#charlie weasleyxreader

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Even if we never met...

Prompt: “I think I’d miss you even if we never met...” + Kiss to the centre of the palm, wrist cupped,

Character: Charlie Weasley

Notes: This prompt has been sat in my drafts for years but what perfect time to write some Charlie fluff, with a little bit of angst for good measure. Just two idiots in love. Reader is a Hufflepuff because I really can’t help myself, this takes place after the war at Harry and Ginny’s wedding. 

There’s a warmth to Charlie’s arms that never fails to surprise you, like being wrapped in a heated blanket in the middle of winter or the hot press of a hot water bottle against your skin. It’s a comforting warmth that causes you to curl towards his body on the dance floor laid out for Harry and Ginny’s wedding. 

In true fashion Mrs Weasley had truly managed to make the marquis for Harry and Ginny’s wedding feel magical, perhaps that was simply the benefits of being a magical family or maybe it was that Mrs Weasley touch. There was a dimness to the light that felt warm and cozy, the floating warm yellow lights providing enough light but still giving a sense of intimacy and closeness, it reminded you of the Hufflepuff common room, one of your favourite places in the world, a place you missed every day since graduation. The banners of soft chiffon that hung from the ceilings and the enchanted butterflies that drifted through the air created a self-contained environment that felt nothing short of wonderous. 

Charlie had asked for a dance, and it felt like you were dancing two at once. There was the physical dance, the weight of his arm around your waist, the rise and fall of his chest beneath the suit he wore, the tie long forgotten, buttons now undone, and there was the emotional dance. Charlie and you had been toeing the line between friends and lovers ever since his transfer from the reserve in Romania to the newly formed Welsh dragon reserve. His presence had suddenly been so very active in your life again, like it had been when you went to school together, but now you were both adults and things were different. Charlie was beautiful and kind...and he treated you so very tenderly that it was hard to forget that you were just best friends. It felt like you might toe too far over the line, stumble off of a cliff into unknown territory. 

You found yourself torn between actions as he spun you around the dance floor. Did you rest your head on his shoulder? Was it allowed to step closer, to intertwine the fingers of your hand held firmly in his own? Could you look in his eyes or was that too much?

“I can hear the cogs turning in your head from here, trouble.” There’s a faint chuckle riding his voice, a shake of his head at your overthinking. It was so like you to be in your head, rather than just enjoying the moment. 

“I...it’s nothing.” You fix your eyes on a point past his shoulder, eyes focused on where Arthur Weasley had a young Teddy Lupin in his arms, spinning him around for a dance, even though the tot could most definitely not dance the waltz yet. 

Charlie dragged your eyes back to his by the twisting of your joined hands until he had your palm close to his face, you watched on, confusion turning to bashfulness as he pressed a gentle kiss to the inside of your palm, once, then twice. His eyes never left yours. “You know, you can tell me anything right, sweetheart?”

“I...what if...what if I tell you something and it...it ruins our friendship?” You’d been friends since you were 11. You were now 29 years old. 18 years of friendship and the possibility, the fear of ruining it by seeking something he wasn’t prepared to give was so very, very real. 

You’d lost a great deal during the war. Friends, some so very close to you like Nymphadora. Your family, muggles who were hunted down and murdered. To lose what you had left...you weren’t sure you’d survive it. 

“What if I want to ruin our friendship?” another kiss is pressed to the palm of your hand before he twines your fingers tightly together and begins to pull.

“..Charlie?” You’re confusion mounts, you smother a small ember of hope in your chest, even as he pulls you from the dance floor and out into the dark grounds of the Weasley property. Tugging you so fast that at times you find yourself stumbling after him in the dark. 

You follow ever attentive as he drags you towards the pond you’d spent so many summers jumping into and cooling off in. That you’d spent winters skating over, trying to keep your balance. 

You’re pulled to a stop at the edge, Charlie’s hands reaching up to cup your face. You can’t pull your eyes from his deep brown, can’t help but stare at the freckles that cover his skin, the shades and shadows that dance across the facets of his features in the moonlight. You shudder as his thumbs rub softly across your cheeks and you’re hands grasp his wrists, try to ground yourself, try not to hope too much, try to avoid getting your hopes up, only to have them dashed. 

“Charlie..?”

“I think I’d miss you even if we never met...I think i’d wonder what was missing from my life even if I had no memory of you, even if we’d never met...I’d wonder why things don’t feel quite right, why it felt like someone was supposed to be right” the words are punctuated by him pulling you firmly into his arms, tightly wrapping you up, not unkindly but firmly “here. There’s been an empty space, shaped just for you.”

“But...but you’ve never...” You’re mind is whirling, eyes scanning his features, only to find sincerity, and fear, plain and open and terrified that you are going to take his offered heart and crush it firmly in your hands, stamp on it for good measure. 

“I’m not much of a Gryffindor, huh? I’ve been scared to tell you since sixth year, I thought maybe if I didn’t say anything, the feelings would go away, we could just be friends, but I don���t think I can just be friends...I think I was made for you, love. I was made to adore you until the day I die.” Even when he was i Romania, even without your constant presence, you were always on his mind.

There is a long, pregnant pause, a silence that feels so overwhelmingly loud to Charlie as he waits. The longer it goes on the more certain he is that he’s misjudged, that you are going to break him in two, that he is going to be so thoroughly broken by a few words soon to pass from your lips. That your friendship, cultivated over nearly 2 decades is about to come crashing down, smoldering to ash.

“It took you long enough.” You can’t help it, you laugh, baffled and happy and so very pleased as you take a step closer and rest your chin on his chest. Your eyes glisten and it takes him so thoroughly off guard that he’s not sure his brain is even working anymore. 

“Wait...what?”

“I love you too, you absolute idiot! I’ve been waiting for 15 years to hear you say something like that!” All the heartbreak, all the fear, all those years of longing and in the end he had always liked you back...it feels like wasted time, but there’s a relief in knowing you weren’t both so daft as to waste your entire lives. 

There’s a moment, where he buffers like an old computer, brain trying to catch up with the revelation that he is in fact not going to walk away heartbroken. His eyes fliting between yours, mouth agape, his bafflement and sheer bamboozlment made no better by the press of your lips against his own. If anything it completely shuts his brain down for a solid ten seconds, where you worry if you’d crossed some sort of line. 

Until his eyes close as he leans into the kiss, rough, work worn hands curling into your hair and trying to tug you ever closer as your noses bump and lips press. Kissing Charlie feels like home and it is not until Charlie pulls away just a breath and brushes tears from your cheeks that you realise you’d started crying, happy tears, but tears nonetheless. 

“Promise you’re always going to fill that space?”

“Promise, it was made for me afterall.” 

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Summer Nights: Part 3

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Charlie Weasley x Overweight/Plus size Female identifying Reader

Series: Summer Nights

Warning: Fred’s death, the series will mention issues such as guilt, grief, etc. + Chapter specific warnings: guilt, self-blaming, trauma, scenes of magical healing, mentions of past childhood fatphobia/body shaming

Writer: @writings-of-a-hufflepuff​ (formerly imaginesofeveryfandom)​ aka @hufflepuffing-all-day-long​

Summary/Request: You’d always had brief glimpses of Charlie Weasley throughout your life, but despite your closeness with the rest of the Weasley family and your friendship with the Weasley Twins, you had never officially met. Until Charlie Weasley decided to take the summer off from his work as a Dragon Keeper at the Romanian Reserve and come back home, to the Burrow, that is.

Notes: Gif is my own, using my art of Charlie Weasley which you can find on my art blog @artisticwarnug here. If you use please make sure you credit me and my art blog properly, that the ownership is clear as it is my own art and I would hate for it to be unclear that I made it <3 x

Prologue / Part 1 / Part 2

Dinner that night was a riotous affair. You, six Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione all crammed in around a table, reaching for the amazing food that Mrs Weasley always made. Shoulders bumped against each other, the volume reaching extraordinary heights, but as you sat there you couldn’t help but smile. This felt right. Being around all these people. So welcome. Watching the way Ginny looked up to Charlie and the way Ron and Harry joke around, while Hermione rolled her eyes at George. You’d often felt alone since Fred’s death, a distance seemed to exist in your mind between yourself and the Weasley’s, a gnawing guilt. While you lived with them there were very few moments like this, one’s where you felt like yourself again. 

As you look around the table with a smile, your eyes catch Charlie’s. A soft, small smile, shy, lifts at the corner of your mouth and you're delighted to say that Charlie smiles more with his eyes than anything else. 

When you go to bed that night you think perhaps it will be a night in which you will fall asleep easily, in which the memories won’t haunt you, in which the guilt that settles like a stone in your stomach will ease...that is a foolish belief you realise rather quickly. Your head rests against your pillow as you stare at the ceiling. 

You toss and you turn, twisting this way and that. You lie on your side for a moment, arm curled beneath your pillow, before flipping onto your back and then your front before going back to your back. You try sleeping with your head at the other end of the bed, maybe you’ll trick your brain that way. It doesn’t work. You try every trick possible, but you just can’t sleep. The frustration is clouded by other thoughts, intrusive ones, the ones you try not to dwell on because you can’t change the past and you can’t bring him back. You don’t have that kind of power, although sometimes you wished you had a time turner, you might go mad, but maybe, in the process you could bring one of your best friend’s back. Maybe you wouldn’t fail him this time. 

You lie there trying desperately to calm your mind, to silence your thoughts, to sleep, for what seems like hours. In truth it can’t have been more than an hour before you decide to just forgo all the tossing and turning and potter downstairs to make a warm cup of something and maybe nab a biscuit or two. 

The Burrow is eerily quiet at this time of night, the lights are out, the stairs creak as you pad down them, and a chill has you grabbing the knitted throw blanket from the living room on your way to the kitchen. There was never a shortage of blankets at the Burrow. Something you could thank Mrs Weasley endlessly for. 

You wrap yourself up as tightly as possible, the blanket a soothing weight across your shoulders, before putting the kettle on the stove. Despite magic being at your disposal, you always preferred to make hot drinks whether coffee, tea, hot chocolate or otherwise, the muggle way. Working with your hands, going through the motions of creating something whether food, drink, art or something else entirely, helped you calm down more often than not. You suppose it was very Hufflepuff of you, doing things the muggle way, doing things the homely way. 

You look up before he’s even at the entrance to the kitchen, you hear the footsteps softly pad down the stairs, the creek of an old floorboard, the quiet shuffling of clothes and a soft sigh of frustration. You didn’t know who you’d expected, Charlie, wasn’t it though. Perhaps Ginny or maybe Ron or even Mrs Weasley. 

The tattooed dragon that had previously been on his neck had moved, as magical tattoos are want to do. It was now laying across the other side of his neck, nearer to his shoulder, barely peeking from his sleep shirt, sleepy and annoyed looking. You wondered if it wanted to sleep but couldn’t because of Charlie’s alertness. You’d never given much thought to wizarding tattoos, but you suppose they must have some sort of personality or thought process or....something. Why else would they move? You supposed that they might work like wizarding portraits, perhaps the dragon had been a real one, its likeness etched into his skin.

His hair is out from the tie it had been in during the day, loose around his face and a sort of bird's nest that screamed ‘i’ve been tossing and turning for a while now’. During the day he’d looked so confident, put together, like everything was okay, but here, in the dark of the kitchen, with only a few little lights to provide a warm glow, he looked haggard. He looked how you felt. 

“Would you like something to drink?” You keep your voice soft. Partly knowing that the walls in the Burrow were thin, not wanting to wake the others, and partly because it didn’t seem right to speak loudly or even speak at your normal volume right now. 

He pauses for a moment, taking in the kettle on the stove that’s begun to whistle quietly, thanks to a well placed muffling charm, the blanket across your shoulders, the bags underneath your eyes. He blinks before nodding his head towards you in confirmation, a small upturn at the corner of his mouth, a polite smile not more and not less. It cannot compete with his earlier bright smile during the day. 

“Tea, please, love.” You grab a tea bag and another mug, making both your own preferred hot drink and his mug of tea. Only stopping to ask if he had sugar in his tea, for him to respond with 3, and you to not comment further despite knowing his mother would probably exclaim that 3 was 2 too many. 

You carefully hand him the mug, not wanting to spill a drop, fingers brushing against his. You note his hands are rougher than most wizards, years of hard work will do that. Most wizards and witches have soft hands, skin that only ever touched a wand. The Weasleys are some of the few you knew who relished in hard work and manual labour, some things magic helped with like chopping vegetables, but other things like collecting eggs or planting fruit in the garden seemed to them more suited to their hands. Like you they seemed to enjoy the calming nature of going through the steps, of grounding yourself with the world around you. 

You sip at your drink and study the grooves in the table, the different grains of wood, the stains and the marks. Some you know the story of. Like the burn that was caused by Ginny playing with Arthur’s wand at the age of 5. Others are the sorts of stains and marks that come from a family using it every day, from children playing and drawing and existing. 

Charlie clears his throat and you lift your eyes to his, he looks a little sheepish, “Sorry, if this is a bit...if you don’t want to talk, but can I ask why you’re not in bed?” 

The truth is that you’ve barely known Charlie a couple of days and perhaps normally you’d be reluctant to talk about anything personal, about nightmares or your guilt or your feelings. But, Charlie isn’t a complete stranger. He’s a Weasley and there has never been a Weasley you couldn’t talk to, even Percy who could be and had been an arse in the past. Even when he wasn’t around, the other’s talked about Charlie, their darling boy or their amazing brother. If you knew one Weasley you inevitably felt like you knew the rest even if you’d never met. Maybe it was that he was a Weasley, that he was Fred’s cool older brother, or maybe it was that you were lonely and fed up of hiding it all...that you knew him the least and it seemed easier to talk to someone who’d understand and yet didn’t know you well enough to push too far. Or maybe it was just that Charlie Weasley had one of those faces that made you want to talk. 

“I...I struggle to sleep these days. I’ve struggled to sleep since the battle to be honest...if it's not tossing and turning then it’s nightmares. When the lights go out the thoughts come out...”

“From what I heard you did alright. You helped people, you got a few death eaters along the way...” There was an unspoken question, ‘what do you have to be haunted about? What did you do? or what did you not do?’

“Yeah....I helped some people, used my healer training to my advantage and sure I got a few stunning spells in, but I....I couldn’t save the one person that really mattered. I couldn’t....” You breathe in a shaky breath and can already feel the tears welling in your eyes at the thought of him. A hand reaches across the table and covers your own. It’s a comforting gesture, it reminds you that you’re safe here.

“I couldn’t save Fred...I tried, y’know, I even tried muggle methods, I thought maybe if magic wouldn’t help, muggle medicine might...I thought if I could just get him breathing again he’d be okay. It would all be okay...I” You close your eyes hard, feeling the press of your lids together, the wetness welling at the corners, “It’s my fault...I don’t even know why your parents let me stay...how any of you can even look at me...if I had been a better healer, or better at defence, then Fred might still be here.”

“You can’t seriously believe that?”

You lift your eyes to his, his eyebrows are furrowed, twisted down, mouth set in a frown. “I should have been able to save him. I have helped so many people. I have stopped so many people from dying...but I couldn’t save him.” You avert your eyes, his stare feels too intense, too much.

“You’re not to blame, look at me,” He squeezes your hand, firmly, but still gentle. The other reaches forward, a finger underneath your chin to lift your face as he brings your gaze back to his and leans ever forward as if all he wants is for you to truly listen and truly believe. “You didn’t kill Fred. You didn’t cause his death. No one can bring someone back from the dead..there was nothing you or anyone else could do. Rookwood was to blame. Voldemort and his followers were to blame. Not you.” 

“Then why do I feel like I am? Like I should have done better?”

“Because we all do. Do you think Percy doesn’t blame himself? Like maybe if he’d not made a joke, not distracted Fred, he’d still be here? Do you think George doesn’t think he could have protected his own twin better? Me? I wish I'd bloody been right there, right next to him. I wish I did more and I feel the guilt of not doing more each day...We all feel like we failed him. You don’t feel guilty because you did something wrong, you feel guilty because he was your friend and you’re a good person. Good people always want to do better, even if it's not possible, love.”

“How do you do it? How do you keep going?” It feels impossible some days, the idea that you shouldn’t feel guilty or sad or angry or hurt. Some days you almost forget that he’s not here, you see George and go to ask after Fred, you think of a joke and think that you should go tell him...Some days simply getting out of bed seems impossible.

“I let it go. You can’t live in the past or else you’ll forget the present, and never look to the future. That’s what we were fighting for. That’s what Fred was fighting for, a better future. I chose to stop punishing myself for what I did or did not do because my brother would feed me a canary cream if he heard me blaming myself.”

You let out a sharp laugh, quick, unexpected even for you, and it's true. Fred wouldn’t stand for it, he wouldn’t stand for anyone blaming themselves, he’d tell you to buck up and crack a few jokes, stop hurting yourself. He was like that. Whenever he found you squirrelled away behind a tapestry, sad and crying, he always found a way to make you smile. His life’s work was getting people to smile.

“...Thank you. I know it’s not going to get better over night, but...maybe it’s time to try and stop dwelling in the past.” You stare into your empty mug for a second before rising to place it beside the sink. He’s still drinking his tea, and you, realise this whole time you hadn’t asked him why he wasn’t asleep.

“Why...why aren’t you asleep, Charlie?” You lean back against the counter to watch him, the blanket slipping off of your shoulders slightly. 

“I...I have a few old injuries that keep me up sometimes. Mostly my back, the scars I have ache a lot...but I...I sleep best on my back so...” 

It surprises that his lack of sleep was something that seemed so fixable to you, but you often had to remind yourself that most witches and wizards struggled with even basic healing charms and didn’t think in the same way that you did. Healing was a skill and knowing the right solution to a problem took both natural intuition and training.

“Do you...have you ever learnt lenio?” You move closer to him, throwing the blanket off of your shoulders and onto the back of your chair. Each step shows your healer nature as you itch to get closer and have a look at the problem, to solve it like you do every day of the week. 

“Uh, I’ve never heard of it?”

“Oh...I suppose you’re probably used to being given potions for pain, they usually last longer, don’t rely on the witch or wizard’s will power. It’s a...a pain relief spell, it works on a great deal. I...Hermione’s scar hurts a lot so I taught her it, but her scar’s easy for her access...you could always see me before you go to sleep each night and I can administer it. It’s considered outdated because of potions but I find that it’s most effective for scarring or pains that distract or make you unfocused and people don’t get as reliant.”

“Does...does it last awhile?”

“It varies on the caster’s strength of thought, I typically find when I cast it it lasts anywhere between 12 hours to a day, some people it can last minutes. Hermione manages to make it last around 8 hours. It’s why it fell out of fashion, not a lot of wizards or witches have the aptitude for it.” Potions had become easier. Easier to make. Easier to administer and more predictable when duration was involved. But, pain relief potions could be addictive and you always found yourself leaning towards charms and spells over potions, where possible. 

“Before you...before you go to bed could you cast it? I’d really like to get some sleep, love.”

Nod with a small smile, easing the tension in Charlie’s shoulders just that little bit. That famous bedside manner of yours pushing its way to the surface. 

“You said it was your back?” You ask as you reach for your wand in the waistband of your pyjama shorts. He nods at you, “First year on the reserve a Hungarian Horntail decided he didn’t like me very much...never told mum.” You let out a little laugh at that, the thought of Mrs Weasley’s reaction was rather comical in your mind. While she could be fearsome, she was also known for her over the top and sometimes melodramatic responses. 

You understand why he chose not to tell her. Mrs Weasley could be overbearing in her protectiveness and you’re sure she would never have let him work on the reserve again, no matter how much he loved it. “Could you...um, disrobe for me.” You ignore the nerves in your stomach and try to get into the healer mindset, you’ve seen plenty of patients wear even less and it was never a problem before. You weren’t going to let Charlie Weasley taking his shirt off get to you. You’d seen him without it early that day and surely he couldn’t affect you quite so much the second time.

Or that’s what you told yourself before you found yourself gazing at him a little too long. Truth was Charlie was an attractive man, even fully dressed and the beauty of his torso was not diminished by you having seen it previously. Up close you noticed things that you hadn’t earlier in the day. Scars of various types caught your eye, a few bite marks you recognised well as various types of dragon, scratches, burn marks, his body told the story of a dragon keeper who had known pain and yet still enjoyed his job. He was covered in freckles head to toe, or at least what you could see of his body, and red hair that criss crossed his arms and his chest. The dragon had moved from his shoulder and neck area, stalking its way across his left ribs, breathing little spouts of fire.

You cleared your throat and gestured for him to turn his back towards you. You could see it was covered in scars, a large portion was burn scarring, but there were claw marks too. You placed a hand gently on the top of his shoulder and gently pushed him forward so that you could get a better look. Your other hand softly trailed over the skin, examining the depths of the scars, making an assessment of what sort of scarring it was. “These were healed poorly, did you not go to the reserve healer?” You could tell they could have been healed better, they would have left a mark certainly, but with less pain you were sure. It was, in truth, a rather shoddy job. 

“Oh, I went...he’s just not very good.” You scoff, not very good was an understatement and you wrecked your brain for anyway you could fix the damage done. You’d never seen wounds healed so poorly or such extensive scarring caused by magical healing, you think that they might have healed better on their own.  

“This was about nine years ago, correct?” You watch the back of Charlie’s head move up and down in a nod, “He used a mending charm.” You scoff, irritation strong within you.

“Is that wrong?”

“They’re meant for objects not people, it’s why you have so much scarring, why it hurts...I just wonder...I wonder if...I know you just wanted me to do a quick lenio, Charlie...but I’d like to try something, I have absolutely no idea if any of the spells I know will work, but I might be able to permanently reduce the pain, and the damage.”

“You couldn’t do that with Hermione?”

“Her scar is the product of dark magic...that’s...we’re still trying to figure out how to undo that sort of injury, but this is normal in comparison. I could make it worse or I could make it better or it could do nothing...”

“Love,” he looks over his shoulder at you, eyes surprisingly full of mirth, “I doubt you could make it worse, give it your best shot.” 

You think through all the healing spells you know and you contemplate the nature of this. It isn’t an open wound or a broken bone, but it is damaged flesh, scar tissue so mangled it hurts and you think deep about your time at St Mungo’s, the many healer’s you’ve known and learnt from and you think of your own experience creating spells, melding your wants, desires, outcomes, into a single word, a single channel for your magic. You use his confidence in you and your desire to see his pain reduced or undone as a force behind the words that leave your mouth without even thinking and the almost natural movement of your wand. 

“Renovare” It’s not a spell you know and yet, as you speak the words and channel your magic through your wand, you know what it does and you know what it’s purpose is. Renew. To fix what isn’t wounded, but is damaged, to heal what has been healed poorly. You watch delicate streams of pearlescent light, flickering between white and pink and teal, fall over the scars and break them apart delicately before rehealing wounds. You hear Charlie hiss and squeeze his shoulder in reassurance that everything is working the way it should and that you’re sorry it hurts. The scars that are left behind are less angry, closer to the skin, and less like knotted damaged tissue. Perhaps had you been there when it happened, there would be no scars at all, but unmending and re-mending a wound is not so perfect or simple. You have the presence of mind to realise this is a new spell, of your own creation, and that you should write all of this down before you go to sleep tonight. This spell could be a breakthrough for wizarding medicine, at least where angry scars that cause pain are concerned. You’re so focused on fixing his pain that this realisation doesn’t bring you the pride it should, after all, not many witches or wizards could simply create a spell.

There’s something satisfying about watching the process, the breaking open of skin and the regrowth of new. The new scars looking as you’d want them to be, knowing that you have fixed the work of a poor healer and hopefully, in the process, stopped the pain that causes Charlie’s lack of sleep. 

You run your hand over the new scars once you’re done, checking the thickness of the scar tissue, his dragon has moved to his back now, curiously dancing around your fingers, nipping as if it could catch them. You get the feeling that it is grateful for your work. “Does it hurt at all? or...at least is the pain lesser?”

“It’s...it’s sore, like i’ve just come off the quidditch pitch, but it doesn’t hurt. Not like it used to.”

“Mmm...,” you continue your observations for a while, asking more questions about how it feels as you go, “I suspect the soreness will go, I have just broken your scars open and re-healed them...they look better, proper healing work, none of that bollocks from before.” You find your patience for bad healers always to be quite small, healing was serious business, people’s lives, their feelings were at risk and bad healers, in your opinion, simply shouldn’t exist. 

“I...thank you for letting me try I...”

“I’ve never heard that spell before.”

“That’s because I just created it.” He looks at you as you expect, surprised and a little bit in awe. Most wizards and witches can’t just make their own spells, you know this, but your experience with Fred and George had taught you a few things. The two of them had always innately created their own charms and potions, and they taught you how it should feel, how to focus, how to think, how to tap into that part of yourself that was purely magic, that knew without words what it could and wanted to do. 

“That’s...impressive.”

“Your brothers’, they’re...they were...George and Fred have always...” You sigh in frustration, it is so hard to find the right tense now. George is here and Fred is not, but they're a pair, not individuals and it feels wrong to...to leave one out. He’s patient with you, soft eyes, a reassuring smile as a hand reaches for yours and gives a quick squeeze. “When we were in school, the twins just knew how to make their own spells...all their products are their own work and creation...they taught me how to...how to tap into that part of me, the part that knows what to do. I’ve not done it in years, I've not had need to...I just knew what I wanted to happen and I let myself guide me.” You smile at him softly, round cheeks pushing upwards with your smile. His eyes are darting curiously across your face as if seeking out the answer to some question only he knew. 

There’s a look of surprise behind the curiosity. You can see it, that he never fully realised just how brilliant his brothers’ were. Most of the people who meet...met the twins underestimated their abilities, but they were brilliant. Sometimes you just have to look past the laughter, the jokes and the ostentatious colours. 

“Thank you...thank you for this,” He gestures to his back, “and thank you for teaching me something about the twins that I...that I failed to realise myself. We’ve always undervalued them, I love them...loved...but, even I saw them as jokers and never...never realise the work they put in.”

“Brilliant, that’s how I describe them. Insane. Terribly immature at times. Quick to anger, like most Weasleys, but brilliant and kind...” You look off into the distance, eyes losing focus for a second, “have I told...has anyone told you how I became friends with the twins?”

“I always assumed they just wouldn’t leave you alone,” It’s a cheeky smile that makes you laugh, “that would be rather like them.” You lean against the table, thick thigh pressing lightly against the outside of his knee as you think back on how you met the twins. 

“In truth...it’s not a wholly happy story. But it’s not entirely sad either, meeting them was the best thing that ever happened to me. They gave me friendship, companionship, knowledge, protection, and family. They gave me a wizarding family that would always support me and I don’t think at the age of eleven I truly understood the importance that your family would play in my life. Now, I couldn’t live without them.” You turn your eyes on him with a soft smile. 

“We have a way about us...Weasley’s collect people, I think. We’re never happy alone, we like a full house, we like fighting over a bathroom in the morning and cramming around the table. Mum loves adding people to the family, and I'm sure the moment she met you she knew you’d be the newest addition.” You smile at that. You wonder if a Weasley could ever truly be happy alone. While Charlie lived away from his family, you were sure, judging by his little smile, that the distance was hard on him and that he probably surrounded himself with friends and colleagues to feel that familiarity. 

“It was my first year and I was crying…” You look up at the ceiling, the wood beams that cross it, the hanging pots and drying herbs. “I was behind the tapestry on the 5th floor...there’s this little room behind it and I found it by accident, I’m rather clumsy,” You laugh and look back at him. It startles you a little to realise you have his undivided attention, but it also pleases you, to know that he’s listening, that he values what you have to say even if it's just a silly little story. 

“I was bawling really, none of that quiet dainty crying. It was rather horrible actually...they must have heard, said I sounded like Moaning Myrtle which just upset me more...they sat beside and they asked ‘what’s happened? Who do we need to prank?’' It was ever so Fred and George even back when you were all just eleven. Their solution to a problem was often either pranking the person responsible or starting a fight with them. The latter was your least favourite of the two.

“Sounds like them, although I wouldn't have been surprised if they offered to throw a few punches...we have hot tempers.”

“You seem awfully mild mannered for a Weasley to me?” It was true, Charlie and Bill both seemed like two calm individuals, at least compared to Ginny or Ron or even Mrs Weasley. All of whom were known for their explosive, passionate tempers. 

“Well, love, you’ve never seen me nearly tear the Ravenclaw quidditch captain a new one after a blatant display of cobbing...Although, i’m definitely less fiery than Ginny. She scares me a little sometimes.”

“She is prone to bouts of violence,” You love it about her though, her quickness to defend others, her bravery. If there ever was a Gryffindor it certainly was Ginevra. “Either way, they offered pranking services rather than violence...good move on their part, I suspect I would have been terrified of them had they offered to break someone’s nose…”

“So who or what made you cry? Homesick?”

“No...I mean, I was homesick, but that wasn’t what had me crying behind that tapestry...it was boys actually. They’d been picking on me, all years, all ages, all houses, for the first few weeks of my life at Hogwarts. Sometimes it was my hair...and other times it was my teeth, sometimes it was the fact I was muggle born...but mostly, it was that I was fat,” You see he rearing up to say something at the word, but you stop him before he can speak, “I am fat. Charlie, that’s not an insult to me, I can be a million wonderful things, and fat is just a descriptor. I am fat and a hufflepuff and I am pretty and I am brave and I am terribly dedicated to my work. But back then...the way they used it. That was an insult. I was fat, I was a whale, a pig, or some other creature they could demean me with. They said I was ugly and unworthy and ‘who’d want to date you?’...I wasn’t even old enough to care about dating, but they made me feel like I was unlovable...and then your brothers came along.”

You smile at him, at the hand he’s placed on your knee in reassurance, the hand that doesn’t stay there too long out of respect for you. He’s listening now, truly, there is no desire to butt in, to interject, because he realises that you do not unjustly hate your body. You are simply telling a story. “After that they never let anyone say a bad word about me...they protected me and I protected them too...you’ve not seen a thing until you’ve seen a hufflepuff fly at Draco Malfoy with the intent to maim.” You quirk a lip thinking of all the times you’d nearly hurt the boy, he was better now, you could have a civil conversation, but Merlin, he’d been terrible in school.

“Should I worry for my personal safety?” Charlie laughs, leaning back away from you as if you might attack at any moment, but it is all play and it makes you chuckle. “I think you’re safe, dragon boy…”

There’s a comfortable silence in which your leg pressed against Charlie’s as you leant against the table, Charlie leaning back in his chair. It’s the sort of silence that feels like companionship, there is no pressure in your chest to speak, no feeling that the silence was wrong, no strange buzzing in your chest. 

“I’m glad they looked out for you...you deserve to have people who look after you the way you look after them.”

“You...you barely know me.” You look at him through your lashes, feeling shy, bashful at the kind words. He just gives you a stunningly soft smile, his brown eyes crinkling at the corners. 

“True, but in the short time I have known you you’ve been nothing but kind, caring, and you even invented a spell simply to help me. Love, that says more than anything else about you. You care about people...and people should care about you too.” The tenderness should scare you, intimidate you, instead it makes warmth blossom in your chest and happy tears well in your eyes because no one has ever said something so kind. Even when you doubt how useful you are, even with the guilt, it means so much to hear someone acknowledge the kindness you give, the care you provide, and not take it for granted. It is this that makes you realise how desperately you want to keep Charlie Weasley in your life, even simply as a friend because he cares so deeply about people and because he doesn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed to share those thoughts or feelings that would matter most to a person. 

It is with those words and thoughts in your head that the two of you say goodnight and you return to your bed, the blankets don’t feel irritating anymore, your head does not buzz with bad thoughts. While it is hard to go to sleep it is not out of guilt or anger or sadness, but a sort of giddiness that you haven’t felt in so long. You fall asleep with a smile.

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Summer Nights: Part 2

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Charlie Weasley x Overweight/Plus size Female identifying Reader

Series: Summer Nights

Warning: Fred’s death, the series will mention issues such as guilt, grief, etc. + Chapter specific warnings: physical attraction, gawking, hot Charlie. 

Writer: @writings-of-a-hufflepuff​ (formerly imaginesofeveryfandom)​ aka @hufflepuffing-all-day-long​

Summary/Request: You’d always had brief glimpses of Charlie Weasley throughout your life, but despite your closeness with the rest of the Weasley family and your friendship with the Weasley Twins, you had never officially met. Until Charlie Weasley decided to take the summer off from his work as a Dragon Keeper at the Romanian Reserve and come back home, to the Burrow, that is.

Notes: Gif is my own, using my art of Charlie Weasley which you can find on my art blog @artisticwarnug here. If you use please make sure you credit me and my art blog properly, that the ownership is clear as it is my own art and I would hate for it to be unclear that I made it <3 x

Prologue / Part 1

June was looking to be surprisingly warm in England and with that in mind you forwent the usual woollen jumpers of the Weasley clan and instead reached for your summer clothes that had been sat in the back of the wardrobe for many months. Pulling on a pair of denim shorts, the only pair that you’d managed to get to fit given your wide hips (unlike other denim shorts they didn’t gape at the waist much to your joy), and a vest top, before shoving your feet in your worn trainers. Running a brush through your hair you contemplated the changes you’d gone through since Hogwarts.

You were still a large woman, wide hips, soft stomach, big arms, fat rolls, a soft looking face, thick thighs. But, the self-consciousness you’d held during school was almost nonexistent. The energy you used to have was somewhat diminished, you usually had dark circles under your eyes, and a tired sort of look. Your hair was finally how you’d always wanted it, your parents no longer allowed to tell you off for cutting it this way or that or dying it this colour or the other. (Not that changing your hair was particularly hard when you had magic at your disposal). You looked older, that was certainly true, the youthful look had gone slightly and while you still looked young, you certainly looked like the adult that you were. You hadn’t grown any taller since school and for the most part you thought you looked rather the same, just with more confidence in yourself, a generous helping of trauma and heartache and a few years added on. 

Returning the brush to the dresser underneath your mirror, you decided it was probably time to make your way to the little patch of vegetables and fruits that you were charged with watering. 

There was something relaxing about gardening at the Burrow, it took your mind off the war that had been and instead allowed you to ground yourself. The sounds of the birds in the trees, the feel of the warm sun on your skin, the soil beneath your hands and knees. It involved a multitude of sensations which helped focus you, helped you smile, even briefly and reminded you that somethings don’t change. Despite everything the earth was still the same, the birds still sang their songs, the sun still decided to shine. While you had all changed and all been touched, some things were constant. 

You watched George swing a gnome wildly as you filled a watering can, Ron was nearby being bitten by a gnome. Aguamenti came in handy, quickly filling the can. The vegetables were doing well already, despite needing a little weeding and a little watering, the plants looked healthy. You were sure that Mrs Weasley had some sort of secret trick to making them grow so well and so effortlessly.

You started weeding first, despite the warm sun bearing down on you. You found yourself wiping your brow of sweat every few minutes and your skin felt like it was covered in a thin layer of moisture. But, still you persisted. Until you heard George swear loudly. This swearing prompted a series of events which completely distracted you from your gardening. This series of events went something like this; George swore (something about Merlin’s saggy balls), you promptly looked up to make sure he hadn’t been seriously hurt to find he had just been lightly kicked in the shin by a gnome, at the sound of laughter your eyes moved from George to Charlie...and there in laid your distraction.

As has previously been said Charlie Weasley was an incredibly attractive man, but more so when he was shirtless, standing in the sun, with a large smile on his face. It was a beautiful sight. Charlie’s smile was on its own something that made you feel warm inside, like things were okay because he was smiling. But, dear merlin, were you a woman with certain feelings. Charlie was broad shouldered and beautiful, genuinely beautiful.  The magical tattoos that moved across his skin of their own accord, the heavy layer of freckles. The scars that littered his body didn’t detract from the sheer beauty of Charlie, if anything it added to it.They made you more aware of just how resilient and strong Charlie was. You wondered if he could pick you up with those strong arms, what it would be like to be carried by Charlie or simply to be held by him. He looked warm and safe...and delicious. You sighed wistfully as you watched him degnome the garden, your weeding and watering long forgotten.

“You can’t be serious.” You jump with a little squeak (or rather a loud shout) as Ginny pops up right behind you and interrupts your day dreaming. George and Charlie look over at you, from your place in the dirt where you’d fallen in shock, but seemed to decide that you were okay. With a light laugh at your expense they returned to degnoming.

“Ginny!” You hiss at her, “Don’t scare me like that!” You loved the girl dearly, but she knew you were easily scared. Especially after the war. It had heightened your anxiety and hyper awareness.

“I wouldn’t have scared you if you hadn’t been drooling over my brother.” She teases, sitting down next to you in the dirt, “Besides, mum asked me to come help you...I think she noticed you were distracted.”

“Please tell me she didn’t...she’ll be insufferable.” You look towards the Burrow, worried you might see Mrs Weasley eagerly watching you. 

“So you don’t want to date my brother?”

“I...I find him pleasant to look at...is all.” That was a lie and the both of you knew it. You would happily date Charlie Weasley. Not only was he physically very attractive, but he was funny and seemed kind and invested in his career. You just had reservations...after all he worked and lived in Romania and if it all went terribly wrong what would happen with your extended family? Would you no longer be able to spend time with the Weasley’s? What if he wasn’t interested and you simply made everything terribly awkward?

“You know there’s no harm in liking someone, right? It’s not going to kill you to admit you’re attracted to him.”

“It’s more than that, Ginny. It’s more complicated. There’s a million other factors to take into account. We’re not kids in school, Gin...we’re adults and we have our own lives and that’s not even taking into account that just because I think Charlie is handsome doesn’t mean he’s interested in me in the slightest!” You pick at the stones in the vegetable patch, throwing them away, just to give your hands something to do. You can feel the embarrassment rising in you at talking about this with his own sister, your friend. 

“Piss off! As if he wouldn’t be!” 

“Gin, this is the brother that I have been told on numerous occasions will probably remain a bachelor forever. Why would he be interested? I’m a bit of a mess...” Charlie had always been portrayed as a lone wolf, the least likely Weasley to get married, and most likely to die a bachelor. It was hard to imagine he’d suddenly take an interest in a relationship just because you were there. 

“We all are. The war did a number on most of us...but you’re amazing and I know my brother. If he’s not already interested, he will be.” She bumps your shoulder with her own and for a moment she seems like the older one, the wise one...not you. 

The two of you work together on the vegetable patch, talking about other things such as Harry and whether he’ll propose before Ginny does and her contract with the Holly Head Harpies. It’s nice, you think, as you take in a deep breath of fresh air before a cold wet feeling falls over you and you gasp in shock. 

Your hair is dripping, you blink water away from your eyes, your clothing soaked as you look up to see a now empty bucket hovering above your head and a laughing George Weasley doubled over nearby. With a battle cry you run at your best friend and tackle him to the ground, grabbing your wand you cast aguamenti and a stream of water hits him straight in the face. It doesn’t take him long to throw you off and run away, but you watch as Ginny chases after him. Ron is watching with a gnome attached to his leg, his attempts to shake the little thing off don’t seem to be working. In all this excitement you forget that another Weasley was also present...that is until two arms wrap around your thick waist and pull you off the ground.

You barely have enough time to yell “Charlie!” Before a stream of water hits your face. You try not to laugh, lest you choke on the water, but it's hard to do so. Something about this whole situation just seems hilarious to you. Maybe it's your pitiful attempts to get free, not that you were trying especially hard, or maybe it's that it feels like it used to. Like things weren’t different. Like you were all still kids not war weary adults. 

“Charlie!” You push away from him, managing to break free and immediately turn on him wand raised. 

This water fight between you, Charlie, George, and Ginny, with the occasional complaint from Ron as he gets sprayed by water, continued until Mrs Weasley came out of the Burrow.

“Look at the lot of you! Inside, you best get dry and changed before you catch your death!” 

You laugh lightly at the concern on Molly’s face as she ushers you all in with a tea towel in hand, most likely having been making lunch when she saw the lot of you soaked to the bone. 

You look up at Charlie as he bumps your shoulder lightly and smiles down at you as he passes. You sigh lightly as he walks in front of you. It would be rather nice you think...to be Charlie’s girlfriend. Rather nice indeed. 

Ginny giggles as she moves up to next to you, raising her eyebrows and smirking. You simply roll your eyes but can’t keep the smile off your face. Maybe she wasn’t wrong after all...

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Summer Nights: Part 1

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Charlie Weasley x Overweight/Plus size Female identifying Reader

Series: Summer Nights

Warning: Fred’s death, the series will mention issues such as guilt, grief, etc.

Writer:  @writings-of-a-hufflepuff​ (formerly imaginesofeveryfandom)​ aka @hufflepuffing-all-day-long​

Summary/Request: You’d always had brief glimpses of Charlie Weasley throughout your life, but despite your closeness with the rest of the Weasley family and your friendship with the Weasley Twins, you had never officially met. Until Charlie Weasley decided to take the summer off from his work as a Dragon Keeper at the Romanian Reserve and come back home, to the Burrow, that is. 

Notes: Gif is my own, using my art of Charlie Weasley which you can find on my art blog @artisticwarnug here. If you use please make sure you credit me and my art blog properly, that the ownership is clear as it is my own art and I would hate for it to be unclear that I made it <3 x 

Reader was a Hufflepuff in school but it probably won’t be mentioned that much!

Prologue 

After the war you’d found it harder and harder to spend long periods of time with your family. Not only were you working and living within a magical world that they were not a part of, but they didn’t know of the war or understand the true trauma of the experience for you and most of the wizarding community. You’d lost one of your best friends...Fred wasn’t coming back and your family had no idea that any of it even occurred. You’d seen your own friend alive one minute, and dead the next. Nothing could quite compare to the feeling, like choking on your own breath. Like drowning.

As a result you not only lived with the Weasley’s, Molly protesting whenever you tried to pay her money (you had Bill help you put some into their vault anyway, feeling the need to give them something for their kindness), but spent most of your holidays there as well, rarely returning home for Christmas, Easter, or the summer time. As much as you loved your family you struggled to be around them and they didn’t understand you either. 

In your grief you’d found that helping others made it easier, or at least helped you forget the feelings of guilt and grief that sat so heavy in your stomach. Helping George get back on his feet, helping Lee get his enthusiasm back, helping Mrs Weasley with dinner and around the house, helping everyone just seemed to make it easier to handle. That and working relatively long hours as a healer at St. Mungo’s often took your mind off of the war and what had been lost. You often chose to hide your feelings from the war behind Hufflepuff cheer. But, sometimes you wished someone would notice. You didn’t blame them for not, everyone had their own problems, your remaining best friends most of all. Grief and running a business took much attention. 

You woke up that Saturday morning fully aware that you should get out of bed, but that you didn’t want to. It wasn’t a particularly important Saturday, no plans had been made, no work to be done, no visitors expected. Yet, it would turn out to be a Saturday that completely changed your whole life. 

Since moving into the Burrow, 2 years prior, you had been staying in Fred and George’s old room, seeing as George lived above the Flat. You had spent the first few weeks simply making sure the room was safe, the twins had left many pranks around their room, but also all sorts of potion ingredients. You’d packed everything up and taken it to the Flat...It had been hard, going through all their childhood things with George. Hard for you, but harder for George. Years on and George was doing better, but you knew he still didn’t feel complete, like something was missing. But he slept better, stopped having nightmares, and generally seemed to have some of his old cheer back. It helped that Angelina was there for him as well. He was moving on and growing happier each day. 

The few things that you had been given by the Weasley family included clothes. At first it had been odd, being given some of Bill or Charlie or George’s old clothes to wear to bed or around the house. But, that had gone away quite quickly considering the oversized quidditch jerseys, jumpers, and shirts, were incredibly comfortable. Bill’s fit most snug, being a plump woman, with wide hips and a stomach, and Bill being one of the lankier of the Weasley’s. George and Charlie’s clothes fit much larger on you, however, seeing as they were some of the broader, stockier Weasley’s. It still surprised you that Charlie had been a seeker and not a beater.

The night previous you’d gone to bed in Charlie’s old quidditch jersey and a pair of pajama trousers with little snitches on, that had previously belonged to George. The trousers were much too long on you, covering your feet, and the Jersey while it clung to your hips was loose in every other aspect. It was a pairing that you enjoyed simply for its comfort. It was not something the Weasley’s even blinked at or questioned, after all you’d been gifted the clothes and had been wearing them for the last few years. So you hadn’t really thought twice, as you stumbled out of bed, feet hitting the powder stained floor, about going to breakfast as you were. 

You yawned loudly, covering your mouth with your hand, as you walked into the kitchen, not really taking in which Weasley’s were at the table, being much too tired to do so. 

“Morning” You sighed out as you grabbed a plate and collected your breakfast, Mrs Weasley having already placed dishes of eggs, toast, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, and sausages out on the dining table. 

“Good morning, dear!” Mrs Weasley called back, followed by a variety of familiar Weasley voices, and one that you did not recognise, that gave you pause. 

You wouldn’t say you were mortified to look up from your breakfast and realise that Charlie Weasley, the very attractive Charlie Weasley, was sitting in front of you, with an amused half smile and a raised eyebrow. But, you certainly were mildly embarrassed, simply because you were not exactly dressed for introductions and you were almost certain that you had a million knots in your hair. 

“Uh, hello...” You wave awkwardly, a little stinted, with an embarrassed smile. 

“Hello, love. I see mum finally gave away my jersey” You’re certain that Charlie is trying not to laugh, although you don’t feel hurt by this fact. Much like the rest of the Weasley’s Charlie comes across as laughing with you rather than at you. 

“I can...you can have it back, I...”

“It’s alright, looks better on you than it does on me. Might be a tad small for me now actually.” You relax at his easy going manner about it. You were sure it would be a little weird for the second oldest Weasley to finally meet someone while said someone was wearing his clothes. But, apparently not. 

“Y/N, right? I don’t think we’ve properly met?”

It had been two years since you’d last seen Charlie Weasley, that had been at Fred’s funeral and you’d not really taken much notice of him at the time. You had been, naturally, more concerned with and consumed by your own grief and the proceedings before you. 

You’d forgotten how handsome Charlie was. With broad shoulders and deep red hair, pulled back into a ponytail. Charlie was by far the most freckled of the Weasley’s with dense freckles across his face and sharp jaw, down his neck, and over his arms. The last time you’d seen Charlie he’d been dressed in a full suit, covered head to toe, the time before that he’d been a teenager, now you realised that he had a tattoo that you had never previously seen. It was a beautiful tattoo, a welsh green on his neck that twisted its head and puffed smoke from its nostrils. 

“We haven’t, just crossed paths, here and there. Surprising, really.”

“Considering you are not only friends with my brothers...” he pauses just a moment, before correcting himself, “brother, and have been living here, yeah, just a little surprising. Hufflepuff, right?”

“Yeah, managed to make Head Girl in the end, much to...much to Fred and George’s delight.” It was still odd wanting to mention them both, but realising that one of them wasn’t around anymore. But, it was true, Fred and George had teased you for weeks, over the fact that you, best friend to the biggest pranksters at Hogwarts, managed to make Head Girl. “Are you still working at the reserve in Romania?” 

“Yeah, thought I'd be head keeper by now...but...”

“Bad boss?” 

“He’s not bad, but we don’t see eye to eye when it comes to the dragons.” You raise an eyebrow, curious for him to continue. You’d never really been especially good at Care of Magical Creatures but that didn’t mean it wasn’t fascinating to you. “He wants to commercialise the reserve, make it a place people can come visit rather than a place for us to keep the dragons from the Muggles. Daft really, dragons’ll sooner eat a bunch of tourists than sit pretty for them.” 

“The reserves aren’t supposed to be tourist attractions though...why would...surely that’s dangerous and also not exactly fair on the dragons?”

“Oh, it’s definitely dangerous, it takes multiple keepers to restrain a dragon and the dragons aren’t exactly in cages on the reserve like a muggle zoo. Luckily he hasn’t gone through with the idea...yet.” He frowns in a way that tells you he suspects it’ll happen anyway and his tone suggests irritation with the situation. You’re sure for someone who loves dragons so much and wants them to be kept away from muggles and left to their own devices, it must be terribly frustrating. 

There’s a beat of silence as you continue eating. You feel a little awkward, although that certainly isn’t Charlie’s fault. It’s made worse by the sensation of Mrs Weasley’s eyes on the two of you. You were more than aware that Mrs Weasley’s one goal in life since the war had been to marry off each of her children, you included in that. Ginny had since been dating Harry, Ron was with Hermione, George was with Angelina, Bill was already married and Percy...you weren’t sure about Percy.  But, that left Charlie as the oldest single Weasley child, and yourself...still not dating much to Molly’s dismay. She was constantly asking you if you’d met anyone lately. 

“You’re a healer right?”

“At St. Mungo’s, on the Dai Llewellyn Ward for Serious Bites, although I'm often dragged away if someone's had a few too many hexes that have interacted poorly.”

“Ever had any dragon bites?”

“Once, a Peruvian Vipertooth, lady was in a right state for a while. Came out the other end though.” 

“Nasty bites, aggressive little buggers. You’d probably have a field day on the reserve the amount of bites and burns we have each day.” At that Charlie lifted his own arms to show an array of burn scars and old bite marks. Some had healed well, others less so.

You pointed at one, “Looks like you avoided seeing the healer.” You raise an eyebrow and make the face you learnt from Madam Pomphrey, the one that explicitly says you disapprove of avoiding proper medical care. You’d spent a great deal of time with Poppy not just because of the twins but also because she’d helped you prepare for your healer training. 

He lets out a slightly nervous laugh and looks away from you, red rushing up his neck in traditional Weasley fashion at being caught, “Didn’t want to bother anyone, it wasn’t serious. No need to worry, love.” You grab his arm and pull it closer to get a closer look. Trying to ignore the fact he had very strong forearms and incredibly warm skin.

Working on the Serious Bites Ward meant that you had a good eye for bite marks and what might have made them. Some dragons had very distinct bite marks. A Peruvian Viper Tooth had a different set of teeth to a Hungarian Horntail for instance. 

“Ukranian Ironbelly, right? Young one, by the looks of it.” 

“Just a baby really, got a bit over excited is all. Hurt like a bludger to the head though.”

“You should always see the reserve healer, you know? You could get a serious infection from a bite like this.” You let go of his arm and lean back in your chair, arms crossed, fixing him with the same look again. 

“I would if our healer was as nice as you. He’s got the personality of a fire crab who’s had its tail yanked.” You try not to take the compliment as more than it is. 

“Grumpy and explosive?” You knew a few healers like that. They didn’t exactly have the best bedside manner and it made many a witch or wizard reluctant to seek treatment. 

“Exactly. Augustus Pye still working on the ward? He tried to give dad stitches that time...” 

“Yes...” You sigh, it wasn’t that Augustus was a horrible person to work with so to speak, but you’d had a few awkward encounters with him when you’d first started working on the ward. 

“You don’t sound happy about that?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the man...he just...it's a very small ward you see and he may have...there were a few times where...”

“He asked her out on a date and she said no and embarrassed the poor bastard.” George’s voice comes from behind you with a laugh, before he takes the seat besides you. You’d been flattered, really you had, but, Augustus wasn’t someone you were particularly attracted to. Not physically, nor intellectually nor in regard to his personality. He was nice...but that was just it. You hadn’t expected to go into work and be asked on a date, either, it had been all a bit of a shock really...you hadn’t gotten a great deal of romantic attention in school. Being a big girl meant that boys were more inclined to tease you than date you. Not that you were upset about that, teenage boys were the worst. 

“Thank you, George. I obviously couldn’t disclose that myself.” You roll your eyes

“I still don’t know how you did it, you’re far too nice to say no to anyone.”

“I...” You look at all the curious eyes watching you, feeling a wave of genuine embarrassment as you realise you’re going to have to tell them the truth...that you’d really struggled to say no and had instead, “told him I was already seeing someone, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings!” You protest as George lets out a loud laugh next to you.

“It’s not funny, George! I was very flattered but...I didn’t want to tell him he was just...meh! How do you let someone down nicely? At least this way he thinks it's because i’m already taken not because I find him lacklustre!” 

“Just say it. You don’t find him attractive, you don’t want him to ravage you in the store room, it’s not that hard. You do know you’re an adult and not thirteen, right?” 

You let out an unhappy moan as you let your face fall into your hands at George’s teasing. 

“George Weasley!” You hear Molly scold him about talking about private matters such as ‘ravaging’ and teasing you so much, before turning her attention to you. “It’s okay not to like someone, dear, you don’t have to lie to save someone else’s feelings. Although, it would have been lovely for you to go on a date...it’s been a while, dear.” 

“Mum.” Charlie gave his mother a look which you knew too well, many of the Weasley children had given their mother that exact same look whenever she tried to encourage them to find a date. It was a relief to have someone else tell her to leave well enough alone. You loved Mrs Weasley dearly, but you’d rather date someone you wanted to rather than date someone simply to please her. 

“Oh, alright. Charlie, I need you and Ron to degnome the garden, you too George since you’re here. Y/N, dear, could you water the vegetables in the garden today?”

“Of course, Molly.” You’d long since learnt not to call her Mrs Weasley to her face. Molly hated any of her ‘adopted children’ calling her Mrs Weasley, Harry and Hermione still hadn’t quite gotten out of the habit yet though. Much to Molly’s dismay. 

After much more teasing from George and a shy goodbye to Charlie, you rushed up the stairs to get ready for the day. A day that might very well end with Charlie Weasley being the death of you, death by embarrassment that is.

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Summer Nights: Prologue

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Charlie Weasley x Overweight/Plus size Female identifying Reader

Series: Summer Nights

Warning: Fred’s death, the series will mention issues such as guilt, grief, etc.

Writer: @writings-of-a-hufflepuff​ (formerly imaginesofeveryfandom)​ aka @hufflepuffing-all-day-long​

Summary/Request: You’d always had brief glimpses of Charlie Weasley throughout your life, but despite your closeness with the rest of the Weasley family and your friendship with the Weasley Twins, you had never officially met. Until Charlie Weasley decided to take the summer off from his work as a Dragon Keeper at the Romanian Reserve and come back home, to the Burrow, that is. 

Notes: Gif is my own, using my art of Charlie Weasley which you can find on my art blog @artisticwarnug here. If you use please make sure you credit me and my art blog properly, that the ownership is clear as it is my own art and I would hate for it to be unclear that I made it <3 x 

The Weasley family had become your own family, your own wizarding family. Having grown up with muggle parents, it was both a shock and a joy at the age of eleven to discover that you were in fact a witch, that all those strange occurrences, such as Billy having a sudden and severe wedgie after picking on you, began to make sense. You finally felt like you fit in somewhere.

Your own family struggled to understand your new world, what magic was like, what you were exposed to, the dangers, the joys. It made connecting with them hard, not to say that you didn’t still love your family, you did, but it was hard to talk with them. Even more so after finishing at Hogwarts, after the second wizarding war, and becoming a healer. Your life was in the wizarding world, not the muggle, it put a wedge between you and your family. So the Weasley’s filled a hole that had formed. Your own family just couldn’t comprehend what you’d seen and gone through during the war, and you were loath to even tell them it had happened at all. 

Fred and George Weasley had, despite being Gryffindors and you being a Hufflepuff, befriended you from the moment you met. They often joked that it was because none of the teachers thought you were capable of pulling pranks and would believe that you were a good influence on the twins. While you certainly tried to rein them in it was impossible. The twins and Lee Jordan had certainly been much wilder than yourself, what with their ridiculous and amazing pranks, you had certainly been dragged into more than your fair share. But, often you were the one patching up burns after misfiring fireworks or getting rid of hexes and jinxs that were particularly troublesome or which had been caused by an event that Poppy shouldn’t be aware of. No one could have tried to calm Lee’s flamboyant narration of quidditch games or Fred and George’s ability to create the most brilliant pieces of magic.

To some it seemed like a weird relationship that you had with the three boys, but it was the best friendship group you could ask for. Whenever another student made fun of you for being overweight or for your hair or the way your face looked or your teeth or height or called you names because of your muggle born status, the boys were there. Likewise you were there whenever you could be for them; healing injuries, aiding in complicated charms, and on the odd occasion yelling at slytherins much more intimidating than yourself. There had been a few occasions upon which you’d helped the boys try to get a date with a girl that had taken their fancy as well. Not always with positive results. But, teenage affection never did run smoothly. Especially not when it involved Lee and Angelina.

Over your years at Hogwarts you had met most of the Weasley’s. Percy, the perfect prefect, who had a tense relationship with his family but still appeared to love them very much. Ronald, the boy who never seemed to feel good enough. You tried to praise him when you could, knowing he felt lost in the sea of family achievements and his friends’ own abilities and skills. Ginny, a sweet girl, but also incredibly fierce. Her traumatic experience with Voldemort in her first year had only made her braver, and you had a soft spot for the only daughter of Mr and Mrs Weasley. Arthur Weasley was a kind soul, who spent more visits than you can count asking about muggle inventions and culture, even asking for your help when tinkering with muggle devices. Not that that ever ended particularly well. Molly Weasley was a mother to everyone who needed it, always making sure you had enough food on your plate, that you had a Weasley Jumper on Christmas morning, and that you had people to lean on. While Molly could also be fierce in her anger and her ability to cut people off, she was still Mrs Weasley and cared for you and others greatly.

You eventually met Bill during the war. You hadn’t gone to his and Fleur’s wedding, simply because you wanted to spend as much time with your family before you joined a war that might very well kill you or them. You had been more than aware of it looming on the Horizon. Your family had been entirely unaware of the situation and you knew that they’d been suspicious about your persistent presence at the time, if grateful.  Bill was interesting to talk to, he was smart and had a great deal of knowledge on hexes and curses. He also had a streak of mischief that you recognised from the twins. 

Charlie Weasley, you had seen in passing. You had been a young student when he’d been at Hogwarts, despite your friendship with his younger brothers you never talked or officially met. You had watched a few quidditch games as a young student while Charlie had been Gryffindor Captain and there had always been brief glimpses of Charlie through your life. Though not enough for you to properly dwell on the man or wonder too much. A glimpse at the Gryffindor table, a glimpse during the war, a glimpse of him at Fred’s funeral. You knew of him, of his skills, his interests, his past history with the Cursed Vaults, but didn’t know him. He was the one Weasley you had never truly met or known.

That was until two years after the war, two years after Fred’s death. Charlie Weasley decided to take the summer off from his work as a Dragon Keeper at the Romanian Reserve and come back home to the Burrow.

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Mixing Traditions

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Charlie Weasley x Reader (No pronouns are used, reader isn’t described)

Warnings: N/A

Writer: @imaginesofeveryfandom​ aka @hufflepuffing-all-day-long​

Summary/Request: Carving Pumpkins with Charlie.

Notes: Gif is my own, using my art of Charlie Weasley which you can find on my art blog @artisticwarnug here. If you use please make sure you credit me and my art blog properly, that the ownership is clear as it is my own art and I would hate for it to be unclear that I made it <3 x

You absolutely loved Halloween for a variety of reasons. Being muggleborn you had grown up going tricking treating with your parents, carving pumpkins (badly), watching scary or simply funny movies, eating sweet treats like candy apples, and watching and helping your parents decorate the house. Halloween had been a big thing in your house, in fact considering the rest of your neighbours weren’t particularly interested in Halloween, your house always looked manic in comparison. 

Your parents loved Halloween. They made ‘monsters’ out of old costumes, and lights and placed them around the outside of your house. They made it so spooky that some kids didn’t want to trick or treat, but most loved it. So did you. When you finally went to Hogwarts Halloween was just as magic, sure trick or treating wasn’t a thing, nor were scary movies, or traditional pumpkin carving, but Hogwarts was always decorated so delightfully. 

Now as an adult with your own house, and your first Halloween in it, all you wanted to do was carve some pumpkins and enjoy the spooky festive spirit. With Charlie of course.

“No, you have to do it the muggle way! Charlie!” You whine. He’s getting ready with his wand to carve his pumpkin with magic and its so terribly frustrating when you wanted to do it the muggle way. “Please...” You put an extra quiver in your lip, knowing that Charlie would immediately put his wand down...which he did. 

“I’m sorry, love...we just always do it that way.” 

“It’s okay. I can show you.” You know it must be odd, to a pureblood, to not use magic for something like pumpkin carving. Especially when magic makes so many things so much easier and so much simpler. 

You hand him a sharpie, and instruct him as the two of you draw out the lines for your pumpkin faces. Yours begins to look like a silly face, two big eyes and sharp but smiling teeth. Charlie’s is predictably an attempt a dragon...or that’s what he said it was...it looked a little bit like a splodge of paint. But, you wouldn’t tell him that.

“What now?” 

“Knife.” You hold up a variety of knives, in a variety of different shapes and sizes

“Knife?” You place a knife in his hand and show him on your own pumpkin as you cut the top off of your pumpkin allowing you to reach inside. He’s rather adept with a knife considering pure blood wizards rarely have use for them, often bewitching them rather than actually using them. 

“And scoop.” You hand him a spoon and show him how to loosen the insides of the pumpkin. It was probably your least favourite part of pumpkin carving, simply because it took forever and stringy bits of pumpkin got everywhere. 

You laugh under your breath as you reach up to pull a bit of pumpkin from his red hair that had sprayed up as he cleaned out his pumpkin messily. “Messy pup.” 

He grins at you before diving back into his pumpkin and you’re glad that he’s so invested...you were a little worried he wouldn’t enjoy carving pumpkins. It was a muggle thing after all. 

“So our pumpkins are empty, our lines are drawn, now’s the tricky part. Carving. You don’t want to use too big a knife because you might cut too big a piece.” You let Charlie pick up the best carving knife first and watch him as he carefully cuts out his ‘dragon’. There’s something so relaxing about watching Charlie concentrate on something, take his time. It reminds you of school a little bit. The two of you used to just sit quietly together working on essays and projects, you didn’t need to be loud all of the time and things haven’t changed as you grew. Your relationship is great because you can be boisterous and loud, but you can also be calm and quiet too. Its not preformative. You’re loud when you feel like it and quiet when you want to be.

Truth be told, Charlie’s dragon wasn’t quite as bad as you thought it would be. It was somewhat identifiable and it had a little bit of awkward charm. 

Your own pumpkin turned out neat and surprisingly clear. Despite your many years of pumpkin carving experience you weren’t always good at it. But that was half the fun, if the pumpkin was a little weird that was just charm right? 

The two of you used magic to light the pumpkin, flames that wouldn’t go out and that were relatively safe compared to the muggle candle method, before placing them outside of your front door to welcome any visitors.

The two of you snuggled up under a blanket on the sofa, after pulling bits of pumpkin out of your hair and cleaning the kitchen. Pumpkin got everywhere.

“Thank you for humouring me...I know magic is easier, but...its not quite the same.”

“I enjoyed it.” He presses a kiss to the crown of your head, pulling you closer, “I like sharing these things with you...I like that you share this side of you.”

“Why wouldn’t I? I love you. I trust you. Muggle traditions are part of who I am and I want to share it with you...so we can have our own mixed traditions.” You liked that you could share these things with him, that you could trust him to try muggle things and mingle them in to your own life together. 

“I’m definitely up for pumpkins every year, love.” You smile up at him, pressing a kiss to his check before settling back down. You let out a content sigh and snuggle closer.

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Ways to Show You Care| Bad Dreams and Real Discussions

Prompt: Calming them down when they have a bad dream

Character: Charlie Weasley

Warning/Notes: Mildly angst. Also kind of a kind at some of the themes in Summer Nights (which still hasn’t been completed and is sat in my drafts judging me)

Gif is my own, using my art of Charlie Weasley which you can find on my art blog @artisticwarnug here. If you use please make sure you credit me and my art blog properly, that the ownership is clear as it is my own art and I would hate for it to be unclear that I made it <3 x 

You can buy stickers of Charlie (without the background) from my redbubble artisticwarnug.redbubble.com

The war took its toll on everyone. Barely any of the wizarding community remained untouched. Everyone had lost a friend, a family member, or an acquaintance. Everyone had seen places they loved touched by war...damaged...destroyed. Diagon Alley and Hogwarts would never be pure, untouched memories anymore. Those places you’d discovered and loved as a child were tainted but death and destruction. 

You’d lost friends and family. Being muggle born was hard, not just because you were a target, but because your family had been targeted as well. You wish every day that your worst nightmares hadn’t come true, that those fears hadn’t been justified, that your family was still here...but they weren’t. You were on your own in a sense, but the Weasleys...especially Charlie always reminded you that you weren’t truly alone. You had people who cared about you. People who loved you. 

Nighttime was the hardest for you. During the day people distracted you, made you laugh, your job as a healer kept you busy and your friends were never far. As hard as life was post-war during the day there was always something to remind you that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Those days where nothing good seemed to happen, you found yourself too busy to really dwell on the past. 

But, when the sun set, when the moon rose, and you settled into your bed beside Charlie that’s when the memories and the dreams came out. Sometimes you dreamt of things that had been, that had happened... Fred dying, Tonks and Remus, the moment you found out about your family. Sometimes you dreamt of things that hadn’t happened, but that would devastate you if they did. Charlie dying was usually the most common theme. In your dreams he died in so many ways, some muggle, some magical.

Tonight was no different, it started at the Battle. Spells flying, walls breaking, acromantula, giants, and death eaters...you did what you always did, what you had done. You flung spells and ducked and dived, looking for familiar faces, people you wanted to protect, people you wanted to stick beside. The familiar feeling of fear deep within your chest, tightening, like a weight that stopped you breathing easy. The feeling of imminent and ever present danger. 

“Y/N!” A shout, your name, familiar and filled with relief. Charlie, you smile in your dream, he’s here. He’s okay and you can stick with Charlie now, protect each other.

You turn to greet him, your smile drops as he stops in his tracks, green light hitting him, his eyes going blank, his body dropping and you scream.

You scream and you scream and you scream, you’re still screaming when hands gently shake you awake. It dies on your lips as you’re greeted by familiar concerned eyes, long red hair and stark freckles, freckles that you’d always try to count but never be able too. You always lost count after 30. 

Your breath is shaky and stutters as your eyes flit over Charlie’s face, trying to burn it into your memory, to remind yourself that he’s here, that he’s okay, that he’s not dead. 

“It’s okay, love...it’s okay. It was just a dream.” His voice is low and soothing as he moves to sit next to you, pulling you into his arms. Fingers start running through your hair and you close your eyes focusing on the sensation as you try to slow your breathing and calm yourself down. 

You grounded yourself with the feeling of Charlie’s fingers in your hair, legs beneath your own, the sound of his humming and shushing noises, those little things that remind you where you are and who you are with.  

“Do you want to tell me what it was about?” His voice is still low and quiet, soft, like he’s scared to spook you. Charlie always asked but you knew that if you said no he’d accept that answer and not push for more. He asked because he wanted to help and because knowing helped him to help you.

You take in a deep breath, the smell of Jasmine from Charlie’s washing detergent calming you a little bit more. “It was the battle...again.” He hums, knowing just how many dreams you’ve had about that day. 

“Except it was different...” Fingers are still brushing through your hair, soothing circles against your scalp. You let out a shaky breath, “You died. You died and I couldn’t...I couldn’t do a thing.”

It’s silent because he doesn’t know what to say. Because his worst nightmare is losing you and the rest of his family. He knows yours is losing him, after your family...after everything you’ve lost the idea of losing another person breaks your heart and tortures you whenever you fall asleep. It breaks his heart to know you’re tormented so much by dangers that are no longer real. 

“Do you...do you think maybe it’s time to see a healer?” You stop yourself from immediately reacting poorly and think...and think some more. The truth is you’ve been suffering from dreams for months, getting barely any interrupted sleep and looking over your shoulder at the slightest sound. Charlie was right, it was clear you were struggling and while Hermione and the other’s had sought help, you hadn’t...maybe it was time you did.

“Yeah...I think so. I’m just...i’m scared to do it.”

“We’ve all been there...you know that I...that I went after Fred.” You nod against his shoulder, he’d been devastated that he’d ‘failed’ as a big brother, that he hadn’t stopped Fred’s death even though he wasn’t there to stop it. He’d felt like he should of been. “It really does help...and it’s hard, facing all of it, but I want you to be happy and I want you to be able to sleep through the night, love. If you want to do it, i’ll be here the whole time and we can try and find a healer you like.” 

Another shaky breath leaves you as you pull away enough to look Charlie in the eyes, to grimace at him, “I think I need to...thanks for...thanks for making me realise that. I don’t want to be like this forever. I want to be happy. With you. Planning the future and not living in the past.”

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Lucky Charm

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Charlie Weasley x Reader

Warning: N/A

Writer: @imaginesofeveryfandom aka @hufflepuffing-all-day-long

Summary/Request: Charlie always says you’re his lucky charm for quidditch.

Notes: Gif is my own, using my art of Charlie Weasley which you can find on my art blog @artisticwarnug here. If you use please make sure you credit me and my art blog properly, that the ownership is clear as it is my own art and I would hate for it to be unclear that I made it <3 x

“You’re coming to my quidditch game on Saturday, right?” Your attention was drawn away from the essay you were writing during Rakepick’s Defence Against the Dark Arts class, by Charlie leaning across the gap between your desks. 

He had that particular soft smile, that made the corners of his eyes crinkle and his freckles dance, directed at you. His red hair was pulled back like usual in small ponytail at the back of his neck, his tie was loose around his neck and your fingers itched to tighten it properly. 

You loved classes with Charlie. Partly because he was your friend, which meant spending time with him was fun, he made classes less boring and always made you smile. But, partly because since 4th year you’d had more than a little crush on the boy. 

“Of course, when have I not?” 

“Just wanted to check, you’re kind of my lucky charm after all.”

“Charlie, it is entirely coincidentally that you catch the snitch the majority of the time i’m at the games.” After all Charlie was good enough to play for England. It wasn’t a secret that he was incredibly talented even with his frame being more of beater’s than a seeker’s. 

“Nope, it’s cause you’re my lucky charm.” You roll your eyes at him and return to your essay, but its hard to deny that your heart is beating just a little too fast and your hands are a tiny bit clammier than normal from his words.

Gryffindor verses Slytherin Quidditch matches were always tense and Charlie was always a little bit nervous before them. A lot rides on his shoulders, they would win the cup if he caught the snitch. But he takes a deep breath, thinks about you up in the stands cheering him and the others on, now he’s captain of the Gryffindor team, now its your last year of Hogwarts, and he knows he can do this despite a variety of nasty faces staring him down from the other team. 

You always got nervous watching Charlie play, mostly because bludgers always seemed to get so bloody close to him and because on more than one occasion he had taken some rather bad hits and ended up in the hospital wing. Charlie wasn’t as small as some seekers, who made smaller targets. Charlie was broad shouldered and large, his brother had once compared him in size to a Gorilla and it wasn’t far off. He was large and it made him a larger target. You were always on the edge of your seat wishing him luck and praying that he didn’t get hurt. 

Nymphadora Tonks was commentating the game today in her usual bubbly, cheeky style. You barely listened to her commentary watching as chasers lost the ball, gained the ball, scored. As bludgers were batted away from the Gryffindor team one hitting Merula Snyde right in the ribs but she carried on, despite being slightly slower now. 

You always watched Charlie though, the other players didn’t really matter so much. You watched and watched until you saw it. The little dart of his eyes and then he was careening forward. He’d spotted the snitch. As always once Charlie noticed the other seeker noticed, but even on a shoddy broom Charlie was faster, always able to get the best out of the broom the way he got the best out of animals and people. You wondered if brooms truly understood the character of their rider. 

You watched in awe and horror as Charlie got closer and closer to the ground and with a lunge off of his broom and straight to the pitch terf caught the snitch in his hand, holding it aloft like some sort of trophy.

“With 180 points to 50 Gryffindor win!” Tonks yelled over the cheers, but you were already making the long decent down the stands and towards the pitch.

It took a few minutes, to get down and out, but then you were rushing towards him, “YOU DID IT!” You were halfway to him and he turned to smile at you. A smile so bright you thought you might burn up and melt like Icarus. 

You’re a little out of breath when you reach him, not being particularly sporty yourself, and throw your arms around his shoulders pulling him into a hug. It was a post match ritual of sorts, that you would come and congratulate him as everyone began to get ready to leave. 

“Of course I did, my lucky charm was there, love.” You look away from him as you pull back slightly, biting your lip bashfully. He always knew how to make you giddy, bashful, a little bit unsure. All because of your silly little crush. 

“Charlie...”

“You’re my lucky charm...” He turns you head back to face him with a gentle hand under your chin. “and I hope I don’t lose you when we graduate.” 

“You won’t.” You promise, sure that wherever he went for his dragon obsession you’d follow. You could be a healer anywhere. Anywhere. As long as the two of you stuck together that was what mattered. Charlie made you feel like you could tackle anything, a mountain troll, a dragon, an oversized niffler. 

His face is so close yours that you can see every individual freckle, that his nose brushes against yours, that you can feel his breath against your skin. “Can I kiss you now?” 

“Yes” Its barely a whisper from you and you barely have it out before his mouth is pressed to yours, a hand supporting the back of your neck and another pulling at your waist until there is not space between you.

You barely register that those students still around are cheering and catcalling, because Charlie Weasley is finally kissing you and it feels right. It feels like your soul has lifted out of your body and flown away. It feels like a thousand homecomings. It feels like you’re supposed to be there, in his arms, pressing your lips against his and following his lead. 

“Will you go out with me?” Its a whisper still as the two of you pull away, only slightly, foreheads still pressed together, noses still brushing.

“Yes, Charlie.” You laugh slightly, giddy, “I’ll go out with you.” 

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Prompt List

Prompt: Annoyance

Character: Charlie Weasley

Notes: Gif is my own, using my art of Charlie Weasley which you can find on my art blog @artisticwarnug here. If you use please make sure you credit me and my art blog properly, that the ownership is clear as it is my own art and I would hate for it to be unclear that I made it <3 x

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It makes you want to scream. The taping of his fingers against the table. You’re not sure why today of all days the sound annoys you or why it makes you want to scream and throw something. Normally your mood is pretty mellow, relatively even and stable, the feeling is scary. Its not something you’re used to and it makes you feel silly and out of control, which makes you even more annoyed.

It’s not Charlie’s fault. He taps his fingers all the time, he’s always doing something with his hands, but in that moment you know you just have to get up and leave the library, leave that space. You know that if you stay you’re going to say something horrible or do something you’d regret and your mood is one which you can’t blame on Charlie. Nor do you want to.

Charlie had been your boyfriend for little over a year and you adored him. From the tips of his ears, which turned bright red when he was embarrassed, to the bottom of his hand me down shoes. You liked his love for dragons, you loved watching him fly when playing quidditch, adored how kind and gentle he could be, and generally found very few things to dislike about him. It was rare for you to be annoyed around him, or sad, or angry. Because he just always managed make your day seem brighter. But today something was just setting your nerves on edge and you knew that you couldn’t stay around that bloody tapping. 

“Y/N?” You don’t reply as you swing your bag over your shoulder and make for the door of the library at a quick pace. You know Charlie is confused, perhaps even a little hurt, but you also know that staying to explain could end in you blowing up at him for something he hasn’t done. 

Its not until you’re out by the Black Lake that you finally realise why you’re so annoyed. Its not Charlie, its not the tapping, in truth its a culmination of things. The product of stress and anxiety that’s built up to the point of irritability. Sometimes annoyance is simply a reaction to feeling overwhelmed, a defence. The calm stillness of the Black Lake, the biting chill on your cheeks, the not quite silence of the outdoors with its bird song and rustling leaves, it all serves to ground you and cause some introspection. The outdoors has that sort of habit, of making people think, to experience, to feel. When things are too much sometimes just surrounding yourself with nature can help to bring you back down to earth.

It’s where Charlie finds you, sat with your back to a willow tree (not the whomping one of course). 

“I’m sorry...” You say as he sits down next to you on the ground. Your eyes are fixed on the lake, now that the annoyance has gone, the irrational irritation, you feel bad...because you’d have hated for someone to just walk off and leave you wondering...and that’s exactly what you did.

“What happened?”

“I...I just felt really irritated and annoyed and..I didn’t want to take it out on you...this is where I come when things are just too much.”

“You know...we all get like that sometimes.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmm, I live with so many younger siblings and I love them, but sometimes I wake up and I just...I can’t handle it and I need to walk it off. It’s okay. You don’t need to apologise for looking after yourself, okay?” His shoulder butts against yours in a reassuring gesture.

You lean your head against his shoulder, letting him wrap and arm around your shoulders, “Same goes for you.” I love you, you want to tack onto the end but you don’t. It’s not quite right yet. You’re both not quite there. But you content yourself with knowing how you feel.

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Weasley Jumpers

Fandom: Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

Pairing: Charlie Weasley x Reader

Warning: N/A

Writer: @imaginesofeveryfandom aka @hufflepuffing-all-day-long

Summary/Request: You receive a Weasley jumper in the post and teasing and confessions ensue.

Notes: Gif is my own, using my art of older Charlie Weasley which you can find on my art blog @artisticwarnug here. If you use please make sure you credit me and my art blog properly, that the ownership is clear as it is my own art and I would hate for it to be unclear that I made it <3 x

I know Bill is one that gets you the Weasley jumper...buttt...I love Charlie so much. 

Gender neutral

You’d been at breakfast, the owl post arriving in it’s usual flurry of activity. You expected perhaps a letter or two from your family, but nothing more. You certainly weren’t expecting a brown parcel, wrapped with twine. It fell rather heavy in your lap, soft, but not entirely light and you would have opened it then and there had you not been running late for potions with Snape who absolutely hated you. So instead you’d shoved the parcel into your satchel, where you kept your ink, quills, and parchment before going about your day. It could wait after all.

It wasn’t until lunch, which you decided to eat out by the great lake with each of your friends that you had time to open it and have a look. 

“What you got there, Y/N?” Tonks asks as you pull the brown parcel out of your bag. Each of your friends, Penny, Tonks, Bill, Ben, Charlie, Tulip, Andre, Barnaby, and Rowan glancing at you curiously. It was strange how such a large group of random people worked together so well.

“I don’t know...I got it at breakfast this morning but I didn’t have time to open it. No idea who would be sending me a parcel though.” 

“What if it’s cursed?!” Ben fretted and you rolled your eyes at him, hushing him and reassuring him that you were sure it was probably something completely harmless, despite the many adventures you all got yourself into. 

“Well, open it then!” Penny urges you on and under the watchful eyes of your friends you begin to untie the twine and pull apart the layers of brown parcel paper. 

It is not what you expect at all. It’s a Weasley jumper. So clearly a Weasley jumper. The exact same colours as Charlie’s, maroon and mustard yellow. Your first initial knitted into the front of it. It is a pleasant surprise. You’d always looked at Charlie’s jumper with envy, Bill’s as well. They both looked so comfortable and warm, and at the height of winter Hogwarts could get rather cold. You’d been contemplating simply stealing one of theirs for a while now. 

“Mum, must have sent you it” Bill looks entirely confused as to why you’d receive a parcel from his mother, Charlie seems flushed, red tinting the tops of his ears, his cheeks and even his neck. 

“There’s a letter.” Within the folds of the jumper, a little piece of parchment with neat handwriting greeted you. 

“Dear Y/N, I know this must be a surprise but I was making this years round of jumpers for Ginny and the boys and decided that you should have one as well. After all, you’re one of Charlie’s closest friends and Bill’s as well. It would be lovely if you could come to the Burrow over the Christmas holidays. Much Love, Molly” You read out, rather bashful at the realisation that she’d sent this to you because you were close to Charlie, it seemed ever so much like Bill was the after thought in the letter. 

It was true that Charlie was perhaps your best friend, as much as Rowan would hate to hear you admit that, and while you and Bill certainly were close friends you doubted he talked much about you or your escapades to his mother. He had to preserve his image as prefect after all!

“Mum...” You looked up to Charlie’s groaning, head in his hands. You supposed it must be somewhat embarrassing for your mother to make a jumper for your friend because of you. But you were rather happy. You’d always wanted a Weasley jumper and you supposed it would have happened eventually after all you knew so much about the Weasley’s Charlie often joked that you might as well become an official one yourself. It was also nice to know Charlie talked about you, even if it was to his mother. 

“Charlie..it’s fine. I’ve always wanted one!” At the time you’d meant it of course, but days later as the teasing began to increase you started to wonder if having a Weasley jumper wasn’t more trouble than it was worth. 

You were wearing it to your usual trip to the Three Brooksticks with Andre. Drinking butterbeer across from him and being ever so careful not to ruin the jumper which was both warm and comfortable. The sort of thing you could fall asleep in.

“I think this means you and Charlie are married now. A Weasley jumper is practically an invitation into the family.”

“Andre...”

“You like him. His mother sent you a jumper that she only makes for her family or people she considers almost family. He’s my friend too...and if he’s talking to his mother about you...”

“Andre, we do dangerous, stupid, reckless things every year. He probably just tells her about the trouble we’re getting into.”

“You should hear him talk when you’re not around. He likes you. Whether you want to admit it or not.” Each of your friends seemed to agree or at least share the view that Mrs Weasley wanted you to marry into the family. 

You couldn’t deny that you had a crush on Charlie. He was handsome, kind, brave, passionate about what he loved, and always happy to support you in whatever you needed. But, it seemed like a stretch to assume he felt the same simply because his mother had given you your own handmade jumper. 

You still continued to wear the thing, however, and found yourself flustered when Charlie took note of it one Hogsmeade weekend in which the two of you decided to go out near the Shrieking Shack, the other’s deciding to continue shopping. You quite liked sitting on the peaceful hill, even if the Shack was creeping and looming.

“It looks good on you.” 

“Mmm?” At first you’re not quite sure what he means, and ask a question with only a hum. Ask him to clarify without words.

“Mum’s jumper. It looks good. You look good.” Charlie rubs the back of his neck, he’s going that usual Weasley red, making his freckles stand out even more. 

“Oh..thank you. I love it, I really do...” You’d written Molly back thanking her for it and promising you’d ask to see if you could visit the Burrow soon. Even her letters sounded warm and friendly. Motherly. 

“Will you be coming to the Burrow this Christmas?”

“I need to ask my parents, but, I hope to. I want to meet your family...and spending extra time with my best friend is also a plus.” You tease as you bump his shoulder with your own. 

He looks down and away from you, his cheeks deepening in colour even further. It’s times like these, where Charlie flushes bright red and averts his gaze, that you think maybe Andre was right. Maybe Charlie did like you.

“You know...everyone keeps joking that your mother wants you to marry me...”

“She probably does.”

“Where would she get that idea though?” You’re hoping to get something out of him, to really understand why Mrs Weasley sent you this jumper, to understand why Charlie talked about you so much or at least enough for her to make you a jumper. 

“I...I talk about you...look, you’re my best friend, yeah?” You nod and confirm that of course you’re his best friend, he looks up and meets your eye. “I don’t want to ruin that, but I talk about you because I like you. I really like you and mum...mum knows that...she’s always known when one of us had a crush.”

“So she really does want us to get married?” 

“Or at least...date, but I know you probably don’t feel that way so...i’d rather keep you as a best friend then lose you completely.” His expression drops and it hurts to think that he believes you don’t feel the same. You’re not sure you could feel anymore affection for this boy if you tried.

“Who said I didn’t feel the same way?” 

“Well, I always assumed that you an-” You cut him off, “You know what they say about assuming? It makes an ass of you and me.” 

“So...?” A little smile starts to form on his face, dimples coming into play, his freckles moving in a little dance across his cheeks. 

“So, I like you Charlie..and I thought you didn’t so I kept quiet, but I really like you.” You take his hands in your own holding them, smiling at him brightly. It was thrilling to know he liked you. He really liked you and Andre hadn’t just been getting your hopes up. 

His hands tighten on yours, his smiling widening even further as he pulls you closer by them. “So...next Hogsmeade Weekend?”

“It’s a date. I have to get started on becoming an official Weasley after all.” You laugh as he pulls you into a hug, the smell of fresh grass and honeysuckle surrounding you as you press your face into his shoulder. Both your jumpers merge together, the same wool matching perfectly.