On This Wild Night

V. Charlie

The champagne flutes floated around to top up the glasses once more as everyone sat back down at the end of Ron's speech.

"I thought he did really well," said Artemis, holding her glass aloft for one of the bottles to fill, "especially as he was obviously so nervous about it."

Charlie eyed his youngest brother sceptically. "Was he?"

"Yes."

"Well, you'd know. I just would have preferred it with a few less anecdotes."

"I thought they were quite funny anecdotes."

"Yeah, they were." Charlie shrugged. "I just don't think we all needed to know quite so much about the bloke who's going to be shagging my little sister later."

"I always thought people stopped having sex after they got married," Artemis said, and on Charlie's other side, Kingsley Shacklebolt let out a deep reverberating chuckle.

"The number of redheads in the room might suggest otherwise," he laughed, leaning forward to make eye contact with Artemis, who grinned.

Charlie grimaced and shook his head, and Artemis nudged his shoulder with her forehead.

"Lighten up, Charlie," she giggled. She raised her glass to her lips and added under her breath: "Hypocrite."

Charlie pulled a face at her and put his own glass on the table so that he could poke her in the ribcage. He steeled himself for her retaliation, but didn't need to. His father had stood up and was hitting his own champagne glass with a teaspoon.

The room fell quiet, and Arthur Weasley pointed his wand to his throat.

"Sonorus," he said, and his voice became louder, as he introduced himself to the wedding guests. "Good afternoon, everyone. For those of you who don't know, my name is Arthur, and I'm the father of Ginevra and Ron, along with several other red-headed young men, but they're all less important today."

"Oi!" a male voice heckled from a nearby table. Charlie smiled, recognising the voice as that of George.

"Today is all about Ginny — and Harry, of course, but we can talk about him later," Arthur continued, all too used to being disrupted after over thirty years of fatherhood. "Now, most of you are probably aware that by the time Ginny came along, my lovely wife Molly and I were old hats as far as parenting is concerned, but there were still certain things that we were not prepared for.

"Firstly, up until then we'd only had boys. There's nothing quite like the panic of a father taking your daughter out in public for the day and her telling you that she needs to go for a wee. Bill, you have this to look forward to," he added, looking across to the table where Bill was sitting with Victoire on his lap. "Luckily, Ginny's always been an independent sort of girl, so she had no problem walking off to go by herself, leaving me to worry about her and feel as if she were already growing up too fast. Not that she knew, of course. She wasn't worried in the slightest. She was fearless.

"That's the other thing that I wasn't prepared for: Ginny herself. Anyone who has met our boys will know that Molly and I have a habit of raising children that are either too clever for their own good, too stubborn for their own good—"

"He means you," whispered Artemis.

"No, he doesn't," Charlie whispered back.

"— or just too much trouble for their own good. Ginevra is all three of those things, and much more. It's no wonder that she's managed to achieve so much even at the young age she is now. Every day, she does something else that makes me get that same feeling as I did watching the back of her little head walk off that day, and to make me proud to call myself her father.