Dragon Tears - 1/7 - Teen - Charlie/Hermione
Title: Dragon Tears (1/7)
Author: silvernatasha
Rating: Teen
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: Sometimes, something bad can start something good. Charlie/Hermione.
Word Count: 1201.

After studying Hermione for a moment, Miranda frowned. “You look positively exhausted.”

Hermione sighed. “I was up late reading. I lost track of time and it was three o’clock before I finally realised the time.” Most bosses wouldn’t have been too impressed by this admission, especially as Hermione had risen at five for work, but Miranda just nodded at the coffee pot. To the American witch, coffee was the cure for just about everything, from fatigue to flu.

“Try and wake yourself up a bit,” she advised. “Best not to be half-asleep when dealing with the dragons.”

“I suppose not.” Hermione poured herself a mug, deciding that black coffee was the way to go. She lifted the mug, just inhaling the scent for a moment as she leant against the table. For someone who had survived the War, studying dragons probably wasn’t the safest occupation to pursue, but after everything that she had been through, Hermione knew that she wasn’t the sort of woman who would ever be able to work behind a desk.

Now, twenty-two years old, she had been in Romania for just over a year, collecting data on the local Longhorns. The authorities had recently moved a Peruvian Vipertooth into the reserve, which had caused upset among the dragons and the researchers. Things had only just started to calm down when mating season had started. Several clutches of eggs were now situated around the reserve, but no-one knew what they would have on their hands when they hatched.

“Post’s here!” Charlie Weasley came into the tent, slinging a sack onto the table.

Hermione yawned, covering her mouth. “Anything for me?” After a quick inspection, it turned out there wasn’t. “Okay, I think I’m going to go for a quick walk,” she announced. “See if the fresh air will wake me up a bit.”

She downed the rest of her coffee, pulling a face at the bitter taste. She would have much preferred tea, but Charlie had used the last of the teabags; he drank the beverage as though it were water.

“When you come back, we need to go take a look at Misty’s eggs, okay?” Charlie inspected a package that had arrived. Although the dragons were officially documented by a unique number, Charlie had a habit of naming each and every dragon. Hermione had arrived at the reserve just after the last mating season and had initially been rather confused by the way that he had started referring to ‘the babies’ and ‘my kids’.

Misty was probably his favourite dragon, although he was often worried about her because she was old in dragon terms. This was most likely going to be her last clutch of eggs, too, as she would most likely fall victim to some of the younger, more aggressive females on the reserve.

“Okay, I won’t be long,” Hermione promised, fishing in her pocket for a hair tie. Pulling her hair into a high ponytail, she stepped outside, pausing for a moment to let the cool breeze wash over her. It looked as though it was going to be a nice day, and looking around, she spotted that someone had left the bucket loose. They’d already managed to lose one bucket by doing that, so she set off down the well-trodden path to the well, quickly hanging the bucket on its peg.

Hermione took a drink of water - it was so cold that it made her teeth ache. She shivered slightly, looking back at the tent, which was just moving gently in the wind. It was a bit tent, housing seven of them. A further four researchers lived in another tent about half a mile away, but they were more prone to move around.

She loved the stillness and quiet on the reserve. Well, the sound of dragons mating in the night was hardly the nicest sound, but it never lasted long. The tent was situated about a mile away from the nearest dragon dwelling, too, so the sound wasn’t at its loudest.

The landscape always intrigued Hermione. It seemed to be perpetually changing and she always seemed to noticed something different every time that she took the time to study it in any detail. Had she been an artist, she would have loved to have painted it. Charlie liked to sketch and he often did drawings of the dragons, but when he turned his hand to the landscape, she felt as though the images he produced never truly capture the wildness of the landscape.

But could you ever truly draw the landscape as it was? It was wild, but by drawing it, it seemed to suggest that it was something that could be tamed and that didn’t seem right to Hermione.

Hermione stretched her leg, her knee aching from a recent injury. She frowned, deciding that it would probably be best to rub a little of the soothing ointment that she had been given into the joint before she went to check on Misty with Charlie. Turning, she made back to the tent.

The explosion knocked her from her feet.

Her knee ached more now and Hermione stared at her hand; it was bleeding where she had put her hand out to stop her fall. There were grazes on her knees and palms. For a moment, she just stared at them, before a scream of pain jolted her from her own insignificant injuries.

“Fuck.”

The tent was practically gone. It was burning, the wind whipping up the flames. The spell that made it larger on the inside than the outside was gone, and the massive area of the tent spread out across the ground, its true size revealed. Hermione didn’t know where to look. When she saw Pete, the oldest member of the team, coming out of what had been his room, she stumbled to her feet.

She shrieked, ducking as several more explosions went off. The jars of dragon blood that they had been studying had exploded and Hermione realised with a horror that Jessica had been thrown from the tent, along with shards of glass and wood. Pete. Jess. Mark and Addie were out checking on the Peruvian Vipertooth. So where were Charlie and Miranda?

The kitchen.

The smoke from the fire was stinging Hermione’s eyes and she desperately wished she had her wand. It was in her bedroom. It was in the tent. As she ran for the burning thing that had been her home, Pete grabbed her by the tops of her arm, pulling her round to face him. “It’s going to collapse,” he managed to gasp out. A nasty burn ran down the side of his face, worse than any that Hermione had seen in the past year, or even during the War.

“You can’t go in there.”

“Charlie… Miranda. They’re still in there.” Hermione turned her horrified gaze to the tent, seeing something moving.

“Oh, god.”

“You see to Jess. I have to try and help them.” She wrenched herself away from his grasp.

“Don’t be a fucking idiot, Hermione.”

Hermione had never been particularly brilliant at thinking on her feet. Taking a deep breath, though, she ran for the burning tent. “For once, I don’t care.”