If you've read my other Bill/Fleur fic "Chocolate and Ginger", this chapter will be familiar. Because I have a slightly obsessive need for my stories to agree with each other, this is a shorter re-write of the first chapter of that. I hope it works in this form!
Il faut que je t'aime
Honeyduke's Best Chocolate
She has had enough. She has had enough of the other secretaries' jealousy and bitchiness. She has had enough of Miss Payne's constant undeserved criticism. She has had enough of struggling to put everything she says into English instead of just saying it. She has had enough of going home to an empty flat every night.
She wants to see her mother and father. She wants a good gossip with Amalie or Marie-Claude. She wants to race round the garden at home with Gabrielle, allowing her little to sister win, but not letting on that she has done so.
She wants to go home.
Gisela is taking the minutes in a meeting. (Miss Payne will trust Gisela to do this, but not Fleur, though her English is no better than Fleur's is.) Gladys Porlock is absent today, and without their ringleader most of the English girls are ignoring Fleur. The Payne is upstairs talking to one of the goblins. No one is taking any notice of Fleur, as she sits at her desk crying.
Or so she thinks.
"Why are you crying?" a voice asks. She looks up, and it is Bill Weasley. Bill Weasley. Why does he have to be the one to see her crying?
She denies that she is, even when he persists. He shrugs and leaves her to it.
Merde.
But he is back within five minutes, laying a bar of Honeyduke's chocolate on her desk. He says his sister swears it helps to cheer you up. Fleur remembers his sister – the red-headed girl at Hogwarts. He has brothers too - Harry's friend and those ridiculous twins. Suddenly, she wants him to stay. Not just because he is good-looking (Gisela was right – at least twelve out of ten), but because he is kind; he is treating her as a human being. She asks about his family, and they share the chocolate. They talk about the Tournament too, which almost makes her start crying again. But she realises that that is where she has seen him before – the thought that she knew him from somewhere has been driving her mad, because she could not place him. He was at Hogwarts for the last task – with Harry.
When he asks her for the third time why she was crying, she tells him. He is sympathetic. He seems to really understand how it feels.
She asks him if he believes that The One They Must Not Name is really back, and he says that he does.
Then they are interrupted by The Payne's harsh voice, and Fleur knows that she is in trouble again. But Bill is quicker than she is, hiding the chocolate in her desk drawer and making some excuse that the older woman accepts. He scribbles something on a parchment and winks at Fleur as he straightens up and leaves.
She reads the note when Miss Payne has gone: "I'll meet you outside after work. You need to be introduced to English beer as well as English chocolate. B.W."
Fleur wipes her eyes, smiles to herself, and turns to the paperwork that now does not seem quite so bad.