My Eldest Weasley

A SOFT SPOT

Fleur

As I stood staring at the shirtless man standing in my bedroom, who was staring back at me with an expression of utter disbelief and shock - a mirror image of my face, I am sure - I had to admit that I was wrong.

Not to mention completely foolish. Completely foolish to think that this day cannot get any worse and that it was finally over.

Even though it was past midnight, it seemed like the day was not done with me yet.

It had taken me almost five hours to get the image of this particular set of sparkling blue eyes - though, shining with guilt and apology - out of my head, and just when I thought that I had managed that, I find those same sparkling blue eyes staring back at me; shining like dark sapphires in the dim light..

I couldn't even grasp the threads to connect how I managed to myself here? Oh, of course, the Boggart.

I had left Gringotts hoping that by separating myself from the source of my unsettled thoughts - and of course, by getting a good night's sleep - will help me find my equilibrium back again.

But of course that was, clearly, too much to ask from this day. I knew this, as soon as I had reached the place I was supposed to call home.

When Madame Maxime had said that the apartment was at best modest, and at worst inhabitable; I had thought that she was just exaggerating.

But as it turned out, the apartment, for which I am supposed to pay 20 galleons per a week, was a warehouse turned apartment building above a tiny cauldron shop called Benign's world of leak proof cauldrons.

The only acceptable point that I had so far managed to find about the place is that it is just around the corner from Gringotts.

As I had stepped into the cobwebbed living room with a small, it was obvious that the place has been uncared for, for longer than my O.W.Ls.

The gray paint on the walls, which was probably white at some point was peeling from every corner, the furniture in terrible need for repairs.

The place had a wet, mouldy air to it with its tiny and grubby rooms and dim lights.

The bedroom wall looked like a lone brick wall put up to separate room containing a single bed with, thankfully, clean sheets, an old writing desk and chair and a tiny wardrobe.

It had taken me the whole evening to clean most nook and grainy corner of the apartment even with flick of a wand, flicking it more time than i cared to count, until I had finally collapsed on the creaky bed, tired and decided to skip the dinner.

I might have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew was opening my eyes to utter darkness in the room and to the sound of a dull thump from the writing table by the window.

I knew at once what was banging in the desk with those dull thuds, but nothing could have prepared me for what happened once I had released the Boggart to get rid of it.

I had practiced with boggarts inneumerous times at school but there, I always had a teacher or a fellow classmate to help me with it.

Facing it all alone was as scary as the real event of Cedric Diggory's death, maybe even more, as then I had the whole school around me.

Seeing that cold body with open, lifeless eyes, I had not realized that I had cowered in the corner while scream had left me.

Only when I felt wetness of my tears had I realized that I had been crying.

Steeling myself, I was about to visualise something - anything - humorous in my most wretched nightmare when someone had barged in my room, freezing at the sight of the body of the young boy on the floor.