- - sorry i died and didn't update. i'm at the stage where i hate everything i write. i can no longer differentiate terrible grammar from an intelligible sentence.

Chapter 10 - Dreams I've Denied For All These Years

Fleur couldn't get comfortable. She checked the clock. Hours. It had been hours that she tossed and turned, trying to find a position on the couch that wouldn't add to the dull ache in her body. Maybe she slept in an odd position last night. Or maybe it was just this fucking couch. (Bill insisted on secondhand furniture, a habit she knew that came from his upbringing).

Fleur frowned. Maybe it was — she shook her head. No, it was best not to think about it.

Flipping onto her stomach she continued to read her book, unfolding the dog-eared page. Bill had suggested that she read muggle literature a little while ago. She knew why, of course, but it never struck her as something terribly important.

Living at Shell Cottage gave her time to do the not-so-terribly-important things. In fact, nothing she did here was terribly important. This wasn't exactly her idea of participating in a resistance — being sidelined because of someone else's idea of 'strategic timing'. Bill took it into stride, however, and had designated it time for character building and introspection (his personal definitions of these concepts seemed very off-base).

She could tell he was bored as shit too.

Coming and going was a pain (because of the war), visitors were almost nonexistent (because of the war), and she wasn't one for recreational drugs (because her body was a temple, thank you very much). They were left to their imaginations and magic. It almost made her feel like a kid again. A very bored and over-the-legal-age kid.

It was not in any way progress. Fleur almost felt guilty for all the things she'd done, just to end up here. Her mother had been understanding, but her grandmother? Her grandmother berated her for ruining the sanctity of marriage. 'You've dishonored our traditions, Fleur.' She didn't think much of it until the actual wedding, when she was there. It had felt so wrong, to share such intimacy with someone other than her, even if it was an act. Fleur then understood the weight of her grandmother's words.

How could she be putting one foot in front of the other and still be going backwards? (By facing the wrong way).

A faint crack sounded from outside the house. What the fuck?

Fleur quickly sat up from her position in alarm and called out from the couch.

"William?"

Hearing fumbling and distant curses, she threw her book on the coffee table and hurried to the kitchen.

"William?" Fleur called out again.

"Someone's apparated here! Didn't you hear that?" Bill hissed. Fleur spun around to look at him, a small amount of tea had spilled onto his shirt, and the tea tray had been messily thrown onto the counter.

"We have to check it out." he said, too insistently to make room for an argument. He took out his wand and silently instructed Fleur to do so too. She could tell his adrenaline had spiked, the same reaction was felt throughout her own body.

Bill took in a deep breath and nodded towards the front door, moving towards it with his legs slightly bent at the knees. He licked his lips as he reached for the knob.

"You ready?"

No. Fleur nodded.

Fleur wasn't really sure what was going on. And running in the sand was absolutely impossible.

There were three. She easily recognized them, despite them looking like absolute hell. Ollivander, the Lovegood girl, and a boy she remembered by the name of Dean. Bill ushered them into the house, and Fleur's rapid fire questions were easily ignored, much to her chagrin. They must have been in shock — she didn't blame them. Fleur noticed they were all empty-handed, how did they even get here?

"Mr. Dobby will be back soon with the rest." Luna said, breaking the rush of their arrival.

Fleur paused at that. Her mouth opened in question, but nothing came out. Luna had said it so offhandedly, not giving any indication to who exactly 'the rest' were.

Dean pointed to the Horizon. "Look!"

Following his line of sight, her stomach dropped. She knew who that was. Hell, she could feel it. Fleur was out of the house before anyone could say another word.

Ron was carrying Hermione to the nearest room (incidentally Fleur's), Fleur following closely behind. Hermione was passed out, her breathing too shallow for Fleur to register anything else. Her earlier questions couldn't form on her tongue anymore.

Fleur waved him off to go find Bill (she would rather have Bill witness her inevitable breakdown than Ron, even though the boy looked about ready to have his own).

Dobby had died mere minutes ago. The added stress of a death triggered her instinctual responses, ones she had learned about long ago. (Ones she had learned from her time in the Black Lake). Seeing Hermione like this lit the ends of her nerves on fire.

Her hands shook as she tried to remove Hermione's shirt. It was bloodied and dirty and why are buttons so hard to undo? With unbridled impatience, buttons came flying off the shirt and Fleur muttered unintelligible apologies under her breath.

Her hands still trembled as she held her wand over the gash on Hermione's neck and quickly murmured a spell.

It wasn't working.

She tried again.

Nothing.

For a quick second Hermione stirred from underneath her and Fleur's anxiety skyrocketed. Was Hermione in pain? Was she herself about to have a heart attack? (Both were very possible).

Fleur grabbed a loose sheet from the bed and tore one of the ends into a makeshift rag.

Bill came rushing into the room with an emergency kit.

"She's bleeding." Fleur cried, holding the cloth to Hermione's neck. She watched as the redness bled through the thin linen. Bill started unpacking the kit and looked Hermione over.

"They're not too deep of cuts, we can —"

"I've tried!" Fleur cut in. In a different setting, she would've realised how harshly she had said it.

Bill shook his head. "It was dark magic then." he said quickly. She watched helplessly as Bill wiped away the blood on Hermione's arm. His face paled. Before she could take a look, he hurriedly wrapped the arm in cloth. Fleur drew her attention back to the cut on Hermione's neck for the sake of urgency.

He nodded to her hand. "Keep pressure on that."

Fleur almost snapped at him. She knew that. They both were curse-breakers, and injuries caused by dark magic were what they'd been trained to treat. Somewhere in her rational mind Fleur knew he was helping. Her initial responses were being traded out with ones of her blood. This, she could not deny. Veela instincts were incredibly single-targeted.

Shit, she could feel herself losing it. Bill had noticed too apparently.

"She's going to be fine, Fleur, they're minor lacerations."

He reached to bandage Hermione's neck. Fleur tensed. Bill stopped midway.

"If you freak out on me, I'll floo your mother." he said, his eyebrows raised.

She drew her hand back, slightly embarrassed. Fleur had 'freaked out' on Bill only once before, and to be fair, 1996 was a bad year for everyone. They had just gotten news of what happened at the Department of Mysteries, and Fleur may or may not have spontaneously set Bill's book on fire (her mother later explained it was a mix of pure adrenaline and her Veela immaturity).

"Sorry." she apologized, watching as Bill adhered the cloth onto Hermione's neck with magic.

"Stop staring at her, she might catch on fire." he joked, although a little humorlessly.

Fleur didn't find it funny.

Hermione was awake for the funeral. Or something close to it.

Fleur had planned to come check on her before they buried Dobby, only to find Hermione wandering aimlessly through the house. Ron seemed overwhelmingly worried about this. At first, Fleur had written it off as a side effect of extreme exhaustion, but seeing Ron's reaction told her she was missing something.

Hermione had mumbled something about being here earlier than last time, whatever that meant.

She had asked what happened, of course, but was always met with anxious avoidance from both Harry and Ron, and a change in subject. Her patience was wearing thin. If they knew of her condition would they tell her the truth?

'Condition'.

As if it were an illness to be treated. Her grandmother would have a conniption if she heard those words come out of Fleur's mouth.

Ron had held Hermione upright throughout the ceremony. She would not encroach on his faithfulness to his friend. No matter how much the creature inside her disagreed. Fleur knew it wasn't the time nor place for her jealousy (it never was), and her eyes would give her away if she wasn't careful.

Fleur disliked treating it as a secret. It had started off as one for the sake of her and Hermione's youth. (And for the fear of rejection). Now, it was only acting as a burden.

Soon after the funeral, she eavesdropped on a conversation between Ron and Harry (a little too easily, she might add).

They were talking about the Longbottoms.

Fleur knew little about previous members of the Order, but the Longbottoms had been somewhat of a cautionary tale, nevermind that what happened to them was not their fault. Tortured to the point of insanity by the hand of Death Eaters. There was no lesson to be learned other than the cruelties of man.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, an idea formed of what exactly happened to Hermione, but denial was a strong suit of hers.

As she changed Hermione's bandages, Fleur realized why Bill was so adamant on her not seeing Hermione's arm before. She had thought it was just misguided paranoia. (Something that never seemed to leave). The jagged lettering was staring back up at her now, still haunting its sleeping host. It would have made her throw up — if she had eaten anything.

The first time she heard the word was at Hogwarts during the tournament. A boy in the hallway said it with such disgust and cruelty that her cluster had stopped to look at each other. (A cluster consisting of family members. After all, Veela understood Veela better than anyone else). One of her cousins had asked a Hogwarts student what it meant at dinner one night, and was soon met with wide eyes and a shocked hiss of "Don't say that!"

Blood prejudice never had been an issue back home. Her father explained that the English see some things differently — long ago some madman obsessed with the idea of blood purity had created a demonizing narrative onto those who were born without magical parents, and it had stuck ever since.

Mudblood.

Placing the puzzle pieces together, she pressed her fingers into her forehead, trying to ease the oncoming headache (it wasn't a headache, she knew this), and released a heavy breath through her nose. Her control was slipping, it had been since Hermione arrived. The Veela inside called for vengeance.

Fleur would need to talk to her mother.

Chapter title inspired by the music of: Massive Attack - Live with Me

- - guys, if you see something that doesn't make any fucking sense, just know my grocery store had a sale on wine.