Peace and quiet. After the news about You-Know-Who splashed the front page of the
Prophet, they were two elusive, bordering fictitious concepts. The kind of thing you read about in books set in libraries or, well, something. In the corridors, out on the Grounds, inside the owlery, outside the owlery,
everywhere -- there were murmurs. There was fear. And sometimes, Charlie sensed something worse than fear: satisfaction from it all.
Charlie was amazed that, of all the places inside Hogwarts, his dormitory was the one place he found empty and still. There was an unchanged quality to it. His bed was still unmade, sheets in a disarray, a grass-stained sock of his was still hanging off Kirley's chair. There were a whole litter of messes no one could be bothered to pick up, still there. Still unaffected. He could have fallen asleep, woken up again, and thought he had imagined it all. Dreamed it.
It would be nice if he could. He could go back to thinking Quidditch was the second most important thing in the world, right beneath dragons and everything Hagrid had to tell him about magical beasts that Professor Kettleburn could only show them poor quality photographs of.
Now, now those things almost didn't even matter anymore.
Collapsing across his four poster in a sprawl, Charlie closed his eyes and buried his face in a pillow.
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