alianora | HP Ficlet: Letter By Letter (Dragon Tamer 'verse)

Title: Letter By Letter
Author: alianora
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through HBP
Summery: Charlie Weasley/Gabrielle Delacour, in a nonsquicky way.

literarylemming accidentally snuck some cute hints about Charlie and Gabby in her Bill/Fleur fic Mon Mari, Mon Espouse, which i heartily encouraged. I pestered her to write more in Valentine, and I followed with Dragon Tamer and How to Catch a Dragon.

and then, she made me flaily and squeaky and upset with The Third Sunday and i had to deal with it!

also,

literarylemming made me this Charlie/Gabby icon, and it is gorgeous and i love it!

Charlie had his feet kicked up on his desk chair, and he was scowling at the ceiling.

Odette was waiting. And she wasn’t doing so very patiently. But his mind was completely empty of anything to say to Gabby.

He looked down at the blank piece of parchment in front of him.

Dear Gabrielle.

And that was all he had.

And he had been staring at this parchment for nearly an hour.

He pulled her last letter out of his pocket and read it again. He had gotten it over a week an a half ago, and had been carrying it around since. Something about it was troubling him.

Gabby sounded..sad.

He had been surprised when she chose to move to England with her sister, and even more surprised when she chose to go to Hogwarts instead of Beauxbatons, but she had never sounded like she struggled with either of those decisions.

Her letters had always been chatty and friendly and full of questions. She tended to prattle and he had always picked up a good amount of things she didn’t say in there.

And her last letter was full of things she wasn’t saying.

Come to think of it, her letters over the past year hadn’t been quite as cheery as they used to be

He dropped his feet to the floor with a sigh.

Her first two years of Hogwarts had gone well, if the length of her letters had been anything to go by. There were several times when poor Odette had needed to rest for almost a day before heading back to England.

This year, her letters had gotten shorter.

Charlie had just thought she was getting too busy to have time for an old dragon keeper several countries away, but now he wasn’t so sure.

She was fifteen. She should be dating and flirting and giggling with her friends. Not wasting her time writing letters to a guy twice her age.

But, instead, it sounded like he was her only real friend, besides Hagrid.

Charlie had known that Fleur was part Veela that instant he saw her. She was gorgeous, and privately he wondered how Bill had gotten so lucky. Men routinely fell on their faces when Fleur swept into a room. And she knew it.

But Gabby was different.

She was part Veela, sure, but he had never really thought of boys falling all over themselves to talk to her. She wasn’t like Fleur. She didn’t immediately attract attention when she walked into a room. She didn’t want to.

She just wanted to work with dragons.

But it sounded like she didn’t have a choice anymore about having all of the male attention. And all the female jealousy went along with that. And no matter how much she said she didn’t care, and made light of it in her letters, Charlie knew it had to be hurting her. If her hairbrush had gone missing, he was willing to bet she was missing other things, probably more precious to her.

But what could she do? She couldn’t just stop being part Veela. She couldn’t make herself into something she wasn’t, just to fit in.

And how could he help her? He was in Romania, which wasn’t exactly close to Hogwarts.

He crumpled up the letter and threw it across the room in frustration.

It landed beside a picture of his family, all waving cheerfully. Except for Percy, who was scowling at the twins from beneath an oddly charmed hat.

Charlie blinked. A slow smile spread over his face. Reaching forward, he grabbed another piece of parchment and his quill.

Dear Fred and George,

I’ve got a girl who could use some of your specialized assistance…

END