Disclaimer: Everything belongs to J. K. Rowling.

Advertencia: This is a "what if?" What if Fleur had murdered Barty Crouch Jr after the third task of the triwizard tournament and then she had tried to murder Harry?

Through the mirror

"Everything fades away, come turning of the tide

For your love I'm sorry

For your pain, don't worry

Everything fades away"

Everything Fades, Poets of the Fall

The body was difficult to look at. Where Alastor Moody had been before, now were Barty Crouch Jr. Minerva looked away of the corpse. They had put him in the nursing's farthest bed until the aurors got there because nobody else had known what to do with him.

"Do you think she knew it, Albus?" Minerva asked.

Dumbledore shook his head.

"I don't know," he said. "It seemed the target was another."

Of course. Harry. If Albus hadn't acted quickly to stop her, they probably would have two dead bodies and one would have been Potter's. It seemed that every year he had to face such a risk. Minerva sighed. She only wanted to go to sleep after such a long night.

However, she knew it was impossible.

There were two bereaved parents with whom Pomona was talking. Cedric Diggory was dead. Harry assured that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had returned. They had discovered that a death eater had been infiltrated in Hogwarts for almost a year. And then was the girl… What had led her to murder someone?

"And she… Has she said something?"

Albus shook his head, again.

"Olympe refuses that she will be questioned again before she can notify her parents, but no one can locate them―"

"They―they didn't come to see her, did they?" McGonagall asked. She didn't recall seeing them. The young woman had been only in her sister's company. "Only they were missing today…" Nobody had explained it. A week before, they had sent the confirmation, saying they would be there to see the final task of his daughter in the tournament. Minerva, incapable of finish what she had been saying, only sighed again.

What are we going to do?, she asked herself. She didn't know the answer.

"Professor Dumbledore! Professor Dumbledore!" The doors opened and there were nobody that stopped the young professor Sinistra for entering the room. She was shouting, pretty alarmed; but she didn't wake up anybody because Madame Pomfrey had assured that everyone there had a swallow of potion for dreamless sleep, at least for that night. "She―We don't know how it happen." Aurora Sinistra was breathing haltingly and she was panting, like she had run all the way through there. "I'm sorry, professor Dumbledore, but she escaped. We don't know how she did it."

Minerva frowned.

"Fleur Delacour has escaped?" she asked.

Professor Sinistra nodded and she show her hand's content: there was a piece of parchment there.

"She left this behind." Sinistra gave the piece to Albus, who studied it after he fitted his glasses. Minerva approached to see it.

Tell Harry I'm sorry.

Her hands don't stop shaking while she was running away. She had to go far, the farthest possible, where nobody knew her. She had to make a better plan, she hat to write a letter to Gabrielle. She had to apologise to her too. (When she would be able to no longer say "I'm sorry"?). She had not believe she could do what had to be done until she did it.

She had raised her wand and she had spoken the right words. And she had felt them. She really had felt them.

That was the only way.

She would have finished all in a moment if only Dumbledore hadn't stopped her. All would have been done in a moment. But then, all turned complicated.

I have to do it, she repeated herself.

And she would do it.

She only needed a better plan.

If only she could turn invisible. But no. She didn't manage the spell well and she didn't want to risk herself. She simply had put a perception spell on herself and even though everyone could see her, no one was able to really look at her. Like she wasn't there. As long as she didn't attracted any attention to herself, nobody would notice her. Still, she has taken some precautions. Her clothes were not to jazzy and she was carrying an umbrella for the sun; also her face was covered with enormous sunglasses.

It was the third time she had gone there. Privet Drive number four.

It was too risky. There was too much vigilance. She had no idea how Harry hasn't noticed, his vigilantes were not precisely discreet. She couldn't risk everything with another stupid plan.

I'm sorry, Harry, she told herself.

He was her only chance. The, why she was overthinking and having all that remorse? Not doubts, only regrets for what she was going to do. As she had started to pay the penalty for the crime she was going to commit. But if that was the price, didn't matter for her. It was her choice.

It had always been her choice.

Nobody was looking at her and, for that, she didn't bother to put away the paper that she was holding in her hand. She didn't bother to stop a rebel tear that had escaped her eye. The paper was the letter she had written days before for Gabrielle, the letter that had returned from France without any response.

Come with me, Gabrielle, it said.

She was becoming careless or she was learning how to move clandestinely. Sometimes she still saw the "WANTED" posters with her photograph. But, when she compared her face in that old photograph with the face in the mirror, she wasn't capable of recognise herself. That was the photo of the day of the wands' testing and, in there, Fleur was smiling elegantly, with her blonde hair in a ponytail and the Beuxbatons' uniform.

She didn't look like that girl anymore. There, sitting in a corner of a London café, where she got a man who paid for a coffe for her. She looked at the photo and she convinced herself that she wasn't going to be recognized in the street. The face was the same, but it was almost always covered in sunglasses; and the blond hair was always hidden under a wig and was much shorter that in the photo.

And the smile―the smile had disappeared. She wasn't capable of smiling that way anymore, not sincerely. Just sometimes, when she was really focused, she could open her eyes and show a pretty smile just to convince someone to buy a coffee for her, or pay for a meal. That curious thing, hypnotism. The pure veelas dominated it, of course: every man on earth would do everything for a veela's smile, a move. Something.

But Fleur wasn't one of them.

If she thought about that in cold numbers, her blood was only a quarter vela. And her powers not even that. She was never bother about that, of course; she had always been a good witch. She had gotten good grades, she had showed her witchcraft skills. And she had always been conscious about the boys that looked dumbfounded at her when she started to become a teenager.

She had hated that at the beginning.

Then, she had gotten used to it.

And at the end, she had discovered that if she was able to really focus, she could inhibit it.

But there, in that moment, she was struggling for doing the exact opposite. To focus in show all her charms on a poor young muggle man that would pay for her meal that day without being really conscious of what he was doing or why he was doing it. That was the maximum that she could accomplish with her quarter veela blood. Meanwhile, she was reading a newspaper.

And occasionally, she looked at the date.

September 1st, 1995.

Her chance had gotten away again.

She could have go back to Hogwarts. She could have tried there again. But when she was thinking about the last time, how easy Albus Dumbledore had stopped, her hands shook uncontrollably. She couldn't take a chance like that again.

But she simple didn't know how to commit an assassination like that, even though she had killed someone before.

The first time the words had come to her mind in the middle of desperation. They had cherished her throat moment before they went out. Did they would do that a second time? She was afraid that the answer were "no"; and, at the same time, she was afraid it was "yes".

And, as always she was afraid, she ended up throwing up in the bathroom of the motel where she was staying that month.

There was a letter in her hand. That was the only response she has gotten in all that months for all the "Come with me, Gabrielle" that she had written and sent directly to France. (She could have been caught, but it seemed that nobody thought that she was still in contact with her younger sister.

In the paper was the only word Gabrielle had ever written back in months.

It was 'no'.

December started without any signal of Harry and, when she wanted to looked back, it was Christmas. The first Christmas she ever passed without her family. She didn't even had a festive mood.

Why nobody had asked where her parents and her grandma where?

She bought a bottle of wine and she serve a little in a plastic vase. She wanted to make a toast in her mind, but the only thing she accomplished was to make her eyes full of tears. She got closer to the mirror and put her hand on the cold glass.

As if she expected to find something. Something that wasn't there anymore.

She picked up the phone when it rang. She learnt how to use it when she studied Muggle Studies in Beuxbatons and she discovered her usefulness. It was a lot more useful and more personal than the letters; and, also, of course, it was a lot more difficult for the wizard to intercept phone calls than a letter.

"Hello?" She already knew who was calling. The only person who had that room's telephone number.

A breath had heard in the other side of the line; the answer didn't arrive right away.

"Fleur…," someone said.

"Gabrielle? Gabrielle?"

However, the girl in the other side line seemed to regret the call and hang up. The only that lasted was the constant whistle. She guessed that having a sister in the loose wasn't the desire of any girl. A killer sister.

But she still had a lot of words in her throat, waiting to get out.

Who are you with? Did they take good care of you? Do you miss mom and dad? Are you okay? Are you happy? Gabrielle… All the words were stuck in her throat, especially the last phrase she wanted to tell her: Would you want to come with me?

She hang up the phone, waiting to Gabrielle to call back. But the telephone never rang again.

He had been her entire plan. Her great aunt Anika had seem in a rabbit's viscera; she had told her that she could find him in the United Kingdom. Then, she had made a plan that had collapsed.

Because she hadn't planned that his name, precisely his name, would get out of the goblet of fire.

Neither had she planned that he would rescue his sister in the second task in an act of generosity.

She had gone to Hogwarts to kill Harry Potter. Since the beginning that had been her only solution. And she couldn't kill him. Yet.

In May, Gabrielle sent her another letter. Are you sure that you can do it?, it said, I want to go with mom and dad.

Fleur answered with a single word.

Yes.

Privet Drive number four again. The vacations had arrived and Fleur had realised she had been in England for two years. However, in that moment, Gabrielle was with her. Fleur has promised her sister that she would take her with the parents and she was decided to make her sister happy although she had to look Harry in the eyes and ask his forgiveness again before killing him.

That time there was no vigilance when she reached the door; everyone was sleeping. Anyway, after opening the door with a movement of her wand, she casted a sleeping spell all over the house like her grandma had taught her.

Gabrielle stand right behind her. She was little, very little, and she was scared. Probably she had thought a lot in all that when she had decided she would want be with her mom, her dad and her grandma.

Fleur could take her with them.

"Tell me again about the mirror's story," Gabrielle asked in whispers while they were going up the stairs.

Fleur sighed, that story was the story she had told Gabrielle day by day since their family disappearance.

"It is said that thousands and thousands of worlds and universes exist out there, in space," she started to tell, talking in whispers, too, "and the universes and the worlds are separated only by millimetres. Universes where maybe history is different, where, perhaps, Great Britain isn't Great Britain, but a part of France… Or maybe worlds where the wizards are free and doesn't have to be hidden." When they reached the top the stairs, she stopped the story a little bit, only to make sure her sleeping spell were working perfectly. There were no sound to be heard. "In theory, we can't see none of these universes which are only a millimetres far from us. But sometimes, only sometimes, it is possible to watch a little moment the things in the other side.

"For example," said Fleur, stopping at the first door, "the things we can see through the mirror. Have you ever seen something strange in the mirror that isn't really there? Something that has appear from nowhere? That is because you are seeing another place, somewhere very very very far from here and still so close…" She opened the door and look inside. She closed it immediately when she saw the double bed and the two people who were sleeping in it. "There is where mom and dad and grandma are. The crossed to another world through the mirror.

Fleur never had told her sister how that happened. She never had told her sister that not ever she had understood it. She hadn't told her that one day she had arrived home and had found everything broken and, in the middle of all the disaster, she had found a letter from her grandma with the instructions she had to follow in order to see them again.

Do it only if you are really sure. Only if you can't cope with our absence. Because once you've done it, it is no way back, the letter said in the end.

"But you can take me with them," Gabrielle murmured.

Fleur nodded. She opened another door and she closed it again. Whoever was sleeping there wasn't Harry.

"Yes," she said. "Of course I can. Because, you'll see, in every universe there are different people, special people. People who only exist there and no more." She had never reached that part of the story, never had the opportunity. "People that had their fate already written. 'Chosen ones', they are called. It is said that they are heroes the most of the times, but sometimes there are villans and sometimes a little bit of both."

She opened the last door.

There he was, Harry Potter. She entered the room with Gabrielle behind her. She looked through the entire room and smiled a little when she saw a small mirror in the wardrobe.

That time she didn't bother to ask forgiveness.

She was doing what had to be done. It was her choice.

For her. For Gabrielle. For her parents. Because that was the only way to see them again.

She raised her wand and felt, right behind her, her sister's breath.

"Avada Kedavra," she said.

She closes her eyes because she didn't want to see the light impact on Harry's chest. When it was done, she walked to the mirror. She knew the words by heart, the feeling and when her wand's point touched the mirror, the glass surface waved. She put her hand in the mirror and, for the first time, she didn't feel the cold.

For the first time, she could go home.

With her parents and her grandma. With Gabrielle.

Through the mirror.

I didn't get high to write this, I simply write it. What could force Fleur to kill Barty Crouch Jr. and to want to kill Harry? The original story in Spanish (A través del espejo) was a gift for Gaheller Saberhagen and she put some restrictions:

1) No imperius. There isn't.

2) Polyjuice potion. Neither.

3) No time travel. If a want to write about travels in time Doctor Who exists.

4) No veela's craziness. Well, I don't know what is considered craziness for a veela, but yeah… there isn't any of that in the story, either.

5) Threatens to her family. No one is threatening Fleur's family here, they simply are in a far far far away place and it's totally Fleur's choice to go with them.

Now, the mistakes section: I don't explain myself yet how the Cambridge webpage swear I have a C1 level in English (it's advanced). I swear the webpage is lying and I have grammar horrors here. If you hadn't guessed yet, English isn't my mother tongue (that's Spanish, best language ever, in English everything is in the wrong place for my brain). So, maybe I no longer make mistakes like "They is" (horror!) but I tend to write some things in the wrong order (because in Spanish that is the right order, damn it!). If you find a mistake, please please please tell me in the reviews section; you'll actually help me a lot.

Thanks for reading!

Andrea Poulain

December 15th, 2015