Chapter Text
The wind tickled at his light beard as his gaze travelled along the wide, azure horizon of the sea, flirting with his senses to dive in and embrace the salty wet surface of the expanse before him. It was akin to a dream he may have had as a kid during one of the colder seasons at Hogwarts. He could recall having vented about the Scottish chill one too many times, prompting Hermione to suggest he think of a warmer climate to distract his shaking bones from the biting frost digging into his ribs.
The memory made him smile, tugging at the corners of his lips. At least he thought he smiled, the tension on his face giving the impression that he did.
At the sound of sand being scraped on rock, Harry turned to eye the young child to his side, playing with a pile of sand. They had brought plastic shovels and a small beach bucket on their trip to the sea. Anything else would have summoned wails and ringing ears.
“Watch your dress, Fee,” he called out to the child. “We’re having lunch at Molly’s, your mother will have my hide if it gets dirty.”
No response...
Harry sighed as he watched his daughter continue to ignore him as she dug around in the sand. Her small frame carefully balanced itself and the dress just a few hair widths above the mineral remains of large boulders.
“Fee?” He repeated, urging her to look at him. “Did you hear what I said?”
Finally, the tiny creature turned to eye him with her blue-green eyes, the clarity and sharpness to them captivating since he first saw her and demanding attention at every waking hour. The long platinum-blonde hair with his pitch-black strands mixed in-between betrayed nothing other than her heritage.
“Yes,” she muttered. “I won’t dirty the dress.”
Having provided the confirmation to his remark, his daughter quickly disregarded him and continued to fondle the pile of sand that seemed to grow relatively slowly. He couldn’t help but chuckle on the inside. Françoise was many things but she was no simple child. It was something her mother and he had been slightly concerned about when she had abandoned infantile habits for short, brief mutterings and clear cut comments.
“Want me to help you build a sandcastle?” He offered on a whim, feeling the urge to infiltrate her silent operation. “Maybe I can teach you a trick or two?”
“Get your own plot,” she replied with little interest. “This is mine. Go find your own.”
“Ouch, munchkin,” he scoffed in faux pain, clutching at his chest. “You do your old man like this?”
“Obviously,” she remarked flatly. “Mami spoils you rotten. I shan’t do the same.”
“ Shan’t ?” He repeated, surprised. “Where did you pick that up from? Were you reading my grown-up books again?”
“No,” she mumbled, hiding her face from him as she continued to load sand on top of her malformed creation. “I mean…I didn’t. I mean, I never do.”
He chuckled loudly at her discomfort, moving to squat behind her, placing his head just above hers and snaking his hands under her armpits.
“Lies, child. I only hear lies through those teeth of yours,” he whispered dangerously before launching her from her feet in an instant and swinging her up into the air above them. “What do we do with lying children, Fee?”
“Put me down,” she squealed with a giggle. “I’m not a baby anymore.”
“You’re my baby, you little pumpkin,” he corrected her with a laugh as he continued to swing her around him, his hands clasps of steel holding on to her frail-looking bodice.
“Last I checked, she was ours ,” a feminine voice called in between giggles and childish shrieks.
As if hit by lightning, Harry stopped his antics and lowered his daughter to the ground who instead of waiting for instruction, lurched forward and toward the much taller female in the family.
“Mami, Daddy is bullying me, ” she moaned into the belly of the adult Veela. “ He wouldn’t take me seriously. ”
The mother smiled and patted her daughter on the head with well-manicured fingers, the soft-looking skin a known treasure to him.
“You should really treat her with the respect she deserves, Harry,” she admonished him with a smirk. Her tone sounded serious but her gaze was anything but. “What if she runs away one day? I would be inconsolable if this little one disappeared.”
“I will, I will,” the little girl confirmed hotly from her mother’s embrace. “I’m not a baby anymore.”
Harry turned to pick up the bucket and shovels, carefully banging them together to empty the last remnants of sand lodged in the corners. When he rejoined them, he handed the things to his daughter before bending down to her and pinning her with an intense stare of his own.
“You would leave us?” He asked her, his voice bereft of jest. “You would abandon your mother and father for pride?”
“I will,” she puffed her chest and met his gaze with her own. “I shan’t be treated like this.”
“Hermione,” he stated suddenly.
A look of mortification passed his daughter's face as her shoulders slumped in defeat. “Not fair, I didn’t even get to the elves yet.”
Her father gave her a wide smile as he lifted up and placed her on his side, carefully holding on to her as her hands were busy with her toys.
“It was a really good impression of her,” he nudged her with his nose. “You’d make for an excellent comedian one day.
“Don’t be putting funny ideas into her head,” the older woman commented at his side as they made their way back to their small beach house. “She might just stick to one of them.”
“Please, Fleur, let her have some dreams at least before hounding her with your plans,” he reminded her, as he usually would. “She’s seven. Her time for those will come, but for now, let her be a child.”
“Oui, I’m not a baby, Mami ,” Françoise nodded to his words.
“ Baby, child, it matters little, Fee ,” shrugged Fleur nonchalantly, her hair flowing in the wind and espousing a sense of her ancestry with birds. “ In the end, you are my chicklet and as such you do as this mother hen tells you. ”
“I’ll fly away then.” threatened Fee.
“ Do try , ma petite.” Fleur mocked jokingly.
“Je ne suis pas petite.” Fee repeated hotly again.
“ You’re our petite,” Harry and Fleur answered in choir.
Verbally smothered by her parents, Françoise demanded her father let her down. Once able to touch the ground, the little girl dashed forward and away from her parents, opting to seek peace from the patronising treatment.
Once out of earshot, Harry’s shoulders sagged, watching his daughter race toward their little picnic on the beach.
Fleur noticed his melancholic gaze and moved closer to him, closing her arms around his bare neck, giving it a longing kiss.
“A penny for your thoughts,” she muttered into his warm skin. “What has you so down?”
Lost in his own little world, he barely noticed his wife’s concerned tone. Slowly, he raised his arms to close the circle, snaking his limbs around her lower back and giving her body a gentle squeeze.
“It’s nothing,” he answered truthfully. “I just forgot how hard-won this was.”
“Hard-won?” She repeated with a furrowed brow.
He felt her confusion in the tension of her jaw against his neck. His hands began to circle her back, moving in soothing circles, much like he would when they would lay in bed.
“I didn’t see this in any of my futures, Fleur,” he began anew. “Not once had I thought of having a family. To have you as the mother of my child. To be a father to a beautiful daughter.”
“Harry,” she moaned, finally raising her head from his shoulder and backing out of the loving embrace, her eyes trained on his. She palmed his cheek, rubbing his face with her soft thumb. “You still have such thoughts after all this time?”
He chuckled with guilt.
“Why?” she pushed. “Why still deny yourself this?”
“I’m not,” he replied, shaking his head at nothing in particular. He couldn’t look at her, after all. All this time, he still carried doubts with him. “Maybe I am. I’m sorry.”
He felt her hand move his head to face her fully. “What makes you think that you don’t deserve this? What makes you believe I don’t deserve you?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he insisted, moving back to put some distance between himself and his wife. But he couldn’t. Looking down, he saw her other hand hold on to his shirt.
“Then what did you mean?”
Her voice was soft but serious. Her ocean-blue eyes looked wild and yet her face appeared calm.
“Every day that we’ve been together since that night at the Thames, I’ve felt nothing other than happiness. This time together has been a boon to me, an answer to a long lost plea. I couldn’t fathom a better life,” he stressed with as much fervour as he could.
The smile on Fleur’s face was unlike any smile he’d seen on any others. Maybe he could be wrong but who was going to argue with him? She was his love.
“And yet I feel like I still could, should be able to offer you more. Offer you more than what I’m able to. To give Fee the life she ought to live.”
Her mouth flattened to a line at her realisation. She finally grasped what he was so worried about, what had him so guilt-driven over the last few days since their trip to the sea.
“You need to forget what they said to you, Harry,” she clarified once again, drawing his arms back around her, closing the distance to his face in an instant.
The kiss was deep, soothing, a balm to his regrets.
“Fee will never be welcomed into the coven, will never learn to be part of her kind,” he whispered to her, ensuring that they won’t be overheard. “And I’m to blame.”
“Rubbish,” the older Veela disagreed. “So what if zhose cretins deny her? She is our daughter and as much a part of you, as she is a part of me.”
“You don’t understand, Fleur,” he insisted. “I chose my exile and am happy to have done so. But still, I feel the absence of magic and it can be cruel. I don’t want this for Fee. She didn’t choose this life.”
“Listen to me,” she held him by the chin and looked up into his eyes with as much fire as her nature could summon. “None of this is your fault. I wanted this life. I chose you. I decided I wanted children with you. And I knew this could happen, that they would deny my child her heritage.”
“Fleur…” he said wetly.
His wife shook her head at him while her hand moved from chin to his shoulder, giving it a soft, loving squeeze.
“Françoise will be fine and will learn to live with it. When the time is right, my mother and I will guide her, teach her our ways.”
“But-”
“She will only learn to hate her life, if you make it a point to do so, Harry,” she pushed forward. “Our daughter will persevere, if we teach her to do so.”
Rendered speechless, he opted to nod at her instead, and admit she was right.
“After all,” she finally stated, “what have both our lives taught us if not to face the consequences of our choices?”
His chest felt full, swelled even. How could he have ever doubted this woman, doubted their decisions for even a second.
Lowering his gaze, he eyed her free hand at her side. He grasped it carefully and pulled it to his chest, letting her feel the beat of his heart.
Her eyes widened at the gesture, moving her own hand away from his shoulder back to his jaw.
“Have I ever told you how much I love you?” He confessed to her.
“Many times,” she whispered into his lips.
A loud familiar sounding ‘ew’ could be heard from a few paces away, to which the couple could only chuckle.
The End