Four Weddings and a Dragon - Charlie Weasley

Chapter 4

In his quarters at the dragon sanctuary, Charlie Weasley stepped back, releasing Hermione's hands. "We did sell our souls," he told her. "We sold them to each other. Hermione, you and I are married."

Her eyes might have widened, her brows might have lifted, but her chief reaction was to laugh.

"No. No, we're not." She kept laughing even when Charlie didn't join in. "It can't happen like that, Charlie. I repeat something in a language I know nothing about to a person who knows nothing about me and then I'm married? No. We didn't apply for a license, no one in particular stood up as a witness. We didn't even have to swear we weren't brother and sister first. The old witch can't just -- I mean -- she can't."

"Well, she has done." Charlie threw his hands up. "Welcome to Carpathian mountains wizarding society." His hands came to rest on the top of his head as he paced in a circle. "Like I said, I'm almost sure it means nothing outside this region, but -- try telling them that."

Hermione spun away from him. "That's exactly what I'm going to do. You may all be terrified of that Baba Yaga, that Doamna Marius, but I am not. I'm something of a formidable witch myself, you know." She had reached the door and was tugging hard at it. "If we were strangers, I might actually impress you."

Charlie crossed the floor to stand beside her as she hurled Alohomora spells at his door. "Of course I'm impressed with you," he said. "Everyone here knows you broke the opal-eye out of Gringott's. There isn't anyone, even way out here, who isn't impressed with you."

She ignored the compliment, refusing to stop working on the door, defiant at being pushed around and penned up and married off without her consent.

"Look," Charlie said. "Marius managed to tell me that when Doamna Marius came in here after work today, the first thing she did was indeed to scream at me for having a woman in my bed. And I answered, not inappropriately, though accidentally, 'I'm sorry.'"

Hermione gave up on opening the door and switched to trying to charm it to knock itself down instead. Still nothing.

Charlie went on. "And then, she demanded to know whether I intended to marry you, and I replied with the next Hungarian word i know, 'yes.'"

Hermione paused in her spell casting, uttering a groan. "And don't tell me, Charlie. She then offered to marry us after dinner, to which you blissfully, ignorantly replied, 'thank you,' and now we're locked in here for our honeymoon. Is that it?"

He slouched against the wall beside the door. "Yes. It turns out I agreed to it not once, but twice. And it's -- "

He interrupted himself, sniffing and stepping back, alarmed to find the wood of the door was now smoking as Hermione continued to fire spells at it. "For stars' sake, Hermione, they've charmed all the exits shut until morning and there's nothing much we can do about it. Is being stuck in here for a few hours really worse than burning ourselves alive?"

He was right. She stopped her magical attack on the door, but gave it one final parting kick, yelping as she smashed her toe harder than she knew she could against the old oak boards. Charlie reached out to brace her as she doubled over, one arm around her shoulders, his other hand holding her elbow.

"I'm alright," she said, still hissing from the pain. She moved to step away from him, toward a chair, but he was turning her around, holding her against his chest. The furious edge left her posture, and she slumped against him, letting him hold her up along his frame. "What do we do now, Charlie? How can we let this relationship sort itself out when we've been meddled with like this?"

He answered with a sympathetic groan and a slight swaying, side to side, almost like a dance.

She went on. "We were supposed to talk about us tonight, like a pair of reasonable, sensible adults in complete control of our own lives, away from your bed and with you fully clothed."