Harry Potter:Diamond Heart.

'I did not use my allure to affect you,' she defended. He was glad to see that small flicker of guilt pass through her eyes again and know for sure that whatever he was to her, it was not nothing.

'Yes you did,' Harry exclaimed, 'after the Yule Ball in the Room of Requirement, when you wanted to test my resistance. I felt it, Fleur.'

'You called me beautiful,' she smiled, leaning in a little closer. Harry had the distinct impression that she knew something he didn't. 'You used your charm on me,' Harry pointed out in his defence, 'and then you kissed me and left.'

'I'd drunk more wine than I should have,' Fleur confessed. 'I was feeling reckless, and I had never kissed anyone before, but I could not use my allure to make you think I was beautiful, not even if I tried. It is a compulsion to impress, to want, nothing more.'

'I didn't feel any desire to impress you,' Harry remembered aloud. He had never even come close to managing to forget that evening. 'Why did you avoid me?' He asked quickly, to escape the next question, the one he saw looming ominously in Fleur's very clear, very close eyes.

'I had a lot of things to think about,' she explained calmly, 'most of them were to do with you.' There was a flicker of something across her face, a tremor of anxiety that shook the facade of calm she was presenting to him.

'I'm sorry about the second task,' he said after a minute. 'I should not have been so cruel to you.'

'Why did you do that?' Fleur drew back a little so she could see him properly and Harry suddenly found there was a whole lot more air in between them to breathe. It all smelt of the same scent of burnt holly that clung to the blond veela.

'I was angry,' he admitted. 'You used to me to save Gabrielle, you used how I felt about you to make me do what you wanted. I hated that.' Harry had really hated that.

'How do you feel about me?' Her question, the question, wavered when Fleur spoke it, but she leant in confidently, as if unphased. Her face was much closer than before, only a hand's length from his own. All the air disappeared from in between them and the words went with it, evaporating off his tongue every time he tried to say something.

'I won't give you the word to go back until you answer,' she warned him, half -teasing, half-serious. Fleur's voice grew increasingly uncertain.

She's nervous too.

Words didn't seem to be helping him. They kept abandoning him, vanishing on his lips, and as they remained stuck in his throat, Harry could see the hope in her eyes slowly dying. Something wet welled desperately in its place.

He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her across what little was left of the gap between them, giving up on his traitorous tongue.

'Is that your answer,' she whispered, her hair falling around their faces in a tickling, silver cascade.

Harry shook his head. 'No,' he managed to exhale. Her hands came from beside him on the willow tree to rest on his shoulders, but she didn't move away from the gentle pressure of their contact.

It was enough to give him the courage to kiss her. He slid his other hand up from the small of her back to the base of her neck and pressed his lips into hers as gently as he could.

Fleur was far less tentative.

The moment their lips touched her hands swept up into his hair and she crushed herself against him, pushing every curve of her body into the contours of his, and pressing his back hard into the tree. Her tongue tasted of marzipan again, leaving a sweet tang traced along his upper lip. 'That was a good answer,' breathlessly when they separated.

'Gabrielle was right?'

she

told

him

'She will not let me ever forget it.' Fleur scowled playfully, but she was too happy to hide it for long and her warm smile soon spread back across her face.

'Good,' Harry decided. 'I don't ever want you to.' She kissed him again for that, more softly, taking his lower lip teasingly between her teeth.

'You aren't getting the word for the portkey,' Fleur smiled, running her hands through his hair, 'not until I'm satisfied.'

'I'm only fourteen, remember,' Harry reminded her, suddenly fearful.

'Almost fifteen,' she smirked, eying him coyly, then she laughed and kissed him again. 'It doesn't matter, I stopped thinking about your age a while ago.'

Harry leant his head back against the tree trunk, letting Fleur rest her cheek on his. 'How is this going to work? You will be in France, I will be in Britain.' Thoughts of Voldemort, Dumbledore, horcruxes and Death Eaters flooded through his head as he wished, not for the first time, that he was someone else.

'You can come visit me,' Fleur murmured into his neck, eyes closed, 'with that portkey. I will make one for myself, and we will both come here, whenever we can.'

'For the rest of our lives?' Harry asked her gently.

'Until we think of something better,' she told him, 'or I will just not tell you the word to send you back to Britain, and keep you here with me. Gabby would romantic.'

like

that,

she'd

find

it

very

'You'd kidnap the Boy-Who-Lived?' Harry teased her.

'Nobody would ever look for you here in France,' she decided, sounding worryingly serious. 'If you wanted, you could disappear and stay with me.' There was an unspoken desire there, but enough realism for Harry to know he wouldn't hurt her by refusing.

'You know I can't,' Harry responded, with surprising regret. 'I have to finish school, and that's the least of my worries.'

'Voldemort,' Fleur muttered angrily. 'We heard the rumours, even if your ministry denies it.'

'I have a plan,' he assured her, grinning cheerfully. 'He'll be defeated, I'll get wonderful exam results, win the house cup, and be in complete control of my life for the first time.'

It was a very vague plan, one that was little more than a list of four words, but it seemed to reassure Fleur.

It's five words now, Harry decided, changing his mind. Prophecy. Horcruxes. OWLs. NEWTs. Fleur. And certainly not in that order.

'I will help,' Fleur decided, shifting slightly to look up at him. 'I have only six more months at Beauxbatons left, then I am applying for a job with the Bureau d'énigmes. It will not be easy to get in, it takes years sometimes, but, hopefully, I will be able to work with the most complicated enchanted things in existence. Other things do not interest me yet, and my family is wealthy enough. In the meantime,' she leant back into his neck, 'I shall help you however I can and you will come and visit me.' That apparently was that, because she gently place her finger on his lips when he tried to talk about the future again, and shook her head. Harry relaxed and kissed the finger tip.

Fleur was right. This was not the time to worry about such things, somehow, despite his best efforts, he'd managed to find her, his closest equal, and in this moment that was more important to him than anything else could be.

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