Gift for luvscharlie!
Recipient: luvscharlie
Author: roses_at_sunset
Title: For the Best
Pairing: Charlie/Fleur
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Infidelity, smut (although I figure that's more an enticement than a warning) and general angst (but then that's a given).
Word Count: 2,800
Summary: Charlie never meant to sleep with his brother's wife, and he certainly never meant to fall in love with her.
Notes: I hope you enjoy this, luvscharlie. I tried to include as many of your requests as I could, and I promise I haven't killed Charlie (although, I'm afraid I have made him pretty damn miserable).
For the Best
Fleur is leaning against the back of his father's shed, just as Charlie knew she would be. Her back is flush to the wood, as is one foot, with her knee bent up. Her head is dropped back to watch the sky. She does not move as he approaches or give any sign that she knows he is there, though she must.
Charlie joins her, leaning against the shed so close to her that their hips and elbows touch. The simple touch of her bare arm on his is enough though to send sparks shuddering around his body.
He pulls a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, lights it and inhales. After just one drag, he leans across to pass it to Fleur, but she waves him away.
"I quit," she says, and Charlie wonders why that bothers him so much. Perhaps it's because that was the start of the secrets they shared: the two outsiders escaping to satisfy their guilty little cravings at yet another family lunch that they both found interminable. Charlie loves his family, really he does; it's just that he is used to quiet, and space, and dragons not people, and sometimes the massed ranks of Weasleys can just be a little much to take.
It bothers him too that it must be his brother's influence. Fleur smokes: she is French after all. It is a part of who she is, but Bill doesn't approve. He doesn't approve of Charlie smoking either, which is ironic given that it was his big brother who taught Charlie to smoke. Bill had the sense to stop though, and Charlie didn't. It is the story of their lives.
"We can't keep doing thees, Charlie." Fleur doesn't look at him as she speaks, and her skin feels chilled, where it presses against his arm. She doesn't mean the cigarettes.
They have said it many times: every time since the first in fact, pressed up against the back of the shed, flushed, gasping and guilt-ridden. There is a finality in her voice this time though, which is new, and it scares Charlie.
"Does he know?" Charlie cannot even bring himself to say his own brother's name, and he hates himself for that. He hates himself for what he is doing, the betrayal, and how much it would hurt Bill, but he hates himself too for the bitter way he resents the man who got there first with this beautiful, wonderful woman.
He drops the cigarette, grinding it out with his heel, and then Vanishes the evidence. His jaw is clenched tight; his teeth mirror his foot pounding into the dirt.
Fleur shakes her head, and a single tear rolls down her cheek. "No, but things change, Charlie."
Charlie shifts to move in front of her, leaning over her with one hand planted on the wooden boards beneath her shoulder as the other strokes away the tear. "Not this," he says. "Not us. We don't have to change."
He cannot bear the thought of it stopping, even though he knows it must and has taken his own steps towards ensuring they are forced to end it for good, since they seem incapable of taking that choice whilst a choice still remains. Although, whether he can carry through on taking the choice away, he doesn't know yet.
It's not just the sex he'd miss, he realises with a jolt, because despite the fact that's all they get to share, there is something more: he cares about her, maybe he loves her.
Charlie Weasley is an idiot, because somehow he loves his big brother's wife.
"I love you." He says it without thinking, and Fleur looks as if she wants to slap him. He entwines his fingers into hers.
"Eediot!" she hisses at him. "Stupeed bastard!" But she leans forward, pressing her body against his.
Charlie hisses too at the friction as she shifts her hips, moving against him with a delicious pressure to which his body responds. He kisses her hard, pushing her back against the shed so fast that he feels her gasp as their bodies slam against it. He lifts her hands above her head, fingers still locked together, and pins her arms against the wall as his lips travel along the underside of her jaw and down her neck.
Fleur's leg wraps around his back, her heel on his buttock, drawing him tightly against her as she grinds her hips into his.
"I 'ate you, Charlie Weasley!" Her lips are so close to his ear that that he can feel the heat of her breath. She takes his ear between her lips, and Charlie can feel her teeth drag across the sensitised flesh. He doesn't know if she will bite down; he holds his breath, but she draws her head away. The words smart regardless, and he almost wishes for the physical sting that might take them away. He knows she can't mean them, but it's easier to try and hurt each when they both know that this is goodbye.
"All we do ees 'urt each other," she says as she yanks his t-shirt up over his head.
"That's not all we do." His voice is a rasping whisper, as he fights to control the fire building within him. He slips a hand beneath her skirt, pushing it up and ripping her flimsy, lace knickers clean off. They flutter loosely down onto the damp earth. "We do this too," he says as he slides first one finger then a second inside her.
Fleur gasps, and her nails dig in to the Chinese Fireball curled around his bicep: she can leave marks that can't seen on the scarlet ink. Her other hand fists in his hair, and he allows himself to be guided down onto his knees. Her one leg is draped across his shoulder, and her head is thrown back, as he sets to work with his tongue, taunting her slowly and savouring the stifled moans when she bites her arm to keep from crying out.
She is writhing, teetering on the brink, when he finally stands and drops his trousers. She wraps her legs around his waist, and Charlie hooks his arms beneath her knees, lifting her higher so that he can ease himself inside her. He plans to move slowly, to make her gasp and beg for more, but she feels so good around him that his hips thrust forward almost without his control and he thrusts deep and hard, knowing he won't last long like that but unable to resist.
Fleur bites his shoulder hard to muffle her cry as she comes, but he is barely aware of the sharp sting of her teeth as, tightening around him, she takes him over the edge too. Charlie collapses forward, on shaky legs, his forehead resting on hers whilst he lowers her feet back to the ground.
He places a soft fleeting kiss on her lips that is gone before she can respond, withdraws from the welcome warmth of her body, and it's over - really over - and Charlie knows it.
There are no words as they dress and tidy themselves up without eye contact, because there's nothing to be said.
* * *
"Could you pass ze potatoes, please?"
It's hardly a deeply erotic request, but the sound of Fleur's voice is enough to set Charlie's pulse racing. An electric charge shoots through his arm when his hand brushes hers passing across the bowl, and all he can think is that, half an hour before, he was buried deep inside her and the sticky traces of him are probably still streaked on her thighs, under her demure, grey skirt.
He can't look up for fear that it is written all across his face: what they have done. He hates Sunday lunch at his parents' now, even as he craves it. Those stolen moments with Fleur, and counting down the days until the next, occupy his thoughts constantly, but afterwards, at lunch, comes the guilt and the fear of discovery. He hates seeing Bill. Once they were so close, but now he has made a stranger of his brother to avoid the lies.
Charlie has spent his life wanting to be his big brother and wanting to beat him, because Bill got there first with almost everything, being older. Bill was the one to teach Charlie everything that mattered though, and he never complained when his little brother bested him. Bill taught Charlie to fly and never said a resentful word when Charlie was promoted to Quidditch Captain over him; he taught Charlie to drink and didn't complain when his little brother learnt to drink him under the table; and he taught Charlie how to chat up girls and then gave him a hearty slap on the back when it was Charlie not Bill who lost his virginity first.
Charlie was always aware, when they were boys, that he was sharing Bill's things, and that Bill let him. It was Bill's bedroom first, before Charlie. Gryffindor was Bill's House first, before Charlie. But Bill allowed him to share everything with a fond grin.
This time though, Charlie knows he has taken things too far. There would be no indulgent grin if Bill found out, because he has taken the one thing Bill would never share.
If Charlie stays, this thing with Fleur will keep happening, he knows, because he isn't strong enough to stop it, and if it keeps happening, then Bill will find out in the end, because secrets don't last for ever. The thought of the look on Bill's face if he were to catch them - his little brother buried hilt deep in his wife, up against the back of their father's shed (where Bill once gave him his first cigarette) - makes Charlie feel sick and makes his mind up that he must follow through with his plan to bring an end to it all.
He pushes his food around listlessly with his fork and doesn't eat much; the knot in his stomach is too tight to allow for food. It's inevitable that his mother will notice.
"Charlie dear, you've barely touched your dinner. Are you coming down with something? I'm sure you don't wrap up warm enough, and it's so exposed on that Reserve. It wouldn't surprise me if you picked up a chill."
"Now, Molly, don't fuss. I'm sure he's more than capable of looking after himself," his father cut in.
"But he looks peaky. Ginny, don't you think he looks peaky?"
Ginny's scrutiny makes him uncomfortable as she studies him carefully across the dishes of sprouts and broccoli. His sister isn't stupid, and she's always seen straight through him, whether he had been telling her that of course she hadn't heard him sneaking home at three in the morning at the age of sixteen and that there was absolutely no need to tell mum that she thought she had heard Tonks' voice coming from his room after that or whether he had been telling her that it would all be okay and they'd all make it out of the Battle of Hogwarts alive. Something in her eyes tells him that she has seen through him now too, and he doesn't want to let her down, because he's always loved that she thinks he's worth looking up to, so he knows now that his decision is made. He does not want to give Ginny the chance to confirm her suspicions.
Charlie takes a deep breath and puts down his cutlery ready to speak, but just as he does, Bill says, "We've got an announcement to make."
For a brief second, Charlie is scared that Bill knows, and he picks up his beer to steady himself, but then he sees that Bill is smiling and placing his hand on Fleur's in a proprietary fashion that brings out something bitterly feral within Charlie. He takes a slug of beer, his knuckles white against the glass, as fear turns to jealousy, because once again he will have to share Bill's moment rather than have his own.
"Fleur and I are having a baby!"
The bottom drops out of Charlie's world. He's never really understood that expression, but now he does perfectly, because the ground stops feeling solid beneath him and everything is roaring in his ears. He is barely aware of the congratulations, and George slapping Bill on the back, and everyone hugging Fleur cautiously, and his mother crying.
He understands now why today felt like goodbye and why he has to stand by his decision and leave.
He chances a glance up and catches Fleur's eye. It is like a white-hot needle through him, because her eyes are shuttered. She has locked herself away from him. It is really over, and all there is now is a question that he knows he can never ask. He barely wants to think it. It will be alright though, because Charlie looks like Bill, so no one else will ever ask the question, least of all Bill, but Charlie will always wonder if the child is his, and it's just another reason now to go away so that he doesn't have to watch it grow and never get to be its father.
Charlie's fingers grip the table edge like a vice. "I've got news too," he says. The words feel as if they are choking him, as if they are lodged on his throat, scratchy and harsh.
The happy babble stills as everyone looks at him in surprise, because this is Bill's moment of course and Charlie is intruding.
"Not got someone pregnant too, have you?" George asks with a ribald grin.
Charlie feels as if his insides are shrinking, because no one knows how close to the bone that slides - except Fleur, and he can't look at her.
"Oh don't be ridiculous, George!" his mother chides. "Of course he hasn't." There is a pause, and she doesn't sound sure.
"Have you, Charlie?" his father asks softly, clearly wondering from the grey pallor that is tingeing Charlie's skin at the comment whether it might have hit home.
"Surely not, Charlie? You don't even have a girlfriend. Do you? At least not one you've brought home, and if you haven't even brought her home then it couldn't be serious ..." His mother tails off.
Charlie shakes his head, although he can't bring himself to deny what may well be the truth. "I got offered a new job," he says instead, "A promotion."
There is relief in the smiles and congratulations around the table.
"Where is it? Still in Romania?" someone asks.
"New Zealand," Charlie says, and he studies his plate intently, reluctant to meet anyone's eyes, especially Fleur's; he doubts she'd see this as the act of gallantry that he intends it to be.
There is an outbreak of noise around him.
Disappointment clouds his mother's eyes, but as much as that is hard, it is easier to bear than what would be there if she knew the truth. "But that's so far away, dear," she says quietly. Charlie hates hurting her; she has lost one son already.
"And Portkeys are the only way for trans-continental travel," his father adds, taking off his glasses to polish them on his jumper, so as to avoid meeting Charlie's eye: a sure sign of his displeasure. "Regulatory nightmare. How many did it used to take you to get home from Egypt, Bill?"
Bill's watching Charlie oddly, and Charlie doesn't want to think about what that means, as Bill says, "Seven, so from New Zealand, it would have to be …"
"Eighteen," Charlie says, staring fixedly at the table. His mother gives a little sob.
"So we'll see you at Christmas if we're lucky then?" George asks, and there is a hint of anger in his voice for what Charlie is doing to their battered family.
As Charlie looks up, he sees Fleur has her head down too, and there are small wet drops forming on the table.
He is hurting everyone, but it's the only option left, because any other is far worse. He fears he would lose his family completely if they knew what he has done, so it must be better for him to make the choice, however painful, surely?
"It's for the best," he says.
Fleur shoves herself up abruptly, upsetting her chair, and flees the room. Charlie freezes, because it may all be for nothing now. Her reaction seems so obvious. How could everyone not guess?
"Morning sickness at this time of day: it'll be a boy," his mother says sagely.
Bill will have a son; Charlie will have nothing.
Author: roses_at_sunset
Title: For the Best
Pairing: Charlie/Fleur
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Infidelity, smut (although I figure that's more an enticement than a warning) and general angst (but then that's a given).
Word Count: 2,800
Summary: Charlie never meant to sleep with his brother's wife, and he certainly never meant to fall in love with her.
Notes: I hope you enjoy this, luvscharlie. I tried to include as many of your requests as I could, and I promise I haven't killed Charlie (although, I'm afraid I have made him pretty damn miserable).
For the Best
Fleur is leaning against the back of his father's shed, just as Charlie knew she would be. Her back is flush to the wood, as is one foot, with her knee bent up. Her head is dropped back to watch the sky. She does not move as he approaches or give any sign that she knows he is there, though she must.
Charlie joins her, leaning against the shed so close to her that their hips and elbows touch. The simple touch of her bare arm on his is enough though to send sparks shuddering around his body.
He pulls a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, lights it and inhales. After just one drag, he leans across to pass it to Fleur, but she waves him away.
"I quit," she says, and Charlie wonders why that bothers him so much. Perhaps it's because that was the start of the secrets they shared: the two outsiders escaping to satisfy their guilty little cravings at yet another family lunch that they both found interminable. Charlie loves his family, really he does; it's just that he is used to quiet, and space, and dragons not people, and sometimes the massed ranks of Weasleys can just be a little much to take.
It bothers him too that it must be his brother's influence. Fleur smokes: she is French after all. It is a part of who she is, but Bill doesn't approve. He doesn't approve of Charlie smoking either, which is ironic given that it was his big brother who taught Charlie to smoke. Bill had the sense to stop though, and Charlie didn't. It is the story of their lives.
"We can't keep doing thees, Charlie." Fleur doesn't look at him as she speaks, and her skin feels chilled, where it presses against his arm. She doesn't mean the cigarettes.
They have said it many times: every time since the first in fact, pressed up against the back of the shed, flushed, gasping and guilt-ridden. There is a finality in her voice this time though, which is new, and it scares Charlie.
"Does he know?" Charlie cannot even bring himself to say his own brother's name, and he hates himself for that. He hates himself for what he is doing, the betrayal, and how much it would hurt Bill, but he hates himself too for the bitter way he resents the man who got there first with this beautiful, wonderful woman.
He drops the cigarette, grinding it out with his heel, and then Vanishes the evidence. His jaw is clenched tight; his teeth mirror his foot pounding into the dirt.
Fleur shakes her head, and a single tear rolls down her cheek. "No, but things change, Charlie."
Charlie shifts to move in front of her, leaning over her with one hand planted on the wooden boards beneath her shoulder as the other strokes away the tear. "Not this," he says. "Not us. We don't have to change."
He cannot bear the thought of it stopping, even though he knows it must and has taken his own steps towards ensuring they are forced to end it for good, since they seem incapable of taking that choice whilst a choice still remains. Although, whether he can carry through on taking the choice away, he doesn't know yet.
It's not just the sex he'd miss, he realises with a jolt, because despite the fact that's all they get to share, there is something more: he cares about her, maybe he loves her.
Charlie Weasley is an idiot, because somehow he loves his big brother's wife.
"I love you." He says it without thinking, and Fleur looks as if she wants to slap him. He entwines his fingers into hers.
"Eediot!" she hisses at him. "Stupeed bastard!" But she leans forward, pressing her body against his.
Charlie hisses too at the friction as she shifts her hips, moving against him with a delicious pressure to which his body responds. He kisses her hard, pushing her back against the shed so fast that he feels her gasp as their bodies slam against it. He lifts her hands above her head, fingers still locked together, and pins her arms against the wall as his lips travel along the underside of her jaw and down her neck.
Fleur's leg wraps around his back, her heel on his buttock, drawing him tightly against her as she grinds her hips into his.
"I 'ate you, Charlie Weasley!" Her lips are so close to his ear that that he can feel the heat of her breath. She takes his ear between her lips, and Charlie can feel her teeth drag across the sensitised flesh. He doesn't know if she will bite down; he holds his breath, but she draws her head away. The words smart regardless, and he almost wishes for the physical sting that might take them away. He knows she can't mean them, but it's easier to try and hurt each when they both know that this is goodbye.
"All we do ees 'urt each other," she says as she yanks his t-shirt up over his head.
"That's not all we do." His voice is a rasping whisper, as he fights to control the fire building within him. He slips a hand beneath her skirt, pushing it up and ripping her flimsy, lace knickers clean off. They flutter loosely down onto the damp earth. "We do this too," he says as he slides first one finger then a second inside her.
Fleur gasps, and her nails dig in to the Chinese Fireball curled around his bicep: she can leave marks that can't seen on the scarlet ink. Her other hand fists in his hair, and he allows himself to be guided down onto his knees. Her one leg is draped across his shoulder, and her head is thrown back, as he sets to work with his tongue, taunting her slowly and savouring the stifled moans when she bites her arm to keep from crying out.
She is writhing, teetering on the brink, when he finally stands and drops his trousers. She wraps her legs around his waist, and Charlie hooks his arms beneath her knees, lifting her higher so that he can ease himself inside her. He plans to move slowly, to make her gasp and beg for more, but she feels so good around him that his hips thrust forward almost without his control and he thrusts deep and hard, knowing he won't last long like that but unable to resist.
Fleur bites his shoulder hard to muffle her cry as she comes, but he is barely aware of the sharp sting of her teeth as, tightening around him, she takes him over the edge too. Charlie collapses forward, on shaky legs, his forehead resting on hers whilst he lowers her feet back to the ground.
He places a soft fleeting kiss on her lips that is gone before she can respond, withdraws from the welcome warmth of her body, and it's over - really over - and Charlie knows it.
There are no words as they dress and tidy themselves up without eye contact, because there's nothing to be said.
* * *
"Could you pass ze potatoes, please?"
It's hardly a deeply erotic request, but the sound of Fleur's voice is enough to set Charlie's pulse racing. An electric charge shoots through his arm when his hand brushes hers passing across the bowl, and all he can think is that, half an hour before, he was buried deep inside her and the sticky traces of him are probably still streaked on her thighs, under her demure, grey skirt.
He can't look up for fear that it is written all across his face: what they have done. He hates Sunday lunch at his parents' now, even as he craves it. Those stolen moments with Fleur, and counting down the days until the next, occupy his thoughts constantly, but afterwards, at lunch, comes the guilt and the fear of discovery. He hates seeing Bill. Once they were so close, but now he has made a stranger of his brother to avoid the lies.
Charlie has spent his life wanting to be his big brother and wanting to beat him, because Bill got there first with almost everything, being older. Bill was the one to teach Charlie everything that mattered though, and he never complained when his little brother bested him. Bill taught Charlie to fly and never said a resentful word when Charlie was promoted to Quidditch Captain over him; he taught Charlie to drink and didn't complain when his little brother learnt to drink him under the table; and he taught Charlie how to chat up girls and then gave him a hearty slap on the back when it was Charlie not Bill who lost his virginity first.
Charlie was always aware, when they were boys, that he was sharing Bill's things, and that Bill let him. It was Bill's bedroom first, before Charlie. Gryffindor was Bill's House first, before Charlie. But Bill allowed him to share everything with a fond grin.
This time though, Charlie knows he has taken things too far. There would be no indulgent grin if Bill found out, because he has taken the one thing Bill would never share.
If Charlie stays, this thing with Fleur will keep happening, he knows, because he isn't strong enough to stop it, and if it keeps happening, then Bill will find out in the end, because secrets don't last for ever. The thought of the look on Bill's face if he were to catch them - his little brother buried hilt deep in his wife, up against the back of their father's shed (where Bill once gave him his first cigarette) - makes Charlie feel sick and makes his mind up that he must follow through with his plan to bring an end to it all.
He pushes his food around listlessly with his fork and doesn't eat much; the knot in his stomach is too tight to allow for food. It's inevitable that his mother will notice.
"Charlie dear, you've barely touched your dinner. Are you coming down with something? I'm sure you don't wrap up warm enough, and it's so exposed on that Reserve. It wouldn't surprise me if you picked up a chill."
"Now, Molly, don't fuss. I'm sure he's more than capable of looking after himself," his father cut in.
"But he looks peaky. Ginny, don't you think he looks peaky?"
Ginny's scrutiny makes him uncomfortable as she studies him carefully across the dishes of sprouts and broccoli. His sister isn't stupid, and she's always seen straight through him, whether he had been telling her that of course she hadn't heard him sneaking home at three in the morning at the age of sixteen and that there was absolutely no need to tell mum that she thought she had heard Tonks' voice coming from his room after that or whether he had been telling her that it would all be okay and they'd all make it out of the Battle of Hogwarts alive. Something in her eyes tells him that she has seen through him now too, and he doesn't want to let her down, because he's always loved that she thinks he's worth looking up to, so he knows now that his decision is made. He does not want to give Ginny the chance to confirm her suspicions.
Charlie takes a deep breath and puts down his cutlery ready to speak, but just as he does, Bill says, "We've got an announcement to make."
For a brief second, Charlie is scared that Bill knows, and he picks up his beer to steady himself, but then he sees that Bill is smiling and placing his hand on Fleur's in a proprietary fashion that brings out something bitterly feral within Charlie. He takes a slug of beer, his knuckles white against the glass, as fear turns to jealousy, because once again he will have to share Bill's moment rather than have his own.
"Fleur and I are having a baby!"
The bottom drops out of Charlie's world. He's never really understood that expression, but now he does perfectly, because the ground stops feeling solid beneath him and everything is roaring in his ears. He is barely aware of the congratulations, and George slapping Bill on the back, and everyone hugging Fleur cautiously, and his mother crying.
He understands now why today felt like goodbye and why he has to stand by his decision and leave.
He chances a glance up and catches Fleur's eye. It is like a white-hot needle through him, because her eyes are shuttered. She has locked herself away from him. It is really over, and all there is now is a question that he knows he can never ask. He barely wants to think it. It will be alright though, because Charlie looks like Bill, so no one else will ever ask the question, least of all Bill, but Charlie will always wonder if the child is his, and it's just another reason now to go away so that he doesn't have to watch it grow and never get to be its father.
Charlie's fingers grip the table edge like a vice. "I've got news too," he says. The words feel as if they are choking him, as if they are lodged on his throat, scratchy and harsh.
The happy babble stills as everyone looks at him in surprise, because this is Bill's moment of course and Charlie is intruding.
"Not got someone pregnant too, have you?" George asks with a ribald grin.
Charlie feels as if his insides are shrinking, because no one knows how close to the bone that slides - except Fleur, and he can't look at her.
"Oh don't be ridiculous, George!" his mother chides. "Of course he hasn't." There is a pause, and she doesn't sound sure.
"Have you, Charlie?" his father asks softly, clearly wondering from the grey pallor that is tingeing Charlie's skin at the comment whether it might have hit home.
"Surely not, Charlie? You don't even have a girlfriend. Do you? At least not one you've brought home, and if you haven't even brought her home then it couldn't be serious ..." His mother tails off.
Charlie shakes his head, although he can't bring himself to deny what may well be the truth. "I got offered a new job," he says instead, "A promotion."
There is relief in the smiles and congratulations around the table.
"Where is it? Still in Romania?" someone asks.
"New Zealand," Charlie says, and he studies his plate intently, reluctant to meet anyone's eyes, especially Fleur's; he doubts she'd see this as the act of gallantry that he intends it to be.
There is an outbreak of noise around him.
Disappointment clouds his mother's eyes, but as much as that is hard, it is easier to bear than what would be there if she knew the truth. "But that's so far away, dear," she says quietly. Charlie hates hurting her; she has lost one son already.
"And Portkeys are the only way for trans-continental travel," his father adds, taking off his glasses to polish them on his jumper, so as to avoid meeting Charlie's eye: a sure sign of his displeasure. "Regulatory nightmare. How many did it used to take you to get home from Egypt, Bill?"
Bill's watching Charlie oddly, and Charlie doesn't want to think about what that means, as Bill says, "Seven, so from New Zealand, it would have to be …"
"Eighteen," Charlie says, staring fixedly at the table. His mother gives a little sob.
"So we'll see you at Christmas if we're lucky then?" George asks, and there is a hint of anger in his voice for what Charlie is doing to their battered family.
As Charlie looks up, he sees Fleur has her head down too, and there are small wet drops forming on the table.
He is hurting everyone, but it's the only option left, because any other is far worse. He fears he would lose his family completely if they knew what he has done, so it must be better for him to make the choice, however painful, surely?
"It's for the best," he says.
Fleur shoves herself up abruptly, upsetting her chair, and flees the room. Charlie freezes, because it may all be for nothing now. Her reaction seems so obvious. How could everyone not guess?
"Morning sickness at this time of day: it'll be a boy," his mother says sagely.
Bill will have a son; Charlie will have nothing.