Fleur draped herself along the length of the branch, their branch, and tried to listen to the wind instead of her thoughts, spinning her locket around her finger on its chain.
The wind chose that moment to die down, and the browning leaves of the willow tree fell silent.
Fleur listened to the soft noise of the water instead, watching the fallen leaves flowing along its surface, but her distraction didn't last long, just as it hadn't for any of the last hour she'd been sitting, or lying, or hanging or standing on the branch.
Harry is coming soon.
He would be here, he always came when they agreed to return here, to their spot. Fleur wasn't sure how she would react to seeing him. Her father had suggested that she subscribe to the Daily Prophet, just so she had some insight into what was happening in Britain. She knew, of course, that it was largely lies, truths twisted to suit the purpose of the Ministry, and that Harry had never told her what it said because he didn't want her to read it and see what it said about him.
Fleur had subscribed all the same, she wanted, needed, to know what was happening to him, what they were saying about him. She couldn't help him with it otherwise.
The first few papers had barely mentioned him, their subjects of slander were Albus Dumbledore's supporters, but then Friday's paper had arrived and she'd found Harry on the front page. She'd shifted halfway to her other form in an instant and not calmed down enough to change back for an hour.
How could he do something like that? She was going to kill him when he turned up, and then they were going to talk. Fleur wasn't making the mistake of avoiding speaking to him about anything important again.
Tapping the folded up Prophet with her fingers she waited for the conjured silver numbers of her tempus charm to shift slowly towards the time they agreed to meet and struggled to ignore the soft heat of her anger that urged her to let her body shift.
With a soft snap Harry appeared under the willow tree.
Right on time. He better have a good explanation.
Fleur threw the Daily Prophet at him catching him on the shoulder, then leapt down out of the tree.
'What did you do?' She demanded, pointing a finger at the paper projectile. 'When did you start reading the Daily Prophet?' Harry asked, glancing down at it with obvious concern.
'Since you stopped telling me what was happening in Britain,' Fleur responded, swiping the paper from the floor.
'You're angry,' Harry said quietly.
'Of course I'm angry,' she retorted in french, doing her best to prevent the shape of her face from shifting. She could feel the instinct to restructure herself stronger, to let her body react to her anger, but she resisted it again. This was not how she wanted Harry to first see her change.
'I sort of knew you would be,' he continued, just as evenly, 'but I hoped you'd understand.'
'Understand,'
she
cried,
her
cheekbones lengthening under her skin. 'You impaled this Malfoy with four inch spikes of ice, why?'
Harry didn't reply straight away, he looked at her, at the willow tree and the river, then up at the outline of the moon, a bitter, expectant smile tracing across his face.
'Because I wanted to,' he replied simply. 'He was there, running his mouth like normal, while Katie was hurt because of his lackey Crabbe. He deserved it.'
He did it because someone hurt Katie Bell.
Her Fleur knew that he would protect his friends, that he wouldn't let anyone or anything hurt them and go unpunished, but he'd nearly killed the other student for her and it worried her just a little that he was so devoted to the girl.
'I would have done it for you,' he told her fiercely, reading her thoughts from her face, 'if it had been you with broken fingers and ribs, I would have done far worse.'
'You seriously injured a student in front of that Umbridge woman, the one you know would take any chance to act against you. You could not have done anything worse!' Her temper returned, more potent than before. He did not seem to understand how reckless he had been. She could feel the prickling of feathers along her forearms under her robes.
'I was angry,' Harry responded, his tone was growing slightly cool. 'All the insults Umbridge threw at you, the things she inflicted on children, Katie getting hurt, I can't keep my temper forever.'
'You were angry, so you did that?'
'She is mutilating children,' Harry declared coldly, 'forcing them to slice words into their own skin, would you not be angry? Or do you expect me to be some perfect paragon of virtue because I'm called the Boy-Who-Lived?'
His whole stance had shifted from when he first arrived. The easy, open, relaxed air was gone, replaced by a tense, closed off coldness. Fleur squeezed her fists tightly together, thinking furiously. She could see his doubt, his expectation that she would now turn her back on him, and the first steps of his immediate attempts to cut her out first, just so it hurt less when she left.
'I don't know what you want me to be,' Harry whispered.
'I want you to be Harry,' Fleur told him, stepping closer. 'I don't care what else you become, what you do, or what you don't, as long as you are Harry, my Harry, I won't care.' 'No matter what?' He seemed surprised and shaken, his voice coming out hoarse.
'My father thinks that me being with you is dangerous,' Fleur admitted, 'he told me that either you're not what you seem, or I'll be standing next to Voldemort's first target. He is worried about the English pure-blood obsession too.'
Harry visibly shrank into himself for a moment, then he looked her in the eyes and straightened up. 'We can stay a secret,' he decided, 'nobody ever has to know about us, you'll be safe in France from any of them if there's no connection to me.'
'Let me finish,' she snapped, irritated that he'd even consider hiding her away while he risked himself. 'I thought about what papa said, it's why I subscribed to the Daily Prophet, and I came to a realisation when I read that article today.' 'What did you realise?' There a desperate, clinging fear in his bright green eyes and Fleur knew instantly that he was more afraid of losing her than anything else. Their bond meant as much to him as it did to her, everything would be so much less without it.
'I didn't care,' Fleur told him quietly. 'I didn't care what you had done, you could have killed him and I would still have only been worried about you provoking the Ministry's lapdog.'
'That's why you're angry,' he smiled, relieved. 'I hoped that would be why, but when you threw the paper at me, I was so afraid I was wrong. I thought you were disgusted with what I did.'
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