Fleur Delacour sometimes wonders what she did wrong.
She sits, hands on her knees, hair falling around her down turned face, and remembers. She remembers every detail, every color, and every expression as if it were that very morning. The scorching look of hatred and disgust in those deep calculating brown eyes, sharp like a hawk's. The picture, burned into her mind still makes her flinch, and clench her hands to stop the tears. She shudders as the images of the girl, turning away with a purposefully averted gaze, fill her mind and etch themselves deeper into her memory. She wonders what she must have done, if ever she did anything, to make the girl hold so much hatred, so much repulsion. Her thoughts are muddled by the desire to forget it all. But she can't forget. The memories are too strong. She asks herself if perhaps each failing in her life has been her own fault, if it is something deep within her that has driven all she has ever wanted away. She thinks back, her eyes misted over, jaw clenched, to that year, that single so important year, and imagines Hermione Granger. She wishes she could tell her how she felt. How much the turned cheek from the brown haired girl had hurt her… Hurts her still.
She admits to herself, silently as a tear escapes, that it was really her own doing. She never meant to seem so proud. To stand so straight and sit so tall. She never intended words, dripping with a thick and so unkind superiority to spill from her mouth. She never intended to push away the one thing she ever really wanted, and she never expected to find herself regretting any of it either. She never once imagined she would look back on her life, with anything but laughter, and perhaps a wrinkled smile.
Fleur Delacour, bent and broken, never expected to live her life the way she did, never thought so little could change so much, and never once imagined that the disapproving look from one girl, could ever break her heart.