Tit For Tat:

Disclaimer: If it were mine I would ship Ruby/Charlie; we've been over this. Stop rubbing it in.

A/N: I'm still working on Shamelessly, and I appreciate all of the support! I'll get back to it when I find my drive again, always seems to taper at the end. Anyway, enjoy!

Tit For Tat

I.

"She's going to have a cow when she finds out," Charlie heard someone say as he sauntered through the kitchen of the Burrow.

"And what makes you think she's going to find out?" Charlie asked the unseen face, which, after a moment reveled itself to be the very grown up Hermione Granger.

" I'm not going to tell her, if that's what you're asking." She replied. "But I'd be careful of when she does find out."

"I do know how to handle my mum, luv," Charlie told her. "Surprising, I'm sure."

"You Weasley men all say that," she began, "but the second she shows up you'll be at her feet. You always are."

"We're good to our women." There was silence.

"Hermione," Charlie asked for a moment.

"Mhm," she replied, not lifting her head from her book.

"Can you help me cover it up?"

II.

"Never have I ever gotten a tattoo," so that was how his youngest sister would play, Charlie thought to himself. He saw his younger brothers proudly put a finger down in the ridiculous muggle game Ron had forced them to play into extreme states of inebriation. But despite how much Ginny had thought he had had to drink Charlie saw something he thought he's never expect.

"So where is it, luv?" He asked her, cornering Hermione as she took her midnight walk around the garden.

"Where is what?" She replied.

"Your tattoo," he began, "the other night, you put down a finger, remember?" She left out a laugh.

"And you can put that down to too much firewhiskey," she replied. "To be honest, I'm surprised you remembered that at all."

"You're more interesting than you think, Miss Granger," he admitted, with a smile that left her analyzing for days.

III.

Her eyes were boring a hole into his back. Charlie could feel the resonating stare of confusing that Hermione seemed unable to break since he had first begun chopping at the stubborn root outside of his mother's garden.

Hermione would claim that it started when he first took off his shirt, giving her a tantalizing view of the sweat rivets slipping down the muscles in his back, the hard masculinity of a man's shoulder and the curious sight of the moving tattoo as it flipped and danced around his skin.

"See something you like?" He asked her, when he finally put the axe down for a drink of lemonade (which she cursed and applauded as the precipitation melted against the contour of his abs.)

"It's beautiful," she told him truthfully, stunned by the intricate design and awed by the art involved in its creation.

"Well, I know I am," Charlie replied, in good humor. But his smile faded as he watched her in awe. She reached her hand out for a moment, like a painting, her fingers just grazing the skin of his bicep. They caught eye contact for a moment and then she hurried off.

IV.

Charlie had taken to wandering around nearly buff. The summer had reached sweltering temperatures and even the shear fabric against his bare skin was enough to cause mild irritation.

Hermione sat out in the shade under the maple tree beside The Burrow. Her hair was plastered to her neck and her thin white t-shirt was soaked to her skin. She tried to read but couldn't focus.

"I'm going for a swim," he threw to her, as he walked towards. "Come with?" She couldn't help her feet as they dragged her to the pond, as if her body's subconscious desire to be near him was enough to cause forget of the heat and oppressive humidity.

"Charlie, your tattoo?" Hermione questioned, as she saw that it rested, no longer in the contours of his shoulders but now on the nice muscle of his hip.

" It's cooler down there," he said with a laugh.

"So it just flies around then," she asked him, as they floated on their backs through the cool pond.

"Just flies around then," he replied. She stood for a moment, blushing from her neck to her roots.

"Does it go everywhere?" She asked him, always the curious one.

"Why don't you find out, sweetheart?" He replied. They caught each other's eyes but a door slamming from the house broke them from their reverie.

V.

"Dance with me, Lioness?" Charlie whispered in Hermione's ear, the sweet curves of a woman's body so beautifully contouring to his own as they slipped, her cocktail dress, his tux, two people moving as one, from the sidelines to the dance floor. The tent was filled with people, all for the wedding of the Great Chosen One to his blushing, ginger bride. Wine flowed like the light from the candles and the music taught people how to let their inhibitions go.

Hermione knew it was out of character, to so wantonly let her body's movement fit the sensual motion of her partner's, but she was in this damn red dress and she was going to earn it.

"I found your tattoo princess," he added, as he moved her hair from her neck and allowed a sweep of the sweet skin with light peppered kisses, so light they could hardly be felt.

"Stat so?" she asked, moving just that she reveled in the moan he tried to bite back when the most carnal of her motions set the most animalistic of his desires running their course.

"Last week," he growled. "When you were taking a bath."

"Voyeur,"

"It's not my fault you didn't close the door." By now she could feel his lips against her bare neck and back, each time her spoke the heat of his breath tickling the underside of her ear and hitting her nape.

"In fact," he bit slightly at her earlobe, "I think you wanted me to see."

"Is that so?" She replied, incapable of concealing the moan that escaped her wanton lips.

"So," Charlie replied, spoon feeding Hermione her own medicine when he moved his desires against her own and she buckled back against him.

"Candles lit, light perfume, the bathroom door unlocked right next to my bedroom…" he paused to nibble her neck. "The sweet sound of your moans as you took yourself so close to me. My Lioness."

His hands slid down to rest on her hips, where beneath the slope of red fabric rested the riled face of carnal Lioness.

VI.

"He likes you," Charlie told her, as they lay tangled in a mass of red sheets, her head on his shoulders, her hand on the flighty dragon that now lazily roamed his abdomen.

"S'that so?" She asked him. "Well, she likes you." And it was true, the beautiful jungle cat had found its way to her shoulder blades, where it rested as close to her lover as it could.

"Dragons and Lions don't get along in nature," she laughed, contouring with his body even more than she had before.

"We don't really make sense, either, luv," he told her, kissing the crown of her brilliantly curly hair. " And yet, here we are."

And there they were, the Dragon and the Lioness, two animals that could never love in nature, but there they sat, in Charlie Weasley's bed, covered in Gryffindor colors, natural as could be.