Flowerpot

Survivor's Guilt

Fleur Delacour didn't fight. She could have, but she didn't. One might say that she married into the war, but she still didn't fight in it. She'd kept it distant, far off. She had to.

Voldemort was a fairytale monster, an unspeakable evil so horrific that she couldn't quite believe it was true. She'd believed Harry, he'd saved her sister, but even with Cedric's body in front of her she couldn't bring herself to comprehend what was happening. And then she met Bill.

Bill was a fighter, a hero, a good man. He'd recruited her to the Order of the Phoenix, and somewhere along the way they fell in love. The war never seemed farther away than when she was in his arms. It never felt closer than when he was in hers.

Fleur Delacour didn't fight in the war, not even when a death eaters killed her husband in front of her in the halls of Hogwarts. She never knew who his killer was, she didn't want to. It didn't matter, an acromantula had reached through the window and eaten the man right after he murdered the love of her life.

The worst thing about war is that the ones who get hurt the most are the ones who deserve it least. The first blood war made many orphans, the second made more. Hogsmeade didn't have an orphanage until after the fighting ended, now it seems like they need two.

Fleur Delcour didn't fight in the war, but she helped rebuild after it. She wasn't the only one. Every day, every single day, she apparates to the single Orphanage in Hogsmeade and takes a turn watching over the children. Muggleborns and the children of muggleborns all of them. Not a single child with family was left alone after the war, but not many of then had any family left.

She wasn't the only one there, there were others too. Some came once a week, some twice, some only when their guilt would drive them to. There was only one other person who was there every day. He'd fought in the war, he'd ended it. More than all of that though, he was an orphan too.