CHAPTER NINE:

Third Person Narrative:
(A/N: finally fixing the POV after 80 parts... yikes)

The intermittent days between Christmas and New Year's Eve passed by peacefully enough. Reports of attacks had, thankfully, dwindled, as if even Voldemort and his followers had decided to take a holiday, albeit Charlie knew they were most likely just preparing for an even greater onslaught of killings in the weeks to come.

Having kept his word, Charlie wrote various letters to Harry over the holiday break, informing his best friend about the recent pain flaring in his forearm. In return, Harry kept him up to date on all things happening at the Burrow. Their letters, however, failed to divulge too much, given the fact that the Ministry was vigorously checking all of their post.

The holidays were a quiet affair. Charlie and Hermione had re-established an untouchable feeling of affection in each other's company. They had made the most of their time alone, spending the days rekindling the intimacy of their relationship. Abiding by Hermione's request, however, they refused to rush anything between them, opting for a kiss or cuddle whenever necessary, but restraining from anything more intimate than that.

Often times, they'd occupy themselves during the afternoons by visiting Hagrid or listening to a Christmas broadcast by Mrs. Weasley's favourite singer, Celestina Warbeck, whose voice was warbling out of the large wooden wireless set. By the time they welcomed the New Year, Charlie and Hermione had shared a multitude of kisses as the clock struck twelve and ended the night just like every other, entangled and cuddled up close in each other's arms.

A few days after the New Year, Charlie and Hermione trudged their way reluctantly down to Hagrid's Hut for their daily afternoon cuppa. It was the last day of the holidays, mind you, and all classes would be resuming bright and early the next morning. Although chuffed to be reunited with his closest friends, Charlie couldn't help but feel saddened by the fact that his time alone with Hermione was about to meet its conclusion.

He had struggled to get out of bed that morning, trying his damnedest to slow the time down. His hesitance was ultimately reflected upon Hermione as well, who had fallen victim to his kisses of persuasion that kept her in bed for the greater part of the morning. After hours of secluding themselves in the comfort of Charlie's dorm room, the two lovesick Gryffindors were inevitably forced to start the day, given their rising hunger levels after having missed breakfast.

Having taken less that twenty minutes to get ready for the day, Charlie met Hermione at the portrait hole before setting off. The snowfall became less and less significant as they moved from December to January, but there was still a bitter chill in the air. Their visit with Hagrid went as it always did: they had spent hours being updated on any encounters the half-giant had had with magical creatures since they had seen him last, and even though Hagrid's rock-cakes were barely considered edible, Charlie found that he had devoured two of them by the time their visit reached its end.

Not long after, Charlie and Hermione had trooped out of Hagrid's Hut and forged on toward Gryffindor Tower. They arrived, coincidentally, just in time to see Harry, Ron, and Ginny crowded around the Fat Lady Portrait, having returned to the castle at last.

"Oi! Oi!"

They hurried towards them, very pink-faced from the coldness and wearing their own individual cloaks, hats, and gloves. Once the pair reached their friends, various forms of greetings were exchanged, although Charlie had purposefully made to ignore Ron, having not forgotten about their fight.

"Did you guys just get back? Charlie and I have just been down to visit Hagrid and Buck— I mean Witherwings," Hermione explained breathlessly. "Did you have a good Christmas?"

"Yeah," said Ron at once, "pretty eventful, Rufus Scrim—"

"My grandfather should be back tonight, Harry, and I think we should go see him as soon as possible," Charlie told his best friend, not bothering to look at Ron nor give any sign that he had heard him. "Oh, hang on — password. Abstinence."

"Precisely," said the Fat Lady in a feeble voice, and she swung forward to reveal the portrait hole.

Harry kinked his eyebrow, "What's up with her?"

"Overindulged over the holiday," Hermione explained, rolling her eyes as she led the way into the packed common room. "She and her friend Violet drank their way through all the wine in that picture of drunk monks down by the Charms corridor."

"Right," Harry sniggered lightly, cocking his head to look at Charlie. "Good to hear that your granddad is back, I've got loads to tell him — and the two of you. Let's sit down —"

But at that moment there was a loud squeal and Lavender Brown came hurtling out of nowhere, heading directly towards Charlie. Several onlookers wore puzzled expressions; Hermione gave a tinkling laugh and said, "Oh, Merlin, here we go."

"Hi Charlie! Have a good holiday?"

"Yes," Charlie spoke flatly, looking to his friends for help. "I spent it with Hermione," he added, hoping for that to be, more or less, a valid way to get her to back off.

Apparently, Charlie's method seemed to work, however, for all Lavender responded with was a simple, "Oh... did you?"

"He did," Hermione chimed in with confirmation, her lips threatening to curl upwards. With a glare from Lavender, she shrugged, "And I think we enjoyed ourselves a fair bit, didn't we, Charlie?"

Charlie looked down bashfully, feeling heat rise in his cheeks. Stuffing his hands into his pockets awkwardly, he muttered, "Right, yeah."

"Well, that's nice, I suppose," Lavender grumbled finally after a pregnant pause. Blushing with embarrassment, she added, "You know, I should probably go and find Parvati..."

And with that, she maneuvered her way through the packed common room before Charlie had even realized she had gone.

"I'd best be off too," said Ron, who had become uncharacteristically quiet since Hermione's comment. "I think I'll go and unpack my trunk."

"Oh, well, okay then," Hermione spoke timidly, acknowledging the jealous undertone in Ron's voice and deciding that it was best let him go. "There's a table over there... coming, Ginny?"

"No, thanks, I said I'd meet Dean," said Ginny, though Charlie could not help noticing that she did not sound very enthusiastic. Leaving the two Weasley siblings behind, Harry led Charlie and Hermione over to the spare table.

"So how was your Christmas? Anything I should know about what's going on between you two?"

There was a mischievous wiggle in Harry's brow which made Charlie roll his eyes.

"We're taking things slow," Hermione shrugged, her bottom lip between her teeth as Charlie nodded at her reassuringly. "We've mainly spent the holiday talking —"

"And doing other things, I'm sure," Harry interjected with a cheeky smile. "Which, by the way, wouldn't exactly align with all this nonsense about 'taking things slow'. I'd say you're better off telling people you're back together."

"But we're not officially —"

"Whatever helps you sleep at night, Hermione."

"Okay, enough about this," Charlie pleaded, feeling a little embarrassed by Harry's pestering questions. "Tell me, how was it at Ickle Ronniekins?"

Harry sighed at once, pinching the bridge of his nose, "Look, Charlie, can't you just —"

"No, I can't," he said flatly. "So don't even ask."

"I thought maybe, you know, over Christmas —"

"It was the Fat Lady who drank a vat of five-hundred-year-old wine, Harry, not me. I haven't forgotten what's happened," Charlie spoke firmly, his jaw clenched in bitter damnation. "So what was this important news you wanted to tell us?"

Hermione looked between the two boys, shifting awkwardly in her seat. Having noticed this, Harry dropped the subject of Ron and recounted all that he had endured over the two-week holiday break.

"I got into a row with Rufus Scrimgeour," he told them, earning immediate looks of disdain from his friends. "He showed up at the Burrow alongside Percy, and he requested that I work alongside him to boost the morale of the public."

Charlie scoffed, "Ha, fat chance. Honestly, Scimgeour has a great deal of nerve asking for your help, especially after the Ministry blatantly persecuted you for the entirety of last year."

"That's precisely what I told him," said Harry, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "And as one might expect, the Minister didn't seem to like that very much."

Hermione stared across the room, apparently lost in thought, failing to notice Charlie for a moment, as he placed his hand on hers under the table to pull her back to reality.

"How's Lupin?" she asked finally, and she began to draw circles on the back of Charlie's hand as a term of endearment. "Ginny wrote and said he was joining you for the holidays."

"He's not great," said Harry, and he told them all about Lupin's mission among the werewolves and the difficulties he was facing. "Have you heard of this Fenrir Greyback?"

"Well, yes, I have," whispered Hermione, sounding startled all of a sudden; Charlie held her hand more firmly in his in attempt to calm her. "And so have you, Harry! You too, Charlie."

"When? History of Magic? You know full well I never listened..."

"No, no, not History of Magic — Malfoy threatened Borgin with him!" Hermione reminded him, rolling her eyes ever so slightly. "Back in Knockturn Alley, don't you remember? He told Borgin that Greyback was an old family friend and that he'd be checking up on Borgin's progress!"

Charlie gaped in amazement at her, "You're amazing, you are. I would've completely forgotten about that, if I'm honest. Do you reckon that proves that Malfoy really is up to something? He'd have to be acting on the Dark Lord's orders to have Greyback at his command like that, right?"

"It is pretty suspicious," breathed Hermione, biting down on her bottom lip anxiously. "Unless..."

"Oh, come on," Harry groaned, his eyes narrow, "you can't get round this one!"

"Well... there is the possibility it was an empty threat."

"Hermione," Charlie began, treading carefully, "you were there when we overheard Snape and Malfoy. There's no denying that something's going on."

Hermione sighed, "Yes, I know, but we're not going to solve anything by jumping to conclusions —"

"You're unbelievable, you are," said Harry, shaking his head. "We'll see who's right... you'll be eating your words, Hermione, just like the Ministry."

And the rest of the evening passed amicably with all three of them debating the true intentions of Draco Malfoy.

————————————————————

The new term started the next morning with a pleasant surprise for the sixth-years: a large sign had been pinned to the common room notice boards overnight.

APPARITION LESSONS

If you are seventeen years of age, or will turn seventeen on or before the 31st August next, you are eligible for a twelve-week course of Apparition Lessons from a Ministry of Magic Apparition instructor.

Please sign below if you would like to participate.

Cost: 12 Galleons.

The core four joined the crowd that was jostling around the notice and taking it in turns to write their names at the bottom. Charlie was just taking out his quill to sign after Hermione when Ron began a conversation behind him.

"So... Apparition," said Ron, his tone making it perfectly plain that he wished to ease the newfound tension within the group. "Should be a laugh, eh?"

"I dunno," said Harry. "Maybe it's better when you do it yourself, I didn't enjoy it much when Dumbledore took me along for the ride."

Charlie laughed, "It's not the greatest of feelings."

With their names written down, the four of them stalked off, having no wish to stay enclosed amongst the group of eager sixth-years swarming the notice. They reached the Fat Lady portrait shortly after.

"I forgot that the two of you had already done it... I'd better pass my test first time," gulped Ron, looking anxious. "Fred and George did."

"Jack failed, though, didn't he?"

(A/N: justice for jack weasley)

"Yeah, but Jack's much bigger than me," Ron held his arms out from his body as though he was a gorilla, "so Fred and George didn't go on about it much... not to his face anyway..."

"When can we take the actual test?"

"Soon as we're seventeen. That's only March for me!"

"Yeah, but you wouldn't be able to Apparate in here, not in the castle..."

"Not the point, is it? Everyone would know I could Apparate if I wanted."

Ron was not the only one to be excited at the prospect of Apparition. All that day there was much talk about the forthcoming lessons; a great deal of store was set by being able to vanish and reappear at will.

"How cool will it be when we can just —" Seamus clicked his ringers to indicate disappearance. "My cousin Fergus does it just to annoy me, you wait till I can do it back... he'll never have another peaceful moment..."

Lost in visions of this happy prospect, he flicked his wand a little too enthusiastically, so that instead of producing the fountain of pure water that was the object of today's Charms lesson, he let out a hoselike jet that ricocheted off the ceiling and knocked Professor Flitwick flat on his face.

After Ron had let it slip that his friends were well versed in Apparition, Charlie and Harry were besieged with requests from the other sixth years to describe the sensation. All of them seemed awed, rather than put off, when they told them how uncomfortable it was, and both Charlie and Harry were still answering detailed questions at ten to eight that evening, until, at last, they were forced to escape in time for their visit to Dumbledore's office.

The lamps in Dumbledore's office were lit, the portraits of previous headmasters were snoring gently in their frames, and the Pensieve was ready upon the desk once more. Dumbledore's hands lay on either side of it, the right one as blackened and burnt-looking as ever.

It did not seem to have healed at all and Charlie wondered, for perhaps the hundredth time, what had caused such a distinctive injury, but did not ask; Dumbledore had said that he would know eventually and there was, in any case, another subject he wanted to discuss. But before Charlie could say anything about Snape and Malfoy, Dumbledore spoke.

"Harry, I hear that you met the Minister of Magic over the holidays?"

"Yes," said Harry, glancing to Charlie ever so slightly. "He's not very happy with me."

"Well, yes," sighed Dumbledore, "I imagine he is not very happy with me either. We must try not to sink beneath our anguish, Harry, but battle on."

Harry grinned.

"He wanted me to tell the wizarding community that the Ministry's doing a wonderful job."

Dumbledore smiled.

"It was Fenwick's idea originally, you know. During his last days in office, when he was trying desperately to cling to his post, he sought a meeting with you, hoping that you would give him your support —"

"Quite ironic of my father, isn't it?" muttered Charlie angrily. "In what world would Harry ever advocate for him after everything that happened last year? After Umbridge?"

"I tried to tell Fenwick that there was no chance of it, but the idea did not die when he left office." Dumbledore sighed, peering over the rims of his glasses. "Within hours of Scrimgeour's appointment, we met and he demanded that I arrange a meeting with you —"

"So that's why you argued!" Harry blurted out. "I read about that in the Daily Prophet."

"The Prophet is bound to report the truth occasionally," said Dumbledore, "if only accidentally. Yes, that was why we argued. Well, it appears that Rufus found a way to corner you at last."

"He wanted to know where you go when you're not at Hogwarts," Harry spoke timidly, looking fixedly at his knees.

"Yes, he is very nosy about that," nodded Dumbledore, now sounding cheerful, and Harry thought it safe to look up again. "He has even attempted to have me followed. Amusing, really. He set Dawlish to tail me. It wasn't kind. I have already been forced to jinx Dawlish once; I did it again with the greatest regret."

"They still don't know where you go?" asked Charlie, hoping for more information on this intriguing subject, but Dumbledore merely smiled over the top of his half-moon spectacles.

"No, they don't, and the time is not quite right for you to know either. Now, I suggest we press on, unless there's anything else — ?"

"There is, actually, grandfather," Charlie interjected, straightening up in his chair. "It's about Malfoy and Snape."

"Professor Snape, Charles."

"Right... well, I overheard them during Professor Slughorn's party..."

Dumbledore listened to his grandson's story with an impassive face. When Charlie had finished he did not speak for a few moments, then said, "Thank you for telling me this, Charles, but I suggest that you put it out of your mind. I do not think that it is of great importance."

"Not of great importance?" repeated Charlie incredulously. "Forgive me, grandfather, but did you not understand — ?"

"Yes, Charles, blessed as I am with extraordinary brainpower, I understood everything you told me," said Dumbledore, a little sharply. "I think you might even consider the possibility that I understood more than you did. Again, I am glad that you have confided in me, but let me reassure you that you have not told me anything that causes me disquiet."

Charlie sat in seething silence, glaring at Dumbledore. What was going on? Did this mean that Dumbledore had indeed ordered Snape to find out what Malfoy was doing, in which case he had already heard everything Charlie had just told him from Snape? Or was he really worried by what he had heard, but pretending not to be?

"Let me get this straight," Charlie began, in what he hoped was a polite, calm voice, but he noticed Harry tense out of the corner of his eye, "you definitely still trust — ?"

"I have been tolerant enough to answer that question already," dismissed Dumbledore, not sounding very tolerant anymore. "My answer has not changed."

"I should think not," said a snide voice; Phineas Nigellus was evidently only pretending to be asleep. Dumbledore ignored him.

"As you may recall, we've had this discussion once before and the outcome was not satisfactory. Now, Charles, I must insist that we press on. I have more important things to discuss with you and Harry this evening."

Charlie sat there feeling mutinous. How would it be if he refused to permit the change of subject, if he insisted upon arguing the case against Malfoy? As though he had read his grandson's mind, Dumbledore shook his head.

The wise old man opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Behind Charlie, Fawkes the phoenix let out a low, soft, musical cry. To Charlie's slight confusion, he suddenly realized that Dumbledore's bright blue eyes looked rather emotional, and stared hastily at his own knees, his head bowed in shame. When Dumbledore spoke, however, his voice was quite steady.

"Ah, Charles, how often this happens, even between the best of family. Each of us believes that what we have to say is much more important than anything the other might have to contribute!"

"I don't think what you've got to say is unimportant, granddad," muttered Charlie stiffly.

"Well, you are quite right, because it is not," agreed Dumbledore briskly. "I have one more memory to show you and Harry this evening, obtained with enormous difficulty and, dare I say, the most important I have collected."

Charlie did not say anything to this; he still felt slightly angry at the reception his confidences had received, but could not see what was to be gained by arguing further.

"So," continued Dumbledore, in a ringing voice, "we meet this evening to continue the tale of Tom Riddle, whom we left last lesson poised on the threshold of his years at Hogwarts. You will remember how excited he was to hear that he was a wizard and that I, in turn, warned him against continued thievery when he arrived at school.

"Well, the start of the school year arrived and with it came Tom Riddle, a quiet boy in his second-hand robes, who lined up with the other first years to be sorted. He was placed in Slytherin House almost the moment that the Sorting Hat touched his head," Dumbledore pressed on, waving his blackened hand toward the shelf over his head where the Sorting Hat sat, ancient and unmoving. "How soon Riddle learned that the famous founder of the House could talk to snakes, I do not know — perhaps that very evening. The knowledge can only have excited him and increased his sense of self-importance.

"However, if he was frightening or impressing fellow Slytherins with displays of Parseltongue in their common room, no hint of it reached the staff. He showed no sign of outward arrogance or aggression at all. As an unusually talented and very good-looking orphan, he naturally drew attention and sympathy from the staff almost from the moment of his arrival. He seemed polite, quiet, and thirsty for knowledge. Nearly all were most favorably impressed by him."

"Didn't you tell them what he'd been like when you met him at the orphanage?" asked Charlie, sharing similar thoughts with Harry, who's ears perked up with intrigue.

"No, I did not. Though he had shown no hint of remorse, it was possible that he felt sorry for how he had behaved before and was resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. I chose to give him that chance."

Dumbledore paused and looked inquiringly at Charlie, who had opened his mouth to speak. Here, again, was Dumbledore's tendency to trust people in spite of overwhelming evidence that they did not deserve it. But before Charlie got the chance to speak, Harry remembered something of grave importance.

"But you didn't really trust him, sir, did you? He told me... the Riddle who came out of that diary once said, 'Dumbledore never seemed to like me as much as the other teachers did'," said Harry, reminiscing on a time where he had once talked to the Dark Lord through a little black book.

"Let us say that I did not take it for granted that he was trustworthy," said Dumbledore. "I had, as I have already indicated, resolved to keep a close eye upon him, and so I did. I cannot pretend that I gleaned a great deal from my observations at first. He was very guarded with me; he felt, I am sure, that in the thrill of discovering his true identity he had told me a little too much. He was careful never to reveal as much again, but he could not take back what he had let slip in his excitement, nor what Mrs. Cole had confided in me. However, he had the sense never to try and charm me as he charmed so many of my colleagues.

"As he moved up the school, he gathered about him a group of dedicated friends; I call them that, for lack of a better term, as I have already indicated, Riddle undoubtedly felt no affection for any of them. This group had a kind of dark glamour within the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty. In other words, they were the forerunners of the Death Eaters, and indeed some of them became the first Death Eaters after leaving Hogwarts."

Harry sent a discrete look at Charlie, who tensed ever so slightly and stiffened upon mention of the Dark Lord's followers.

"Rigidly controlled by Riddle, they were never detected in open wrongdoing, although their seven years at Hogwarts were marked by a number of nasty incidents to which they were never satisfactorily linked, the most serious of which was, of course, the opening of the Chamber of Secrets, which resulted in the death of a girl. As you know, Hagrid was wrongfully accused of that crime.

"I have not been able to find many memories of Riddle at Hogwarts," continued Dumbledore, placing his withered hand on the Pensieve. "Few who knew him then are prepared to talk about him; they are too terrified. What I know, I found out after he had left Hogwarts, after much effort, after tracing those few who could be tricked into speaking, after searching old records and questioning Muggle and wizard witnesses alike.

"Those whom I could persuade to talk told me that Riddle was obsessed with his parentage. This is understandable, of course; he had grown up in an orphanage and naturally wished to know how he came to be there. After some time, he was forced to accept that his father had never set foot in Hogwarts. I believe that it was then that he dropped the name forever, assumed the identity of Lord Voldemort, and began his investigations into his previously despised mother's family.

"All he had to go upon was the single name 'Marvolo,' which he knew, from those who ran the orphanage, had been his mother's father's name. Finally, after painstaking research, through old books of Wizarding families, he discovered the existence of Slytherin's surviving line. In the summer of his sixteenth year, he left the orphanage to which he returned annually and set off to find his Gaunt relatives.

"It was Morfin Gaunt, Tom Riddle's uncle, who revealed the truth behind the story of his nephew's conception. Now, although there is no evidence to show us what happened after this affair, I think we can assume what happened next. In a fit of retaliation, Voldemort attacked his uncle, took his wand, and began his hunt. He murdered the Muggle man who had abandoned his witch mother, and, for good measure, his Muggle grandparents, thus obliterating the last of the unworthy Riddle line and revenging himself upon the father who never wanted him. Then, he returned to the Gaunt hovel, performed a complex bit of magic that would implant a false memory in his uncle's mind, laid Morfin's wand beside its unconscious owner, pocketed the ancient ring he wore, and departed."

"So Morfin was framed for murder? And never realized he hadn't done it?"

"Never," confirmed Dumbledore. "He gave, if I remember correctly, a full and boastful confession."

"But how come the Ministry didn't realize that Voldemort had done all that to Morfin?" Harry asked angrily. "He was underage at the time, wasn't he? I thought they could detect underage magic!"

"You are quite right — they can detect magic, but not the perpetrator," explained Dumbledore, smiling slightly at the look of great indignation on Harry's face. "You see, they are unable to tell who performed the magic. They rely on witch and wizard parents to enforce their offspring's obedience while within their walls. It's difficult to decide whether or not to hold a child accountable in a household full of wizards and witches that are of age."

"Well, that's rubbish," snapped Harry. "Look what happened here, look what happened to Morfin!"

"I agree," nodded Dumbledore, speaking as calm as ever. "Whatever Morfin was, he did not deserve to die as he did, blamed for murders he had not committed. But it is getting late, and I apologize for digressing off the topic of discussion. I wanted you to see this other memory before we part. So now, boys, if you will stand..."

Dumbledore rose, and Charlie saw that he was again holding a small crystal bottle filled with swirling, pearly memory. "I was very lucky to collect this," he said, as he poured the gleaming mass into the Pensieve. "As you will understand when we have experienced it. Shall we?"

[entering the memory]

Charlie stepped up to the stone basin with Harry, and bowed obediently until his face sank through the surface of the memory; he felt the familiar sensation of falling through nothingness and then landed in front of a man he recognized at once.

It was a much younger Horace Slughorn. Charlie was so used to him bald that he found the sight of Slughorn with thick, shiny, straw-colored hair quite disconcerting; it looked as though he had had his head thatched, though there was already a shiny Galleon-sized bald patch on his crown. His mustache, less massive than it was these days, was gingery-blond. He was not quite as rotund as the Slughorn Charlie knew, though the golden buttons on his richly embroidered waistcoat were taking a fair amount of strain. His little feet resting upon a velvet pouffe, he was sitting well back in a comfortable winged armchair, one hand grasping a small glass of wine, the other searching through a box of crystalized pineapple.

Charlie looked around as Dumbledore and Harry appeared beside him and saw that they were standing in Slughorn's office. Half a dozen boys were sitting around Slughorn, all on harder or lower seats than his, and all in their mid-teens. Charlie recognized Voldemort at once. His was the most handsome face and he looked the most relaxed of all the boys. His right hand lay negligently upon the arm of his chair; with a jolt, Charlie saw that he was wearing Marvolo's gold-and-black ring: he had already killed his father.

"Sir, is it true that Professor Merrythought is retiring?"

"Tom, Tom, if I knew I couldn't tell you," shrugged Slughorn, wagging a reproving, sugar-covered finger at Riddle, though ruining the effect slightly by winking. "I must say, I'd like to know where you get your information, boy; more knowledgeable than half the staff, you are."

Riddle smiled; the other boys laughed and cast him admiring looks.

"What with your uncanny ability to know things you shouldn't, and your careful flattery of the people who matter — thank you for the pineapple, by the way, you're quite right, it is my favourite —"

As several of the boys tittered, something very odd happened. The whole room was suddenly filled with a thick white fog, so that Charlie could see nothing but the faces of Dumbledore and Harry, who were both standing beside him. Then Slughorn's voice rang out through the mist, unnaturally loudly: " — you'll go wrong, boy, mark my words."

The fog cleared as suddenly as it had appeared and yet nobody made any allusion to it, nor did anybody look as though anything unusual had just happened. Bewildered, Charlie looked around as the small golden clock standing upon Slughorn's desk chimed eleven o'clock.

"Good gracious, is it that time already?" awed Slughorn. "You'd better get going, boys, or we'll all be in trouble. Lestrange, I want your essay by tomorrow or it's detention. Same goes for you, Avery."

Slughorn pulled himself out of his armchair and carried his empty glass over to his desk as the boys filed out. Voldemort, however, stayed behind. Charlie could tell he had dawdled deliberately, wanting to be last in the room with Slughorn.

"Look sharp, Tom," said Slughorn, turning around and finding him still present. "You don't want to be caught out of bed out of hours, and you a prefect..."

"Sir, I wanted to ask you something."

"Ask away, then, m'boy, ask away!"

"Sir, I wondered what you know about... about Horcruxes?"

And it happened all over again: the dense fog filled the room so that Charlie could not see Slughorn or Voldemort at all; only Harry and Dumbledore, who was smiling serenely beside him. Then Slughorn's voice boomed out again, just as it had done before.

"I don't know anything about Horcruxes and I wouldn't tell you if I did! Now get out of here at once and don't let me catch you mentioning them again!"

"Well, that's that," Dumbledore spoke placidly beside Charlie. "Time to go."

And Charlie's feet left the floor to fall, seconds later, back onto the rug in front of Dumbledore's desk.

[exiting the memory]

"That's all there is?" asked Harry blankly, as the three of them returned back to the Headmaster's office.

Dumbledore had said that this was the most important memory of all, but he could not see what was so significant about it. Admittedly the fog, and the fact that nobody seemed to have noticed it, was odd, but other than that nothing seemed to have happened except that Voldemort had asked a question and failed to get an answer.

"As you might have noticed," Dumbledore looked between the two boys, reseating himself behind his desk, "that memory has been tampered with."

"Tampered with?" repeated Charlie, sitting back down too. Harry followed suit shortly after.

"Certainly," said Dumbledore. "Professor Slughorn has meddled with his own recollections."

"But why would he do that?"

"Because, I think, he is ashamed of what he remembers." Dumbledore interlocked his fingers and rested them across his stomach. "He has tried to rework the memory to show himself in a better light, obliterating those parts which he does not wish me to see. It is, as you will have noticed, very crudely done, and that is all to the good, for it shows that the true memory is still there beneath the alterations."

Harry and Charlie looked between one another, slightly confused.

"I once told you that Professor Slughorn had something that I desired deeply," Dumbledore spoke with a tone provoking simple reminder. "This is it. The missing part of this memory. And so, for the first time, I am giving the two of you homework. It will be your job to persuade Professor Slughorn to divulge the real memory, which will undoubtedly be our most crucial piece of information."

Charlie stared at him.

"But surely, grandfather," he said, keeping his voice as respectful as possible, "there must be a more efficient option — why couldn't you use Legilimency? Or Veritaserum, perhaps?"

"Professor Slughorn is an extremely able wizard who will be expecting both," Dumbledore dismissed the notion quickly, despite the fallen face of his and son. "He is much more accomplished at Occlumency than poor Morfin Gaunt, and I would be astonished if he has not carried an antidote to Veritaserum with him ever since I coerced him into giving me this travesty of a recollection.

"No, I think it would be foolish to attempt to wrest the truth from Professor Slughorn by force, and might do much more harm than good; I do not wish for him to leave Hogwarts. However, he has his weaknesses like the rest of us, and I believe that you two are the only ones capable of penetrating his defenses. It is most important that we secure the true memory, Charles... how important, we will only know when we have seen the real thing. So, good luck... and goodnight."

A little taken aback by the abrupt dismissal, Harry got to his feet quickly. "Goodnight, sir."

Charlie followed, "Goodnight, granddad."

Then, as he closed the study door behind him and Harry, he distinctly heard Phineas Nigellus say, "I can't see why they should be able to do it better than you, Dumbledore."

"I wouldn't expect you to, Phineas," replied Dumbledore, and Fawkes the Phoenix gave another low, musical cry.

———————————————————

The next day Harry and Charlie confided in both Ron and Hermione about the task Dumbledore had set them, though separately, for Charlie still refused to remain in Ron's presence longer than it took to give him a contemptuous look.

And so, Charlie happily discussed his findings with Hermione after Harry returned from dealing with Ron. As expected, Hermione took a gloomier view on the revelation.

"He must be determined to hide what really happened if Dumbledore couldn't get it out of him," she said in a low voice, as they stood in the deserted, snowy courtyard at break. "Horcruxes... Horcruxes... I've never even heard of them..."

"You haven't?"

Charlie was slightly disappointed; he had hoped that Hermione might have been able to give him a clue as to what Horcruxes were.

"They must be really advanced Dark magic, or why would Voldemort have wanted to know about them? I think it's going to be difficult to get the information, Charlie, you'll have to be very careful about how you approach Slughorn, think out a strategy..."

"Apparently Ron reckons that Harry and I should just hang back after Potions this afternoon," Charlie grumbled, flaring up at once. "Harry agrees with him, of course, because when has Ickle Ronniekins's judgement ever been faulty."

Hermione sighed, stopping in her tracks to give him a stern look, "Charlie, please, can't you just —"

"No," Charlie huffed, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he came to a halt as well. "He kissed you, Hermione, and I'm not okay with that."

"And while I understand that," said Hermione sympathetically, moving closer to interlock their hands, "you know perfectly well that it didn't mean anything."

"Maybe not for you," Charlie narrowed his eyes upon Hermione's disdained face, trying not to cave at the way her fingertips caressed his skin. "But that ginger-haired git is relentless when it comes to you."

Hermione smirked ever so slightly, her heart pounded so erratically in her chest that she didn't even realize the pet name that fell from her lips before it was too late:

"Careful, baby, you're starting to sound a bit jealous."

Luckily, the boy in question didn't seem to catch the slip up, and Hermione's cheeks, which were already a brilliant shade of pink from the cold, masked her flush of embarrassment.

Charlie scoffed, standing ankle-deep in snow, "I'm not jealous."

"Good," beamed Hermione, and she leaned up to place a gentle kiss upon his cheek; her lips were warm against his ice cold skin. "Because you have no reason to be."

And with a light chuckle, Charlie allowed himself to smile as he rested his forehead against hers. They stood there for a moment, their noses touching, trying to resist the temptation to snog in the courtyard. But, at last, they were torn away from one another as the bell rang to signal the start of class. With their hands still interlaced, they trudged through the snow together.

Potions lessons were uncomfortable enough these days, seeing as Charlie, Harry, Ron and Hermione had to share a desk. Today, however, the group seemed more divided than ever, for Charlie and Hermione had isolated themselves on one side of the table with their cauldrons, while Harry sat next to Ron, who wore an expression as though he longed to apologize.

But before Ron could say anything, Slughorn was calling for silence from the front of the room.

"Settle down, settle down, please! Quickly, now, lots of work to get through this afternoon! Golpalott's Third Law... who can tell me — ? But Miss Granger can, of course!"

Hermione recited at top speed: "Golpalott's-Third-Law-states-that-the-antidote-for-a-blended-poison-will-be-equal-to-more-than-the-sum-of-the-antidotes-for-each-of-the-separable-components."

"Precisely!" beamed Slughorn. "Ten points for Gryffindor! Now, if we accept Golpalott's Third Law as true..."

Charlie was going to have to take Slughorn's word for it that Golpalott's Third Law was true, because he had not understood any of it. Nobody, apart from Hermione, seemed to be following what Slughorn said next, either.

"...which means, of course, that assuming we have achieved correct identification of the potion's ingredients by Scarpin's Revelaspell, our primary aim is not the relatively simple one of selecting antidotes to those ingredients in and of themselves, but to find that added component which will, by an almost alchemical process, transform these disparate elements —"

Opening his copy of Advanced Potion-Making, Charlie began doodling absentmindedly in the margins. The newfound benefit of getting back on good terms with Hermione meant that he could always rely on her to help him out of trouble when he failed to grasp what was going on.

"...and so," finished Slughorn, "I want each of you to come and take one of these phials from my desk. You are to create an antidote for the poison within it before the end of the lesson. Good luck, and don't forget your protective gloves!"

Hermione had left her stool and was halfway towards Siughorn's desk before the rest of the class had realised it was time to move, and by the time Harry, Ron and Charlie returned to the table, she had already tipped the contents of her phial into her cauldron and was kindling a fire underneath it.

"It's a shame that the Prince won't be able to help you much with this, Harry," she said brightly as she straightened up. "You have to understand the principles involved this time. No short cuts or cheats!"

Charlie watched as Harry, who was clearly annoyed by this comment, uncorked the poison he had taken from Siughorn's desk, tipped it into his cauldron and lit a fire underneath it. However, a few seconds later, it began abundantly clear that he did not have the faintest idea what he was supposed to do next, for he stood still glancing around at his friends, subconsciously asking for help.

In complete contrast, Charlie was doing surprising well, thanks to Hermione, of course, who began whispering the instructions in his ear whenever her unofficial lover looked in need of assistance. Every so often, she would lean into his body to convey her tips on how to brew the potion successfully. However, Charlie secretly knew that it was all a ploy for her to close the space between them and graze her fingertips over his chest in a teasing manner. Charlie did not complain about her blatant displays of affection, mind you, but rather found comfort in her touch.

On the other side of the room, Slughorn had peered hopefully into Harry's cauldron on his first circuit of the dungeon, preparing to exclaim in delight as he usually did, and instead had withdrawn his head hastily, coughing, as the smell of bad eggs overwhelmed him. Hermione's expression could not have been any smugger; she had loathed being out-performed in every Potions class. She was now decanting the mysteriously separated ingredients of her poison into ten different crystal phials. More to avoid watching this irritating sight than anything else, Harry bent over the Half-Blood Prince's book and turned a few pages with unnecessary force.

And there it was, scrawled right across a long list of antidotes.

'Just shove a bezoar down their throats.'

The words provoked an earlier memory within Harry, and it was something that Professor Snape had mentioned in their very first Potions lesson:

"A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat, which will protect from most poisons."

It was not an answer to the Golpalott problem, and had Snape still been their teacher, Harry would not have dared do it, but this was a moment for desperate measures. Charlie watched as the boy with glasses hastened towards the store cupboard and rummaged within it, pushing aside unicorn horns and tangles of dried herbs until he found, at the very back, a small card box on which had been scribbled the word, 'Bezoars'.

Harry opened the box just as Slughorn called, "Two minutes left, everyone!" Inside were half a dozen shrivelled brown objects, looking more like dried-up kidneys than real stones. Harry seized one, put the box back in the cupboard and hurried back to his cauldron.

"Time's... UP!" called Slughorn genially. "Well, let's see how you've done! Blaise... what have you got for me?"

Slowly, Slughorn moved around the room, examining the various antidotes. Nobody had finished the task, although Hermione was trying to cram a few more ingredients into her bottle before Slughorn reached her. Charlie had slumped down on his stool, resting his head upon his hands and smiling up at Hermione's flustered face. Ron had given up completely, and was merely trying to avoid breathing in the putrid fumes issuing from his cauldron. Harry stood there waiting, the bezoar clutched in a slightly sweaty hand.

Slughorn reached their table last. He wafted Charlie's potion towards him and moved on to Ron's with an unreadable expression. He did not linger over Ron's cauldron, but backed away swiftly, retching slightly.

"And you, Harry," he said. "What have you got to show me?"

Harry held out his hand, the bezoar sitting on his palm. Charlie kinked an eyebrow at his best friend, who simply nodded towards the old, vandalized textbook that he'd grown to love. Understanding what had happened immediately, Charlie sighed. It honestly came as no surprise that the Half-Blood Prince had come to Harry's rescue yet again.

Slughorn looked down at the bezoar for a full ten seconds. Harry wondered, for a moment, whether he was going to shout at him. Then he threw back his head and roared with laughter.

"You've got a nerve, boy!" he boomed, taking the bezoar and holding it up so that the class could see it. "Oh, you're like your mother... well, I can't fault you... a bezoar would certainly act as an antidote to all these potions!"

Hermione, who was sweaty-faced and had soot on her nose, looked livid. Her half-finished antidote, comprising fifty-two ingredients including a chunk of her own hair, bubbled sluggishly behind Slughorn, who had eyes for nobody but Harry.

"And you thought of a bezoar all by yourself, did you, Harry?" she asked through gritted teeth.

"That's the individual spirit a real potion-maker needs!" said Slughorn happily, before Harry could reply. "Just like his mother, she had the same intuitive grasp of potion-making. Oh, yes, he undoubtedly gets it from Lily... yes, Harry, yes, if you've got a bezoar to hand, of course, that would do the trick... although as they don't work on everything, and are pretty rare, it's still worth knowing how to mix antidotes..."

The only person in the room looking angrier than Hermione was Malfoy, who, Charlie was pleased to see, had spilled something that made him look like a cat sick over himself. Before either of them could express their fury that Harry had come top of the class by not doing any work, however, the bell rang.

"Time to pack up!" announced Slughorn. "And an extra ten points to Gryffindor for sheer cheek!"

Still chuckling, he waddled back to his desk at the front of the dungeon.

Charlie and Harry dawdled behind, taking an inordinate amount of time to do up their bags, for they had subconsciously agreed to confront Slughorn after class. With a quick goodbye to Hermione, Charlie watched as she and Ron left the room, looking rather annoyed with Harry's praise.

Once the classroom had cleared, leaving only the two Gryffindors and their Professor in the room, Charlie looked to Harry and whispered, "How do you reckon we go about this?"

Before Harry could respond, however, Slughorn had came bustling over to see what the holdup was.

"Come on, now, boys, you'll be late for your next lesson at this rate," he told them affably, snapping the gold clasps shut on his dragonskin briefcase.

"Actually, sir," Harry began, reminding himself irresistibly of Voldemort; Charlie internally braced himself for what was to come, "we wanted to ask you something."

"Ask away, then, my dear boy, ask away..."

"Sir, we were wondering if you knew anything about... about Horcruxes?"

Slughorn froze. His round face seemed to sink in upon itself. He licked his lips and said hoarsely, "What did you say?"

Charlie cleared his throat, "I asked whether you know anything about Horcruxes, sir. You see —"

"Your grandfather's put you up to this, hasn't he?"

Slughorn's voice had changed completely. It was not genial any more, but shocked, terrified. He fumbled in his breast pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, mopping his sweating brow.

"Dumbledore's shown you both that... that memory," mumbled Slughorn, his eyes narrow. "Well? Hasn't he?"

Charlie and Harry shared a look.

"Yes," they said simultaneously, deciding on the spot that it was best not to lie.

"Yes, of course," muttered Slughorn quietly, still dabbing at his white face. "Of course... well, if you've seen that memory, boys, you'll know that I don't know anything — anything —" he repeated the word forcefully "— about Horcruxes!"

He seized his dragonskin briefcase, stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket and marched to the dungeon door.

"Sir," pleaded Charlie desperately, "We just thought there might be a bit more to the memory —"

"Did you?" barked Slughorn. "Then you both were wrong, weren't you? WRONG!"

He bellowed loud enough for the shelves to shake and then, before either Charlie or Harry could say another word, slammed the dungeon door behind him.

————————————————————

Neither Ron nor Hermione was at all sympathetic when Harry and Charlie told them of their disastrous interview. Hermione was still seething at the way Harry had triumphed without doing the work properly. Ron was resentful that Harry hadn't slipped him a bezoar, too.

"It would've just looked stupid if we'd both done it!" exclaimed Harry irritably, coming to his own defence. "Look, I had to try and soften him up so we could ask him about Voldemort, didn't I? Oh, will you get a grip!" he added in exasperation, as Ron winced at the sound of the name.

Disappointed by his failure, Charlie brooded for the next few days over what to do next about Slughorn. He decided that, for the time being, he would let Slughorn think that he had forgotten all about Horcruxes; it was surely best to lull him into a false sense of security before returning to the attack. When neither Charlie or Harry questioned Slughorn again, the Potions master reverted to his usual affectionate treatment of them, and appeared to have removed the matter from his mind.

Charlie awaited an invitation to one of his little evening parties, determined to accept this time, even if he had to reschedule Quidditch practice. Unfortunately, however, no such invitation arrived. And so, he checked with Hermione and Harry: neither of them had received an invitation and nor, as far as they knew, had anybody else. Charlie could not help wondering whether this meant that Slughorn was not quite as forgetful as he appeared, or whether he was simply determined to give them no additional opportunities to question him.

Meanwhile, the Hogwarts library had failed Hermione for the first time in living memory. She was so shocked, she even forgot that she was annoyed at Harry for his trick with the bezoar.

"I haven't found one single explanation of what Horcruxes do!" she told him and Charlie, during their free time in between classes. "Not a single one! I've been right through the restricted section and even in the most horrible books, where they tell you how to brew the most gruesome potions — nothing! All I could find was this, in the introduction to 'Magick Moste Evil,' listen — '...of the Horcrux, wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction,'...I mean, why mention it, then?" she said impatiently, slamming the old book shut; it let out a ghostly wail. "Oh, shut up," she snapped, stuffing it back into her bag.

The snow melted around the school as February arrived, to be replaced by cold, dreary wetness. Purplish-grey clouds hung low over the castle and a constant fall of chilly rain made the lawns slippery and muddy. The upshot of this was that the sixth-years' first Apparition lesson, which was scheduled for a Saturday morning so that no normal lessons would be missed, took place in the Great Hall instead of in the grounds.

When Charlie, Harry and Hermione arrived in the Hall (Ron had come down with Seamus), they found that the tables had disappeared. Rain lashed against the high windows and the enchanted ceiling swirled darkly above them as they assembled in front of Professors McGonagall, Snape, Flitwick and Sprout — the Heads of House — and a small wizard whom Charlie took to be the Apparition Instructor from the Ministry. He was oddly colourless, with transparent eyelashes, wispy hair and an insubstantial air, as though a single gust of wind might blow him away. Charlie wondered whether constant disappearances and reappearances had somehow diminished his substance, or whether this frail build was ideal for anyone wishing to vanish.

"Good morning," said the Ministry wizard, when all the students had arrived and the Heads of House had called for quiet. "My name is Wilkie Twycross and I shall be your Ministry-Apparition Instructor for the next twelve weeks. I hope to be able to prepare you for your Apparition test in this tim—"

"Malfoy, be quiet and pay attention!" barked Professor McGonagall.

Everybody looked round. Malfoy had flushed a dull pink; he looked furious as he stepped away from Crabbe, with whom he appeared to have been having a whispered argument. Charlie glanced quickly at Snape, who also looked annoyed, though Charlie strongly suspected that this was less because of Malfoy's rudeness than the fact that McGonagall had reprimanded one of his house.

"— by which time, many of you may be ready to take your test," Twycross continued, as though there had been no interruption. "As you may know, it is usually impossible to Apparate or Disapparate within Hogwarts. The Headmaster has lifted this enchantment, purely within the Great Hall, for one hour, so as to enable you to practice. May I emphasize that you will not be able to Apparate outside the walls of this Hall, and that you would be unwise to try. Now, I would like each of you to place yourselves now so that you have a clear five feet of space in front of you."

There was a great scrambling and jostling as people separated, banged into each other, and ordered others out of their space. The Heads of House moved among the students, marshalling them into position and breaking up arguments.

"Charlie, where are you going?" asked Hermione, for Charlie had shuffled his way forward, moving out of her reach before she could even attempt to grab at him.

Having not heard, Charlie did not answer; he was moving quickly through the crowd, past the place where Professor Flitwick was making squeaky attempts to position a few Ravenclaws, all of whom wanted to be near the front, past Professor Sprout, who was chivvying the Hufflepuffs into line, until, by dodging around Ernie Macmillan, he managed to position himself right at the back of the crowd, directly behind Malfoy, who was taking advantage of the general upheaval to continue his argument with Crabbe, standing five feet away and looking mutinous.

"I don't know how much longer, all right?" Malfoy shot at him, oblivious to Charlie standing right behind him. "It's taking longer than I thought it would."

Crabbe opened his mouth, but Malfoy appeared to second-guess what he was going to say.

"Look, it's none of your business what I'm doing, Crabbe, you and Goyle just do as you're told and keep a lookout!"

"If I wanted my friends to keep a lookout for me, I'd tell them what I was up to," Charlie muttered, just loud enough for Malfoy to hear him.

Malfoy spun round on the spot, his hand flying to his wand, but at that precise moment the four Heads of House shouted, "Quiet!" and silence fell again. Malfoy turned slowly to face the front.

"Thank you," said Twycross. "Now then..."

He waved his wand. Old-fashioned wooden hoops instantly appeared on the floor in from of every student.

"The important things to remember when Apparating are the three Ds!" shouted Twycross, his voice carrying. "Destination, Determination, Deliberation! Step one: fix your mind firmly upon the desired destination..."

And with that, the lesson began. Their first attempt was absolutely horrific. The second attempt was no better than the first. The third was just as bad. Not until the fourth did anything exciting happen. There was a horrible screech of pain and everybody looked around, terrified, to see Susan Bones of Hufflepuff wobbling in her hoop with her left leg still standing five feet away where she had started.

The Heads of House converged on her; there was a great bang and a puff of purple smoke, which cleared to reveal Susan sobbing, reunited with her leg but looking horrified.

"Splinching, or the separation of random body parts," explained Twycross dispassionately, "occurs when the mind is insufficiently determined. You must concentrate continually upon your destination, and move, without haste, but with deliberation... thus."

Twycross stepped forwards, turned gracefully on the spot with his arms outstretched and vanished in a swirl of robes, reappearing at the back of the Hall. "Remember the three Ds," he said, "and try again... one — two — three —"

But an hour later, Susan's Splinching was still the most interesting thing that had happened. Twycross did not seem discouraged. Fastening his cloak at his neck, he merely said, "Until next Saturday, everybody, and do not forget: Destination. Determination. Deliberation."

With that, he waved his wand, his equipment vanishing, and walked out of the Hall accompanied by Professor McGonagall. Talk broke out at once as people began moving towards the Entrance Hall.

"How did you do?" asked Ron, hurrying towards Harry and Charlie, who had maneuvered his way back over to the Gryffindors. "I think I felt something the last time I tried — a kind of tingling in my feet."

"I expect your trainers are too small," said a voice behind them, and Hermione stalked past, smirking.

"I didn't feel anything," shrugged Harry, ignoring this interruption. "I reckon I was a little discouraged with the whole Splinching thing... what about you, Charlie?"

Charlie shrugged, his eyes fixated elsewhere, "I don't care about that now —"

Ron blinked, "What d'you mean, you don't care... don't you want to learn to Apparate?"

"I'm not fussed, really. I've got more important things to worry about," grumbled Charlie, glancing over his shoulder to see where Malfoy was, and speeding up as they came into the Entrance Hall. "Look, hurry up, will you? There's something I want to do..."

Perplexed, Harry and Ron followed Charlie back to Gryffindor Tower at a run. They were temporarily detained by Peeves, who had jammed a door on the fourth floor shut and was refusing to let anyone pass until they set fire to their own pants, but the three Gryffindor boys simply turned back and took one of their trusted short cuts. Within five minutes, they were climbing through the portrait hole.

"Are you going to tell us what we're doing, then?" asked Ron, panting slightly. Harry had his eyebrows knitted in confusion.

"Up here," beckoned Charlie, and he crossed the common room and led the way through the door to the boys' staircase.

Their dormitory was, as Charlie had hoped, empty. He flung open Harry's trunk and began to rummage in it, while his two friends watched him impatiently.

"Oi! Why are you mucking around in there for? Bloody hell, I just got everything sorted!"

"Charlie...?"

"Malfoy's using Crabbe and Goyle as lookouts. He was arguing with Crabbe just now. I want to know... aha."

He had found it, a folded square of apparently blank parchment, which he now smoothed out and tapped with the tip of his wand.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

At once, the Marauder's Map appeared on the parchment's surface. Here was a detailed plan of every one of the castle's floors and, moving around it, the tiny, labelled black dots that signified each of the castle's occupants.

"Help me find Malfoy."

He laid the map upon his bed and he, Harry, and Ron leaned over it, searching.

"There!" said Ron, after a minute or so. "He's in the Slytherin common room, look... with Parkinson and Zabini and Crabbe and Goyle..."

Charlie looked down at the map, disappointed, but rallied almost at once.

"I need you to keep an eye on him from now on," Charlie told Harry urgently. "And the moment you see him lurking somewhere with Crabbe and Goyle keeping watch outside, it'll be on with the old Invisibility Cloak and off to find out what he's —"

He broke off as Neville entered the dormitory, bringing with him a strong smell of singed material, and began rummaging in his trunk for a fresh pair of pants.

————————————————————

Despite Charlie's determination to find out what Malfoy was up to, Harry had no luck at all over the next couple of weeks.

Although he consulted the map as often as he could, sometimes making unnecessary visits to the bathroom between lessons to search it, Harry did not once see Malfoy anywhere suspicious. Admittedly, he spotted Crabbe and Goyle moving around the castle on their own more often than usual, sometimes remaining stationary in deserted corridors, but at these times Malfoy was not only nowhere near them, but impossible to locate on the map at all. This was most mysterious.

When Harry revealed his findings, Charlie toyed with the possibility that Malfoy was actually leaving the school grounds, but could not see how he could be doing it, given the very high level of security now operating within the castle. He could only suppose that Harry was missing Malfoy amongst the hundreds of tiny black dots upon the map.

February moved towards March with no change in the weather except that it became windy as well as wet. To general indignation, a sign went up on all common-room noticeboards that the next trip into Hogsmeade had been cancelled. Ron was furious.

"It was on my birthday!" he said, "I was looking forward to that!"

"Not a big surprise, though, is it?" shrugged Harry. "Not after what happened to Katie."

She had still not returned from St. Mungo's. What was more, further disappearances had been reported in the Daily Prophet, including several relatives of students at Hogwarts.

"But now all I've got to look forward to is stupid Apparition!" grumbled Ron, his ears red at the tips. "Big birthday treat..."

Three lessons on, Apparition was proving as difficult as ever, though a few more people had managed to Splinch themselves. Frustration was running high and there was a certain amount of ill-feeling towards Wilkie Twycross and his three Ds, which had inspired a number of nicknames for him, the politest of which were Dog-breath and Dung-head.

"Happy birthday, Ron," beamed Harry, when they were woken on the first of March by Seamus and Dean leaving noisily for breakfast. "Have a present."

Charlie sat up in his bed just as Harry threw the package across on to Ron's bed, where it joined a small pile of them that must have been delivered by house-elves in the night. A sense of guilt overcame Charlie at once, for after everything that had happened with him and Ron, he had forgotten to get the ginger a birthday gift.

"Cheers," said Ron drowsily, and as he ripped off the paper, Charlie got out of bed, opened his own trunk and began rummaging in it for an old pair of Oliver Wood's Keeper gloves, which had been given to him as a parting gift. He turfed out half the contents of his trunk before he found them hiding beneath the rolled-up socks in which he was still keeping his Hawthorne family heirloom pendant that he had gotten for Christmas five years prior.

"Here," he murmured, walking the Keeper gloves over to Ron's bed and placing it upon the stack, "I, uh, didn't have time to wrap them."

"Nice one, Charlie!" awed Ron enthusiastically, brandishing the Keeper gloves in his hands. With a quick glance at the ginger's smiling face, Charlie gave a quick nod, silently agreeing to let Ron have one day of normalcy.

"No problem," he said with a shrug, and Charlie watched as Ron unwrapped his presents; every now and then he let out an exclamation of pleasure.

"Seriously good haul this year!" he announced, holding up a heavy gold watch with odd symbols around the edge and tiny moving stars instead of hands. "See what Mum and Dad got me? Blimey, I think I'll come of age next year too..."

"Cool," muttered Charlie, sparing the watch a glance before peering over his shoulder to look at Harry, who was curiously searching the Marauder's Map for any sign of Malfoy. "Anything?" he asked the boy with glasses, hoping for a change in the usual answer.

"No, unfortunately," said Harry, looking up. "I don't see him anywhere."

Where was Malfoy?

Harry did not seem to be at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall, eating breakfast... he was nowhere near Snape, who was sitting in his study... he wasn't in any of the bathrooms or in the hospital wing...

"Want one?" said Ron thickly, holding out a box of Chocolate Cauldrons.

"No thanks," Charlie refused politely, whipping his head back around. "Malfoy's gone again?"

"Can't have done," mumbled Ron, stuffing a second Cauldron into his mouth as he slid out of bed to get dressed. "Come on. If you don't hurry up you'll have to Apparate on an empty-stomach... might make it easier, I suppose..."

Ron looked thoughtfully at the box of Chocolate Cauldrons, then shrugged and helped himself to a third.

Harry tapped the map with his wand, muttered, "Mischief managed," though it hadn't been, and moved to start the day. Charlie quickly followed suit, slowly getting dressed into his school robes, his mind too occupied to pay any attention to the festering design carved into his skin.

There had to be an explanation for Malfoy's periodic disappearances, but Charlie simply could not think what it could be. The best way of finding out would be to tail him, but even with Harry's Invisibility Cloak this was an impractical idea. He still had lessons, Quidditch practice, homework and Apparition, meaning he could not follow Malfoy around school all day without his absence being remarked upon.

Coming to his senses, he turned back around to face his two friends, "Ready?"

Him and Harry were halfway to the dormitory door when they realized that Ron had not moved, but was leaning on his bedpost, staring out of the rain-washed window with a strangely unfocused look on his face.

"Ron? Breakfast."

"I'm not hungry."

Harry stared at him.

"I thought you just said — ?"

"Well, alright, I'll come down with you lot," sighed Ron, "but I don't want to eat."

Charlie scrutinized him suspiciously.

"You've just eaten half a box of Chocolate Cauldrons, haven't you?"

"It's not that," Ron sighed again. "You... you wouldn't understand."

"Fair enough," said Harry, puzzled, as he turned to open the door.

"Guys!" yelled Ron suddenly.

"What?"

"Mate, I can't stand it!"

"You can't stand what?" asked Charlie, now starting to feel definitely alarmed. Ron was rather pale and looked as though he was about to be sick.

"I can't stop thinking about her!" said Ron hoarsely.

Charlie gaped at him. He had not expected this and was not sure he wanted to hear it. Friends they might be, but if Ron started up the whole Hermione argument again, he would have to put his foot down.

"Why does that stop you having breakfast?" Harry asked, trying to inject a note of common sense into the proceedings.

"I don't think she knows I exist," muttered Ron with a desperate gesture.

"She definitely knows you exist," Charlie shook his head, his fists clenching ever so slightly. "She's been your best friend for six years, hasn't she?"

Ron blinked.

"Who are you talking about?"

"Who are you talking about?" questioned Charlie, with an increasing sense that all reason had dropped out of the conversation.

"Romilda Vane," hummed Ron softly, and his whole face seemed to illuminate as he said it, as though hit by a ray of purest sunlight.

The three of them stared at each other for almost a whole minute, before Harry said, "This is a joke, right? You're joking."

"I think... Harry, I think I love her," said Ron in a strangled voice.

"Okay?" whispered Harry, perplexed, as he walked up to Ron to get a better look at the glazed eyes and the pallid complexion, "okay... say that again with a straight face."

"I love her," repeated Ron breathlessly. "Have you seen her hair, it's all black and shiny and silky... and her eyes? Her big dark eyes? And her —"

"This is really funny and everything," said Charlie impatiently, "but joke's over, all right? Drop it."

He turned to leave; he had got two steps towards the door when a crashing blow hit him on the right ear. Staggering, he looked round. Ron's fist was drawn right back, his face was contorted with rage; he was about to strike again.

Charlie reacted instinctively; his wand was out of his pocket and the incantation sprang to mind without conscious thought: "Protego!"

Ron yelled as his fist collided with the shield and he was sent flying backwards, knocking him off of his feet for a moment until he landed hard on his arse.

"What was that for?" Charlie bellowed, his knuckles tightening are his wand.

"You insulted her, Charlie! You said it was a joke!" shouted Ron, who was slowly scrambling to his feet, blood rushing to his cheeks. "But it's not! I'm in love with her!"

"Alright, fine, you're in love with her! But have you ever actually met her?" retaliated Charlie, his voice growing louder. "Or do you just take pride in falling for women who are originally interested in me?"

Ron charged again, prepared to strike, but Harry intervened before he was able to connect.

"That's enough! This is insane," he ridiculed, keeping the two at an arms distance away from one another. "Honestly, Ron, what's got into —"

And then he saw the box lying open on Ron's bed and the truth hit him with the force of a stampeding troll.

"Where did you get those Chocolate Cauldrons?"

"They were a birthday present!" shouted Ron, revolving slowly in midair as he struggled to get free. "I offered you both one, didn't I?"

"You just picked them up off the floor, didn't you?"

"They'd fallen off my bed, alright? Let me go!"

"They didn't fall off your bed, you prat, don't you understand? They're the Chocolate Cauldrons Romilda Vane gave Charlie before Christmas and they're all spiked with love potion!"

Realizing what had happened, Charlie groaned into his hands, "Fuck, I must've chucked them out of my trunk when I was looking for the Keeper gloves."

But only one word of this conversation seemed to have registered with Ron.

"Romilda?" he repeated. "Did you say Romilda? Harry — do you know her? Can you introduce me?"

Charlie stared at the lovesick Ron, whose face now looked tremendously hopeful, and fought a strong desire to laugh. A part of him — the part closest to his throbbing right ear — was quite keen on the idea of letting Ron go and watching him run amok until the effects of the potion wore off... but on the other hand, they were supposed to be friends, and although that evidently didn't mean much to Ron, the selflessness in Charlie couldn't permit him to declare undying love for Romilda Vane.

"I'll introduce you, Ron," said Charlie, thinking fast, and earning him a curious look from Harry. "She'll be in Slughorn's office."

"Why will she be in there?" asked Ron anxiously, hurrying to keep up as Charlie made his way to the door.

"Oh, she has extra Potions lessons with him," added Harry, inventing wildly, for he seemed to catch on to Charlie's plan.

And without another word, the three of them made their way down to the common room and pushed through the portrait hole. Charlie had been slightly worried that Slughorn might be at breakfast, but he answered his office door at the first knock, wearing a green velvet dressing-gown and matching nightcap and looking rather bleary-eyed.

"Charles," he mumbled. "This is very early for a call... I generally sleep late on a Saturday..."

"Professor, we're really sorry to disturb you," said Charlie as quietly as possible, while Ron stood on tiptoe, attempting to see past Slughorn into his room, "but my friend Ron's swallowed a love potion by mistake. You couldn't make him an antidote, could you? I'd take him to Madame Pomfrey, but we're not supposed to have anything from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes and, you know... awkward questions..."

Slughorn paused for a moment, glancing towards Harry, "I'd have thought you could have whipped him up a remedy, Harry, an expert potioneer like you?"

"Er," said Harry, somewhat distracted by the fact that Ron was now elbowing him in the ribs in an attempt to force his way into the room, "well, I've never mixed an antidote for a love potion, sir, and by the time I get it right Ron might've done something serious —"

Helpfully, Ron chose this moment to moan, "I can't see her, Harry — is he hiding her?"

"Was this potion within date?" asked Slughorn, now eyeing Ron with professional interest. "They can strengthen, you know, the longer they're kept."

"That would explain a lot," panted Charlie, now positively wrestling with Ron to keep him from knocking Harry and Slughorn over. "It's his birthday, Professor," he added imploringly.

"Oh, all right, come in, then, come in," said Slughorn, relenting."I've got the necessary here in my bag, it's not a difficult antidote..."

Ron burst through the door into Slughorn's overheated, crowded study, tripped over a tasselled footstool, regained his balance by seizing Charlie around the neck and muttered, "She didn't see that, did she?"

"She's not here yet," Charlie told him, watching Slughorn, as he opened his potion kit and added a few pinches of something to a small crystal bottle.

"That's good," said Ron fervently. "How do I look?"

"Very handsome," said Slughorn smoothly, handing Ron a glass of clear liquid. "Now drink that up, it's a tonic for the nerves, keep you calm until she arrives, you know,"

"Brilliant," beamed Ron eagerly, and he gulped the antidote down noisily.

Charlie, Harry and Slughorn watched him. For a moment, Ron beamed at them. Then, very slowly, his grin sagged and vanished, to be replaced by an expression of utmost horror.

"Back to normal, then?" said Harry, grinning. Slughorn chuckled. "Thanks a lot, Professor."

"Don't mention it, m'boy, don't mention it," sniggered Slughorn, as Ron collapsed into a nearby armchair, looking devastated. "Pick-me-up, that's what he needs," Slughorn continued, now-bustling over to a table loaded with drinks. "I've got Butterbeer, I've got wine, I've got one last bottle of this oak-matured mead... hmm... meant to give that to Dumbledore for Christmas... ah well..." he shrugged, "...he can't miss what he's never had! Why don't we open it now and celebrate Mr Weasley's birthday? Nothing like a fine spirit to chase away the pangs of disappointed love..."

He chortled again and Charlie joined in. This was the first time he had found himself almost alone with Slughorn since his disastrous first attempt to extract the true memory from him. Perhaps, if he could just keep Slughorn in a good mood... perhaps if they got through enough of the oak-matured mead...

"There you are, then," grinned Slughorn, handing Charlie, Harry and Ron a glass of mead each, before raising his own. "Well, happy birthday, Ralph —"

"— Ron," whispered Harry.

But Charlie, who did not appear to be listening to the toast, had already thrown the mead into his mouth and swallowed it.

There was one second, hardly more than a heartbeat, in which Harry knew there was something terribly wrong and Slughorn, it seemed, did not.

"— and may you have many more —"

"Charlie!"

Charlie had dropped his glass; he half-rose from his chair and then crumpled, his extremities jerking uncontrollably. Foam was dribbling from his mouth and his eyes were bulging from their sockets.

"Professor!" Harry bellowed. "Do something!"

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," Ron chanted anxiously, pacing the room. "What the bloody hell happened?"

But Slughorn seemed paralysed by shock. Charlie twitched and choked; his skin was turning blue.

"What — but —" spluttered Slughorn.

Harry leapt over a low table and sprinted towards Slughorn's open potion kit, pulling out jars and pouches, while the terrible sound of Charlie's gargling breath filled the room. Then he found it — the shrivelled kidney-like stone Slughorn had taken from him in Potions.

He hurtled back to Charlie's side, wrenched open his jaw and thrust the bezoar into his mouth. Charlie gave a great shudder, a rattling gasp and his body became limp and still.

———————————————————

"Not exactly how I imagined spending my birthday, if I'm honest," Ron sighed, slumping back in his chair. "But I'm glad he's alright."

It was evening; the hospital wing was quiet, the windows curtained, the lamps lit. Charlie's was the only occupied bed. Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, and Elaina were sitting around him; they had spent all day waiting outside the double doors, trying to see inside whenever somebody went in or out. Madame Pomfrey had only let them enter at eight o'clock. Fred and George had arrived at ten past.

"This isn't where we imagined we'd give you your birthday present," said George grimly, handing a large wrapped gift to Ron and taking a seat next to his brother.

"Yeah," nodded Fred, glancing briefly over to Charlie's unconscious state. "Not exactly the ideal setting."

"Tell me about it," George let out a light, rueful laugh, "the original plan was to run into you lot while you were in Hogsmeade —"

"You were in Hogsmeade?" asked Ginny, looking up.

"We were thinking of buying Zonko's," Fred told her gloomily. "A Hogsmeade branch, you know, but a fat lot of good it'll do us if you lot aren't allowed out at weekends to buy our stuff anymore... but never mind that now."

He drew up a chair beside Harry and looked over Charlie's pale face once again.

"How exactly did it happen, Harry?"

Harry retold the story he had already recounted, at least a hundred times, to Dumbledore, to McGonagall, to Madame Pomfrey, to Hermione, to Elaina, and to Ginny.

"...and then I got the bezoar down his throat and his breathing eased up a bit. Slughorn ran for help, McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey turned up, and they brought Charlie up here. They reckon he'll be alright. Madame Pomfrey says he'll have to stay here a week or so... keep taking Essence of Rue..."

"Blimey, it was lucky you thought of a bezoar," muttered George in a low voice.

"Lucky there was one in the room," said Harry, who kept turning cold at the thought of what would have happened if he had not been able to lay hands on the little stone.

Hermione gave an almost inaudible sniff. She had been exceptionally quiet all day. Having hurtled, white-faced, up to Harry outside the hospital wing and demanded to know what had happened. She had taken almost no part in Harry, Ron, Elaina and Ginny's obsessive discussion about how Charlie had been poisoned, but merely stood beside them, clench-jawed and frightened-looking, until at last they had been allowed in to see him.

"And Dumbledore knows?"

Harry nodded, "He's been by to see him a couple of times, but I imagine he's in his office now, wondering how to tell Charlie's father. Regardless, I'm sure he'll be back soon."

"Maybe it'd be better if Minister Hawthorne didn't know," suggested Elaina, gulping slightly as everyone turned to her. "I mean, we all know that the last thing Charlie would want is to see his father when he wakes up."

"While that may be true," muttered Ginny weakly, "he's still his father."

"Doesn't make him any less of a monster..."

There was a pause while they all watched Charlie mumble a little in his sleep.

Fred cleared his throat, "So there was definitely poison in his drink?"

"Had to have been," confirmed Harry at once; he could think of nothing else and was glad for the opportunity to start discussing it again. "Slughorn poured it out —"

"Would he have been able to slip something into Charlie's glass without you seeing?"

"Probably," said Harry, "but why would Slughorn want to poison Charlie?"

"No idea," shrugged Fred, frowning. "You don't think he could have mixed up the glasses by mistake? Meaning to get you?"

"Why would Slughorn want to poison Harry?" asked Elaina, her eyes wide.

"Who knows?" Ron chimed in. "But there must be loads of people who'd like to poison Harry, mustn't there? The 'Chosen One' and all that?"

Ginny kinked a brow, "So you think Slughorn's a Death Eater?"

"Anything's possible," muttered Ron darkly. Elaina and Harry shared a quick glance to one another before shifting their eyes down to Charlie's left arm... if only the rest of them knew.

"He could be under the Imperius Curse," suggested George, trying to think of the endless possibilities.

"Or he could be innocent," countered Ginny. "The poison could have been in the bottle, in which case it was probably meant for Slughorn himself."

"Who'd want to kill Slughorn?"

"Dumbledore reckons Voldemort wanted Slughorn on his side," Harry confessed. "Slughorn was in hiding for a year before he came to Hogwarts..." He thought of the memory Dumbledore had not yet been able to extract from Slughorn. "And maybe Voldemort wants him out of the way, maybe he thinks he could be valuable to Dumbledore."

"But you said Slughorn had been planning to give that bottle to Dumbledore for Christmas," Ginny reminded him. "So the poisoner could just as easily have been after Dumbledore."

"Then the poisoner didn't know Slughorn very well," said Hermione, speaking for the first time in hours and sounding as though she had a bad head cold. "Anyone who knew Slughorn would have known there was a good chance he'd keep something like that for himself."

At the sound of Hermione's voice, Charlie rustled beneath his bedsheets. They all fell silent, watching him anxiously, but after muttering incomprehensibly for a moment he merely started snoring.

The infirmary doors flew open, making them all jump: Hagrid came striding toward them, his hair rain-flecked, his bearskin coat flapping behind him, a crossbow in his hand, leaving a trail of muddy dolphin-sized footprints all over the floor.

"Bin in the forest all day!" he panted. "Aragog's worse, I bin readin' to him — didn' get up ter dinner till jus' now an' then Professor Sprout told me abou' Char! How is he?"

"Not bad," Harry informed him. "They say he'll be okay."

"No more than six visitors at a time!" said Madame Pomfrey, hurrying out of her office.

"Charlie would want us all here," George pointed out. "Besides, you have no other patients anyway."

"Oh, well, I supposed..." muttered Madame Pomfrey, who seemed to have been taken aback by the the Weasley twin's bluntness. To cover her confusion, she hurried off to clear up his muddy foot prints with her wand.

"I don' believe this," croaked Hagrid hoarsely, shaking his great shaggy head as he stared down at Charlie. "Jus' don' believe it... look at him lyin' there... who'd want ter hurt him, eh?"

"That's just what we were discussing," frowned Harry. "We don't know."

"Someone couldn' have a grudge against the Gryfinndor Quidditch team, could they?" said Hagrid anxiously. "Firs' Katie, now Char..."

George shook his head, "I can't see anyone trying to bump off a Quidditch team."

"Wood might've done the Slytherins if he could've got away with it," said Fred fairly.

"Well, I don't think it's Quidditch, but I think there's a connection between the attacks," attributed Hermione quietly, her hands resting at Charlie's sides as though she were waiting for him to reach out for her.

"How d'you work that out?" asked Fred.

"Well, for one thing, they both ought to have been fatal and weren't, although that was pure luck. And for another, neither the poison nor the necklace seems to have reached the person who was supposed to be killed. Of course," she added broodingly, "that makes the person behind this even more dangerous in a way, because they don't seem to care how many people they finish off before they actually reach their victim."

Before anybody could respond to this ominous pronouncement, the hospital wing's doors opened once again and Dumbledore appeared, ushering the group of Snape, McGonagall, and Slughorn, who still held the remains of the bottle of mead in his hands, down the ward towards his grandson's surrounded bed. They had satisfied themselves with the fact that Charlie would make a full recovery on their last visit to the ward; now Dumbledore placed a hand upon Harry's shoulder and squeezed affectionately.

"I cannot thank you enough, Harry," he said, emotion clogging his throat. "I will forever be grateful for your quick thinking. Using a bezoar. You must be very proud of your student, eh, Horace?"

Slughorn blinked, his eyes transfixed upon the unconscious boy, "Hm? Oh. Yes... very proud."

"Now, while I think we all agree that Potter's actions were heroic," agreed McGonagall, her expression slightly disdainful. "The question remains as to why they were necessary."

"Why indeed..." Dumbledore trailed off, and he moved towards Slughorn to take the half-empty bottle of mead, which was still bearing a bit of gift-wrap, from his hands. "This appears to be a gift, Horace. You don't remember by chance remember who gave you this bottle, do you?" He uncorked the bottle and gave it a whiff, "Which, by the way, possesses remarkably subtle hints of liquorice and cherry... when not polluted with poison, of course."

Snape stepped forward, taking the bottle from Dumbledore and inspecting its remains. He narrowed his eyes upon Slughorn, "I believe the Headmaster asked you a question, Horace... who gave you this bottle?"

"W-Well, you see, I don't kno—"

But before the words had even left Slughorn's mouth, the infirmary doors had opened yet again. This time, however, the perpetrator was followed by a bellowing Madame Pomfrey, who demanded the intruder leave at once.

"Where is he? Has he been asking for me? Please, I need to see him, you don't understand!"

To everyone's great surprise, Romilda Vane had parted her way through the group surrounding the hospital bed; many were confused by her presence, but Hermione, who had felt her coming like a bad case of the swine flu, stood on alert, her fists clenched in fury.

"What's she doing here?" Romilda bellowed, her expression slightly astonished as Hermione stared back at her.

"I might ask you the same question!" Hermione retaliated, the sadness in her voice now replaced with aggression.

"And why's that?" Romilda scoffed. "I'm concerned for Charlie's well-being, is all!"

"Are you joking? You're the reason he's in here in the first place!" shouted Hermione, and Elaina had to stop her from lunging. "If you hadn't slipped him those love-potion infused Chocolate Cauldrons, then Charlie and Harry wouldn't've needed to bring Ron down to Slughorn's office!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," denied Romilda, crossing her arms in a ferocious stance as she tried to sound convincing in front of the Hogwarts faculty. "Besides, up until a few weeks ago, you and Charlie were on the outs. So, don't make me laugh. You've only made up with him now that he's suddenly all interesting!"

"He's been poisoned, you daft dimbo!" Hermione laughed viciously; the rest of them room was a mixture of confusion and amusement. "And, for the record, Charlie and I have worked through our differences. Now, since you have yet to realize, your delusional fantasies are becoming undoubtedly pathetic."

"The only thing pathetic here is you, Granger," Romilda snapped, evidently ignoring that her Head of House was standing three feet to her left. Before anything could happen, however, Charlie became restless once again, rolling over onto his back, pulling everyone's attention way from the heated confrontation.

"Ha! See? He senses my presence! I'm here, Charlie, I'm here —"

"Er-my-nee," croaked Charlie unexpectedly from his hospital bed, his eyes struggling to remain closed. "Er... my... nee... I... luh... you."

In a haze, he reached out for her blindly. With her cheeks blushing feverishly, Hermione sat back down on the edge of his bed and took her hand in his. Just like before, Charlie fell unconscious again, his body still, yet his hand remained firmly intertwined with Hermione's.

Vibrating with a newfound rage, Romilda let out a shaky breath, clenched her jaw, and quickly stalked out of the room before any 'told-you-so' comments rang in the air.

In complete contrast, Dumbledore beamed, "Ah, to be young and to feel love's keen sting. Come, everyone, I believe my grandson is well tendered."

And as Dumbledore led everyone back out the room, Elaina deliberately leaned into Harry, their noses nearly touching, and whispered, "Well, it took him long enough, don't you think?"

Without waiting for a response, Elaina swept out of the room along with the others. Harry watched her go, hopelessly smitten, and only when the door closed behind her, did he turn back around. In the corner, Ron still sat in the hospital armchair, studying the back of Hermione's head, his expression saddened as her hand enfolded over Charlie's.

Not long after, Ron got up and made his way to the exit as well, clapping a hand on Harry's shoulder as he passed, "Let's give them some time alone, yeah?"

Harry nodded, but he looked towards his two friends once more, just in time to catch Hermione's eye as she looked up, a wide smile plastered across her lips.

"How's that taking things slow thing working out for you, Hermione?" he asked with a slight chuckle.

With that, Hermione blushed even more, shaking her head, "Oh, shut up."

And with that, Harry followed after Ron, closing the door behind him and leaving Charlie and Hermione alone in the vacant hospital wing.

She sat there for a moment, admiring the features of his face with a grin; her heart fluttering every time Charlie unconsciously squeezed her hand. And only when the sun began to set through the windows, was Hermione Granger forced to leave him, but not before she leaned up, placed a soft kiss against his lips, and muttered:

"I love you too, Charlie... goodnight."

———————————————————

Author's Note:
*this chapter was not proof read*

hope you enjoyed this chapter! it was a bit of a filler, but we're nearing the end guys 👀

are you excited?!

you know the drill —> [insert begging for comments and votes]

btw! I saw this on ElectricZenith 's message board, but I'm super curious, what are your top five favourite moments from the book so far? lmk!

as always, much love <3

see you guys in the next one!!

xo, selena