As she had all but promised, Fleur's notes came sporadically over the next few days. What little he did get were filled with descriptions of Norwegian towns and countrysides that almost bled off the paper to form an image in front of him. Lush blankets of forests and a coast that stretched out to the horizon, the Norwegian Sea brushing at the shore.
She had promised to bring him almost immediately, threatening a kidnapping if necessary. Stuck inside an empty house with Sirius off meeting with Andromeda, there was nothing Harry wanted more.
His idle letter writing days before bore more fruit than he expected when Hedwig returned from Hermione's with a brief, no-nonsense, extremely Hermione-ish reply.
Harry,
We're coming over. What day works for you?
He laughed aloud, his voice echoing through the quiet home. Sure there may be nothing to do, but it'd be much more fun to do nothing with his friends.
One reply and a day later, Hermione and Ron stepped through the floo, calling back to Mrs. Weasley that they had indeed made it, and not gotten somehow lost in the floo network.
"Alright, mate?" Ron asked, dumping an armful of things onto a decorative table that sat next to the large couch.
Fruits and vegetables rolled across the wood, falling off Ron's preferred travel chessboard.
"Mum sent all this. Reckon she thinks you and Sirius eat dirt or something. Heard her muttering about 'bachelor food' while she pulled these from the gardens."
"I think it's sweet," Hermione said, catching an apple before it fell to the floor. "There's nothing like home-grown food."
"We eat fine, but I'm not going to say no. Sirius has…pretty particular tastes. I'm getting a little tired of fish."
Harry gathered the food and stowed it in the kitchen before returning to the living room. When he did, he found Hermione lounged on the couch, her feet up and hair spread out across the arm, thick book in hand. He glanced at it as he moved to join Ron, who had set up a game on the floor in front of the couch, his back resting against it. The Path of Monarchs was printed across the front in big bold letters.
"I almost expected next year's textbooks," Harry said, sitting down next to the black pieces. He seemed to do better when Ron was forced to go first.
Hermione huffed and turned a page, sparing them both a wry glare. "Ron said the same thing. I'll have you know I like to read fiction as well. This one came highly recommended."
She suppressed a smile.
"Not all of us have been tricked into enjoying losing at chess."
"The game isn't to win," Harry said, opting to be as offensive as possible and nabbing one of Ron's early pawns with a knight. "It's to last…or to see if you can confuse him."
"I knew it," Ron muttered, sending his bishop to trap the knight. "You always send your queen zooming around the board for no reason."
"That game is to see how long I can go without getting her caught."
Ron laughed when Harry's queen lifted her skirts and sprinted to the edge of the board, dodging around a diagonal wall of pawns who waved as she passed.
Harry lost that game, though he'd almost managed a record for longest-delay-of-the-inevitable. A game he was rather good at after so many years of practice.
Hermione slid a bookmark in between her pages and shifted to watch the start of a new game, studying the board and giving Harry hints with their secret gesture code. They had discovered early on that Ron often narrowed his focus down to a pinpoint, making it easy for them to confer covertly in an attempt to wrest a win from his grasp.
After a particularly egregious mistake on his part, Hermione shifted flawlessly into plan b.
"I was surprised to see Percy at the Burrow," Hermione said, pointing to Harry's king-side rook. "Tonks too."
Ron nodded absently, watching as Harry shifted his king over to a better-defended position.
"Yeah. I guess we're on the protection list now. We get our own Auror and everything."
"Protection list?" Harry echoed, losing track of his limited visualization of upcoming moves.
Ron nodded again, prodding his knight into Harry's line of pawns.
"The DMLE seems to think we're a potential target for You-Know-Who. Or at least for the same group of assholes that sacked Godric's Hollow."
"Ron!" Hermione snapped, her eyes darting over to Harry, who shrugged.
"Well, they are," Ron grumbled as Harry sacrificed a bishop to grab Ron's rook. "Mum says that was the sort of thing they did before. They're probably being a little extra cautious, but I'm not really complaining. It's not like I'm locked in there or anything."
"Sirius said the same thing," said Harry, scanning the board for a low-cost random move to throw Ron off. "Hopefully Dumbledore showing up will scare them off for a bit before they try anything else."
"Hopefully," Hermione agreed, tapping her finger against the cushion to indicate an available en passant.
Ron's irritated mumbling more than made up for the immediate capture of his own pawn, and Harry resumed his game of speed-queen.
Games rushed by with Hermione taking his place at the end of chapters or during a particularly slow bit in her story. He made them a lunch of chicken sandwiches made from some leftovers in the refrigerator.
Sirius came back from his meeting while Harry was winning the 'confuse Ron' game and agreed to take a turn, just to give Ron a break. To Harry's relief and Sirius's extreme embarrassment, he fell victim to the two-move win, something that Harry had learned to avoid years before. He made a better showing during his insisted second game which ended with a particularly brutal misstep with his queen.
Sirius took them out to dinner, side-along apparating them all, with a few stops to rest, to a small restaurant on the Mediterranean. Hermione's eyes were big enough to reflect the sea outside the window as they ate. Sirius pointed to various buildings he'd scouted in his time in hiding, and one particular spot which was barely a dot along the coast, where he could change back into a man and enjoy the surf, free from the potential eyes of the locals.
They returned home satisfied and laughing. Hermione and Ron gathered their things and bid them both goodbye, Hermione unable to keep from enveloping Harry in a quick hug. He patted her back as she squeezed, then waved when the green flames whisked his friends away.
Even though he went to bed without a message from Fleur, he found himself grinning as sleep touched the edges of his consciousness. Who'd have thought a day full of inane conversation and losing at chess could be so satisfying.
They returned the following day, much to Harry's delighted surprise. Fleur had again been absent from their once-nightly conversations, and the presence of his two best friends was a balm to his loneliness. In a further, much larger surprise, Ron brought his set of gobstones and exploding snap along with his chessboard, while Hermione returned to whatever world lived inside that book of hers.
Morning had shifted to afternoon before they were finally interrupted. A thud from upstairs in the vicinity of Sirius's room made Harry fumble his toss, earning him a loss against Hermione. A rare occurrence in the explosive game. When Sirius didn't show, paranoia began to prickle at the edges of Harry's good mood, sending spiraling tendrils of anxiety through his idle thoughts.
"I'm gonna go check on him," he said after a particularly ghastly image of Sirius lying face down after having cracked his head on a piece of furniture played through his mind.
His quick knock against Sirius's door was met with a somewhat strangled but very much alive answer from Sirius.
"Yeah?" he called, his voice muffled through the wood of the door. "Did you need me for something?"
"Er…no. Just checking," Harry said, a sudden feeling of trespass coursing through him.
He wasn't sure he'd ever seen the inside of Sirius's room, let alone bothered him while he was inside.
"I'll be down in a little while," Sirius said when Harry didn't continue.
True to his word, he joined them not long after. Harry thought he caught the glint of anger in Sirius's eyes, though they softened whenever they scanned across him. Where Sirius had been bad at chess, he was a prodigious gobstones player, sweeping the floor even when the three of them worked together.
Dinner came and went, a simple affair Harry threw together, rather than the impressive trip to another country they'd enjoyed the night before. Hermione and Ron made all the appropriate appreciative noises that swelled Harry's heart, even with the possibility of simple politeness. The way Ron and Sirius got up for thirds indicated that was an unlikely scenario.
At the tenth stroke of the clock in the living room, Sirius shooed Harry's friends from the house, tightness at the corners of his eyes sending Harry's heart to thundering even as he waved his goodbyes. He knew the deep frown lines and dim, haunted eyes that meant bad news from his godfather, and the shining, impossible to hide joy of good news. The reticence and awkward glances in Harry's direction were new.
New was rarely good in his experience.
"More bad news?" he asked if only to end the agony of uncertainty.
He found it difficult to imagine something that would deal such a blow as finding out he was prophesied to fight Voldemort while hosting a nightmarish piece of the evil wizard.
Sirius dropped down onto the couch and gestured for Harry to follow. He tried not to walk too woodenly over to where his godfather sat, but his legs wouldn't quite obey. Despite his attempted reassurances of his own mind, every shift and sigh Sirius made only served to fuel the anxious fire burning in Harry's chest. A tiny, petulant part of Harry's brain, the same that wished Fleur was home so she could visit, begged the universe for just one, single week. One week of experiencing easy summer hangouts with his friends and fancy meals.
"I'm…not sure how to tell you this," Sirius said, running a hand through his hair before letting his hand fall to his side.
He shifted it onto his lap, then grabbed his wand and began rolling it in his fingers.
Harry had the unmistakable urge to snatch the wand and shake his godfather. His every nerve vibrated, eager for release.
"The uh…" Sirius tried, before blowing out a long breath and letting the words finally spill out. "Your Aunt and Uncle are moving."
The string of anxiety-fueled guesses his mind conjured fell to pieces, skittering and clanging through his thoughts in a cacophonous jumble. He scrambled to latch onto anything as the tension that laced through his muscles fell into numb confusion.
"M-my relatives?" he heard himself say, the words muted and distant.
Sirius nodded, the same angry glint alighting in his eyes.
Harry scooted back from the intense expression, his mind reeling at the sudden intrusion into his life. Into his new life. He couldn't even-
"I've had someone watching them," Sirius said, his voice snapping Harry's tenuous grip on his thoughts, though his voice was careful and deliberate. "They're all packed and moving to Germany, it seems."
His head weighed hundreds of pounds as he forced it to nod. Slippery worries began to needle their way into the fog his relatives shoved into his mind.
"So…what?" he asked, barely registering the pathetic crack in his voice.
Why couldn't he take news like a normal person? What was wrong with him? Moving wasn't a big deal.
The concealed anger in Sirius's face flashed to the forefront to be replaced by a mask of pain.
"That squib lawyer of theirs got them off. Best I can tell is that he used the chaos in the Ministry to push some sort of reconciliation through the gutted department of family affairs. At best, we might be able to get them tried once the war is over and the Ministry is put back together. At worst…"
The unspoken words hung in the air, foul and pungent. They crept into Harry, into space reserved for anger and energy. Into his floundering mind and blanketing whatever had remained from the light that had been his day.
They were leaving.
Free.
They were leaving and people knew what had happened and they were leaving.
Sirius was speaking, but the words didn't make any sense.
So much work to put them out of his mind.
To go for days and weeks without a single thought of those horrible people and what they'd done, just to find out it could be wiped away by a well-placed form to a shattered government.
Even the guilt that settled in his stomach for his selfish desire for justice during a war was gray and muted.
A hand on his arm lanced hot fear through his thoughts and he snapped back into the dim living room and the searching gray eyes of his godfather.
"I'm not going to give up," Sirius was saying, his hands knotted in his lap. "Tracking them isn't going to be a problem. No matter what, in the end, they won't get away with it."
The spark of hope carried on Sirius's words found cold, unforgiving ground in Harry's chest.
Get away with it? Hadn't they already done?
"I'm…going to bed," Harry forced himself to say, allowing his legs the flight they'd been searching for.
He wanted to be away from Sirius, from the one who had borne news of those tyrants back into his life. He needed to be away from the room that had seen so much laughter an eternity before, and needed to find the sanctuary that was his bedroom. A room of furniture and pictures and letters, not of a bare mattress and bars.
The click of his bedroom door echoed as loud in his ears as if he'd slammed it closed. An unreal sight met his eyes. A messy bed, cards strewn across his dresser. Ink blotches dotted his nightstand and the paper atop sat idle and blank.
How had he allowed his room to become so messy? It didn't make any sense. He was a clean person.
With deliberate motions and the fuel of purpose to heft his iron-filled limbs, he set to work tidying. Christmas cards so far out of season found a home in an empty drawer on his dresser, while his bed received a strip and a refit of the fitted sheet, allowing him to ensure crisp edges and perfect lines.
Clothes that had been tossed into a pile were placed in their respective drawers. He could wash them later if he remembered. They just needed to be out of sight so he could move on.
Lamenting his lack of tools, he scanned the room for signs of obvious dust or mildew, checking the corners for cobwebs and under his bed for renegade clothes.
He was panting when he ran out of things to do, his chest heaving as sure as he'd sprinted through each task twice. Without his momentum, his body grew heavy, weak, and he dropped onto his perfectly made bed, his feet dangling over the edge.
What little energy he'd managed to cultivate fled. His heart pounded and his lungs refused to allow him to settle and catch his breath.
So what if they moved away? They were already out of his life. Out of his thoughts. It didn't matter if they were in jail or some other country, so long as he never had to see them again. So long as he never had to think about them again. It didn't matter.
On instinct, he reached over for his quill, the feather trembling in his unsteady hand. With deliberate strokes, he let Fleur know what he'd been told.
Fleur,
Sirius just told me my relatives are moving away. Some lawyer they got managed it so they don't have to go to trial, and they're moving to Germany or something. I wish it were a little further away, but so long as they're gone, I don't care. Part of me isn't that surprised that they managed it, but so long as it's over, I don't mind.
He nodded as he set down his quill and flipped the paper, just in case she had time to reply.
He tried laying down to settle his frayed nerves and stampeding thoughts. He was pretty sure she'd have been upset if he hadn't said anything, but what if he'd interrupted something important? Maybe she'd found more of her people and was learning about her past like she had done with Mariika's family. Would she stop what she was doing because she felt compelled to reply?
Long, stretching minutes of deliberation rolled by, his mind doing laps of its own accord through the multitude of credible reasons he should have waited to let Fleur know.
He rolled over and cleared his words from the parchment. He could tell her next time she was able to talk to him.
The bed creaked as he rolled back over, letting his hands rest at his side. There was no reason to bother her with something as simple as somebody moving to a new country. Not when she was finally getting answers to questions she'd had since she was young.
Footsteps finally sounded up the stairs, the footfalls vibrating through the large hallway outside. He squashed the childish urge to roll to the side and present his back to the door. Sirius knew when he wanted his space.
The click of the handle sat him bolt upright, a potent mix of embarrassment and anger rolling through him in equal measure. He shouldn't be mad...but was this his room or wasn't it?
A glint of silver fury revealed herself as the door swung open. It banged against the wall as she strode into the room, her hair tailed at the back of her head by her vibrant red ribbon.
For all the tempestuous rage he saw coiled beneath the surface of her eyes, they were the same, gentle sky-blue he'd come to know so well, and he flagged when they fell upon him.
"I didn't want to worry you," he said when she just continued watching him. As if spurred forward by his words, she lowered herself onto the bed opposite him, her gaze never leaving his. "Like I said, it's not a big deal. So long as I don't have to see them again, it's fine."
The hand she rested on his was almost scalding to the touch.
"'Arry," she said, her voice soft and controlled. "It is okay to be upset."
He shrugged and shook his head. There was nothing to be upset about. He'd made a promise to move on and be who he needed to be. Who she needed him to be and who his friends needed him to be. The person who somehow held the answer to Voldemort's demise in his hands and the person who she had somehow taken an interest in.
He shifted tactics.
"It's…disappointing. I guess I was kinda looking forward to seeing what they'd do if they ended up in jail or something."
He shrugged again for emphasis.
"It's not like I'm going to have to go back to their house, so I'm okay."
She scanned him, the intensity of her search disregarding his words and stripping away the little composure he'd managed to capture. He swallowed and looked away. He didn't need to come undone in front of her.
Not again.
Once was too much.
"Look," he tried again. "I'm-"
The hand that rested on his cheek was gentle. It tugged at his threadbare control, the warmth of her seeping into his clammy skin.
"It is okay," she said again, a frown touching her lips. "Let me help."
He could only manage the barest shake of his head.
"It's fine. You've already helped me plenty. You shouldn't have to keep doing it all the time."
Her frown deepened and her thumb brushed across his cheek.
He hadn't started crying, had he?
A quick blink told him he was fine and he tried to plaster on a smile.
"I'm not kidding. Last summer was…bad. There was no way I wanted you to see that, but…" He trailed off and gestured uselessly to the room around them. "But here I am now. If you had to deal with that all the time…"
He was almost thankful for the knot in his throat that stopped his rambling, no matter how close it brought the tears to the surface. He needed to get up. To get away from her gentleness and warmth and the silence. If he didn't-
Her other hand moved up to cup his cheek and she smiled at him. The shy, intimate smile, tinged with the sadness of their discussion. She smiled at him, and let the heat of her hands radiate into him.
He expected a kiss.
"My love for you is not so fleeting."
In the pure moment of understanding, his muscles tensed and relaxed and his lungs divulged themselves of their shaky breath. His skin burned and his cheeks were hot and wet beneath her palms, each stroke of her thumb sending ripples throughout his body.
A shimmer of color swam through his watery vision, her ribbon shifting to the bright, perfect purple he'd come to treasure.
For a blissful moment, he was still.
When silence began to ring in his ears, he jerked, his mind finally re-engaging. He needed to say something. To reply.
"I-"
Two fingers across his lips stalled him, her soft expression never faltering.
"Do not say it now," she said, her voice just above a whisper. "If I am to hear it, I want you to be certain and clear-headed. Not in an impulsive reply."
Her shy smile grew into a larger one and she finally let her gaze drop from his.
"And if I am being honest, I would like it to be romantic."
He could only nod dumbly, his head bobbing in her hands.
"Now come on," she said, stroking his cheek one more time before rising.
"W-where?" was all he could ask, and he was surprised he could manage even that.
She…
At his question, her pleasantness faded from her, the fury returning in earnest.
"I have something to show you."
Perplexed, and more than a little dazed, he took her offered hand and felt himself spun into the crushing blackness of apparition.
Muggy summer air clung to his skin when he was pushed back into reality, his body taking a moment to reorient itself in space. The earthy scent of rain and grass clippings suffused the street they'd appeared on while the subtle noises of late-night activity permeated the air. Streetlights bathed a familiar street in their pallid yellow glow, illuminating the damnable pavement of Privet Drive.
Everything inside of him recoiled, tugging at the immutable space around him to return to Grimmauld Place, to safety.
Her hand slid into his, a blazing squeeze calming his attempt at flight.
"Why?" he croaked. "And…how? Your dad?"
She shook her head, her hair swinging with the motion, her ribbon a shifting mix of purple and red.
"Our letters, remember?"
His mind was moving so slowly. It shouldn't take so much effort to form a coherent thought.
"Yeah, but…don't you have to know the place…to apparate there?"
At that, her fair skin colored, visible even in the darkness. Rather than into one of the broad circles of streetlight, she had brought them into the shadows between houses five and three. Number Four sat across the street, a large moving truck parked in its driveway. Light spilled out through drawn curtains and a burly form passed occasionally in front.
"I have…been here before," she admitted, her voice a whisper, though her anger still coursed through it. "I had…considered…my offer."
"Your offer?" he echoed, unable to draw his eyes from the house.
"To burn those horrible people to the ground," she snapped, a roiling ball of flame springing to life in her free hand.
It cast a muted orange light across their hiding place, its shifting tips licking the air. It coiled and spun in front of him, little bursts of blue suffusing the light. With a curse, she snuffed it out, then visibly recovered her composure.
"That was stupid. I am sorry."
"It's okay," he said, momentarily distracted from the shapes moving across the window. "Did you see…?"
She nodded and clenched her fist, a frown pulling at her lips.
"I did, but there will be time for that later."
He turned back in time to see the light click off, bathing the house in darkness.
"So…" he began after he'd done some searching for his voice. "Why are we here? There aren't many places I'd rather be less."
"I know," she said, squeezing his hand again. "But…if you wanted to…we could do something about this."
A cold sweat stole across his body, despite the heat radiating from Fleur. It was one thing to hear the offer in the woodlands of France, it was another entirely to be only feet away.
But there was no denying the appeal.
Unbidden, the years of scorn and violence came whirling back. Those very walls had hidden away his mistreatment by the monsters that lived inside. They could be burned or obliviated or made so afraid that they turned themselves in, free-pass or no.
The bones in his wrist creaked as he realized he'd be gripping Fleur's hand as though she were all that was keeping him from plummeting to his death. If his grip hurt her, she didn't say.
No sooner had the memories stoked his anger than it left him hollowed out and just as weak as he'd been before she'd stepped into his room.
He hadn't been lying. Not entirely anyway.
It was all so…exhausting.
"I want to be done with them," he murmured, his voice reverberating between the two houses to either side of them. "I want to never have to think about it again and I don't care where they are when I forget about them."
Fleur released his hand and wrapped her arm around his shoulder, pulling him close. The heat that rolled off her body soothed the raw edges of his nerves and settled the buzzing, incessant anxiety that permeated this place.
"Then we will leave."
When he nodded, she turned on the spot and pulled him back into the cold blackness of apparition and away from Privet Drive.
He blinked when they reappeared, the moonlight through the window to his right casting her small living room with its glow.
"I thought a change of scenery might help," she said, flicking on the lights with a muttered wave of her wand.
He nodded, his energy expended. His insides felt hollow, devoid of the muscle necessary to keep him upright. Only the desire to not collapse in front of her and sheer willpower kept him standing.
"Come," she said, tugging him toward the hall and her bedroom. "It is time to relax."
He followed her into her small bedroom, the space taken up mostly by her large bed, a single nightstand sitting to one side. Giant fluffy blankets stretched across the top, pulled to the headboard in a messy approximation of being made up.
She kicked off her shoes and shoved them to the side with a foot and drew down the covers. Once he had done the same, she slid into bed, her back resting against the intricate wooden headboard. He sat down to join her, but the moment he sat down, she scooted over further and redirected him down so his head lay in her lap. He stared up at her, the warmth of her legs pulsing through his neck.
In the darkness, his legs dangling uselessly off the edge of the bed, flickering blue eyes watched him as she ran her fingers through his hair. Her other hand found his and clasped it, resting them both against his heart.
The careful touch of her hand never ceased and the warmth of her crawled its way through his body, finally dispelling the tension that kept him from unconsciousness.
It wasn't until she began to hum that he found himself on the precipice of sleep, and when she began to sing the words, slow and imbued with warmth, his eyes closed, even as his tears walked slow paths down his cheeks.