A/N: I couldn't resist a little Charmione novella for the 2018 holiday season. I hope you like it. I've been having a lot of fun writing this one. It's almost complete in draft, so I'm hoping for some daily updates over the next couple of days until it's completely posted (you say, "Yaaaay!"). Happy Holidays and a very Happy New Year, everyone. I hope 2018 has been good to you.

xx-Kitten.

Home for the Holidays

By Kittenshift17

Chapter One

The kitchen door of the Burrow blasted open with a bang, a gust of blizzarding wind tearing through the warm house in an instant to reveal a strapping, hooded figure stomping the snow from his boots on the step. The adults inhabiting the kitchen of the Weasley family home all trained their wands surreptitiously on the figure in their surprise before the sound of a gleeful shout rent the air.

"UNCLE CHARLIE!" Victoire Weasley and Teddy Lupin both shouted in delight, the pair of them barreling toward the wizard as he stepped out of the cold and into the warm kitchen.

Charlie Weasley looked up, grinning. His hood fell back to reveal his gleaming red hair and freckled face just in time for the two children to crash into him. He stooped to pick both of them up, holding each child with one arm and lifting them from the ground despite their being eight and nine years old and hardly small enough for being carried around with ease.

"Happy Christmas, you pair of little blighters!" Charlie crowed to the children as they both cuddled into his embrace.

"Oh, Charlie, you're home!" Molly Weasley said happily, bustling over to her son intent on stealing the next hug from him just as soon as he'd finished cuddling the boisterous children.

Hermione Granger tucked her wand back into her pocket quickly, the temperature in the room spiking at least twenty degrees as she laid eyes on Charles Weasley. When no one else complained of suddenly being incredibly warm, she began to suspect the temperature spike might be localized to her knickers.

Galloping Gargoyles, but the man was a delight to the senses!

"Go on, now," Charlie was saying to the children after hugging them both. "Off with you and play. You'll get your presents later, yeah?"

"You got us presents?" Teddy asked excitedly, bouncing up and down as his hair wildly shifted through the colors of the rainbow in his excitement.

"What do you take me for, kid? Some heathen? Of course, there's a few presents tucked away in these pockets of mine for my favourite pair of rascals."

Teddy and Victoire both began to cheer and dance happily, shuffled out of the way as they were by Molly when she moved in to hug her second son.

"Howdy, Mum," Charlie said, his easy smile seeming to light up the room. "Happy Christmas, yeah?"

"Happy Christmas, darling. Oh, it was getting so late, I'd begun to worry," Molly fussed, hugging the man close before pulling back to peer into his face.

"Yeah, got a bit stuck coming through Customs, you know?" Charlie shrugged easily, not at all concerned by the late hour or the time it had taken to get himself home for the holidays.

Hermione looked on from across the room where she'd been fixing herself a drink while the rest of Charlie's family came forward to wrap him into back-slapping brotherly hugs, following stern handshakes for all. She waited patiently, drinking in the sight of him and trying to keep from having anyone spot the fact that she was beginning to squirm in her rapidly dampening knickers. Merlin, but the Dragon Tamer got handsomer with age, she was sure.

"Ickle Ronniekins," Charlie smirked when Ron strolled in and shook his elder brother's hand.

Hermione stayed quiet in the corner.

"Still calling me that, Charlie Bear?" Ron smiled good-naturedly, not at all rising to the bait of the childhood nickname his siblings had given him.

"Always will, little brother. How've you been?" Charlie grinned, though Hermione noticed the way his wild eyes bounced from Ron to Fred, to George, to her, then to his mother and then over to the hulking figure of a wizard just entering the kitchen.

"Good," Ron nodded. "I've been really good, Charlie. And you?"

"Living the high life, my friend," Charlie shrugged his muscled shoulders, beginning to wriggle out of his cloak when the warmth of the kitchen began to heat his chilled form.

Hermione bit her lip as he stripped down to only his jeans, dragon-hide books, and what looked like last year's Christmas sweater from his mother. It was green with a Chinese Fireball knitted on the front of it.

"Hey, listen, there's someone I want you to meet, Charlie. You know, officially," Ron said a little awkwardly when Fred and George exchanged grins and obviously wanted to pounce on their elder brother with questions about his 'high life'.

"Oh, yeah?" Charlie asked, and Hermione noticed the way his eyes darted to her in the corner again.

When he caught her watching him, he shot her a crooked grin and a shrug, making her think he had every intention of coming over to give her a hug just as soon as Ron sorted himself out. Hermione smiled gently in return before lifting her glass of wine to her lips and sipping.

"Yeah," Ron said, looking over his shoulder as a hulking wizard approached him from behind. "This is Greg. Greg, this is my brother Charlie."

"Goyle?" Charlie asked, surprising the lot of them that he knew who it was.

"That's me," Goyle nodded, his head. "Nice to officially meet you."

He held out his hand for Charlie to shake and Hermione held her breath, wondering if Charlie would make the connection yet that he was being introduced to Ron's boyfriend.

"Uh, you too, mate," Charlie said, looking slightly confused but doing the polite thing and shaking Goyle's hand just the same.

"Blimey, what a lot of fuss," Fred rolled his eyes when the handshake ended, and Ron stood their awkwardly, obviously at a loss of what to say next. Hermione could tell he'd been expecting to have to fight with Charlie as he'd fought with Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Fred, and George when he'd introduced Goyle to them as his latest love interest.

"Right," Charlie chuckled. "I think I need a drink, yeah?"

Ron frowned at his brother, but he didn't say anything as Charlie moved past him.

"Hullo, Hermione," Charlie said as he moved around his brothers and crossed the kitchen toward her.

"Hi, Charlie," Hermione said, hating that her voice came out huskier than she'd intended.

Before she could worry about blushing or trying to clear her throat, Charlie stooped a little and curled his arms around her waist, lifting her right off her feet and into a bone-crushing hug. She smiled against his shoulder, burrowing her face into his neck and breathing him in as she hugged him back. He smelled of smoke, and the outdoors, and of dragons. Hermione closed her eyes, reveling in the feel of his strong arms around her, holding her a foot off the floor with apparent ease.

"Happy Christmas, yeah?" he said when he let her down a minute later – much too soon for her liking.

"And to you," she smiled, her eyes dancing over his freckled face and drinking in the wicked little grin he shot her before he looked over his shoulder when George nudged him and handed him a glass of eggnog.

They didn't exchange any further small-talk before Charlie was swept away by his family into the living room, but the warmth of his body and the tingle of his touch after having been pressed against her so intimately for just a minute had left Hermione flushed and hungry for more.

Merlin, she needed to get her crush on the man under control. He'd never looked at her sideways, from what she could tell. He'd always thought of her as Ron's friend, and then Ron's girlfriend, and she didn't think he would ever think of her as anything other than a friend of the family. The last thing she needed was to make an arse of herself by attempting to flirt with the man or too obviously lusting after him.

She topped up her wine glass before strolling into the living room where Charlie had been pushed into an armchair by the fire – no doubt by his mother who was fussing over him having been out in the blizzard raging beyond the safety of the Burrow that chilly Christmas Eve. Already, Teddy and Victoire had claimed Charlie's lap as the perfect spot for them to sit and listen to him regale them all with tales of why he'd been late.

Hermione leaned her shoulder against the arched doorway between the living room and the kitchen, looking on greedily as he bounced his niece on his knee.

"What kept you?" Arthur asked of his son, pulling his wife down to sit on the couch when she kept trying to fuss with Charlie's hair and worrying that he wasn't warm enough.

"A few of the dragons wanted to share their holiday cheer with me," Charlie shrugged his shoulders. "Had a pair of Ironbellies giving us some grief just before I was set to head out, and we had to get the fight broken up and the wounds patched over before I could get away."

"Were you hurt, darling?" Molly frowned.

Charlie shook his head. "Nah, I'm alright, Mum," he said, but from the way he didn't meet the woman's gaze, Hermione could tell he was lying.

"What were they fighting about, Uncle Charlie?" Victoire asked, wriggling on his lap and completely enraptured by her uncle's tale.

"Just a squabble over territory, Vic," Charlie shrugged. "They're pretty fierce, those Ironbellies, and they don't like sharing their turf. The weather over there isn't much better than it is here, and one of the younger drakes thought he'd hole up in a cave on the mountainside to avoid the worst of it, see? Only the cave was already occupied by a big old mean drake we call Krampus. He's not real friendly, old Krampus, and he wasn't too keen on some young bloke invading his cave. They got into it pretty bad, but the young gun held his own."

"Did you have to wrestle them, Uncle Charlie?" Teddy asked, hanging on Charlie's every word.

Charlie grinned.

"I usually try to stay away from old Krampus," he admitted. "He was a people-eater, back in the day when he was first relocated to the Sanctuary. He was picked up near Mykolaiv in the Ukraine after he'd been destroying villages and eating all the muggles who lived there."

"Does he bite?" Victoire asked.

Charlie laughed.

"They're dragons, Vic," he smiled patiently. "They all bite."

"Oh," the little girl said, frowning.

"Anyway, old Krampus hasn't given us much grief since we got him sorted out about fifteen years ago, but I wasn't real keen on getting too close to the bloke, eh?" Charlie shook his head. "'Course, when he got the young gun in his jaws and started trying to chew his head off, me and the lads had to get involved."

"You wrestled him?" Teddy asked excitedly.

"Yeah, buddy," Charlie grinned. "He nearly had me, too, old Krampus. Thought he'd be clever and play dead when the young gun kicked him in the head. I pounced on him to restrain him before he could fight back, and the sod almost ate me!"

The children weren't the only ones engaged in the story and Hermione chuckled to herself when a few of the adults gasped in concern for Charlie, too.

"How did you get away?" Teddy wanted to know.

"I'm pretty quick, buddy," Charlie grinned. "I threw myself down right on top of his snout and clung onto one of the horns growing out the top of his head for dear life. You can't bite your own nose, see? You try it."

Hermione giggled when Teddy and Victoire both stuck their lower jaws out, tipping their heads and trying to bite their own noses. She shook her head when she noticed Ron trying it, too.

"Oi!" Ron exclaimed when Goyle leaned over and bit the tip of Ron's nose instead.

Everyone looked over and began to laugh when Goyle pulled back, looking smug.

"Gotcha," he taunted his boyfriend while Ron rubbed the end of his nose, laughing.

"See? Can't get it by yourself, can you?" Charlie chuckled. "One of the safest places to grab hold of a dragon is on his head because he can't bite you from so close. But you've got to be quick, otherwise he'll chomp you right up before you get hold of him."

Teddy and Victoire nodded seriously, obviously appreciating and absorbing the lesson in dragon wrestling. Hermione shook her head once more, smiling to herself as she watched the Dragon Tamer entertain and educate the two young children with no small amount of cluckiness. She was certain her ovaries might burst the longer the looked on, unable to keep from daydreaming of how he might one day look with a son or daughter with her curls and his coloring balanced on his knee or cradled in his arms.

"Whose hungry?" Molly asked sometime later after Charlie finished his story of how they'd subdued the fighting dragons, supposedly unscathed.

"I'm starving," Ron announced, and Hermione giggled when Goyle looked like he could eat an entire feast all to himself, as well. She didn't envy the pair of them their grocery bill, that was certain.

When everyone bustled their way into the kitchen to be seated around the hugely extended dining table – expanded to fit the spouses of the numerous Weasley offspring – Hermione found herself shuffled a little further along from her usual spot. She pressed her legs together under the table when Charlie rested a hand on her shoulder as he lowered himself into the seat beside her. She noticed as he did so that the move was just a little strained, and she began to suspect that though he wasn't walking with a limp, he'd done something to one, or both of his legs during his dragon-fight before coming home.

"You mind if I sit by you, Hermione?" Charlie asked even as he settled himself into his seat.

"Not at all," Hermione smiled, just a little breathless in his presence.

Charlie shot her a wink, releasing her shoulder as he was drawn into conversation with Bill when the eldest Weasley son claimed the seat on Charlie's other side. Leaning back in her own chair on Bill's far side, Fleur made eye contact with Hermione before crossing both her eyes as Charlie and Bill launched into discussion about their professions. Hermione laughed quietly, the half-veela Frenchwoman having grown on her in the eight years since Victoire's birth and following the close living quarters they'd shared when she, Harry and Ron had escaped to Shell Cottage during the war.

She wasn't surprised when the twins sat opposite them. Charlie didn't get home too often, so when he managed it, everyone wanted a chance to catch up with him. She felt almost bad that he'd chosen to sit beside her when so many of his siblings wanted the chance to talk to him, too. Not bad enough to move, of course. She wasn't about to give up such prime real estate when she'd had her eye on Charlie for what felt like years, now.

Ever since she and Ron had come to the conclusion that he was, in fact, bent as a bowtruckle, she'd been single and more than one fine young man had caught her eye. For almost five years, she'd been searching for someone who caught her attention and held it in a romantic or lustful sense and if she was being honest, she hadn't had a lot of luck until Charlie had come home for Christmas four years ago. She'd casually dated a few men, but none of them had been of consequence and since then she'd spent too many nights imagining a future with a man who hadn't ever looked twice at her.

She hated being a statistic, too, and Hermione was thinking that this was the year she was finally going to do something about it. She was tired of window shopping. She wanted to try things on for size. She didn't know what she might have to do to convince Charlie that she was an available and passionate young woman, but she was sure that a conversation or two might be a step in the right direction if she could just wrestle his attention away from his brothers and his parents for a few minutes.

NOTE: I wrote a book! A real one! You can find it on Amazon. Just search "PARANORMAL DIVISION: AWAKENING by Ellie J Duck." I'll adore you forever if you grab a copy today.