All I Want
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine.
Title: All I Want
Characters: Neville/Charlie
Warnings: Christmas fluff
Word Count: 2,150
“Isn’t she grand?” Charlie crowed to the group at large. Assenting murmurs rose from the crowd.
“That’s a lovely tree, dear,” Molly said approvingly. “It’s very symmetrical.”
“Fine job, son,” Arthur added.
“Will it fit in the house, do you think?” Percy asked appraisingly, leaning back to peer at the feathery top that seemed to brush against the sky.
“Eh, we’ll just raise the ceiling a bit,” George offered.
“Bill, did you bring the axe?”
“I thought Dad had it.”
“No, I gave it to…”
“Here!” Ron strode forward and offered the blade handle to Charlie.
“Thanks, bro. All right, kiddies, everybody stand back.” Charlie got into position and gripped the handle firmly with both hands.
“Wait!”
The assembled Weasleys turned, to where one person stood at the back of the crowd, looking out of place with his dark hair and well-appointed coat and mittens.
“Yes, Neville?” Charlie asked curiously.
“What’s the matter, dear?” Molly added solicitously. “Are you still feeling woozy from Aunt Muriel’s cold potion?”
“No.” Neville’s eyes were strangely wide. “I mean, yes.”
“Which is it?”
“Nothing. I just….”
Charlie watched as Neville’s eyes went to the tree, to the axe, to the rest of the family, back to the tree, before landing briefly on Charlie himself, whereupon he suddenly turned red. “Sorry!” he blurted out. “I’ll see you back at the house.” He turned and rushed off into the woods.
“I’d better go check on him,” Ginny sighed. “Before he gets lost or something.”
Charlie handed the axe to Bill. “Let me, Gin. Why don’t we hold off on this until later, when we can all be here.”
Everyone agreed, with most of the family deciding to return home for hot chocolate, and Charlie heading out to look for Neville.
It wasn’t much of a challenge, between the footsteps in the snow, and the fact that Neville was traveling at a considerably slower rate of speed. Charlie caught up with him in five minutes. Neville looked surprised to see him.
“What are you doing here?” the young man blurted out.
“Checking on you. Aunt Muriel’s cold potion can really knock you on your ….”
“But what about…” Neville swallowed. “The tree?”
“Eh, we’ll do it later.” Charlie waved it off, unconcerned, but Neville only looked more distressed.
“I’m sorry, Charlie, I really didn’t mean to interrupt your family tradition like that.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re our guest and the number one priority, not the tree. We’ll go get it tomorrow when you’re feeling better.”
“But it’s not that, Charlie, I’m well enough. I just… I’d rather not be there when you….you know…” Neville made a vague chopping motion through the air with the side of his hand.
“Oh. Is this about the tree then?”
“It’s two hundred and forty years old,” Neville said quietly.
“How do you know?” Charlie asked curiously.
“It just had… sort of a presence… and it kind of….told me. I know that sounds insane.” Neville turned around, and began walking away again.
Charlie trotted after. “Well for Godric’s sake, why didn’t you just SAY something?”
“Because I’m already intruding enough on your family just by being here and because it’s none of my business what you do with your own land… and because I’m a coward!”
“WHAT?” Charlie grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to a stop. “How can you even say anything that daft after everything you did at the Battle of Hogwarts?”
“Oh, that.” Neville dropped his gaze, staring from under long lashes to the vicinity of Charlie’s boots. “Killing monsters and fighting for your friends, that’s easy. It’s things like…. standing up for trees when people already think you’re half crazy… and …. Other stuff….” Neville’s voice trailed off.
“Other stuff? Like what?” While Charlie was waiting for a reply, he began to think maybe it could wait. Neville was looking flushed again. Charlie pulled off one glove and pressed the back of his hand to Neville’s cheek in fair imitation of his mother.
“You’re burning up,” he reported. “Let’s get you back to the house before you get any sicker.”
“Am I going to have to drink more of that potion?” Neville slurred reluctantly.
“More than likely.”
~*~
Neville woke up to the pale gold of afternoon light seeping through the curtains. He determined that he was on a sofa, propped up on a pillow and covered by several quilts. He could smell the crisp green scent of fresh fir, and gradually focused on a decorated tree filling most of the living room. He was relieved to see that it was not the same tree he’d been worried about earlier. This one was a bit smaller, but still very attractive, he laid there for a few minutes looking at all the ornaments while he tried to collect himself. There were quite a lot of felted and beaded cats, he noted. There were miniature snitches and a hippogriff made of owl feathers, a set of golden nifflers, silk spiderwebs with crystal spiders, tiny brooms made of twigs, and peppermint wands.
“We went ahead and trimmed it,” said a quiet voice. Neville jumped slightly, and looked over to find Charlie perched on the arm of a chair, a basket of laundry on the seat cushion and some sort of sewing project in his hands. “We didn’t know how long you were going to be out.”
Neville was a little discomfited by the idea of the whole Weasley clan having a trimming party around him while he was unconscious in the middle of the room. He wondered if anyone had untangled fairy lights over him or used him to hold up the garland. “I hope I haven’t been snoring,” he offered nervously.
“Oh, not at all,” Charlie assured him breezily.
Neville wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure? Cuz my dormmates always said I sounded like the Hogwarts Express.”
“Well, if that doesn’t make you an honorary Weasley, I don’t know what would.” Charlie looked up and tossed him a quick grin. “You should hear me, I’ve been told I can outsnore an Opaleye in allergy season.”
“How come you’re….er…..?”
“Darning my own socks? Mum’s charging us fifty knuts a piece now.”
Neville wasn’t sure if Charlie was kidding or whether he should laugh or not.
“I learned how to repair my own clothes and gear on the preserve,” Charlie explained. “Not so good with the domestic spells, but I can work a needle and thread. No reason to burden Mum with anything extra.”
They sat in silence for a few peaceful minutes in the glow of the tree. Neville found he was in a position to watch Charlie without looking like he was watching Charlie, so he gifted himself with a few minutes of drinking him in while he had the chance.
Of course he was only making himself crazy looking at what he couldn’t have. That was the double-edged sword of visiting Ron and Ginny’s family, he supposed, that glimpse into a cozy, homely life he had never had, would never have.
How on earth he’d ever let Ginny talk him into stopping by the Burrow for a bit of the family tonic he couldn’t remember, he must’ve been delirious. And how on earth that had turned into camping on their sofa on Christmas Eve, he wasn’t sure either.
“I should go,” he murmured, rubbing his eyes and trying to push the quilt back.
“Go?”
“Home,” Neville explained, as his feet came to rest on the rug.
“You’re not traveling now,” Charlie said firmly. “You couldn’t withstand Apparating and unless you want to fly through a snowstorm…”
He didn’t. “At least let me… is there a guest room?”
“We can find a room for you,” Charlie said calmly. “Feel up to helping me hang the stockings first? I know we’re all a little long in the tooth for it, but we’re keeping the tradition alive until Fleur’s baby gets here. At least that’s what we’re telling ourselves.”
Neville realized the laundry basket was full of Christmas stockings of various shapes and sizes. He walked over and looked in curiously. Some of them were patchworked, some were velvet, some were trimmed with chenille, they were misshapen and stretched out and some of them were clearly very old and much mended, but Neville thought it was the most magical assortment of fabric scraps he’d ever seen.
“Got one for you to borrow,” Charlie grinned, holding up the red sock he’d been working on. “It’s clean, I promise. Washed it before I left the preserve.”
Neville chuckled a little. The idea of eating candy out of a sock wasn’t terribly appealing, but he was touched to have been remembered.
“We never did these,” Neville admitted. He thought back momentarily to his grandmother’s seasonal decorations ~ antique, fragile, not to be touched ~ his annual parcel of new clothing, the peculiar presents from elderly relatives for which he had to pen out careful thank-you notes before the day was over.
Charlie broke him out of the reverie by handing him his makeshift stocking. “Anything special you’d like to find in it?” he asked.
Something in Charlie’s voice made Neville’s hand pause as it closed around the sock, so that both his hand and Charlie’s were around it. Neville thought he felt a slight playful tugging on the thing, he looked up into Charlie’s face and wondered if he were imagining things or if the cold tonic was affecting his senses or if Charlie really was looking at him like that with conifer green eyes that were smiling warmly in the corners and if Charlie really was close enough that the warmth of his body seemed to jump across the gap to envelope Neville’s too.
Charlie’s preferences were well known. And even if he did rebuff him, which he probably would, Neville was sure he’d be kind enough about it that Neville decided he could probably bear it if it happened. Yes, he was going to throw all caution and propriety to the winds and kiss Charlie Weasley, here in the beautiful glow of tree and hearth.
Except….
“Is there someplace I can brush my teeth?” he blurted out.
~*~
Charlie leaned against the wall outside the Burrow’s bathroom with one foot propped on the plaster and waited for the sound of waterspray to stop.
He’d had plenty of time to think while he’d waited.
Merlin, he’d been acting like a complete fool. What had he been doing, thinking about a friend of Ron’s like this? And how had he misread the young man so badly? What on earth would his mother have had to say about hospitality and the treatment of guests, had she known the kind of thoughts he’d been entertaining about this one.
He was just going to have to pull himself together and reclassify Neville in his disappointed brain as just another kid brother. And never mind the dark eyes, or the locks of curls that framed them, or the gentle hands that tended plants so competently and so…..
He gave a guilty start when Neville emerged with a towel around the neck of his bathrobe. He was a little disappointed to see Neville had shaved off every trace of the stubble that had been starting to color his jawline earlier. And he now positively reeked of peppermint paste, which was, Charlie had to admit, pleasanter than Aunt Muriel’s cold tonic, not that he wouldn’t have been willing to overlook it earlier.
“This way,” Charlie offered, ungluing himself from the wall and heading up the stairs. He showed Neville into a room, recently cleaned, with a freshly made bed in the center.
“Is this your room?”
“It was,” Charlie confirmed. “How’d you know?”
“Dunno. Felt it.” Neville moved over to the bed and sat down on the edge of the bed. His voice had sounded strangely heavy, and Charlie watched him carefully.
“What’s the matter?”
Neville covered his face in his hands. “Like I told you earlier. I’m a coward.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I had the chance, I had such a perfect chance. Earlier, with the sock, and the lights…”
Charlie sat down next to him slowly, not too close, not too distant. “Well, it is Christmas Eve,” he pointed out gently. “If it’s a second chance you want….”
~*~
Neville happily accepted a cup of tea from Molly Weasley as the family bustled around the sitting room in the pale light of morning. Ginny was collecting the laden stockings from the mantel and distributing them amongst her brothers and sister-in-law.
“Charlie,” she scolded suddenly, “I thought you were going to give Neville one of your socks to use.”
“I did,” he replied from the sofa.
“Well, where is it?” she demanded.
Charlie grinned, and crossed his leg across his knee to reveal his bright red sock. “I’m in it!”
Title: All I Want
Characters: Neville/Charlie
Warnings: Christmas fluff
Word Count: 2,150
“Isn’t she grand?” Charlie crowed to the group at large. Assenting murmurs rose from the crowd.
“That’s a lovely tree, dear,” Molly said approvingly. “It’s very symmetrical.”
“Fine job, son,” Arthur added.
“Will it fit in the house, do you think?” Percy asked appraisingly, leaning back to peer at the feathery top that seemed to brush against the sky.
“Eh, we’ll just raise the ceiling a bit,” George offered.
“Bill, did you bring the axe?”
“I thought Dad had it.”
“No, I gave it to…”
“Here!” Ron strode forward and offered the blade handle to Charlie.
“Thanks, bro. All right, kiddies, everybody stand back.” Charlie got into position and gripped the handle firmly with both hands.
“Wait!”
The assembled Weasleys turned, to where one person stood at the back of the crowd, looking out of place with his dark hair and well-appointed coat and mittens.
“Yes, Neville?” Charlie asked curiously.
“What’s the matter, dear?” Molly added solicitously. “Are you still feeling woozy from Aunt Muriel’s cold potion?”
“No.” Neville’s eyes were strangely wide. “I mean, yes.”
“Which is it?”
“Nothing. I just….”
Charlie watched as Neville’s eyes went to the tree, to the axe, to the rest of the family, back to the tree, before landing briefly on Charlie himself, whereupon he suddenly turned red. “Sorry!” he blurted out. “I’ll see you back at the house.” He turned and rushed off into the woods.
“I’d better go check on him,” Ginny sighed. “Before he gets lost or something.”
Charlie handed the axe to Bill. “Let me, Gin. Why don’t we hold off on this until later, when we can all be here.”
Everyone agreed, with most of the family deciding to return home for hot chocolate, and Charlie heading out to look for Neville.
It wasn’t much of a challenge, between the footsteps in the snow, and the fact that Neville was traveling at a considerably slower rate of speed. Charlie caught up with him in five minutes. Neville looked surprised to see him.
“What are you doing here?” the young man blurted out.
“Checking on you. Aunt Muriel’s cold potion can really knock you on your ….”
“But what about…” Neville swallowed. “The tree?”
“Eh, we’ll do it later.” Charlie waved it off, unconcerned, but Neville only looked more distressed.
“I’m sorry, Charlie, I really didn’t mean to interrupt your family tradition like that.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re our guest and the number one priority, not the tree. We’ll go get it tomorrow when you’re feeling better.”
“But it’s not that, Charlie, I’m well enough. I just… I’d rather not be there when you….you know…” Neville made a vague chopping motion through the air with the side of his hand.
“Oh. Is this about the tree then?”
“It’s two hundred and forty years old,” Neville said quietly.
“How do you know?” Charlie asked curiously.
“It just had… sort of a presence… and it kind of….told me. I know that sounds insane.” Neville turned around, and began walking away again.
Charlie trotted after. “Well for Godric’s sake, why didn’t you just SAY something?”
“Because I’m already intruding enough on your family just by being here and because it’s none of my business what you do with your own land… and because I’m a coward!”
“WHAT?” Charlie grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to a stop. “How can you even say anything that daft after everything you did at the Battle of Hogwarts?”
“Oh, that.” Neville dropped his gaze, staring from under long lashes to the vicinity of Charlie’s boots. “Killing monsters and fighting for your friends, that’s easy. It’s things like…. standing up for trees when people already think you’re half crazy… and …. Other stuff….” Neville’s voice trailed off.
“Other stuff? Like what?” While Charlie was waiting for a reply, he began to think maybe it could wait. Neville was looking flushed again. Charlie pulled off one glove and pressed the back of his hand to Neville’s cheek in fair imitation of his mother.
“You’re burning up,” he reported. “Let’s get you back to the house before you get any sicker.”
“Am I going to have to drink more of that potion?” Neville slurred reluctantly.
“More than likely.”
~*~
Neville woke up to the pale gold of afternoon light seeping through the curtains. He determined that he was on a sofa, propped up on a pillow and covered by several quilts. He could smell the crisp green scent of fresh fir, and gradually focused on a decorated tree filling most of the living room. He was relieved to see that it was not the same tree he’d been worried about earlier. This one was a bit smaller, but still very attractive, he laid there for a few minutes looking at all the ornaments while he tried to collect himself. There were quite a lot of felted and beaded cats, he noted. There were miniature snitches and a hippogriff made of owl feathers, a set of golden nifflers, silk spiderwebs with crystal spiders, tiny brooms made of twigs, and peppermint wands.
“We went ahead and trimmed it,” said a quiet voice. Neville jumped slightly, and looked over to find Charlie perched on the arm of a chair, a basket of laundry on the seat cushion and some sort of sewing project in his hands. “We didn’t know how long you were going to be out.”
Neville was a little discomfited by the idea of the whole Weasley clan having a trimming party around him while he was unconscious in the middle of the room. He wondered if anyone had untangled fairy lights over him or used him to hold up the garland. “I hope I haven’t been snoring,” he offered nervously.
“Oh, not at all,” Charlie assured him breezily.
Neville wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure? Cuz my dormmates always said I sounded like the Hogwarts Express.”
“Well, if that doesn’t make you an honorary Weasley, I don’t know what would.” Charlie looked up and tossed him a quick grin. “You should hear me, I’ve been told I can outsnore an Opaleye in allergy season.”
“How come you’re….er…..?”
“Darning my own socks? Mum’s charging us fifty knuts a piece now.”
Neville wasn’t sure if Charlie was kidding or whether he should laugh or not.
“I learned how to repair my own clothes and gear on the preserve,” Charlie explained. “Not so good with the domestic spells, but I can work a needle and thread. No reason to burden Mum with anything extra.”
They sat in silence for a few peaceful minutes in the glow of the tree. Neville found he was in a position to watch Charlie without looking like he was watching Charlie, so he gifted himself with a few minutes of drinking him in while he had the chance.
Of course he was only making himself crazy looking at what he couldn’t have. That was the double-edged sword of visiting Ron and Ginny’s family, he supposed, that glimpse into a cozy, homely life he had never had, would never have.
How on earth he’d ever let Ginny talk him into stopping by the Burrow for a bit of the family tonic he couldn’t remember, he must’ve been delirious. And how on earth that had turned into camping on their sofa on Christmas Eve, he wasn’t sure either.
“I should go,” he murmured, rubbing his eyes and trying to push the quilt back.
“Go?”
“Home,” Neville explained, as his feet came to rest on the rug.
“You’re not traveling now,” Charlie said firmly. “You couldn’t withstand Apparating and unless you want to fly through a snowstorm…”
He didn’t. “At least let me… is there a guest room?”
“We can find a room for you,” Charlie said calmly. “Feel up to helping me hang the stockings first? I know we’re all a little long in the tooth for it, but we’re keeping the tradition alive until Fleur’s baby gets here. At least that’s what we’re telling ourselves.”
Neville realized the laundry basket was full of Christmas stockings of various shapes and sizes. He walked over and looked in curiously. Some of them were patchworked, some were velvet, some were trimmed with chenille, they were misshapen and stretched out and some of them were clearly very old and much mended, but Neville thought it was the most magical assortment of fabric scraps he’d ever seen.
“Got one for you to borrow,” Charlie grinned, holding up the red sock he’d been working on. “It’s clean, I promise. Washed it before I left the preserve.”
Neville chuckled a little. The idea of eating candy out of a sock wasn’t terribly appealing, but he was touched to have been remembered.
“We never did these,” Neville admitted. He thought back momentarily to his grandmother’s seasonal decorations ~ antique, fragile, not to be touched ~ his annual parcel of new clothing, the peculiar presents from elderly relatives for which he had to pen out careful thank-you notes before the day was over.
Charlie broke him out of the reverie by handing him his makeshift stocking. “Anything special you’d like to find in it?” he asked.
Something in Charlie’s voice made Neville’s hand pause as it closed around the sock, so that both his hand and Charlie’s were around it. Neville thought he felt a slight playful tugging on the thing, he looked up into Charlie’s face and wondered if he were imagining things or if the cold tonic was affecting his senses or if Charlie really was looking at him like that with conifer green eyes that were smiling warmly in the corners and if Charlie really was close enough that the warmth of his body seemed to jump across the gap to envelope Neville’s too.
Charlie’s preferences were well known. And even if he did rebuff him, which he probably would, Neville was sure he’d be kind enough about it that Neville decided he could probably bear it if it happened. Yes, he was going to throw all caution and propriety to the winds and kiss Charlie Weasley, here in the beautiful glow of tree and hearth.
Except….
“Is there someplace I can brush my teeth?” he blurted out.
~*~
Charlie leaned against the wall outside the Burrow’s bathroom with one foot propped on the plaster and waited for the sound of waterspray to stop.
He’d had plenty of time to think while he’d waited.
Merlin, he’d been acting like a complete fool. What had he been doing, thinking about a friend of Ron’s like this? And how had he misread the young man so badly? What on earth would his mother have had to say about hospitality and the treatment of guests, had she known the kind of thoughts he’d been entertaining about this one.
He was just going to have to pull himself together and reclassify Neville in his disappointed brain as just another kid brother. And never mind the dark eyes, or the locks of curls that framed them, or the gentle hands that tended plants so competently and so…..
He gave a guilty start when Neville emerged with a towel around the neck of his bathrobe. He was a little disappointed to see Neville had shaved off every trace of the stubble that had been starting to color his jawline earlier. And he now positively reeked of peppermint paste, which was, Charlie had to admit, pleasanter than Aunt Muriel’s cold tonic, not that he wouldn’t have been willing to overlook it earlier.
“This way,” Charlie offered, ungluing himself from the wall and heading up the stairs. He showed Neville into a room, recently cleaned, with a freshly made bed in the center.
“Is this your room?”
“It was,” Charlie confirmed. “How’d you know?”
“Dunno. Felt it.” Neville moved over to the bed and sat down on the edge of the bed. His voice had sounded strangely heavy, and Charlie watched him carefully.
“What’s the matter?”
Neville covered his face in his hands. “Like I told you earlier. I’m a coward.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I had the chance, I had such a perfect chance. Earlier, with the sock, and the lights…”
Charlie sat down next to him slowly, not too close, not too distant. “Well, it is Christmas Eve,” he pointed out gently. “If it’s a second chance you want….”
~*~
Neville happily accepted a cup of tea from Molly Weasley as the family bustled around the sitting room in the pale light of morning. Ginny was collecting the laden stockings from the mantel and distributing them amongst her brothers and sister-in-law.
“Charlie,” she scolded suddenly, “I thought you were going to give Neville one of your socks to use.”
“I did,” he replied from the sofa.
“Well, where is it?” she demanded.
Charlie grinned, and crossed his leg across his knee to reveal his bright red sock. “I’m in it!”