'You're an idiot,' she switched back to English, pushing him back into the tree. 'Why would I care what happens to any of those small-minded people? English bigots. Not one of them understands me like you do, none of them ever cared about me as much as you do.'
Fleur traced her fingers down the side of the face, smiling when he shivered, letting her fingertips linger on his skin.
'I don't like that you defended Katie Bell so fiercely,' she murmured, 'you're mine, but I know you won't let anyone harm your friends and I don't care what you do to those that do.'
'Katie is just a friend,' Harry cut in, but she placed a finger on his lips. She didn't need him to interrupt her, not when she had worked up the courage to open herself up so much.
'I care that you were stupid enough to do that in front of people. I care that you got yourself banned from playing a sport that you love. I care that you gave that pathetic rag of paper another piece of slander to throw at you.' The Daily Prophet ignited in her left hand, her conjured fire reducing it to ashes in the space of seconds. 'I'm not going to abandon you,' she told him, 'not now, not ever.'
'Not even if I told you what I've done?'
Her fingers flinched away from his face.
'As long as you're my Harry, I won't care,' she repeated, trying to ignore the fear that he might have slipped, that perhaps Katie Bell might have meant more than to him than he said.
He knew, straight away, what she meant and reached out to catch her hand and pull him against her, shaking his head.
'No,' he told her, kissing her forehead gently. Fleur didn't need any more reassurance than that, and a flood of relief flowed through her.
He's still mine.
It almost worried her how attached to Harry she had become. She supposed that the absence of any close bonds outside of her family made the one she had all the more important. If something ever broke it she feared how much it would hurt, her heart contracted in panic at the very idea of its loss, but as long as he was hers nothing would mean as much to her. 'I took revenge,' he admitted, but he didn't sound very regretful, just very satisfied. 'When I asked you about enchanting it was so I could take my vengeance on Umbridge. I'm going to make her suffer before I'm finished with her.' There was something cruel and determined about the way he said it and Fleur knew that he would get what he wanted.
Good, she decided. She deserves it.
The idea of Gabrielle being forced to harm herself because of that foul woman made her bones hot with anger. It made them feel soft, malleable to her magic, easy to bend and reshape into the form of a predator.
'I'm not so selfless as I used to be, Fleur, I used to put everyone before myself, but I can't see things that way anymore, not for just anyone.' He twisted his lips in consternation. 'Things are complicated now,' he said finally. 'It used to just be Voldemort, the Death-Eaters, and everyone else, but that's not true at all. There's a million individuals trying to get what they want, and I'm just one of them.'
'What do you want?' Fleur asked.
'So many things,' he laughed, 'but really, honestly,' for a second he looked horribly vulnerable, 'I want to mean something to someone, to be something important to them.'
She didn't need to see any of the desperate desire in his eyes, or the longing in his voice to know just how much she must mean to him if he thought that Fleur was that someone.
'What would you do to have that?' She had to ask.
Harry gave her a very long, very soft look. 'Anything I had to,' he admitted quietly.
'Then you'll be more careful next time you want to curse someone, won't you?' Fleur teased, letting him slide his hands around her.
He kissed her very gently, slipping a hand onto the back of her neck to keep her lips against his.
'I was afraid that you wouldn't understand,' he murmured, pulling back from the kiss.
'You are still an idiot,' she sighed. 'Do you think I am any different?' He didn't answer, just shrugged and looked away uncomfortably. 'You mean just as much to me as I do to you, Harry,' she pulled his face back round to look at her, 'when I have finished my exams at Beauxbatons this winter I will spend every second making sure you stay mine.'
'And how will you do that?' 'We'll get stronger,' she told him, 'we'll get so powerful that nobody will ever be able to take what we want away.'
'It isn't that simple,' Harry said sadly. 'There are so many things we need to know that we don't.'
'We'll discover them,' she assured him. 'Between us we'll learn enough to set ourselves free from everyone else. Nobody will be able to control us, we'll spend our lives doing what we want, where we want, with each other.'
'Isn't it a little early to say things like that?' He was smiling at her again, a teasing glint in his eye. 'We've only been together for a few months.'
'Are we going to fast for you, Harry?' She breathed, leaning in close, touching the tip of her nose to his, and brushing her lips over his. 'I suppose I should stop-' Everything else she had been intending to say was cut off when Harry kissed her hard, slipping her around and crushing his lips into hers, pressing her back into the tree and himself into her. His hands were in her hair, drifting to her hips, and running over her shoulders up to her cheeks to cup her face.
It was hot with his passion, and incredibly sweet. Fleur found herself melting into his lips, disappearing into the touch of his tongue on the underside of her upper lip.
Harry pulled back and she let out a soft moan of disappointment. He laughed and she flushed violently, then dragged his mouth back down to hers, where it belonged.
'Now,' she told him, pushing him back and stepping away from the trunk of the tree, 'I want to see what you can do. The Daily Prophet spent so much time talking about this dark curse you used that I want to see it for myself.'
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