| Tarie ( @ 2007-09-08 14:39:00 |
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| Entry tags: | harry/charlie, my fic |
FIC: Before and After Hours, Harry/Charlie, NC-17
Author: Tarie
For:
r_becca
Title: Before and After Hours
Pairing: Harry/Charlie
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Not mine. Everything recognisable belongs to JKR.
Summary: In the middle of the war, Dumbledore ships Harry off to Romania. Harry is not impressed and finds that he is in Charlie's care until further notice.
Excerpt: He'd not put any shorts on. He was naked under there. What was more, the laces just barely met when he tied them off at the top and Harry could almost, if he squinted just enough, see a bit of what was undeniably his cock right there.
"They are rather tight," Charlie commented, causing Harry to jump with a start and lift his eyes up to meet Charlie's somewhat guiltily.
Notes: This was written for
hp_springsmut. Thank you SO much to Callie for the beta and Jen for enduring my spam whilst I was writing this. I've NEVER written Harry/Charlie before, so this was new territory for me. *wibbles*
Some days he really hated Albus Dumbledore, while others he tolerated him and tried to understand why the wizard treated him as he did.
Today was one of the days where he hated Albus Dumbledore quite a lot, really.
He resented that he'd gotten shipped off to Romania in the middle of the night without an explanation or the chance to say goodbye to Ron and Hermione - or even tell them where he was going - just because Dumbledore had said so. They would worry; he knew they would.
How could they not?
Last night they'd all been huddled together in some cave on the side of a mountain just outside Ilfracombe resting up for an attack the following morning on a small camp of Death Eaters Tonks had discovered the previous day. Harry had waited until Ron and Hermione drifted off to sleep until the thought of slumber even remotely crossed his mind. He couldn't go to sleep first; he'd never been able to do that. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he thought he'd fall asleep first and wake up through the night and discover that they'd left him. Somewhere deep down he knew this fear was silly, not to mention completely unwarranted. But the fear was real and it was there. His parents had left him and Sirius had left him. Ron and Hermione had been a part of his life more than his mum, dad, and Sirius had been combined. They were his life. If something happened to them, he didn't know how he would cope. When Ron began to mumble and draped his arm across Harry's middle and Hermione began to snore softly on his other side, he grinned, feeling comforted somehow, and cleared his mind, ready to drift off for what little bit of sleep he could manage before it was time to move.
He'd just began to settle into that heavy sense of turning into himself when a pair of hands gently but urgently shook his shoulders.
Eyes opened blearily and then his mouth had scrunched up into a scowl.
Snape.
Just the person he wanted to see at half-ridiculous-o'clock in the morning while he was all curled up with his best friends. Ha.
Although he had been want to screw his eyes shut and pretend his former Potions teacher wasn't standing there looking highly displeased (as if he had ever seen Snape look anything but), he had resigned himself to the fact that Snape, no matter how much he wanted him to, would not go away.
"What?" he had grumbled in a low voice, struggling to sit up without disturbing Ron and Hermione.
"There is no time for foolish questions or insolence, Potter," Snape had returned acidly, not bothering to lower his own voice. "Get up. Your Portkey is only good for a few moments and it would behoove you not to miss it."
Harry had scrambled to his feet and stepped over his friends' sleeping forms, grabbing his rucksack before falling into step beside Snape as he led the way to the back of the cramped cave. "Where--"
"I said," Snape had interrupted smoothly, one brow lifting in a sort of mockery, "that your Portkey was only of use for a few moments, Potter, yet here you are attempting to demand answers of me. Are you simply deaf or has your idiocy finally consumed you?"
Harry had glared at Snape then, clenching down hard on his teeth so as not to both lose his temper at the man and wake Ron and Hermione. Averting his eyes, he had stared hard at his trainers, willing himself not to explode, when he caught site of a crushed can from a fizzy drink. That had to be the Portkey, he decided. And just as Snape began to repeat his insulting question, Harry stooped down defiantly and laid his hand on the can. In an instant, he felt that familiarly uncomfortable hook-behind-the-navel-jerk sensation and his feet left the ground. Wind and a myriad of colours sped past him as he moved forward at an uncomfortably fast rate and then his feet slammed hard down onto the ground.
He was there.
Where ever 'there' was.
He had been incredibly disoriented right after landing, blinking and rubbing his temple. It had only just begun to occur to him that he didn't quite know where the Portkey had taken him or what he should do when a familiar face popped into view. Charlie Weasley.
That meant he was in Romania.
Charlie had welcomed him and immediately escorted him to his tent, telling him to pick a room and have a lie down and that he'd answer questions in the proper morning.
And that was how Harry found himself to be in Romania.
After Charlie bade him good night, he didn't sleep a wink. Instead, he tossed and turned and cursed Dumbledore's name, wondering if Charlie even really knew why he was there.
When he'd turned for the 72nd time (he'd been counting), Harry decided that enough was enough and he was going to go out and investigate things. Just to be safe, he dug his invisibility cloak out of his rucksack before ducking out of the tent. As Hermione always said, it was better to be safe than sorry. He hadn't heard of any fighting making it's way out of Britain, but he wasn't exactly sure all the same that there weren't other tents filled with Charlie's co-workers nearby. If Dumbledore had gone through the trouble of arranging a Portkey for him, he'd best take pains to take care until he knew the coast was clear.
Safe and undetectable to the naked eye from under the gossamer fabric of the cloak, Harry walked around the perimeter of Charlie's camp. The lack of other tents was...interesting; he couldn't decide if he was surprised or not by it. In the distance he could just make out some sort of paddock - it definitely wasn't big enough to house full-grown dragons; perhaps drakes (or were they simply called baby dragons, Harry wondered) were kept there until they were large enough to be released into the general population at the reserve. He made a mental note to ask Charlie if he could see Norbert while he was there and swallowed hard against the lump in his throat that rose with the thought. Thinking of Norbert only reminded him of Hagrid. They'd lost Hagrid a few months ago; he had gone to the giants again to plead with them to take a side and been killed by one of his own.
The sun began to rise and Harry figured he ought to head back to the tent. Surely Charlie would be up and checking on him soon.
Doubling back, Harry rubbed tiredly at his eyes; maybe he'd be able to actually fall asleep. That would be nice.
But what would be even nicer, he decided as his eyes fell upon what could only be a washing area, judging from the pipes leading up into the structure from the ancient-looking tap beside it, would be a warm shower. Harry couldn't remember the last time he'd had a proper shower. Cleaning Charms were awfully handy but they weren't nearly as efficient - and soothing - as the real thing.
Looking forward to getting some of the grime out of his pores, Harry pushed open the door to the washing area and stepped inside. Inwardly he grinned at the sight that greeted him; it strongly reminded him of the Gryffindor Quidditch team's changing room. There were a few rows of lockers with benches in between each one. To the right was a hamper for dirty towels and to the left was a small corridor leading to the showers. When he'd approached the rickety-looking building, Harry had figured the inside would be tiny and cramped. He chuckled softly under his breath as he shuffled off toward the showers; by now he should have been used to expecting things to be unlike what they appeared.
Lost in thoughts of Ron and Hermione and wondering if anyone was telling them right now where he'd gone, Harry rounded a dividing wall (meant for the privacy of those in the shower from people on the other side) and then abruptly stopped in his tracks.
How he had failed to hear the running water of the shower, Harry didn't know. But he had. The water was running, oh yes. Running all over a very wet and very fit Charlie Weasley. His hands were against the wall and his head tilted down as the spray pounded against his neck, the water running down his muscled back and over his sculpted arse in rivulets.
Oh God.
He should look away. He should definitely look away.
But he couldn't.
Freckles ran in the Weasley family and Harry'd been looking at freckled Weasleys for years now. But he'd never seen so many freckles on one Weasley before. Charlie had a healthy smattering of them on his face but they didn't even compare with the number Harry saw on his back. It was the first time Harry'd ever seen him shirtless (or naked, for that matter) and he sucked in a breath, willing himself not to make a noise to give himself away.
Harry loved Weasley freckles. They were ginger and generously distributed on all Weasleys and Harry equated all things Weasley with warmth and comfort.
And if the amount of freckles on a Weasley determined how much warmth and comfort they could provide? Charlie was the most generous of the lot.
He had so many freckles on his back, on his arse, and on his legs that, had he not known any better, Harry would have sworn he had a tan.
Just then Harry decided he quite liked the tanned-and-freckled look. A lot.
Charlie was shorter than his brothers and a bit broader, stocky even. It probably was for the best that he was built like he was, considering he did all that physical work with the dragons and all.
Come to think of it, maybe that was a tan, Harry thought. Maybe he should get a bit closer for a better look. And what was that mark just below his right shoulder? There was a thin mark, perhaps two inches wide, that clearly wrapped around to his front, that was reddish and shrunken, obviously healed over, that withered away from a thin halo of healthy pale skin around it, the pale skin blurring out to feather and fade into the abundantly-freckled skin covering his defined back.
Curiosity now piqued, Harry edged toward the shower. At the precise moment he took a step forward, Charlie withdrew his hands from the wall and turned around under the spray, tipping his head back and allowing the water to over his face, eyes closed.
Harry's eyes immediately run down Charlie's frame. The mark he'd seen on his back did indeed curve to the front, dipping just below his breastbone. Lower still Harry's eyes roamed, dancing over a thin trail of ginger hairs low on his stomach, stopping when they set sight on Charlie's cock. Charlie's thick and erect cock.
Oh fuck.
He really ought to get out of there.
In his haste to leave as quickly as possible, Harry stumbled over the hem of his cloak and fell arse-backwards to the ground, revealing his presence in a rather spectacular manner to Charlie in the process.
"Harry?"
Charlie sounded surprised and Harry couldn't blame him.
Mortified and resigned, he coughed and pulled his cloak off the rest of the way, bunching it up into a ball and holding it against his chest as he got to his feet.
"Yeah," he murmured, unable to look Charlie in the eye.
The spray cut off and then Charlie was beside him, making it impossible for Harry not to look at him.
"Everything all right?" Charlie asked, rubbing at his hair with a towel and then wrapping it around his waist.
"Er..." No, not really. Snape made me take a Portkey in the middle of the fucking night just because Dumbledore said so and my best mates are likely in a scuffle with Death Eaters right now and I'm off here in the middle of damned Romania and not in the middle of the scuffle beside Ron and Hermione where I ought to be and I've just had a stare at your cock that lasted much longer than any normal 'bloke sizing up another bloke's cock' sort of stare ought to be. "Yeah, mostly."
Charlie grinned, then clapped a hand on Harry's shoulder. He jumped and then offered a weak smile as an apology. "Just a bit jumpy from the, er, Portkey."
"Dead nasty form of transport, Portkeys are," Charlie said sympathetically, turning Harry round and steering him out toward the changing area. "C'mon, mate. Let me get dressed and then I'll give you the run-down on how things work around here."
Beyond grateful that Charlie wasn't hacked off at him, Harry followed him down one of the rows of lockers and sat on the bench while Charlie opened his up and pulled out his clothing. It was all an ashy sort of colour and there were bumps here and there.
"What is that?" Harry asked curiously, pointing to the neatly-stacked garments on the bench.
"This?" Charlie asked, holding up a pair of trousers.
Harry nodded.
"This is Tebo hide. Everything I wear when I go out in the field is made from it."
Harry's brow furrowed in confusion. "What's that?" he said, pink colouring his cheeks a bit. From the tone Charlie had used while answering him, he figured it was something he, as a wizard, ought to know about and felt foolish that he didn't.
Charlie sat down on the other side of the clothes and leaned over, sticking his feet in his trousers. "A Tebo is a sort of warthog, which is why there're all these things that look like pock-marks on the hide," he explained, standing and pulling the trousers up his calves and over his knees. "They're mostly in Zaire and around the Congo, although I did pick this kit up in Egypt the last time we'd all went to visit Bill there. Cost me a bloody fortune, too, cos Tebos can make themselves invisible and that means they're a bugger to catch. Tebo hide's nearly the best thing out there for protective clothing and you have three guesses as to why I'm in the market for that sort of thing." Charlie grinned again, yanking the trousers up over his hips. Harry was about to ask if Tebo hide was used for anything else but the words died on his lips when Charlie started lacing up the fly of those ashy trousers.
He'd not put any shorts on. He was naked under there. What was more, the laces just barely met when he tied them off at the top and Harry could almost, if he squinted just enough, see a bit of what was undeniably his cock right there.
"They are rather tight," Charlie commented, causing Harry to jump with a start and lift his eyes up to meet Charlie's somewhat guiltily.
"Er...?"
"The trousers," Charlie chuckled, taking his shirt off of the pile and shaking it out before pulling it over his head. "So's the shirt. It all is, actually, because you want the hide to be as close to your skin as possible for maximum protection." After shoving his arms through his sleeves, he took up a short waistcoat with odd-looking buttons. "These are fire crab claw buttons," he commented after catching Harry's curious gaze. "Their shells can stand up to nearly anything, particularly fire for obvious reasons."
"Oh," Harry said, embarrassed still at being caught again looking at Charlie in places he ought not be looking. While Charlie pulled on some socks and boots, he busied himself with folding up his invisibility cloak.
"You look about Jimsom Jigger's size. I bet he's got an extra kit in his locker you can have. Not like he'll be needing it, seeing as how everyone's been moved north save for me and two or three of the new hatchlings," Charlie said, tilting his head as he pulled the laces on his boot tight.
"What?"
"If you're going out in the field with me, Harry, you're going to have to make sure you've got the gear on," Charlie said. "I'm to watch over you for a few days until Dumbledore can come in from where ever he's at; I don't think he or the rest of the Order will take too kindly to my allowing you to get burnt to a crisp." He shut his locker and jerked his chin toward the end of the aisle. "C'mon."
Thankful that Charlie was the first to bring up the subject of Dumbledore, Harry gladly followed him to Jimsom Jigger's locker. "Dumbledore?" he said, trying to sound casual and failing. "He's coming here? D'you know why I'm here, then?"
Handing him a kit from the messy locker, Charlie frowned. "I'm afraid not, Harry," he said slowly. "All I know is that you were to be sent here and that Dumbledore would arrive one week from today with further instructions as to what you were to do. And since I'm still technically a dragon trainer first and an Order member second, I'm going to do my best to combine the two jobs and keep an eye on you while I tend to the dragons. For me to do both of those things at once, I'm going to have you be my assistant until Dumbledore gets here." He gave Harry an apologetic look. "Sorry I don't know more. But at least you're somewhere safe."
Despite the concern in Charlie's voice and the regret that he couldn't give him more information visible in his eyes, Harry's blood positively boiled.
"Somewhere SAFE?" he bellowed. "SO I'M HERE IN ROMANIA AWAY FROM THE THICK OF IT ALL AND RON AND HERMIONE AND TONKS AND EVERYONE ELSE IS OUT THERE GETTING INTO IT WITH DEATH EATERS AND DUMBLEDORE WON'T LET ME KNOW ANY MORE THAN I'M JUST TO BE HERE AND FUCKING WAIT FOR HIM TO HAVE HIS FILL OF LEMON DROPS AND POP OVER?"
Apparently used to loud outbursts (he had lived in a house with Molly and Ron, after all), Charlie let Harry rant and rave a few minutes, waiting until he paused for breathe to cut in. "I know it's shite. Believe me, I do. But I'm not the one you're hacked off at and railing at me isn't going to fix anything or put you back in the fray of things," Charlie said calmly, holding a hand up placatingly. "The best thing to do, for now, is to put that kit on and come outside. It'll do you some good to get some sun and not worry about looking over your shoulder every other minute."
Scowling, Harry grudgingly toed off his trainers and shucked his jeans before plopping onto the bench, pulling the Tebo hide trousers over his feet and up his legs.
"You might want to take those shorts off, mate," Charlie said, wandering back to where his locker was and picking up his dirty towel.
Cheeks mottling red, Harry pretended to not have heard him and tugged the trousers up the rest of the way. Well, most of the rest of the way. The hide sort of stuck fast against his skin; he had to practically roll it up his legs. It didn't seem to want to go up over his shorts, although Harry did try. He managed to get almost to the tops of his thighs but his shorts bunched up beneath the Tebo hide.
Shite.
Seemed as though Charlie was right after all.
Harry struggled getting the trousers down and off and then removed his shorts, being careful to have his back facing Charlie while he put the kit trousers back on. While he was buttoning up the waistcoat, Charlie's shoulder bumped his as he moved around Harry to get to the hamper, tossing his towel inside.
"All ready, Harry?" he asked, clapping his hands together.
"Yeah," Harry mumbled, shoving his hand in an inner pocket of the short jacket, "I am."