Gamble

Charlie had played one hell of a gamble. The Order of the Phoenix member furthest from all of the action, he had received the message of a call to arms and needed time to get back to England. Along the way, though, he had gathered everyone he could, playing a potentially dangerous waiting game. They would need reinforcements, he knew - but if he came too late, reinforcements would be useless and he'd only be leading innocents to their deaths.

He had led all the family and friends he had found to Apparate into Hogsmede. Instead of rushing as immediately as the instinctual redhead wanted, they had attracted quite a bit of attention. They found more support in the villagers of Hogsmede, quickly dispatched of the few Death Eaters left to keep them in line, and took a moment to amass the lines once more.

"Save Hogwarts!" The battle cry resounded in every throat, invigorating the mismatch of troops. Charlie yelled the loudest, the moment of rest ten moments too long for him.

Picking their ways past dead bodies of students had dropped a few to their knees before they even made it to the bridge. Others began to drop out of the line, taking care of stray Death Eaters. A group of ten charged after a pair of giants. A stray Snatcher slammed into a young woman just beside Charlie, and he barely slowed to grab the ragged man by his shirt and slam him into the ground.

Charlie kept itching to jump into a real fight, but he had taken on the responsibility of leader. It had been years since he had assumed such a mantle. He didn't even look the part. He was a rugged soldier through and through: he showed up clad in a set of robes already tattered and singed, his body was rough with scars and recent burns, and he had the hardened eyes of a fighter, not the soft eyes of a thinker.

He wanted to fight. He had to lead. His whole family was in there; the clock at home had to be going crazy.

"Almost there!" he hollered over the chaos, and his voice carried like a dragon's roar.

The gamble was still up in the air. Had he come too late?

---------

It isn't right, what they're doing. But they have to play by someone else's rules, and that someone else happens to be the most vile wizard in history. Charlie remembers holding back for a moment, keeping the entryway safe for the reinforcements he's brought.

Until he hears his mother scream.

The chaos pounds in his ears and he can make heads nor tails of anything but that doesn't matter. He takes charge again, barreling past those he has led in, pushing aside some heavy professor still in night robes. He should have never left from the lead position. He has no idea who has fallen and who still stands, though he sees He-Who-Must-Be-Killed still standing and sees neither hide nor hair of his little brothers or big brother or their savior Harry and he searches the crowd most intently for his little sister.

Merlin's beard!

A tremor in the air behind him. Charlie whirls around in time to sidestep a flash of green light erupting from the wand of a Ministry official. His good fortune is another's downfall, and he hears the scream of a girl whose name he can't remember. But he sees her fall from the corner of his eye, her green eyes wide with disbelief and her brown hair framing her pained face. Her little sister was in Hogwarts and she just wanted to see her one last time. The others keep rushing in. Even Charlie has continued to run, the girl now five, now ten, now fifteen feet behind him as he lunges at the Imperiused witch who cast the spell. He Stupefies her and throws her to the ground.

For a moment, he cannot decide on a course of action. It's a strange feeling for the impulsive wizard, so used to feeling focus in the now. He sees He-Who-Must -- no -- he sees Voldemort, and an anger surges in his chest such as he's never felt before. But then he sees his sister fighting alongside friends against a wild, cackling witch, and another, more intense anger replaces even that. He sees the blood drained from her face as much as he sees the blood on her and knows the toll this is taking on her.

He can't see the rest of his family, and knows what that could mean, and then he can hear nothing of the chaos, only the rush of rage in his ears.

He can get to neither Voldemort nor his sister because his moment of hesitation has cost him and gotten him surrounded. He cannot make out the leering faces and he doesn't care now. The first jet of expected green light comes from his side and he drops, and the Snatcher kills a Death Eater behind Charlie. The redhead points his wand and the full body bind drops another Death Eater to the ground and it's only the second afterward that Charlie actually screams the spell. His mind and his body work at two different speeds.

He rolls to avoid another curse that scorches the floor and he kicks down the Snatcher. The others have moved to easier targets, but the Snatcher, nearly feral, snarls and grabs Charlie's wand arm, pinning it back and nearly breaking his wrist. Neither boy will find new prey. The wand draws back, and the Snatcher grins as the word "Avada-" comes to his lips.

But the rest does not come. Charlie blinks and when he opens his eyes again, expecting to see the green light, determined to face death head-on, he sees a dragon talon in the Snatcher's chest. He sees the cord that reminds him it's his own necklace, a charm he has carried for years. Then he sees his own hand wrenching out the talon. The Killing Curse dies on the Snatcher's lips.

But Charlie cannot afford another moment's pause and he drops the talon, feeling it thud against his chest as it falls back into place. He grasps his wand tighter than ever, and now the words for the full body bind come much faster as he works his way into the crush of fighters. He relies on his free hand as much as his wand, punching and slamming aside wizards while firing off his magic. An intense blast of a screeched "Incendio!" burns through his robes but the searing pain in his back only feels nostalgic as his mind blocks out pain. He turns and disarms the wizard before putting out the fire. He needs to get to Ginny.

He pushes past one last throng of wizards and sees his sister safe – and his mother killing Bellatrix Lestrange.

He finally stumbles to a stop and wonders if his mother feels remorse and knows that in the moment she does not. And then he wonders if he should. Blood still covers his hand.

That moment does not last long, either. Moments never do. A scream fills the room, bodies are flying backward. Professor McGonagall is one of those flung aside and nearly into Charlie; he runs to her, afraid to show himself to his family yet, even as he sees Voldemort turn to his mother, and suddenly fear makes him stiffer than a statue, caught halfway between helping McGonagall up.

"MUM!"

"PROTEGO!"

Harry. Harry blessed Potter has finally appeared. He isn't dead. Charlie stares and doesn't realize it as McGonagall helps herself up with Charlie as a frozen support.

Thank Merlin. Thank Potter. He wasn't too late. The gamble worked!

---------

Charlie had always known intense focus. It had kept him from fearing smashing into the ground when he played Quidditch and helped him always find the Golden Snitch first. It had kept him alive while he spent years studying dragons, sometimes wrangling them, often caring for found hatchlings and getting as covered in burns and scars as in his hundreds of freckles. It had kept him alive tonight. He had shown up looking like he'd been through a battle, his body battered at all times, and he had surged through throngs of Death Eaters and assorted villainy. He came out scathed, but it all blended in, and he felt, physically, no worse for the wear.

Until he saw her.

He had been told of his younger brother's death. It had stabbed deeper than any dragon's talon, even the one that had stained his hand with blood, and his heart ached and burned. He had been prepared to see Fred's body, was already mourning as he came crashing down from the adrenaline that had kept him alive. Tears already stung his eyes.

No one had told him...

No one had thought to warn him that Tonks hadn't survived.

He almost didn't recognize the woman, her hair in such a limp, quiet state. He knew her loud, boisterous, infectiously happy, in both her personality and her looks. He knew her as his best friend, and he had seen her at her best and her worst. This was something even worse than worst - because even at her worst, she had been loud, had been there, had been alive.

"No..." he choked out, boots stamping on the bloodied castle stone as he took off. He ran to her side, the one opposite her husband, the man Charlie had grown fond of, glad he had given Tonks what Charlie never could. "Nym, Nym please..." He fell to his knees beside her, stumbling on the steps. He grabbed her limp form, cradling her head and torso. "This is your worst... worst acting job ever," he said. "I-" He didn't know what else to say, because that was when she would have interrupted him.

No more words came. It would take some time before they did again, before he could get used to talking in a world where she wouldn't interrupt him or scold him for not dreaming of something more. Where the twins wouldn't tackle him and prank him and play connect-the-dots on his freckles and they'd all laugh. Where he would have to live with a heavy heart and a hand that had taken a life, a human life, circumstances be damned and forgotten. Where he would have to live outside of the simple life he had grown to love.

He folded over Tonks, holding her in his lap. He wondered if he could have come soon enough. If he had just left Romania for a while. If he had just been there for her like he had sworn he would. He had broken her heart before, but he had never broken such an oath. How could he have been so stupid? He bowed his head to hide the tears he had expected to come, had accepted, but still burned his cheeks with shame.

He'd gambled poorly. He'd been too late.