No Means to Use the Stove

A Life-Threatening Situation

One Charles Archibald Weasley-- a man of the world, a dragon tamer, a war hero, an adventurer, a charmer (at least in the sense that he used charms)--was sitting by the pond in the garden of his childhood home and - whittleing.

He didn't know, exactly, why he had once again returned to his parents' house instead of his own after his disastrously finished meeting with Seamus Finnigan's father, but he did know why he was whittleing. Of all the sensible pieces of advice Sean Finnigan had offered him, only one seemed possible to follow at the moment. The others would have needed Anna's participation, or at least her presence. Therefore, right now, he was "learning to do something with his hands, in order to understand her better."

The blunt little knife attacked a piece of wood forcibly. It wasn't like he hadn't ever done anything with his hands; one couldn't play Seeker without hands, could one? And he wouldn't have got his hands all burnt up with the dragons had he only used his wand from afar. And garden gnomes, they were grabbed with hands and with hands they were tossed over the hedge. Nevertheless, he had to admit to himself that after his early childhood, he had made barely anything without his wand.

Hands were used for exercise and manual labour and sports; all important things, all things requiring some skill, were handled with magic. Quidditch and potion-making were about the only exceptions he could think of. Not many wizards even draw pictures, and if they did, the drawings were at least animated or manipulated in some other way employing magic. Doing tasks the Muggle way was used as a punishment at Hogwarts, for Merlin's sake!

Leaving the Finnigan's house on the previous day, he had been filled with dismay. The only thing he could have thought of had been the throbbing feeling of total failure inside of him. He had been broken down before his gigantic, uncorrectable error. Then determination had stepped in. Grim, solid, all-conquering determination. Maybe he couldn't repair what he had done, but he would do something. Anything. He would punish himself, he would learn from his mistakes, he would find a way to somehow make up what he had done to Anna. He didn't know yet how, but he would. And so he whittled a piece of wood with the knife his mother daily spelled to peel vegetables.

Having reminded himself of his decision, he felt better, calmer. He concentrated on the piece of wood in his hand and the knife moved slower and with more precision. The wood felt warm in his hand, almost alive. His knife, as if not so blunt anymore, found the way to smooth it gently. He didn't need pressure, his hands would move without his brain telling them what to do. The deep and piney fragrance of freshly-cut wood reached his nostrils as the piece slowly shaped itself into a small animal figure.

The little wooden cat on his palm had only three legs and they were all of a different length. Its tail began from the middle of its back and its head was more than lop-sided. Charlie didn't notice these little faults, though. Or rather, he noticed them alright, but still felt proud over accomplishing something that even remotely resembled a feline. He scrutinized his work of art and started carefully to file off its third ear.

Abruptly, his knife slipped and he cut his palm. A long slash appeared on his flesh. Blood ran along his wrist and dripped on his robe. Automatically, he reached for his wand to heal the wound. Then he stopped with the wand in his hand. If he had been a Muggle, he couldn't have healed the cut. What would he have done? He hazily remembered something about disinfectant liquids and bandages or... plosters, plusters? He didn't have those, though, so he just pressed the sleeve of his robe on the cut and watched the blood slowly ooze through the fabric.

* * *

"Charlie!" Hermione's voice echoed in the obviously empty apartment.

"I think he'd answered the first time you yelled. Or at least the fourth. Maybe we can establish he isn't home." Ron watched as his wife continued to look around like expecting his older brother to suddenly appear from the cupboard or from under the bed.

"Then where is he? He didn't go to work this morning."

"Well, he wasn't supposed to. He had a month's holiday, remember?" Ron answered sensibly. "Listen, love, maybe we should just let Charlie deal with his problems himself. Maybe we shouldn't meddle-"

"Ron! Please, you didn't see him yesterday! I'm worried about him, I really am. The least we can do is try to help him. Them. Anna didn't seem very happy, either."

Ron looked at Hermione's pleading eyes and gave in. "Well, all right then, I guess. We could check the Burrow next and then Fred's and Angelina's, if he's not there." He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when he heard a soft "pop" and his wife disappeared from his sight. He sighed and followed suit.

When he Apparated in the kitchen at the Burrow, Hermione was already questioning his mother trying to conceal her fervour: "So he's here?"

"Yes, dear, he came home yesterday evening. He looked a bit ill, poor boy. But I guess one can expect as much." There was a slight element of bitterness in her voice. "When the person you love leaves you with no explanations, it's not something that's easily born, not even with the help of a pensieve."

"Especially if you don't bloody use it," Ron muttered under his breath, only to get Hermione's elbow to painfully connect with his ribs.

"We have something we would like to talk to him about. Where is he?"

"Oh, in the garden, I suppose," Molly Weasley sighed. "I do hope you can cheer him up."

Ron followed Hermione out into the garden and they soon spotted Charlie sitting by the pond. Ron was just about to tell her he had been right all along and she shouldn't have worried so much, when she suddenly let out a terrified shriek and leaped for Charlie.

"Charlie! No! Put the knife away!" She furiously attacked Charlie, grabbed the little blunt kitchen knife out of his grasp and drew out her wand healing his wounded hand with so much force it almost stopped the blood running not only from the cut but inside his veins as well. Charlie only looked at her, flabbergasted. Ron shook his head. Had he seen correctly? There had been a knife, and blood and...had his brother tried to...

"What the...?" Charlie managed to stutter.

"What the bloody hell you think you were doing?!" Ron heard his own voice crying out, an octave higher than usual. "It would have killed Mum if..." he couldn't even finish his sentence.

"If she would have seen me whittleing and cutting my palm? Blimey, it was only a tiny little wound. Nothing to get your knickers all twisted about."

It was then that they noticed the small wooden carving on the ground beside Charlie. Hermione blushed when she took a closer look at the knife she had considered so life-threatening: a suicide using it would probably be the most tedious and laborious deadly sin anyone could think of committing. Reluctantly, she gave up her image of Charlie as a man losing his mind over love and herself as a brave and miraculous saviour.

Ron didn't give in so easily, though. "Damn you, Charlie! We thought you were trying to do yourself in! And why were you just bloody sitting there, with blood all over?! You have your wand in your hand, for Merlin's sake!"

Now it was Charlie that blushed. He averted his eyes and muttered something incoherent. That didn't satisfy Ron's righteous anger:

"What!? What did you say, you bloody oaf?!"

This time Charlie raised his voice as well. "I said I thought I wouldn't use my wand, as the reason I was whitteling in the first place was to identify with Muggle life. I rather thought that resorting to my wand at the first little setback would pretty much ruin the experience."

"Well, Charlie," now it was Hermione speaking, her voice still trembling from the previous shock, "for your information, Muggles don't just sit back and watch as they bleed to death, either."

"Couldn't have guessed myself," Charlie gnarled under his breath.

"And what's this business about identifying with Muggle life, anyhow?" Ron wanted to know.

"It doesn't happen to have anything to do with Anna?" Hermione asked, not succeeding in hiding her enthusiasm.

"Of course it does!" Actually, Charlie was quite happy he had gotten a chance to vent his feelings. He had been on the receiving end of quite a few scoldings lately, and he was more than ready to pay it back to his brother and sister-in-law. "I'm not going to take this any more! I don't care what you say, or what Mum says, or what the bloody Ministry says! Obliviating Anna was a damn idiotical thing to do and disgusting and awful and just plain bloody wrong! Hell with the rules! There's no hope she will ever take me back after what I did, but I'm going to confess it all to her, anyway! Let her hate me some more, but I'm not going to leave her there wondering where three weeks of her life suddenly disappeared to! Bloody hell, she might get crazy! I know I would."

Charlie stopped, panting, and looked at Ron and Hermione, challenging them to disagree. It was almost a disappointment when they didn't. Actually, Hermione was grinning so widely it was a miracle her cheeks didn't rip and Ron seemed, though a bit dumbfounded by Charlie's attack, generally approving of his opinions. Then Hermione's smile faltered and she glanced at his husband, clearly remembering something. Ron's expression changed as well and he looked thoughtful and...well, there was something in that face that reminded Charlie of the time his brother and Hermione and Harry had been having all kinds of secrets because of their daring escapades.

"What do you know that I don't?" he asked, his voice suspicious and slightly menacing, clearly indicating they were better off telling him, and fast.

"Well, Charlie..."Hermione started, but Ron interrupted her, facing his brother as if saying: Want to yell at somebody? Yell at me.

"I don't think you have so much to say that Anna doesn't know already, mate."

"What do you mean? I Obliviated her, you moron! She doesn't remember anything of us, anything of the magical world."

"Well...actually...we saw her across from the Leaky Cauldron reading a wizarding book and I think she recognized us," Ron spoke fast but looked Charlie straight into the eyes.

"What?" Again he was rendered a stuttering idiot. Well, he wasn't going to take it any more. He wanted explanations. "How? How did she counter the Obliviate? I didn't know it was possible. Did you try to talk to her?"

Ron brave pose wavered slightly. "Um...yeah...but she fled while we were..-"

"We don't think she countered the charm, in the exact meaning of the word," Hermione interrupted her husband hastily. "We think it's more like she reminded herself. You see, I realized it when Ron told Anna had been expecting you to cast a memory spell on her. She had several hours between her departure from the Burrow and your and Harry's arrival at her apartment. How do you think she used that time?"

"You don't mean she..." suddenly Charlie heard Sean Finnigan's voice in his head: I started to carry a darn tape-recorder with me and tape everything so I wouldn't keep missing bits of my life. Charlie didn't know exactly what taping was, but he made a wild guess: "She...taped all her memories?"

"She could have done that, yes, but she didn't have a tape-recorder with her here and anyhow, I rather suspect she just wrote it all down."

"But Harry searched her apartment! He even took all my letters to her!"

"He probably didn't search her computer. I would have typed it all on my computer and then e-mailed it to myself, so you couldn't even have removed it without a password or much better computer-skills that any wizard I know has."

Charlie knew about computers but he wasn't very familiar with them and e-mail was almost totally unfamiliar concept to him. He understood, though, that Hermione thought Anna could have succeeded in writing down her memories and hiding them so that Harry hadn't been able to find them. He had learned that Hermione usually knew what she was talking about, so he didn't even bother to doubt her words.

"On top of that, she obviously managed to hide some magical items as well, as we saw her reading a wizarding book," Ron offered his own contribution to the conversation with clear admiration for Anna's cunning in his voice.

"And," Hermione wanted to top Ron's revelation, "she evidently also remembered to save on her computer the photographs she had taken here with her digital camera. That's the only way she could have recognized us."

"So, basically, you are saying she knows already what I have done to her?" Charlie grimaced. "Bloody great. She was probably stalking the Leaky Cauldron trying to hire someone to hex me. I mean, she did order me to Obliviate her, but she won't remember that." Suddenly, he himself remembered something he had been meaning to ask Hermione ages ago: "Hermione...what's a lobo...loboto..."

"Lobotomy?" Hermione offered.

"Yes?"

"It's a Muggle surgery formerly used by patronizing and ignorant doctors treating mental illnesses. In practice, they removed a piece of a difficult patient's brain in order to calm them down. The procedure calmed the patient all right," Hermione's voice filled with indignation, " but they usually lost most of their intelligence and personality, as well. The doctors in their benevolence and higher understanding even managed to ruin some fabulous, if maybe a bit eccentric, artists and geniuses from the world, that way."

"Oh," Charlie winced and rubbed his neck with his hand. Ron threw a sympathetic glance at him.

"Oh," Hermione repeated almost immediately, "I take it Anna compared Obliviate to lobotomy, then?"

"Uh...yes."

"Muggles haven't used it for decades, you know. It's considered unethical." Regardless of all the sympathy Hermione felt towards Charlie and his situation, she just couldn't stop herself from saying that.

"Thanks a lot for your understanding and support, Hermione," Charlie snapped.

"Anytime," she answered smugly, happy to see him sarcastic, rather than desperate.

Then Charlie shrugged and straightened. His jaw set and eyes serious, he looked at Ron: "I'm not going to play by the Ministry's rules anymore. I'm going to Anna's; she is bound to return to her place some time. If she remembers everything already, she probably doesn't want to see me but at least I can be selfish and try to get some of this guilt off me. I'm going to make her talk to me; I'm going to apologize; I'm going to try to make amends and if I'll need magic to do that, I'm not going to care whether I'm supposed to cast spells in her presence or not."

Ron nodded solemnly. He didn't seem reluctant at all; in fact in his eyes there was a hint of appreciation towards Charlie's decision. "I'll cover your back at the Ministry. And I'll even convince Harry to do the same."

"Thanks, Ron."

"And I'm coming with you," Hermione declared, looking at Charlie.

"What?!" both men exclaimed.

"She might want to hire someone to hex you, after all," she said, patting Charlie affectionately on the shoulder. "I can do it and then patch you up afterwards. Shall we?" She raised her wand, preparing herself to Apparate.

"Hermione," Ron sounded alarmed, "don't you think-"

"No. Seriously speaking, we are only assuming how and why she remembers us. It might also be a case of a dangerously failed Obliviation. And if it is, she needs help and you shouldn't go alone. Furthermore, if you'll have to do magic and Ron and Harry can't cover it up, you'll need some one there to create a diversion."

If Charlie's jaw was set, so was Hermione's, and both men knew it was no use to argue with her. Charlie even felt slightly grateful for not having to go alone, as the task he had at hand was much more frightening than confronting a pack of dragons. Especially now that she might remember. Ron, however, couldn't help wondering if behind Hermione's smooth reasoning there really was only a woman curious of his brother-in-law's love life and keen to meddle with it.

Ron didn't have time to articulate his suspicions (which probably was better for him) as Hermione asked: "Leaky Cauldron, then?" and Disapparated with a "pop." Charlie followed suit and Ron was left alone by the pond.

It was time to mislead the Ministry and practice some severe rule-breaking. Anything for love, babe.