This is the longest yet, which I guess is predictable, given my love for Bill and Fleur. The idea for this chapter is actually what started the whole story - it was originally going to be a oneshot from Fleur's point of view, but it grew.
Again, translate it into French if you're clever enough!
Please read and review.
Aftermath – Before the Funeral
Fleur II
She desperately wants to go home. She wants to be at Shell Cottage, just her and Bill, no uninvited houseguests, no one but the two of them.
That will not happen of course. Bill won't – can't - leave his family, and she won't –can't - leave him.
But she has not felt so much like an outsider here since she stayed at The Burrow when she and Bill were first engaged, and half the family made it blindingly obvious that they disapproved. That is over now, of course. Since Bill's mauling by Greyback, even Molly has come round to her. The fact that she feels like an outsider now is nothing to do with that. It is because Fred was not her brother. She cannot grieve for him as his family do.
If she is honest (with herself – she won't say it to Bill or to anyone else, because she does not want to hurt them more), until George lost his ear last summer, she still found it practically impossible to tell the twins apart. Now, she wonders if she would feel the same if it were George who had died. Were they really so much one person in her mind that she cannot mourn Fred as an individual? She knows that the twins were different, and it hurts her that she will never now know them both well enough to find out those differences for herself. Harry and Hermione knew them better than she did.
She tries to imagine how she would feel if Gabrielle died. She remembers how she did feel when Gabrielle was hostage to the merpeople during the Triwizard Tournament, and she failed to save her. She goes cold at the memory. But she cannot know what it really feels like to lose a son, a brother, a twin.
She tries to be helpful, as Hermione does. A bond develops between the two of them as they make tea, answer letters, clear up plates. One day, they escape together and forget that they are observers and intruders in a house of mourning, and act like giddy schoolgirls for a blissful (if slightly guilt-inducing) hour. She does not tell anyone about it, not even Bill.
She feels sorry for Percy and Harry, with the guilt they both feel, but do not deserve. She wants to cry for Ron and Ginny, who both look so young to her (though in reality, they are not so very much younger than she is), and who both appear so lost and disorientated. She feels awful for George. How must it feel to be alone for the first time ever? It hurts to look at him, and to realise just how much he is suffering. And she feels desperately sorry for Molly and Arthur. Children are not supposed to die before their parents. It just should not happen.
She cannot feel sorry for Charlie, because she is furious with him. She understands that he is angry with himself, but cannot forgive him for taking that anger out on everyone else. Not when Bill needs him. Bill and Charlie have always been allies, partners. Now, Charlie's anger is just one more burden for her husband to bear. She is so angry with Charlie, that she allows him to reduce her to tears on one occasion, although perhaps that is a good thing, as afterwards Bill confronts him about his attitude, and Charlie finally gives in and cries.
Bill, of course, is the reason she stays. The reason she has not escaped to Shell Cottage on her own, at least for a day or two, or gone to her parents' house in France as her mother has urged her. Bill needs her, and she cannot – will not – leave him.
She knows that the rest of the family think that Bill is coping with this. And that is partly his fault, because that is what he wants them to think. He is the one dealing with the practical arrangements – the funeral, the gravestone, the announcement in the 'Prophet', the notification of friends and relatives. He is the one everyone seems to look to to sort it out when tempers flare or disputes arise. He is the oldest, the big brother, the one who looks after the rest of them. So he has to appear calm and in control.
But Fleur knows that he is not. Sometimes his eyes meet hers across the room, and the pain in them hurts her so much she almost cries out. She knows that the physical pain from his reopened scars is bad, although he will not admit it even to her, and she bullies him into taking the potions Madam Pomfrey has prescribed. She holds him at night when he cries, or when he does not cry because he is simply too exhausted, and tries to comfort him with the warmth of her body, murmured words in a mixture of French and broken English, and the fact of her love for him. And there is one awful day, when a scared-looking Harry comes to find her and tells her that Bill is in the orchard and he needs her, and she runs and finds him pale-faced, gasping and shaking. He holds her so tightly that he hurts her, until he stops shaking and his breathing steadies, but he will not tell her what has happened.
So Fleur cannot leave.
Bill is the person keeping the family together, and she is the one stopping him from falling apart.
She cannot leave when he needs her so much.
