Name Change
Weeks passed, life passed slowly, so slowly that Charlie felt himself getting stir crazy. When Iris would allow it, he would meander the garden with her, limping along, and look through the flowers that she had carefully cultivated.
She did have an absolute blast explaining all the types of flowers that they had on the farm. His favorite though were the exotics she had carefully tucked into a large greenhouse near the front of the farm, full of orchids, plumeria's, monstera's, hibiscus, bromeliad's and much more. He felt like every time he went in he could find something new in there.
It was getting close to fall, and the cool chill of autumn was in the air. He had a nice spot under one of the large flower trees, where he would sit and sketch, or read over his old logs and enjoy being outside. On this day in particular, the tree decided it was time to drop all of it's blooms that were currently raining down on him. It felt like every minute he was flicking the purple petals off his pages. Some of the chicken's had come over his way and were pecking around the ground, and would cluck happily when he would flick the flowers off of him, eating them quickly. Everything was beginning to droop and die off for the season and Iris and her employee's were out cutting things back, collecting seeds, or what was dubbed the 'worst task' which was digging up and getting the Dahlia's ready to be stored for the winter.
He had heard Iris talk about how the dahlia's were the bread and butter of the whole operation. People paid good money to have some of the dinner plate size blooms for their bouquets or cut flowers. It was nice to see her in her own little world, doing exactly what she was good at.
Things had been surprisingly good between them. It almost felt like they were dating, rather then roommates, not that he actually knew what dating was like. Even saying they were roommates was a stretch depending on the day a few weeks ago. Iris smiled more, and seemed more at ease around him, and he could sleep easy at night without the fear that she would suffocate him in his sleep.
Iris was walking with a large straw basket over her arm as she collected dead heads of flowers and put them in bags to collect seeds later for the chance of creating new types of flowers.
The sun was setting and Charlie stood up, cracking his neck from being hunched over for so long. He watched from his spot as one of the ladies approached Iris and handed her a large box and Iris seemed to light up, and looked towards him. She said a few things, pointed here and there and then headed his way.
“Do you need help getting in?” She asked as she bent down and picked up a few of his things.
“If you don't mind grabbing that, I should be ok.” He explained and she looked a little overwhelmed by this things, her basket of flowers, and all of his things. He gripped his cane, he had been given a walker to help him get around but he had straight out refused it, saying he would rather trip and fall flat on his face then use a walker before he was a old man. Instead he had used a cane, and that seemed to pacify the healers at St. Mungo's including Chiara and Talbott.
Inside their house, Charlie saw a stack of letters stacked up from the owls dropping them off, and Heuchera was chirping indignantly. Iris's little owl, for being so teeny-tiny, was quite large for personality. He walked over while Iris piled all the things in her hand on the table, turning her attention to the box.
“It's short notice but Mum wants to know if we can come over tonight for dinner.” Charlie told her.
“Oh yeah, I don't see why not. I don't have anything to do, are you ok with that?”
“I think it sounds great, we can take over some of that cheese you made, I'm sure Mum would love that.”
“So would your dad. We should take some of that blue cheese I tried too, in case Harry and George are there too.” Iris added as she opened the flaps of the box and gasped a little.
“Anything wrong?”
“No! It's fantastic! Look at this!” Iris pulled out a book, with a ton of colorful roses, “it's from David Austin! He's the King of Muggle roses! And he knows my name!” It was like watching a kid in the candy store. “Listen to this,” she pulled out a letter and began to read it, “dear Iris Weasley, it is my sincere pleasure to send you an advanced copy of my newest book along with some of the roses from our garden. I hope you enjoy what you see and hope you also consider being a ambassador for our roses by carrying some of our unique roses on your farm!” She was almost shaking, but the only thing that Charlie heard was Iris Weasley. He had no idea when she had formally changed her name.
“I'm so happy for you Iris. You really deserve this.” He told her, not wanting to rock the boat.
“I'm going to make Mum a arrangement to take over tonight.” Iris said happily, pulling the cut roses out to inspect them. Charlie shuffled through the rest of the mail until he noticed a letter addressed to him from the sanctuary and quickly opened it, his heart beating roughly in his chest. He honestly thought it was going to be a pink slip, excusing him from his job at the sanctuary.
“What is it?”
“There's a mandatory meeting at the reserve tomorrow.” He explained, feeling slight relief.
“Do you feel like you can handle portkey or floo transportation now?”
“We're about to find out. I feel like floo is going to be less painful.” He explained to her, folding the letter up and tucking it into his jacket pocket. “Good thing is I have that check up of sorts tomorrow morning, the meeting at the sanctuary isn't until late afternoon.” Iris nodded as she searched through her cabinets for the perfect vase for Molly.
“Have you ever thought about writing a book?” She asked him as she pulled a vase from one of the cabinets.
“Who? Me?” Charlie asked her.
“Yes you. I know you've written tons of journals, even back when we were at Hogwarts's, you had journal's dedicated to the Dragons that were on the creature preserves nearby. You have enough to write a book, hell, you probably have enough to write ten!” Iris encouraged him. “And what you know now about Goldie, that could change the way we interact with dragons.”
“I wouldn't even know where to start.”
“I do, actually. Murphy has written a couple books about Quidditch, I could write him and see who published their books and if they'd be interested in a author specializing in dragons.” Charlie had to smile because he could tell that Iris was genuinely serious about getting him to write a book. He had thought about it a few times, he remembered when he was little how hard it was to find a book dedicated to dragons, and dragons only. He thought about other little kids that had an interest in dragons and how he could help them pursue their passion. How if he and Iris ever had a child, he could show them into his world.
“On one condition.”
“What's that?” Iris asked him.
“Kids books.” He told her, “in addition to the journals for Dragonologists to study, I want to make like... Jr. Dragonologist books.” The smile that came over Iris's face was bright.
“I think that's really sweet.”
“Well, I'm happy we are on the same page.” He winked, making her shake her head at his goofy pun.
~*~
Iris hadn't been able to go with Charlie to his appointment the next morning. A deluge of rain had almost flooded the dahlia fields and it was time for Iris to use some magic to get the tubers out of the ground so that they didn't rot. It was fine though, he finally felt like he could be more independent and this was the first day he would be doing things without Iris or his Mum.
The healer looked over the paperwork and had inspected Charlie from head to toe, perhaps even a little too thoroughly in the red heads opinion. He was currently hmm-ing to himself and Charlie wished that Talbott had been there.
“Mr. Weasley, I think it's alright if you return to your physical activities so long as you take it slow.”
“So I can go back to work?”
“I said, physical activities, not work.” The Healer said, “I understand that dragons are exceptionally interesting and you want to go back, but I don't want you to return too early. If something else happened similar to what got you here then you may not get so lucky.” He explained. “The injuries you sustained I have only ever seen on corpses. I would hate to let you return to work to early, and widow your wife.” The Healer didn't know it, but he had hit a nerve and Charlie nodded. He didn't know if Iris had mentioned it to him that she had been widowed once already or if it was a more innocent metaphor, or maybe Chiara or Talbott had said something to him.
“No, I wouldn't want that.”
“Start small, walking, gardening if you wish. You can go back to work only if you keep to the more mundane tasks such as paperwork or even taking a role as a nutritionist. Actually working with them may be a few more weeks, but I expect you will be back to working with them by the new year.”
That was only a few months away and Charlie felt excitement in his veins.