I don't own anything related to the Harry Potter franchise
Author's Note:
A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations.
A plaque on the wall that read the words "Harry Potter's Bed" let Harry know exactly where he was just an instant before the Cruciatus curse pain that he'd been avoiding took its first opportunity to assault him in earnest, tore throughout his whole entire body, and drove a groan of abject misery from his lips.
Slowly, spastically, Harry groaned, curled up into a seated position, and formed a tight ball on the bed with his head secured tightly between his knees.
"Take zis potion, 'Arry," a concerned sounding voice said from off to Harry's right.
As Harry slowly lifted his head towards the ceiling, a potion bottle was carefully tilted towards his mouth, at which point he attempted to create a seal with his lips but they refused to cooperate and he spilled some of the pain potion down onto the hospital gown he was wearing. Immediately after, a second potion was raised to Harry's lips, allowing him to try again with no more success, but by now he'd swallowed a normal dose of the potion, and a slight lessening of the pain flowed throughout his throbbing and spastically jerking body.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Harry unraveled and collapsed onto his back on the bed again, during which time he found that his eyes hurt like they contained glass shards and felt even worse when he closed them, so he ended up staring up at the ceiling of the room.
"Madam Pomfrey ees of ze opinion zat sequestering away Cruciatus pain makes eet even worse when you eventually must confront eet. She says zat ze curse ees eentent driven primarily by anger and 'aatred and ze magic becomes enraged by ze opposition eet ees receiving."
Harry nodded in understanding because now he knew why Poppy and Fleur so unceremoniously knocked him unconscious. He must've been building up more and more misery for himself every second that he contained the curse damage inside of his mental barriers. Harry was curious about something though. "B..Being un..uncon..shious isn't p..perceived b..by the m..magic as a f..form of a..avoy..dance?"
Oh wow… The stuttering was really bad right now….
When Fleur replied, her voice sounded cool, almost detached, in a way that sent a shiver up Harry's spine… "I asked zat same question as well, and Poppy just shrugged. Ze 'ealer 'aas eemplied eet ees still avoidance een ze magic's eyes but nowhere near as bad as brazenly walking around wiz ze curse caged up eenside of you. She also eentended to 'aave you 'ealed of eenjury, magically refueled and consuming pain potions ze very moment you began to feel ze curse effects."
Harry nodded again while drawing in a horrifically painful breath of medically scented, sterile air with a nice hint of Fleur in the mixture for variety's sake, and then he repeated the performance as a method of pain management as more and more time went by, and the curse took its toll in the following ways:
-Pain, a wild variety of it, somehow both extremely acute and widespread at exactly the same time
-Intense muscle contractions that repeated over and over again, as if he just finished running five marathons in a row and tore his body to shreds
-Electric burning sensations burning their way through his nervous system as if he was attached to a live wire, with much more powerful jolts stinging his body at irregular intervals.
-Sensitivity and intense irritation in his skin, as if he was slowly being rotated on a spit over red-hot coals
-weakness and a deep, grating achiness, as if his bones were broken in a million places and being held together by tape.
In the end however, Harry's head was probably in the worst shape at the moment, as it currently felt like he had a hundred gallons of water trapped inside of his skull, where it was trying to violently explode outwards at random, fast-paced intervals.
Needless to say, Harry had never been truly drunk before, but he imagined that to have a headache this profoundly awful you would normally need to have one hell of a good time first.
Harry hurt physically… but that wasn't all… He was also being persistently harassed by nagging, heavy, oppressive guilt regarding his irresponsible actions earlier that day, and ignoring these feelings would only make the situation worse over time, which is why he decided he needed to address the one variety of discomfort he could conceivably do something about.
Slowly, Harry turned his head in Fleur's direction, taking in her exhausted and miserable looking features. "I..I'm s..sor..ry... Fleur."
While at first Fleur slowly nodded in response, as soon as she was finished, she started shaking her head, her expression became even more miserable than it was before, and she appeared to completely give up on replying.
With a haggard sigh that leaked from his mouth as if it was made of sandpaper and glass, Harry haltingly turned his attention back towards the ceiling, and then he allowed his vision to grow vague and unfocused. What he really wanted to do right now was cry, but despite the fact that he wasn't some repressed tough guy, tears just didn't seem to be available.
More than likely, crying was too much of a cathartic release to be allowed by the Cruciatus curse and his ability to do so was currently being suppressed….
Well… No matter...
There was officially nothing to be done about any of it at the moment, so Harry just gave up and sank into a really healthy, wallowing style, self-pity party, sulk. In the end, he just lay there, suffering on multiple fronts, while also hurting because his wife was hurting, and very slowly over many minutes, the painful… everything… incrementally eased away. Eventually, when exhaustion overtook the nagging misery that was wracking Harry's body, he fell into a normal, non-meditative sleep, for the first time in many, many months.
The next time Harry awoke, it was immediately apparent that the torturous agony that wracked his body before had dulled to a persistent ache, so yes, there was that to look forward to, but it was also immediately obvious that Fleur was nowhere nearby… Without even opening his eyes, he could sense as much, because he could always smell her in the air for just shy of half a Kilometer.
Fleur was gone, and she had been gone for quite a while now…
Next, Harry's thoughts started drifting into his Mindscape, both as an escape from his remaining discomfort, and to sort out the various damages that he was sure he'd caused to his inner world. At the very last second however, Harry stopped when he heard the rustling of pages…
Instantly, Harry's mouth broke into just the ghost of a smile because that could only be one person. Drawing a full lungful of air, he decided he would try out his voice, see if he could put a few words together with any eloquence... "I can hear turning pages in a book. Let me gueesssss... Harry heard Hermione giggle from his right even as he cracked open his eyes to look at his sister. "Ah... I was right in one. It could only be the most studious of us all, the one and only Hermione Granger."
"Hi Harry," Mione whispered as if he still had a splitting headache. "How are you feeling?"
"Better," Harry answered, while smiling purely for her benefit. "I feel relatively normal, but I'm still shaking inside as if I'm just getting over a high fever or I'm attached to electrodes or something."
Hermione nodded as she turned the book that she'd been reading in Harry's direction. The title said Diagnosis and Treatment of the Cruciatus Curse.
"According to this book, your nervous system's been beaten all to hell and you only have your absurd magical strength to thank for your ridiculously speedy recovery," Hermione described with a sigh of relief and a shake of her head. "Under normal circumstances, you'd still be experiencing large amounts of pain and talking would still be impossible, as apparently, even relatively weak Cruciatus exposure causes prolonged hospital convalescence for most wizards."
Harry nodded, closed his eyes and smiled a wide, genuine smile for the first time since the attack. Mione was studying while also being the very best friend that anyone could ever ask for, thus it was a hyper Hermione moment. It was one of those moments where she was being the most Hermione that Hermione can conceivably become, and Harry appreciated her for it very, very much.
"Love you," Harry whispered, almost overcome with gratitude at the moment and finally leaking some tears. At the same time, he felt his best friend put her hand on his arm, which made the tears come even faster. "I... I messed up," Harry whispered towards the ceiling.
"Yeap." Hermione casually replied as if he'd just pointed out that the sky is blue. "I imagine you're referring to your lady love and yes, yes, you've most definitely made a mess of things in that regard. On the other hand, what you did out there in that dueling arena was a hyper Harry moment. It was one of those moments where my friend Harry Potter was being as Harry as he can conceivably become, and since Fleur knows you well enough to know how you operate… I'll admit I don't have very much patience for this little snit she's having over in that carriage…"
Harry softly chuckled to himself purely because he and Hermione were very good friends and their shared jokes always seemed to have perfect timing. Then he felt some more tears trail down his cheeks because he had no connection to his wife in the bond right now, and its absence was tearing him apart inside… "Hermione I.. I betrayed her..."
Very suddenly, Hermione loudly closed her massive book, quite firmly interrupting Harry's train of thought. "Tell me something Harry… Do you know how many people you saved out there in that stadium?"
Harry merely shook his head because no, no he didn't.
"Between the people you managed to warn about the danger who wisely ran away, the people you defended from those high power explosive curses, the people you held up in those stands using a single Arresto Momentum spell for over a minute, the people who got away while you made yourself a highly visible target, Mary MacDonald who you saved despite the fact she was magically torturing you, and the countless other students who would've been murdered by that lunatic if you hadn't put him down," Hermione very loudly listed off… "Well… How about we low-ball the number for accuracy's sake… Your actions yesterday saved hundreds and hundreds of lives…"
A scraping sound filled the room as Hermione abruptly slid her seat closer to the bed to look down at Harry from above… "What would Fleur have you do, Harry? What would've made her happy given the situation? Were you supposed to Disillusion yourself and hide in the Forbidden Forest? Were you supposed to disregard hundreds of innocent lives? You and I both know you were the only person out there who had a single hope in hell of stopping that monster, and while I was terrified for you yesterday, I was also extremely proud of you because you're a Merlin be damned Hero!"
Hermione paused at that point and gave what she'd said so far a moment to fully sink in. Finally when she thought that Harry'd completely digested what she'd said so far, she landed the finishing blow. "Not one student died in that arena yesterday, Harry... Not - a single - one."
And now Harry was torn… He didn't know… He didn't know damn it! He didn't know where the scales tipped! He didn't know at what point he was supposed to look out for the good of his wife and his life, and just… let it all burn.
Except… no.
Harry slumped further into his mattress in defeat, because he knew he couldn't do it. He knew that he couldn't be asked to do it because it was unfathomable to him. Harry knew for a fact that he was a borderline chauvinist, white knight, with a hero complex. He knew he was a product of a abusive and neglectful childhood, which led to low self-worth and a need to please others. He knew that he was pathologically a martyr and needed to understand that his life had just as much value as everyone else's. He also knew that he just couldn't do it... He couldn't disregard the lives of others and continue to live with himself in his carefully Occluded mind.
Slowly, Harry turned towards Hermione and nodded his appreciation. "Thank you, Mione."
"You're welcome, Harry," Hermione allowed, before returning to her book as if they were just discussing the weather.
Soon after, Harry fell asleep again and the vigil at his bedside was swapped over to Neville and Hannah (Hannah supported Neville, as the boy was not comfortable around the Crutiatus curse, for completely obvious reasons).
Harry would remain in bed for the next day and a half, during which time he was never alone, as in ones or twos, all of his friends kept him company.
Truth be told, keeping Harry company wasn't the issue…
In the end, Madam Pomfrey compiled a list of Harry's closest friends, before barring entry to the mob of people that were milling around at the doors. Her patient needed sleep dammit, and he couldn't be disturbed every five minutes by obsessing girls and hero worshiping boys.
Madam Pomfrey did notice however that Harry was never once visited by the one person who could've done him the most good given the circumstances.
"Teenagers," Poppy muttered like a curse word, while shaking her head and throwing medical linens into a bin. "They don't know a damn thing about hard times or how to weather them."
Then Madam Pomfrey looked down at Harry as he slept in "The Potter bed" and she very quietly amended her statement. "Well… Most of them don't know hard times..."
On Sunday night a petition was written by an unnamed student, before it was copied over two hundred times and was posted on every notice board/empty hallway around the whole entire school. In this petition, the student claimed to have been sitting in the stands that Harry James Potter magically suspended in the air at great personal risk, and that there was absolutely no doubt in his/her mind that she/he would be dead if he hadn't done so. Said student demanded that the stone column that was currently residing in the middle of the clearing outside of the Entry Hall remain there permanently as a memorial. He/she demanded the stone column memorialize heroism on a scale that is only very rarely mentioned in history books and is quite often debated as being far too fantastical to be accurate.
The petition invited any student whose life was saved by a fellow student on the 18thof November 1994 to legibly and magically carve their names into the stone column as a reminder of what could've happened. Furthermore, he/she implored the involved students of all three schools to please write their names on the stone column to remind future generations of one extremely important lesson.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Over the course of the following Monday, hundreds and hundreds of students wandered down the hill from the Entry Hall to a lone stone column in the middle of a field, where they stared at, approached, and then magically carved their names into the stone. At first, the names were written in a medium sized font, but eventually the names became smaller and smaller because they were finding it difficult to find room to write. By the end of the day many people were forced to stand on each other's shoulders to reach empty areas of rock in order to write their names. By the end of the day the stone column was completely covered in neat, wand carved names from the bottom to about four meters up where it was almost impossible to reach.
On Monday night before dinner, Dumbledore addressed all of the students amassed within the Great Hall, announcing that the stone column would indeed become a permanent memorial and would soon be professionally warded to protect it from outside interference, weather and the ravages of time. At the same time, he requested that the student who posted all of the petitions discreetly find him because he wanted him/her to write what would go on the plaque.
Dumbledore's announcement went over well with most of the students (with the usual exceptions) but it was a rather quiet gathering of wizards/witches who heard it. They were still pretty shaken up by the events of the day before, and Dumbledore's actions felt more like common sense rather than an act of grand extravagance. Everybody merely clapped politely when Dumbledore was finished speaking before returning to their meals in quiet conversation.
Harry wouldn't learn about any of this until quite a bit later because everyone would just assume that he'd already been told by somebody else…
The Daily Prophet, Monday the 24th
Death Eater Unleashes Chaos During Event at Hogwarts
This paper didn't have any journalists present at the preliminaries for the Tri-Wizard's Dueling Tournament this Sunday afternoon at Hogwarts. At the time, all of our attention was focused on a heated legislation debate that was developing at the Ministry between Dumbledore and the light faction and Malloy and the Conservative faction. For that reason, watching students get seeded for a tournament later in the year was lower on our priorities. We were wrong. In our defense, we thought that the event at Hogwarts was going to be extremely tame. We thought that it was being run by celebrated ex-Auror Alastor Moody and overseen by a team of highly trained professional dueling proctors hired by the Ministry. We were wrong. In actuality, the event was not being run by Moody and in the end it was anything but tame….
Over the following full-page article, the events that took place at the Interschool Duelling Tournament preliminaries was described in great depth and detail, during which time the following events were mentioned
-Harry's involvement in the prelims as a stand in Proctor
-Mr. Foehnor's attack on Mary MacDonald, Harry's intervention, and then the newly fired Proctor's use of a Finite Incantatum spell to sabotage the dueling platform
-Harry's bizarre standoff with a man that everyone believed to be Professor Alastor Moody, the creepy and malevolent expression that grew across the Professor's horribly twisted face, and then Harry's pre-emptive attack (that was negated by the man's powerful magical armor)
-The way Harry blocked several explosion curses with his body and his shields
-The way that Fleur, Cedric, Neville, Hermione, Selene, Fred and George created both walls and trenches in the ground for people to retreat behind, before providing cover fire to support their friend
-The way Harry held up the collapsing stands while having to dodge persistent spellfire
-The duel that Harry took part in with fake Moody, and then how his friends helped him put the man down
-The fact that during this duel, Harry was exposed to a Crutiatus curse, cast into his back by an Imperio cursed student (unnamed) that he was protecting with his body
-The fact that all of Magical Britain's contracted Proctors ran for their lives at the beginning of the attack, how disgraceful it was that Magical Britain hired these untrained goons, and the answers that they intended to get from the Wizarding Council
-The fact that the attacker was none other than Bartimius Crouch Junior, son of Minister Crouch who was one of the convenors of the tournament
With all of the above described in excruciating detail, the article then moved on to the aftermath…
Following the attack, we at the Prophet moved to perform the very depressing but necessary job of reporting the exact death toll amongst the student population, only to find out that doing so would be completely impossible. While scores of different students were cut, bruised or burned, etcetera, no one present at the preliminaries ended up succumbing to those injuries.
Harry Potter, two of his fellow Champions, and a half dozen of his friends saved hundreds of lives in the midst of an out of control firefight that rendered the entire dueling arena down into wooden scraps and rubble.
In the wake of the attack, Lord Potter was relocated to Hogwarts's Hospital Wing, where he was rendered unconscious in preparation to treat his Cruciatus curse exposure. For those of you unaware of the grizzly side effects of the Cruciatus curse, it can cause widespread nerve damage and take an extremely long time to fully recover from. This is of particular concern to us at the prophet, because the first Task of the Triwizard Tournament is coming up in only six days' time, and it's unknown if Lord Potter will be fully recuperated in time to safely compete.
Over the next few days, we at the Prophet will push hard for Britain's Magical Council to speak on why they cheaply contracted failed Auror trainees to act as Proctors, why they keep failing to assure the safety of the students at their events, and why a dozen student aged magicals were forced to step up where they failed.
Written by Adam Reagan and Jeremy White.
Appoline slammed down the internationally owl-delivered, Magical Britain newspaper, following a snarl of max outrage at her irresponsible and stupid daughter. "It has been a full day and I am only now finding out that my future son in law is in the hospital," she shrieked towards the ceiling.
"What is it dear?" Adrien sprinted into the dining room, at the sound of his wife's screeching.
Appoline handed Adrien the paper without a word and stared at him as he read it.
At first, Adrien's eyes slid down the page as if to sleuth out the gist, but soon after, his eyes took on a laser like intensity and he was reading every single word at a rapid rate. Over the two minutes that followed, the color of his face transitioned through several different shades starting with paper white but slowly turning red as he joined his wife in her anger.
"Fleur…" he growled out in red-hot rage, the likes of which he almost never directed at his family.
"I know right," Appoline exclaimed, grateful to have someone on the same page as her.
"Are we not family, " Adrien ranted, as he stalked around the living room like a leopard in a cage. "Are we not important enough to know such little details as a Death Eater attack at the school and the near murder of one of our own!?"
"I know, I know," Appoline exclaimed, climbing to her feet and joining her husband on the lap that he was completing around the dining room.
All of the sudden, Appoline had a eureka moment and yelled out the word, "Dobby!"
POP
"Oh wow, she didn't tell you," Dobby immediately exclaimed with supreme levels of surprise written upon his face. "My Lady... I would've been here instantly if I'd thought for even one second that you were being left in the dark. The earrings, telephones, so easy..."
"Enough, Dobby... We don't blame you. First off, how is Harry?" Adrien's face was all business.
"He should be leaving the Hospital Wing as we speak. He is very strong magically and should be completely recovered by tomorrow or the day after," Dobby immediately responded, much calmer now that he had a way to be helpful.
"If you had to guess… Why is this the first we are hearing about this," Appoline asked as she slowly dropped to a knee in front of Dobby.
"Fleur is... upset with my Master and hasn't talked to him since the first night he spent in the Hospital Wing, but it's also… so much more than merely that," Dobby slowly explained with a helpless expression upon his face. "Even with the empathic connection that Fleur and I share, her emotions are so wildly complex, painful and conflicted right now, I can't even begin to parse them into a recognizable whole. What I do know is that she's spent the last twenty-four hours locked in her room and ignoring visitors while ranting, raving, crying, and rolling around in her bed…"
By this point, the anger was draining from Adrien's face as confusion and concern rapidly took its place. "Do you have any idea why she's so very upset?"
"I... can only try to explain the snippets of coherent thought that I've been able to pick out. Fleur's mind is in chaos," Dobby hedged.
Appoline and Adrien immediately nodded their understanding while gesturing for Dobby to continue.
"My Master is a dyed in the wool hero, which I suspect is exactly why Fleur is so upset with him," Dobby hedged. "She desires him safe far more than she cares about the welfare of strangers, she's furious with him for disregarding his own safety to such an absurd degree, and although she feels guilty for it, a small part of her feels betrayed because if he dies, he's condemning her to a very short and painful end... There's more as well… an unfathomable amount of more, in fact… but that much I can put together.."
Both Adrien and Appoline finally nodded their understanding, as Adrien crouched down next to his wife.
"Oh Gods, but why did this have to happen now," Appoline moaned as her husband pulled her face into his chest and curled his arms around her back. "Fleur is likely being assaulted by her Veela instincts and will struggle to come to terms, 'Arry won't be able to simply change for her peace of mind because he is who he is, and they will hurt themselves trying to avoid one another as they sort themselves out…"
"They love each other," Adrien replied in low tones because above all else he knew that to be true. "They'll figure it out or come to accept reality for what it is. Fleur knew who Harry was when she became involved with him and only recently she scolded me for my fears regarding his very dangerous life."
"Fleur won't enjoy becoming a hypocrite, but when it comes to Veela instincts, rationality becomes of very little importance," Appoline warned…
Adrien sighed heavily because he'd experienced as much first hand back when he and Appoline were young… Then he merely asked the relevant question. "Give them time?"
Appoline sighed in return and then nodded into her husband's chest… "Give them time."
"Damn," Adrien muttered into his wife's silky-soft hair.
For the rest of the morning, the Delacour parents took turns reading the newspaper article and asking Dobby for further clarification.
Later that day, the Durmstrang versus Beauxbatons Quidditch match took place, and was an absolute blowout. Durmstrang won the game exactly one hundred and fifty points to zero when Krum caught the snitch within the first minute of playing time. Both teams and the media were annoyed with Krum because the game was over before it started and didn't display the skills of either school beyond the fact that they could mount their brooms and successfully take off.
Tuesday Morning…
After an entire Monday spent in the Hospital wing, either sleeping or chit-chatting with Mary McDonald and the real Alastor Moody (newly freed of a multidimensional trunk), it was finally time for Harry to brave the big bad world again, and he bid his roommates goodbye with as much enthusiasm as he could muster before exiting the unit… and then freezing in place like a statue.
The hallway outside of the Hospital wing was littered with flowers and trinkets of all shapes and sizes…
This… looked like it was going to be troublesome to deal with, but then, at the moment, most things seemed far too troublesome to deal with, and there was absolutely nothing that Harry could do about it, because… he was in a really bad way.
At the moment, there was an ever present, vacuum of sucking darkness where Fleur normally resided inside of Harry's soul, and it was slowly tearing away his resolve to do anything but sulk in a darkly lit room. Oh sure, the bond was still there and as strong as ever, the magic wasn't the problem. The problem was that the bond was completely closed off, as if the blast doors on the Death Star had slid into place, isolating Harry from his other half.
Gods! Grow up, Harry silently ranted at himself. You'll survive this, you've felt these feelings before and you survived them for a damned decade! For the Gods know what time over the last few days, Harry violently shook his head and slapped his cheeks, and then he stalked through the halls in the direction of Gryffindor tower.
It was only several minutes later, when Harry ascended the spiral staircase into the tower and approached the Fat Lady portrait, Harry's mood finally improved, mostly because of all the fond nostalgia that the portrait seemed to exude from her every pigment. At the same time, Harry suddenly realized he currently had a small problem to deal with, as he feared he'd have to sit outside the painting door for many minutes waiting for a fellow Gryff to arrive. It had been weeks since he'd been here for anything other than a visit with Neville and Hermione and they'd always opened the painting in advance of him as they entered...
Briefly, Harry wondered why he'd taken that act of kindness for granted, before deciding to bring the thought up with his friends later.
"Hello Harry," The Fat Lady greeted, her omnipresent cheer filling the hallway. "I am willing to let you into the tower without the password today, if you desire. I wouldn't even have a purpose without you after all, as I can't open a portal for students who are dead…"
When the Fat Lady beamed in his direction, Harry smiled in return, if a little awkwardly. "I'd appreciate being let into the tower my Lady, although I'm certain the stories that you've heard are a little bit... exaggerated," Harry softly spoke while leaning his right shoulder against the nearby wall.
"Oh, I know rumors and I know truths," The Fat Lady corrected with an amused shake of her head. "Of course, it helps when the sources I'm citing number in the hundreds…"
Leaning his whole back against the wall next to the painting, Harry rubbed the back of his neck for the first time in several months now. "You do have a point, my Lady, and I am in fact a little bit frightened of entering the tower at the moment… When I left the Hospital Wing for the first time this morning, the hallway outside of it looked like people had been leaving offerings for baby Jesus…"
The Fat Lady instantly barked out a sharp laugh, before snorting loudly and then covering her face with her hands.
"A Lady never snorts," Harry calmly assured. "I neither heard a sound just now nor will I remember anything of note happening while we conversed."
"Oh you are well-trained," The Fat Lady laughed.
"I like to think so, but sometimes I'm not so sure," Harry replied while forcing a smile and squaring up in front of the portrait. "Okay, my Lady. You have successfully calmed me down with your endless grace and charm. I am ready to enter my tower and behave as if I am a confident, adult male."
"Oh you are a keeper, Harry, and I'll miss you when you graduate," The Fat Lady gushed while beaming a gentle smile. "I wonder if another boy who looks exactly like you will arrive at the school in just a little over a decade…"
Harry did smile at that prospect because a lot of the things that he knew about his father, he knew because of the painting standing right in front of him. You would've thought it would be one of his professors or maybe even Dumbledore himself who told him about his parents, but you'd be wrong. None of those people seemed to ever have the time to fill him in on the details surrounding his own life.
Well, the Fat Lady did, and she was quite happy to talk…
And back in the present, The Fat Lady smiled because Harry was smiling, and her right hand drew sideways towards the right margin of her painting. "Okay Harry, take a deep breath, smile and wave and it'll all die down in time…"
With one last parting smile from Harry, the painting opened wide, and he ducked into his common room for the first time in over a week.
The very first thing that Harry noticed was that none of his teammates were currently around, and nor were Neville or Hermione (damn). Next, Harry noticed that his arrival had caused a wave of silence and perfect stillness to expand across the crowded room.
Five and then ten seconds passed, as everyone just stared where they sat, but then the common room's occupants slowly snapped out of the fugue state they'd fallen into, they rose to their feet in ones and twos, and a chorus of voices began calling out in Harry's direction. Eventually, a ruckus began and Harry was swamped by a mass of extremely excited people. By far the most tenacious members of the mass were Lavender, Parvati, Seamus and Dean, who were almost standing right on top of him in their excitement and growing enthusiasm, and as per the Fat Lady's suggestion, Harry merely smiled and performed a hello gesture with his hand…
"Uhhh, hey everyone…" Harry eventually voiced, when the tumult quieted enough to be heard. "I'm back, and my body works almost like it's supposed to again."
Of course, after he broke the ice, it was rapid fire question time for one Harry James Potter, as he was once again forced to answer a wide variety of different questions with varying levels of truth and accuracy, but this time he was fine with the questions because... yeah... Sunday was a pretty upsetting event, and curiosity was a pretty natural response given the circumstances. At some point however, it all had to come to an end, and Harry saw exactly how that outcome was going to happen.
Ronald Weasley, the biggest, most reliable, git of all time, was walking into the room and his face was screwing up into a resentful looking scowl.
Harry, for the very first time ever, was relishing the verbal abuse that he was about to receive, and he dutifully waited for it to happen.
"Hero my arse," Ron finally volleyed across the room, cutting through the din of many questions like a hot knife through butter. "If you hadn't attacked first, the Eater probably wouldn't have gone all mental in the first place!"
Harry had to concede that as far as complaints go, the redhead had a halfway decent one, and even though Ron invented it purely out of spite, he still couldn't fault the boy for thinking it. Fair enough, was the predominant thought in Harry's mind… Of course, Harry had access to advanced magical senses that provided him with many, undeniable clues about how dangerous and insane Bartimius Junior was, but Ron wouldn't know that so his complaint was valid. Harry mentally tipped his hat to the persistently douchie boy standing on the stairs across the room.
Following that concession, Harry took the offered opportunity to begin calmly walking through the crowded common room towards the stairs and Ron, and everybody parted aside as if they were the Red Sea. Harry didn't scowl, he didn't make threatening gestures or even really look at Ron, but the boy shrank against the wall anyway as he moved to his side. Then, just as Harry moved past his one-time friend, he stopped for just long enough to ask the boy a question.
"Ron... Let me ask you this... If I didn't react, didn't try anything, didn't move for fear of upsetting Crouch, and then people were killed because of my indecision, would you accept my excuses?"
Then Harry moved on, ascending the stairs to his dorm room, where he found some training clothes and his spare running shoes, and then marched out onto the lawns and the Black Lake beyond.
It was time to get his broken body moving again.
At first, Harry's return to running felt awkward in the extreme. Harry's body felt ungainly and stilted, which is why he spent the remainder of the day running laps around the Black Lake. He ran, drank protein and snacked on food Dobby delivered before repeating the process over and over again.
After several hours spent repeating this process, yes, Harry began to notice some real improvement, and he pushed to move even faster. By nine Am, Harry's body broke through a bottleneck of some kind, and it began to feel like his own again. By ten Am, Harry was really hauling ass and reducing Aethir's involvement to almost nothing in the process. By one Pm, Harry was tearing through the course at blistering speeds and was thinking of having Aethir hold him back. By two Pm, Harry was running at full sprint the full ten mile course while Aethir was actively trying to slow him down.
Next, Harry tackled the obstacle course, and he experienced a similar feeling of awkwardness with his upper body, but this time he was undaunted and went at it with enthusiasm until around four o'clock at night.
All in all, Harry completed over thirty laps of the Black Lake by the time he staggered back into the castle and made his way up to Gryffindor tower a sweat-drenched and muddy mess. The tower's residents were no longer used to seeing Harry in the evening, and they weren't used to seeing anyone as run down and muddy as Harry currently was, so they stared, hard, as he moved across the room.
Half an hour later, after a long hot shower, Harry met up with Neville and Hermione and sat down in a relatively private alcove just off the common room. It felt... almost but not quite surreal to be hanging out in the common room before a meal just shooting the shit, because under normal circumstances, Harry would still be at Quidditch practice at this time. Unfortunately for Harry, he was currently benched from the team, until Madam Pomfrey confirmed that he was back to full health, and Pomfrey had no intention of letting him fly for a few more days…
"Are you going to go to the Great Hall for dinner with us," Neville asked with a visibly conflicted expression upon his face.
At first, Harry intended to ask why he wouldn't go to the Great Hall, but then he realized why he shouldn't, and his mouth clicked closed. At the same time, he was forced to shunt his sudden, deep depression behind his Occlumency barriers so that he wouldn't worry his friends.
Fleur Delacour would likely eat in the Great Hall…
Forcing himself to brighten, Harry quickly shook his head as if he'd never intended to go to the Great Hall in the first place. "It's still a little too early for that, Nev, as I'm not really looking forward to being completely mauled by my rather fanatic fanbase. I'm going to eat and train in the... Damn."
The RoR was neutral territory too, and Harry refused to trouble his wife.
Then again, Harry's very existence was a danger to his wife, and since he couldn't fundamentally change his character, there wasn't much that he could do about it.
Abruptly, Harry wondered if there was some obscure magical-bond severing ceremony that Harry had never heard of, because if there was one, then Fleur might potentially decide to go through with it for self-preservation purposes. Then Harry shook off the extraordinarily unlikely, unkind and paranoid thought, and instead tried to figure out where he'd hole up for the evening... He eventually decided that he'd find an empty classroom to train his spell-work in, and have Dobby bring him food…
Of course, at the tail end of that thought, Harry suddenly realized that his words had dropped off about halfway through a sentence, so he tried to pick them back up again as if the long pause never happened. "I'm going to eat and train in an empty classroom near the dungeons for a few hours just to... you know... iron out the kinks."
Right away, Harry could see that Neville and Hermione could basically read his mind at the moment because of how unbelievably transparent he was being. At the same time, he saw the both of them carefully control their expressions so that he may continue believing that he hadn't made them sad on his behalf, and the circle of failed deceit was officially complete.
"Harry," Neville hedged, his voice carrying an odd variety of determination.
"Shoot, Nev," Harry replied with far too much enthusiasm.
"My uncle Algie wants to meet you," Neville slowly revealed. "You remember how I told you that he works for the department of mysteries…"
Internally, Harry congratulated his friend even as he nodded his head in confirmation. For the moment, at least, the boy had successfully caught his undivided attention.
"Would you be interested in meeting my uncle tomorrow, and visiting his office in the Ministry," Neville asked, when he saw the light of interest in Harry's eyes. "I know that you planned on running like five hundred laps around the Black Lake on just your hands or something equally absurd, but…"
"Yes, I want to go," Harry quickly and loudly interrupted. This was exactly what he needed right now. It was mystery and adventure and yet safe and controlled. What's more, Harry was excited about having something to be excited about, and he was throwing a lot of enthusiasm at this newest idea.
Neville smiled because Harry looked genuinely... genuine, for the first time since they first sat down, and he leaned in close as he sought to further his own goals at exactly the same time… "I don't know anything about my uncle's job, so if you come back and don't tell me anything… I'll be forced to assume you've been bound by a magical oath of some kind…"
"That makes sense, as otherwise I'd tell you everything I know," Harry replied with a grin.
A wide and happy smile grew across Neville's face as he rose to his feet and turned towards the stairs. "Okay, I'll be in our dorm calling my uncle using the com earring I gave him. He was extremely impressed by your invention by the way, and while I didn't tell him who made it… he may have figured it out…"
"Am I going to be abducted tomorrow, forced to mass produce com earrings for an alphabet soup organization, and then end up being 'disappeared' by the government," Harry asked, a very impressive deadpan expression upon his face.
Hermione instantly started giggling at Harry's question because she got the alphabet soup reference from spy novels. Neville caught on to the joke a few seconds later, and then all three of them were laughing because, yes, that was likely a legitimate concern.
Abruptly, Harry stood up, brushed off his pants and addressed his friends. "All the bullshit I'm spreading about my stellar mental and emotional well-being aside, I really do need to train my magic because Gods know what that lil Cruciatus did to my pathways. I'll be in a dimly lit, damp, depressing classroom near the dungeons because I'm desperately crying out for help and no one's paying any attention."
Once again, Hermione was the first to understand Harry's sarcastic psychobabble and began giggling. Neville on the other hand was extremely alarmed at first, and only caught on to the sarcasm after the fact.
As Harry walked out of the Gryffindor tower it was to an extremely relieved looking Neville being patted on the shoulder by a very amused looking Hermione.
In the end, Harry settled down for the evening in a torch-lit room that actually did resemble his sarcastic comment from earlier but was also an old dueling practice room in the dungeons and therefore perfect for what he needed. After a nutritious meal provided by Dobby, he spent the next three hours straight pounding the living shit out of a well-warded wall in the back of the dueling range with every conventional spell that he knew.
At the moment, performing the Potter family spells would be… unwise for the following two reasons:
One) the stronger spells might actually destroy the warded wall of the training room
Two) Harry currently had a rather persistent observer who was standing in the corner of the room concealed under a Disillusionment spell.
After sending off yet another Conjure Arrow spell at the wall and watching the projectiles smash into tiny pieces upon the wards, all of the sudden Harry completely ran out of patience with his little voyeur, and he sighed in a very deep breath… "Two and a half hours," he finally declared out loud...
...
...
...
"Two and a half hours spent standing in a corner," Harry clarified for the invisible person.
...
...
...
"Do you have no shame," Harry asked with his arms outstretched and a look of incredulity upon his face. "You must know I'm a taken man and that I'm never ever going to do the cool impossible magic with you spying on me?"
...
...
"Ummm, first a statement and then a question," a smooth but cool feminine voice came from an invisible mouth. "I am a lesbian, and what if I'm not invisible?"
Harry sidestepped the lesbian comment because he didn't really care, instead turning towards the woman with his wand twirling in his hand. "If you reveal yourself, I might show you a Potter family spell… but it won't end up being helpful to you…"
"Why's that?" The feminine voice sounded disbelieving.
"Mostly because designed into the spells in my family grimoire is a secondary spell that makes the words I say while casting them unintelligible to non-Potter ears," Harry replied.
A long pause followed Harry's statement and then a feminine voice demanded, "prove it."
Harry huffed out all of his currently held air in a massive bout of both frustration and surprise. He could not believe the stones on this girl. They were huuge stones. This mystery girl may in fact be manlier than any man that he'd ever met, and that included Hagrid. Harry decided since she was keeping him occupied and that is not easy to do these days, he would indulge her invisible highness in the corner. He turned back towards the wall, squared up, mustered up the magical power necessary and intoned the spell Rotignisphera in a loud and clear voice.
Appearing suddenly from the end of his wand, two medium sized fireballs lit up the gloomy area and began hovering over Harry's head.
"Well, you're right, I didn't hear the words you used, but that's also just a variation of a normal fire spell…" The smooth feminine voice sounded just a little bit smug, and Harry was all but certain she was currently manipulating his pride for additional information.
Harry decided to just nod in defeat and wait.
...
...
...
"Okay, okay, I give up and I understand you won't be manipulated," the feminine voice spat out with supreme levels of impatience. "Now tell me why those fireballs are so damned special."
Harry grinned, directed the fireballs to orbit his head in a circle and then declared, "I've completed the spell, and am not using any magic whatsoever at the moment."
"Wait what?" the invisible girl sounded bemused. "How is that possible?"
"I said that it's impossible Potter family magic. Weren't you listening?" Harry grinned as he spoke and gestured up at the fireballs. "Want to see why these are such a game changer?"
...
"Okay. Show me."
Turning back towards the wall, Harry began sending off rapid-fire conventional spells, but even as he did so, he circled the fireballs around the room back and forth with nothing but strong intent. Finally, Harry directed the fireballs to hit and then cover the wall in flames and they did so without him ever stopping his outpouring of spells.
Abruptly, Harry stopped his demonstration and huffed out a deep breath of air. His claim that he wasn't maintaining the spells with magic was indeed accurate, but controlling a magical construct with intent alone was still tiring and took some time to master.
"That... is... but...why didn't you?..."
Since Harry understood the stuttered out question, he nodded while turning his attention back towards the invisible girl. "I didn't use any obvious Potter family spells on Sunday mostly because they're hellishly magically taxing to pull off. I'm strong magically, but after holding up that set of stands, I wouldn't have had it in me to spam advanced level spells while also defending my friends."
"I was stuck on those stands," the invisible girl admitted in a voice that sounded resentful rather than grateful.
Very suddenly and very sharply, Harry's heart hurt, because this invisible girl was reminding him of Fleur from the beginning of the summer… Still, he did respond to the tone of the woman's voice… "I suppose you resent being made to feel like a defenseless damsel or something?"
...
...
No answer but the invisible presence didn't leave.
Sighing, Harry ran his hands through his hair, as very suddenly he couldn't figure himself out in the slightest. He didn't know why he should go out of his way to make such a difficult person feel better about herself, but for some unknown reason, he wanted to try. He squared up in the direction that he knew the girl was standing, and pierced her with his eyes. "Can you fly without a broom using magic?"
"No. No one can," the sulky, invisible girl answered.
"I'm not so sure about that, but for the most part, yes, you're correct," Harry replied. "Can you drop eight meters to the earth and expect to remain uninjured? For that matter, can anyone?"
"Well... I can't, but you can," the sulky, invisible girl immediately replied. "First Mini-Trial, dizziness AEO spell... You cast a spell and rolled out of at least a six meter fall unharmed."
"I used a massively overpowered Herbology second year spell that thickened the air near the ground and I was not unharmed in the process," Harry replied while shaking his head. "I landed far softer than I normally would have, but I was bruised top to bottom by the end of the day… but that's not my point. My point is, you have nothing to be ashamed of…"
"And my point is some of us don't have the luxury of just massively over-powering spells," the sulky, invisible girl immediately countered.
Abruptly, Harry grew tired of arguing with a persistently contrary and grouchy disembodied voice, so he picked up his bookbag, intending to find another Warded wall in some other room.
"Wait..."
Pausing in place, Harry looked directly at the invisible girl again, merely to let her know he knew where she was. "Yes?"
"What do you think of Slytherins?" The girl appeared to have really forced herself out of her comfort zone by asking that question, because it came out both quickly and somewhat panicky.
"I think they have a tendency towards cunning, ambition and a certain disregard for rules… just like most other people I know," Harry casually replied. "You're a Slytherin I suppose?"
...
No answer, and yet the invisible girl was still just standing there.
Leaning back against the wall, Harry decided to give a real answer this time. "I don't have much of an opinion about Slytherin women at all, considering the fact you're the very first one I've ever actually had a conversation with and I can't even see your face. I'll readily admit the Slytherin guys are pretty unpleasant to be around, and I was furious at the people hunting me during the Quidditch tryouts, but most of those guys are just weak-willed, follower types… I'm not a fan of Nott, and I hate Malfoy just like literally everybody else including Pansy... wait! Tell me I haven't been talking to Pansy Parkinson all this time!?"
Harry was visibly distressed at the very idea that he was trading witty banter with Pansy 'bitch-face' Parkinson.
...
...
snicker…
"Okay, so not Parkinson," Harry mused to himself while heaving a huge sigh of relief.
"Nope." Sulky, invisible girl appeared to be extremely amused, judging purely by her voice.
"Would you by any chance like to end that magically draining Disillusionment spell so that we can interact like normal people," Harry suddenly asked.
"I might, but you can never tell anyone that we were civil with each other…"
Despite how childish and absurd the invisible girl's demand was, she was clearly being entirely serious.
For just a single moment, Harry attempted to stop it from happening, but then he didn't, and he scoffed both loudly and derisively.
"Rude…" Sulky, invisible girl sounded completely affronted.
Rolling his eyes, Harry turned back towards the door even as he responded to the invisible woman's question. "When I was very young and still attending primary school, children used to give me ultimatums similar to yours, because I was small for my age and was the target of persistent bullying. There were plenty of people that were willing to be my 'friend' just so long as I promised not to tell anyone…" Abruptly, Harry turned back towards the invisible girl, his face a cold and unreadable mask... "My answer now is the exact same as it was back then... I'm not interested."
All of the sudden, the invisible girl was standing in the threshold of the doorway, her hand on the nob, her aura filled with outrage. "It's all about you isn't it," the girl accused with a truly pissed off voice. "Have you tried considering the situation from my perspective?"
"I might damage what reputation you have with your Slytherin bunk mates. I might cause Malfoy to give you a hard time, and your parents might even punish you. You fear reprisals from your entire house and want to remain secret for safety's sake," Harry listed off in a completely deadpan voice.
Invisible, pissed off girl froze still at Harry's detailed answer. "If you understand my position to that extent, then why are you being so damned unreasonable?"
"Because this past summer, I finally gained the self-confidence to look people in the eyes, after a childhood so hard it reduced two Veela mind healers to out of control sobbing," Harry suddenly snapped, before freezing like a statue and forcing himself to calm back down…
Harry's mental state was… a mess.
Belatedly, Harry scrutinized the invisible girl's aura, and she felt... prickly, guarded, careful, calculating and shrewd, but… decent… and even deeper inside, she felt extremely vulnerable and sad, which is likely why he just vented all of that built-up angst in her direction.
The invisible girl was no longer pissed off. In that particular emotion's place was an invisible, quiet form of shock that Harry could feel in his bones.
For a good long time, Harry leaned against the wall waiting to see if the girl would leave or continue talking.
"That hard huh," the invisible girl finally ventured.
Harry just nodded.
With her aura radiating high levels of vulnerability, the invisible girl turned to lean back against the door, where she drummed her fingers against its surface and expanded her lungs around a long indrawn sigh. "You know, the boys in my house would rather die than say any of what you just said…"
Harry slowly nodded, as yes, he figured that much was true.
"I... Okay... I... I had a sucky childhood too," invisible girl suddenly blurted out. "And while I don't have low self-esteem, what I do have is ingrained behaviors. I've had strict propriety beaten into me since I was all of six years old, and now I'm... cold. I don't... can't... emote. I can't smile, grin, frown, or... anything. I am a wooden mask of propriety."
In the seconds that followed, Harry cast out tendrils of his aura with a comforting feeling injected into them, as apparently, invisible girl just managed to make herself miserable, and he figured he was partially to blame.
"That rough huh," Harry eventually ventured.
Invisible girl just nodded because at this point she knew that Harry could sense her movements.
"Well, at least your ingrained behaviors don't put you and your loved ones in danger," Harry pointed out with a defeated shrug of his shoulders. "I, on the other hand, was raised in an environment specifically designed to give me low self-worth and a desperate need to please others, culminating in a hero-complex that has me levitating stands during life or death duels... I mean… I really do want to do what I can to help, but… my reckless actions scare my significant other… badly… and It hurts her that I don't put us first over a never ending tide of them... So far as I can tell… she's currently trying to figure out if I'm worth it…"
...
...
"That's pretty heavy," the invisible girl finally admitted, her earlier gloom blown away by his newest revelation. "I mean, I'd normally call you a total douchebag for trying to claim your innate selflessness is a character defect… but I won't, because… the stands… You're a Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne type, and neither one of those characters can keep a woman to save their lives…"
Harry couldn't help it, he laughed, like, a real laugh, not forced or exaggerated for anyone's comfort, because invisible girl was completely freaking brutal, and for some reason her words hit him right in his strike zone. "My girlfriend likes to use Tony Stark as a reference, but you may be right that I'm more of a Peter Parker... You're a very unconventional Slytherin though, referencing muggle comic books like that."
...
...
"It would be best if my knowledge of muggle media remained a secret," invisible girl admitted in a tired sounding voice. "I was a good little blood purist at one time, but I also like modern clothing fashions, which is why I started sneaking into Muggle London. At first, it was just the clothing, then the books, then comics, then music, and finally I grew to appreciate modern cinema. Unfortunately for me, my family considers themselves conservative gray, and while they don't actually hate muggles, they do consider them unworthy."
For the next half a minute, Harry and the invisible girl just stood there, having said what needed saying and feeling slightly better for having done so… Then Harry lightly bounced free from the wall, the girl moved away from the door, and he swung it open with a pull of his magic.
"You were right about your house-mates causing you problems if you associate with me," Harry admitted, because now that he'd calmed down, he could see that his earlier reaction was unfair… "If you're interested, I think I might like to be your friend, and I'll even act like I don't know who you are… I'm going to leave now though, because dungeons suck. I have literally no idea how you Slytherins operate under these conditions all the time."
"Kills the hair," the invisible girl admitted.
"My hair never cooperates in the first place," Harry offered in parting.
"Wait…" Invisible girl called out at Harry's back.
Harry turned around in the door, his right eyebrow arched in question.
"Give me a hint regarding my identity," invisible girl demanded.
Harry sighed expressively and melodramatically while stretching his arms out in front of himself. "Have... you... no... faith?"
"Not an ingrained part of my character," the invisible girl replied.
With a long and enthusiastic sigh of long suffering, Harry turned away from the seemingly empty room, paused a few feet down the hall, and spoke to himself as if he was delivering a code.
"You're the opposite of the Blue Sky."
…..
No response. Harry didn't need one. Twenty seconds later, he ascended a flight of stairs towards the main campus of the school, feeling surprisingly refreshed… which made sense. He just aired all of his dirty laundry to a complete stranger whose return judgments meant almost nothing to him, and the process was cathartic in the extreme… Harry felt lighter, less burdened, and he could see why support groups are such a popular public forum out in the muggle world.
Then Harry shook his head because just WOW. Invisible girl had to be the single most fussy and intractable woman that he'd ever met in his life, and that included the infamous Fleur Delacour...
Ugh... damn.
Instantly, the bubble burst, the pain returned, and just like that, Harry missed his errant wife.
It was currently time for bed Tuesday night at Hogwarts and Fleur Delacour didn't care in the slightest. Her daily training, the tournament, meals, it all seemed completely insignificant in the face of rising panic, desperation and honest to Gods insanity, as her entire life plummeted into a fiery tailspin towards absolute ruination and she was ready to throw up again from accumulated stress and exhaustion.
Fleur's trip into Dante's inferno began on Sunday night, immediately after she left the Hospital Wing, deserting her newly unconscious mate during the moment he needed her most.
Unforgivable.
Even worse was the horrible way that Fleur treated her husband in the hours leading up to her betrayal… She merely sat there next to the love of her life, making his situation even worse by abusing him emotionally.
Monstrous, heinous… evil…
Of course, Fleur was far too cowardly to even explain the burgeoning madness and terror that ran rampant throughout her mind as she sat there next to Harry's bed. Hell… she wasn't even certain if she'd use words to communicate or instead write her thoughts in blood on the walls, because that's just how twisted her mental state had become, and it was getting worse with every second that passed.
Eventually, the betrayal happened... and the true suffering began.
Fleur ran away, escaping the Hospital Wing and Harry's tortured, vulnerable, heroic looking form in order to begin properly hating herself, trying to mask her retreat under the pretense of needing some time alone. It didn't work. Fleur is smart, so she didn't fool herself for even a second. What she did instead was stress, pine, fume, rant, grunt, choke, groan, wail, yell, roll, sob, punch, scream, kick and random mixtures of all the above at irregular intervals all damn night atop her increasingly disheveled bed…
Over the course of the many torturous hours to follow, Fleur found herself alternatively in love with and in... Fleur wasn't quite capable of describing the negative feelings that she harbored for her husband, because hate would never fit and neither would dislike.
Fleur resented Harry... Yeah, she resented him, sure.
Of course, the word resentment also seemed extremely harsh due to the fact that Harry was the perfect mate in every way that mattered, almost all the ways that didn't matter, and he would do absolutely anything to make her happy… but it was still true despite it all, and it was killing her inside.
The problem was as follows: Fleur love, love, love, loved Harry Potter like nothing else in the whole entire world, and she wanted to protect him by making him... no longer him anymore.
Ugh…
Harry Potter is heroic. To divorce heroism from Harry is to destroy Harry. He can no more stop that behavior than he can breathe underwater without magic. Nevertheless, Fleur wanted to change his character to save his life... This was the catch twenty-two that Fleur was encountering every time she tried to figure out what to do.
Fleur was losing her mind to a tidal-wave of all consuming fear… and in the brief moments when she had the wherewithal to think about anything at all, she figured she knew why…
Fleur was currently under the thrall of brand new, full-blooded Veela instincts, which were compelling her to hoard her husband as if she was a dragon and he was her treasure. The problem with this new and powerful magical imperative was that hiding Harry from the world would never, ever be an option.
Harry Potter was a Merlin, a Perseus, he was a Hercules. He was a player in the grandest of games and he'd become a course of study by student-aged wizards long after he died performing some world saving deed… and yet Fleur was trying to make the man… less… What's more, she was trying to legitimize a course of action that would keep the man safe in captivity, and that line of thinking was just... madness.
Even worse than the insanity that Fleur was currently experiencing was the fact that she was hurting her husband…
Unforgivable.
For two days now, Fleur avoided her mate both physically and psychologically, with the bond slammed shut during the worst of her tantrum… and she was so, so scared because she feared his reaction. Once before, when they were still friends and exchanging many letters, Fleur pulled a similar stunt, and the parallels between then and now tortured her because of what he believed at the time. Harry believed she didn't want him or love him. He believed that he'd pushed her to a breaking point and she was balking in a massive way.
And if Harry was thinking along similar lines right now, he might currently think she was second guessing their relationship, that she simply didn't love him enough…
Suffice it to say, Fleur knew she was a monster for staying away this long, and yet now she was thoroughly stuck. She was neck deep in metaphorical quicksand this time, and she was sinking deeper by the second.
It was bad. It was really, really bad.
It was so bad, Fleur was actually pleased that she hadn't slept for more than an hour since she first deserted her mate to pain, loneliness and insecurity. She desired that she might suffer like he is or even worse if she had her way about it. She was also succeeding in a big way. Oh Gods, Fleur was suffering. All day pining for her mate and tearing herself apart, only to find that she could not, would not, find rest without her face laying atop his chest. Her husband... husband…. Her husband who'd broken the world to make her his wife in order to keep her safe. Who went to those lengths because he is a target for madmen, monsters, demons and…
Voldemort.
Ugh…
Only two things were certain to Fleur in that moment. The first was that she was nowhere near done with her mental circling of this issue. The second was that she was just moments away from a full out mental breakdown that would land her in the Hospital Wing. It was a horse race to the finish between her mental fortitude and her mad desire to... fix Harry...
Hah!
As if Harry was the one that was broken! As if he wasn't the best thing that the world had going for it! As if he wasn't an inventor of ingenious skill who would change the world for the better… if only he survives the process.
No... Harry wasn't the one who was broken here...
Dammit!
Something must be done about me!
With hands fisted into her sweat soaked mattress, Fleur started regulating her breathing to enter into meditation… It was time to look inwards.
It was time to face the fire.
Bartimius Crouch Junior, AKA Barty, lay in his jail cell, a sly little smile on his face that wouldn't go away. Of course, the smile came naturally to the happy and rather insane Death Eater, but it also had the added benefit of unnerving the pair of guards standing directly outside of his holding cell.
Sometimes, you need to take enjoyment from the little things…
It goes without saying that Barty blew it big time back at Hogwarts, and under normal circumstances, he'd languish in Azkaban for the rest of his short and miserable life. His disguise was seen through by the Harry Potter himself, at which point continuing the charade became futile and meaningless. With no clear directive regarding what he should do if/when everything goes to shit, Barty fell back on old habits, he caused havoc on a gigantic scale, and - it - felt - great!
The fire, the screaming, the blind panic on the faces of the so-called proctors as they completely deserted the children…
Bliss.
Barty did have to hand it to Potter though... Unlike everybody else, the boy proved that he was absolutely everything that the newspapers said he was, and he was definitely worthy of taking part in the Master's revival. In fact, so far as Barty could tell, Potter was the Master's antithesis. He was powerful, charismatic, and enigmatic just like the Master, but he also bled for the useless sheep of the world, as if they gave a single rat's ass about him in return...
Potter and the Master were exactly the same, except the fact that they were polar opposites...
And Barty loved it.
Ever since he was a kid, Barty was a fan of poetic symmetry, so he truly enjoyed the fact that his master had a legitimate arch-nemesis.
But then there was more…
Much to his surprise, Barty actually liked Potter during the rather short period of time that he was still in Moody-mode and working closely with the boy. Potter was cool, calm, confident without tipping into arrogance, and he protected his secrets with a stoic variety of self-control. Barty could appreciate that. No, rather, he was impressed by that...
Too bad for Potter, Barty wasn't moved by such trivial emotions, and he'd quite happily sever the teen's spine if given the opportunity.
But wow, that boy could swing!
Back during the war, Barty designed the magical armor that he wore, and he sacrificed over twenty uniquely powerful wizards to fully charge the curse-stones that powered it.
Didn't seem to matter in the end though, did it?
In just a little over seven minutes, Harry Potter brought down such a concentrated hell of curses, he shredded the magical barrier, and then blew Barty away!
Wow, just... WOW!
Barty shivered in mad excitement because he really just couldn't wait to do that again… but first, he needed to get out of this cell, so his thoughts returned to the matter at hand.
Yes, Barty would normally be fucked right now because Potter had reigned on his parade big time. Fortunately for Barty, he made a few contingency plans in advance for just such an occasion, and now he was waiting for them to come to fruition...
The guards outside of Bartimius' cell, Greg Jenkins and Drew Hamilton were pretty damned creeped out by the grinning Death Eater inside of the cell, and for good reason. No one in Bartimius's situation should be as entertained as he appeared to be. On the bright side, they were going to be off shift in a couple of minutes and free of this creepazoid once and for all.
At seven Am on the dot, their relief arrived but something was confusing to the two men on guard.
"Why are you here, Atkins?" Drew gave a curious look to a guard who initially hadn't been scheduled to work today.
"I'm here as a replacement for Hughes, who's out sick today," Brad Atkin's unemotionally replied from where he was standing next to Steven Finkleman, his partner for the day.
"Oh… Fair enough," Drew replied while bouncing on his toes at the idea of freedom. "Look, be careful with this guy, he's a real sick puppy…"
Both Drew Atkins and Steven Finkleman nodded in understanding and the night guards left to get some well-earned sleep.
Steven Finkleman looked at his partner for the day and raised an eyebrow at how quiet the normally very verbose man was being.
Drew just shrugged and said the word, "tired."
Steven nodded, smiled and began walking over to the chairs that they'd occupy for most of the day, at which point he heard a robotic voice intone the words Avada Kadavra from behind his back, and he was dead before his body hit the floor.
"Good, Good," Barty said to himself as the Auror that he Imperious cursed in advance began unlocking his cell door. "Did you bring the goods that were taken off my body?"
"Yes," the vacant man replied in a calm and unemotional voice. "They're in an invisible bag in the corner."
Dashing across the room, Barty retrieved his wand, his ward stones and a blood covered rock that he stowed in his pocket just moments before Harry spelled him unconscious. A bloody rock that was once a part of a hastily Transfigured rock wall. A rock wall that Barty exploded directly in Harry Potter's face. A blood smear that came directly from the young wizard's body…
"Blood of the enemy, forcefully taken."
As the moonlight slowly crept up the wall of Fleur's bedroom, the woman lay in a state of increasingly deep meditation, sinking her consciousness ever deeper inside of herself in order to do something extremely... unwise.
Fleur was currently in her mindscape in an area near her magical core, approaching a location that all Veela are told to stay away from. They are warned away from this place as if it's where the boogieman resides… except incomparably beautiful…
Fleur was approaching this taboo place for one very important reason. She needed to talk to the root of her issues, and she needed to do it now.
Back when Fleur was still but a child, Appoline used to tell her grand epics about Veela who attempted to negotiate with their inner Veela nature, and for every success story that you hear, several more told of selfish brutality and uncontained need. By the time Fleur was only seven years old, she already knew that she would never approach her inner Veela, because it was essentially a death sentence for a partial Veela with far less control.
At this point, Fleur could only hope that her assumptions were correct, and she was closer to a full-blooded Veela now, after being saturated by Harry's immense magical power. She was in complete control of her Allure, after all, and most half or quarter Veela spend their entire lives struggling to control at least a little ambient allure that refuses to be reigned in.
Truly, Fleur was all but certain her body was approaching full-blooded status, and what's more, she knew this transformation was the primary reason why she was suffering so much.
For example:
Fleur currently felt an intense desire to Stupify her husband, shove him in a sack, abscond with him to a secret dungeon located deep underground, and then chain him safely to a bed with magic nullifying restraints. She really, truly, wanted to do this unbelievably selfish, AWESOME thing, and she knew of only one race of women who believe that such behaviors are acceptable.
The words territorial, possessive, paranoid and impulsive are the hallmarks of full-blooded Veela who have truly fallen in love with a man. It's hard work to make a full-blooded Veela fall for you in the first place, but if you succeed, congrats, you may have just ruined your life for anything but extremely good sex.
Full-blooded Veela do not react calmly or rationally to falling in love and they do not share. Hhooohhhh Gods THEY DO NOT SHARE… and not just in a romantic sense.
The possessive instincts of a full-blooded Veela aren't comparable to a jealous girlfriend saying, "I don't like you being close with other women," as that reaction would be far too tame… A full-blooded Veela is more likely to say something absurd like, "I don't like you being seen outside the confines of our home," and even this reaction would be considered both rational and reasonable.
And now Fleur felt it, all of it, growing deep inside, and she felt two sets of conflicting values vying for dominance, with her mind and her mental health acting as the battle-ground.
On the one hand, all Fleur's life, she watched Appoline treat Adrien like a partner and a friend… and on the other hand, she had an inner Veela nature that wanted her to treat Harry like a prized possession to lock away.
Abruptly, Fleur mentally shook her head.
NO.
Fleur was going to show her innermost bitch who's boss.
As if that commitment was the push that she needed, Fleur suddenly found the magic surrounding her consciousness growing hotter, and she knew she was heading in the right direction. From the tales that she'd been told, roiling flames and scorching hot air surround the inner Veela, so bring on the heat.
As her surroundings rapidly grew in temperature, Fleur traveled deeper and deeper into the very core of her psyche.
To Be Continued
Author's Note:
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