Warden Style
It was ridiculous. Absolutely preposterous. His head felt light, the room shaking, the myriad of colours coming through the tinted windows forming a kaleidoscope around a singular form. It was almost as if the very world was fighting for some semblance of protagonism.
There was none to be had though, not when she was a contender.
So he closed his eyes. He closed his eyes, let the cold Scottish air work his magic, and opened them again.
There she still was. Elbows on the window frame, her hair moving under an ethereal breeze. Not for the first time he wished for an artist's talent, so that he could let out the ache he felt when he looked at her. He was spellbound.
"Took you long enough," Fleur said, turning ever so slightly with a cheeky grin adorning her face, "I would have thought you knew this castle better than anyone."
Harry shrugged, a grin of his own stealing across his countenance on the face of bashfulness, "You are not wrong."
"Of course I am not," she said perfunctory, "I rarely am. What kept you."
Harry raised his face, her curious eyes shifting something inside him. "There are things that are harder to find than a room."
She cocked her head to the side, curiosity peaked further, and it was all Harry could do to keep his lips from quirking up.
"So, what is it that you searched for, 'Arry, that kept you from me?"
He stepped forward, the air changing as he neared her, the caress of her fire floating in the ether around her, and he flushed, as he remembered the spark he felt when he reached her at the lake, the small, sound asleep form of her little sister curled like a cat in his arms.
"It was you," he whispered.
"I'm afraid, you are making less sense than normal, mon ami." She blinked with exquisite slowness and bit her lip, an action that made her flinch from the split that she still bore from the second task. He laughed as he saw it.
Such a mundane thing that he had not even notice it on her. All the small bruises and scratches that still tried to marr her face unsuccessfully .
"I don't know that I can make sense, but I know that I will never make sense again if I don't now."
"You lost me searching for me? And that is the reason you are late to meet me at the place you took pains to ask me to meet you?"
She moved to the side, opening up an inviting space next to her. He leaned, trying to look at her without adverting his eyes, his mouth suddenly dry.
She put her hand to his shoulder and gave him a worried glance. And as he looked at her then, he felt different. His nerves banished, for in front of him was his friend. A person that had wormed into his life in the strangest of ways, but someone he could not do without now.
Her expression changed slightly, and he could not help but think that the crease of her worried brows was the most adorable thing he had seen.
"Harry..."
"I... I like you, Fleur. I like you a lot more than I should." He turned to look at her, his face flushed. Whether in embarrassment or ardor he could not really say. "You have become a part of my life that I cannot fathom to part with. A- An-" He huffed, not for the first time frustrated at his eloquence, and turned his face to the grounds, trying to order his thoughts.
His face turned towards her's again, jump-started by her electric touch on his hand. Her brow still held the same cute furrow to it, but the rest of her face held a different kind of softness.
"Mon petite, you asked me to come here, to this abandoned and beautiful part of the castle, through a letter that came from an owl that was not your own and was written in a different hand than you usual, signed with a single H." Her eyes glittered under arched brows
"So you knew that-"
"I had my soupçons. My- my hopes."
"And-"
" 'Arry."
"Yes?"
"I came here, did I not?" She smiled. Such a smile that blazed through him, burning through weights that he had carried for a lifetime. A smile that opened a door that he could only hope to hold open for a long time to come, and so he smiled back, trying to give her a fraction of what she had just given him.
He turned to look at the door, a door that was, coincidentally, open too, and he could not help but laugh. Her gaze followed his towards the door that led to the rest of the world, though she suspected the bubble of them would carry even beyond such a threshold. Her eyes rested on his vibrating ones and she smiled again, her hand pulling at his.
"Allez," she breathed, and so they went. Together.
LTCMDR Michal Drápalík Style
Feets crambled behind, the sound of metal against stone amping the nerves, cruel laughter and a language that was as alien to the ears as the singing of the distant stars. Hands tightened on the leather grips of his arms.
He turned and look at the otherworldly visions behind him, two little girls, shining like the moon and shivering In fright like tiny glittering stars.
His hair fell upon his darkened green eyes.
Run, he said, and run they did.
He would hold this door if it was the last thing he did.
A devilish grin peaked through the darkness and with tense muscles a cruel spear flew, tearing the face in half. Docens of creatures broiled out of the hallway, scrambling over the wasted body, slipping on the black ichor.
He answered their infernal tittering the only way he knew how. With a scream of steel and magic, of rage and mourning.
An explosion of will saw limbs flying, his powerful swings hacking though the roiling mass of black and grins a circular ark tearing all around him. Claws reached him scratching before being cut down, until he no longer could feel resistance against his enchanted sword.
It lay a few feet in front, cleaved into the torso of a rapidly decomposing creature, his arms still attached to it.
He stood defeated.
He closed his eyes the tearing claws no longer painful, the insane cracking fading into nothing as his head started to feel light. They were safe, he had won.
He opened his eyes, hopeful of a glimpse of the night sky before the end. The creatures werr gone, reduced to nothing. Almost as if they never existed. There, on the firmament, next two the moon, lay two drops of divinity, shining with unmatched strength.
'You did well, Man.'
He lowered his eyes to the figure that had spoken. A man of unmatched beauty, a carefree half-smile on his youthful face, his winged helmet snug against golden tresses.
'They are safe, and it's time we left.'
He smiled at the familiar stranger and took his hand, then he knew no more. He had held the door.
Charlennette Style
With a strength normally reserved for more arduous tasks, he set his body solidly against the mahogany wooden frame. The door banged against his back, each strike resonating on his very soul, the smell of the punished wood wafting to his nose, the sweetness of it taking him back to his childhood on the woods.
He closed his eyes. This was his fate. And for the little chicks, he'd bore it.
Forever