The cold jet of water emitted by Fleur's wand splashed into Harry's face, effectively washing sleepiness out of his eyes. At first he struggled remembering where he was, his eyes wildly running around in the half-darkness, until he finally remembered the by now more or less familiar interior of their refuge.
"Get up, I don't have all day," Fleur spat in an unnecessarily cold voice. "Breakfast is ready." Taken slightly aback by this less-than-friendly wakeup call, Harry carefully examined the young witch's tired face, her red-rimmed eyes, her slightly trembling hands. Then, remembering last night's events, he lowered his glance, while he climbed out of the now soaking wet bedlinen.
"Allez, allez," Fleur urged him with an impatient gesture while she flicked her wand at the window blinds that opened up, letting brisk sunshine and crystal fresh air into the small bedroom; air that smelled of flowers, den trees, freshly cut grass and wet earth, and pleasantly tickled Harry's senses. He saw the other bed was either untouched or already made up, he couldn't decide, but he understood at once that the young witch must not have had a long and proper night's sleep.
He stood up and decided to go to the bathroom to get the day started but Fleur was standing in his way. He raised his eyes to meet the girl's glance but the next second wished he hadn't. There was such an intense mixture of pain, hurt and hatred in those eyes that he wanted to sink through the floor in his shame. He understood all too well why the more-than-cold morning welcome: he knew he had done a stupid thing last night and betrayed the only person he swore to protect.
He made a feeble attempt to get past the girl, but Fleur roughly grabbed his shoulder and turned him back to her with an incredible force, fuming with anger. He swallowed heavily and lowered his glance again, but her hand forced his chin upwards.
"Isn't there anything you wish to say to me?" she hissed in a venomous voice. He collected all courage he could muster and looked intently into those gorgeous eyes that were shooting frozen daggers at him now, only slightly above absolute zero.
"I'm ashamed of myself, Fleur."
"And you should be indeed, my dear," Fleur retorted in the same icy voice, still standing dangerously close to him, and the boy backed one step away when he felt that familiar breeze starting to form around her.
He swallowed again and braced for the worst: a fireball, a slap across his face or a nasty hex of some kind, but none came. She just stood there, unmoving, a few genuine teardrops collecting in the corner of her eyes but it stung Harry more than as if she were shouting at him or hexing him into next January.
"I'm really sorry for abandoning you when I just swore to protect you. I guess it's easier to protect you from everything and everyone but myself."
"Harry, you didn't hurt me that much by abandoning me, rather by trying to decide what would be the best for me without asking me first. I thought you being you would have already taught you that it would never work. I may be a woman, a pretty face, but I'm also an independent, adult person and I will never allow anyone to command me because someone knows better what would be the best for me. It was a no-go area for Bill, and it most certainly is and will be for you, my dear." An unhealthy, purple flush appeared on her cheeks as she became more and more agitated, but her anger started to subside as she gradually vented away her frustration at the young wizard.
"I could have, might have agreed that you were leaving because you're fed up with me, because I'm making your life a living hell, or because you hate this place here in the middle of fucking nowhere, Harry; all these would have been valid arguments. Yet, I would have tried to make things more bearable in the first place, and give up on you, on us only when I was completely sure I had failed."
Harry was just about to interject, but Fleur's harsh voice caused him to snap shut immediately. "Shut the fuck up, I'm not done with you yet."
Holding a brief pause, she composed herself – giving hereby Harry the chance to do the same, and continued in a slightly softer voice. "The worst thing is, mon cher, that you did yourself more harm last night than you did to me, although, I do not deny, I would have never expected that from you."
Sharply turning away from him, she wiped her eyes, then started rummaging in the cupboard with just slightly more noise than necessary.
"How's your head?" she asked, not even turning around. Harry, stil standing on the same spot, reached up with his hand, feeling the spot where he had hit it last night against that piece of wood. It bothered him no more and the wound was gone; he reckoned Fleur must have healed it and his face flushed with a genuine feeling of shame. Slowly walking up to the girl who still feigned being busy by sorting and arranging tableware from one shelf to another and then back, he gently lay his hand on her shoulder.
He felt Fleur freeze under his touch and her hands stopped their dance on the shelf for a moment. Then, she abruptly turned around, their faces separated by mere inches. "Don't ever do that to me again, hear?" she hissed in a venomous voice and, without even expecting an answer, left the dumbfounded boy alone with his thoughts.
"I need to get out of this dumbfuck place, if only for a few hours," Fleur took a delighted, long sip of her milk. "It feels here as if I couldn't breathe, as if I were being strangled. I want to go down to the village to the Thursday market; you may come with me or stay here if you want to."
"I won't let you go anywhere alone, Fleur," Harry said simply, and the girl's eyes started dangerously narrowing again. "If my memory serves me well, I've just told you what I'm thinking about things being decided for me. Haven't you heard me or you just simply needed a better translation than I had provided?"
Now, it was Harry's turn to count to ten, while he pressed his lips firmly together. "I have listened you out and understood perfectly what you'd said. Now you listen to me carefully, Fleur. With you not being my mother, my professor or my drilling sergeant, I don't think I should be asking for your permission every time I need to wipe my arse. If you don't want to see my ugly face, fine, I will Disillusion myself, but I'm not going to let you go alone Merlin knows where. No, Missus, it's not going to happen."
The girl, for a moment, was perplexed. Harry's unexpectedly harsh tone surprised her so much that she forgot about the glass she was holding, from which the milk was still dripping onto her neck and into her cleavage. Harry automatically jumped up and grabbed a towel, hesitating whether he should wipe the droplets of milk off her or let her do that; finally common sense won and he silently handed it over to the young witch. Following her hand with his eyes, he gulped heavily when the towel disappeared in her cleavage, but, when she, feeling his piercing gaze on her skin looked up and her eyes met his, he promptly turned away his head.
Feigning embarrassment, Fleur adjusted her dress – not that it meant anything as the cleavage was deep enough – but in her eyes there was an ironic twinkle as she very well saw the boy's purple ears. "Had you really left last night, you would have missed quite a few of these little shows as I seem to be rather clumsy recently. Would you have missed them, my Harry?"
"Shut up, you teasing wench," Harry muttered halfheartedly under his nose. "Of course I would have missed you, and 'these little shows' would have been the least important reason."
"Oh yes?" Fleur's eyes lit up again. "And care to elaborate what would have been the most important one?"
"Who could I show off to with my highly advanced Transfiguration charms so that I could force-feed her with croissants otherwise?"
Fleur exagerratedly rolled her eyes, but her initial anger evaporated away, leaving only a hint of bitterness and a touch of panic at the very depths of her soul. I didn't want him to leave. I need him. I can't live on without him.
"Did you see the bite marks on your leg, Harry?" She abruptly change the theme of the conversation and Harry's built-in senses gave off an alarm. The expression on his face might not have been too intellectual, as Fleur felt the need to elaborate further.
"Last night I heard howling and something was scratching on the door. I took a peek outside, with my wand at ready. There was a huge grey wolf in front of the door that seemed to be calling me outside. I can't explain it better; it was as if he wanted me to follow him, for the lack of a better word. He lead me to you; you were lying, unconscious, a few yards away from the house. From what I saw – and from the bite marks on your leg - I understood that the wolf had dragged you here from the place we had our little conversation last night."
She held a brief pause, waiting for Harry's reaction. His face, at first, turned a vivid shade of red, then abruptly went pale. Fleur emitted a short laugh. "Yes, Harry, I had to undress you in order to heal your leg and no, I was behaving myself, and even your manhood is where it belongs and not in the middle of your forehead, even if I was - and still am - angry and hurt."
"Can you forgive me, Fleur?" Harry's pleading voice was so broken, that the girl could only guess what he was trying to say. She shook her gorgeous head in disbelief, rolling her eyes. "Of course I can forgive you, you thick-headed, daft, stupid mountain troll! It was partly my mistake too; I was too busy feeling down and miserable and depressed that I had no eyes for your tragedies and you were too busy trying to pull me out of the swamp I was sinking into instead of trying to come to terms with your own losses. Come here, you... you Gryffindor!" She expectantly held out her arms and Harry more than happily answered her hug, pressing her ample curves tight against himself.
Their tear-stained cheeks touched and Harry shivered ever so lightly, feeling Fleur's breath tickling his skin. "Look at ourselves," she whispered, nuzzling her head into the crook of his neck, "two idiots quarreling as a married couple already."
"I guess I have to thank our furry friend that he prevented me from making the biggest mistake of my life," Harry laughed bitterly, inhaling her sweet scent of grass and spring flowers and closing his eyes in delight for a brief moment. "Now, this one, I would have missed a lot, even if this is just a friendly gesture."
He felt her arms tighten around his neck as she nodded her accordance. Suddenly he felt wetness running down his skin and he understood it was her tears again. She was crying too often, in his opinion, and – while most of her misery wasn't his fault – these tears lay on his chest as a heavy burden.
His thumbs gently wiped away the genuine pearls – her huge teardrops - and a brisk smile brightened up her aristocratic face. His fingers, as if by themselves, got lost in her silvery blond hair, so soft and silky, and Fleur emitted a contented sigh. "Every time I would go home for the school holidays, I would visit the hairdresser's shop in the village near our home, first thing in the morning. I would always ask the shopkeeper, an elderly Muggle lady, to wash my hair and massage my scalp. Then she would brush my hair, slowly, gently, with a soft brush in her thin hand marked by age. In half an hour, all my tiredness, all my frustrations were gone and I felt as if I were reborn. You playing with my hair, Harry, feels good just the same."
"You've got beautiful hair, Fleur," Harry nodded simply. "However, if we want to get to the village while your market is still open, I'm afraid I will have to postpone brushing your gorgeous locks until a later, more suitable time." He needed to break the situation, however gently, as he felt his body react rather vehemently to her soft, curvy presence and didn't want to embarrass himself – or her, just the same - by his raging hormones.
"Party-crasher!" the young witch gently poked him in his ribs and slowly, unwillingly, disentangled from the hug. Her eyes, however, twinkled happily now as she machinally arranged her simple, short-sleeved summer dress, getting rid of a non-existing crinkle in front of the young man's eyes.
"Basket, wallet, wands," Harry flexed his fingers, while summoning the items one by one, handing over Fleur's wand to her and pocketing his new wand, Gabrielle's inheritance. "I think we are set to go. Lead the way, Mrs. Popescu."
"Who? I can't really recall that name," Fleur shook her gorgeous head in disbelief. Harry couldn't help but giggle at the rather comic sight of the young woman staring at him with huge sauce eyesr, her mouth slightly agape. "You remember what the Queen said when we first visited her? About the charm that conceals the village and its inhabitors?"
Fleur briefly frowned in concentration. "That one, I do remember, yes," she finally answered, not clearly understanding where Harry was going with this. Her confusion, however, didn't last long, as Harry elaborated further.
"When you were at the hospital, one of the Healers addressed me as Mr. Popescu, and you as my wife. I almost blew our covers, but luckily I bit my tongue off before doing so. Then I understood it must have been the effect of that Concealment charm, so I didn't give it a serious thought after that."
"Right," Fleur's eyes twinkled with a playful glow. "So, my ever-so-handsome husband..." She didn't get to continue her sentence, as Harry, rather abruptly cut into her thought. "That's only a farçe, Fleur, that may very well save our lives; please don't think too much into it. Come on, don't make me explain myself to the detail, you know darn well what I mean."
Fleur only teasingly smiled at the young wizard. "Why, Harry? Does the perspective of me being your wife for a few hours disgust you that much?"
"Whoa... no... yes... Wait a sec, Fleur!" Harry groaned inwardly, taking a deep breath to collect his thoughts. "Come on, lady, give me a break if you don't want me to sink through the floor. Of course it doesn't disgust me, not at all, it's just I can't force my tongue to address you like that when you... when you..." He abruptly broke his sentence, desperately trying to avoid Bill's name, but the young Veela understood him even without words.
"Don't worry, I completely got you. I happen to realize that you just wanted to spare me from another round of crying about Bill. And, of course you being yourself, a perfect gentleman, already understood that it's not like I'm proposing to you to consummate our marriage any time soon," she laughed throatily, but with a hint of bitterness and pain that still made her otherwise ringing voice sound dull and void.
Upon catching the hidden implication in her last sentence, Harry did wish to sink through the simple wooden floor of the small cabin. After short hesitation, however, he looked straight into the beautiful young women's eyes. "Then you must have already realized as well that under other circumstances I would most probably have nothing against me being your husband and acting as such, in every which way, sans question. Can we drop the discussion now, please?" Suddenly flushing red, he stopped his mouth with his hand. "Fuck, I can't believe I've just said that."
Slightly inclining her head, the witch merrily cackled, but something stirred deep inside her. "Well, it's nice to know that you care. So, Ioan," she abruptly switched over to his other, mock identity with a broad smile on her face, "I think we should really leave now in case we want to make it back before dark."