So I know it has been ages since I've updated and honestly I would have updated sooner but between writer's block, school, and trying to find a job, time just flew right by and then I moved. I think I needed the change of scenery to get the creative juices flowing again. I also decided to dig up my old laptop and write on here because it's really where all these stories started and it seems to be the only place I can write. I now reside in Las Vegas with my grandmother (I need to take care of her) but I find myself friendless since I don't know anyone up here, so if you happen to live here, I would love the opportunity to get to know some people or something. Anyways, here it is, the chapter you all have been waiting for, at least I believe so, I got a ton of positive reviews on my last chapter which I once again thank you all for.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned by J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers, I'm just messing with their world for a bit…

***This would have come out last week on Friday btw but I donn't have an internet connection and without a car in the middle of the desert, well let's just say that I was and still am cut off from the rest of the world here...Anyways, I present to you, my faithful and hopefully still loyal readers (and new readers) chapter 6 of Tides of War (which will be getting a name change...just not sure what to call it yet)

*WARNING*

There are implications of child abuse, death and rape in this chapter. I do not in any way endorse, condone, and/or encourage such acts and use them solely for the advancement of character development and growth

Harry was sure he was going to feel the lurch in his chest once again but instead found that nothing happened. A wave of relief swept over him as he came to the conclusion that he had somehow broken free of whatever bond was forming between the woman and himself but, as he continued to study the face of the woman in front of him his relief left, this was not Fleur. No doubt in his mind that she was somehow related to her because they were strikingly similar but there were subtle differences between Fleur and this woman.

"So…Harry Potter, quite the stir you caused back there," the woman said with a sly grin, "you almost convinced me but, that is what you do, no? You are a confidence man; you make people believe what you want them to believe, all the while holding the cards close to your chest…."

Harry suddenly became alert, this woman obviously knew a lot more about him that he knew of her, which coupled with the fact that she had been able to follow and observe him while keeping him in the dark meant that he was at a disadvantage, and he was never at a disadvantage, "Who are you and what the hell do you want?"

"Tsk, tsk," the woman gave a mock frown, "such poor manners, and here I thought you knew how to control yourself, especially in the presence of those better than you."

"You are not my be–" Harry began.

"Please Harry, do not push the line," the woman's face suddenly dropped all emotions of playfulness and became deadly serious. Harry fought against becoming frightened by the woman, she obviously wielded power even he could not hope to match…yet, "I did not come here to be disrespected by some boy who obviously needs to get over his petty little grudges."

Harry's hand shot to his wand but found it to be missing. As he began to panic he felt a wand being pressed to his diaphragm from behind him.

"Now, now Harry, let us not be rash. You know as well as I do, that leaping before looking can quite…detrimental to one's health, no?" the woman casually said as she poured herself another shot of firewhiskey, "Understand that the sole reason I do not have you killed for your blatant disrespect is because my daughter's love is now tied to you. She will only love you and no other man from now until the day she dies. Veela are special in that way but, you must also understand that if you pose a threat to my daughters or my coven, then I will have you put down like the dog you are, regardless of my daughter's ability to ever love romantically again," Harry felt a cold shiver run down his spine as looked into her lifeless eyes before the shifted once again to a happy demeanor, "Ah, where are my manners?! My name is Apolline and I will be your future mother-in-law…"

Harry barely moved as anger rolled off of him.

Apolline smirked, "For one who is so emotionless, you sure wear your emotions on your sleeve Harry. Understand that I bare no ill will towards you. I am simply looking out for me and my own just as you are. Hermione was a wonderful girl with many dreams and aspirations but you must understand that death has no age, it is as blind as love itself."

"How?" was all the Harry was able to get out.

"Hermione was in everything but blood my niece, her mother was my step-sister," Apolline said as she eyed the firewhiskey for a moment before putting it on the edge of the table. Aberforth came by and picked up the bottle before dropping off a bottle of wine. She eyed it, "Elvish, 1085, good year I suppose…"

"For one who lost a niece, you seem to be doing perfectly fine."

SMACK.

Harry tasted copper in his mouth and brought his hand up to stop the blood that now flowed freely from his busted lip.

Apolline held up her hand to stop the second strike from landing and shooed the man away. Harry watched the man walk back to his seat before looking back at Apolline.

"You will watch your mouth boy," she said barely above a whisper, "I have allowed you too long of a leash, and you have taken advantage of it, no longer. I have grieved for Hermione but life moves on."

"Not for her…"

"Grow up Harry, there is always a thin line between life and death, you know that better than anyone. Hermione is dead and you can't go around blaming yourself or anyone else. A basilisk killed her; nothing you can or will do will change that. I understand more than anybody how you feel but, she is dead. It's time you accepted that and moved on from that. I'm not asking you to forget her; I'm asking you to let her go…"

"I…can't. I can't let her go, she was everything to me. She was the only one who knew me completely and utterly. She was and is the only girl in my heart. I am sorry that your daughter's love is tied to me, I really am but, I will not allow myself to become close to anyone. If I have no connections I have nothing to be used against me, nothing to lose, you must know that," Harry said as he finally was able to stop the bleeding and looked her in the eye, "your daughter I am sure is a wonderful person and maybe if we had met under different circumstances we would have worked out but─"

"But nothing Harry, there are no different circumstances, there are no second chances, there is here and now, and as soon as you learn to live in the here and now you will find that things will become much easier to come to terms with," Apolline said as she poured Harry a glass and then herself one. She lifted the glass to take a sip before she noticed that Harry had not touched his, "Please do drink, this is a very expensive bottle and I would hate for it to go to waste."

Harry took a hesitant sip, "Good, no? The elves always were good at making wines, terrible with ales and any other hard liquors but wine…they can make wines. My grandfather once told me that they were great warriors but after the line was established between the magicals and the 'regular' folk they gave up all forms of contact with the outside world. Elves are strange creatures to be completely honest and may I let you in on a little secret," she said with a soft smile, "their immortality is nothing but a myth that they fervently hold onto. I suppose it goes with the whole 'mystical creature' thing, I don't know. I find it quite humorous," she said as she eyed her glass of wine. Harry looked at her confused, "I am sorry; I am quite sporadic sometimes…I can get off on a tangent within seconds and forget what I was talking about in the first place. My husband finds it quite annoying but he won't leave me…no matter how much he cheats. Funny he has a veela for a wife and yet he beds other woman," she snorted, "he should at least have the decency to cheat on me with other Veela, then I could understand…but regular witches and muggles; I don't know where to be angry or insulted."

Harry sat quietly taking everything in, this certainly wasn't how he thought this conversation would go, "I'm…sorry?" he was certainly at a loss as to what to say to the woman.

"Unless you are apologizing for your behavior earlier towards either my daughter or myself, then you have nothing to apologize for," Apolline said, "nor do I want an apology, apologies are like candy, people hand them out with no purpose or meaning. No, you can keep your apologies Mr. Potter, what I want from you is a change. I want you to stop looking back and start looking forward. Understand that Fleur is your future whether you choose to accept it or not. She is strong, she is after all my daughter…"

Harry remained silent as he looked at the woman in front of him and looked around the room before looking back at Apolline, "Ten?"

Apolline smiled gave a soft laugh, "You forgot the two gentlemen out font, the gentleman guarding the back door and the two women at the bar, or did you really think that I would only employ men to guard me?"

"Who exactly are you?" Harry wondered.

Apolline's smile slowly faded as she looked at her glass. He gaze became distant, "Who am I?," She was silent for a moment before she took a sip of her wine and sighed deeply, "When I was a young girl I lived in Eastern France, in a little coven of Veela just northeast of Doussard," she started, "I loved it there. My fellow sisters and I used to spend the days down at the lake, oh for the life of me I cannot remember the name, but those days, oh they were so simple. They always are when you are that young. One day a man came to our coven, I was five maybe six. His name was Kristian Malveki and he didn't stay long, two maybe three days and then he left. I didn't think much of it then because, well I was a little girl, the days were long, and even an hour felt like days. About a week after he left he came back but, he wasn't alone this time. This time he came with hundreds. We fought, oh we fought bravely but while they had several hundred we had fewer than two. So it came to pass that we lost, unsurprisingly enough. My family, my friends, everyone was taken as slaves and transported, all except for Sophia. Apparently Sophia had sold us off, her greed destroyed my coven.

"So there I was…a mere child, barely out of her toddler years being sold off as a slave. My mother was sold off to Jocav Mekal, an arms dealer who was looking for someone to warm his bed. What he didn't count on was who my mother was. My mother had been brought up away from the coven in Moscow under the tutelage Igor Mekal, so when Jocav Mekal, his son, found my mother in his bed well, he was surprised to see the same girl whom he grew up with.

"I, however, wasn't so lucky. I was sold to Roberto Devoltri," she spat out the name, "a factory owner with wandering hands who had a thing for little blond girls. I wasn't the first girl to be sold to this man; there were others before…they died for the constant sexual abuse and his…anger issues. I watched three girls die before my eyes as he 'played' with them. That's what he called it 'playtime'," she gave a humorless laugh, "he hadn't touched me till then, satisfied to just making me watch as he fucked the girls to death. I still remember their faces, their pleas…their tears. Then came my turn, till this day I remember that date…24th of August, 1949. It was a day that my life forever changed…

"I remember waking up that morning to an irritable tapping on my door, the night before I had watched as Karin had been pulled kicking and screaming by the hair. She hadn't come back that night and for the entire night I heard the disgusting pounding of flesh on flesh and her screams and cries until they just stopped. The pounding continued but she, she was completely silent," Apolline shivered as she continued to recall the day, "I was brought to his room and as I walked through the door I saw her…she was already dead, I think she had died before he had finished with her. He asked everyone else to leave the room and then locked the door himself. I remember I was completely numb, I couldn't think, I couldn't feel, I wasn't even entirely sure I was breathing. Then he laid his hand on me and I blacked out," she downed the rest of her wine and poured the rest of the bottle into her cup.

"When I came to, the entire home was in flames, blood covered my hands and shirt, and I held in my hands a wand, his wand. I panicked, I washed everything, hid the wand and walked into town. From there I was able to convince a woman that I had been kidnapped and had me transported back to Doussard. When I got back I was hoping to find my family, a friend, someone but all I found were ashes. I was however able to track Sophia down. Turns out she had moved to Italy to live like royalty. I stowed away on a train and was soon in Sicily. However it was impossible to get to her, she had become a mob wife. So I did the only logical thing, I joined the mob. They usually didn't allow girls, the mob was a man's game but I proved my worth within days, my allure beginning to show and I could partially manipulate a man, at least to agree with whatever I said. So, I brought into all the meetings when negotiations were made. All I had to do was make the person sign the papers. It was simple enough, nothing I couldn't do.

"Years passed but, I never lost sight of what I was there for. The mob worked both sides of the world muggle and wizard, the problem they had was that although they had wizards in their employment, they had no way to control them, allowing a wizard the title of mob boss was unacceptable because they could never really trust them to not shoot them in the back. That's when I became important. They had raised me, I was loyal, and most importantly…I was expendable. If things went wrong I could easily be taken out. I wasn't raised as a witch, I had no formal education in witchcraft and all I knew was the mob, so I was the safe bet. Turns out that was their mistake. I still had a wand, the wand I had liberated Roberto of and although its alliance wasn't completely with me, I had just enough to make spells work. I practiced every day and every night, I willed my magic to do my bidding, forcing it rather crudely into spells that I had no knowledge of their proper wand movements or names.

"Over the next two years, I slowly but surely gained the confidence of the wizards under my command. I expanded my troops, gained their loyalty till the point that I was sure that I could take on the mob and win. And on April 8, 1962, 12 minutes after midnight, just a few days after my 18th birthday I made my move…

"Five hundred people died that day, fifty of which were my own but, the battle was won. My battle however had yet to be finished. She was hiding in the closet when I found her," Apolline laughed, "the maudite vache had the nerve to offer me money for her life. I asked her how much would she give me for the life of my mother, you should have seen her face Harry," Apolline laughed, "Oh, you would have loved the look on the salope when she realized who I was. I killed her Harry, her head exploded everywhere. A bit over here, a bit over there, I even had a bit on my face but it didn't matter, it wasn't going to bring my mother back.

"I spent the next year exhausting all my resources and favors just to find her and when I finally did find her, she was dead…I was shocked to find that she had been remarried before she died to a man named Adrian Sanders who had a daughter from a previous marriage, Jean Sanders, who you know as Jean Granger. I decided that the only way to move past my mother was connec t to the only people who knew her perhaps better than I did. I came to call Jean my sister, Adrian my father and left it at that. I returned to France to settle down, have a normal life but, up until then my life had never been normal, and as I learned I couldn't do normal. I was raised mob and I had people, hundreds who relied on me to lead them. So," she indicated to the people around the bar, "I did what I was raised to do, lead my people. I won't pretend to be someone I'm not; I'm a criminal, in every sense of the word. I've killed, I've stolen, I've cheated people and I've broken many, many laws to get what needs to be done completed. I understand your want for revenge, I understand the need for someone to take the blame but trust me when I say that killing Sophia didn't make things better, finding my mother didn't make things better. Connecting with Adriana and Jean was what made everything better. Sure it was slow and I didn't want to see them as family but I eventually got over it, I got over myself.

"Harry I can't tell you what to feel, I can't tell you what to think, I can't even tell you what to do. What I can tell you is what I know, that there are people, good people reaching out to you, to help you, to heal you and as long as you refuse to see beyond your own revenge, your own past, you will never achieve what you need the most. Love, peace, happiness," Apolline gazed at Harry analytically for a couple of silent moments before she turned and waved Aberforth over, "Abe, I'm done here for today, please charge all of this to my account and give the boy a sandwich, chips, and a couple of butterbeers," she said as she stood and pulled her gloves on before she turned to Harry, "Honey turkey with avocado and bacon on wheat, toasted. Make sure that the chips are not too over cooked Abe and don't bring all the butterbeers out at once, one at a time, three will do I'm sure," she finished with a smile and began to walk away before she paused, "I hope to great things about you, especially from my daughter Harry, great things," she said with a wink and with that she left. Harry watched as the other 'patrons' stood and left one by one. Harry felt his wand being slipped back into his robe pocket before the man behind him stood and walked away.

Harry sat shell shocked well after she had left. He couldn't remember eating, drinking or walking back to the castle. By the time he snapped out of his shock he was sitting on his bed, looking at the large envelope in front of him which held nothing but blank pages. He couldn't recall Apolline relieving him of the envelope but it didn't matter. She knew everything know, his network, his contacts, his finances, and his plans. Somehow Harry felt that even though it was another person's hands, he had no worries about it getting out. In fact, he felt that things were about to get interesting…

I know, I know, huge filler I would guess but I needed to give a basis…and update. I just wanted to say I do not in any way encourage, condone and/or endorse slavery or pedophilia but you must admit, it builds quite an interesting character. In every story I've ever read, it's always Fleur's father who helps Harry in some way or form and when it is the mother, she always gets a bunch of veelas to help, I wanted to do something different, something that nobody would have seen coming. Tell me what you think. I know there are grammatical errors somewhere in there even though I read through this chapter twice. I'm hoping someone will volunteer to beta for me or if my old beta would contact me once again so that I may once again generating chapters again. As always leave me a review, I would really appreciate it.

We will be diving into the First task next chapter. I've put it off long enough :)