back pocket of Artemis’ jeans.
“George still hasn’t been back here?” Artemis asked quietly as she unlocked the door and they entered the eerily quiet Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. She closed the door behind her, and immediately opened one of the windows.
Charlie shook his head. He didn’t think anyone had been in here since the shop had been forced to close, not even Verity the former shopgirl, who he had met for the first time at Fred’s funeral.
“George said there are a load of decorations in the storeroom,” said Charlie, before his thoughts could get away from him and linger on memories of the day they had buried his little brother. “Let’s go and have a look.”
The storeroom was enormous, and filled with shelves upon shelves of unsold stock and cardboard boxes. It was hard to know where to begin to search, but without even needing to voice a plan, he and Artemis lit their wands and crossed to opposite ends of the room.
Charlie made his way along shelves at the rightmost end of the storeroom, using his wandlight to illuminate each and every box he could find. At the end of the shelves stood an upright cupboard with doors. Charlie tried to open it. It was locked.
“Artie?” he called out, looking at the keyhole and handle. “There wasn’t a second key, was there? Smaller than the one for the main door, possibly made of brass?”
“No. Why?”
“Never mind.” Charlie pointed his wand at the door. “Alohamora.” The door clicked quietly, and Charlie reached out to open it with his spare hand. “I wonder what he’s done with…”
His sentence hung unfinished in the air. It was not the only thing that hung there.
Hovering in front of Charlie’s face was a mass of green and grey smoke, which began to twist and contort itself into the shape of a skull. Slowly, the skull’s mouth opened, and from it a shadowy snake slid towards him.
Charlie’s hands fell to his sides, completely slack, and he dropped his wand. As it hit the floor at his feet, it deluminated, plunging him into darkness. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he could hear someone calling out his name, but he could barely hear it over the sound of his own pulse hammering away in his ears.
“Charlie?”
He felt a soft pressure on his shoulder, but he did not look to see what it was. He could look nowhere but at the shadow-skull, the smoke-snake, the greenish glow that made tears sting his eyes and his stomach churn.
The pressure on his shoulder became a tug at his arm which grew stronger with each pull. When he stumbled backwards, his eye contact was broken, and so too was the floating skull’s trance. He turned to see Artemis at his side, her fingers gripping his upper arm.
“Come on,” she said. “This way, come on.”
Charlie was in no mood to put up a fight. He felt far too weak for that. He had barely made it out of the storeroom before his legs were unable to support his weight, and he had to lean against one of the shop walls. Artemis placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him down the wall until he was sitting on the floor with his back against it. She crouched down in front of him.
“It’s fine, Charlie. It was just a Boggart, it can’t hurt you. Look.” Charlie didn’t look, but he heard the storeroom door slam closed. “It can’t get out now. You’ll be okay. Just stay there, I’ll be back in a minute.”
With that, she was gone. Charlie didn’t even see her leave, but he knew that he was alone, sitting on the floor, a closed door between him and the… Could it really be a Boggart? He had never known a Boggart to look like that before.
He put his head into his hands, running them from his chin and up into his hair, which he pushed back from his face. He took a shaky breath and exhaled, closing his eyes and lifting his face to the ceiling.
A little bell rang, and he opened his eyes to see Artemis re-enter the shop. In her hands was a bar of chocolate. She sat down beside his feet facing him, and held out the chocolate bar to him.
“Here,” she said. “Eat this, it will help.”
Charlie shook his head. “That’s for Dementors, not Boggarts.”
“You gave me chocolate once when I saw a Boggart.”
“I was just improvising.”
“Well, so am I. Eat it.”
It was clear from the stubborn look on Artemis’ face that she was not going to take no for an answer. Not wishing to be force-fed, Charlie reached out and took the chocolate from her and bit into it. He had not been expecting it to do anything, but at the sweet taste and creamy texture, he felt his heart slow ever so slightly, and the tightness in his chest started to ease. Artemis had one hand on his forehead.
“You feel clammy,” she informed him, “but you look less pale now.” She removed her hand and looked at him with narrowed eyes. Charlie felt as if he were being scrutinised closely. “Has your Boggart changed since you last saw it?”
Charlie closed his eyes. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m not using Legilimency on you.”
“You are.”
“Not deliberately.” Charlie glanced at Artemis, who had leant back slightly and had a less searching look in her eyes. She nodded her head at the door. “Just then, you didn’t just look scared, you looked surprised, too.”
“Well, you don’t exactly expect a Boggart to be in a joke shop, do you?”
“You know what I mean. You looked how I felt after my Boggart changed, and I know you must’ve seen a Boggart before at school, so…”
“Yeah, alright.” Charlie gave in. He shrugged. “Yeah. It’s different to what it was when I last saw a Boggart. I mean, that was back at school, so I’m not sure when it changed to… to that. To the Dark Mark.”
He heard his own voice shake as he said the words, and took another bite of chocolate. It had less of an effect this time. Artemis’ hands were in her lap, her head nodding slowly.
“This summer, maybe,” she suggested.
“Yeah, some point last year would make sense.” Even as he agreed, Charlie knew that it was wrong. “Or even before, maybe. The World Cup.”
“When it went up over the crowds during the riots?”
That was it exactly. Charlie shuddered at the memory, even now.
“Do you remember when we were little,” he said to Artemis, “how adults would always talk about people who’d gone missing or been killed by Death Eaters?”
“When they thought we couldn’t hear them, you mean?”
“Exactly. But we always heard them, right? And the story would always be the same, someone would leave their house and come home, or go to someone else’s house, and find the Dark Mark over it. They were such scary stories, but they were just stories. But then, that night…”
“It was real,” Artemis finished his sentence for him.
“It was real, and it was terrifying. It was the most scared I’d ever been, at that point in my life, anyway. I remember when it went up, Dad and the twins and Ron and Ginny, they were all off somewhere trying to keep out of the action, and I…” Charlie swallowed before continuing, “That was the first time I ever worried someone I cared about might have just died. I’d known people who had died, obviously, like my uncles and Rowan, but I hadn’t been scared for them at the time, if that makes sense.”
Artemis’ eyes were wide and sympathetic. “It does. It makes a lot of sense.”
“I’ve felt like that so many times since then, and it never gets any easier. During the war, every time I opened a letter or went home, I’d be so scared about what I’d find.” Charlie placed his half-eaten chocolate on the floor. Speaking was making him feel better than eating had done. “I’d worry that the letter would contain bad news, or that I’d get back and everyone would be gone, and there would just be the Dark Mark, there, hanging in the sky just like…”
As his voice tailed off, Charlie screwed his eyes shut and rested the back of his head on the wall behind him. Artemis didn’t speak. It were as if she were expecting him to continue, but Charlie didn’t feel able to continue.
“Like that Boggart?” she asked him eventually, and he shook his head. A few moments later, Artemis let out a soft sigh. “At Hogwarts. At the battle, it was over the castle that night,” she said with a tone of realisation. “Oh, Charlie. That must have been horrible.”
“It was,” said Charlie, his eyes finally opening as he felt Artemis’ hand squeeze his own. “I… Actually, no.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “It’s nothing, not when pretty much everyone else went through much worse than me.”
“Just because other people had bad stuff happen to them, it doesn’t make the stuff that’s happened to you less bad, Charlie,” Artemis told him.
Charlie was not sure that he agreed. He took his hand back and crossed his arms over his chest. Artemis fell quiet for a few moments.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” she said, “what was your Boggart before?”
He didn’t mind her asking.
“A Howler.”
It seemed a silly, trivial thing to have as a Boggart these days, but Artemis didn’t laugh. She raised her eyebrows, almost conspiratorially.
“Who from?”
“Everyone,” said Charlie. “Mum, Dad, Bill, Professor McGonagall, all the other teachers. All of them saying that I’d let them down and failed them and disappointed them. That I hadn’t been good enough or done well enough, that kind of thing. I know—”
“It’s not stupid, Charlie,” Artemis interrupted. “It’s not stupid at all.”
“No, I guess it isn’t.” Charlie was stuck by a small epiphany, though it was not one that made him feel any better about the situation. “I mean, I have let people down. It’s just now there are worse things than people being disappointed by me failing them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the people I’ve let down are dead, aren’t they?”
The words came out harsher than he had intended, but Artemis didn’t even flinch. Her eyebrows furrowed in concern.
“Charlie,” she said quietly. “You didn’t let anyone down.”
But that simply wasn’t true.
“I did. I did let people down. I let Tonks down. I let Fred down.”
“How?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“You were,” Artemis told him. Charlie shook his head. “You got there as soon as you could.”
“That wasn’t good enough, was it?” Before Artemis could contradict him, Charlie continued, “I was too late to protect them, and I should have protected them. I should have been there. I mean, Fred was my little brother, for Godric’s sake! What kind of older brother doesn’t…”
Charlie stopped mid-sentence. He was tiptoeing around a dangerous topic for Artemis. His eyes drifted out of the open shop window to the street outside. Diagon Alley was bustling, presumably full of witches and wizards buying gifts and supplies for Christmas. Were they going to be celebrating without loved ones this year? Were any of them plagued with feelings of guilt and inadequacy?
“You know what the worst part is?” murmured Charlie. “I didn’t even realise.”
He wasn’t sure that he had spoken loudly enough for Artemis to have heard him, but she answered him: “Realise what?”
“Fred. When I got to the castle, the first thing I did was look to see who was safe and still there fighting. I went in and I made sure I could see Mum and Dad, and Ginny and my brothers and… I thought I saw the twins, but I didn’t, I just saw George. In my head that meant that they were both there, that they were both safe, but he was already gone. And I didn’t even notice.”
He had never told anyone that before. He had thought that he never would tell anyone, not even Artemis.
“Please don’t tell anyone I told you that,” he added, and his peripheral vision, he saw Artemis shake her dark-haired head.
“I won’t. Promise.”
“I don’t want people to judge or think badly of me. More than they already do, anyway.”
“No one thinks badly of you,” said Artemis. There was a genuine note of surprise in her voice. “Why would they?”
Why would they not, Charlie wanted to ask her, but he didn’t. Instead, he shrugged his shoulders.
“I dunno, probably because I’ve spent the whole war safe and cosy in Romania while they were fighting,” he said. “Because I didn’t do enough, or care enough, and I wasn’t there when it mattered.”
“That’s just not true,” Artemis replied. “You were there when it mattered for me. You managed to help me at the battle, weren’t you?” Her eyes met Charlie’s for a brief moment before they both looked away. Her cheeks had turned a slightly pink colour. “And you did do things to help from where you were, like getting allies and stuff.”
“The easy stuff.”
“Easy for you, because you’re good at making people like you. Really good at it.” The corners of Artemis’ mouth began to twitch. “And you did something no one else could’ve done.”
“What’s that?”
“You looked after Fergus for me.”
“Anyone could’ve done that, Artie.”
“They couldn’t, because I wouldn’t have let anyone else but you do it.”
Charlie didn’t have it in him to return the smile Artemis was giving him. It disappeared from her face as quickly as it appeared.
“Charlie, look here. Look at me.”
He felt one of her hands rest on his cheek, soft and cool, and he did as she instructed. The look on her face was resolute as she held his gaze and told him:
“Everyone you care about knows that you’d do anything for them. And that’s a lot of people, because you care about almost everyone. And anyone else… Well, who cares what they think? They can think what they like, they can judge you whatever, because they don’t matter. The people who do matter won’t judge you or think badly of you. They don’t. I don’t.”
“I know you don’t,” said Charlie. He meant it.
Apparently happy with his response, Artemis retreated from him. Charlie picked the chocolate bar up again. He snapped the remnants of it in half, and handed one of the halves to her.
“I do feel bad, you know, telling you about my problems when I know people like you have had it worse,” he said.
“Don’t. It’s fine.”
Charlie looked at her carefully before telling her, “I don’t think that you’re fine.”
“I didn’t say I’m fine, I said ‘it’s fine’.” Artemis sighed. “I don’t think I’m fine either.”
“No. Of course not. Sorry. How are you?”
Artemis raised one eyebrow. “Really?”
“Really,” Charlie nodded. “How are you?”
“Well, I have been sleeping a bit better. Not great, but better. Now it’s just managing to be in a room without the windows or doors open that I need to work on.”
Subconsciously, Charlie glanced at the open window again. “That’ll get better eventually.”
“Yeah, but it’s cold now,” Artemis said with a laugh. Charlie couldn’t help but smile, albeit weakly. Her laughter faded, and she looked down at the chocolate in her hands. “I just feel a bit pathetic, really. Panicking about being trapped, it’s—”
“Not stupid,” Charlie interjected. Artemis’ nose wrinkled.
“Maybe not, but it still makes me feel like a coward.”
“You? No way. You’re the bravest person I know.”
But Artemis shook her head and replied, “Not anymore.”
Her voice was quiet, barely louder than a whisper, and her gaze low. There was a look of loss and feeling lost in her eyes that made Charlie’s heart hurt. He decided against hugging her, a better idea entering his head instead.
“I disagree. Come on.” He got up off the floor and held one hand out to her. “I’ll prove it to you, if you like.”
Though she looked sceptical, Artemis took his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. When Charlie moved to open the storeroom door, however, she shook her head.
“Charlie, wait. I’m not sure if this is a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because I haven’t seen a Boggart in a while,” she said. “I don’t know what form it will take. What if it’s a Dementor or… What if I can’t face it?”
“That doesn’t matter, because you aren’t going to face it,” Charlie told her. “I am.”
“What is that going to prove?”
“That you’re still the bravest person I know.” Artemis frowned, and Charlie explained, “If you come with me, I think I’ll be able to face it. If not, then I’m not sure I’ll even make it halfway across the room.” He looked at his hand on the door handle and back again. “Will you come with me? Please?”
It seemed as if an age passed before Artemis slowly nodded her head. Charlie thanked her, and opened the door. With her at his side, he walked across the storeroom to the far corner where he had found the locked cupboard. As he approached, a dark cloud rose in the air between him and the cupboard, once more swirling in the air until he stood face to face with the green, shadowy skull that had haunted his nightmares for years.
His knuckles tightened on the hilt of his wand, but his mouth was too dry and his chest too tight for him to call out the incantation to banish the Boggart. He had to think of something that would make him laugh, but all he could think of was the castle that night, the skull hanging in the sky above it, his brother already dead inside its walls before he even arrived…
“Charlie.”
It was not so much the sound of Artemis’ voice but the feeling of her hand on his arm that caught his attention. He managed to pull his gaze away from the Dark Mark to look at her. She nodded at him and smiled. Charlie closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Riddikulus!”
A light flashed, and Charlie opened his eyes with a start. The Dark Mark dissipated, exploding into a small display of green and white fireworks. Beside him, Artemis let out a little giggle, and the fireworks stopped. The Boggart was gone. It was just them.
“Thank you,” said Charlie.
“What for? I didn’t really do anything.”
“You were there. That was enough.”
He was still trembling, but that stopped as soon as Artemis rose up onto her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Charlie felt the last of his tension leave him as he returned her hug.
Resting his chin on the top of her head, he looked back at the door behind them. He wasn’t sure at what point it had happened, but somehow it had closed without him noticing.
And Artemis, still with her arms held tight around him, hadn’t it noticed either.
For Day 2 of @thethreebroomsticksfic 12 Days of Yule Bash, I've done a little Romione celebrating Christmas in Australia mood board. One of my HCs is that Hermione's parents stay in Australia after they get their memories back, so the Granger-Weasley's have Christmas down under ever other year.
A/N: I’ve been wanting to write and share this story for a while. Thanks to @thethreebroomsticksfic’s 12 Days of Yule Bash, I finally had an excuse to start. This chapter uses the prompts ‘evergreen’ and ‘first snow’.
Warnings: mentions of war and loss.
1st December, 1998
The Ministry of Magic was as quiet as it ever was these days, the rush of lunchtime having settled, and the exodus of the evening not yet started.
Artemis paused in the very centre of the atrium. A few days ago, the spot had been empty, the way it had been since the May morning the Minstry was reclaimed from the Death Eaters. Now, however, one of the largest fir trees she had ever seen was standing in the place that had previously housed the Fountain of Magical Brethren. At least a thousand lights twinkled from its branches, reflecting in the shiny surfaces of the tiles covering the floors and the walls. It was as if the whole atrium were sparkling.
She was not the only one whose attention had been caught by the tree. Several others had also stopped to look at it, their expressions varying from those of appreciation and excitement to disapproval. One of the more dubious looking expressions was worn by a face that was familiar to Artemis, and she forced a smile as she walked over to her acquaintance.
“You don’t look too sure, Perce,” she said. She tilted her head at Percy Weasley, who fiddled with the arms of his glasses. “Don’t you like it?”
“I’m not sure that it’s an entirely appropriate replacement for the fountain.” Percy sniffed, and his glasses wriggled up his long nose. “It seems rather frivolous, given everything that’s happened in the past year and a half.”
“That’s the whole point. People have had enough fear and misery. And Kingsley said it’s actually very symbolic.”
‘How so?”
“Because it’s evergreen,” said Artemis, repeating the word Kingsley had used. “Trees that are evergreen bloom all year round, even in the cold and the dark. And people decorate them to celebrate that the nights are going to get lighter from now on.” She smiled at the tree. “He says it’s very fitting to have a Christmas tree up now, exactly because of everything that’s happened.”
Percy did not look convinced, but perhaps he was just too stubborn to admit that Artemis was right. She frowned at him.
“I thought you and Charlie were doing some work on the house today,” she said.
“We were, but I got called in to work. There are a lot of last minute Portkey requests being sent through at this time of year and…”
Being entirely uninterested in Percy’s work, Artemis interrupted him before he got carried away and she was unable to get a word in edgeways.
“So, is your brother still in Ottery St Catchpole or has he gone back to Tinworth already?”
“He’s still at the Burrow.”
It was to the Burrow that Artemis Apparated once she left the Ministry of Magic, disappearing from the corner of a damp London street and reappearing in a frost-covered garden beneath a sky that was the rosy grey of incoming snowfall. Wishing that she had worn a warmer cloak, she hurried across the crunchy grass to the door of a tall and somewhat ramshackle house at the other end of the garden path.
The door was opened by a stockily built wizard with red hair and a face full of freckles, whose confused-looking smile dimpled his cheeks as he looked at Artemis.
“Wasn’t expecting to see you here,” he said.
“Just hurry up and let me in, Charlie. It’s freezing out here.”
Charlie Weasley obliged, opening the door wider so that Artemis could step into the warmth of his childhood home. Without her needing to ask him, he pointed his wand first at the window above the sink, which opened a fraction, then at a teapot on the kitchen table. A flame appeared beneath the teapot.
“How was the interview?” he asked.
“Fine.” Artemis removed her cloak and sat down in one of the few chairs that still had all its legs attached. “ More than fine. They offered me the job. I’m going to start in the New Year.”
“Congratulations,” Charlie told her. “You pleased?”
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I dunno if I’m that excited about working for the Ministry.”
“Is anyone ever that excited about working for the Ministry?”
“True. It’s not really what I want to do, but I don’t really know what I want right now, so at least I’ve got something to do. I can figure the rest out later,” said Artemis. Charlie nodded sympathetically and conjured two mugs from thin air. “And I reckon Bill and Fleur will want their spare bedroom back at some point.”
“They’ll want both of the spare bedrooms back, I expect.” Charlie half-laughed as he started pouring tea. He handed one mug to Artemis. “There’s no milk, I’m sorry.”
Artemis didn’t mind that. She took the proffered mug from Charlie’s outstretched hand and blew gently on the hot contents, her eyes scanning the room around her. She had not visited the Burrow in months, not since the war had recently ended. At that point, the house had been a wreck following Death Eater raids. There was a strange mixture of unpleasant feelings that had arose from seeing a place that had always been filled with such warmth and laughter reduced to an empty shell, and a broken and charred one at that.
Now, though, thanks to Charlie and his brother’s handiwork, the Burrow was starting to resemble the family home she remembered visiting during her youth. There were still a couple of piles of rubble in the corners of the room, many of the chairs were in pieces, and white sheets layered with dust covered most of the surfaces, but the building was standing strong.
“It’s what they call a fixer-upper,” Charlie said, with a wry smile. Artemis shook her head.
“It’s not looking half bad in here,” she told him. “Do you reckon you’ll be finished in time for Christmas?”
“Godric, no. I’ll never get all of it done by then, even if Percy took the next few weeks off work.”
“Not even if you used magic?”
Charlie shook his head. “You know I don’t like taking shortcuts,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be perfect, just liveable. That’s good enough. As long as everyone can come home for Christmas, that’s the main thing. I can finish the rest in the New Year.”
As Charlie fell quiet and sipped his tea, Artemis continued to look around the room, craning her neck in an attempt to peer around the corner into the living room and up the stairs to the landing above. One foot tapped impatiently against the table leg as she did so.
“Aren’t you going to offer to show me around?” she eventually asked Charlie, who coughed quietly as he laughed midway through a sip of tea.
“Not yet,” he replied. “Your Christmas present is here. I’ll have to go and hide it first. Don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
It was Artemis’ turn to laugh. Charlie had given her the same thing for Christmas every year since she was sixteen: handknitted socks in lurid colours that seemed to get uglier with each year that passed. She knew as well as Charlie did that Christmas held no surprises for her as far as he was concerned.
“You hide the present, and then afterwards I’ll go and look for it,” she said, eyebrows raised mischievously.
“You’ll never find it. I know where all the best hiding places are these days.”
Artemis didn’t doubt it. Charlie had always known where all the best hiding places were. She frowned slightly, as a question entered her mind, one she had first asked herself ten years ago.
“Where did you go?”
“What?”
“All those times when we were here when we were younger and no one could find you,” Artemis explained. “Where did you used to go?”
Charlie half-smiled into his cup of tea and shrugged his shoulders. Unsatisfied with that response, Artemis placed her own mug down and narrowed her eyes at him.
“It’s a secret,” Charlie said. Artemis glared harder, and he sighed. “Alright. I’ll show you, but you have to promise you won’t tell anyone. Yeah?”
Artemis nodded. “Not a single person, I promise. Cross my heart.”
Her promise was clearly good enough for Charlie, because he rose to his feet and walked across to the staircase, his unfinished cup of tea forgotten on the table. Artemis made to follow him, but he stopped and pointed back at her chair.
“You might want to put your cloak back on,” he told her.
Curious, Artemis did as he suggested him before following him up the many flights of stairs to the very top of the house.
“You were in the attic the whole time?” Artemis asked, as Charlie opened the door to the attic. “Please don’t tell me the ghoul was just you in a stupid costume.”
“Not quite.”
Charlie walked across the attic, which was just as dusty but not nearly as cluttered or dark as Artemis remembered, the piles of cardboard boxes that had previously cast shadows across the floorboards having disappeared, allowing the light to stream in from the window at the back completely unobstructed. Artemis stopped in her tracks.
“Wait,” she said, looking at the window. “Did you add that in recently, or…”
The look on Charlie’s face was answer enough. He opened the window, and swung one leg over the sill. He looked back over his shoulder at Artemis, a daring look in his eyes.
“Are you coming, or what?”
As Charlie climbed out of the window, Artemis crossed the attic to follow him. She leaned out of the window to see him crouching on top of the sloped roof of the house. He pointed to the bottom of the window.
“Hold onto the guttering and put your foot on that ledge there, and then you can just step across to where I am,” he told her. “Just be—”
Artemis did not hesitate to step onto the ledge below the window and jump off it to join Charlie on the roof, barely using her hands to support her as she did so.
“— careful.” Charlie blinked. “Or not. Alright, come on.”
“There’s more?”
“If anyone looked out of the window, they’d see me straight away,” Charlie said with a shrug. “The best spot is over there.”
With Artemis on his tail, Charlie scaled up and over the roof to the other side, away from the window, coming to rest at the flatter part where the rooftop met the chimney. The two of them sat down on the brown roof tiles, the chimney the only thing in their way of the view across the orchard and rolling hills behind.
“If you stay low, you can’t even be seen from the garden,” Charlie explained. “And when the fire’s lit, the chimney is warm. So, it’s kind of the perfect spot. No one can find you, no one can bother you.” He looked almost sheepish as he continued, “As much as I love my family, it was always nice to have somewhere I could escape from them all. Everything was always so loud here, and… Well, you know that I’ve always preferred the quiet. Sometimes I needed to get away.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
Charlie looked at Artemis and smiled, before returning his gaze to the view of the countryside. Artemis looked out as well. The sky that had previously been threatening snow had started to make good on its promise, and tiny flecks of white were now falling from the clouds above to land on the frosted fields below. The snowflakes didn’t make a sound, and neither did she and Charlie. Instead, they stayed side by side in companionable silence, watching the first snow of the year fall to the ground and melt away as if it had never been there at all.
“Do you think any of it will settle?” she asked after a short while. Charlie shook his head.
“It’s not cold enough. Maybe if we get some more at Christmas it’ll stick around.”
“I’d like that.” A smile crept across Artemis’ face. “Remember that Christmas in fifth year when I came to stay? I was desperate for snow that I started practising a bogus spell Merula taught me.”
“It wasn’t bogus,” said Charlie. “You had Hogwarts caught in a blizzard. You’d have been stranded if I hadn’t snuck out and flown all the way there to pick you up.”
“Always sneaking,” muttered Artemis with a grin, and Charlie nudged her in the ribs with his elbow. She giggled, before falling quiet once more. “That Christmas might be the best one I’ve ever had. It definitely was at that point, anyway. It was the first time I ever felt like I really belonged to a family at Christmas, even though it wasn’t actually my own family, it felt…” Her voice tailed off, her sentence remained unfinished. “I’m really happy that you’re going to make it so everyone can be here for Christmas again.”
“Me too. With everything that’s gone on and everything that’s changing, I’m glad that there’s something that’ll be the same as it used to be.”
“Like Christmas trees staying green all the time.”
“I guess so.”
Artemis’ teeth grazed her bottom lip. “Lots of things are changing these days, aren’t they?”
“Yeah. Some of it is good, though,” said Charlie.
“Oh, yeah. I know that.” Artemis turned to him, her head tilted to one side. “Would you say that we’ve changed, or are we the same as we always have been?”
“I dunno.” Charlie seemed to consider the question carefully. “I’d say that we are pretty much the same. Some people would probably say we haven’t changed enough.”
He laughed, and Artemis couldn’t help but join in. She leant back, resting her head against the cold tiles of the roof behind her, and extended her tongue as far as she could. A single snowflake fell onto the very tip of it, tingling slightly as it melted. Once it had disappeared, she wrapped her cloak tightly around herself and closed her eyes and mouth, savouring the silence around her.
“Thank you for showing me your secret place,” she whispered.
Charlie’s response was so quiet that she barely heard him at all, his voice seemed to melt away into the air like the snowflake on her tongue.
for @thethreebroomsticksfic Twelve Days of Yule Bash
Rating: Teen & Up
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Ship: Draco/Astoria
Word Count: 1,259
Prompt: first snow
Summary: Inside the manor, their parents are having tea and exchanging snide remarks, but Draco and Astoria are outside in the gardens, enjoying the first snowfall of the year - and he has a very important question to ask her.
Written for The Twelve Days of Yule Bash hosted by the amazing @thethreebroomsticksfic 🎄
Summary: Ron, Hermione and Rose create memories during the season’s first snowfall.
Prompts used: first snow, hot cocoa, gingerbread, Weasley jumper, fireplace ❄️☕️🍪🧶🔥
Read on AO3
Carefree laughter fills the cold winter air as a white blanket covers the cozy cottage’s garden. The almost 3-year-old girl twirls with unrestrained energy in the winter magic of the first snow. The couple, bundled up in thick coats and scarves, stand huddled together, watching their daughter giggle with delight as she catches snowflakes on her little mittens.
“She loves it,” Ron says, a proud smile on his face.
“Yes, it’s like she’s discovering a whole new world,” Hermione responds, her eyes mirroring the same radiant joy.
A soft muffled cry emanates from her chest, silenced immediately as a dummy finds its place back into the tiny mouth. Gently, she caresses the tiny head to calm their newborn son, only two weeks old, snug in a baby wrap against her chest.
Ron wraps his arm around her, planting a lingering kiss on her temple while skilfully adjusting the baby‘s woolen hat with his free hand.
“Just imagine, next year we’ll have two little ones running around in the snow.”
She smiles, leaning into him. “I can’t wait for that.”
He pulls her even closer and rests his chin on her head, the crisp air contrasting with the warmth of the moment.
“I love you so much,” he whispers, pressing another tender kiss to the top of her head. At that moment, she can’t discern who he means - most likely, all three of them.
A radiant smile graces her face as she lifts her head to kiss his lips, conveying that she feels exactly the same way.
“We love you too.”
Ron comes back for another kiss, but their moment is playfully interrupted by a sudden impact on his head. They both turn their attention toward their mischievous little daughter, who stands giggling, armed with yet another tiny snowball.
“Catch me, Daddy!” Rose squeals, her infectious joy filling the air as she runs off.
With a playful glint in his eye, Ron grins at his wife, planting another sound kiss on her lips. Then he turns and scoops up a handful of snow and begins to chase after the giggling girl.
“Just you wait, little snow princess,” he calls out with mock seriousness, throwing a snowball in his daughter’s direction, narrowly missing her by an inch.
“You missed!” Rose exclaims, hurling a handful of snow that almost instantly dissipates into thin air, causing Ron to laugh.
It warms Hermione’s heart to see the love in his eyes as he plays with their daughter. It has always been his dream - this little family. He would have eagerly embraced parenthood much earlier if it had been solely up to him. She recalls the earlier years of their relationship when his desire to start a family had blossomed within him during their early 20s. In contrast, she had been steadfast in her decision to wait until her career had found solid ground. Now, observing him revel in fatherhood, she fully realizes just how rock-solid his patience must have been all these years. In that moment her love for him deepens even more.
Rose screeches with joy, snapping Hermione out of her thoughts. Yet another cautiously thrown snowball sails through the air towards the running girl, hitting her tiny pink winter boots. Hermione can tell that Ron deliberately avoids throwing higher to prevent hurting his little princess.
“Bullseye!” he cheers.
“No, Daddy! That’s cheating,” Rose fires back and her daughter’s demeanor reminds her so much of Ginny.
“Come on, Rosie, let’s build a snowman,” Ron suggests.
“Yes! A really big one!”
They gather handfuls of fluffy snow, the cold powder sticking to their gloves, laughter fills the crisp winter air, as they roll and pack the snow, turning it into a huge lopsided snowman.
“Look at those wonky arms!” Ron chuckles, placing a pair of crooked branches to their creation. “He’s quite an ugly guy.”
“No!” Rose objects, giving the snowman an approving nod. “He’s very handsome.”
The little girl meticulously places two stones for eyes and a carrot, thoughtfully prepared by her dad, for the nose. Stepping back, she admires their masterpiece, a proud grin grazing her flushed face.
“Mr. Snowman is ready!” she declares.
Ron holds his hand out to high-five his little princess. “Well done, Rosie!“
At that moment Hermione notices that Rose‘s hat is askew, no longer properly shielding her from the cold. However, before she can point it out, Ron is already adjusting the pink bobble hat over her little ears.
“Can we take him inside? I don’t want him to get cold! He doesn’t have a snowsuit.”
“He’ll melt, darling,” Ron replies softly, crouching down to be at eye level with her.
“Why?”
“Because Mr. Snowman is made of snow, and when it gets warm, he turns into water,” he explains patiently, taking her little hands in his. “He’d rather stay outside and watch over the garden.”
Rose ponders his explanation for a moment, then nods with a small smile. “Okay, he can stay outside.”
“Great decision, sweetie.”
Ron stands up, ruffling her head.
“I’m cold, Daddy. Can we cuddle?”
Rose clings to his leg. He lifts her up easily, planting a kiss on her slightly reddened cheek.
“I’m cold too,” he responds. “I suppose Mummy’s too. Hugo probably not so much because he’s got Mummy as a personal heater.”
“How about a cup of hot cocoa?” Hermione suggests, as the sun begins to dip below the horizon, casting a warm orange glow across the white powdered garden.
“Yes!” Rose exclaims and starts wriggling on Ron’s arm, prompting him to set her down. “I’m the first at the door!”
The little girl runs ahead, and a few moments later the family enters the cottage, leaving wet footprints on the pebble-grey tiles of the hallway.
While gently unwrapping the peacefully slumbering newborn from the baby wrap, Hermione lovingly watches as Ron assists their daughter in removing her snowsuit and her boots.
As the little girl dashes off in her blue star-patterned tights and a pink Weasley jumper, their eyes meet, and he raises his eyebrows with a questioning look.
“What?”
Her response is a wide smile, accompanied by a sweet kiss on his cold cheek.
She places the sleeping Hugo in his arms and he makes his way to the living room, where Rose’s voice can already be heard singing a funny version of “Jingle Bells”.
With a warm heart, she turns towards the kitchen to prepare three cups of hot cocoa and a plate of gingerbread.
Five minutes later, they settle on the sofa in front of the fireplace, the flames crackling, enveloping the room in a cozy warmth.
Rose, her cheeks still flushed, the steaming mug of hot cocoa in her hands, looks up with innocent eyes.
“Can we play in the snow again tomorrow? Please!”
“We’ll be at the Burrow for lunch tomorrow. You can build a whole bunch of snowmen with your cousins.”
The girl’s face lights up with excitement and she gleefully claps her little hands, hitting her mug with her elbow. The mug wobbles dangerously, causing some of the brown liquid to spill over the coffee table.
In that precise moment the baby begins to stir, tiny fingers curling around Ron’s. Suddenly, a loud, heart-wrenching wail pierces through the living room, followed by a whimper and more piercing cries.
“I guess, someone needs feeding,” Hermione notes with a soft smile, shifting her attention to their tiny son. Ron gently places the crying baby in her waiting arms.
“Probably just feeling left out because he didn’t get a sip of hot cocoa,” Ron adds with a playful grin, casually waving his wand to clean Rose’s mess.
Cradling their hungry newborn, Hermione deftly opens the buttons of her long-sleeved shirt. Hugo is now screaming deafeningly, prompting Rose to cover her ears with both hands. The tiny arms flail wildly, and the legs wiggle as Hermione expertly places the baby against her chest, silencing the hunger cues.
She senses Ron’s gaze upon her, and as she looks up, sapphire blue meets fawn brown, the flickering glow of the fire reflected in both of their eyes.
He leans over to kiss her temple.
“You’re amazing, love.”
She smiles, appreciating his words.
“I love you,” he says, his eyes full of adoration.
