750Nothing is mine.
Katie gets her maman to keep her promise and tell her everything.
The Never-Ending Story
'Papaaaa,' Katie whined, batting his hand away from her shoulder-length, silver, half curls. 'Not my hair. You'll make it messy like yours!'
'Maybe soon you'll grow a beard like mine.' Harry laughed and swept her into his arms, holding her tight as she buried her face in his stomach with a small contented hum. 'Did you get a wand of your own, then?'
She nodded. 'Look!' His daughter reached behind her and pulled a wand from the slim dark blue ribbon girding her dress, sticking Harry's into the little loop of silk in its stead. 'It's my own wand!'
Harry admired the smooth brown wand. 'Do you remember what Ollivander said it was made out of?'
'Twelve inches of holly with a liquid core of phoenix tears and three of maman's interwoven hairs,' Katie recited, beaming; the wand lit up with a soft silver glow as she smiled, scattering bright sparks of every colour into the air. 'Look, it likes me!'
'It's perfect for you,' Harry murmured. 'You look very happy with it.'
'I am! Everything is happy!' His daughter bounced on her toes. 'And maman said she would take me wherever I wanted to go and tell me about everything.'
'I told you she would eventually, little chick, your maman loves you very much.'
Katie nodded. 'Je sais. But the secrets make her sad and I don't want her to be sad anymore.' A stubborn little glint welled up in her bright green eyes. 'And you said you have to make wishes happen, papa, so I told her no more secrets.'
'Where are you going to get her to take you?' He chuckled. 'Wait, I already know. You're going to get her to take you to a café in Paris that sells clafoutis tomorrow.'
'No, I don't want to wait until tomorrow, papa.'
'As impatient as your maman,' Harry teased. 'Bird-girls and their love of cake…'
She pouted. 'I don't want to just get cake. We're not going there. We're coming here.'
Harry's blood ran cold. 'Here?!'
Katie, what did you do?
He reached for the raven, shrinking down toward the pale stones, but Fleur appeared on the white pebbles, a soft warm smile on her face and her dark-blue silk dress whispering about her legs in the breeze.
Harry's heart lurched, and the raven slipped through his fingers like red rose petals tumbling into the dark. 'Fleur,' he breathed.
All the colour drained from Fleur's face and her eyes flashed dark as night. 'Katrina,' she hissed, grabbing Harry's wand from the back of Katie's dress and levelling it at his heart. 'Come here. Right now!'
'Maman,' Katie whined, squirming in her grip. 'What are you doing?!'
'Hush, Katrina!' Fleur's pitch black eyes swept over Harry. 'Take your wand out of your sleeve with two fingers very slowly, drop it on the floor, and break it under your heel.'
'I don't have a wand,' he replied, pushing his sleeves up one after the other and raising his hands. 'See?'
'You expect me to believe you just do not have one?'
A small sad smile crept across Harry's face. 'I thought about getting one once or twice, but I never really needed a wand and if I'd been caught or seen, you might've just disappeared and then...'
Then there really would be nothing left again.
'Accio wand,' Fleur snapped.
She truly doesn't trust me anymore. The storm stirred, a burning whisper of yearning swirling in his chest. You deserve it. You ruined everything. Harry forced all of that down. No, we ruined everything. She made me forget. And then I did the rest because I couldn't remember.
'I…' The sharp searing winds slicing through his heart tore the words from the tip of his tongue and scattered them far out of reach. 'I came back.' He held out his left hand, conjuring a small red rose in his fingers. 'And you said it, at Château d'Acier, I could only have come back if—'
'I did not see you come back.' The tip of the ebony wand trembled. 'You came back another way. You are still Mithras. You think you feel, but it is twisted by La Victoire Finale.'
'No…' Harry shook his head. 'I never gave up. I—' he pointed at his wand '—the horcrux chose to give up; it was the only way it could fulfil its purpose. And because it did, it ended, so I came back from inside the pensieve, but then you…'
Fleur flinched, the dark draining from her eyes. 'I — I — non, this is just a lie. More madness. La folie. You are still Mithras. You sacrificed us before and you will do it again when you begin to crave it once more.'
'If I'm Mithras, you know what to do,' he whispered. 'So do it.'
The ebony wand rose to point at his heart. 'You think I cannot? I can. I will. I did it before and I will do it again.'
'Mithras can't come back,' Harry murmured. 'Only I can come back. Tom didn't share that dream and Mithras was the two of us together.'
Do it. Do it as many times as it takes. I'll come back. I'll always come back.
Katie wriggled free, darting forward. 'Papa—'
'Hold onto this for your maman, baby bird.' Harry poked the smooth green stem into Katie's hands and closed her small fingers over the soft crimson petals. 'Don't worry. I'll be back soon.'
'Will you?' Fleur breathed; fragile hope shone amongst the tears in her bright summer sky-blue eyes. 'Always? Every time? Like you promised me?'
'Always.' Harry felt the familiar words forming on her tongue as the tip of the ebony wand trembled. 'As many times as you need.'
'J'espère,' Fleur murmured, covering Katie's eyes with her hand. 'Je t'aime.'
'Je t'aime,' he whispered.
A wave of emerald washed the world away; it shrank into a spark of distant gold, bright as the breaking of dawn in a strange moment of still thick shadows, splitting into two, into four, and bursting into countless more, pouring toward him. The amber motes of light flooded over Harry's face, as warm and bright as the sun spilling in through his cupboard keyhole.
And he stood in the cool air beneath the rustling willow leaves, Fleur's wide soft blue eyes staring back at him and Katie peeking through her maman's fingers.
Fleur covered their daughter's eyes and raised the wand again.
As many times as it takes.
The flash of emerald ripped him from the world; it tore him from beneath the slim green leaves of the willow and the warm breeze, but he stepped from the dark through bright golden light out onto the white pebbles again; emerald magic swept the world away, snatching him back from it over and over in bursts of vivid green and dawn-bright light, like the tide tugging a small seashell from golden sands out to sea upon the foam of every wave.
Harry sucked in a breath, blinking in the sun beneath the willow boughs as Katie wriggled in Fleur's grip, yanking at the hand covering her eyes. 'See,' he whispered. 'See?'
'Je suis désolée.' Fleur dropped her hand from Katie's face and threw her arms around him, burying her face in the crook of his neck; her warm tears splashed against his skin and trickled down his bare chest. 'I am so sorry,' she whispered. 'I was trying to create a loophole so you could come back to us. But I was so cruel to you. You gave me your whole heart, held it up to me in your hands as if I was the sun; I was your only wish and—' bitter loathing coloured her words'—and all I did was twist the knife to see if you still loved me enough to hurt.'
'I don't mind.' Harry breathed in the cherry blossom of her hair and squeezed his eyes tight shut against the tears. 'I don't care. It was all worth it just to see our baby bird grown up and smiling.'
'I will be kind.' Fleur clung to him, crushing herself against his chest. 'I will be as kind as Gabby always was. Tu n'es plus marié à un monstre, plus maintenant. Je promets.'
'Je t'aime.' He wrapped his fingers around his wand, but she tensed. 'You can do it again,' he murmured into her silver hair, letting go of the slim piece of ebony. 'I'll come back again. I don't need a wand. I don't need any of that. I only need us.'
Fleur leant back and smeared her tears away on the back of her hand, resting the tip of his wand over his heart. 'Just once more to make sure.' She whispered the words beneath her breath.
A flash of green stabbed at his eyes.
'Voilà.' Fleur offered him a tearful, trembling smile and lowered his wand. 'I cannot, non?' She conjured a plain blue robe and wrapped it around his shoulders.
Katie tiptoed forward.
'Come here, sneaky little chick,' Fleur murmured. 'I see you found your papa. No more secrets indeed, Katrina.'
'Pardon, maman.' Their daughter squirmed. 'I thought he was just a friendly bird who left me flowers when I was sad, so I didn't say anything, and then papa made me promise not to tell you, so I couldn't until I showed you.'
Sneaky little chick indeed.
Fleur gave her a warm smile. 'You are not in trouble, baby bird, but can you take my rose back to the kitchen? Your papa and I will come back soon.'
Katie glanced between them. 'You're not going to be cross and scary?'
'Non, mon poussin. I am the farthest thing from being cross; you can feel it, non?'
Harry watched Katie skip away through the tall grass, a huge smile on her face. 'You did so amazingly well,' he whispered. 'She was lonely, but… she's so beautiful. Everything we dreamt of. Everything we hoped for.'
'We were both lonely,' Fleur murmured. 'I tried, but… I did not know what to tell her about you that would not make her unhappy, and if we were here, I knew she was safe. It was okay for a while; she always wanted to find you and know about you, but until the last year or so, she was mostly happy to wait.'
'You did much better than I would've done. I don't know anything about bird-girl things and I would just have given her everything she asked for the moment she pouted at me.'
'You would have spoilt her rotten.' She laughed. 'And she is just as sneaky a chick as her Auntie Gabby and her maman, sidestepping her promise to you to get what she wanted; she would have wound you around her finger, mon amour.'
Harry's heart lurched and hot tears sprang to his eyes. 'I think she already has.' He mustered a smile. 'Now you will have competition.'
'It is not a competition.' Fleur cupped his cheek. 'I meant my promise, mon coeur. I will be kind. If I ever want to see that you love me, I have all my roses, I have you back, and I have our baby bird.' She swept her long silver hair back over her shoulder with a small frown. 'Why do you smell like honeysuckle?'
'Isobel made me use her shampoo yesterday; she was a bit cross with me and force-fed me just about everything in their home too.' A small chuckle escaped him. 'They know. My sisters said… they said I can come back. I can be Henri Dufort, Henri Delacour, and Violette, and help them make sure everything I did wasn't for nothing and… and I think I should, shouldn't I? But… only if you want me to.'
'If I want you to?' Her blue eyes darkened a few hues and she pressed her forehead against his. 'Mon amour—' Fleur's breath tickled his cheek '—I have missed you every day since you did not come back to me from der Waldkrone. Of course I want you back. And I do not want you hiding here if you do not want to be. I will be kind, but…' She pressed a soft kiss to his lips. 'You are still mine, non?'
'As always,' he whispered.
Fleur tucked his wand into his hand and slipped her fingers through his. 'I will find you some new clothes, mon coeur. And you need to shave and cut your hair. And then I will find you some boots too.' Her gaze dipped to his bare feet. 'And your nails need rescuing. And then, when you look like my husband and not like you just tunnelled out of Château d'Acier, we will go to Paris. We have ten years of cake dates to catch up and our little chick is very stubborn about being told everything, so if we do not feed her something sweet, she will just keep chirping questions at us until she runs out of breath.'
'You may have to pay for the cake,' Harry said. 'I own nothing but the clothes on my back, and you made those, too.'
She laughed. 'This is all ours, mon amour. Our château. Our home. Our little chick. Our sunset. It hurt so much more than I imagined to get here, but—' the mirth faded from Fleur's soft, summer sky-blue eyes and she rested her head on his shoulder '—it will always be like this now. There is no more hurting left to come.'
'It was worth it,' Harry whispered. 'This is more than perfect enough.'
'We will enjoy it,' she murmured. 'We promised Gabby, non? And I promised you. And you promised me. We all promised. No more of how we were before.'
He nodded.
'Bon.' She pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. 'And after we have answered all our little veela fledgling's questions, fed her enough cake to satisfy a small dragon, and put her to bed, will you come down here with me?'
'Of course,' Harry promised. 'Do you want to watch it? How we did before?'
'I do,' Fleur breathed. 'Today. Tomorrow. Forever. Together.'
Katie bounced out from under the fading cherry blossom. 'Maman! Papa! You said you were coming!' She folded her arms across her chest and turned her nose up at them, a delicate pout upon her lips. 'You're taking ages!'
Fleur laughed and slipped away from his side, wavering out of sight and appearing beside Katie. Their daughter grabbed a hold of Fleur's arm, a huge bright smile bursting across her face, and waved down the hill at him.
'Look at you both,' Harry whispered.
Look how beautiful you are.
He picked up one foot and forced it forward, took a deep breath, and mustered a second step toward home.
You won't ruin it. Not this time. You know better now.
The white pebbles clicked beneath his heels as Harry strode up the hill toward them, quickening his pace, and, with a small smile, he felt the last searing yearning of the storm melt away into a warmth as soft as summer sunshine.
AN: And just like that, it's finally finished.
Thank you to everyone who's been patient while reading this - the story is really not designed to be read piece by piece upon release and it makes some parts of it very frustrating - and hopefully, in the end, it was all worth it after all! I would imagine there are some questions, because there usually are when I finish writing something I'm trying to be clever about. I don't really want to post a huge swathe of explanation here, so the best place to ask is the Discord, because it's way easier to have a conversation there, but you can PM here (FFN might tell me, but I apologise in advance if I don't see them).
I do, for those interested, have another story coming called Smile Back (actually, I've already written about 150k words of it and the first twenty something chapters are up as early access on my own website) and I think, after such a long bleak, raw march through the entirety of the underworld to finally keep that promise and reach Elysium, something much lighter and more fun is probably more than called for! So, keep an eye out on my stuff for its release in a week or so, or join the Discord to start reading today (or if FFN notifications are broken again)!