Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So it's been a while, almost a week, but here's the next chapter. Enjoy!

Chapter 78

It was early afternoon when Harry drifted past the window of the kitchen she stood at. He was picking his way through the grass towards the copse of elm trees, trailing a procession of glass jars and vials behind him in the air as he went.

He's doing the rituals, Fleur realised.

Harry had been designing the more complex of the two for the last few days, though he had bought all of the magical items he needed back when Diagon Alley had been attacked.

Curiously Fleur set down her rosewood wand. The enchantment she was trying to weave could wait. She wanted to see the rituals for herself, and while her project was both interesting and useful she had plenty of time to work on it another time.

She stepped out through the back door and followed her beau's trail through the grass, for once the knee high meadow was dry. One of Britain's few days of true summer had finally come.

'Curious, were you?' Harry asked, when she stepped into the copse.

'I was,' she admitted.

'You must have been to put aside your pet project,' he grinned. 'It's quite ingenious, breaking all those similar enchantments down into small pieces of magic and placing them onto different parts so when the object is physically altered its effect is also altered.'

'I was hoping I could use it to protect things,' Fleur smiled. 'If you know the right physical form you can open the lock, otherwise you get cursed, but I have yet to find a suitably similar set of spells.'

'It will come,' he said earnestly.

'I know,' she smirked. It always came in the end, even when it took longer than she expected. She was fairly close as it was, the piece of magic to unlock something was already enchanted across the set of rotating rings so that when they were twisted into a particular position the small box would open, and she was only a burst of inspiration from creating a curse that would open every synapse in the body of anyone who tried to open it when the rings were in the wrong position. They would be paralysed until they were released by another, or the enchantment faded; which would be about two or three hundred years by Fleur's best estimate.

Harry swept his wand in a vague circle, and the vials spread out to hover in a loose circle around the edges of the grove before descending gently onto the ground.

'What are you doing?' Fleur asked, as Harry began to draw runes on the ground around him in incandescent, purple flames.

'A ritual to increase how fast I recover after using magic,' he answered absently. 'Think of it like increasing your stamina. I'll recover more quickly after casting a spell, so I'll be able to last longer in duels. It's an obvious advantage to have, one I'm sure Voldemort has already seized for himself.'

An interlocking design of seven triangles, all etched in patterns of blazing purple runes surrounded him, and from the three largest jars, rose the finely sliced leaves of plants Fleur vaguely recognised. They were all used by her mother in potions she made for the infirmary in Carcassonne.

'Myrrh, bloodroot, vervain,' Harry told her unnecessarily, carefully scattering the sliced leaves across the design in an even spread. 'At the moment this ritual would act as no more than a very potent version of some of the recovery potions you can get at St Mungo's or in Diagon Alley, so to make it permanent I get to do the fun, blood magic bit.'

He flicked the tip of his wand across his wrist without warning, cutting deeply into his wrist, shedding a thick stream of crimson along the underside of his palm.

Fleur curled her toes into the ground in distaste. She knew it was necessary, and not even particularly dangerous, but watching Harry so casually cut a line into his own arm was still unsettling and altogether wrong.

She clenched her jaw and ignored the irrational impulse to stem the bleeding.

The blood flowed in an unbroken pattern over the same design, spattering ing the plants in viscous liquid as Harry made his way around the triangles.

He paused briefly to clean the congealing blood from his hand and arm, and to wait for the cut to heal, the surrounding tissue swelling red as the edges crept back together.

'Let me,' Fleur offered, pulling her wand from her waist and stepping to the edge of the set of triangles. 'Vulnera sanentur,' she murmured, tracing her wand over the cut until it faded away.

'Thanks,' Harry smiled, watching enviously as his cut healed in an instant. For all his magical puissance, the deft, soft, nature of healing magic was something Fleur was far more gifted in.

'You should close your eyes now,' he warned, then he twirled his wand in his fingers, set his jaw, and with a bright, purple flash completed the ritual.

Fleur only just managed to squeeze her eyes shut in time, but the moment the flash had passed she snapped them back open.

Harry stood at the centre of the pulsing purple runes, every vein standing out from his skin, jaw clenched, and his eyes glowing an eerily bright emerald. For a horribly long moment he was frozen, and Fleur began to fear he had made a mistake, then he relaxed, and sighed loudly.

'Not the most pleasant feeling,' he commented wryly. 'It felt rather like I imagine having molten lead poured through your veins would, or how showering in this house used to be before you finally fixed the enchantments in the bathroom,' he grinned.

'I did a better job of fixing the shower than you did of painting the door,' Fleur noted archly. 'It's supposed to be smooth, and even.'

'It is,' Harry defended.

'It is now you've gone and used magic to fix it,' Fleur corrected teasingly. 'Before there were lumps everywhere, and more blue on the doorstep than on the door.'

'It's harder than it looks,' Harry protested lightly. 'I needed a better brush really.' He stuck his chin in the air in a deliberately exaggerated imitation of her. 'Next time, 'Arry,' he drawled in an atrocious French accident, 'I shall paint ze door myself; it 'az more 'air on it zan ze brush does.'

She pouted at him, but given those were her actual words there wasn't much she could refute. Just the terrible accent. Fleur wouldn't be caught dead speaking like that; it was ridiculous.

Harry swept his wand in the general direction of the ground around him, and the blood soaked leaves flew across the clearing at the centre of the copse in a small wave to land out of the way. After a moment of thought he burnt them, incinerating the remains of the ritual with a thin tendril of flame that writhed from the tip of his wand.

He was looking quite excited now.

'This is the one you designed to resist poisons isn't it.' Fleur realised, smiling at his obvious enthusiasm and watching him draw a perfect, triangular prism about himself in the same glowing purple runes as before. Now that he was writing them in the air she could read a few of them, though it was difficult to understand them backwards. She made out a few of the runes that meant imbue and the glyph for consume appeared several times in the pattern.

By the time he had finished Fleur could barely see him behind a wall of floating, indigo fire.

The vials and jars that remained came drifting across the copse to hover around him, opening one after the other to divulge their contents before Harry sent them tumbling away again. She briefly glimpsed a handful of bezoars before the crumbled to dust under the tip of Harry's wand, and spread in small tendrils of cloud across the glowing prism of runes. There were crushed mistletoe berries too, and unicorn horn that was also ground to dust, before being directed to join the floating array of ingredients in the air and the identical lines traced across the floor.

'Is that unicorn's blood?' She gasped, when the smallest vial opened to shed a single, brilliant, silver droplet.

'Yes,' Harry nodded proudly, 'uncursed; it's the only thing magically powerful enough to nullify most poisons on its own. That,' he gestured to the remaining vial, 'is yew sap.'

The sap scattered in a fine mist across the prism, but the drop of silver blood ascended to to the summit of the prism, glowing like a tiny beacon.

'This is probably one of the most complicated rituals I will ever do,' he grinned cheerfully. 'There are a lot of ingredients.' He paused, looking suddenly thoughtful, and staring hard at the runes on the floor around him. 'Actually,' he smiled, 'since this is unlikely to have any adverse affects even if it goes wrong, why don't you join me?'

'Join you?'

'Yes,' Harry nodded emphatically. 'You'll be immune to almost every poison that isn't magically potent, and much safer.'

'What do I have to do?' Fleur asked, squeezing into the centre of the prism. The floating ingredients parted to let her through.

'I'll have to add a few more runes,' Harry mused, 'to separate out our identities, otherwise anything in your blood might affect me and vice versa, but other than that the only thing that remains is the blood magic.'

'We have to cover the whole prism,' Fleur deduced flatly. It wasn't small, and she definitely wasn't backing out now; Harry couldn't possibly produce enough blood to cover it and remain standing.

'We do,' Harry pulled a rather reluctant face, 'each, but better that than you get poisoned.'

He opened his wrist once more, drawing a very thin, fine ribbon of blood from the injury and using his wand to hang it in the air around them, before draping it across the ground. The prism was large enough that he healed twice before he was done, and had to re-inflict the injury to continue.

'Your turn,' he said softly.

Fleur grimaced, but gripped her wand tightly and slashed it across her own wrist, murmuring the incantation of the cutting curse. A deep line carved itself into the soft, pale skin of her forearm, and Harry, looking rather anxious, quickly performed the same piece of magic he had used on his own blood.

'Close your eyes,' he told her gently, 'and steel yourself.' She felt him heal the wound on her wrist; its throbbing, burning pain faded away, and then his hand was in hers.

'Will it hurt a lot?' She asked tentatively.

'It always does,' Harry warned, 'but it will be worth it. I would not have even considered doing this with you if it was not.'

He didn't say anything to start the ritual, but the indigo runes glowed brilliantly, pulsing so bright the light penetrated her eyelids, and, unable to resist, she opened them.

Harry was staring curiously around as well, and when he saw she too had peaked he grinned at her, and motioned upwards with his head. The drop of unicorns blood was shining so brightly it left spots of colour on her retina.

'It's beginning,' he whispered, squeezing her hand.

A fine, cyan mist began to pour from the floating lines of the prism, filling the air around them. There was no choice but to inhale it, and the moment it touched her tongue Fleur could taste the metallic tang of blood. Beneath it was a hint of something sweet, but she swiftly forgot it as he lungs began to burn. Her fingers curled into fists, clenching her nails into her palm and Harry's.

He didn't seem to notice.

The searing sensation in her chest began to spread down, settling as a pool of roiling heat in her stomach, and Fleur had to fight the impulse to throw up as she forced her gorge down. Harry's breathing had become light and fast as he tried to reduce all the movement to his own stomach.

The sound of the air, the taste of the blood, and the flaring light was making her dizzy, everything was covered by a disorientating, cyan haze, and the copse of trees kept twisting back forth across her vision as she swayed, trying to keep her balance.

Harry tottered alongside her, sometimes dragging at her arm, other times collapsing into her shoulder, and she was amazed that they were still upright given she could barely make out the trees though the thickening mist.

It was a long few moments until the dizziness began to recede, and Fleur had never appreciated having the ground stay still and firm under her feet quite so much until then.

Without warning the colour drained away, and the sensation of burning faded from her lungs, lingering only in the back of her throat and on the tip of her tongue.

'That wasn't so bad,' Harry muttered next to her. 'I don't feel too tired.'

She wasn't tired either; they hadn't expended too much blood, but she couldn't agree. It had felt pretty awful to her.

'Is it over?' She asked warily, not wanting to be caught unaware by another bout of sickness and hurl her breakfast onto Harry's feet.

'It's done,' he grinned weakly. 'Do we have anything strong tasting in the kitchen?'

'Yes,' Fleur nodded enthusiastically. There were plenty of things that could replace the taste of blood on her tongue.

Wine, she decided, very sweet, white wine.

Harry vanished the remnants of the ritual, and slipped his wand back away, before apparating them back into the kitchen. Fleur caught herself on the table when she swayed, but Harry, who had nothing within arm's reach, sprawled across the floor with a groan.

'I retract what I said,' he muttered into the tiles, 'this one is just as bad as all the others.'

'What were the others like?' She asked, as he dragged himself into a chair, looking distinctly ill.

'They hurt a lot,' he admitted, 'but I didn't feel so horribly sick.'

'Maybe this will help,' Fleur smirked, producing the wine bottle. Harry looked like he was definitely the worse off of the two.

She conjured them two glasses, and poured a decent measure into each one before drinking it in one gulp.

'That is a very British way to drink wine,' Harry smirked, 'your family would be horrified.'

Fleur poured herself a second, more modest glass, and sipped it in a more befitting manner. 'Happy now?' She asked archly.

Harry quaffed his own drink, and closed his eyes for a moment. 'Now I'm happy,' he grinned, looking immediately less sick.

'Good,' she tucked the wine bottle back away, 'lying around feeling sick was not the plan for the rest of the day.'

'No,' his expression sobered immediately, 'no it wasn't.'

'Do you think it is still a good idea to go?' Fleur asked, knowing full well Harry would not have changed his mind even if he'd had to douse the ground beneath the elm trees with a couple of pints of his blood.

'Of course,' he nodded, a stubborn glint in his eye. Fleur suppressed a smile at the sight of it. 'Do you not feel up to going?' He asked, more concerned. 'I can go alone.'

'No,' she snapped, unwilling to let him entertain that idea for more than a moment. It had taken him far too long to include her completely to let him slide back into his old, overprotective ways. 'I'm fine,' she clarified more calmly.

'Sure?' He scrutinised her carefully.

'Very,' she answered warningly. 'So how are we going to do this?'

'You know where he lives, don't you?' Harry raised an eyebrow.

'I do,' she dipped her head, 'I can apparate us.'

'He lives alone save for his son, who's my age,' Harry mused, 'but he likely has a house elf. House elves must be able to identify a wizard's magic to bond with them, so if it feels us it will likely be able to identify us in the future.'

'Avoiding a house elf within its own residence is all but impossible,' Fleur frowned.

'Then we will have to be sure that it cannot identify us in the future,' Harry decided calmly. 'I will have to use legilimency to see if Mr Nott knows anything useful, but if we're subtle we can get in and out without ever encountering his son. He should not have to die for the sins of his father.'

'This doesn't feel like much of a plan,' Fleur sighed.

'When is it ever?' He grinned. 'Shall we go?'

His smile was infectious, and she couldn't help but return it. They were wandering into the home of one of Voldemort's most trusted followers half blind, with all but no plan, and she was smiling like an idiot just because he was.

'Let's go,' Fleur agreed, hauling Harry out of the chair with one hand, and simultaneously apparating them both.

It was, somewhat inevitably, raining, when they appeared with a soft snap on the open, gentle slope of a Kentish hill underneath a spread of late blossoming hawthorn.

Two hedges, a ditch and a low, loose-stoned wall lay between them and the lawn of the Nott's residence, but beyond that area of neatly kept grass was a smart, symmetrical Georgian era home and a grey-veiled view of the South Downs. It was, Fleur decided, quite a beautiful, simple place, as lovely in its own way as any part of France.

At least it would be were it not for the rain, she frowned, casting a silent charm to keep the weather off both herself and Harry.

They picked their way across the fields, cautiously apparating past the hedges and over the ditch, until they stood before the wall.

Neither of them were fooled by its simplistic, ordinary appearance; its existence was too convenient, its shape too perfectly circular for an conventional boundary.

Fleur closed her eyes, pushing her magic gently out around her, sensing, listening, as Gabby had dubbed it, for the magic of the wards that must be around her. The specific ward was obvious the moment she touched it from the way it curved and stretched away from the fringes of her magic.

'There are anti-apparition wards, several layers, and anti-portkey ones as well.' Fleur was not overly concerned about those, either of them could tear through with relative ease. 'They've cast the Fianto Duri,' she said, almost impressed. It was not an easy charm to cast, and its nature required it to be recast every few days.

'So?' Harry did not understand wards well enough to appreciate the intricacy and elegance of the Unyielding Shield Charm.

'It is a flawless piece of warding, the pinnacle of spacial manipulation, draining the ward with spells will take several hours at best,' Fleur summarised.

'Do we have to drain it with spells?'

'Not with me here,' Fleur smirked, drawing her wand.

The edge of the shield stretched away from anything magical it touched, expanding the gap between its borders with no limit to distance or speed until the magic upholding it gave out. Nothing magical could pass through until the ward drained, but an identical, opposite piece of magic would force it to try to expand infinitely far in an instant, and exhaust the magic immediately. The only catch was that to defeat the charm Fleur had to effectively cast it in equal or greater strength herself.

The tip of her wand hovered millimetres from the edge of the ward, a slender, but brilliant torrent of crackling white energy pouring from its tip as she cast a second Fianto Duri to overlap with the original ward.

The air shimmered over the home. A visible, shivering barrier rippled and distorted for a moment, then the white beam vanished and the sky cleared of everything but the rain.

'They know someone's here,' Fleur warned, throwing up anti-apparition and portkey wards of her own within the pre-existing layers to prevent escape.

Harry's eyes flickered from the new shimmer in air to her. 'The floo?' he inquired.

'Nott dislikes it,' Fleur assured him, 'the residence isn't connected to the network at all. I checked.'

'In we go then,' he grinned.

Harry's ebony wand flicked into his palm as he stepped gracefully over the wall and onto the shorter grass inside. Holding the slim, dark piece of wand low and angled away from his body none hand he took her free wrist in his other and apparated them in front of and then past the window into the downstairs hall in two apparitions so fast the soft noises of their air displacement merged together.

It was quiet inside the house, so quiet Fleur could hear her heartbeat over the soft sound of the rain. She swallowed hard; this creeping, rising tension was not how she had imagined this being. Every shadow, every silhouette had the potential to be an ambush, and Fleur could not help but glance into every shrouded corner, eyes straining for movement, her heart hammering harder at every sound.

Why does it have to be so quiet? She demanded, annoyed with her own anxiety.

Harry seemed unaffected; if anything he seemed quietly elated, prowling along the corridors silently, the slim length of ebony in his fingers drawing small circles as he twirled it over and over.

Something creaked from the left behind them, and Fleur whirled, instinctively unleashing a stunning spell, and, twisting away from where she stood, cast three more.

All three spattered harmlessly across tapestries in the space of a second, and her opponent's spell, a bright blue beam, melted two feet through the wall next to her head, taking some of her hair with it.

Harry's first response, a piercing curse, caught the wizard in the thigh and he stumbled, clutching at the gushing groove in his leg.

Jugson, she recognised.

He was one of the Azkaban escapees.

'Aguamenti,' Harry murmured, his eyes as hard as stone, and his voice cold.

Ice cracked and spread across the hall, coating the tapestries, and thrusting, in cruel jutting spikes, from the floor and walls.

Jugson, already injured, couldn't evade them all, and his desperately gasped blasting curse, merely sprayed sharp shards of ice into the tapestries and himself before the first spine impaled itself through his achilles heel.

It was followed by a host more, trapping him within a painful prison.

Fleur disarmed the wizard, snapping the wand the moment she caught it, irritated that her reaction had been so much more ineffectual than Harry's.

'There is a house elf in residence here,' Harry asked smoothly, 'summon it.'

'The house elf,' Jugson's disdain was evident despite the pain in his voice. 'Why?'

'I do not make the mistake of underestimating magical creatures just because they are not intimidating,' Harry answered with equal contempt. 'You would not take a dragon lightly, and house elves are far more magical than dragons. Now summon it.'

'Askey,' Jugson reluctantly groaned the name. His fingers were pressed so hard into his leg that they had turned white under all the blood.

There was a loud crack.

'Master Jugson, sir?' An old elf quavered.

'Not quite,' Harry apologised, genuinely remorseful. 'Avada kedavra.'

The bright, viridian flash of the Killing Curse illuminated everything in a painless instant of ghastly light, and the wrinkled, weathered, bald elf collapsed as if the strings had been cut from his marionette. He spared the elf a single, long sad look, then his face hardened again.

Fleur's toes curled. The elf was a risk they could not afford, and Harry was not in the habit of taking risks he could avoid.

'Are there any others here?' Harry asked Jugson evenly.

'Are you going to kill them too, Potter?' the Death Eater grinned. 'The Dark Lord was right about you; we should have listened.'

The slender tip of his wand traced its way down Jugson's cheek, cutting off his next comment and coming to rest over the gently quivering artery in his neck. Harry gave the wizard a small, encouraging smile, but the glimmering, emerald glow emanating form his wand left neither her nor Jugson in any doubt as to what the Death Eater's fate would be.

It is no less than they deserve, Fleur dismissed.

They were nothing to her.

'Go to hell, Potter,' he spat. 'We'll all be waiting for you there.'

A final piercing curse left a hole Fleur could have fit her fist through where Judson's heart would have been, and the Death Eater toppled limply onto the floor of the hall, crushing shards of ice beneath his weight with a soft crunch. Blood, poured gently from the gaping wound to spread across the hall, but it did not spurt and spray as it would had Harry severed the artery like he had threatened.

Slightly less messy, Fleur thought, staring apathetically down at the body.

'Let's go,' Harry encouraged, pulling her gently away before the blood could reach her toes. He looked worried until she met his eyes, conveying in a glance that she did not care what he had done to either Judson or the elf.

'Do you think there will be others?' She whispered.

'There is only Nott, and his son,' Harry replied confidently. 'I asked only to provoke him to think about them. He might have lied even if he had answered, but Jugson lacked the skill to deceive my legilimency.'

They strode swiftly down the corridor, sweeping past dull, plain tapestries depicting scenes of hunting, and many empty rooms until they came to a slightly more grand doorway.

'Nott is in here,' Harry smirked, 'he's expecting his master, the only wizard he believes capable of breaking his ward so easily, so hopefully that means Theodore will stay away.'

Fleur felt a slight tingle of pride at the praise. Voldemort was not by any means a poor comparison.

The doorway crumbled to fine dust at the tip of Harry's wand, pooling and swirling about their feet as they stepped into the hall.

It was a dining hall. Elegant, expensive chairs surrounded a mahogany table that stretched from one end of the room to the other beneath an array of crystal chandeliers. Fleur thought it was surprisingly tasteful considering the rest of the decor.

Their target sat at the far end, at the table's head, by the fire, upright and obviously nervous beneath a painting of his wife.

'My lord,' Nott bowed, then froze in surprise.

Harry laughed.

'Potter,' he hissed, pulling his wand smoothly from his robes. 'How Lord Voldemort will honour me when I bring him you.'

A flurry of bright orange curses arced towards them over the long, mahogany table, but Harry flicked them casually aside from the tip of his wand, sending them to hiss and spatter across the floor. Fleur stepped round him, adding her spells to his as they retaliated, advancing further into the room.

It felt almost like they were dancing in the Room of Requirement again, only this time Harry did not flinch away like he had used to. She moved around him as he advanced, her constant motion to evade Nott's magic complemented by Harry's implacable advance.

A stray curse struck the chandeliers, and fragments of crystal rained down between them cascading in a glittering sprawl across the centre of the room. The great mahogany table collapsed into dust when Harry placed the tip of his wand upon it, and Fleur, gracefully twirling around him, deflected the volley of curses Nott unleashed back at their caster, who rolled across the floor to evade them.

Chairs splintered, and shattered under stray spells, and Nott, growing desperate as they drew closer, and unable to match their speed any longer, turned his wand upon her.

'Imperio,' the Death Eater snarled.

There was a light, floating sensation, and an almost irresistible urge to turn her wand upon Harry, but Fleur did not move.

Bring him down, something urged, more strongly, and the tip of her wand trembled even as Harry's butterflies surrounded them to swallow the crackling red beams of Nott's Cruciatus Curse.

Not Harry, something else insisted, something deeper.

Her wand tip snapped back to Nott, but he was already defeated.

The ebony butterflies flooded him, twisting from their forms into to black mist and then into thin, dark ropes that grasped the Death Eater and dragged him into his chair, binding him so tightly he could not move his wand arm.

The effect of the Imperius Curse had fully faded, and she moved to join Harry as he wandlessly summoned two of the surviving chairs from the wreckage of the room, and took a seat in front of their target.

Fleur joined him, deftly removing Nott's wand from his now limp grip, and tossing it into the fire behind him. Harry seemed to have a tendency to forget little details like that.

'To what do I owe the pleasure?' Nott drawled.

'Jugson is dead,' Harry caught the Death Eater's gaze with his own, 'nobody is coming to save you.'

Nott flinched, looking decidedly unsettled, then drew himself up proudly. 'I have nothing to say to you.'

'That's a shame,' Fleur commented, 'because we're only here to ask a few questions.'

'Sorry about the room,' Harry added, grinning.

The wooden floor was scorched, and scarred, the table gone, the chandeliers shattered, the tapestries burnt, and the paintings on the walls were empty save for Nott's wife, who had a hand clamped over her mouth, and sheltered, horrified, behind the tree she was painted next to. The others were smouldering frames, or just faint, pale outlines on the wall.

The levity seemed to take Nott aback, and Harry, who was leaning casual back in his chair, though still retaining eye contact, took his opportunity.

'I was wondering it you knew of any of your fellows being given something to protect by Voldemort. An object that he valued a great deal.'

'I told you I have nothing to say to you,' Nott sneered. 'You, descended from such a prestigious bloodline, and consorting with this creature.' His eyes flicked to Fleur for the first time since the duel. 'It's not unattractive I suppose, but to even touch it is to contaminate centuries of magical blood.'

Something very cold and cruel manifested in Harry's eyes, and for a moment she feared he would kill him before they got their answers, so she reached out with one finger, and placed it lightly on the Death Eater's forehead.

'There is more magic in this finger, than you possess,' she dismissed him contemptuously. Harry did not look appeased by Nott's slight twitch of discomfort. 'Let me show you.'

A brief, blue spark, burst into life upon the tip of her finger, as she withdrew it to give him a better view. Gradually, as she directed more of her magic, it grew brighter, turning a soft white hot enough to distort the air around it.

This time she replaced her finger more firmly, and Nott, held tightly within his conjured confines, could not escape. He sat teeth getting audibly, as the tiny spark seared his brow.

Some of the fury had faded from Harry's face, so Fleur released the fire, and leant back. Nott slumped limply in the ropes, subdued, and Fleur felt a tiny lick of satisfaction at quelling the wizard. It was, after all, no less than he deserved for such a remark; its stupidity was almost as insulting as the comment itself.

'Father!' A young voice cried from the far end of the hall, cracking in distress.

Fleur was out of her chair before Harry could move. This time she would not be as ineffective as the last.

A young wizard, clutching a short, light wood wand in one shaking hand, stood opposite her. She spared a glance at Harry.

'He's seen us,' her beau replied calmly, leaving no question as to what Theodore's fate would be, but despite his outward apathy she knew it both upset and annoyed him that they now had to kill someone when it could have been avoided.

'No,' Nott burst out, 'I don't know anything about any object, I swear, but not my son, not Theo.'

Theo's first curse missed her by some margin, flying harmlessly into the wall where it burst against an empty frame.

A stunning spell, Fleur recognised.

This wizard was barely more than a child born into the wrong family, but now he was in their way, in Fleur's way.

'I thought you didn't have anything to say to us,' she heard Harry remark cruelly from behind her, 'but I suppose, if you said something useful, maybe Theo could just be memory charmed.'

He was lying, of course. Neither he nor Fleur would risk the aurors undoing the charm and coming after them, but Nott was desperate.

She'd never heard anyone talk so fast, but nothing he said they did not already know, so as she batted the younger Nott's ineffective spells aside she prepared herself to do something unforgivable.

Harry had killed the house elf, killed Jugson, Rita Skeeter, Bellatrix and more. He had already proved how far he would go to get what he wanted, now it was her turn, and she hoped she too could be so ruthless. If she couldn't be then she feared he might not believe that she was as committed to being next to him as he was to her.

Her aura, the natural magic her peers had so loathed, and avoided her for, washed across the room in waves. Fleur's was stronger than most, and Theodore Nott, unprepared and unskilled, was enthralled in moments. It was the first time she had ever successfully tried to enthral anyone, and it was to kill them easily.

What would Caroline say to that, she wondered. Something spiteful, no doubt.

Her rosewood wand rose to point gently at the young wizard who gazed up at her with adoring, enraptured eyes that were glazed with her magic. How Fleur hated that expression; it had followed her for her whole life.

'You said you would memory charm him,' the elder Nott croaked nervously.

'I did,' Harry answered evenly, turning to give her a small smile. 'Fleur?'

'Avada kedavra,' she whispered, and the painting of the boy's mother froze and fainted. The glazed eyes of the enchanted Theodore Nott's went blank in a brilliant, green flash, permanently extinguishing the expression she so loathed.

'No!' Nott cried, 'you, you-'

'I lied,' Harry said coldly, rising from his chair.

'Theo,' the Death Eater whispered brokenly, staring at the body of his son. Silent tears trickled down the man's face. 'I failed you,' he murmured, twisting his head in the ropes to stare at the picture over the mantel. The bindings were tight enough to cut into Nott's neck, but he didn't seem to care.

Fleur waited for the satisfaction, for the guilt, for whatever was meant to come after taking a life, but nothing did. Theodore Nott was dead, and that was all there was to it. It shouldn't have had to happen; it was a waste of life, and regrettable, but she had had no choice once he entered the room, and thus no fault of hers. Her lips twitched into a smile; she was strong enough, ruthless enough, to stand beside Harry after all.

'He knew nothing,' Harry said disappointedly. 'We have wasted our time.'

'Two less Death Eaters,' Fleur reminded him, 'likely three from the spells he was trying to cast. There are others.'

'Yes there are,' Harry's expression brightened. 'I'll take them all away from him, one after the other.'

He walked slowly over to join her, slashing his wand across his chest in a vicious line without looking back. Fleur saw the fire swirl in the chimney behind the only living Nott, then the massive, flaming serpent's maw lunged from over the logs, closing around the Death Eater with a searing, hissing snap and a single short scream.

Harry took her hand, apparating them both to the edge of the wards Fleur had created.

'I can raze the place,' he suggested quietly, looking to her for agreement. Fleur nodded gently. They shouldn't leave anything behind that might lead back to them for either the Ministry or Voldemort to find. Not that it was likely the Ministry would look, the escalating conflict had spread out across the country spilling into and splitting communities as the violence and bloodshed surged. The three deaths here would be lost in tomorrows list in the Daily Prophet.

'This is the spell I used to get through the maze,' he remembered with a soft chuckle as Fleur regrew the lock of hair she had lost in the fight in the hall. 'It's the one I wouldn't tell you about because I was afraid you might try it and lose control.'

'Fiendfyre,' Fleur realised, the mention of control enough to give away the piece of magic. 'I did wonder what you knew that was powerful enough to harm the hedges, but I have very good control, remember?'

'It's a very useful piece of magic, but not easy,' Harry grinned, raising his wand.

Fleur raised hers too, refusing to be left out. It was a fire spell at its most simple; she should be quite adept with it.

'Together then,' she insisted.

Red-tipped flames flowed from their wands in billowing gouts, entwining with each other and rippling across the grass towards the house. The strain of keeping the flames focused was far harder than she had imagined, and she knew without any doubt that had their spells not combined and reinforced each other with their intent hers would have collapsed and spread beyond her control.

Instead, from the roaring waves of flame, rose the head and wings of a vast, feathered serpent, so great that it's burning, shimmering body of white fire was able to encircle the house, melting the windows and setting the curtains alight just from it's proximity.

The fiendfyre serpent spread its wings, rising over the home like a cobra, then plunged down into the house smashing though the roof, and drawing its coils tighter, crushing the walls beneath its wings.

Harry flourished his wand, and the serpent dissolved, collapsing in a thin pool of fire across the ruins of the house. Already a thick column of smoke was rising above the devastated building.

Fleur dispelled her piece of the fire, but it would not fade, stubbornly refusing to give up its appetite for destruction. Instead of a serpent, a long legged, crane like bird rose over the ruins, darker, red-edged flames protruding from the back of its head to form a crest, and a cruel, hooked beak clacked beneath its burning, white eyes.

She tried again, as Harry watched curiously on; they were both safe from the flames, and he was capable of dispelling her part too if she could not.

He did not have to.

The bird lashed out violently with one leg, stamping furiously at the ground, then dissipated.

'That is incredible control for the first time you have ever cast that piece of magic,' Harry remarked, obviously slightly envious.

'It's not quite the first time,' Fleur admitted. She had tried it, knowing her inherited veela magic gave her an aptitude for both control and fire, but never on such a scale.

A wave of tiredness washed over, dousing her in cold exhaustion and she leant against Harry to still her trembling legs, releasing the wards she had cast, so he could apparate them back home.

'Are you ok?' Harry asked softly.

'I'm tired,' she answered, leaning closer and putting her head on his shoulder. The Fianto Duri and Fiendfyre made a draining combination; she was exhausted, completely spent. Her eyelids were already beginning to droop.

'That's not what I meant,' he chided.

'You are worried about how I feel,' Fleur surmised. 'Why should I care about their fate? They were nothing to us, less than nothing; they were obstacles. I am glad,' she smirked, pushing herself upright so Harry could see her face clearly, 'glad to find that we are both equally devoted to getting what we desire most.'

Something very soft shone in her Harry's eyes.

'There is a mirror,' he began, 'that can show you want you desire most.'

'The Mirror of Erised,' Fleur nodded, leaning back onto him again, and grasping his arm so she did not fall. 'It is quite famous.'

'I have seen it,' he admitted.

'What did you see?' She asked, her breath catching in her throat. Fleur did not need to see the mirror to know what it would show her. Harry would be there, their family, Gabrielle, and her parents; they were all she really wanted in the end, but was his vision the same as hers.

He apparated them back rather than answer straight away, appearing by their bed with a soft snapping noise, and laying her gently down so she could sleep off the toll of their magic casting. His fingers lingered on her cheek when he pulled the duvet over her, and he left his arm within her grasp, sitting beside her rather than taking his company away to pore over books in his study.

'I saw you,' Harry answered gently, as her eyes drifted shut. 'I saw you.'

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!