Right after the eventful dinner, Harry found a secluded spot and flashed home.
As soon as he appeared in the living room, his instincts flared, and he jumped to the side, barely dodging an overpowered stinging hex.
"Harry James Potter!" Fleur's voice rang through the room, her hands on her hips and her face flushed with a mixture of worry and relief. "I was worried sick because of your stupid actions! Couldn't you at least spare me a minute and explain what happened? Why did I have to learn everything from Fawkes?"
Harry took a deep breath and ran a hand through his messy hair. 'Ash, commence Order: Fawkes the Traitor.'
"I'm so sorry, love. Everything happened so fast, and I had to react quickly. You're right, I should have contacted you as soon as I could," he said weakly.
He approached her cautiously, knowing that her Veela temper shouldn't be taken lightly, especially now when righteous concern was involved.
"Fawkes," Fleur called, and moments later, the phoenix materialised in a burst of flames.
Trill. Trill. Trill.
'Oh shit—' Harry cursed; Ash had been commencing his order…
"Love… Why is one of Fawkes' talons in Asmodeus' mouth?" Fleur asked, calmly, and more than a little befuddled.
Harry shook his head in resignation. His serpent familiar was proudly holding the phoenix's talon between his teeth, Ash's eyes twinkling with mischief.
'The sneaky bastard is trying to pin this on me!' he thought, darkly amused, ignoring that it was indeed he who told Ash to 'attack' Fawkes.
Fawkes looked surprisingly unperturbed, as if he was patiently allowing his children to tire themselves out.
"Ash! What are you doing? Release Fawkes immediately!" Harry commanded, mock-mortified by his familiar's behaviour.
Alas, even though Ash did just that, Fleur wasn't fooled in the slightest.
She crossed her arms, her mesmerising blue eyes narrowing dangerously.
"Don't try your antics with me, Harry," she said with a knowing smile, the fire in her eyes softening slightly. "While this little comedy act was nice, it won't distract me from the fact that you disappeared into danger without warning me."
She took a step closer and hugged him, her voice dropping to a more intimate tone. "Now will you please tell me everything that happened today?"
Harry took a deep breath and sighed. "Of course, love. For what it's worth, at one point, I almost told Fawkes to bring you, and I promise that I was careful," he said, and upon her dubious look, he added: "Pinky Promise."
Fleur smiled, and Harry took that as a good sign.
"Okay, where do I begin? Well, you know that I went a bit earlier to Hogwarts… Anyhow, I was bored and I, uh, decided to go and talk to Dumbledore. It was coming either way—there's no way he wouldn't have called a meeting for whatever bullshit reason. After that, it didn't take any time at all for things to go wrong."
Fleur raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. It seemed that she was waiting for Harry to explain how he started the mess.
He coughed. "I didn't do anything wrong," he said weakly.
'Seriously, what's with that disbelieving look?'
"Honestly, I really didn't! I just noticed that it wasn't really Dumbledore sitting in front of me, and I greeted the guy… appropriately."
Now that he said it out loud, Harry could sort of see how someone could think that he was the one who initiated the confrontation.
Fleur smiled tiredly and shook her head.
"Right, right. And what did you do after calling out Voldemort's deception? I assume things escalated quickly from there," Fleur prompted, her expression a mixture of exasperation and concern.
She knew Harry well enough to understand that 'one thing led to another' would translate to 'I provoked him, and he acted accordingly.'
"Actually, no," he said, surprising her.
Harry smiled at Fleur's reaction and said, "See! Nothing bad happened, and instead, we even started talking like civilised men. We were being truthful as well, at least I think so."
'Ha, take that!' he thought, enjoying his girlfriend's flabbergasted expression.
Taking a little pause in his imaginary victory dance, Harry continued with the story.
"After that, I told him I know about him being one of Voldemort's many soul fragments, surprising him quite a bit, and—"
"YOU DID WHAT?!" Fleur suddenly exclaimed, more than a little surprised herself.
"You revealed one of your biggest advantages to the madman?! Harry, what were you thinking? That information could have been crucial leverage!"
Harry held up his hands in a placating gesture. "I know how it sounds, and it probably was not one of my brightest ideas. However, I knew that he had absorbed a horcrux, and he most likely intends to do the same for the rest of them."
"Okay?" Fleur asked, looking like she was expecting more explanation to justify what she still saw as a stupid move.
"I figured that I might as well catch him off guard with what I know. That probably influenced how he reacted and what he did next and how I got off so easily," Harry said truthfully, before smirking. "Besides, I wanted to see his reaction—and trust me, it was worth it."
"Harry Potter!" Fleur sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Please tell me you at least gained something actually useful from this encounter."
Harry's smile melted, and he nodded.
"Assuming that he is trying to absorb all of his horcruxes, because what's the point of doing it just once, we can safely deduce that he doesn't have access to the rest of them, because if he did, he would have already gotten them and not left them wherever they are."
"That's... actually quite insightful," she admitted, her expression softening.
"Anyway," he said with a nod. "Considering the two Voldemort soul fragments possessing Dumbledore's body, and with the two we've already destroyed, that leaves us with two more possible horcruxes somewhere out there."
Fleur finally summoned a chair and sank into it, her expression thoughtful as she absorbed this information.
"It doesn't seem as impossible to finish him now, non?" she asked hopefully, and Harry couldn't help but laugh at the barest hint of her French accent.
"Yes, we'll get him soon," Harry confirmed, his expression growing grave. "I think it's time we interrogated our own horcrux."
Fleur wrinkled her nose at the idea. The thought of deliberately conversing with a fragment of Voldemort's soul wasn't exactly appealing. But if it could help them find the remaining horcruxes...
She nodded and was about to get up when… "Wait, you didn't tell me when Voldemort started attacking you."
Harry rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced. "Well, I might have actually initiated that."
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Chapter 131: It's Finally Over