A Cadmean Victory by DarknessEnthroned

75. The House of Black

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

So it's been a while, almost a week, but here's the next chapter!

You're all very suspicious people! Is it not at all plausible that a poor curse-breaker might give something he found, and was trivial enough that he was allowed to keep, as an apology rather than actually buying something? No? Ok, then. There are a lot of fics that have every single relationship Harry enters under constant threat of destruction by love potions, compulsion charms and worse, but, come on, all references to the Nibelungenlied aside, it's only a little ring...

Chapter 75

Light streamed into the room, thrusting a warm, orange glow through his eye-lids and bathing him in heat. Lying half-awake on his side Harry was content to quietly bask, but Fleur, as always, grew restless in the warm, shifting across the bed to slip an arm around his waist, and tuck herself under his chin to press light kisses along his collarbone.

Harry opened one eye to look down at her gently, and kissed the top of her head, the only part of Fleur he could easily reach to kiss.

'Sirius will be here soon,' Fleur murmured into his neck. Her breath tickled warm against his skin and he squirmed slightly, opening his other eye and abandoning all hope of remaining as they were.

All good things must come to an end.

'And you have to go to work,' Harry finished reluctantly.

'Yes,' Fleur's reply tickled him once more.

'I suppose we'll have to get up then,' Harry said, freeing an arm to wrap around her shoulders.

Neither of them moved towards the edge of the bed.

Eventually Fleur moaned, and slipped out from under his arm, discarding her nightdress with a coy look. Harry found himself suddenly much more awake than before, and shifted subtly towards his clothes to conceal his reaction.

Judging by the smirk on Fleur's face as she drifted, still naked, towards the bathroom, he hadn't been even remotely successful.

She found him downstairs once her frenetic morning ritual was complete, pausing in her habitual preparation to firmly place a decent-sized breakfast on the table in his usual spot, and eye him questioningly.

Harry knew better than to disagree, not that he minded to begin with, her single-minded determination to make sure he was always taken care of was as touching as it was unprecedented. Nobody else had ever seemed quite so dedicated to putting him first.

'So what will you be doing while I'm sitting at my desk reading through files on prominent families who may have connections to Voldemort?' Fleur asked, inhaling croissant and coffee, while simultaneously reading the Daily Prophet.

'Adding the final touches to the protections of our home,' he smiled, glad to see the corner of Fleur's mouth curve at his choice of words.

'Something sanguine?' She inquired, brushing crumbs daintily away from her lips.

'Yes,' Harry nodded, dragging his eyes away from Fleur's mouth to the back of the paper. In bold, black font, the Daily Prophet declared the last skirmish between Voldemort's followers and the hit wizards a victory for the Ministry, but the substantially longer list of dead or injured hit wizards suggested otherwise.

'Will you need some of my blood?' Fleur looked more than a little curious, and some part of Harry briefly entertained the fantasy of being able to teach her all about it in the future. The rest of him firmly proclaimed that it didn't like her doing something that often ended up being very dangerous.