AN: New chapter up, enjoy!

Chapter 39 - Bella and Fleur

"Why are you chasing us?" the young man asked. "Back off or we'll call the police!"

"Police? What is that?" one of the Aurors said, completely oblivious.

"He means the Muggle Aurors," Kingsley explained. "But I'd rather you dropped the farce. We know you are wizards."

The young man drew out his wand. A straight and simple wand, made of a light-brown wood, about eleven inches long.

"Why are you chasing me?" the young man asked again, but this time his voice was cold, no longer pretending to be scared.

"We're not chasing you in particular," Kinglsey explained in a calm voice. "We are doing a check on all the wizards and witches coming in and out of Birmingham. With Fenrir Greyback on the loose, we can't afford to take any chances. So please don't put up a fight and allow us to take you to the Ministry. Shouldn't take more than half an hour to clear your up if you prove to be clean."

The young man did not reply right away. He turned to look at his female companion and touched her jacket with his hand.

"Portus."

[...]

Moody sat up from the ground with a groan, just in time to see Kingsley and Dumbledore fire a Full-Body Binding Curse and an Incarcerous Spell at the young man.

"Are you kidding me?! Take the kiddy gloves off and shoot the damn bastard down!" the veteran Auror hollered and fired a lethal curse of his own at the escapee.

But, as if to mock their efforts, a Shielding Charm blocked the two spells from Kingsley and Dumbledore and, with his free, unarmed hand, the young man slapped the incoming Bone Breaking Curse from Alastor right towards Rufus Scrimgeour.

A howl of agony resounded in the forest as the Head of the DMLE collapsed on the floor with his kneecaps shattered.

[...]

"Albus Dumbledore, the one who defeated the Dark Lord Grindelwald. I've always wanted to cross wands with you!" the young man said respectfully but the tone of his voice spoke volumes of his burning fighting will.

"I'm afraid you have me at a loss. You know who I am but I do not know anything about you. I don't remember you attending Hogwarts either and I will say that my memory is still excellent despite my age," Dumbledore said conversationally as he took a better look at his opponent.

"My name is not important. I'm a nobody."

⁂

It was the first week of June. Ever since he was released from the hospital, not a day passed without Dumbledore diving into his Pensieve to rewatch his confrontation with the unknown young man suspected to be a serial killer.

'Who is he? Where did he come from? How in the world has he achieved that level of skill in magic?'

Some healing salves and some Murtlap essence had taken care of the first and second-degree burns resulting from the young man's Firestorm spell and a Hair Growth Charm had restored his burnt hair and beard to their original appearance. To everyone else, Dumbledore looked no different than he did a few weeks ago. To top it all, the world at large didn't even know about the fact that a serial killer still roamed free. Everyone was singing praises to the Ministry of Magic for capturing Greyback after such a wide-scale operation and for executing him via a Dementor's Kiss... Only a handful of Ministry employees knew exactly what had transpired that day. To everyone else, it was a secret. Even then, nobody knew that ever since that day, Dumbledore had been in a perpetual state of alarm and semi-shock. The stakes were much larger than everyone thought, Dumbledore had just lost the most powerful wand in the world.

He had racked his brain the past days over and over again, trying to glean the tiniest bit of information on the man that had conquered the Elder Wand from him but it was to no avail. No matter how many times he rewatched his or Kingsley Shacklebot's memories of the young man in the Pensieve, he could not find anything worthwhile.

'The faint accent suggests he's from Southern England or has lived there for a period of time. But other than that?'

The young man was of an average height and weight, he had square glasses, a normal-looking face, brown eyes, brown hair. Nothing about him stood out in any way.

"My name is not important. I'm a nobody," Dumbledore repeated the words that the young man had told him out loud.

'Not looking for fame. Not trying to make a name for himself.'

It was this thought that immediately made him dismiss the idea that this young man could be a wanna-be Dark Lord. Dark Lords were nothing much without their zealotic followers. But one had to show strength, charisma, and a certain level of self-confidence and pride in order to gain followers.

'His very appearance could be a disguise.'

Dumbledore very much entertained that thought. It made a whole lot more sense to him if the young man was actually an old wizard or witch disguised with a Polyjuice Potion.

'Wizards and witches in their late forties and early fifties are the most powerful duellists. Physically, they are not far from their primes and they are also old enough to have had time to hone their skill with a wand to perfection.'

It sounded more plausible for him that someone in his fifties had such a high level of skill and power. It was unthinkable that a 20-something-years-old man could be that good. But the thought that the young man was in fact an old person using a Polyjuice Potion only served to further distance him from finding out their identity.

'The Healers from St Mungo couldn't find his identity from the blood samples at the scene either. Either he's been disguised by a Polyjuice Potion or he has never been to St Mungo.'

The only other clue left for Dumbledore was the young man's wand.

'This isn't much to go by. No, it's almost nothing.'

The suspected serial killer's wand did not have any distinctive features, as the Elder Wand did for example. It had no knobs, no carvings, no special shape, no fancy handle. It was eleven inches, supple, straight as a ruler, simple, unadorned.

'There is one such wand that Ollivander and I remember...'

However, as he thought of that, he let out a self-mocking scoff.

'To think I'd even go as far as to consider a 12-year-old boy among the suspects. This is ridiculous.'

A wave of embarrassment washed over him at the memory of him asking Bellatrix Black about Harry Potter's whereabouts on the day of the Ministry's clash with the serial killer suspect.

'It's impossible to be him no matter how I think about it. Harry Potter is but a young boy. Gifted? Undoubtedly. But he is not him. It can't be.'

Another memory came at the front of his mind then.

Three blue and gold-tinted translucent shields appeared on Dumbledore and two Aurors. But, at the last moment, instead of aiming his spell at them, the young man swung his wand to his right side and shouted:

"DAO!"

On an area over 50 feet wide, a diagonal slash chopped through several dozen trees, mowing them down like cutting grass. Barely a second later, a mournful cry rang out in the distance.

"Fawkes!" Dumbledore cried out.

High up in the air, an invisible blade had caught the fiery bird dead-on, cleaving it in half. The Phoenix did not even know what hit it before getting killed.

The old wizard let out another sigh.

'Uncovering this man's identity is no different than searching for a needle in a haystack. No, it's even worse than that. By the looks of it, he must've lived in China or that part of the world for a long time to have learned this spell. The Dao Cutting Curse. I've heard of it during my travels but it's the first time I saw it in person. It was formidable.'

To his knowledge, the Dao Cutting Curse was not a spell that any average Joe could cast. Leaving aside the fact that this was Europe, Dumbledore knew that even in China, very few wizards and witches knew how to cast this spell due to the fact that knowledge regarding its theory was being tightly guarded by the Shaolin wizards living in seclusion. It made no sense whatsoever that a 12-year-old boy had travelled to China and befriended the reclusive monks to be allowed to learn one of their most prized martial spells.

Dumbledore shook his head and stopped thinking about Harry Potter. Suspecting that a 12-year-old boy was the young man that had bested him in a 1vs1 duel was beyond ridiculous even to his paranoid mind. The fact that his wand happened to look similar was just that: a happenstance. Pure coincidence.

⁂

"You're finally here!" Bellatrix said in a chipper voice when she saw Harry opening the door of the Music Classroom.

But her ︶ smile instantly turned into a ︵ when she saw him pulling someone from their hand after him.

"What's she doing here?" she asked bluntly, not even trying to disguise her animosity.

The person whose hand Harry was holding was none other than the bane of Bellatrix's existence. The girl that had somehow slithered her way into her boy's graces and corrupted him. And now she even had the gal to intrude on her precious "Harry time". Unforgivable.

"You were right, 'Arry, I can see it. She loooves me!"

Harry threw Fleur an annoyed look.

"Being sarcastic is not the best way to make a good first impression."

The Veela girl crossed her arms and sniffed, not deigning his words with a verbal answer.

"Damnit, would you two stop acting like immature children?" he said in annoyance when he saw the way the two women were glaring daggers at each other.

Bellatrix and Fleur appeared as if they had not even heard his words.

"Shouldn't you be cramming for your OWLs now, Ms Delacour?" Bellatrix said in a frosty voice.

Seeing as it was the first week of June, fifth-year students like Fleur had to take at least one exam every day. It was the same for the other students as well, everyone had their end of the year exams at this time. The library and the common rooms of every house were filled to the brim with students studying for their exams. There was hardly anyone strolling the corridors of the castle or enjoying the beautiful weather and playing outside at this moment.

"Shouldn't you be resting now, Professor Black? I believe this period of exams is just as busy for professors as it is for students. The difference is that we are young and we can 'andle it. Meanwhile-"

Harry suddenly whipped his wand out and a translucent wall of blue light appeared between the two women.

Bellatrix had drawn her wand and fired a spell with such a speed that Fleur had not even seen it. Fortunately, Harry reacted in time and the older witch's spell fizzled harmlessly against his Shielding Charm before disappearing into thin air.

"You've got to be shitting me. Assaulting a student? Are you for real?" Harry said incredulously.

Bellatrix had the decency to at least looks somewhat sheepish.

Fleur was no less startled. Harry talked to her about Bellatrix nearly every day (hence where her dislike/jealousy for her started from) so she had heard him mention that she had a very short fuse but she had not expected the older witch to be that trigger happy.

"Sorry..." Bellatrix muttered reluctantly.

"Do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to see you two acting like this? You're the closest people to me. Seeing you two fighting for no reason, whose side am I supposed to pick?"

The tired tone of his voice made them stop glaring at each other momentarily and look to the side.

"How about we all take a seat and have a talk. Like adults."

Bellatrix sat on the piano stool and Fleur took a sit on one of the music chairs for violinists.

It was when the silence that had instilled between the three of them was starting to become uncomfortably long that Bellatrix broke the ice:

"Why Harry? You are a Veela. You could have any man you wanted. Why go for a scrawny runt three years younger than you? Why him?"

Fleur was momentarily taken aback at Bellatrix unexpectedly speaking to her in French. She replied in her native language too:

"'Arry saved my life, two times. If it had not been for him, I wouldn't be here today."

"Hero worship? Is that it? Harry is not perfect. What will you do when your perfect image of him breaks? - You will leave him. You will end up breaking his heart. He doesn't deserve that. After everything he's been through, he deserves to be happy, to be with someone that will love him for the person he is." Bellatrix said.

"Someone like you?" Fleur bit back.

"Yes, someone like me," Bellatrix said. "I will never betray him. I will never give up on him. He is my son in all but blood."

Harry didn't know French but he could understand that they were talking about him. Although he wanted to hear what they were talking about, he did not butt in. He was relieved that the two women were talking civilly instead of shooting curses at each other. With that thought in mind, he decided to sit back and wait for them to sort out their differences.

'Why are they even so hell-bent on hating each other? Come to think of it, it was the same with Hermione and Ginny in my past life, they both hated Fleur for a long time. Hermione probably out of jealousy due to Ron's exaggerated reaction to a Veela's Charm and Ginny... I guess because of her crush on me and Fleur's shows of affection? But what about Bella? She has nothing to be envious about.'

Harry understood why Fleur was jealous of Bellatrix - it was mostly his fault, due to how often he brought her up in conversations. He had not done it consciously. It was only because he cared about her so much and because he had a very small social circle. Outside of Fleur and Bellatrix, he did not interact with many others on a daily basis.

But, for the life of him, Harry could not understand what was Bellatrix envious of. In his mind, the older witch was not inferior in any way. Fleur did have the edge in the looks department due to her youthful beauty and her Veela Charm but Bellatrix with her elegance and sophisticated look exuded the attractiveness and grace specific only to a mature woman. Moreover, as much as he respected Fleur's intelligence - not just anyone could become Filius Flitwick's apprentice - she could not really compete with a Senior Unspeakable, someone who had created over a dozen new curses and made groundbreaking inventions in warding spells.

'Bella has no reason to be jealous. And we're not even like that, anyway.'

His relationship with Bellatrix had always been platonic. While Harry was mulling over the reason why the two women seemed to not like each other, the two in question continued their conversation in French.

"I may be a quarter-Veela but I'm not that shallow-" Fleur began to say but Bellatrix rolled her eyes at her and cut her off:

"There's no such thing as quarter-Veela or whatever. You're either a Veela or you're not. And you clearly are."

Fleur looked at her in genuine surprise. Not many people were aware of that fact. In truth, half-Veela, quarter-Veela, and so on so forth were just a myth. Veela males did not exist; with that being the case, Veela should have long since died out. But Veela were still around and very much thriving, especially in the Southern European countries. That was because a Veela's offsprings would always be Veela if they were girls. If they were boys, they would be regular wizards, albeit handsome.

The myth about half-Veela and quarter-Veela was something that the Veela themselves had coined centuries ago when the first Ministries of Magic started appearing. They did it in order to more easily integrate themselves into the Wizarding Society and not be shunned. It had been a successful strategy on their part seeing as while magical creatures such as Centaurs, Goblins or Trolls were ostracised and forbidden to wield a wand, the Veela that claimed to be halves or quarters had no such restrictions imposed on them. The so-called 'half-breeds' were still looked-down upon but they were at least tolerated and had most of their basic rights ensured. It was a far better outcome than the situation of the Goblins or the Centaurs.

"I may be a Veela," the girl reiterated, "but I'm not that kind of person."

Fleur knew that most women's hostility towards Veela did not stem purely from their envy of their looks and Charm. It was also due to how promiscuous some Veela acted, taking delight in making married men betray their vows and turning them into their lapdogs. Some Veela loved to toy with men, they revelled in the power they had over them. However, those Veela were a minority - bad apples existed everywhere, these women existed among humans too. Most Veela were similar to human women in what they desired: a happy relationship with just one man, to find the love of their life, to make a family together and live happily ever after. There were also Veela that were less family-oriented and more focused on their careers. Veela were not aliens, they were similar to humans in most things.

"I don't just like 'him. I care about him. I-, I think I love him. Not only that he saved me, but he also gave me hope for the future...he changed my life."

Maybe it was because she wanted to justify her feelings for Harry and make Bellatrix, her would-be mother-in-law acknowledge her. Or maybe because she had bottled up her emotions for too many years and it was getting harder every day to occlude them. Or maybe because she inwardly craved to talk about herself to a fellow woman. Fleur was not sure what was pushing her to uncover her secrets to Bellatrix.

"I'm not that different from 'Arry. The real 'Arry."

At those words, Belatrix's eyes widened.

"I knew it! I knew something was off about you the entire time!" the older witch exclaimed.

Now it finally made sense for her how someone as old and jaded as Harry could have fallen in love with a seemingly clueless blonde teenage girl.

"You believe me? Just like that?" Fleur asked, having expected a lot more scepticism from her.

"When Harry trusts you enough to tell you his secret, how could I doubt you?" Bellatrix said and looked at Harry for confirmation.

But he tilted his head at her in confusion. Seeing as they were talking in French, he had not understood a thing.

'Adorable!'

It was in this kind of moments that Bella usually forgot that Harry was in fact a middle-aged man stuck in the body of a child. That cute look of confusion on his face and his vivid green eyes made him look so adorable that she wanted nothing more than to cuddle him to death.

After a while of them remaining silent, Harry finally spoke up:

"So you're friends now?"

"Pfft." "Don't push it!" the two of them retorted.

He raised his hands in surrender and chuckled a bit.

"Alright, alright. As long you're not cursing each other, I'll consider this a win in my books."

Bellatrix crossed her arms and looked at him with narrowed eyes.

"I understand why you'd want to introduce her to me and get us to know each other. But could it not wait? This was supposed to be our time!"

Harry sighed in exasperation.

"Our piano lessons aren't going anywhere, sheesh, calm down!"

By the looks of how her jaw muscles bulged, him telling her to calm down had the opposite effect.

"You almost got me killed a few weeks ago." Harry continued.

"What?!" Bellatrix asked, momentarily not understanding what he was talking about.

"Sorry," Fleur muttered in a low voice.

"Not you-" Harry began, "-I mean you too, but now I'm talking about Bella."

"You're not making any sense! Spill it out already!" Bellatrix blew her top, quickly getting annoyed at being left out of the loop.

"Your invention, that portable Anti-Portkey Warding Stone. It almost got me killed during the Ministry's operation in Birmingham."

Recognition flashed in Bellatrix's violet eyes and she almost shouted:

"You're the one that the Ministry spectacularly failed to catch?! Are you the serial killer?! So that's why Dumbledore asked me where you've been during the Ministry's operation to catch Greyback!"

Fleur gulped before saying hesitatingly:

"I am."

It had taken a huge amount of courage on her part to reveal her darkest secret to someone that she did not truly know or trust. One could even go as far as to say it was foolish. However-

'I trust Harry.'

When he had suggested in the past to bring Bellatrix into the frame and let her know of her secrets, Fleur had refused to do so, and not for an unfounded reason. However, after nearly getting Harry killed due to her stubbornness during the fiasco with Fenrir Greyback's hunt, she acknowledged that flaw of hers. She could not become an entirely different person overnight but she had resolved herself to work towards changing that part of hers. Listening to Harry's advice was a significant step in that direction.

"So you're the one who offed Malfoy and his spawn? Good." Turning towards Harry, she said. "I like her."

Fleur looked at her gobsmacked.

'W-What?!'

Thinking that Bellatrix would want to kill her due to the murder of her brother-in-law and her nephew was one of the main reasons why Fleur had not wanted to reveal her secrets before. The fact that the older witch seemed to be praising her left her not knowing how to react. Speechless.

"Don't act so surprised now. If your purpose was to get my approval for dating Harry-"

"-I don't need your approval, you're not my mum!" Harry interjected in annoyance.

"-then you have more than earned it," Bellatrix said. "Lucius Malfoy thought of himself as a snake, but he was nothing but a dirty jackal. Subservient as a dog in front of those stronger than him and a vicious opportunist with those below him. He is the one that turned my sister against me, why Cissy and I haven't spoken to each other for a decade. With him and his progeny gone, I finally got my sister back. I am grateful."

Nowadays, due to the fear of Voldemort, Narcissa Malfoy seldom left the safety of her Fidelius Charm protected manor. Because of that, Bellatrix, Sirius, and Andromeda were the only ones she interacted with. With Sirius being a drunkard and a half and Andromeda being mostly busy with her own family, Bellatrix and Narcissa had become closer than ever before. She had become her widowed sister's pillar of support and her closest confidant.

⁂

Later that evening, after kissing Harry good night and going back to her room in the Ravenclaw dorms, Fleur's mind involuntarily went back to the intense meeting between her and Bellatrix earlier during the day. Her final thought before falling asleep was:

'Thanking me for killing her brother-in-law and her nephew...That woman is not normal in the head.'

AN1: Fleur did not omit any 'h' sounds except when saying Harry's name while speaking in French because, well, it's French, not English, so the words are different. Unfortunately, I don't know French so writing their conversation with an italic font is the best I can do to show it's a different language.

AN2: Harry suggested they talked to Bella in Chapter 34. Fleur refused due to being afraid of what would Bella do after finding out that she had killed her nephew and her brother in law.

AN3: For those asking why Harry said "I'm just Harry" in the previous chapter: it was to show how small and insignificant he saw himself in front of Death.

Excerpt from chapter 30: "There is no witch or wizard that can ever hope to defeat me. [...] So I am not worried about my life. I don't question my victory." Harry is supremely confident in his power, to the point of conceit (which, as you have seen, is a double-edged sword given that it also served as a detriment to him in the last fight against Dumbledore when he chose to stay and have a duel instead of running away). Harry is aware of his self-worth.

But in front of Death, none of his accomplishments matter. Death made it possible for him to get a second life. Death brought Fleur back in time and effectively rewritten history. So this isn't about him being a coward or a pussy or whatever. It's about Harry being sensible and understanding his standing. If you want to see Harry act like a cringey edgelord that slurps on retard juice before getting into a shouting match with Death, maybe drop this story and go read a Indy!Harry fic. You will find what you seek there.

To everyone else, I hope you liked the chapter. Until next time! ^^