Thank you to the reviewers who are giving me the benefit of the doubt! Thank you also to Sectumus Prince and BlackPhoenix (read their work).
To the fanon die-hards: Quote to me from canon the hard rules of the dark mark (because hard magic laws is definitely why people enjoy the HP verse). And I do mean page numbers, not your own opinion based on inferences that are rendered further irrelevant by this story being, wait for it, fanfiction.
Language as a Larger Cultural Issue: In my experience, many Americans tend to judge others by if they sound like them or not, which is fucking stupid when you consider how many cultures are represented in the States. Spelling isn't a marker of superiority or intelligence. I was illiterate until I was thirteen, I had panic attacks looking at a mere page of text (Still do for French and Hindi actually).
If you feel inconvenienced by someone's spelling or speech, take a deep breath, and ask yourself, how important is your comfort over not being a fucking dickwad to someone else?
In the real world, be mindful of "helping" just being a way for you to make yourself feel better.
To all my peeps who deal with this BS on the daily, peace and love :D
Chapter 12 - Albatross
Madame Pomfrey had gotten him a plaque.
He was sitting up and staring at the shiny brass behind him that reflected his scarred face over his name. He appreciated the looping script.
Harry felt… disconnected. From everything, from everyone, and from time itself.
The only thing that had been keeping him going was the knowledge that the people he had lost, the relationships forgotten, and all that he had ever sacrificed had been undone.
But now?
Now?
Harry turned to Snape, who was sitting next to him, reading essays and painting the poor things in red ink. In a way, it was useful, seeing as he was telling students what they did wrong, or where they had room for improvement.
"Isn't being nice to me going to blow your cover?" Harry asked numbly.
Snape didn't look up as he said, "I'm spying on you."
"Comforting," Harry muttered.
Snape glanced up at him. "What are you going to do?"
Harry sighed, "We have to kill him and you're too valuable to the cause to be that weapon."
Snape raised a brow. "Are you suggesting you sacrifice yourself?"
Harry snorted. "I'm not powerful enough to kill him, and me sacrificing myself won't stop him from hurting others. So there's no point in it."
Snape was quiet for a long moment before he said, "You are powerful enough."
It was Harry's turn to raise a brow. "Compliments? Honestly, Snape, a little torture is a regular Tuesday for me. No need to put the kid gloves on now."
Snape sighed, "It is more of a warning, Potter."
"Sure," Harry said, reaching to the side to pick up a textbook beside his barely-touched breakfast Hermione had left him.
"Have you ever heard of an Obscurial?" Snape asked. His voice held that type of caution someone used when they were about to break bad news.
Harry looked at him warily. "Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but whatever it is, it doesn't sound good."
Snape didn't smile, unsurprisingly.
"They are creatures born of a wizard or witch who have been abused, either psychologically or physically; typically, both."
"So why aren't you one?"
Snape levelled him with a look. "Because, I was not forced to suppress my magic. Bad things happen to wizards and witches who don't use their magic. My mother, and Minerva's mother too, both married muggles and chose to no longer practice magic in their adult lives. As a result, their immune systems were weakened. I'm sure you've noted just how old Dumbledore is, yet he's as strong as a man in his sixties. Magic prolongs our lives."
"But not using magic actively harms us?" Harry asked. "Doesn't that feel like something you should warn people about?"
"Telling witches and wizards to use their magic, is a bit like telling them they need to eat to survive. It isn't necessary, and quite frankly, it's rare enough that the phenomenon hasn't been extensively studied. It takes a great amount of will to never use magic."
"But they didn't turn into Obscurials, did they? You make it sound even rarer than that."
Snape nodded. "It is something that manifests in young people only. If a child is forced to contain their magic, it turns dark. Like accidental magic, but far more aggressive."
"What happens to these kids?"
"Most die before their tenth birthday," Snape said impassively.
"Well, I'm not ten," Harry snapped, his pulse increasing.
"No, you're a fourteen year old with the magical competence of a fully grown wizard. Dumbledore is worried about you Potter. We all are. You were always prone to accidental magic, and now things have become ever more extreme."
"I thought we had decided that it was Voldemort's Horcrux capping my power that caused the change?"
"Perhaps it is," Snape agreed. "But think, Harry. You've lived your entire life with your magic attempting to protect you from a malevolent force that has attempted to suck out your life force and possess you. All those years, and your magic was lifting an impossible weight. It was shielding you against another soul, a demon in essence. Now that thing is gone and all that energy and magic is free and pointed inward."
Harry looked down at his book.
"What do I do?" he asked, barely above a whisper.
"Dumbledore says it is, ultimately, caused by a sense of alienation, and that you can fix it by finding a place of belonging."
Harry laughed. It sounded bitter even to his own ears.
"Oh, that's great, just perfect. I'm a time-traveller who escaped the end of a war only to enter a new one, losing most of my family in the process. Do you think I'm ever going to make peace with that."
Snape didn't so much as blink. "I think that you have the opportunity to make this life your own. I also think you need to confide in more people than just me."
"Why?"
"Because you are hiding from everyone. I am close to being your worst enemy. What I think of you doesn't affect you because you fundamentally don't care."
"I've always cared," Harry said. "On some level or another."
"It isn't the same."
"I just got Ron and Ginny, and their parents, and—I'm—"
"You are not to blame."
"Ginny and I were dating when I was killed the last time."
"I am sorry for your loss," Snape said solemnly.
"Do you have any idea about the things we faced together? I know Ron could be an idiot at times, but we've been through more than you could ever imagine."
Snape remained quiet.
Harry let out a harsh breath, trying to clear his head. "Am I going to die from my own magic because I don't feel… well?"
Snape shook his head. "No, you'll hurt people long before that happens. You also might be old enough to survive playing host to an Obscurial indefinitely."
Harry stared at him.
"Right," he said calmly. "So if that happens, how about we gift wrap me for the Dark Lord, yeah?"
Snape said nothing for a time before stating, "You need to practice practical magic as often as you can, learn magic that challenges you. You are not normal, Potter."
"No, really?" Harry deadpanned. " Way to crush my dreams, Sir. I suppose we ought to alert the press. I always thought I was the pinnacle of normality, I can't imagine what delusions the folks down at the Prophet have been under."
Snape continued to be unamused. "You are as powerful as Dumbledore or the Dark Lord. You have barely begun to scratch your potential. Your magic is actively taking on a life of its own. If you do not learn to master it, it will break you."
Harry had a suspicion that was happening.
"Then why wasn't I able to hurt the Dark Lord?" Harry only called him that around Snape, who got twitchy when he used the name Voldemort aloud.
"According to the meeting I attended, you stunned Lucius Malfoy and Nott on your own while defending the entire pub."
"People still died," Harry said hollowly, picturing Ginny holding a hand to her heart as it bled out through her fingers and Ron disintegrating under his touch.
Everything I touch dies, was a phrase Ron had bemoaned in Herbology, but Harry would have gladly taken a P in magical gardening than that phrase being so suitable for everyone Harry loved dying around him; his parents, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, Ron, Ginny—
The list was long.
Too damned bloody long.
"Potter, this is war. If we don't fight this, then others will. I would wager that would result in even more death."
"Damned if you do, damned if you don't."
"Precisely," Snape said. "Also, Moody was possessed."
Harry raised a brow. "What?"
"The Dark Lord killed Moody and stuffed Barty Crouch Jr.'s soul into it. Apparently, his body was slowly rotting."
"Cool," Harry groused, "in addition to getting more vicious, he got creepier."
"Crouch Jr. is likely the one who tampered with the Horntail's chains. But the true good news is that all the Death Eaters in Azkaban have been relieved of their souls."
"No Lestranges," Harry agreed. "Happy day."
"You're not alone," Snape offered.
"Thanks," Harry said, staring down at his book, thinking over everything he had said.
He felt so empty, so tired, and inside himself, he held a pain that ran so deep he was certain it would never leave him. Even the people who came back to life in his perspective… Their deaths still hung on him like an albatross around his neck.
At least he had something to work toward. Some goals, some focus.
Months Later
Fleur's heart broke for Harry, Fred, and George, their brother Charlie as well. If it hadn't been clear to anyone before that Harry was a part of the Weasley family, it was made clear now by his visible grief.
Harry stopped talking to anyone unless he was asked a direct question. The twins weren't much better.
But Harry became obsessive in his studies. Most people stayed away from him because, while the feats of magic he was displaying were largely impressive, it could also be terrifying. He was able to perform spells to the same degree as the professors when he pushed himself.
And still, it seemed, he hadn't reached his limits.
As for Fleur, it appeared to be a big deal that she and Viktor had been sorted into Slytherin. Harry had dryly remarked at the Sorting Hat's choice that he wasn't surprised, because they were both ambitious and competitive.
The months flew by, the year almost over, and only one month remained before Final Task. Both her and Viktor's English improved greatly. With lots of help and support from Hermione Granger.
Hermione seemed to deal with grief the way Harry did, pouring herself into her work. However, unlike Harry, she helped everyone and anyone around her who needed even the slightest bit of assistance.
Harry hardly spoke to anyone.
They hardly slept at all while Fred and George almost slept too much.
Fleur was sitting beside Harry at lunch, trying to encourage him to eat more food, when a horned owl landed on the table in front of them, knocking over Harry's pumpkin juice.
Hermione cast a series of detection charms before she allowed Harry to reach for it.
"Thanks, Hermione," Harry said before untying the message.
"Who's it from?" Viktor asked.
Harry sighed, "Voldemort."
He passed it to Hermione, who gasped upon reading the words.
Fleur snatched it out of her hands and read the letter:
My Dear Harry Potter,
If you wish for your friends to live, to be spared from torture until insanity, then surrender yourself to me. I will shield you from suffering, and you will live an eternity at my side in safety.
Merely place your wand upon my mark and I will come for you.
I swear that if you do so of your own accord, I will spare Hermione Granger and your Godfather, Sirius Black.
They will live or die on your choices, Harry.
Yours Sincerely,
L.V.
Fleur felt as if she were going to be sick.
"I need to talk to all of you," Harry said to them, indicating herself, Hermione, Viktor, and the twins. He stood and they made to follow him, but he shook his head and went up to the staff table.
He addressed Professor McGonagall, and Fleur thought she saw Professor Snape have an almost upturn of lips. The Deputy Headmistress looked a bit confused, but rose all the same. As they walked toward the doors, Harry motioned to them to follow.
Fleur was surprised when Harry took them to the Room of Requirement. She was even more surprised when the room didn't appear as a training hall with practice dummies and shelves of defence books, but as a cozy sitting room.
There was even tea.
"What is this about, Harry?" McGonagall asked.
Harry didn't answer immediately, going instead to the tea pot to have a cup ready for them all.
The Professor took her seat first, the rest of them followed.
Harry floated their teacups to them with a spin of his wand. He knew how they all liked their tea. Sometimes, Harry's attention to detail about people amazed Fleur.
Finally, once Harry himself was seated, he said, "I've been meaning to tell you all something. Something that I've owed you all for a while. I didn't want to burden you."
McGonagall levelled him with a hard look, "And what would that be, Mr. Potter?"
"I'm a time-traveller. I'm eighteen years old and when I died fighting in a war against Voldemort, we died together and returned to the past. He got his body back." Harry rolled up his sleeve to the Dark Mark. "And we are somehow tied together. If I die, he likely will too."
Fleur cursed.
Professor McGonagall pointed a shaking finger at Harry. "Don't you dare, Harry James Potter. Don't you dare even think of sacrificing yourself to him."
Harry shrugged, "I've already tried it, that's how I got here."
"What!?" Hermione exclaimed. "Harry, please tell me you didn't?"
Harry gave her a look. "A piece of his soul was stuck to my scar. It's broken from me, and he can't separate his soul again without dying. So, he's more powerful than he has ever been, with knowledge of the future, and, you know, a functional younger human body, but he is mostly mortal."
"Mostly?" Fleur asked in consternation.
Harry shrugged again. "I don't know everything the Dark Arts can do. I don't know what other avenues he could take."
"You really are older," Hermione said.
Harry spared her a smile. "I didn't get higher grades than you because I was at all smarter. It was only because I had already gone through the material four years ago. I've already taken my OWLs."
"And your NEWTs?" McGonagall asked.
Fred and George groaned in unison. "Tests?"
Fred said, "I don't think this is the time to talk about his NEWTs scores."
"Not when he just told us he sacrificed himself to Voldemort," George added.
"I never took my NEWTs," Harry said amiably. "I was Undesirable Number One and living out in the woods during my seventh yet."
"That sounds misérable," Fleur said.
"It wasn't boring. Hermione, Ron, and I robbed Gringotts and rode out on the Goblins' dragon," Harry said casually.
Hermione squeaked, "We did what?"
George and Fred were grinning wickedly.
Professor McGonagall looked slightly aghast.
Viktor was looking at Hermione as if she had possibly just raised his already impossibly high opinion of her.
Fleur, feeling that this was all getting off track, passed Professor McGonagall the threat Voldemort had sent to Harry.
McGonagall read the threat and said in a voice so supremely calm it chilled Fleur to the bone, "Harry, have you confided with no one about any of this?"
"I told Snape. When I ran from the Dursleys, I hiked to Hogwarts. I went to Snape first."
"Severus Snape?" Fred and George asked together.
"Why?" Hermione asked.
"Snape was a Death Eater," Harry stated. "He's a triple agent. The information would do him the most good."
"A triple agent?" Fleur asked.
Harry nodded, as if it was a normal thing to say. "Both the Order of the Phoenix and the other Death Eaters know he's a spy. A double agent is just a regular spy."
"But on whose side?" Viktor asked.
"You trust him?" Hermione asked. "Professor Snape?"
Harry sighed, "Dumbledore set Snape and myself up to die for the greater cause."
"Dumbledore?" McGonagall asked. "He would never allow—"
"It's why he broke my shield," Harry said. "With the dragon. He knew the risks. But I imagine he saw it as a way to break my magic with a healer present."
"What?" Fleur demanded.
"If he could break me," Harry said, "then he wouldn't need to feed me to Voldemort."
"That doesn't make sense," Hermione said.
Fleur snarled, "It doesn't make it okay."
"I was basically possessed, Hermione, Fleur," Harry said. "Like the diary in our second year, like what happened to Ginny. If I went on living, so would Voldemort. If I ever lost control over myself, he could have overtaken me. I would have been worse than dead. I would be another him. I understand why Dumbledore did it."
"Are you saying he purposely tried to kill you?" McGonagall asked.
Fleur didn't have the words. Fire licked at her hands, and it was all she could do to keep the flames from boiling her untouched tea.
"The first time?" Harry asked. "Yes, but we were losing. He was losing, and dead."
"How can you be losing if you're already dead?" Fred asked.
"The last battle was fought on Hogwarts' grounds. I don't know how many kids died because we hadn't fully accounted for everyone yet. The Ministry crumbled. And, well, honestly, my dying was more of a question of when, not if."
"But Dumbledore was still trying to kill you in the First Task?" Fleur reiterated.
Harry shrugged. "I'll say it again: I had a higher chance of surviving than Voldemort."
"There had to have been another way," Hermione insisted.
Harry's expression twisted. "Yeah, my parents not being betrayed by a friend, and myself and my mother's lives being used for Dark rituals would have been an excellent start."
McGonagall placed her teacup down on a table that appeared at her side. She touched her forehead, bowing her head. "We lost the war."
"Not this time," Harry said. "And at least the Death Eaters, Bellatrix Lestrange especially, are dead now, or soulless and useless to him."
"Yeah," George said sarcastically, "but there is a kiss on sight order from the Ministry for anyone with the Dark Mark." Gesturing to Harry's still exposed arm, where the skull and snake were etched into his pale skin.
Fleur set her own teacup down, the tea bubbling as she stood to pace, letting the fire form as whips in her hands.
She heard Harry say something, but she couldn't make out the words.
She had never been so angry.
So afraid.
Back and forth, she paced the room that accommodated her by widening. The fire in her hands crackled and hissed, turning blue and then white as she fed more and more of her power into them.
She wasn't British, she hadn't grown up fearing to speak the name of a monster. Grindelwald's history was better known to her.
But Hogwarts… Hogwarts had become a home to her. She had no friends back in France, save within her own family. Imagining her friends dying on the grounds, fighting when hope was all but lost and their world falling apart around them.
What happened to the Weasleys happening to countless others…
Harry putting himself in danger.
She didn't know how much time had passed, but had Harry not used a wind to catch her flame and redirected it around them, then she would have burned him.
She gasped, pulling back from him, but he caught her hands and her breath caught.
Breathing was how she controlled her power. Sucking in a breath and holding it, she only just stopped Harry from scorching his hands with hers.
"Breathe, Fleur," he told her.
She let her breath out, twisting away from his grasp. "Are you insane?"
"At this point?" he asked, quirking a brow, the white lightning scars framing the emerald of his eyes. "Probably."
Fleur looked around. They were alone.
"They left," he said in explanation, "I'm sure they can think up their questions before interrogating me. It will be interesting to see if they are more or less thorough than Snape."
She shook her head, attempting to clear her thoughts. For months, she had watched him suffer, keeping to himself, pushing himself well beyond a normal person's limits, and barely speaking to anyone.
Never asking for help.
Yet, in that time, he hadn't been isolated from them. Harry had become a constant in her life. Someone she knew saw her as beautiful, but not as a thing to be won or obtained.
He saw her as she wished to be seen: as a woman.
In turn, she had been conflicted about him, a boy so young, but with more depth than a man twice his age. She hadn't been nearly as comfortable with the idea of dating someone younger than herself as Viktor was with Hermione. So, of all the things she wished to discuss with Harry now that he was truly speaking to her again, she asked:
"You're eighteen?"
"Yes?" he answered, clearly amused.
That was not the look he had given her on the docks.
She stepped into his reach, cupped his face, and kissed him.
Like before, he kissed her back.
He was young, but with her eyes closed, the hands that reached up to her waist weren't hesitant, weren't inexperienced, weren't—
He deepened the kiss.
Without an audience, without her father and sister watching, she let herself moan. Leaning more of her weight into him, she pressed her front to his.
He took a step back, and there was suddenly a bed beneath them.
She pulled back with a gasp as she found herself straddling him. Gazing down at him, she said, "That's the look."
He smiled, a real smile that was completely unconcerned by the scars that webbed his skin. He reached up to stroke her cheek with a gentle touch.
"You are so beautiful," he said with candor.
She almost cried.
Bending her arms to lower her forehead to his, her hair falling like a silver veil around them, she said, "You are the first man to say that who I actually believe."
Because Fleur knew she was beautiful and desirable. She knew that her family said she was beautiful, even for a Veela, her humanity only adding to her flame, as her mother might say.
But she had never hoped to find someone as rare as her father was to her mother, to be so unmoved by the Veela allure and still be attracted to her.
Of course, there were men who were gay, or men who were hateful, or men who had already found the person who completed them, but to still be able to love her, beyond any magic she possessed, that was entirely rare.
A near singularity.
Fleur had always imagined that she would have to settle. That she would choose a man who adored her, worshipped her, yet was still a good man at heart. Or perhaps find a male from her grandmother's people, males that were vain and egotistical. Finding a lover among them wouldn't have been hard.
Finding a committed partner was rarer still, and unnatural for their species, for both male and female.
So she had been resigned to settling, until she met Harry, until she saw in him a future she had never dared hope to dream of.
"Fleur," Harry breathed, "you are the most beautiful woman I've ever met. Beauty of the mind, of the heart, of the flame."
She hugged him and he rolled them to their sides so that her hair spilled on the duvet.
She felt compelled to say, "I'm not having sex with you tonight."
Harry turned his head away from her.
Her heart fell. Fearing she had ruined everything, she touched his cheek to turn him back to her.
But his green eyes were filled with mirth.
"Are you laughing at me?" she demanded.
He grinned, "I wouldn't dare." Yet his chest trembling as he swallowed a laugh.
"It's not funny," she said, irate.
"It's not," he agreed, cupping her cheek. "But really, Fleur, that's your romantic comeback?"
Fleur glared at him. "I didn't want this to get out of hand."
She had, after all, just been straddling him not moments ago. She wanted to continue kissing him, exploring him, and she wanted him to touch her.
Only, she wasn't quite ready for the clothes to come off, no matter what she felt for him.
"Fleur," he said more seriously, "I know what consent is."
"I didn't want us getting carried away," she said, hating the defensiveness in her voice.
He grinned, "Ah, you used the word 'us', that's good at least. But I swear, Fleur, you are safe with me. I would never take advantage of you like that without knowing your feelings about it beforehand. Besides, I haven't asked you out on a date yet."
She relaxed, then decided, to hell with it, and threw a leg around his, throwing her trust to him in the same motion.
He smiled again, settling onto the bed more comfortably, as if this was how they had always been meant to be. "Also, just so we're clear, I wouldn't be ready for that with you either yet. I think I would at least like you to consider me your boyfriend before crossing that particular bridge."
She knew he was being kind, and she appreciated both his honesty and his effort, but she couldn't help teasing him a bit, "Of course, your first time should be special."
He smirked, "It was, thank you."
She raised a brow at him, her curiosity instantly piqued.
He read her expression and shared, "Hermione."
Both her brows went up.
He rolled his eyes. "The future one, from my past."
"It must be weird seeing her like this," Fleur noted.
His face sobered.
"Yes and no. It was worse with Ginny. We had been dating, and I could hardly look at her without remembering what we had been. Hermione and I never dated, it wasn't about romance, really."
"Then what was it about?" Fleur asked, because men liked to claim they weren't as emotional, but all that really meant was that they shoved their emotions to the side and often avoided the things or thoughts that brought up the discomfort.
Harry stroked her cheek. "We were running and fighting for our lives, Fleur. You can't imagine how dark the world became, how alone we were. We didn't know who was going to die next, or if we would survive the war ourselves. But she is a true friend. We turned to each other for comfort because we trusted each other absolutely, and absolutes are very hard to come by."
He was quiet for a beat before saying, "I'm glad, no, I'm grateful she didn't have to live through what I did, that she will never remember it, because I am not going to allow the world to go to hell this time. But I do miss her, my 'Mione. She kept me on my feet long before I realized how much I needed her to keep me standing."
Fleur began to trace his scars. He closed his eyes, letting out a shuddering breath as he leaned ever so lightly into her touch.
"You are not alone, 'Arry."
He smiled a bit without opening his eyes.
She traced a stray scar that fell over his upper lip, and whispered, "Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."
Harry opened his eyes, the light returned to them. "Did you just quote the Lord of the Rings at me?"
"Peut-être," she said with a smile.
The delight in his eyes was entirely worth the struggle it had taken her to read through that damned trilogy at Viktor's ardent request when they were only just becoming fluent in their English.
Harry whispered against her lips, "Perhaps, romance isn't completely lost on you, after all, Delacour," before claiming a kiss.
She might have defended herself; however, she was far more interested in the taste of him and the sensation of falling without fearing plummet.
AN: Thoughts, sea otters, or feedback on plot and characters, pretty please?