FicWad

The Harry Potter universe is the creation of J.K. Rowling. This is fanfiction. The standard disclaimers apply.

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Chapter 17: Charlie Weasley


Wednesday, October 3, 1990


Rubeus Hagrid woke up to the distant barking honks and squeaks of geese, carrying from the Hogwarts Lake for a quarter mile and up the hill to his hut. These were barnacle geese, which winter in the Scottish lochs by the tens of thousands. This year, Hagrid estimated, just under a thousand had selected the lake to wait out the months until they could return to their breeding grounds in the arctic. The lake was actually quite big, contained substantial areas of food-rich marsh that the giant squid and other lake monsters couldn't reach, and was adjacent to all the grass of Hogwarts' well-kept grounds. Hagrid, who had to do the keeping of those grounds, would have preferred them to keep their droppings to areas that humans didn't want to walk on. The geese had been there first, though, and so long as they stayed off of the quidditch pitch he was happy for their noisy presence.

They were, in fact, quite noisy during most of their waking hours, and over the years Hagrid had grown very familiar with that noise. Nevertheless, if it weren't for his conversation with Charlie Weasley the other day, he wouldn't have detected the extra notes of alarm in the general din.

"I guess I'd better be checkin' that out, in case it's Fred an' George again. Breakfast'll have ter wait. Fang, do yer business—good boy. Now get back in here—ye'll just be makin' things worse if I take you down ter the lake—ye'll jes' be stirrin' the geese up an' chasin' 'em yerself, too."

With that he shut the enormous, disappointed boarhound back in his hut, and started down the hill to the lake. The alarmed-sounding geese were 500 feet away when he came around a bend in the trail along the shore, and got a good look at them for the first time. Periodically one, sometimes two geese would rise up into the air, sometimes as high as thirty or forty feet, flapping and squawking, move forwards, backwards, or sideways, or sometimes in vertical loops, and then return to the surface and dart away to saner waters. Hagrid sighed.

Being big did not mean Hagrid was unstealthy; on the contrary, he could move extremely quietly through the woods when he needed to. So after veering out into the trees and coming towards the shore directly, he was able to get quite close to the twins. He really didn't expect to find anyone else getting up to this, but after what Charlie had said he had to consider the possibility of copycats. In this case, though, betting on the usual suspects was pretty safe.

"Darn it, Fred, how did Dumbledore manage to hover so many things at once? We've been at this for what, several days? And we can't manage to split the spell across more than one blasted goose. Maybe we should just try the crate idea of Charlie's."

"That one assumes we can then lift the crate. Either way, even one goose is heavy."

"It would help if they'd stop struggling—be easier to concentrate on a second one, then."

"I can't imagine what their problem with it is. You'd think they'd enjoy the chance to fly without having to flap their wings!"

"Ungrateful, truly."

"You know, after launching them in the air so many times these past few days, I'm beginning to really appreciate them. I think they're quite pretty, actually. Very well-designed for flying, swimming, . . ."

". . . making lots of noise, enraging Filch, . . ."

". . . and chasing Mrs. Norris!"

". . . Damn it! Let's just go get breakfast."


Hagrid chose this moment to clear his throat. "Hrrr-em. You know, boys, the trick t'the hover charm is t'start small. Dumbledore was doin' it wi' melon balls, an' here ye're tryin' t'use big, flappin', squawkin' waterfowl!" Fred and George had spun around. Hagrid was never sure if they were genuinely surprised when he caught them, or were just being pretending for the sake of humor.

"I wish we knew how he snuck up on us like that."

"Good morning, Hagrid! My brother and I were just heading up to the castle for breakfast. Won't you join us."

"Of course we have no idea what waterfowl you might be talking about!"


The three of them started off. "Now, boys, I'm goin' t'let this one go, since ye weren't hurtin' nobody, jes' annoyin' the geese some, but they are contraband in the school. Merlin knows why—like I heard you say, they're beautiful creatures."


"George and I speculate," said George, after a while, "based on the arrangement of items on Filch's list, . . ."

". . . that banned items fall into several categories."

"There are the ones that are clearly there because somebody did something nobody expected."

"Like, say, the trawling nets followed by the depth charges."

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"


"Hah! No wonder the merfolk are so twitchy. Nah, that was before my time."


"Anyway, sometimes you see an item, . . ."

". . . or a school rule, in general, . . ."

". . . that makes you say 'wow, what on earth happened there?'"

"I don't think we've gotten anything on there yet ourselves . . ."

". . . which, and don't tell Filch this, is not for lack of trying." Students knew they could rely on Hagrid's rivalry with Filch, and exploited this.

"So another type is where somebody like Zonko gets a whole product line banned."

"That one there's a real compliment, you see, it means Filch or Dumbledore knows you by name and respects you as a prankster, and that anybody caught with anything you made can only be up to no good."

"That's where we want to be some day, if we ever open a shop together."

"Don't tell Filch that, either." Hagrid was grinning. He was quite fond of all of the Weasleys, twins included, no matter how much trouble they were. Of course, like Filch, he got to see a lot more of them than other students, because they were always out in the areas he was responsible for, looking for trouble in places no one else would bother to. But they were nice boys, always friendly to him, even when they weren't trying to get out of trouble. Filch's problem was that he was—well, Hagrid had a lot of words for what Filch was, none of them good.

"Now," continued one of the twins, "some of the things on the list are completely reasonable—you know, things you'd normally put on a list of banned items if you were starting from scratch."

"Dark artifacts, and the like."

"There are an awful lot of those."

"It's like an advanced course in defense, just reading it. Wizards can be unbelievably nasty sometimes!"

"I mean, certainly, we prank people, but never anything truly dangerous."

"Just really embarrassing, or uncomfortable."

"But funny. But anyway those make sense."

"But the other kind of item, on that list, is the genuine mystery item, . . ."

". . . where not even Filch knows what it is, because it just occurred to somebody one day to ban it, and nobody knows why, . . ."

". . . and we can't even come up with a good story to explain it. You wouldn't happen to know what a French can opener is, would you?"

". . . or why anyone would want to ban one?"


"Hah! No idea." He shrugged, which on Hagrid's frame was impressive.


"Filch wouldn't say. Just yelled at us for asking."

"Actually, he just yelled at us the whole time we were there reading it."

"But he couldn't chase us away, this time, . . ."

". . . because we weren't doing anything for once!"

"We should just hang around outside his door more often. Make him nervous."

"Intriguing. Let's see if there's any sort of 'no loitering' or 'no irritating Filch' rule. Who knows, all this time he might have been finding some other excuses to blame us . . ."

". . . and never needed to invoke it! Hah."


They approached the doors of the Great Hall. "Well, here we are, boys, off t'the staff table fer me. It was a real pleasure talkin' ter yers when ye wasn't gettin' inta trouble fer once. Come down with Charlie an' stop an' see me sometime!" The Weasleys smiled, having distracted Hagrid from the fact that they were, in fact, getting in trouble when he found them.


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"Can't you two do that another time? If you get detention and it affects the team, I will personally hunt you down and hex you for it."

Fred and George were surreptitiously trying to levitate bits of fruit salad more than one at a time, without success; Oliver Wood was horrified. "Oh, we're not worried about a teacher coming around and bugging us about it."

"If they do, we'll just insist they show us how to do it!"

"The trick is to distract them. Of course, some of them practically do that themselves."

Oliver was exasperated. "Just try not to get caught again, for anything. Same goes for you, Charlie!" he added, jokingly kicking the other Weasley beneath the table.

"Hey! I'm very good at staying out of trouble. I haven't gotten detention since Hagrid last caught me going into the forest my third year."

"What? Surely, Charlie, you didn't just give up? Why, he chases us away from it at least once a week."

"Maybe if you have so much free time, we should schedule more practice sessions. . ."

Charlie rolled his eyes. "Nice try, Oliver, but no. Next year, when you're captain and I'm gone, you can drag these two out all you like. Some of us, you know, merely like quidditch, and aren't maniacally obsessed with it. Oh, don't take it so hard. We do have other things to do, though."

"What, like sneak into the Forbidden Forest?"

"Oh, come on! It's the best thing about Hogwarts! You can learn way more there in a month, just by watching, than in seven years worth of Care of Magical Creatures classes. Trust me on that."

This gathered a horrified look from Oliver and ones of intense interest from Fred and George.

"See, if you stay on your broom, up in the canopy, and don't go there in broad daylight like my little brothers here, it's way safer than playing quidditch." Fred and George gave each other one of their 'Why didn't we think of that?' looks. "Orrr, you could just watch for when Fred and George make a try, wait a few minutes, and go while Hagrid is distracted chasing after them. Orrr, if for some reason you don't want to risk getting into trouble at all, you could just ask Hagrid to take you.

See that look, Oliver? You might think you see it a lot because Fred and George are idiots who can't come up with obvious things on their own, but you'd be wrong. That look means they just learned something, and will go out and make different mistakes the next time. It means the little gears in their heads are turning, turning, thinking 'how can we exploit this new knowledge to get ourselves another detention with Filch?'"


"You know, Fred, I think he's got us there."

"It's like he's known us all our lives or something!"


"And that look is just them being silly."

"I can't ever tell the difference," said Oliver.

"Neither can most people at first, which doesn't help them stay out of trouble. They also have a look somewhere in between, where they only pretend that the gears are turning, and they're hoping you can't tell the difference. But that's an advanced technique taught only to Weasleys. Anyway, you asked what's in the Forbidden Forest that you should want to go there . . ."

What followed was one of the best combined ecology and Defense lectures ever given at Hogwarts.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Friday, October 5th. Just before midnight.


"Are you dressed warm enough? We'll be up high, and the wind is cold." Charlie had brought the twins to the common room, after waiting until the coast was clear, telling them to dress warmly and bring their brooms. "Okay!" With that he summoned his broom into his hand and mounted it. "Well, come on."

"You want us to fly . . ."

". . . in here?"

"Well, you could of course plod along, trying not to make noise with your footsteps, and barely able to outrun Filch. I don't see the point of it, though. Come on, I've seen that look enough today, let's get going!"

And so the twins followed their big brother out the portrait door, down several hallways, and finally out a window, which they left propped open behind them. "Don't worry," Charlie whispered, "I know lots more ways to get back in if Filch locks it. Now, up!"

Charlie led them up past the roof of Gryffindor tower. "I want you to notice several things about this tower. Number one, that's a clay tile roof, and while it's nice and pointed and sheds the snow and rain, it's not very stable, the staff has to repair it by hand, and most importantly a falling tile makes a damn awful noise. So don't land on any of the roofs like it—they are dangerous, and you will make noise and get caught.

Number two! Those gargoyles? All of them bite. They are dangerous, and you will make noise and get caught.

Number three! Sometimes, and this is the most important part, so pay attention: depending on how the tower is configuring itself on the outside that day, sometimes you can see in the girls' dorms!"

"Let me guess, they are dangerous, and they will make noise and we'll get caught?"

"Not necessarily." Charlie grinned. "Gryffindor girls are friendlier than gargoyles.

One of the other towers is always Ravenclaw—probably that one over there. The Ravenclaw girls are much less likely to notice you, but the Gryffindor girls are hotter in their underwear. I usually stick to Gryffindor, but everyone's values are different. Okay, up."

They followed him high above the school—they could see the lake, the forest, the streets of Hogsmeade, fields, hills, and mountains, spreading out before them. "If you were a seeker, you'd be used to this by now. Snitches are little bastards like that. The difference is right now it's not raining, and we can see. Up!"

"Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously! Come on, are you a quidditch player or not?"

It was bitter cold. The wind was whistling in their ears, and Hogwarts was terrifyingly small below them. "Oh, come on, it's just a few thousand feet—no higher than those mountains over there. It's not like you'll get altitude sickness or anything.

Anyway, the Burrow's off in that direction. If you had a map, you could tell which towns those were. From up here you can navigate pretty much without muggles seeing you, even if you don't have some way to make yourself hard to see. Disillusioning is hard, and most wizards never bother with it—they just avoid getting near muggles in the first place." He paused for a minute, just to let the experience sink in.

"I like to come up here at night, sometimes, and just watch the clouds, and the twinkling lights of the towns and the muggles' cars. You know, I think you were surprised to think of brooms as quiet because you've only ever been going at breakneck speed on them—even playing with Ron and Ginny—they'll be on the team some day, I'm sure of it. And the wind can get really noisy at the higher speeds. But this is a broom, not Dad's Ford Anglia—if you're not doing anything to make noise, it isn't either.

I bet you're scared I'll say 'up' again, right?" The twins nodded. "I won't, this time, but I've gone way higher than this. I don't know what the upper limit on a broom is—I think it needs gravity in order to orient itself properly, but other than that your body will give out before it does. Now, let's go take a look at the castle again and then I'll take you to the forest. While a seeker would consider it perfectly normal to drop most of the way and pull out, I won't make you do that. Come on!"

They watched as the lights from the windows got bigger, and the wings and towers differentiated themselves, and they descended. Up above, Hogwarts was still obviously big, but the world outside was infinitely bigger. Now they were back to worrying about things like getting caught peeking in girls' windows.

Charlie led them in a looping path around the towers, then pulled back up and headed towards the forest, diving down in at a spot which, to Fred and George, looked like any other. They had to pick their way gingerly through the upper branches to get to where Charlie was, holding his finger to his lips to get them to stay silent. They landed next to him on a horizontal limb of an old oak, about sixty feet up. Charlie was pointing at something on the ground, some ways away. The twins had no idea what they were looking for, and made various gestures of confusion at him. Charlie sighed, and motioned for them to get back on their brooms and follow him.

They were surprised to find that Charlie was right—brooms were normally silent if you weren't flying like a maniac. Eventually, they were about a hundred feet from a clearing, at which point even Fred and George could identify the small herd of unicorns grazing there. Charlie made another silencing gesture, then one to follow him, and showed them another use of brooms that they had not contemplated.

Charlie simply moved through the canopy at a turtle's pace, not changing his posture at all, creeping closer to the unicorns. Fred and George were amazed to find themselves just outside of the clearing, looking down at six adults and a foal. The moonlight gleamed off of them, making them seem more ghostlike than real. The twins wondered if they'd lose that effect in the sunlight.

After a while, Charlie backed up slowly, turned around, and at a slightly faster pace led them away. "If you don't come in fits and starts like a predator creeping up on them, and you don't change shape like a predator swooping down on them, and you don't make scary noises, they don't care. But they're sensitive—you have to be careful not to drive them off of their food or stress them. Let's see what else we can find." Charlie flew off deeper into the forest, stopping when he realized the twins weren't keeping up.

"I promise, you'll get better at this in no time flat. I think next quidditch practice I am sending you two out in the regular woods, down by the lake or something, with a practice bludger, and tell you to go all the way to the walls and back with it. That would do it."

"And prepare us for the next match we have to play in trees!"

"Yeah, I have never really gotten the hang of it when forests sprout up all of a sudden on the quidditch pitch. Makes me nervous."

"Oh, come on, you're dodging twelve people on brooms, trying not to get in the way of the quaffle or snitch, and _also_ keeping track of two murderous iron balls. The forest is peanuts. Good, you're giving me that look again. Let's go."

Somewhere that felt to the twins like it must be the heart of the forest, they saw Charlie slow down ahead of them and start creeping along. Once they caught up (having learned to do so slowly), Charlie seemed to be pointing towards the moon. The twins shrugged, figuring that it would make sense eventually, and crept along.

They started to hear small scrabbling noises from the trees ahead of them. Charlie, ever so slowly, angled downwards and descended a few feet. The twins realized this placed the moon directly behind the trees, so that they could see them in silhouette. Small figures were climbing along the branches, stopping every so often to poke around at something. "Bowtruckles," whispered Charlie, pointing out several more that Fred and George had missed, and a few more that they couldn't make out even with Charlie pointing at them. "They're picking wood lice off the trees—it's a symbiotic relationship. The tree gives it a food source—the wood lice and such—and place to live, and the bowtruckle keeps it relatively free of parasites and drives away whatever dangerous creatures it can."

"Like what?"

"Us. They prefer trees that can be used for wand-wood, which unfortunately means wizards go around hunting for bowtruckles. But the Forbidden Forest is so thick with them that they can't all have wandwood-quality magical trees. I asked Hagrid if he thought they were overpopulated, but he thinks they're at sustainable numbers for such a mature forest—you don't usually get expanses of woods like this in Britain—they were all logged more recently. Um, Hagrid didn't say it that way, of course, but you'll find he knows an awful lot if you learn how to get it out of him. I'm getting tired—let's get on back to the school."


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They did, in fact, get back to their dorms without incident—brooms really were faster and quieter than skulking about on foot. They had broken more rules in the past two hours than they had all year, and Charlie had led them around without any fear of getting caught. They were in awe. "Well, I didn't want to teach you all this your first year," he explained, "when we'd all get in way more trouble if we were caught. Also it's good to learn stuff on your own, and get good at a few things at a time. Mostly, though, I just didn't think of it. I mean, it's not like Percy was ever interested in anything I did."

Fred and George almost laughed, but Charlie had sounded genuinely unhappy when he brought up Percy.

"Uh, thanks, Charlie."

"That was amazing."

"And don't let Percy get to you—he's a git."


"Yeah, I know. He's still our brother, though, and I'd like to be able to share stuff with him. I'll be gone next year. So, it'll be up to you two to do this for Ron and Ginny."

"Ohhh." They said, realizing they had just had responsibility thrust upon them.

"Did Bill show you around like this, too?"

"No," said Charlie, "he wasn't interested in the forest much. Bill taught me to cast wards. And break them." With that, he turned around, yawned, and started for bed. "Good night, you guys!"