The light crept up the side of the window, inching, as it had been since the sun first rose, over the stonework he sat opposite from. Harry had watched it since sitting here to see the sunlight slip down his body the previous evening.
Sleep simply wouldn't come. He knew the moment he lay down in the bed and stopped watching the light that his thoughts would start to swarm again. All the questions that hadn't occurred before rising to the surface.
He was sure that what he had done had been the best possible solution for him, for them, but that wouldn't help him explain things to Fleur. He wasn't sure that there even was a good way to say it. It would solve so many of their problems if things went anywhere close to how he expected them to and yet the act itself was unforgivable.
Surely she will understand.
The thought was filled with hope, brimming with it, but hope was not enough to quell his fear that this time she would finally say that it was too far. It was not enough to let him sleep. It was not enough for him to manage the two words that would let him speak to her and know for sure.
He was not being brave, his reluctance to face the consequences of his actions disgusted him, but the hope was better than risking knowing Fleur had changed her mind, and so the smooth, triangular mirror clenched in his palm remained clear.
Fleur would find out soon anyway. Their morning paper would come, she would see the result and then she would come to speak to him. Not contacting her was probably just making it worse.
The sunlight passed another line in the stonework of the window, and not for the first time he was glad that the dormitory was all but empty. Neville, the only other occupant now he had returned a day early, slept like the dead. Harry could only faintly make out his breathing when he strained his ears. His friend wouldn't wake up until the last moment he could before going to breakfast, which left him at least another hour or so here on his own to contemplate the repercussions of his actions.
Closing his eyes he focused on his magic, trying for the first time since he originally cast the Killing Curse to feel the soul he had once fractured.
The pieces were no longer screaming, their deafening silence had lulled to a whisper, a subtle susurration that surrounded him as his reflections stared back at him from within the fragments of himself.
There were fewer than before, but almost every pair of eyes he could feel gazing up at him were cold, hard and curious. To his relief there was no gleam of crimson among the emerald eyed crowd, no hint of the part of him that had once been part of Voldemort.
The cracked mirror of his soul had a over hundred faces, where there had once been a thousand, for every inky black fragment that murmured from within him there had once been ten. He was healing.
He opened his eyes.
Rita Skeeter's death had done little damage to his soul in comparison to what Peter Pettigrew's had done. That made him feel a bit better about it. The less mutilated his soul was then the less selfish the intent and motivation behind casting the Killing Curse had been, and that was reassuring like nothing else could be.
The mirror grew hot in his hand.
He took a deep breath before raising it to his face and replying.
'Fleur,' he smiled warmly. Her eyes remained cold, narrow and furious. The structure of her face had shifted ever so slightly, just as the veela he had first seen shift at the World Cup, hinting at the avian form she could take, and the depths of her anger.
'There is a long way from blackmail to murder,' she told him, her expression cool and distant. He felt like he was suddenly talking to the Beauxbatons witch who had dismissed and insulted him again. 'I had no choice,' he defended. 'She would never have written the article unless she thought she would not have to publish it.'
'She can't publish anything now she's dead,' Fleur responded icily, her chin sharpening slightly. 'Nor does that explain why the Dark Mark was cast over her house.'
'I didn't need her to print anything,' Harry explained, 'I just needed to create doubt about the story the Ministry is spreading. Rita's death under the Dark Mark, which I am capable of casting, can't be ignored.'
'You think just because someone has died under the Dark Mark that they will believe Voldemort has returned,' Fleur exclaimed in angry French. 'There is no motive, no reason for them to attack someone who was covering up their existence. They will simply blame your godfather again.' 'The article I made her write, the one she thought she would never have to print because I swore a vow that voided my influence over her before she handed it in, was all about Lucius Malfoy and his Death Eater connections. The aurors will have found it, and the cabinet of files she kept.'
'So they think she was about to start exposing them,' Fleur realised. 'She dies under a Dark Mark that most of London saw, and doubt begins to spread,' her features grew distinctly more avian, 'it sounds like a very well thought out plan.'
'Thank you?' Harry questioned very hesitantly.
'Thank you,' she hissed, shifting the rest of the way for an instant before regaining control and reverting, 'thank you. You had a well thought out, clever plan that achieves one of our aims, and you fed me that rubbish about blackmail, made me promise to apparate away to worry about you and didn't contact me when you returned to let me know you were safe. What happened to no more secrets?' She demanded furiously. 'Or was that as much of a lie as the plan you told me in your Chamber of Secrets.'
'I didn't lie,' he snapped, angry with her for the first time since the second task of the Triwizard Tournament. If she agreed with his actions he had done nothing wrong; there was no reason for her to be angry with him.
'You told me you were going to blackmail her, not kill her and conjure the Dark Mark over her house.' Fleur's wide, dark eyes bored into him, aflame with wrath.
'I was going to blackmail her until I realised I wouldn't have enough leverage to actually get her to do what I wanted, even if I bluffed successfully, and I only came to that conclusion once you'd left. The Ministry would ignore her offences as long as she keeps slandering Dumbledore and myself, so I had to offer her permanent protection against me knowing her secret, and a way to ensure she didn't risk herself.' He stared at her furiously, ignoring the cold spreading across his chest, she was supposed to know him better than this. Fleur should know that he wouldn't lie to her.
Fleur's face shifted, the bones rearranging themselves back into their usual structure, and the darkness drained from her eyes to leave them the summer sky blue that Harry loved.
'So you didn't lie to me,' she voiced slowly.
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