Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.
New chapter!
This one may continue some dark themes, not suitable for readers aged 17 or under (as if anyone will actually skip the chapter because of this warning).
Chapter 89
'Last time I was here it was Valentine's day,' Fleur remarked, eyeing Madame Puddifoot's with distaste. It was only a little less pink than when she had last seen it. There were fewer cupids, and the decorations were more tea-themed than the fluttering, winged paper hearts, but the colour scheme remained as monochromatic as ever.
'Ah,' Katie smiled, 'one visit was enough then, can't say I blame you.'
'I did not go in,' Fleur shuddered at the very thought of what Gabrielle would have said, 'this was when Harry was moping.'
Her beau shot her a betrayed look.
'Ah,' Neville grinned. 'The good times. I remember those days. There is nothing quite so strange as having someone teach you spells while a thousand pictures of Fleur are smiling down at you.'
'Not even naming your cactus after the girl you not-so-secretly have a crush on?'
'That's pretty bad,' Katie agreed, dragging Neville and Harry into Honeydukes, despite Harry's best efforts to direct their attention elsewhere.
For once we agree, Katie, Fleur thought, happily following the three in, pausing to eye the sugar crystals by the door.
She found Harry openly laughing at Neville who was buried beneath half a dozen boxes of firewhiskey chocolates, and artfully dodging any attempt made by Katie to thrust any confectionary upon him.
'Hold these, Harry,' she smiled, gently placing her armful of sugar crystals into his arms from behind.
'Damn,' he sighed, resignedly shouldering his burden to Neville's glee.
'You didn't think I would come in here and not buy something, did you?'
'I was hoping today might be an exception,' he chuckled, 'but I suppose I should be grateful you are not like Katie.'
Yes, Fleur agreed silently, you should. Try explaining your hobby of creating rituals to her.
Neville, who's glee had turned to horror when Katie had returned with a life-size, chocolate bowtruckle, was wrestling heatedly with the animated chocolate.
'It's worse than Trevor,' he groaned, when the chocolate creature was finally subdued, and imprisoned within a flimsy looking box.
'I'm going to eat it alive,' Katie beamed, earning an odd look from the assistant who quickly moved on to the next aisle.
'We should move on,' Harry warned, still smiling at the assistant's reaction to Katie, 'Neville's gran will come to apparate him back home for Christmas soon.'
'She is still apparating around at her age?' Katie inquired, surprised.
'There's not much that will stop Gran,' Neville grinned. 'I pity Voldemort should he ever try and mess with her, but Harry's right,' he eyed the bowtruckle, which was suspiciously still, 'we do need to move on to the Three Broomsticks if we're ever going to have this talk Harry's been promising.'
'Or we could have it here,' Katie suggested, catching sight of the unguarded free samples.
'There's nobody else in this part of the shop,' Fleur remarked, 'it's likely quieter than the pub.'
'See,' Katie grinned cheerfully from beside the samples, 'Fleur knows better than to pass up free sweets.'
'She also has better sense than to eat all of the alcoholic ones,' Harry reminded the brunette. Katie's hand froze over the sample tray, a guilty expression plastered over her face. 'But we can talk here,' he glanced around, and Fleur caught the subtle shimmer of the silencing ward he cast, 'nobody will hear us.'
'So what was so important that I had to get my gran to apparate me back from Hogsmeade rather than get the train?' Neville asked, carefully stacking Katie's boxes of chocolates back on the shelves while she was distracted. Fleur thought it rather kind of him, given she knew from Harry that Katie and her parents were running a little low on money after having to repair their café.
'You remember I mentioned that important object I was after?' Harry enquired lightly.
Neville frowned, then nodded. 'The one that the Lestranges might have?'
'Or any of Voldemort's most loyal,' Harry agreed. He glanced at her briefly, and she nodded encouragingly knowing Harry feared how his friends would react to hearing what he would have to do. 'It turns out there are more, and they're not just dangerous objects either.'
'What are they?' Katie's attention had finally been dragged away from the free samples.
'Horcruxes,' Harry murmured, 'and the reason Voldemort cannot be killed.'
'So he's immortal?' Neville looked visibly sickened by the thought.
'Not completely,' Harry explained. 'The horcruxes are pieces of his soul, bound to objects, or animals, and while they exist he cannot die, though he will be greatly weakened and end up as a spirit for a while.'
'Like when you were a baby,' Katie realised.
'They have to be found and destroyed,' Harry said flatly. 'No matter what, or who, they might be.'
'Who?' Neville exclaimed, horrified. Katie's face had paled to bone white.
I'm sure I did not react so dramatically.
'A person can be a horcrux,' Harry responded grimly, 'but I belief I know what the remaining horcruxes are. There is a locket, a cup, and Nagini, his familiar.'
'So the Ministry is going to have to destroy those?' Katie asked.
'The Ministry is not aware they exist,' Fleur sniffed at her naivety, 'and they must not learn of it either,' she added, seeing Katie open her mouth. 'If Voldemort learns we are looking for them he will either keep them close, or hide them where we will never find them.'
'He would keep them close,' Harry whispered. 'I would, if the hiding places I thought safe were discovered.'
'So who will destroy them?'
'Us,' Neville realised. 'That's why you're telling the two of us now, when you knew before. There are more than you realised, and you're afraid you might not be able to manage it alone.'
Harry nodded, smiling slightly, and Fleur pursed her lips a little. Neville was not quite correct, but it was a more innocent interpretation than the reason Harry had given her. He suspected that Dumbledore might have no use for him once the horcruxes were gone, and, knowing Harry had no intention of sacrificing himself for everyone, try to force things. Having Neville and Katie to destroy, or help him destroy the horcruxes before Dumbledore was ready could be decisive.
'So how do we find them?' Katie asked, looking fearful, yet determined. Her eyes, Fleur noted with a touch of pity, were fixed only on Harry.
'I was going to ask,' Harry grinned.
'We were going to ask,' Fleur corrected reflexively.
'Ask?' Katie did not follow.
'You're going to learn from the members of the Inner Circle,' Neville murmured, 'but they'd never tell you, not unless they had no choice, Harry, you must know that.'
'Of course,' Harry looked bemused, 'I wasn't going to ask nicely.'
Neville's jaw tightened, and he took a step away from the two of them. 'I won't let you do that, Harry,' he warned. 'Stopping them from killing or harming people again, and taking justice for what they have done is one thing, but torture can't be justified!'
Torture? We do what we have to for each other.
They did not cause pain just because they could. Harry took no pleasure from being able to harm others, and neither did she. Revenge was one thing, but to hurt people simply for the sake of it, to harm for no reason, was as unjustifiable as it was illogical. Fleur shifted irritatedly. Neville understood revenge, that was clear, and he understood what it meant to be placed in a position few others could comprehend, but she had overestimated him. Neville still saw things in black and white. The Death Eaters were the dark ones, those who fought them, the light, and while the means no longer mattered to him, the naive perception of light and and dark still lingered.
'Torture?' Harry eventually raised an eyebrow. 'I'm going to use legilimency, Nev, not the Cruciatus Curse. It's what I did to help you learn occlumency.'
'Oh.' Neville looked suitably mortified.
'You thought he would torture people?' Katie predictably rounded on Neville. 'Are you insane?' Neville flinched, and not just from the accusation of insanity. The brunette chaser looked like she might assault Neville with the final box of fire whiskey chocolates.
'I'm sorry,' he placated, 'but what else was I to think?'
'You should know me better,' Harry told him, and there was an edge of disappointment to his voice. A hint that he felt the sting by Neville's assumption as acutely as she did, more so, given Neville was his friend, and not hers.
The still slightly chubby young wizard shrank bank in the face of Harry's disappointment, and Fleur, who knew the unaffected face Harry was wearing to be false reached out a hand.
Her fingers found Katie's, outstretched towards in the same gesture.
For the briefest of moments the brunette's fingers lingered in Harry's direction, then she smiled very sadly, closing her eyes briefly and dipping her head to Fleur, and her hand fell away.
The victory did not taste so sweet as Fleur had expected.
She had assumed that Katie's final capitulation would be something she would revel in, despite the pity she felt towards the girl, and the guilt she couldn't write seem to quash for stealing Harry from her, no matter what her beau said.
She only felt sad, finding herself wishing that Katie had never loved her Harry, so that the poor girl wouldn't have had to lose.
How I have changed, she marvelled.
Before, when she had been without Harry, she had felt only disdain for the boy's who left their girlfriends for her, and only vindictive amusement in the tears of her female peers. They had been the girls who had teased her when she had remained immature for longer than they, and it felt justified that they know reap the reward for their unkindnesses.
Katie has never been unkind to me, Fleur realised.
She had tested her, with Bill, over her allure, and in so many other little ways, but Fleur finally understood the conflict that she had displayed when Fleur passed. Katie was happy that Harry and her were so inseparable, and devastated that it meant she would never have a chance.
For the first time in half a decade Fleur felt a kinship with a girl who was not Gabrielle, and, surprising herself, replaced Katie's hand on Harry's other shoulder.
The messy-haired brunette frowned, confused, a glint of something that was almost hope swelling to life in her eyes.
Fleur gave her a long stare.
No, the look said. He is mine. He will always be mine. You will never be where I am, but it doesn't mean you have to cut yourself off from him completely.
The realisation in Katie's eyes was bittersweet, but her fingers remained where Fleur had placed them.
'The other reason we are telling you this,' Harry continued, recovered from Neville's misunderstanding, and oblivious to the moment she and Katie had shared, 'is that there is a Death Eater who will die in the Lake District today.'
'You're going to…' Katie trailed off, then looked down at her feet, scrunching her toes in her shoes.
She doesn't want to know, Fleur surmised. She wants Harry to survive at whatever cost, but she doesn't want to know the price.
The brunette was softer than she was, kinder, perhaps, lighter, happier, and a better person, but not, Fleur decided, completely certain at last, a better match for Harry.
She is not as strong as we are. There is too much innocence in her, and it doesn't want to wither.
'We have to know,' Harry told her softly, 'and it is the only way we know of. If there was a better one, we would have taken it.'
That was not entirely true either. Fleur had come to realise that about Harry. When he was with her he was not the same as he was with others. There were facets of him he did not entrust to others, fragments he didn't think they could face, so he hid them. With Katie he remained the playful, cheerful man he was often with her, Neville understood more, but the true face and feelings of her Harry were for Fleur's eyes alone.
No other knew that he wanted to tear Voldemort's loyal followers from him one by one in revenge for the way the wizard had warped his world. No other other knew of the lengths Harry would go to to make sure that he stepped from that warped world into one that was theirs.
'Will you come?' Fleur asked. She knew before the words left her lips how Katie would reply, and the distinction, the difference, that made Harry hers, and not Katie's, would be obvious from the answer.
'I can't,' Katie stuttered uncertainty. 'I don't know how to fight, and I don't want to see…that.'
'We won't force you,' Harry reassured her gently, throwing her a look that reproachful, and empathetical in equal measure.
He understands, Fleur smiled softly, shaking her head. Of course he does.
'Neville?'' Harry turned her question to his other friend.
'I could come,' Neville replied slowly, 'I should, the Lestranges are Inner Circle too, but I don't know if I am ready.'
'There's only one way to find out,' Harry replied thoughtfully, 'and you'll have to take that step eventually if you want your revenge.'
'It's justice too,' Neville frowned, 'but I will come.'
'You should send a note to your gran that you will be back late,' Fleur told him. Harry always forgot little things like that.
'Good idea,' Neville swallowed, 'she'd be furious if she had to search all over Hogsmeade for me.'
'We'll wait a few minutes then,' Harry decided, looking pointedly at her.
Time to begin, Fleur realised.
'I will see you all soon,' she said softly. 'We can meet up safely here over the holidays now and again if Neville can escape his gran's custody.'
'I can,' Neville promised, glancing up from the note he was hurriedly scrawling.
'You can come and visit me again,' Katie beamed, 'since Harry made me promise to stay here with Alicia and Angelina instead of going back to London.'
'You're safer here,' Harry said firmly.
'I know,' the brunette sighed, 'that's why I promised, that and you would have left me for Malfoy if I hadn't.'
'Slughorn's party,' Harry explained. 'Malfoy gatecrashed the first one, and Slughorn invited him to the second. He probably wants to avoid making any enemies if he can avoid it.'
'Nobody is scared of Malfoy,' Katie laughed, 'not since you icicled him. He couldn't harm a pygmy puff.'
'Hermione's worried about him,' Neville cut in, 'but she also thinks that Krum was murdered by someone other than Bagman, who she thinks was imperiused to take the blame, and that Diggory was memory charmed to hide things.'
Typical Hermione, Fleur resisted the urge to roll her eyes, grasps the wrong end of the stick again.
The girl was too intelligent, and over thought everything even when the answer was right in front of her. She'd clearly deduced enough of the pieces to get close, and then had jumped to the strangest conclusion.
'Any idea who?' Harry asked curiously.
'No idea,' Neville shrugged, clearly unconcerned. 'Probably Malfoy if her recent obsession with following him is any indicator.'
'Malfoy couldn't successfully Imperius a baby,' Katie snorted.
'He's initiating his master then,' Neville grinned, 'failing to deal with babies must be a thing for dark wizards.'
'Malfoy,' Harry murmured thoughtfully, weighing the word on his tongue. 'That seems far-fetched to the point of reaching beyond reason, and Hermione is nothing if not logical.'
'I sent the note,' Neville announced, charming his swiftly scrawled apology into a lopsided bird, and sending it on its way.
'You could have just sent a patronus,' Harry remarked.
'They can carry messages?'
'Of course,' Harry grinned, 'did you not know that?'
'No,' he groused. 'At least I have something new to teach at the DA… If I can figure it out.'
'Hermione will be able to,' Harry assured him. 'It's not too complex.'
'We'd best depart,' his fingers briefly caught hers upon his arm, 'you'll have to get the portkey first.'
'I'll meet you there in a moment,' Fleur decided, smiling her farewell to Katie.
'Stay safe, Harry,' she heard the girl whisper as her beau apparated away clutching a surprised Neville.
Fleur barely even paused between her apparations. Silently appearing in the room that was their study to grab the mask she had enchanted, then stepping soundlessly onto the scree slopes of one of Britain's largest hills. They weren't majestic enough to be mountains, though they did hold a certain picturesque appeal to them.
Harry and Neville were standing alongside her. Her beau was shielding himself from her windswept hair with one hand, and staring out over the lake.
'It's nice here,' Neville said.
'It's a shame,' Harry agreed quietly, eyeing the descending sun. They'd tarried too long in Hogsmeade.
'If Travers is wearing his mask, which he should be, given that tonight is the full moon, and there are usually raids on the full moon, then he, and anything he or his magic is touching will be brought here,' Harry explained swiftly.
Fleur raised the mask, carefully adjusting the lines she had carved onto the back, and shifting them into the pattern that would activate the portkey.
'The Death Eater is called Travers, and he's Inner Circle, but we don't know much more about him than that.' Harry gave Neville a serious look. 'He will be armed, he is likely a powerful, dangerous wizard, and we need to defeat him and trap him so I can find out what we need from inside his head.'
'Whatever you do,' Fleur added, as Harry created a particularly powerful set of anti-apparition wards, 'don't panic. Stay calm, and shield or dodge if you're not certain of what you're doing, don't toss around anything that might hit or Harry or I in the back.'
'I won't,' Neville gulped, hands clenched and trembling, but eyes hard, and determined.
'Good,' Harry nodded, and Fleur twisted the last line into place.
There was a loud crack, and something heavy hit the scree in front of them, spilling and scraping down the slope around them.
It was far too loud to be one person.
Neville gasped, flinching away from what lay at his feet, only to trip over another that had slipped to lie behind him.
Blonde-haired, milk-skinned, and blue-eyed, with pale, rose lips, and blank empty eyes. Almost twenty, none older than Gabrielle, and all as cold and still as stone.
'Potter,' the black robed, silver-masked figure above them on the slope spat, stooping to kneel over the nearest body. 'I will not make the same mistake as my fellows.'
He rose, raising his wand.
'This is not the spell I intended for you, my beauties,' he whispered hoarsely, 'but I have no choice.' The eye-holes in the mask fixed themselves upon her, and the her stomach turned at the disgusting desire she could sense from behind the mask. 'You are a little older than I normally would like,' he muttered covetously, 'but you will make a fabulous replacement for them all the same.'
The wand twirled in elaborate gestures even as Harry hauled Neville to his feet.
'When your skin is cold as porcelain, your eyes bright with beautiful death, I will make you mine, and you will serve at my side until your perfection is tainted by time.'
The wand jerked up, and the bodies of the beautiful girls rose with it, as if dragged on the invisible strings of some unseen puppet master.
Harry's first spell was fuelled by fury. Fleur didn't need to hear the incantation to know that the Death Eater's words had incensed him beyond reason. Cracking, creaking spears of ice thrust from the floor in direct line from his wand tip to Travers, reflecting the eerie green light that sparked furiously from his wand.
Several of the girls were impaled, but Travers was not, and the child inferi soon tore themselves free, ripping off the parts of themselves that were stuck, or dragging themselves off the sparkling icicles to hurl themselves furiously forwards.
Now they were closer she could see the true horror of their appearance. The youthful innocence of the young girls was twisted in horrifying aggression, tattered clothes flapping, nails painted pink and sparkling extended in clawlike hunger.
The very thought of what Travers had intended to do to these girls made her feel sick.
'Incendio,' she heard Neville yell, and one, the closest and youngest looking girl, vanished in a gout of flame, that seared the flesh from her arms and face, melting her eyes until they burst with a sickening popping.
The inferius continued regardless, little more than a skeleton, trailing smoking tendons, and flaming hair as it hurled itself in reckless rage towards them.
Fleur cast the first spell she could think of; it was the new one she had been making, the temporary, white flash of energy as her redesigned version of the Unyielding Shield Charm distorted the the space between her and the melted face of the girl for a few seconds.
It was long enough for Fleur to conjure fire, and destroy her more completely.
Harry flicked his wand, and a tendril of thin, purple fire sliced across the mountain side, neatly dissecting and consuming those inferi that were behind her and Neville.
A bright hail of curses hissed towards them, bursting harmlessly on the skin of the inferi, and fading into the sky behind them as Fleur twisted away.
Neville was retching, shaking on his knees by the remains of the girl.
'Get up,' she hissed at him. 'Or end up like them.'
'I don't think he likes little boys as much,' Harry said coldly, and the dismissal in his tone sparked Neville into action again.
'Reducto,' he yelled, and the nearest inferius burst apart in scatter of gore, chunks of flesh, and splinters of bone.
'Fire,' Harry hissed at Neville, deflecting Travers' spells back at the Death Eater, 'use fire.'
The inferius Neville had blasted emitted a slight yellow aura, and gradually pieced itself back together, snarling more furiously than before, and baring, small, white teeth. The regeneration was not flawless, bits of her were missing, the side of her face, her tongue, and thick, raw, red lines stretched where the undead girl had been torn part.
'Incendio,' Neville shouted angrily, unleashing a stream of cherry red flames that encompassed the nearest inferi.
Fleur took the middle ground, guarding Harry's and Neville's backs as they fought either side, casting and recasting her temporary spacial distortion to catch the magically imbued corpses for a few seconds, and then burn them with bright, white flames hurled from her left hand.
The unattached torso of a girl who could not have been more than eleven dragged itself over the scree, too fast for Fleur to catch, and sank its small, sharp baby teeth into Neville's calf. He yelped in pain, and set her, and the bottom of his robes, alight.
Fleur severed the burning cloth from the rest with a swift charm, and returned to watching Harry's back as best she could, trapping the inferi who got close within a maze of small distortions, then burning them, one at a time.
'Enough,' Harry said firmly, and a cloud of black butterflies burst from his wand tip, streaming around them in a circle.
He flicked his wand, and from the cloud sped a scatter of the ebony insects, hurtling at speeds far beyond that which they should be capable of to explode in wisps of smoke against the inferi around them.
Each time the butterflies touched, the inferi crumbled to dust, and remained destroyed.
'No,' Travers moaned, 'you destroyed all of them.' Fleur could hear his anguish echoing from beneath the mask. 'A few I could have sacrificed, for you, Potter, and for her, but all of them!'
'You disgust me,' Harry responded icily.
'Imperio!' Travers cried, directing his wand at the insects around Harry.
One small, black butterfly broke from the cloud, floating slowly, but surely towards Harry.
It burst against his chest with a small puff of ebony mist, and her beau chuckled. Fleur sighed. There was a time for finding amusement, and this was not it.
'Fine,' Travers hissed hollowly. 'Taste the beauty of everlasting death; the perfection in which I will keep you and her until I am tired of you, or until your flesh has worn out too much to be of service to me.'
At the thrust of Travers' short wand the scree swarmed around them, animated, gathering together into serpentine twists of stone with the slithering and clacking of slate.
'Contusio,' Harry countered, shattering the crude stone serpents between him and the Death Eater with an ear-splitting concussion, and flash of bright light. Sharp shards of slate sprayed across the mountain, deflecting off Fleur's hurriedly conjured protection and into the night.
Travers ran the edge of his thumb along the line a piece had left in his mask, around him, the serpents reformed from the gravel, lunging past Harry at Neville and her.
'Reducto,' Neville cried once more, blasting the serpent apart into dust, but it quickly reformed a swirling, furious cloud through which bright, crackling beams of magic passed as Harry and Travers exchanged spells.
The second stone serpent unravelled as Fleur stripped some of the enchantments from it; they had been made in haste, and were not safeguarded from having the magic imbued into them altered. It collapsed, writhing, to the ground, until she banished it off the slope and into the lake below.
'Help,' Neville pleaded, watching the dust constrict around his shield charm, gradually crushing it inwards.
'You were not ready,' Fleur told him harshly, dousing the dust serpent in water, and waiting, flames shivering around her fingers, for it to reform out of mud.
Stray spells batted aside by Harry and Travers bored smoking holes into the dirt, and left dark, angry scorch marks on the stones.
'Stay back,' she warned Neville, as the mud at his feet began to twist and slither over itself. Swiftly she began to alter the enchantments upon it, absently admiring the skill it must have taken to create something like this so quickly. They were a formidable aid in a duel, and had Travers been able to stop her from changing the magic upon them, might have kept her and Neville busy long enough for him to fight Harry alone.
Not that he is ever going to win.
The Death was already starting to look the worse for wear. There were smoking holes in his robes, dark spots spattered across the scree beneath his feet, and the breath behind the mask was ragged, and fast.
'Avada kedavra,' Travers spat, the viridescent coloured curse splashing harmlessly against the slope behind Harry. He followed it with a barrage of bright, multicoloured curses, some of which left deep holes in the scree, and others that left, hissing, bubbling craters.
Harry's wand was crackling with white sparks, glowing so bright it was hard to look at, and the strong tang of burning ozone spread swiftly from him.
'Fulminis,' he replied calmly, flourishing his wand, and flicking, from the tip, a crackling bolt of white lightning that flashed from Harry's slender, ebony wand to Travers before the Death Eater could react.
It left a smoking hole the size of Fleur's hand in Travers stomach, and open, weeping burns across skin now bared by burnt, melted robes.
'Expelliarmus,' Harry murmured, snatching Travers wand from the air, and twirling it between his fingers briefly.
It snapped a second later, and the splintered pieces fell into the shattered scree.
'Kill me then, Potter,' Travers whispered. 'Make me as beautiful as my girls were, let pale, cold hands caress away my fears, feelings and future.'
Harry flicked his wand down abruptly, smashing the Death Eater's face into ground, and separating him from the spell-scarred, silver mask.
'Not yet,' he said coldly, pointing his wand between Travers' eyes. 'Legilimens.'
Several long minutes passed, then Harry blinked, and smiled ecstatically.
'Bellatrix Lestrange,' he announced brightly, as Travers slumped to the ground muttering brokenly beneath his breath. 'He entrusted one of them to her, and she placed it in the safest location she knew… Her vault at Gringotts.'
'We found one,' Neville grinned, dirty, and pale, but victorious.
'It will not be easy to get hold of,' Fleur warned, but her warning was more for Neville.
Harry had a Deathly Hallow that would conceal him from any and all enchantments the goblins might place to detect intruders. They needed only to find the vault, and persuade a goblin to open it.
'Kill me,' the Death Eater pleaded hoarsely, 'make me as perfect as they were, with white, cold skin, bright, brittle hair, and such wonderful, blank eyes. I want to be as I made them, my porcelain people.'
'You can rot here,' Fleur spat, disgusted by what the Death Eater had done to girls like Gabrielle in his depravity. Travers flinched, lips curling in horror, then Harry's piercing hex put a hole where his heart had been.
'You were not quite ready,' Harry said not unkindly to Neville.
'Sorry,' his friend looked distraught.
'If you want your revenge,' Harry's lips twitched, 'your justice, you will have to be better. A handful of hexes from a school book are not enough to keep you alive, let alone help you kill someone like Travers.'
'And there will be two of them,' Fleur added sharply. Neville needed to learn how to duel in earnest, before he got himself killed, or, worse, got Harry killed when he was meant to be watching his back.
'I'll be better next time,' Neville promised.
'Next time?' Harry raised an eyebrow. 'We have learnt what we need for now, Gringotts must be next, and it will be easier if I go alone.' He met Fleur's furious stare with calmly.
'There is room for two under that cloak,' she commented acidly. 'Don't even try saying it,' she added warningly, when he opened his mouth. 'Someone has to go to watch your back, and that someone will be me. I know Gringotts best.'
'I can't argue with your logic,' Harry conceded. 'I'm going to apparate Neville back, I'll see you at home in a few moments.'
'Are we going to just leave him?" Fleur asked, pointing at Travers.
'I thought you wanted him to rot,' some of the ice crept back into his tone when he glanced at the Death Eater.
'I will burn him before returning home,' Fleur decided.
Harry disappeared, taking Neville's arm with a nod, and vanishing with a soft snap.
White hot flames swirled from Fleur's palm, engulfing the body of Travers, and the dust that was all that was left of his victims. A thick column of inky, greasy smoke rose from the fire, and the smell began to turn her stomach, so she stepped away, returning silently to a field of winter flowers, and the home she shared with Harry.
AN: Please read and review! Thanks to everyone that does!
