HP again. But awesome.
Much like real dragons, he was very temperamental. But Charlie was used to the heat. - Harry Potter
When Charlie first met Draco Malfoy, he was so shitfaced he wouldn't have recognised his own wand. Luckily, this happened in a Muggle club and he had left his wand at home.
He has the vague fuzzy memory of bumping into a very blond man on the dance floor. A thin, pointy, blond guy wearing something black – a shirt, or a jacket. Maybe.
To be fair, that could have been anyone, because he was so wankered he could probably have mistaken his own mother for a blond man.
But don't tell her that. She would kill him slowly, with a wooden spoon.
Anyway, the point is, for some reason, the first time he officially meets Malfoy, when Harry pushes the bloke towards him during a post-War party at Hogwarts (“Charlie, this is Draco Malfoy, Malfoy, this Charlie Weasley, I'm going to get some punch, if you need me I'll be with Ginny,”), that is the image that comes to mind.
Funny how your brain works sometimes, eh?
He's been back from Romania for months now, hasn't gone back to it since before the War, and while he does miss his dragons and the people, he's been having an amazing time celebrating at night and rebuilding during the day, making life better.
Malfoy stares at the ground for a while, before Charlie grabs two glasses of champagne off a tray an Elf is levitating – managing to look cool and suave for once instead of smashing the entire tray to the ground, excellent – and hands one to Draco. He decides on Draco, not Malfoy, because he's never been good with calling people by their surnames, it sounds stuffy and old and a little student-teacher like, and he'd rather be mates than cold acquaintances any day.
Draco takes the champagne automatically before frowning at the glass in his hand.
“Why am I here?”
“To get sloshed?” Supplies Charlie, in a way that can only be an offer of help.
Draco glances up at him, “No.”
Charlie shrugs and sips his champagne, “Fair enough, just a suggestion.”
Draco swirls his glass so that the liquid looks like a whirlpool and he stares into it as though he could lose himself in it.
It's an expression that makes Charlie feel slightly uncomfortable.
“What's wrong, mate?”
“Mate?” exclaims Draco, snapping, “I am not your mate. I am the reason your brother has those scars and is now a werewolf. I am the reason that Fred is,” he struggled with his sentence, “that's he's gone, and I am the reason that half the people in this room are grieving over dead relatives.”
He downed his champagne.
Charlie grinned as he took another sip of champagne. He was going to make Draco his project.
This was clearly a man in need of a stiffer drink.
“It wasn't your fault.”
Draco stares at him, his thoughts plain on his face, 'You sir, are mental', the same sort of stare that real dragons give when you approach them for the first time.
“No, no, listen to what I'm saying – it's Voldemort's fault.”
Draco narrows his eyes at him, like a mother dragon watching him inch towards her eggs.
“Yeah, you had a part in it, but was it really your choice?”
He glances down quickly, then back up at Charlie, almost daring him to continue, “No. He had my family.”
“And I can understand that. You did what you had to do. If you hadn't done it, someone else would have and maybe there would have been more deaths.”
“I doubt it.”
“But it's possible. Here,” he grabs an Elf who is levitating an empty tray back to the kitchens, “can we get two scotches? If you have a bottle, just bring the whole thing up.”
Draco is polite but disbelieving, “Excuse me?”
“You and I, mate,” says Charlie, clapping a hand on his back, “are going to get ourselves so pissed that we can't remember how we got here.”
Draco frowns again and starts to protest, but Charlie interrupts him.
“So pissed, that when we wake up tomorrow morning on the lawn outside, our first thought will not be 'shit this is bright', but 'who the fuck moved the sun indoors'?”
Draco snorts and tries to hide a smile, and Charlie knows he's won.
The Elf reappears with two tulip-shaped glasses and a bottle of scotch.
“Thank you!”
The Elf gives a huge smile which looks rather odd and thanks Charlie for thanking him. Or her.
Draco takes one of the glasses without being prompted and points them towards a table at the edge of the room. The project is working well – the dragon trusts him enough to get close.
“Alright. How are we going to do this?”
Charlie barely resists the temptation to make a dirty joke, something about bodies and come and clothes, or no clothes.
What? A dirty mind is a dirty mind.
“You want to play a drinking game?”
Draco sinks into a chair, gesturing Charlie towards the one of the other side of the table.
“No. Drinking games are for people with something to lose.”
Charlie frowns at that, but sits down.
“The war is over.”
“For you. You were on the good side, you're a hero. I was on the bad side and I will forever be a villain.”
Charlie opens the bottle and pours them a couple of fingers each.
“The people who count know why you did what you did.”
Draco looks into tulip-shaped glass and shrugs, stroking his fingers up the side of it.
“That won't stop the rest of the world from hating me.”
Charlie won't let him drink to that, “That's just depressing, Draco.”
He shrugs again and lifts his glass, but Charlie puts a hand on his arm.
“No. This is a celebration.”
“We're going to get pissed.”
“That's not the point. We're going to get pissed whilst remembering the good times.”
Draco shakes Charlie's hand off, “We didn't share any good times.”
“But we did have good times. You played Quidditch, right?”
“I did.”
“So, what position did you play?”
Draco isn't quite convinced by this, Charlie can tell, but slowly relaxes as he feels there's nothing to fear.
“Seeker. You were Gryffindor Quidditch captain for a while, same position.”
Charlie blinks, “I was. How did you know?”
“Detention,” he shrugs, taking a sip of scotch, “those damned plaques had to be polished without magic. They say you were good enough to play for England.”
Maybe this project was not going his way. He had to find some sort of vantage point.
“Oh, I don't know about that. I was good, but I hear you and Harry were amazing to watch.”
Draco shrugs again, as though it was the only way to start an answer, “He flies like he was born to do so. I fly like I was trained to.”
“Technique is important.”
“But not as important as skill.”
“You're starting to depress me, Draco.”
If Draco could have spit fire, he would have, “I'm sorry I can't live up to your expectations of buoyancy and joy while being sent to the castle I helped destroy, among people who I used to know and who now hate me. I'm sorry I can't be less depressing, alright, but this is not a momentous occasion for me. It's a reminder of my failures.”
Much like real dragons, he was very temperamental. But Charlie was used to the heat.
“You led the fight against the Death Eaters when the reinforcements came in, you know the horrors of what happened. Why are you even here?”
“At Hogwarts?”
“Why are you here, offering me drinks and talking to me as though we were friends?”
Charlie sighed. Why were drunks so prone to sadness?
“Because you look like you need one. Look, I'm not going to pretend everything is peachy now, but life is getting better. How many of the people in this room insulted you when you walked in?”
Draco raised an eyebrow, “Seven.”
“Right. And how many insulted you in the first week after the Battle?”
“More. So what, people hate me less because they're busier.”
Charlie looks him in the eye, “I don't hate you.”
Draco looks down into his drink, “You don't know me.”
“Neither do the people who insult you. You learn to ignore the stupid people after a while.”
Draco's head snaps up, “What would you know?”
Charlie has to stop himself from grinning. He knows this game, he played it every day with his dragons in Romania.
“I know that ignorance has no place in life. And ignorant people are the reason there's so much hate.”
Draco pauses, before taking another sip of his drink.
“You know, Weasley, you're quite clever.”
“And if you want people to stop hating you, you're going to have to stop saying things like that. You're not better than anyone else, but you are as good as them.”
Draco looks confused, but nods.
“Now, ready to get happy?”
“The plan is to get more plastered than Svengard the Shitfaced, who was so drunk he got defeated by a Muggle in a wizard duel in a tavern in 1083.”
Charlie laughs out loud, “Excellent.”
They talk about Quidditch some more, their favourite teams and who they think will qualify for the next World Cup.
“There's no way,” says Draco, pouring himself his fifth glass, “that Brazil won't qualify next year. They keep reaching the quarter finals and this year they're going to win.”
“You reckon?”
Charlie is well on his way to being hammered and he's enjoying the company.
“Yeah,” Draco, he notices, looses his uptight vocabulary when drunk, “and Bulgaria won't get in since Krum is on leave next year.”
“They might get someone else.”
Draco shakes his head harder than he means to, because his entire body sways from side to side, “No, nope. Krum was a godsend for them – d'you remember the last time they were in a World Cup before Krum?”
“1960s?” ventures Charlie, “The one in Switzerland?”
“Nope,” said Draco taking a gulp, “it was in Japan, 1932. See? Without Krum, they are doomed.”
Charlie nods, and feels the alcohol at the edge of his consciousness.
“And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom.”
Charlie giggles at the odd manners of this drunk Draco.
He stands up as Draco does, without knowing why, and goes to find Harry.
Harry is snogging Ginny – ergh, he didn't need to see that – so he walks around the room instead.
“Charlie!”
It's Hagrid, who is standing with the large French woman he was with that time in the forest at the Triward Tournament. Madam Maximum or something.
“Hagrid! How are you?”
Hagrid pats him on the back, and though Charlie prides himself on the strength that helps him with his job, the man almost smacks him to the ground.
“Doin' well, can't complain. And yeself?”
“Also good. Missing my dragons, though.”
“Yeah,” Hagrid sighs, “I know what yeh mean. How's Norberta?”
“Last time I was there, she was doing just fine."
Hagrid gets a faraway look on his face and the woman next to him puts a hand on his arm.
He shakes his head, “Say, what were you doin' with Malfoy?”
“He needed a friend,” says Charlie carefully, “I'm just being nice.”
Hagrid nods, “Right. S'a good thing. He needs someone treating him like he's a decent human bein'. Might do him some good.”
“I'm good at handling dragons.” Charlie replied, grinning.
Hagrid nods at him some more, then gets distracted by Professor Sprout coming over.
Charlie smiles and says hello, but wants to get back his table.
People are slowly trickling out of the Hall, going home.
Ron and Hermione wave at him from the line to the Floo and he waves back, almost hitting the girl behind him.
“Sorry!”
Draco is slowly walking back, trying to follow the stones in the floor but wobbling a bit.
“Need a hand, mate?”
Draco frowns, “Walking is difficult.”
“Yeah, it is.”
Together they manage to get back to the table without falling down, though Charlie almost trips on a loose stone.
One more drink, and they're back to Quidditch.
Another drink and they're talking about music.
“Actually, the Muggles might be doing something right. Have you ever been to a Muggle club? They're amazing, they are.”
Almost everyone is gone, but he and Draco stay and talk and drink and laugh.
Charlie stops counting drinks when an Elf comes to bring them what he thinks is the third bottle.
He's quite sure he's going to collapse any minute now, but Draco has become quite talkative and his hair is even blonder when Charlie squints just so.
“...which means, of course, that someone else is going to have to do it.”
Charlie's lost track of the conversation, trying to make Draco's hair brighter.
“What are you staring at? Have I got something in my hair?”
Draco is sounding more sober than he was and isn't the point. Charlie pushes the bottle at him.
“No, s'just blond.”
“Yours is red. It's really bright – it reflects the light and everything.”
Ah, maybe not so sober.
“It's shiny.”
Charlie squints again and the blond looks like a halo, “Can I touch it?”
“If you want.”
So Charlie brings his chair round to the other side of the table and puts a hand on Draco's hair.
“It's soft,” he says in a marvelled tone of voice, “your hair is soft.”
“It's clean.” Says Draco, as though in answer.
Charlie strokes his hair until he puts a hand onto Charlie's head in turn and does the same.
“That's nice,” whispers Charlie, trying to stretch his back without moving the hand, “s'kinda relaxing.”
“S'like petting a kitten,” says Draco, “But I only had owls. Mother doesn't like cats.”
Charlie decides this is getting a bit weird and removes his hand.
“Alright, I think we need some air.”
They slowly and unsteadily make their way outside, leaning on each other for support, giggling when they almost trip over someone who passed out under one of the tables, legs sticking out.
Charlie turns to Draco, “Can you imagine a drunk McGonall? McGangal. McGone...”
“McGonagall,” says Draco, with a laugh that sounds like hiccups, “she might start doing the Highland Fling. Can you imagine her with her hair down and dancing?”
They don't degenerate into a fit of giggles, because they couldn't spell degenerate if they wanted to. But also because they are men – so they do the manly equivalent of that.
Outside is cool, but not cold enough for them to need jackets.
Charlie lets go of Draco, who wobbles, and runs towards the lake, onto the grass and collapses onto it.
Draco follows more slowly, but sinks down next to him, forgetting to complain that the grass is slightly damp.
Charlie is staring up at the night sky.
“You can see different stars in Romania.”
Draco stretches and lies down, “No you can't. Romania is in the same hemisphere as Scotland.”
Charlie leans back onto his elbows, “They look different.”
Draco closes his eyes, “But they're not.”
Charlie stares at him for a bit, because he looks, well, pretty, which is strange.
“You look different.”
Draco snorts.
“That's because it's dark and you are sloshed.”
Yeah.
“Yeah.”
It is dark. Charlie closes his eyes too, just for a moment. He can see the stars and Draco's hair on the inside of his eyelids.
For some reason, there is much too much light in his room. And his eyes are complaining loudly, screaming to his brain that this isn't right and he should make it dark again.
“Oh, shit,” says Charlie, turning over to bury his head in his arms as the pounding starts, “Who the fuck moved the sun indoors?”
Next to him, Draco laughs until Charlie looks up.
Draco is lying on the grass, hair sticking up at odd angles, with grass stains on his shirt and lines on his face, but he looks happier than he did last night. The project is working, the dragon trusts him enough to get close to him.
“Hey,” says Draco, after his laughter subsides, “do you want to go to a Muggle club tonight? You can listen to their music that way.”
