Beauxbatons [Charlie Weasley]

Hungary

Charlie sits bolt upright in bed, soaked in sweat, breathing heavily. He blinks quickly, his hands gripping the bedsheets beside him tightly, balling it into fists. His eyes dart around the dark room, and he tries to get his heart rate to calm down, tries to banish those gruesome images from his mind.

He had a nightmare. In fact, he has nightmares every night now. He has for the past two months. And they're all about the same thing.

Isabelle.

He hasn't seen her for the past two months, and hasn't heard from her, either. Not a letter, not a whisper — nothing. It's driving him insane. Even his subconscious is now thinking up horrifying and gruesome things Isabelle could be going through.

Each and every nightmare he has goes the same way — it starts off with Isabelle finding the Horntail, and having to face off against it one on one. She manages to hold her own for a moment, until the dragon either engulfs her in fire, spears her into the ground with its tail, decapitates her with its wing, or crushes her with its feet.

And every single time she dies in his mind, he wakes up, covered in sweat, unable to rid his girlfriend's screams from his mind. He stands up, shaking, sweat dripping from his bare chest, and heads out of the dark bedroom, pausing at the door to look back at the double bed, empty of Isabelle's figure that should be there.

He heads over to the kitchen, grabbing a glass and pouring himself some water. He drinks it all, still breathing heavily as he stares down at the empty glass. She's fine, he thinks firmly, as if trying to force himself to believe it. She's tough, she can handle herself. She's fine.

But no matter how many times he tries to convince himself of that, he still has that gnawing worry that something bad's happened to her. After all, she's been gone two months. And he hasn't heard a single thing from her.

As his breathing calms down slightly, he looks around the apartment. It feels so empty without her. The two of them got this little Muggle apartment in London so they could travel easily and quickly to and from the Ministry. It was so exciting to get the apartment; their first home together. But now, with her absent for the past two months, no place has ever felt less like home.

Every day, he's had to get up out of bed, force himself to get ready and head off to the Ministry, where he and all the other Dragonologists keep training and awaiting an assignment from Prickle. If he's being honest, his performance in all the training is starting to lack, and his group's noticed. They all know why, of course, but they still aren't the happiest with him. It doesn't help that the other two teams that got assignments on the same day as Isabelle's group are already back.

Everyone crowded around the first four as they got back, after only a week, listening intently as they told everyone about how they found the Common Welsh Green before it made it to the Muggle village, and easily helped it back to its Sanctuary. Three weeks later, the second group of four came back, practically beaming, going on and on about how they had a battle-type thing with the Swedish Short Snout egg thieves, and how all the eggs were still fine when they managed to collect them up. They delivered them safely back to the wild Short Snout, and the entire group of four grinned as they told of how delighted the dragon was at having her eggs back.

Charlie would have loved to be happy for them, he really would, and he tried to, but the only thing he could think of was why isn't Isabelle back yet? And now, a month later, she still isn't back, and his mind's still not at ease.

To make matters worse, in the time between the second group of four to return and the present day, another assignment was given to another group and they got sent off and came back. And Isabelle's group still hasn't returned. He could tear his hair out at this point.