AN: Another treat for you, enjoy!

Chapter 8 - Harry and Fleur

Four years passed since the Weasley family's assassination at the hands of Voldemort and his followers. Gone were his exhausting but happy days as a professional Quidditch player. Gone were the days when he had actually started to enjoy his fame as a Quidditch superstar. There was only a grim and gritty man left, a fierce and merciless Hit-Wizard with dozens of kills on his name. Just a man obsessed with vengeance.

Four years of spearheading a bitter war between the Ministry of Magic and the Death Eaters... Four years of chasing after an elusive Dark Lord that always ran away at the mere sight of him... He could not understand why the Dark Lord was avoiding him like the plague. There were rumours that Voldemort was afraid of him but Harry was not that full of himself as to believe them. Nevertheless, emboldened by the Dark Lord avoidance of a head-on confrontation against him, Harry threw himself against his followers even more viciously than before. He lost count of how many Death Eaters had fallen under his wand.

But after four years, he had finally managed to corner Voldermort. With spells and jinxes that had been cast in place beforehand by a capable squad of Aurors, the Dark Lord was unable to Apparte or portkey himself away.

They fought to the death - Harry Potter, Minerva McGonagall, Filius Flitwick, and Kingsley Shacklebot against Voldemort. There were no more magical protections, no secret gimmicks, no old magics cast by a dying mother to give him an unfair advantage. There were no more rebellious wands against Voldemort to offer Harry victory on a platter like before either. It was a pure, all-out magical battle between four of the most skilled wand users in Great Britain and Voldemort, one of the most terrible Dark Lords in modern history.

It was then that Harry truly realized the gulf between the level of knowledge and skill he possessed and Voldemort. Though outnumbered 4 to 1 by four admittedly very powerful and capable wizards, Voldemort was the one that had held the initiative throughout most of the duel. A Duelling Champion, a Transfiguration Mistress, the strongest ex-Auror since Alastor Moody's death (Kingsley), and a magically powerful and skilled hit-wizard (Harry Potter), all four of them had been forced on the backfoot by the Dark Lord.

They had clutched the victory in the end, only by chance, thanks to Kingsley who had cast an overpowered version of the Lumos Charm and momentarily blinded Voldemort (his comrades had been signalled beforehand to close their eyes).

"I won...but at what cost?" came a hoarse voice through his cracked lips.

It was a pyrrhic victory. There was not one bit left of the tiny Charms Professor as he had been turned into ash by Voldemort's skilful use of Fiendfyre at the start of the fight, a Killing Curse impacted Kingsley the very moment that Voldemort recovered his sight from the blinding Lumos spell while Minerva McGonagall died a painful death, vomiting her innards due to a dark curse from Voldemort.

Harry Potter himself had not escaped unscathed. Just as his Gouging Charm (a spell normally used for digging into rocks and cliffs) had blasted Voldemort's entire torso to bits, the Dark Lord fired a dark cutting curse, at the very last second. Harry's wand arm, his right arm, fell on the ground cut from the shoulder. The Elder Wand was still clutched in the rigid grip of his severed limb, on the floor. Even magic was unable to fix the damage caused by dark curses. He would remain a one-armed cripple for the rest of his life.

Although they won - Voldemort died for the third time - he could not find an ounce of joy in himself. Professors McGonagall and Flitwick and the ex-Auror and Minister of Magic Kingsley died just to give him an opening to capitalize on. He had lost an arm too and many other selfless wizards and witches had lost their lives during the war, fighting for the good cause, against the Dark Lord's tyranny. Furthermore, adding insult to injury, Harry knew that it was far from over. He knew that Voldemort would be back. He had seen his wraith rising from his destroyed body and he had heard his maniacal laughter and filled with rage words:

"I will be back, Harry Potter!"

"Wait for me! I will be back and I will take away everything from you once more!"

⁂

"I should've asked for a Dreamless Sleeping Potion." Harry groaned when he was jolted awake at the end of his nightmare. Involuntarily, his left hand came up to feel up his right shoulder and arm, as if to make sure it was still there.

After 'rescuing' him from the destroyed corridor of the West Tower, the professors escorted Harry to the Hospital Wing. Once she made sure he was unharmed, Madam Pomfrey gave him a simple Sleeping Draught rather than a Dreamless Sleeping Potion because the latter induced a much longer sleep (something that Harry could not afford at the moment seeing as there were only a few hours left until the Express left from Hogsmeade).

By the time he woke up, it was already lunchtime. With Madam Pomfrey's permission, he was discharged and went to have lunch. When he entered through the large doors of the Great Hall, a feeling of deja vu washed over him.

'It's like I'm the Boy-Who-Lived all over again.'

With nothing else to do for the rest of their eternal existence, the ghosts and the portraits in the castle were the biggest gossipers Hogwarts had ever seen. Only a few hours from the 'attack on the West Tower' the entire school had become aware of what had transpired: that someone had attacked Harry Potter and that he had managed to survive until Dumbledore and the rest of the professors came to his rescue.

Not three seconds after he sat at the Ravenclaw table, three boys jumped at him, awe written all over their faces.

"Blimey, Harry! You're a hero!"

"They say you blew up an entire corridor!"

"Peeves swore he saw how you killed your attacker with your bare hands!"

Terry, Anthony, and Michael were exuberant. The rest of the students at Ravenclaw table were also ogling at him without even trying to be discreet about it. Harry managed to smile at them but he was not in the mood to entertain their curiosity. All of a sudden, however, the three misfits became silent. When he looked up from his plate to see what was the reason they suddenly shut up (it was completely unlike them), he was greeted by the clearest and bluest pair of eyes he had ever seen. Fleur Delacour had taken her plate and cutlery in her hands from her previous seat and came to sit right next to him.

Terry and Anthony stared mouth agape, like dead fish. Michael looked at him with a mixture of amazement and envy on his face.

"Dayum, mate, how did you land her of all the people?" Terry whispered but not quietly enough seeing the withering glare Fleur threw at him.

When the three boys voluntarily made themselves scarce, Harry looked at her strangely.

"What's with you? What are you doing here? I thought we were going to talk on the train."

"Just making sure you won't disappear on me," she said in a matter-of-fact kind of voice.

He snorted. To think that someone who had battled the worst Dark Lord in history his entire life would run away from a little witch was laughable.

"Are you going to follow me to the toilet too?"

"Of course."

"You know that if I wanted to rat you out you'd already be on your way to Azkaban by now, right?"

At his words, she looked around quickly, afraid that someone had heard what he said. She glared at him furiously, not knowing that Harry had already cast a nonverbal Muffliato on themselves. The ones around them could only hear some muffled voices, they were unable to understand what they were talking about.

"What are you playing at?" she hissed at him.

He did not reply right away, busying himself with cutting his piece of steak with his knife and fork in a manner unlike that of someone his age.

"Answer me!" she demanded and grabbed him by the forearm.

"I'm not playing at anything," he said eventually.

"You expect me to believe that? Why dangle the information in front of me if not to ask for something in return?"

He sighed and put his knife and fork down.

"Look, I only had some harmless fun in mind when I sent you that note. I didn't expect you to find me right away."

"HARMLESS FUN?!" she shouted at him and grabbed him from the collar of his shirt. It was only thanks to the Muffliato that he had cast earlier that her shout did not make dozens of heads turn to them. She felt like strangling him right then and there. So many sleepless nights spent planning, so much stress and insomnia, so much fear and incertitude... Yet there he was, having some 'harmless fun' at her expense.

⁂ Other students' POV ⁂

"Wow, she really is chewing him out, no joke."

"She must've been worried sick about him when she heard he almost got killed."

"Merlin, why don't I have a fit babe worry about me like that too?"

"How enviable!"

"Lucky sod, how did he land someone like her? She's waaay out of his league!"

"Wait, when did they even get that close? I thought she was single!"

"Damned nerds. Who cares about them."

⁂

In reality, worry and concern for Harry were far from what Fleur felt at that moment. She was trembling with anger.

"I think you should let go of me." Harry whispered conspiratorily after they heard a shout of "NOW KISS!" from one of the first-year boys at the table. "These guys think we're having a lovers' quarrel or something."

Her pale face flushed briefly and pushed him away as she let go of him.

"As if!" she scoffed. "You're just 11, three years younger than me! What would I do with a pipsqueak like you?"

"Don't worry, I share your feelings. You're not exactly the type of girl I'd go for either."

If the French girl had been a dragon, probably there would have been fire coming out of her nostrils when she heard his words. She looked positively murderous.

"Oh come on, turn into a big and fugly bird already!" he said and sniggered.

Fleur snapped her head back at him in shock, her anger forgotten for now and replaced by renewed feelings of wariness and anxiety.

"You know even this too?!"

She thought that cornering him in the middle of the Great Hall and pressuring him like that would serve to intimidate him but the reality was completely different. She was like a lamb that had delivered itself straight into the jaws of the lion. He seemed to know everything about her. And she knew nothing about him. She was so on edge that she lost her appetite completely. She was still lost in thought by the time Harry finished eating and stood up from his seat.

"Talk to you on the train," he said and patted her on the head before leaving the Great Hall with a swagger in his step.

A boy three years younger than her was treating her as if she was some sort of lost little girl... Fleur was left in a daze. Most of the students at the Ravenclaw table were also flummoxed by the scene that had just happened between them.

⁂

"You can see them too?" Fleur asked when she saw Harry watching intently the normally invisible creatures that were pulling the carriages towards Hogsmeade.

"I do," he said quietly, not teasing her as he did in the Great Hall.

The other two students that shared the same carriage as them were looking at each other with a strange expression on their faces.

"You mean something is pulling the carriage? I thought they were just charmed to walk by themselves." one of them said.

"Non. They are pulled by a pair of Thestrals. Winged, skinny, and ugly black 'orses. They are invisible to people that 'ave not witnessed and understood death." Fleur explained.

"I think they are beautiful," Harry muttered.

The rest of the trip was spent in silence. When the carriage finally reached Hogsmeade, the two students quickly disappeared. The previous conversation had creeped them out and they did not want to spend a second more than necessary with Harry and Fleur.

⁂

With only the two of them in a compartment, Harry and Fleur sat across each other silently for a while. Harry was watching his fellow students bidding their friends goodbye and making promises to keep in touch and write each other letters. As for Fleur, she was staring at his face.

'Who is this boy?' Fleur asked herself, a frown marring her beautiful face. 'I didn't study at Hogwarts before but if someone like him existed the first time around, Neville and the Weasleys wouldn't have spoken of Hermione as the brightest in her year because this boy is in a different league altogether. It's not possible for someone like him to have gone under the radar for six years straight.'

Eventually, a loud whistle was heard and the train started moving.

"Well, what did you want us to talk about?" Harry broke the ice between them and said.

Fleur continued studying his face for a few seconds before replying: "Why didn't you turn me in to Dumbledore? You would 'ave been a 'ero. Maybe you'd even receive an Order of Merlin for catching the killer of the Minister of Magic."

"Now why would I do that? If I'm ever gonna get famous for something, I wanna be famous because of my talent in Quidditch," he said lightly.

"You don't get to joke! Not now!" she suddenly yelled at him, all the frustration she had accumulated that day blowing up at that moment. "Tell me what do you want from me!" she spat, her wand pointed straight at his face.

"I told you, I don't need anything from you. I made a bad joke, at the wrong moment. Add to that a freak accident with a Windy Spell and now here we are." he said calmly.

Fleur Delacour was seething inside but she felt helpless about how to deal with the boy in front of her. Why was he so good at pushing all the wrong buttons and pissing her off? At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to see that in-control and confident attitude of his break. He was eleven for Merlin's sake, a boy his age was not supposed to be so mature! But she did not want to hurt him either, or worse, kill him. As far as she knew, he was innocent, both in the present and in the future. She would never kill an innocent person.

"I killed four people. Why are you not scared of me? Why aren't you afraid? I'm not above killing even children like you." she said almost in a whisper.

Harry sighed at her words. If there was anyone who understood what it meant to carry the weight on the world on his shoulders, it was him. He understood her better than anyone else.

"Lucius Malfoy - a former Death Eater, guilty of murder, arson, torture with the Cruciatus Curse, bribery, and blackmail. He claimed that he was Imperiused and got away scot-free. Severus Snape - Death Eater scum that caused the deaths of my parents. Snivelling piece of shit wormed his way into Dumbledore's graces and managed to somehow fool the old man into thinking that he was actually working for him as a spy, not the other way around." (1)

"Draco Malfoy, a miniature version of his scumbag father. Spewing racial slurs and bullying everyone that as much as looked at him the wrong way. Pretty sure he wouldn't turn any different from his cunt of a father after a few years. And Cornelius Fudge - a greedy and corrupt politician at the beck and call of Lucius Malfoy. Now you tell me, why should I be afraid of you when you've only been clearing out the trash so far? I don't fit the pattern of your victims."

Fleur was dead silent, looking as if she was experiencing great inner turmoil. She had never imagined even in her dreams that there would be someone who would accept what she was doing and even view it in a good light. Someone that would not look at her like she was a monster. Momentarily, she was overwhelmed.

"As I told you, I want nothing from you. It was just a string of unfortunate incidents: a bad joke at the wrong time and a freak accident... go ahead and Obliviate me, I won't resist. Not like it helps me with anything to know about your plans anyway." he said and put his wand on the small table in front of them, under the window between their seats.

Not for the first time that day, Fleur was shocked by him. To say that Obliviating him had never crossed her mind would be a lie. It was what she had been secretly planning to do too.

However, she found herself inexplicably hesitating.

She had just found someone who knew who she was, who knew what she was, and looked like he could not care less. He knew something about her that she had not been able to tell anyone else, not even her parents. It did not make sense to her why an 11-year-old boy knew so much about her but she knew that she should be glad at the chance of putting him behind her and continue with her plans unhindered. However... it was probably her only chance at ever making a real friend in her current life. Would she ever find someone like that again?

Nonetheless, eventually, her mind won the battle against her heart. She would put her loneliness and need for companionship aside. The fewer people knew a secret, the more secure it was.

'Who am I kidding? There is no space for friendship or love in this life. Not while I still plan on following this path.'

She was going to stop at nothing from preventing the future of her past. Friendship, love, joy, happiness... they would have to wait for when everything was over. If she was still alive at that time, only then would she allow herself to pursue them.

Her hand was shaking when she raised her wand and pointed it at his forehead.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He just nodded in understanding. "Don't worry. You do what you gotta do."

His readiness to comply only made her hesitate more. She bit her lower lip as a last-second indecisiveness almost swayed her from going through with her decision. But, in the end, her face took on a calm expression as she occluded her unnecessary feelings and thoughts away.

"Obliviate!"

⁂

Only moments after she cast the Memory Charm on Harry, Fleur Delacour grabbed her luggage and quickly left his compartment. He noticed that her eyes were glistening with unshed tears. He sighed. He felt bad and regretful for the stress that he had carelessly caused the girl while she had been carrying such a heavy burden on her shoulders.

'Is she from this world's future? It would make sense because she didn't recognize me until the end... if that's the case, what happened to my previous self in this world? Did this world's true Harry Potter really die when he fell from the second floor and cracked his head? To die in such a mundane way...sheesh.'

The Memory Charm that Fleur had cast on him had had absolutely no effect on him. It was not that she had botched the spell or due to her lack of skill. No, it was that depending on one's level of skill in Occlumency, they could weaken or even completely negate the effects of spells and potions that altered the mind. That is how Death Eaters like Lucius Malfoy could get away with everything they had done when things like Veritaserum existed: an accomplished Occlumens could ignore the effects of the Serum of Truth. It was the same when it came to Memory Charms and even Love Potions too: an accomplished Occlumens could become completely immune to them. As for whether the Imperius Curse could be resisted by the masters of Occlumency or not, that was a controversial topic where the Wizarding World had conveniently never reached a consensus.

With that being said, now Fleur believed that Harry had forgotten everything about her so he achieved his purpose: he had given her back her sense of security, making her think that nobody knew her secret and he had also managed to distance himself from her, avoiding the situation where he would get pulled into the war and all the mess that was about to come if he was close to her.

"I'll just go on with my life as I have decided. In this life, I'm just Harry. The upcoming war is Neville's cross to bear." he said out loud as if to convince himself.

But he grimaced in the next moment. The fact that Fleur Delcour had come back from this world's future and that she was on a bloody quest to kill all the future Death Eaters before Voldemort's actual return was proof enough that something had gone terribly wrong with the future of this world.

'Did Neville fail to kill Voldemort in the future? Or maybe he never found out about the Horcrux in his head? And what happened to Fleur? Was she always a cold-blooded killer in this world? If not, what happened to twist her into what she had become?'

He spent the entire trip back to London, several good hours, thinking about this world's future and about Fleur too. The more he thought about it, the more he realized, much to his ire, that he might not be able to stay away from the war despite that he wanted nothing to do with it.

'Should I just leave Great Britain?'

It was the most logical course of action. However, when the time came and the war started, would he really be able to just sit on the sidelines and watch indifferently how the alternate versions of the people he used to love died helplessly? Would he be able to watch the alternate version of his most faithful friend, Hermione, get tortured and killed? Or the Weasleys, or Tonks, or Remus, Or Sirius?

'They're not the same people that I used to know.' he told himself stubbornly.

He was too tired. He could not imagine going through something similar to his past life all over again. All he wanted was to have a normal life, like everyone else. No more wars, no more killings. There was another Chosen One to take care of things over here.

⁂

Harry was distracted from his thoughts when the train stopped at King's Cross. Although there were hundreds of parents waiting on the platform for their children, Harry spotted Bellatrix Black in the crowd right away. She was hardly a forgettable figure. She was wearing a knee-length black overcoat, stylish high-heeled leather ankle boots, and a rather elegant black bowler hat with a black rose on its side, her long and thick black hair falling in waves over her back and reaching her waist.

'Merlin, she's beautiful.' was his honest thought.

She was completely different from the gaunt and sickly woman with rotten teeth and messy and dirty grey hair in his past life. Classy, elegant, sophisticated...beautiful. If he could not find any interest in the girls at Hogwarts as they were just children in his eyes, Bellatrix Black was another matter altogether. When he stepped into the Veil in his past life, he had been in his 40s. Bellatrix happened to be around that age too in the present (though she looked younger due to her good genes and due to being a witch).

Mixed feelings appeared in his heart.

'In my world, she was a fanatical Death Eater. She killed Sirius, Dobby, and tortured Hermione too. But in this world, she seems to be one of Dumbledore's most trusted friends, enough that he's okay with her raising me. I have to live with this person from now on.'

The 'attack' on him had given Dumbledore the perfect excuse to all but force him into accepting his suggestion to live with a magical guardian that would protect him, no longer allowing him one week to reconsider his offer.

Harry was reminded almost on a weekly basis just how different this world was from his own. In spite of his thoughts, he smiled slightly as he got down from the train. But just as he was about to strain himself with pulling his heavy trunk, the woman in question had already reached his side and pointed with his wand at it, making it levitate.

"Hello, Miss Black. Thank you for taking me in." Harry greeted her and said politely.

Bellatrix gave him a warm smile and patted his head.

"Call me Bella, no need to be that formal with me from now on."

"Is that really ok?"

"Of course it is, dear. Or am I perhaps too old?" she said in mock annoyance and put her hands on her hips.

Feeling a bit mischievous, he made use of the supposed innocence of a child as he said:

"No, I think you are very beautiful."

"Oh my, what a charmer!" Bellatrix covered her mouth and giggled. Harry could even see a tint of pink in her pale white cheeks. She looked especially charming.

He looked at her in surprise when she grabbed his hand in hers and started pulling him gently after her to get out of the crowd, his large trunk following them faithfully from behind. They had only just met (that morning at Hogwarts not counting seeing as they had not talked) and Harry was already surprised at how warm and genial she seemed to be. He could find nothing in common between her and the woman he used to know.

Getting to know this world's Bellatrix and living with her was going to be...interesting. Very interesting.

AN: If it feels like Harry's thoughts about him not getting involved in the war are getting repetitive, I'm doing it on purpose. I'm trying to show his inner struggle with his decision and his attempt at convincing himself that whatever happens, it's none of his business. However, whether he will be successful in staying away from the war or not, that remains to be seen.

(1) As the summary of the story says, Harry never got to see Snape's memories, that's why he is so biased against him.