Hi Everyone!
So, here's the next chapter. I hope you enjoy it; let me know what you thought. As ever, I greatly appreciate your reviews; they help a lot.
Thanks to Raph for the help in beta-reading this chapter.
Hope you enjoy!
As the month of December turned a corner, and the Yule Ball truly set itself upon the castle's collective horizon, Harry found his free time had begun to be eaten away. He could not go a single moment at lunch or dinner without being accosted; and in their desperation, his suitor's pleas had turned into a form far less welcoming than before.
Most, by then, did not even ask him out but rather demanded that he take them, and upon his refusal, demand to be set up with someone else. The experience had become so unpleasant, in fact, that Aimée and Émile had even stopped sitting near him, though given that they soon found a home by the side of both Neville and Justin, Harry could not solely place the blame there.
Hence, when the time came for Hermione to get on the Hogwarts Express and return to her family, Harry rushed to forego a meal entirely to walk her there. He even found himself carrying her rucksack of what felt like every spellbook ever to do so, the bag's mass so great that he could feel the phantom pains of his tournament injuries returning as he carried it.
"Are you sure I can't tempt you to stay?" Harry asked, in-between wheezing breaths. He and Hermione had by then reached the Herbology greenhouses, and yet still the short distance between there and the self-pulling carriages to Hogsmeade seemed to stretch into eternity. At the nearest window, The head of Professor Sprout popped into view, and she gave a quick wave, which Harry struggled painfully to return. "I will buy you literally any book you want if we stop walking right now."
"Any book?" Hermione asked, her finger upon her chin.
Harry nodded, and with the additional weight upon his back while doing so he very nearly flung himself to the floor. "Any book."
Hermione thought for a moment and then rolled her eyes. "Harry, it's not that heavy. Stop being ridiculous," she told him. "If you're really so overburdened, feel free to turn back; I'm sure everyone else would be happy to have you."
Harry sighed. "Okay, I'm sorry," he said. For a brief moment, he thought to raise his hands in surrender, though quickly learned that was neither feasible nor possible. "I'll be a silent pack mule; anything to get me away from that."
"You've finally come to your senses?" Hermione asked. "I must admit, I'd initially thought it wouldn't have taken this long to happen, but I'm heartened to hear you've realised in the end."
Harry smiled. "Why don't you support love, Hermione?"
"Well, Harry, the last thing your work is putting into the world is love," Hermione said. "Most of the people you set up won't last a fortnight together."
"What about Neville though?" Harry asked. "He's like a new person already, and he'd never have spoken a word to Aimée without it all. Even if everyone else fails, just that is worth it."
He truly had changed, too. His Grandmother had written him a letter some days ago, demanding to know who his date was and to know if she was 'worthy' of the Longbottom name. The letter was opened, yet found its home in the bin of their dorm, entirely unresponded to.
"I think they'd manage to find each-other without you, somehow," Hermione replied, dryly. "Surely you understand that there are better uses of your time than throwing teenagers together like barbie dolls?"
"Such as?"
"Oh, I don't know," she began. "How about the fact that you're in a deadly tournament, you have no idea what you're facing, and the next task is less than three months away?"
"'Less than three months' isn't quite the strict deadline you want it to be," Harry replied, mildly. "And when have I ever planned anything I've ever done?" The ground began to rise, as they began to climb up the hill toward the carriages. "I'm pretty sure actually preparing would make me do worse."
"You don't know that because you've never planned anything to prove it," Hermione told him. She took a look at him, and then to the ascending hill, and stopped walking. Harry immediately followed suit, near-crying in relief as he did. "Harry, I care about you so much. You're like my brother, and I just want to not have to worry about your safety for one year."
"I don't think we're ever going to stop worrying about each other," Harry replied. "You worry that I've let a nundu into the school and I worry that you aren't getting enough sleep or that you haven't seen the sun in weeks. That's how we work."
"My diligent studying won't kill me," Hermione insisted.
"And my fun won't kill me either," Harry insisted. He took a moment, to let the air settle. He sighed, then. "I promise, for you, that I'll try to start thinking before I act at least some of the time, and I really will try my hardest to solve the clue while you're away."
Hermione scuffed the ground with her shoe, throwing snow to one side as she did. "Are you sure I can't get you to try to have a normal life, at least some of the time?"
Harry grinned down at her. "You really want me to have a normal life?"
Hermione frowned at him, though her heart wasn't in it. "My nerves would," she muttered. "I don't need to have nightmares that you've run off to tame lions but I still get them."
"Only lions?" Harry queried. "Seems a little mundane for me, don't you think?"
Hermione ignored him entirely and so Harry returned to his life as a beast of burden. The weight did not feel quite so great then though, despite the hill they trekked.
"You're like a sister to me too, you know," Harry said, breaking the peace. "An annoying little sister."
She glared at him. "I'm clearly the older sibling."
"Under what grounds?"
"The grounds of actually being older than you," Hermione said. "And I'm responsible, I'm thoughtful, and I'm far more mature than you."
"How do you think you're the more mature one?" Harry asked. "Last week, you wouldn't let me borrow a quill because it was your 'favourite' spare quill."
"Mature people aren't allowed to have favourite things?" Hermione pressured.
"Not spare quills, they aren't."
"Well then, Harry," Hermione began, with a voice Harry knew to recognise as the harbinger of an argument. "What grounds do you have to be the older sibling?"
"I'm taller, for one," Harry said. "And I'm actually the mature one."
Hermione was moments away from saying 'are not, are too' ad infinitum, though managed to hold her tongue. "Why don't we do the mature thing, and agree that we're twins?"
Harry smiled. "Perfect."
"Of course, even with twins, there's always one born first…" she trailed off.
Harry rolled his eyes.
"But I'll be mature and move on," Hermione rushed to add. "You know, there's a new rumour going around the school, about Cedric and Cho."
"That they're going to the Yule Ball?" Harry asked, before adding. "I know, I set them up."
"Yet another example of a couple that really didn't need your help," Hermione muttered.
"Really, are you sure you don't want to stay?" Harry asked her, teasing. "I'm getting mixed messages is all."
"The point I wished to raise wasn't about them," Hermione continued, ignoring him. "It was actually the story of how exactly they got together." They'd reached the carriages then, and Harry gained a second wind to rush to the nearest one and deposit her belongings there. "He was so excited when she said yes that he was loudly overheard telling everyone exactly who gave him that final push toward his beloved."
Harry smiled. "And?"
"And he mentioned that when he saw you, you and Fleur Delacour were walking the corridors together."
Cedric, it seemed, had a big mouth. Harry sighed. "And?"
"Well, Harry," Hermione prepared. "There are a few conclusions I could draw from it." She raised her index finger. "One, you and Fleur have become great friends, which is unlikely as I've never seen her spend so much as a second with you." She raised her middle finger then too. "Two, you're secretly working together on the second task, which is both illegal and unlikely, as you said yourself that you've never willingly prepared for anything in your life." She raised her ring finger. "Or, the third, and most likely option, is that given the correlation between you definitely having a crush and you suddenly appearing by the side of the prettiest girl anyone has ever seen, is that she is your someone."
"You're just discounting the possibility that we ran into each other at the same moment I ran into Cedric?" Harry asked, in defence.
"That was my initial idea too," Hermione allowed. "However, I came upon another factor yesterday that really tipped the balance." Hermione grinned at him then. The very same grin she wore whenever she found that she'd gotten the best marks on a test. "I saw Fleur in the library wearing a Gryffindor jumper."
Before he could help himself, Harry was smiling. "That doesn't prove anything," he said, though the argument lost strength as the smile remained. "She could just like the pattern, or she could be thinking about coming here for her last year of NEWTs and wanted to see how she'd look in our house's colours."
"It was your jumper."
"You can't prove that."
She sat down upon the carriage and Harry followed her in doing so. "It had two holes in its sleeves, like ones that you cut into yours so that you could poke your thumbs through," she told him. "Only you have a jumper like that."
And, unfortunately, she had a point.
Whenever a student altered or damaged their uniform, Professor McGonagall would force said student to repair it before letting them leave her sight. However, in the case of his jumper, his magic had apparently proved as stubborn as he himself was, and so decided that the cutting charm was to be irreversible, whether it be himself or Professor McGonagall that attempted to fix it. She had asked the Headmaster, in irritation, to correct his impropriety, though he suddenly found himself too unwell to perform such arduous magic.
"So," Hermione broached, just as the carriage began to set off. "You and Fleur?"
"What about us?"
Hermione smiled. "There's an 'us'?"
"No," Harry said. "Not an us."
"Yet."
"I don't know."
Hermione was silent, for all of a moment. "Do you want there to be?" she asked, softly.
"Of course," Harry said, the words flowing as easily as the air that contained them. "I just don't know if she does too."
"Harry," Hermione said, her voice deliberate enough to draw Harry's focus to her. "People don't wear clothes belonging to people they don't like; surely you, master matchmaker that you are, realise that."
"Most people don't, you're right," Harry said. "But Fleur is not most people. She's not like any kind of person I've ever met before, she's…"
"…Special?" Hermione finished. Harry nodded.
"She's… Fleur ," he said, with a note in his voice as though it answered every question anyone could possibly pose. And, in a way, it did.
How on Earth people functioned with thoughts like this, Harry had no idea.
"I think it might be a good time to take some of your own advice," Hermione said. "Just ask her. The worst that she can say is no."
Harry doubted that greatly. Fleur was definitely capable of saying things far worse than no.
Hogsmeade began to grow in Harry's vision, and though its nearing arrival did not slow Hermione.
"Just think about it, Harry," she said, before she smiled at him. "Imagine how much easier your life will be if she says yes; everyone will stop asking you out and you can go back to enjoying your free time."
"I really don't think me being with someone would stop most of them," Harry commented. "It doesn't matter about them, though. I'm not afraid of what other people think and my goal in life isn't to just appease the rest of the world.
Hermione groaned, hiding the noise in her hands. "So what are you afraid of?"
He gave her an abashed smile "That I don't deserve her," he said. "That she'll come to her senses and realise that there's far better ways to spend her time than with me."
"Do you think that's likely?" Hermione asked, incredulous.
"Yeah," Harry admitted quickly. "I'm only me."
"I promise there is nothing 'only' about you," Hermione rushed to respond. "Harry, I might only say this once, but I'm always going to mean it." Her eyes closed for a moment. "You are the most special person I've ever met, even in the magical world. The question isn't whether you deserve her; it's never that. It's if she deserves you."
"What?"
"You have hundreds of people asking you out and rather than leverage that for yourself, you help them find other people. You're left a family fortune, but rather than bragging about it, you use it to buy books for me and quidditch gear for Ron. You know the world shouldn't be yours to save yet you do it anyway," Hermione explained, the words coming at such a rush that they came out as one breath. "I don't know Fleur at all, but she needs to be pretty special to ever be your someone."
Harry sighed, her words washing over him. "I just don't know," he said. "I feel so…overwhelmed when I'm with her or whenever I even think about her." He sighed again. "It's like she's the only thought my brain wants to have and I can't matter as much as that to her. I just can't."
They'd reached the train-station by then, the air filled with the scent of snow and coal smoke.
"If she's good enough for you, you'll be all that to her and more," Hermione told him, her eyes looking toward the platform. They left the carriage, Harry hauling her bag again until they reached the nearest compartment door and he dropped it carefully to the ground, softly enough to avoid a thud.
She gave him one final, significant look before launching herself into a hug, which he returned quickly.
"Good luck, Harry," Hermione said to him, against the cold cotton of his coat.
"Say hello to your parents for me," he said in turn. Hermione nodded, offering him a quiet smile, before attempting to lift the very bag he'd brought. She gave one great heave only for it to not budge an inch, then with a sigh brought out her wand and levitated it into the train and disappeared along with it.
Harry wanted to weep.
Her head popped around the door after a moment. "By the way, Dumbledore was asking after you. He said to go to his office this evening."
His eyes went wide. "And you didn't think to mention it sooner?"
"Other things got in the way," Hermione defended. "You two talk all the time, anyway. I hardly thought it was that pressing." She folded her arms. "Why is it so pressing, Harry?"
"Nope, not after it took you so long to tell me about it in the first place," Harry told her. "Goodbye Hermione."
"Goodbye," she said, curtly, before stepping on to the train. Her voice grew cheerier immediately afterwards. "Write to me when you get my present!"
"You too!" Harry called back. He watched her make her way through the train and find herself a compartment, and only then did he turn away.
Harry did not immediately return to the castle though, but instead chose to make the most of the fact he was in Hogsmeade, away from the other students and able, if not permitted, to make use of the village he'd come to love. It really was a lovely place to be in winter, after all.
The wait to that evening was agonising and made no better by the persistent interjections of Harry's fellow students. He had hoped, ridiculously, that they would serve to break the day up and work through the hours more easily, yet all they truly served to do was place yet more and more barriers between himself and receiving he and Fleur's accolade.
Yet still, as was always the case with time, eventually the moment came. And so, in the dim cover of the evening, with only the oldest students lingering in the hallways, Harry made the journey up the stairs of the castle to visit the Headmaster once more. The Headmaster's gargoyle did not move upon his arrival, and for a brief second Harry damned himself for forgetting to ask Hermione what exactly the password was, yet such damnation was short-lived as the door swung open without any prompting, offering Harry a return visit to the room he'd broken into only a short matter of time before.
The room was as eclectic and spectacular as ever, and yet in that moment somehow more so than ever. First, because the first sight it contained was, to Harry's surprise, Fleur sitting across the desk from the Headmaster. Secondly, a canvas was draped upon the office's mahogany desk.
"Nice of you to join us, Harry," the Headmaster said, without lifting his gaze from his admiration of that same canvas. "I had begun to worry that the message had been waylaid."
Fleur turned quickly to see him; they shared their private smile.
"You could've just told me to come here directly," Harry said, bluntly.
Dumbledore removed his spectacles, and only then did he look at Harry. "Summons, I find, are like doorways. Using one less-frequented often leads to the most interesting journeys. A thought I'm sure you yourself have had at one point or another," he said. Harry coughed, uncomfortable suddenly. "However, such matters are rather mundane in comparison to the vision I have before me."
It took Harry several moments to realise that he was talking about the painting. By the time he had, he found Dumbledore staring at him.
"This, Harry, is a gift I received from Claude Monet some eighty-or-so years ago," Dumbledore said. Harry walked toward the other two and sat beside Fleur, so as to properly get a look at the work of art. To say it was magnificent would be to say that the sun is warm. "To think, the note he accompanied it with described it as a small sketch, of no more than a day or so's work."
The painting had been preserved by magic to not fade by time's touch, and so its colours were as vibrant as they had been the moment they'd been painted by the master. It captured an instant of nature; a meadow's flowers under the summer sun near Monet's home.
A person could work for as long as they were alive and not even come close to brushing near even the furthest edges of the greatness of that 'small sketch'.
"Captivating, is it not?" Dumbledore questioned the awed room. Harry's head nodded before his mind could process the words truly. "There are scores of magical instruments in this room, some even constructed in pure magic, and yet none of them are quite nearly as incredible as this. That is the beauty of art, I find; to be captivating beyond any understanding."
"Have you ever studied fine art, Professor?" Fleur asked, with a lyrical note to her voice that Harry thought the most perfect sound to accompany the great work before them.
The Headmaster shook his head. "I'm afraid I was not always as appreciative of the wonders the world offers," he admitted. "I was already a man when I met Claude and his family, and he was already much too old to teach a mediocre student. I think, in this, I am destined to be an amateur. An amator, perhaps, but still an amateur."
Fleur turned to Harry. "The Headmaster was telling me about his time in France."
"Many of the happiest days of my life," Dumbledore said, his voice warm with memory. "In those days, I lived in Paris, studied under Nicholas Flamel and met with the finest writers of this century. It was difficult not to find myself in awe on most days." He smiled to himself. "My ego allowed me to do so, but only just."
"What made you come back?" Harry asked. Fleur leaned in as he did.
Dumbledore settled into his chair. "Duty," he announced, after deliberation. "Though I might wish it to be, my life was not one that was to solely contain the arts and the wonders." He looked to Fleur, for a moment. "There were weights only I was fit to carry, crosses only I could bear." He turned to meet Harry's eyes. "A world I needed to help form; one beyond just my own joy."
He stood at once and took the painting from his desk. Then without a wand or a word spoken, made it disappear back to wherever it had come from.
"Despite how I might wish for it to be, a trip down memory lane is not the cause for our meeting tonight," Dumbledore said, smiling down at the two of them. "You two have performed an act that I had truly never expected to happen in my lifetime. Not a wonder worthy of being a peer of Monsieur Monet, but perhaps only a shade lower."
Harry and Fleur both grinned, unabashedly.
Dumbledore bowed his head deferentially. "If you two would permit it, might you allow me to guess your method of entering into this very room without my permission?" he asked. They both nodded fervently. "So, given that the last time he set foot in this castle, Nicholas Flamel could not even enter into this office through the door unless invited, I do doubt it was that particular avenue. The fireplace I too shall dismiss for the very same reason."
Dumbledore looked to the two of them, as if to ask to continue, which they immediately answered with the nodding of their heads.
"To my eyes, that leaves two options," Dumbledore then continued. "The first being that you created a runic array such that my floor was made permeable, though that would take several weeks and a mastery, both of which you did not have." He retrieved his wand. "That leaves, I think, the window and the window alone."
"Yes sir," Harry admitted.
"So, approaching it poses no great curiosity after your recent broom-ly heroics," Dumbledore pondered, with a glance at Harry. "And, in order to gain access through the window, a human-shrinking charm would need to be administered which, while difficult, would fall easily under mademoiselle Delacour's purview.
"There is, as I see it, only one issue-" Dumbledore stopped. "Except, there isn't at all," he added soon after, with a laugh behind his long beard. "My apologies, I forget that arguments are often most interesting when one hears both sides, and one does not simply remain inside my mind." He drew breath, and while he did he brought the room's dim candles brighter. He then met Harry's eyes. "The window, that I now know you and you alone climbed through Harry, is enchanted so that only beings that contain the essence of a phoenix can pass through."
Harry suddenly felt the urge to itch along his right forearm. "I didn't know the essence of a phoenix was contained in its tears."
"They are not large beings after their burning days," Dumbledore said. "They have very few places to put it other than their tears, I suppose."
Fawkes had cried a lot of it to heal Harry on that day, weeping for minutes over the basilisk's incision until at last the burning pain stopped spreading.
"So, I've been carrying around the essence of a phoenix for two years?" Harry asked, in a gasping voice. "Isn't that the sort of thing that changes a person?"
Dumbledore smiled in a manner that made him appear decades younger, unburdened "Perhaps it already has," he said. "Tell me; when did your scar last hurt you?"
"Not since my first year," Harry replied immediately, evenly.
"Then, if we are to believe that it was a curse scar, perhaps our dear friend Fawkes has broken the curse," Dumbledore said, finishing his thought. "It is not the gift of immortality he grants, but a good gift nonetheless."
Though Harry felt as though he was hearing a language he only half-grasped, he could not ignore the weight of the words the older man spoke. Beside him, he could feel Fleur's eyes staring at the side of his jaw inquisitively; he met her gaze and offered a look he hoped she would come to understand as 'later'.
"Nonetheless," Dumbledore amended. "As fun as such speculation may be, it does not bring me any closer to learning the truth of the matter at hand." He clapped his hands together, and such was the odd-enormity of his prior words that Harry fought the urge to jump at the noise. "So, am I correct in my estimations?"
"Fully," Fleur told him.
"Wonderful," Dumbledore announced, rather giddy. "Though at first glance your success was as a result of a minor miracle, your efforts are still to be respected. I am sure none but you two could have reached the heights necessary to use your graces." He looked to Harry. "And the manner in which you came to possess this miracle may just be a wonder beyond any that we have already spoken of, especially at your age."
Once more, the urge to rub at the old-scar on his arm resurfaced, his face a darkened shade of red. "I don't want to ruin the tone," Harry began, with the express purpose of doing exactly that. "But will anything come of all this?"
"You shall not be serving detentions, if that is your worry," Dumbledore replied, grinning youthfully. "However, I am more than familiar with some of the rumours circulating around certain…rewards for succeeding in your task."
Both Fleur and Harry leaned in then.
"However, I find gifts to be best given in ceremony," Dumbledore then said. "For Mademoiselle Delacour, you will find yours on the day of Yule, I assure you."
Fleur nodded, smiling.
"And Harry," Dumbledore came to say. "Your gift, I believe, is one too personal for even that." the Headmaster looked to Fleur. "I do not wish to be rude, but might I be able to have Harry's company alone for a few moments?"
Fleur nodded quickly, standing from her seat. She reached down to hold Harry's hand, her thumb brushing over his palm. She let go after their moment and the door soon swung open, leaving just Harry and the Headmaster.
"To begin, I must apologise," Dumbledore said. "First, for not telling you sooner, and second for not providing your gift thirteen years ago."
"What are you talking about, Sir?" Harry asked, the wheels beginning to turn.
"This morning, I was not in the castle fulfilling my role as the Headmaster," Dumbledore explained. "I was in Albania, performing my role as the man I ought to have been sooner." From nothing, he summoned a familiar wand. "This morning, I caught Peter Pettigrew."
Harry gasped. "What?"
"I know this is surprising, but it is true," Dumbledore assured. "There have been reports of his presence in the magical centres of the country's capital, and they came to be accurate." He placed the wand upon the table. "And, what is more, upon his person, there was this wand, which belonged in its active time of use to Tom Riddle."
"So t-that's-"
"-the brother wand to your own," Dumbledore finished, with a glance to his companion, who rested upon his perch. "This means, of course, that by the new year, your Godfather will be a free man."
"Really?" Harry asked, for want of anything else to ask.
"Yes Harry," Dumbledore reassured. "This ought not to have been a gift, for it is only the life you ought to have had, but it is the best thing I am able to give you."
Harry's eyes went wide. "So I'll be able to live with him?"
Dumbledore nodded. "Without question."
Harry swallowed the breath caught in his throat. "Thank you, Sir," he said. "I really don't know what to say."
"Say nothing," he told Harry. "You owe me no thanks; in truth, I owe you much more than you could ever owe me."
Harry stood, suddenly feeling a great deal too much to sit down. "So what was he doing in Albania?" he felt the urge to ask.
Dumbledore stood too, and walked toward the door. Harry followed him there. "That, Harry, is an answer I will come to learn in the coming days," he said. "However, I would think that your news is best celebrated in better company." They reached the door in stride, Harry rushing to keep up with the taller man. "If I do not see you again before the holidays, I wish you a happy festive period."
Harry smiled brightly. "Thank you, Professor."
He stepped away from the Headmaster's office feeling better than he ever could've possibly hoped. In just a few seconds, his world had grown colours and dimensions that he could've never even thought to comprehend before.
Even in the dream world that was his life, there were still so many things that he thought to be impossible. Feats much too miraculous to happen, too wonderful for any world to hold. A life, with Sirius and a home, was one such wonder.
Until then. For a moment, he was reminded of how he felt on his eleventh birthday. Of first learning miracles exist.
And, as the world returned to him, he came to meet the eyes of Fleur again.
Before he realised it, Harry had taken her into his arms, hugging her close to his body, just as she did the same. He could feel the surprised laugh fall from her as he did, and he laughed too, relieved and exalted and all things in-between. For a moment, he lifted her off of the ground, sweeping her in his arms around the foyer of the office. The act drew another burst of surprised laughter from Fleur, though she did not raise an issue with how he held in the least.
"A good gift, I assume?" Fleur asked, her words falling into the mess of his hair. She was taller than him, so as he lifted her, her voice came from a foot above his head.
Harry laughed. "The best," he said, his eyes closing for a moment as he allowed the feelings within him to stir and swell. The utter, total relief. Then suddenly, he realised their predicament, and placed her down on the ground, in-turn offering the sight of her amused face as he did. "Sorry about that."
She shook her head, with red painted along her cheekbones. "It's okay," she said, her hands coming to touch the warmth of her own skin. Her voice dipped as she added. "It's more than okay, in fact."
With such energy within him, Harry could not stand still for very long, and set about walking the halls; Fleur followed him without a thought.
He thought about her, then. On their games of secrets and bartering. He loved them, yet they did not matter to him at that instant.
"My Godfather is going to be proved innocent," Harry said, the words coming from him easier than he'd ever known them to.
Fleur looked at him with curiosity in her eyes. "I don't think I know the full story."
"Last year, with the dementors," Harry began. "They were searching for Sirius Black, because he'd escaped Azkaban." Fleur nodded, familiar. "But he never should've been imprisoned in the first place; Peter Pettigrew should have been. He was never dead; he just said he was to frame Sirius."
In the aftermath of last term, the ministry had seen it fit to issue a statement to properly handle the delicate nature of all that had occurred; one that did not mention a child's use of a ministry-owned time turner, for example. So, to the rest of the world, Sirius had made an effort to capture Harry, only to be driven away by Professors Snape and Lupin. The dementors then acted wildly, going after the innocent, yet Harry managed to drive them away with his Patronus. According to the minister, the creatures had since been banished from this world.
"But," Harry said, with what felt like dawn's light in his voice. "Pettigrew has just been captured."
Fleur grabbed his arm so that he stopped his pacing. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling his face into the crook of her neck. Harry found comfort there easily.
"So Pettigrew was your family's betrayer?" Fleur asked softly. Harry nodded against her skin, his nose brushing ticklishly against her nape. He'd never been one to seek another's touch, before, and yet here he did not know of a single thing that felt more natural.
Conscious of the fact that they were in the middle of a hallway, Harry led them to the nearest free classroom. It was, Harry knew, the Headmaster's old Transfiguration classroom, from the time he'd actively taught the subject.
Harry sat upon the empty desk, and Fleur joined him upon it too.
"My relatives don't really like magic. They're not the biggest fans of me, either," started Harry, not looking at her as he spoke. "So I- " He stopped. "I-I think I might have a chance of finding a home."
A place where he was allowed to be exactly who he was. One where he didn't need to strip away parts of himself for other people's benefit. One of magic being celebrated, rather than hidden.
"Do you think your godfather will be ready to take you in?"
Harry was silent for a moment. "I hope so," he said. "And that hope is far better than anything I've got now."
"I'm sorry," Fleur said.
Harry did look at her then. "Don't be," he said. "You have nothing to be sorry for."
The day wasn't a sorrowful one, either. It was truly the happiest of days.
He felt more than saw the sigh Fleur drew in before she began to speak.
"It is my grand-mère," Fleur began. Upon the desk, her hand gently trembled. "Why I have such a preoccupation with Professor Dumbledore, that is." Her hand clenched as if to snuff out the jitters in her skin. "Veela have not had the kindest history; even the objectified existence we have now is leagues beyond what my people suffered in years gone by, though."
Harry reached out to hold her hand. She leaned into his touch.
"In the thirties, Grindelwald feared our abilities, and so he attacked our communes along the Rhin," Fleur explained, her voice growing shaky and uneven. Harry passed his hand over her arm, his touch gentle. "They would have killed many, if not for Dumbledore." She wiped away at her eyes with her free hand. "They would have taken my grand-mère without him."
With her final word, her voice softened to nothing and Harry swept an arm around her back, another wrapping around her waist. She leaned against his side, her hands gripping onto his sleeves and her head over his heart.
They did not move for an age. Both utterly content to stay in one another's touch in that moment. They forget themselves, then. Forgot who they ought to be; forgot who they ought to have been for one another. Instead, they closed their eyes to the world and just were.
"I don't think it would do our backs any good to sleep here," Harry said to break the silence, finding his voice hoarse. The rumble of his sleepy voice brought Fleur's eyes open, they having closed to allow their comfort to wash over her. "This room isn't warm enough for that, either."
"I am warm enough," Fleur said, without an effort to move a muscle. Harry looked to see her clothes, and such was the strangeness of the day that he only then realised that she wore his jumper, the sleeves pulled over her hands and only her thumbs poking through.
"Comfortable, isn't it?" Harry asked.
Fleur smiled, distracted. "Yes, it is," she agreed before her eyes opened. Her voice was quick to add. "Your school jumpers are amazing. The best part of this country, truly."
" The best?"
Her lips quirked into a smile. "Perhaps second, perhaps third," she teased. "The place grows on you in time."
"People have noticed you wearing it, by the way," Harry offered, his voice careful.
Fleur shook her head. "I don't care," she said. "The people will always talk; let them. They will never understand or even try to."
"They'll never know the truth of it all," Harry agreed.
What they saw was of no consequence. The best things were theirs and theirs alone. No-one else's.
"I think I owe you a secret," Fleur said, her last word uttered into his chest before she left him to stand up suddenly. The loss of her upon him made him feel unmoored.
"You really don't have to," Harry rushed to say.
Fleur shook her head. "We must be fair with this, 'Arry," she told him. "You gave me a hope of yours. Now I owe you a hope of my own."
He reached out to take her hand; her touch tethering him. He brought their palms together, as if to compare the size of their hands, before he threaded them together. "Again, you really don't have to."
"I cannot give you any room to complain," Fleur argued, drawing Harry to smile. She drew a deliberate breath. "My hope is not of the same magnitude as yours, I admit, but it is a hope I have carried for years."
Harry nodded.
"When I was younger, I wished to be a ballet dancer," Fleur said, smiling to him. "I took lessons and I loved it."
There was a wistful air to her, then. "What happened?" Harry asked.
"Another day," Fleur answered. Another secret, Harry came to realise.
"Do you still dance, then?"
Fleur smiled, flirting with withholding her words. "On occasion," she answered, deciding against the idea, it seemed. "Not as well as I ought to, though."
Harry found that impossible to believe. He stood up.
"Would you like to dance?" he asked, on a whim.
"So you are the dancing type," Fleur announced. "Let's dance, then."
Perhaps more so out of instinct than awareness, his hand found itself at her waist, her other hand clasped upon hers. Never before had Harry been offered a better look at Fleur's beauty.
She was unfathomable; he was once more utterly overwhelmed. He could not believe, then, that she existed and that he was allowed to look at her. No wonder could compare, nor none of nature's beauty even approach hers.
If art was to be captivating, she was art.
"Have you ever danced before?" Fleur asked.
"Never," Harry announced, his voice soft even to his own ears. If he were not careful, he knew he could lose himself in looking at her and she deserved better than that.
"Then you are bound to be awful," Fleur said to him, smiling with an amused sort of cruelty. "Fortunately, you shall have me to guide you."
There was no music to dance to, no rhythm to fill the air, and so they satisfied themselves with swaying from side to side. Harry did not believe they kept to any beat, and he could not raise the energy to care. All that mattered then was how Fleur felt in his arms, and how wonderful it was to look into her eyes.
"This is not dancing," Fleur said, amused.
"Then perhaps you ought to teach me what that is," Harry prompted. "I can think of worse ways to pass the time."
"Add that to the list of things we must do," Fleur said, smiling at the thought. "Our matchmaking, our dancing, our…"
She trailed off, though Harry knew by the look in her eyes exactly what she meant to say.
Our everything.
Ours .
As the light outside dimmed to nothing but the moonlight, and even the candles that lined the corridors dimmed to near-blackness, they remained in that classroom. They danced, or not-danced, and they laughed without worry for the whole night. Harry planned to contact Sirius, and Fleur planned the many ways she sought to tease Harry.
The world, for them, had never looked brighter.
Amator = Lover (This is the root word of amateur, and so it is someone who loves what they do, in spite of their skill)
There it is!
Hope you enjoyed. Let me know what you thought with a review.
Until next time!