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There will be others.
I’m lying in bed, fiddling with the leather bracelet he made me before I left, trying desperately to believe my own words.
You only saw him seven days ago.
You haven’t found your soulmate – they don’t exist.
Regardless of what Pansy drones on and on about her and Neville bloody Longbottom.
I like to think of myself as a rational person, even if that rationality doesn’t always lead me to the finest choices in life.
And yet, as I’m staring up at the canopy of my four-poster bed, finally reunited with my eider down pillow and silk sheets, it feels like something is missing.
When I was first offered the option of community service as punishment for my crimes last year, I jumped at the chance. Anything – anything! – had to be better than a year in Azkaban. And yet, when I received the owl informing me of my home for the next twelve months, I almost changed my mind.
Romania. At a dragon sanctuary. With a fucking Weasley.
I wasn’t sure which was worse, the dragons – dangerous, dumb beasts, or a Weasley – magnanimous, dumb beast.
Greg convinced me that both were better than a Dementor, and Theo pointed out that at least Romania had some wine, while Pansy harped on about how maybe some time away from everything was what my (admittedly shaky) mental health needed.
And so I drank my cellar dry, moped around the Manor for a few days, lamenting my fate and cursing every portrait of my father I could find for landing me with it (Childish? Yes. But it was easier than taking responsibility for my own actions) and turned up at the Ministry at the appointed time for my international Portkey.
Granger laughed at me when she saw me in the Atrium. I can’t say I blame her; I would have done the same.
It was not the lightning bolt when our eyes met across a crowded room you hear about in stories. (See, not a soulmate. They’re not real.)
Instead, when I first met Charlie Weasley, it was him looking at me with disdain, making a snide remark about my clothes and harsh reminder that “my lot” were the reason he’d lost a brother, and I was lucky I was shovelling shit and not just being dropped into the enclosure with the nesting Hungarian Horntail.
I couldn’t blame him. I would have done the same. As much as I believe it was my father’s fault that I ended up where I was, I was learning to own up to my shit. I could have done more. Could have not strutted about like an overstuffed peacock. Could have accepted the help that was offered. But I let myself be led, like a pig to the slaughter, and now it was only the virtue of my age that I was here and not in a cell. Oh, and that one time they all turned up at Malfoy Manor.
I do have to admit, though, my first time meeting dragons was perhaps the closest I will get to love at first sight. (Okay, it was second sight – I'd been at the first task of the Tri-Wizard tournament, but I was too busy booing Potter to really notice them.) They were not raging balls of fire to be feared, and they were anything but dumb.
Perhaps if I had met the nesting Horntail first, I would not have been so easily dissuaded from my original view. But the first two dragons I met were called An and Cal. They were small for dragons - Cal was the size of an average, if overly long, dog, with short legs and a skinny body slung close to the ground. She was chaos incarnate, always running around looking for the next thing to investigate and doomed to set fire to them all when she sneezed, which was often.
An, meanwhile, was the size of a small, very round horse, with six eyes that blinked out of sync. She judged everything with deliberate consideration and was fiercely protective of Cal, even if was always with an affectionate eye roll. She also wore a hat, apparently stolen from Charlie, a knitted thing that sat between her horns, somehow not falling off.
I was captivated. And not just by the hat. Their bond, in spite of them being completely different species, warmed my heart in a way that would have turned my stomach if they had been human. It was like Neville and Pansy, if Neville could sneeze fire and Pansy would ever wear a beanie (And I’m still not sure which of those is more unlikely).
When Charlie pointed out I must have something going for me – because, when I unthinkingly reached out to stroke her nose, she hadn’t objected – my fate was sealed.
Dragons, I learnt, are proud as well as intelligent. They are majestic, and fierce (although, granted, you have to bend the meaning of those two adjectives to fit them to Cal), and beautiful.
And they actually like me, unlike most humans. I like to think that this is because they sense a kindred spirit. Charlie agrees, although apparently our common traits are in fact being proud and haughty with a superiority complex. I suppose at least one of them is the same.
While realising that I might enjoy the work softened the blow of being sent to the darkest corner of Romania, it did not alleviate it entirely. The accommodation was basic at best – a wooden cabin with a small bed with a lumpy mattress, and a shower, and a communal canteen that served a lot of meat, potatoes and dumplings (okay, I’ll admit the dumplings were delicious – the wine was decent too), and the days were long.
Working with dragons was hard; for all their positive traits, they were still dangerous. They were huge, demanding and, since they were at the sanctuary, often injured or incapacitated. They did not like being in captivity.
An and Cal were the exception. They would choose a person each morning at breakfast, with a logic no one could explain, and follow them everywhere for the rest of the day, demanding attention. Sometimes, if you were lucky, you could convince them to carry messages to other staff.
Watching Charlie with dragons opened me up to something that I hadn’t been expecting, something I don’t think I’d ever felt for anyone else – respect. The way he cared for his charges. Whether they needed a calming presence, or someone to make sure they did what was good for them, by whatever means necessary. Even if it meant throwing your own safety to the wind.
It made me wonder, if I’d had someone who had my best interests at heart and hadn't accepted my bullshit, I might have ended up differently.
Apparently, liking dragons was all it took for Charlie to forgive you. (Top tip for anyone who might be planning to offend him in the future, though do note I am not so easily bought. And I will find you.) He claims it was also the enthusiasm with which I took to working, the drunken (but very sincere) apology I made to him one night in the first few weeks there, and the fact that sometimes I had the air of an animal who had been kicked too many times (though I’m not sure where he got that from, as I’m fairly sure I kept my guilt-ridden, melancholic nights to myself).
Whatever it was, having him as a friend meant it wasn’t just the dragons that made living at the sanctuary bearable.
Accepting that Charlie Weasley was not who I expected him to be took me longer than accepting the dragons (obviously, he’s a Weasley, Merlin). But once the respect had set in, it didn’t take long for me to notice other things about him. He had a boundless energy he mostly used to try and help people as well as dragons. His sense of humour was almost as dry as mine, and his sense of self-preservation significantly lower.
Much to my initial consternation, it didn’t take long for the respect to turn to admiration, and with that came the inexplicable and overwhelming need for it to be reciprocated.
I started volunteering for more shifts, reading about dragons before I went to bed, brewing new potions that would help treat them, anything that might make Charlie pay more attention to me. To my surprise I actually enjoyed doing all these things too. To my even greater surprise (Pansy has informed me that this should not be surprising), it worked!
We started spending more of our free time together, at first going flying, or going to the pub in the local village, talking about dragons and flying, and home, and family. Activities that were undeniably more fun with two. But his company was addictive and, soon enough, I would take any excuse for more of it (which got me significantly better acquainted with the dragons - he’s obsessed) until it got to the point we’d just be sitting reading together, enjoying the quiet. Being with him made the voices stop.
Unsurprisingly, Charlie isn’t one for overt declarations and I spent longer than I would have liked trying to work out if I was reading into his actions simply because I wanted more than quiet company. Being villainised by almost everyone in your society after growing up thinking you were the dragon’s bollocks does nothing for your self-esteem. But even my stunted sense of whether someone likes me couldn’t misinterpret the signs eventually. We went from sitting in chairs to read, to sitting on the bed, sitting to lying – you can see where this is going.
I will say there was one thing about my initial assessment of Charlie that I stand by – he's a bit of a beast.
I thought I would be relieved by the time it came to leave the sanctuary. Pansy had been right, being away from it all had done wonders for my mental health. I’d learnt new skills, I discovered motivation (for the right reason), I was good at something. I’d grown as a person, and now, it was time for me to go home, back to my comfy bed, meals served on silver platters, my friends.
But saying goodbye to Charlie was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
We both knew it wasn’t a thing thing (y ou know, like a thing). We come from different worlds. And it wasn’t like we wouldn’t be keeping in touch (who else would listen to my own now incessant dragon chat?) But I had to walk away after he’d given me a hug and a bracelet of plaited leather. I used An and Cal as an excuse – I couldn’t leave them without one last daily scritch – but I think even they saw right through me.
And now here I am, one week later, having enjoyed the comfortable bed and the fine food, but still with a gaping hole in my being that feels like it is growing larger every day that I don’t see him.
I tried to ignore it. Last night I went out and got blind drunk with Theo, but all that did was make me try and fire call him at two in the morning.
There is only one rational thing left to do.
It is a terrifying thing, but the mere thought of not doing it is far scarier. So, still nursing a hangover that would incapacitate a Ukranian Ironbelly, I swing my legs off the bed, pack my bag, and brace myself for my mother’s reaction to the news that I will be moving permanently to a different country. Maybe I can convince her to release some family funds to upgrade the living quarters.
Perhaps there would be others. Perhaps I was right, and finding your soulmate really isn’t a thing.
But maybe they aren’t found. Maybe you have to make them instead.