Nothing is mine.

All the notifications came back on! I will, briefly, because it was interesting and I want to, reply to a guest review. You're quite right! If the purpose of this fic was Harry beating Grindelwald and the amber-masked figure, there'd be no need to structure it this way. And that should, of course, give you a bit of a hint about the story xD

The Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Light flashed on the silver spoon as Harry spun it around atop the simple white serviette, watching the distorted reflection of the wall lanterns shift and change.

Where is Fleur? Harry stared down the corridor toward the bathroom.

The quiet hum of conversation and the clink and clatter of cutlery on porcelain faded away as he stared into the gloom, drifting off into the distance as Fleur's dark blue dress and silver hair floated away before his mind's eye.

Gone again. The storm stirred, a swirl of hot sharp razors in his breast. But not really gone. Just… missing.

A glass smashed on the far side of the room.

Don't fret. Harry dragged his eyes away from the shadows of the corridor and shoved the storm down. Fleur's coming back. Fleur will be here soon.

Harry raised his left hand and conjured a bright red rose between his forefinger and thumb; its dark green leaves drooped over the sharp thorns curving from the stem. 'Does this one smell nice?' He raised it to his nose and breathed in a faint sweet scent.

It smells just like Petunia's roses did. Harry pressed the ball of his thumb onto the tip of a thorn; the pain eased the soft scream of the storm in his breast, dulling the bite of its searing sharp claws.

'Mon Cœur…' A gleam of worry shone in summer sky blue eyes. 'Qu'est-ce que tu fais?'

'Fleur,' he breathed. 'Pardon.'

Fleur took his right hand and pulled it away from the rose, watching the bead of crimson well up on his thumb. 'You are hopeless, mon Amour.' She raised his hand to her lips, slipping his thumb into her warm mouth and sucking; the tip of her tongue traced across his skin as she drew his hand away and held out her fingers toward the crimson flower. 'Pour moi?'

'As always,' Harry murmured, holding out the rose.

'Bon.' Fleur lifted the rose to her nose and breathed in. 'You got it to smell. The scent is very nice.'

'I promised you more roses.'

She tilted her head to the side and snapped the thorns off the stem with her thumb. 'Would you?'

'Of course.' Harry leant forward and tucked the flower behind her ear. 'There.'

'How do I look?' Fleur swept her silver hair back over her shoulders and straightened the strap of her dark blue dress. 'Beautiful?'

'Perfect,' he whispered, watching the red petals tremble to the beat of her heart. 'You look perfect.'

The waiter bustled over, balancing three bowls upon his arm. 'Clafoutis—' he set one down before Fleur '—clafoutis.' He frowned and set the second down in front of Harry. 'Three?'

'Yes,' Fleur murmured, patting the table beside her. 'Put it here.'

Harry reached across and took her hand as the waiter set the final bowl down and hurried back toward the kitchen. 'One for Gabby?'

She nodded and picked up her spoon. 'I will enjoy mine for me. And then hers for her.'

He gave her fingers a squeeze and shuffled across the seat, sliding an arm around her waist. 'Missing her?'

Fleur scooped a spoonful of clafoutis from the bowl and stared at the cherry perched on top. 'She was supposed to be here. I wish…'

Harry pressed a kiss to her cheek. 'Je sais.'

'And we cannot have another little girl to call Gabby and bring her back to life like we did Katie,' Fleur whispered. 'I want to make her happy this way instead.'

'We will.' He ran his fingers through her hair and held her tight. 'We'll keep our promise.'

She took a mouthful of clafoutis and closed her eyes.

'Good?' Harry murmured.

'Very good.' Tears shone on Fleur's lashes as she swallowed. 'It is not fair, mon Amour. She never got what she wanted most.'

'Neither will those who took her away from us,' Harry promised. 'That's as fair as we can make it.'

'Gabby did not care about that.' Fleur's knuckles whitened around her spoon. 'She did not want fire. Not really. She always wanted to be me.'

'I don't think that's quite true,' he murmured.

Fleur put her spoon down. 'She wanted to be pretty like I was when she was younger, to do well at school like I did, to work where I wanted to work, to feel loved like I was…' She pushed the clafoutis away. 'I can't eat this,' she whispered. 'It hurts. And I promised no more hurting.'

'Do you want to go back, mon Amour? We can always come another time.'

'Gabby would hate wasting clafoutis.' Fleur balled her fists, little goosebumps rising on her arms. 'I can't make it work. If I keep our promise, I won't miss her anymore and I don't want her to just — just disappear. And if I don't…'

Harry pulled her close, kissing the tears from her cheeks. 'We keep our promise. I'll make sure our sunset is perfect. And when our baby bird wakes up, we will enjoy every moment Gabby gave us.' A small soft smile crept onto his lips. 'Katie can always have another middle name, mon Amour. She has one for you. She can have one more for Gabby.'

Amélie's a nice name. Katrina Isobel Amélie Delacour.

'How can you make it perfect if it still hurts?' Fleur murmured. 'It is meant to hurt and then be perfect.'

Harry closed his eyes. 'I'm going to make sure nothing can ruin it. Not even Grindelwald.'

Fleur tensed. 'We already did that, mon Cœur. La Victoire Finale. Our dream can never be taken away.'

'But there's still all the rest of the world out there,' he said. 'We thought when we escaped from Britain that would be it, but it wasn't. Someone will come to try and take it away. Grindelwald will come. He wants to set the whole world at war. How can Katie be happy when the magical world is at war with the muggle one and we're all fighting just to survive…?'

He has to be stopped before he ruins things for us. And I can't leave my sisters to fight him alone. A horrible sick feeling settled in Harry's stomach. And all those dreams…

Fleur grabbed his hands. 'Forget about Grindelwald. He cannot take us away from each other.'

'But he can take other things.' Harry stared into her bright blue eyes. 'Things we love. Places we love. Sisters…'

Her eyes narrowed, darkening a few hues. 'Katie cannot have any sisters.'

'We can't give her any, but she could find some, one day, like I did.' He groped for words. 'Grindelwald's conflict is going to make the world a worse place for our little girl to grow up and find her own dreams in. And I… I can't let him take away the things she might wish for before she even gets to wish for them. I promised. We promised.'

Fleur's face softened. 'But, mon Amour, it is not Grindelwald's conflict. The magical world has fought over this for a thousand years. If Grindelwald is defeated, there will just be another. It will not end.'

She's right. Harry's heart sank, spiralling down into the bottomless cold black in the pit of his stomach. Grindelwald is just trying to solve the problem in a horrible way. Even if he vanishes, the crucible that forged him remains to make others just like him. Liliana told me so.

Fleur took his face in her hands and pressed a long, soft kiss to his lips. 'We promised, mon Cœur.'

We did. We promised Gabby. And I promised Katie.

'Let us go home, mon Amour.' She plucked the cherry off the top of her clafoutis and stacked a few galleons on the table. 'To apologise for wasting it...'

Harry nodded and slid along the bench, rising to his feet. 'What do you want to do when we're back?'

'I want to try something,' Fleur whispered. 'You will see.' She stood and held out her hand. 'Mon Cœur?'

He slipped his fingers through hers. Madam Antoinette's whirled into the pale blue of Gabby's bedroom.

'Fleur?' Harry squeezed her hand. 'Were you still thinking about her when you apparated?'

Fleur cupped the wisteria earring in her hand, the red rose petals above her ear quivering. 'I want her to have all the things she really wanted.' She turned and tugged him close, stretching up to catch his lips with hers. 'So I know she would be happy.'

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him. 'What did she want?' He offered her a small smile. 'We can check to see if any new Aimée books have been written?'

Fleur's lips twitched. 'Gabby just wanted to feel loved. By our parents. By our little angel. By me—' she pulled his mouth down to hers '—by you...'

All the hairs prickled on the back of Harry's neck as Fleur arched her body against him, her tongue tracing across his upper lip.

He drew back from her kiss as her hands slipped under his robes. 'Mon Amour—'

Fleur crushed her lips against his. 'Non, I am not your bird-wife…'

Unease coiled in the pit of Harry's stomach as her kisses trailed along his jawline. 'Strange, because you look an awful lot like her.'

'Of course I look like her,' she whispered. 'We are sisters, but in the veela harem—'

'No.' Harry swallowed and shook his head. 'No. Fleur. I… I can't do this.'

An awful fragile gleam shone in Fleur's blue eyes as he cupped her face in his hands and pressed a soft kiss to the tip of her nose.

'I can't do this, Fleur,' he murmured. 'It's one thing when it's you just using the name of some girl I barely said a word to, even if there were some very jealous bird-wife reasons behind why you chose that name, but Gabby...' Anxiety writhed in his gut, slithering about in his belly like a tangle of furious snakes. 'It's completely different. I loved Gabby. But not… not like that.'

'But when we are doing things that would have made her happy, it feels like she is still here,' Fleur whispered. 'It does not hurt for a little while. And I promised her.'

'She didn't want this.' He held her close. 'She was happy. You loved her. I loved her. Our baby bird loved her. That's what she wanted, right? To be loved.'

Fleur buried her face in the crook of his neck; her fingers curled into his robes.

'It's okay—' Harry stroked her hair, running his fingers through the cascade of silk-smooth silver '—I know you miss her. I know it hurts. We'll keep our promise. If we're happy, she would be happy, no?'

'Je suis désolée,' she whispered.

'Come with me, Fleur.' He spun the world back past them and stepped out beneath the swaying green willow fronds, ignoring the flash of heat across his thumbnail. 'Look, mon Amour—' Harry swept the silk off the Mirror of Erised '—our little baby bird is just waiting for the right moment to come back.'

'She looks so happy,' Fleur murmured. 'We're all together again. Gabby is with us.'

Harry closed his eyes. 'What's our silly veela hatchling doing?'

'Gabby is holding her. She has stolen a fistful of Gabby's macarons. She is making a huge mess, chomping on all of them and trying to put a whole macaron in her mouth—' Fleur's voice trembled '—and now she is pouting because she wants to be held by her maman…'

He opened his eyes.

Katie sat on sun-soaked white pebbles beneath the willow's boughs, a huge smile on her small face as she stacked the stones into a heap between her little feet. Over her shoulders, a slim crescent of golden sun shone, and the sky glowed pink and orange through the green fronds.

'What do you see, mon Amour?'

'Katie and the sunset.' Harry slid his arm around Fleur's waist and pulled her close. 'Just waiting for us to make it all come true.'

She leant her head on his shoulder. 'I am sorry. I just do not want her to disappear. And I do not want to break our promise by missing her. She has to be happy so we are happy.'

'Gabby would be happy if we were happy,' he murmured, slipping his wand from his sleeve. 'She just wanted to be close to us. To be part of what she felt us having.'

Fleur hummed. 'Most of the time. But my little sister had fantasies of her own, mon Amour. There was a reason you were not allowed to hug her when she was being chirpy.'

'My very jealous bird-wife.' Harry flicked his wand, sweeping the black silk back over the mirror. 'That's why.'

'Non,' Fleur whispered. 'Because Gabby always wanted to be part of what she felt. And if she had ever thought that you could have loved her like you loved me without hurting me or you, she would not have been able to resist.' A soft sigh slipped through her lips. 'I saw it in her eyes when she told me what your love felt like to her. He loves you like you are the sun, Gabby said… But when she said it, for just a moment, there was such envy in her eyes. That every moment I wanted to, I could have that, and Gabby could not.'

Harry's stomach knotted. 'She was happy though, right?'

'Almost always.' Fleur's fingers crept up to the wisteria earring dangling from her left ear. 'But sometimes I think she wished a little bit that she was in my place. Or that I was more like her so she could have what she wanted as well.'

'I never loved Gabby like—'

'Je sais,' she whispered. 'But I still feel guilty. Because it would have made her so happy if you somehow could have. She gave everything up for us. And I could not even let her joke about it without pecking at her.'

'She wouldn't want you to feel guilty.' Harry slipped a finger under her chin and tilted her face up toward him. 'She would want you to enjoy all the time she gave us. And she would still want us to miss her a bit, so we don't just forget her.'

Fleur's lower lip trembled.

He drew her into a soft kiss. 'Je t'aime, my beautiful bird-wife. We'll be okay. Our baby bird will fly back to us soon. It will all be okay.'

Fleur's fingers curled into his hair and she dragged his mouth back to hers. 'Je t'aime,' she murmured. 'Je t'aime beaucoup.'

AN: Not today self-promo demon. Not today.