Four Weddings and a Dragon - Charlie Weasley

Chapter 7

Hermione was on her feet, snatching the book from Charlie though she still couldn't read Romanian. "Muggles," she said. "What does this book say about the effects of opalizing potion on Muggle memories? Does it fix them when they're damaged? Does it? What does it say, Charlie?"

He gasped. Of course. Her parents -- she still hadn't uncharmed the memories of her Muggle parents, the family she'd sacrificed at the onset of the war.

He didn't resist her as the book went out of his hands. But he was sorry when he had to tell her, "It doesn't say. There's nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Yes, it's typical wizarding scholarship, myopic, hardly a word about Muggles anywhere in it. I'm sorry," he said.

She slammed the book closed, raised it even with her eye-level, and dropped it hard against the tabletop. It landed safely but with a clamorous slap on the wood. From far away, for the first time that day, they heard the sound of another human being noisily clearing their throat.

Charlie gathered her hands in his, knowing she'd come to regret it if she took out any more of her frustration on the books. "We'll find something else, love," he said. "Maybe not here, but somewhere. Maybe in Ukraine, or even New Zealand. When you're ready to get your parents, we'll go wherever we have to. We'll find something -- "

"No, there's nothing," she said in a speaking voice that echoed as if it was a shout in the quiet of the library. She turned in a circle, out of his hold, pacing as if she was trapped in a cage. "This is always how it happens. Years and years of research on reversing memory modification, my own and other people's -- every one of Guilderoy Lockhart's illustrious healers on the Janus Thickey Ward at St. Mungo's, for stars' sake. None of us has come up with anything. Oh yes, there are moments like this when something seems to come close, but then -- nothing."

Charlie glanced miserably at the books he'd stacked on the table, wracking his exhaustive knowledge of the library's dragon resources for a book they might have forgotten to check.

She went on, pacing and ranting. "No, the only way I'm going to find something to fix my parents is to invent it myself. I won't find it in any book." She collapsed to sit heavily in her chair, her head in her hands. "I have to do it myself but -- but I'm so scared, Charlie. What if I get it wrong? What if I go to rescue my parents and end up taking away from them what little I left them with the first time? As they are now, they can still practice dentistry, and love each other. But what if I..."

He knelt on the floor in front of her chair, reaching past the mass of her hair to find her hands again. She let him hold them, but he knew to keep quiet, waiting for her to catch her breath and finish.

"That bold teenaged girl who modified their memories while they sat having their tea in front of the television -- she doesn't exist anymore," Hermione said. "All that's left of her is me, and I'm terrified at what I'm capable of. How could I -- how did I..."

Her words trailed away again, fading into the long, dusty silence all around them.

"Let me help you," Charlie said at last. "What have I always told you, all these years? You are not alone in the world. Stop acting like you have to sort this out on your own. I can be your family for as long as you need me. Why not? For as long as you're willing to have me as a husband, your parents are my family too. And we can work this out together. All of us. I don't know how exactly, not yet, but -- "

She looked up from behind her hair, slowly, her eyes wide. "My family? For as long as I want? Charlie, I -- "

But he was interrupting her. "Don't answer now. Not when you're distraught like this. Just be still. Think. At least for tonight, just think about how long you want me to stay. But don't decide yet. I don't think distraught Hermione should be allowed to make important decisions that calm, sane Hermione will have to live with later."