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Even the Wolf In You	By : KohakuShadow Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Bill/Charlie Views: 5306 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of it's characters, nor am I making any money off of this fic. Obviously.

Chapter List
- 1-1
- 2-2
- 3-3
- 4-4
- 5-5
- 6-6
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Even the Wolf In You

I.

Charlie groaned when the fire dinged at him. He'd only just flopped down onto the couch, but it seemed there was no rest for the weary. Between tending dragons and recruiting bloodsuckers, he felt like he never slept anymore. He was exhausted, but there was only one reason left for a firecall and it wasn't a nightcap. He crawled over toward the flames muttering "I'm coming, I'm coming," until he fell to his podgy belly on the rug and accepted the incoming.

It was his father. He thought the man looked a little extra haggard today, but it was really rather hard to tell when your face was made up of bits of tinder and ash. "Dad. What is it?"

"Charlie," Arthur's image crackled at him, forcing him to sit up properly. His father waited for him to adjust.

"Just spit it out," Charlie tried to joke through the unnatural stoicism on Arthur's patchwork face. "Or the suspense will kill me."

"Come home," Arthur said very clearly. "Your brother's been injured."

Charlie tensed. "Ron?" he asked. It was the most obvious, really – running around with the boy who lived 'n'all.

The fire crackled again as Arthur shook his head a bit. "It's Bill. He..." Arthur seemed to look at something behind him, past the fire. "Well, you'll see when you get here. We're in the infirmary at Hogwarts. Can you...?"

Charlie hadn't heard a word after Bill. He started to scramble around the apartment for all those little, important things you can't leave the house without and somehow ended up with a toothbrush, two packs of chewing gum, and an umbrella. He'd been halfway out the door when he remembered to backpedal for his trainers and wand. When he reached for it, he looked at his toothbrush like it was some foreign object and he was an idiot for having picked it up in the first place. He left it on the kitchen counter. He was thundering up the halls of Hogwarts when the umbrella snagged on a torn tapestry. He paused, realising what he was holding, and swore under his breath, leaving it hanging there and continuing up the corridor. He took three steps at a time toward the infirmary, praying the stairwells didn't change on his way up and delay him, all the while hoping he was having a nightmare. Bill couldn't really be injured right? This was Bill, after all, and Bill was bloody well invincible. Charlie had always thought so. The rest of their little troupe of red-haired miscreants seemed to have the same opinion as best he could tell. He grudgingly admitted to himself that he hadn't really been paying as much attention to his family as he ought to since he moved to Romania.

He half-expected to push the infirmary doors open to find a gaggle of Weasleys around his older brother, who would be a little battered – a bandage here or there – but laughing at them all for making dragons out of salamanders. He had the image firmly planted in his mind by the time he pushed the doors open. He was more than a little disappointed to find the scene was not nearly so light-hearted as he'd hoped.

Molly was leaning against Arthur's shoulder. Ginny was sitting stiff at the foot of the bed. Even the twins

didn't have much to say. Lupin was there too - though Charlie didn't understand why at first. That blonde thing that Bill so fancied was also present and accounted for as if she were already part of the family. Whatever. Charlie didn't really see why everyone made such a big deal out of Fleur. She was just a pretty girl. He figured pretty girls were a knut a dozen, but if Bill had taken a fancy to her, there must be something more there. If there wasn't, his brother was more shallow than he'd ever imagined to be so easily won over by an accent and a few waves of blonde hair.

'Merlin, Charlie, what the hell are you even thinking about?' His thoughts were all over the place, as they often were when he was a bundle of nervous energy, trying not to focus his attention on something important. He let his gaze shift from the French twit (reminding himself that was unkind and that he barely knew her to make such a blanket statement, even within the privacy of his own mind) to his older brother's prone form.

His stomach lurched. Bill's handsome face had been badly mauled, and the bedsheets not yet cleansed of the blood splatters. He took a stiff step forward. "What happened to him?" he asked tightly.

George got up out of the chair beside the bed to let Charlie have it. All comedy aside, even the twins wouldn't tease Charlie about his blatant favoritism just now. They would, of course, give him no end of grief over it later, years and years worth – if the tiny smirk they exchanged as Charlie slid into the empty seat and curled his fingers around Bill's left hand was any sign. Fleur was still stationed to his brother's right and showed no indications of moving any time soon. Charlie wasn't sure whether he wanted to hate her a little more, or a little less, for that. He'd give the matter a detailed analysis later. Bill was far more important to him than the tramp he'd decided to marry. Unconscious yet, Bill didn't respond as Lupin reiterated recent events for Charlie's benefit. Charlie made out a word here, a phrase there, just enough to understand that Bill had been mauled by a werewolf, but not much more.

"Remus doesn't think there will be any major side effects," Molly echoed in a drab, humourless sort of way. "But even so we..." She lost her train of thought and shook her head a bit.

Arthur picked up where she left off. "For the moment, there's really no way to be certain. We're going to have to keep a close watch on him."

Charlie nodded dully as his gaze traced Bill's bloodied features, memorising each new scar. It was well over an hour before a word anyone had to say to him really registered. When something finally clicked, it was Ron standing next to him with a plate of sandwiches and a glass of water. He blinked. It felt like it had been a while since he'd done that, too. "Not hungry," he answered quietly.

"That can't be my brother Charlie. He never turns down a meal." The voice that said those words was dry and rough. Charlie felt Bill's hand tighten a bit around his own.

"Don't wander off too quick, Ron. That roast beef has my name written all over it," Bill added as he started to come to. He had no idea how long he'd been out, but figured it must have been a while, because he was famished. He wiggled his hands free of the worried grips to either side of him and pressed one to Charlie's shoulder, using it as a support to pull himself upright.

Charlie knew he'd felt Bill's hand on his shoulder hundreds of times in his life. It was such a small thing, but it's always the small things. They just pile one on top of the other until they become one big thing. Now Charlie wondered how he'd managed to ignore the obvious for so long. 'I love him. I'm in love with him.'

He blinked away the blind daze as he watched Bill smile – then grimace a bit at the pain from his injuries – as Fleur babbled at him and insistently cut his sandwich into tiny little slivers like one might do for a child.

'But it's too late. Fuck.' Charlie stumbled to his feet and offered Bill his best sheepish grin. "Little Wizard's room summoning," he laughed. "Back in a flash."

He hurried out of the infirmary and found the first dark alcove he could slam himself into. 'Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. I fucking love him. That's the reason I hate her. That's probably always been the reason. Bill...' Charlie bit the back of his knuckles because it was better than screaming and way better than sobbing. Really, all said, it was the only thing he could do. Bill had already decided who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, and besides that, they were brothers. It was ten different kinds of impossible. 'Stupid heart. This is shit. If I'd realised sooner then...then what, Char? You could have spent your whole life hiding from your family and friends and dragging Bill right down with you? Don't be a wanker. You know you couldn't do that to him, even if you stood a vampire's chance in daylight against six stone of blonde hair and painted toenails.'
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Even the Wolf In You