“What is it exactly that offends you so much. What has a baby ever done to you to spite you so terribly?” His words were still calm, collected. He had to be, if he wanted her to follow.
“What?” she suddenly asked with much less fire in her voice.
“Why can I not look after this one boy? A boy who evidently has caused you great pain.” He elaborate further. Her demeanour changed to what she looked like normally. Her features slackened and her neck thinned to its beautiful regal smooth skin. However, the tense muscles in her jaw didn’t let up as much. Perhaps she was gathering her thoughts to address his question.
She shook her head a few times in the silence that followed his question. Her eyes jumped, clearly in response to her own, mindful argument. After a few more lengthy moments, she grew still and her hands flattened on the marble kitchen table between them.
“I don’t know how to best explain this, so that you could understand why I am so against the boy staying with us,” she told him with a tone of caution. They sat in the kitchen while the tea in Harry’s mug steamed into the silence that hung heavy between them. The tension was tangible and would one wield a knife, they would pierce it easily. At least that was how Harry felt about the air in the space that had increasingly been growing thicker with each outburst from his young wife. How this conversation would end was anyone’s best guess.
“You said Andromeda would take care of him,” she reminded him with an angry glare. “You said you wouldn’t have to raise him instead, that she would do it. You promised me that.”
The words slapped him visibly and were it not true, he would have snapped back at her instantly. Alas, he couldn’t. He’d indeed spoken those words to her six months ago, or thereabout. He couldn’t quite recall, it was a volatile time for the both of them.
“I know,” he began slowly, his hand slightly raised from the top of the table in placation. “I didn’t expect this to happen either, Fleur. But it is what it is now. I can’t possibly turn him away. He’s my responsibility now.”
“Resp-,” she rasped with venom. “He is not your son! He is Tonks and Lupin’s child. He’s a Black. He has his own birth rights and kin that could look after him.” Her words rang true, to a degree at least.
“I’m his kin, remember?” he posed carefully. He needed to calm her, for whatever reason, he couldn’t fathom why this development had irked her so much. “I promised I’d look after him if they couldn’t. So the point is moot, sweet heart.”
“Don’t call me that when you’ll accept another woman’s child into my home,” she hurled at him. “I won’t have it. I won’t. He’s not yours and not mine. Let him stay with someone else.”
He shook his head at her, understandably confused. “Why are you being like this? What’s gotten into you? Teddy is not some stray I picked up off the road and decided to keep.” He was slowly but surely losing his patience with the woman standing at the kitchen table a few paces away from him. Her nostrils were visibly flared and her eyes stormy.
“Don’t put this on me. I didn’t bring you someone else’s offspring to our doorstep.”
Her teeth were bared at him and had he not been sure, he would have thought her possessing fangs waiting to snapped at him. Her neck was growing redder by the minute.
“Fleur, you’re being unreasonable-”
He had to duck away from whatever she had thrown at him. Whatever it was – it sounded like breaking porcelain – had missed him by a hairwidth.
“Call me that one more time, Arry. I fucking dare you,” she howled once more. “I am not being anything. He will not stay with us. You will not raise him. Do you hear me?”
He heard her. How couldn’t he? She was all but engraving the words onto his forehead by now. It was becoming ridiculous.
Good thing she can’t read minds. She’d pop a vein – if she had any left to spare – if she could.
“What is it exactly that offends you so much. What has a baby ever done to you to spite you so terribly?” His words were still calm, collected. He had to be, if he wanted her to follow.
“What?” she suddenly asked with much less fire in her voice.
“Why can I not look after this one boy? A boy who evidently has caused you great pain.” He elaborate further. Her demeanour changed to what she looked like normally. Her features slackened and her neck thinned to its beautiful regal smooth skin. However, the tense muscles in her jaw didn’t let up as much. Perhaps she was gathering her thoughts to address his question.
She shook her head a few times in the silence that followed his question. Her eyes jumped, clearly in response to her own, mindful argument. After a few more lengthy moments, she grew still and her hands flattened on the marble kitchen table between them.
“I don’t know how to best explain this, so that you could understand why I am so against the boy staying with us,” she told him with a tone of caution.
“It’s…” she paused with insecurity marring her face. “It’s not that I carry a dislike for the boy.”
Harry remained quiet, gladdened that she seemed willing to put her feelings into words. You wouldn’t know it if you met her, but Fleur often struggled with this part of communication.
“It’s what his joining our home would mean,” she stated with a direct stare at him, loaded with meaning he couldn’t decipher.
“He’s a child of our friends,” he shrugged with a lack of understanding. “What possibly could he cause you so much grief for?”
“I’m Veela, Arry,” she whined. Her head dropped down in disappoint and her hands intertwined their fingers.
“So what?” He repeated his lack of understanding, his eyes narrowing at her with a deep frown. “What does that have to do with anything.”
“People will talk,” she hinted.
“About?”
“His being with us. In our home. As your ward or godson, or whatever you call it,” she tried again.
“How is that a bad thing? He has no one to turn to,” he argued against that. “Andromeda apologized already and begged me to take him. She’s not wrong to ask for help. And I’m his godfather. It’s not only right, it’s expected of me.”
“BUT HE’S NOT MINE, PUTAIN!” she shouted again. “Why won’t you understand!?”
“So what if he’s not yours?” He began losing his patience and raised his voice now too. “I did not bring you a bastard. I did not lay with another woman and bring you my forbidden fruit, damn it!”
“They will think me barren!” She shouted again, only this time it was followed by wet breaths. “They wll think I needed a cuckoo’s gift. They will think I couldn’t give you a son of your own.”
He was rendered speechless.
Before he could say anything, she turned in shame and ran from the kitchen, leaving him alone to the silence that remained.