Scattered: Brief Lives

He nearly gets himself in a world of trouble when his foot catches on a vine as he crawls out of Joanna's window. Behind him, he hears her giggle. Joanna thinks it's awfully funny, watching him go through this ungainly maneuver every night. Hamish McFusty would have to be one of those old-fashioned fools who puts anti-Apparition wards around his house, and as a result Charlie has to look like an idiot every time he leaves her bed (something that, no doubt, would not matter very much to Hamish, to put it mildly, since it's his niece's honor that's at stake).

Charlie's strong. He's got a lot of athletic talent. On a broom, he's still a helluva flier. But on the ground, or climbing to it in this case, he's never been especially graceful. So it's hardly romantic, from his point of view, this clumsy clamber out of the window with his sleeve catching on the sill and the branches getting stuck in his hair and clothes.

It always makes Joanna smile, though, so he sends a last grin towards the window (it's grown so dark he can't see her face there, but he knows she'll watch until he's gone) and Apparates back to the castle, into the kitchens, to swipe a late-night snack before heading up to his rooms. The house-elves are chattery and friendly and they make him a sandwich the way he showed them, the bread and the toppings and the meat and the cheese and the pickle in just the right order.

He strolls down Weasley Row and frowns in surprise to see a light coming from Penny and Percy's partially-open door. He hears his brother's muffled voice followed by Penny's in response, and then she laughs and Percy's hand snakes out and pulls the door closed with a thud. Charlie smiles absent-mindedly, his gaze swinging from their door to his parents', to Hermione and Ron's, and finally to his own.

His room is familiar and comfortable by now and he settles down contentedly in the late-night peace with his sandwich and the issue of Dragonkeeper that he picked up the last time he'd left the island. Soon enough he's engrossed in an article on effective methods of curing hide abrasions. He thinks the second suggestion may work on Gnarsh, the male, but not so much for Teena; Hebridean Black females have the most fragile hides of any dragon he's ever worked with. He shoves the magazine in his knapsack and sighs, figuring he can at least try to solve the one problem tomorrow, if not the other.

Then, though, with his snack consumed and his next day planned, Charlie looks around and feels a weight of emptiness settle on his shoulders. He doesn't need to leave the island anymore now that Remus' potion is on hand and the last groups are coming in any day. He knows he will be needed by the Order at some point in the future, but he's never been a strategist or a planner -- he's just a foot soldier, and he's more than willing to go wherever his father needs him, whenever he asks. Until that happens, though, he realizes, he has nothing to do, no real responsibilities other than to help care for the dragons, and two dragons don't take up very much of anyone's time when you've got five McFustys and a Weasley on the job.

He thinks about Percy shutting the door and he thinks about Ron's empty room, never used once since their arrival at the castle... he thinks of Joanna's giggle when his foot was caught in the vine and he thinks of the way her eyes lit up with the smile he knows she gave him, even though it was too dark to see.

He looks around his empty room and realizes he just might have some planning to do after all.