He had wanted to write her for some time.
There had always been an excuse, this calling of work, of life, of the things he’d claimed to have forgotten that needed his urgent attention. His bin was littered with half-penned letters and snapped quills, bittersweet dreams and foregone futures. Childish things that, as far as he was concerned, were best left there.
Harry had tried to forget her, for all the good that had done him. Toying with his old wedding ring as he met friends after work, sharing the occasional kiss beneath low pub lights or small smiles in corridors. Every meeting, a glimmer of bottled lightning and every night, no matter how much he wished for the spark to ignite the ember in his chest, a return to an empty bed.
And yet, no matter how painful the sting of lost partners and now awkward greetings were, he tried to forget her still.
But it had seemed the universe had wanted him to meet her again.
When he saw her again, after all that time, it was beneath pregnant August clouds as twilight fell over London. He’d only just extricated himself from another rendezvous over dinner, lip gloss still staining his lips and heart from the kiss he’d hoped was searing, the flame he’d yearned for.
It had been lukewarm at best.
There she sat, across the street, bathed in the neon glow of deep purple as the sign above her—one he didn’t bother reading—flickered in time with his heart. She didn’t see him, he saw her, high cheekbones that cast shadows down her face, delicate lips parted with an exhale, seeming bored.
An urge, naive as it was, became apparent in his chest. If he crossed the road, he could build bridges, take away her boredom and quell the ache in him. His heart, much like the flickering light, threatened to spill out onto the pavement if he dared take the leap to her.
She didn’t see him as he fought some great war within, as turmoil and tenderness burnt through him like a fever and she didn’t see him as he walked the other way and out of her life again.
It was the little things that made him wonder, she’d never know how much it took not to stand and stare or cross the road and she never would. Such was the way of regret and these days, there had been much for Harry Potter to regret.
The second time was somehow even more spontaneous.
Paperwork had sung its siren song and he’d heeded the call, rifling through case files and old reports to busy the monotony of identical days.
Identical until she came.
She arrived with all the grace he remembered, he barely even noticed her until she spoke with the voice that was so distinctly her.
“Hello, Harry,” she said, forcing him from his work and into the past.
For a minute, he couldn’t speak, part of him dared not to.
“Eh,” He struggled, swallowing against the sudden anxiety in his throat. “Hello, Fleur.”
It had seemed the months had atrophied whatever conversational skills he had, that was if he had any to begin with.
“Is Tonks in?” Fleur asked, busying her eyes with searching the ceiling for any imperfections. “I have an appointment.”
He liked it that way, staring into her eyes after so long would have been harder than he cared to admit.
“Yeah, uh…” Harry busied himself with looking around as if he’d see her just to give himself some reprieve from a reply. “I think so, I saw her earlier.”
Fleur peered past him, staring at the same nothing he’d try to feign the importance of. “Thank you,” she said, toying with the fabric of her robes. “How… How have you been?”
It was such a mundane question it almost caught him off guard, “Could be worse, you?”
“Could be worse,” she echoed and continued rubbing the fabric between her fingers.
He’d always expected their next meeting to be a grander spectacle than awkward words exchanged over a desk, desperate for any avenue of conversation that might hold. If there was such a thing as a second first meeting, Harry was sure theirs could have gone better.
“I…” Fleur started and stopped before she could breathe life into the words. “I best get to my appointment then, I wouldn’t want to keep her waiting.”
Harry gave her the slightest nod, “No,” he said. “You wouldn’t.”
Then, just as he had on that street weeks ago, she disappeared from his life. Half of him wondered when he’d see her again.
The other half went back to his paperwork.
Finally, she found him once more.
He stood in the mid-winter rain, covered in storm, wrapped in regret. The front of the restaurant was relatively quiet save for the dull throb of suburbia in his ears and rain against the road. Inside was yet another attempt at leaving her behind, a friend of a friend, one who he’d offered nothing but polite smiles to in passing.
Ron had urged him to take her to dinner, he’d accepted after the third or fourth day of it. Stepping out to get some air after smouldering gazes and feet playing with own became to much, he saw her.
It had started as it began, she stood across the street from him in the rain and this time, she saw him.
Silver hair, artisan strands he’d once admired were plastered to her face in the rain, her muggle clothes dripping onto the street. Her first step towards him was deliberate, the second shaky and each one after that a dice roll if it would land or if she would flee.
Soon enough, she stood before him on the road, giving him a few inches extra over him. Every heavy breath that left her breath carried a puff of condensation as she looked at him, ocean blue eyes that made him feel like he was drowning in the rain.
“Why?”
Harry let out a shaky exhale, “Why what?”
He knew what.
“Don’t…” She whispered, her hand falling against his chest without any force behind it, like she was defeated. “Just… don’t.”
“I don’t know,” Harry tried instead.
“You do, you have to.”
“What do you want from me, Fleur?” He whispered back. “I just don’t know.”
“I want to know why you left me,” she pleaded. “Tell me that and I’ll leave, you don’t have to see me again, if I need to go to the Ministry, I’ll avoid you. Just tell—”
“I was scared, is that what you want to fucking hear?”
“Of course it isn’t,” she said, stepping onto the curb to even out their height disparity. “I want to know why I was left on a street corner.”
“You’re divorced, I’m divorced,” he said. “It doesn’t take much to realise what that would be like around them.”
“Do you put that much stock into what they think?”
Harry scoffed, “They’re my family, of course I do.”
“I could be your family too,” she took a step closer.
Taking a step back to compensate, “If you do this, I’m going to fall again and it’s taken so long to get over you. Just… don’t.”
Fleur frowned, “You deserve to be happy.”
“So do you,” Harry said.
“Then be happy with me,” she whispered and took a step closer. This time, he didn’t step back.
It took mere moments for months of resistance, hammered and forged in isolation and frequent dates to erode under her words.
He’d searched after his divorce, which had been a quick affair. She hadn’t wanted half, she got it anyway. He tried to find love with others to ensure she wasn’t the only one for him and, somewhere along the way, he’d stumbled across Fleur.
She hadn’t asked for his heart, she’d taken that all by circumstance. Up until cold feet took him away. But now, confronted with the weight of what he had done, the pain he had caused her, he wasn’t sure he had it in him to flee again.
So he had left her on that street corner because he couldn’t bear to look them in the eyes with her by his side, to explain that something had been born from the ashes of the relationships with two separate members of their family. That they’d been happier with each other than they had before, smiling in their faces, laughing at the other’s jokes, enjoying life.
That stung everyone involved and he didn’t know if he had the heart to hurt them. Instead, he ended up hurting her.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Harry whispered.
“You did,” she said. “A lot.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
Fleur looked up at him, standing in the remnants of their old relationship, in her eyes he realised she might prove to be his salvation, a cure for this lonely ache. This was no longer simply about running away from life, it was about her showing him he could change it, even if they disapproved.
Taking another step towards that bridged everything that had fallen between them, his bad choices and her heartbreak, she wrapped her arms around him.
Perhaps a kiss would have been more passionate, more along the lines of songs and stories of losts loves and romantic reunions. But when she embraced him, she embraced everything he was just as he did her. What they’d been over the past few months, what they were now and what they’d be in each others arms.
Maybe it was time to be content with being happier than he thought he deserved.
“Do we give it another chance?” She whispered in his ear.
“Yeah,” Harry swallowed hard. “I think we do.”