February 17th, 2027; River Seine in Paris, France.

LXXI. Lost and Delirious

(Fleur’s POV)

Exhaustion. Madness. Sadness; I have it. Passion, memories, desire, fulfillment, and a fucking blatant ass truth that she still loves me; all of it is being denied by her and only dragging me further and further along this river. It’s my guiding light in this dark night, but it’s still my complete and utter demise in the form of a beautiful woman. I keep dragging my feet after this red lighthouse with its outrageous curves, sexy walk, voluptuous prizes, determination and denial…painted crimson with the lies she smears over me every time she lies.

Why do I keep going after someone who feels one way and acts another? But the way she’s almost glowing makes me think her insides are screaming for me to keep chasing after her. It’s been months and she still won’t let me convince her of anything. It’s been years since I’ve had her…

I don’t mind that I can hear the cracks in my brain and see the sweat dribble down my nose. She still loves me, so I will keep chasing her. I feel like we’re being followed, but I don’t care. I still love her, so I’m going to keep walking after her in a slouch and a stupor and a struck dumb expression because there is nothing else to do…

Something else is a myth. My life is Hermione Delacour.

And now she stops just feet away from this landmark in our city of love. She refuses to look at me while I stop an inch behind her.. Things have been looking so dreary for the past six months, but I’m still after her. Down is the new up…

She faced me now. She turned to look up at me with the scowl that sears my heart and scars my mind, but I still revel in being able to receive. I get down on one knee because I want her to be above me. I look up at her, my goddess, my creator of insanity, my…everything… I adore her, I worship her, I need her…

Now here I am, practically lying in the reeds while she’s perfectly able to step over me. But I will keep following her, and I will take advantage of every precious second of her attention she bestows upon me.

“Stand the varying shores of the world… oh ‘Ermione….’Ermione, ‘Ermione… My beloved…please…if I can’t ‘ave you, I’ll call upon the sun to burn the ‘ole sphere… ‘Ow can nothing in nature change when such an extraordinarily shattering event ‘appens? You…not being able to trust me, to love me, to ‘ave me…

“Shall I abide in this dull world which in thy absence is no better than a sty? The crown of the earth doth melt and there is NOTHING left remarkable beneath the visiting moon…

“’Ermione, don’t you see…? I ‘ave such a love for you… a mad, passionate love that crosses all boundaries. I know you feel passion for me…why are you doing this to me…? To us, even…”

Her silence is more deadly than any weapon or word or wrong-doing. I staggered my eyesight down to her legs and nearly burned my arms while I held her. I held her to keep from falling down this pit without her. I wanted her with me, because she wasn’t even trying to kick me off. She sometimes even forgets to scowl at me.

I’ve found myself living for those moments.

I kept hearing her voice in my head…her denial, saying that love is old. It’s trite, boring, nonsensical and not worth her time. I keep hearing her say that I’m not right in the head. But she’s left me with nothing but her refusal and defiance, so which direction could I be?

I’ve no direction without my wife.

I’ve nothing without her.

“Liar…liar…liar, ‘Ermione…you’re a liar. Liar, liar, ‘ands on FIRE… STOP lying to me! You know what love is. It just…is… It just IS, and nothing you can say can make it go away… Because it IS the point of why you and I are ‘ere… it is the ‘ighest point…”

The highest point…higher… I needed her higher…

My mind had a mind of its own; I merely closed my eyes and opened them again and she and I were at the top of the Eiffel tower. Of course she staggered, but I held her strong. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t scream at me. She didn’t try to kick me off to kill me.

But I know I felt her trembling in my arms. I know I did. I’m not delusional; I FEEL her. I feel her…

“…and once you’re up there, looking down at the world… You’re there forever…because if you move…you’ll fall…”

I held her tight and obliged my skin to devour the warmth of her thighs to ignore the biting wind. I shut my eyes against her and kissed her legs under her jeans in vain; I felt the spasms reverberate through my lips. I heard her choke a sob…

But she’s up here with me now, and I refuse to let her go. I refuse to move. I want to be up here forever with her. Forever…

“…you’ll fall, ‘Ermione… But I would save you… I would. I will… You’re my best friend, my love, my everything… Why won’t you let me put an end to this…? You are the only person I will ever love… I’m choking on my own words to let them out, but I know you feel them if you can’t ‘ear me… But if I keep ‘aving to do this, soon I won’t be able to breathe anymore.”

My breath trembled just as she did while I stood, still encircling her body in my arms. It’s our anniversary and she still won’t let me in… it’s our anniversary and she’s still confused, even with me looking deep into her eyes with my face over hers. She’s trying to search the pools of my distress to save lies from its depths, but there are no lies in these tears…

Why doesn’t she understand that..?

What is wrong with her?

Or is it me…? Am I not begging enough? Do I need to do more to please her? That must be it…

“Don’t leave me in all this pain…don’t leave me out in the rain… Come back and bring back my smile; come and take these tears away… I need your arms to ‘old me now… the nights are so unkind… Bring back those nights when I ‘eld you beside me…”

I begged with my tears drowning my eyes and face, but she refused to let my pleas overflow her. She wouldn’t hold me, she wouldn’t move, but she was still trembling. I know she wasn’t cold; she was trembling because she wanted to be a pillar with me holding her, just envying her strength…

Well, I do… I do, I do, I do but I want to bask in the strength. Her glory, her wonders, her sex once more. But she won’t…let me…

“Un-break my ‘eart and say you love me again…un-do this ‘urt you caused when you walked out the door and walked out of my life… un-cry these tears… God, I’ve cried so many nights… ‘Ermione, please…please… I’ve been pleading for months… Why are you doing this to me?

“Don’t leave me ‘ere with these tears…kiss the pain away, please… I can’t forget the day you first left, because time is just so unkind… and life is just as cruel without you beside me in my ‘eart, body, and soul…not just physically…”

Her eyes finally glistened. Our chests were hitching against each other and I almost wanted to smile. I was getting somewhere… somewhere….

“’Ermione p-please…you know I wouldn’t be begging for so long if I didn’t honestly truly, truly love you… I swore to you, I vowed to you exactly eighteen years ago that I’d f-fight for you…but you’re fighting AGAINST me… that’s not…right… I’m crumbling right in front of you and y-you just…”

I shut my eyes while a wave of emotions swept over me and sent me staggering to my knees again. I held her in my limp arms, barely able to look up at her anymore. My jaw clenched, my teeth grit in desperation, my lips rested just in between her legs and I shut my eyes against her; I felt her hands on the back of my head, just beckoning me closer…closer…

But she was still so silent, even with the wind howling against us and the storm of my need and want and craving and…just…fucking EVERYTHING for her going and going and going… And yet I feared I could not some time soon if this kept up…

“DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?! WHY are you letting your nightmares overrule this what you see and feel and NEED in your ‘eart?! Stop…doing this to me…

“Come back and say you love me… Un-break my ‘eart, sweet darling… without you I just can’t GO ON!”

I let everything pour out of me and onto her sex that was so…forbidden. But so mine… Why does she let society rule her? Why won’t she just rule me and still shout out to the world that she loves me…?

Not even me crying harder than I’ve ever cried in my nearly fifty long years could move her. Because Hermione is just such an imperturbable force that NO ONE can move, not even with true love… She’s a force that no one could waver, no one could ever dare attest to, all because she is too powerful and divine and unattainable…

Not even I could dare move her with my waves of tears crashing against the sharp rocks of her defiance…and yet I kept crying anyway. I wailed and screamed at the top of my lungs that I love her, I love her, I LOVE HER… I didn’t care if my throat was bleeding or if any part of me not in contact with her was frozen; I kept begging for her to warm me up. I begged and begged because I had nothing else to do. Not now, not ever…

My lungs were screaming for air, my chest was cracking for oxygen, but I couldn’t stop crying; I couldn’t stop loving my Hermione… my adorable, adorable sweet Hermione… Nothing else mattered; our surroundings were unimportant. The moon could keep shining down on us from such great heights and I would keep howling to the wind that she is my maiden and I am her dog…because that’s all I am to her… But if that’s what I am, then so be it…

And even now that I felt my tears subdue, I felt a different material against my knees that nearly bled from scraping against every ground imaginable after my Hermione. There was no biting cold; no moon on us.

I felt her try to kneel down, and I loosened my grip around her. I could barely keep my eyes open to look in hers while we were in this dark room. It was…her room… this room I got dressed in before our wedding… I knew there was something ominous about it that day… I knew it.

Hermione looked into my eyes with a burning compassion, but it all could have been distorted. My tears for her, of hope, of want… they were probably disfiguring her beautiful face into a look I wanted, needed to see. And even though we were alone, I still felt so surrounded. It was an irritating feeling that I couldn’t shake ever since December, but it mattered not. Hermione was trying to tell me something with her eyes.

Our lips were so close; I haven’t kissed her in years… I needed to. I just had to press my entire face against hers before me and breathe in the scent of her true desires in one last breath. I kept sucking on her beauties for a drop of power and lust that I wished she could leak from her presence alone, but it couldn’t. It could never be. Only the feel of her kissing me back could do this… it’s been so long…so long since I’ve felt this manifestation inside of me for her, with her that I’d nearly gone delirious and could barely savor the moment. The taste and feel and smell of her supple saltwater lips, tainted with my weaknesses…

My weaknesses for her, though…for her…for Hermione… Hermione, Hermione, Hermione…

I moved my hands to her face, but she clasped them in her own before I could warm my freezing palms with the warmth of her confusion. She moved my hands to my sides and let them go, but I kept a grip on one of hers while she made to stand up. I gripped it more and more while I kept slowly inching to the floor underneath me, and she kept inching away from me with no intention of bringing me on the bed with her… so damn cruel…

Such a fucking tease…

I squeezed her fingers to death that were still enclosed in my own. My hand trembled and I bowed my head to the floor, shutting my eyes while I kept curling my head down in hopes of bringing her closer…closer… but I was weak with weakness. Hermione was not, because she was…not.

And just like that, she was gone from me and away. But still so close. Too far away at the same time, though… I was on my knees with my head still curled down, biting back sobs, whispering please, please, please, Hermione, please… My nails tangled themselves in my hair over my neck, gripping it because Hermione refused to do it while I pleased her. My body shuddered because I heard her snuggle into her bed under the duvet without me. Without me… without you, I just can’t…go on…

My body was dragged out of her room by a strange force; hands. Familiar hands, but not Hermione’s hands. Her door closed in front of me and I was still knelt down just in front of it, scratching down the surface like a dying animal. A man’s voice cracked in my ears and I snapped my head around to glare at the sex who could be with her without ruining her image…

Draco… Draco Malfoy. He was looking down at me with so much fear and sympathy that my tears hardened into anger around my eyes and face. I stood up and shook my aching head while I looked at the mirror on the wall.

Mirror… mirror… a mirror of my delusion; that was what I saw. I walked over to it with a vengeance written all over my face in the form of dabs of toughened weaknesses. My gaze was sharp against myself, almost pitying myself because I keep running after this woman who acts like she does not want me. But she’s painted with all of her lies… she’s just making me hate her more and more but I always crumble to my knees whenever I’m near her. I can’t fight the urge to chase after her. I can’t…

I hate who I see. I hate my reflection. I hate myself. I hate, hate, HATE being a…woman…

My hands moved to the edges of the mirror and lifted it from the wall. My feet walked back over to Hermione’s door while I kept despising this…image…of a woman who cannot have what she NEEDS just because of WHO she is.

The ultimate denial; the ultimate refusal.

My mind was broken just like this mirror. Hope for Hermione was shattered to a thousand pieces, just like the ones she sent flying at me seventeen years ago and this empty frame I sent from my hands and flying to the floor. But my image was not broken at my feet; I still saw myself in them. The noise of the breaking did not phase me; the fear of the man behind me did. A man, a man, a MAN who COULD be with Hermione, but wasn’t. He wasn’t…

But I could be. I could be… I am hers but she is not mine… I refuse to stand for this…this injustice…

I picked up a large shard from the floor and turned to face Draco. I stepped over the rest and handed the glass to him, balling my hair in my hands and trying to keep my lip from quivering. If I couldn’t be myself to have Hermione once more, then so be it…

“Cut off my ‘air.”

“Why…?”

“I ‘ave nothing to lose now… I’m going to war…”

“Wh-what?! Fleur, you—“

“Come ON!”

“Is this…for Hermione?”

“Just cut OFF my ‘AIR, Draco!”

“…she wants a guy, Fleur…not a woman with hacked hair—“

“What the FUCK do you know?!”

I let go of my hair to ball his collar in my arms before I shoved him to the floor because I couldn’t control myself. But the sound of his collision against the carpet and his whimpering made me snap again, and I held my hands out and softened my expression. Breaths that I’d been holding in came out while I breathed my apologies to him and he scrambled to his feet. I balled the end of my shirt in my hands and pulled at it and picked it while I fidgeted and fished for something…anything else to say…

“I’m sorry, Draco.. I just… I just ‘ave to get ‘er back…”

My lips kept quivering again and I held back my tears. Hermione could hear me…she could hear me, I know she could…

“Fleur…listen to me…it’s been months.. Hermione obviously isn’t a lesbian anymore, so you should just…just forget about her. Okay?”

Did he really…say that? Even with the fear oozing from his face, he still said it. I let my face relax in a stupor of near disbelief while I kept replaying his…word choice in my head…

I had a feeling that he didn’t want to tell me this, though…like he was just…acting…for a movie, or something…

But then again, what did I know? What did I know if I didn’t have Hermione’s approval wrapped in my arms and around my approval for her…?

“Lesbian…?” I took a step closer to him and he took a very small one back. I kept fidgeting with my shirt and felt my voice rise little by little as I spoke almost incredulously with a laugh to go with it. “Lesbian, are you fucking kidding me, you think I’m a lesbian?”

“Y-you’re a woman in love with a woman, aren’t you…?”

“No…!”

I stood my ground and stopped right by one of his chairs and a table with china on it. I cradled an arm at my waist with my palm up while I spoke, slamming the back of my hand against it to sound empowered. To sound vehement, adamant, passionate… even if part of my voice still rung and echoed with my need to just…break down and sob…

To sound chauvinistic for my woman…

“I’m Fleur in love…with ‘Ermione…! Remember? And ‘Ermioine IS… She IS in love with ME because… SHE is MINE… And I am HERS… And NEITHER of us are LESBIANS!”

My arms and hands slammed to the side and knock over and broke the china at my side like the whirlwind I feel in my heart for Hermione.. My teeth were clenched, my heart was clenched, my very BEING was clenched and constricted and pulsing and crying out like my pained hands…

WHY is Hermione being such a goddamn tease?! Why!? I threw myself in the chair against the wall and ignored Draco’s fear of me while I shut my eyes. My body was slouched, arched out like I was just begging to be underneath her…but I couldn’t…she wouldn’t let me, and I don’t…know…why….

I bit back my tears and shoved the back of the chair against the wall while I jerked my body up against it in irritation. My hands burned my scalp while I ran through it, and kept my teeth clenched but my lips would not stop quivering… A hand moved from my hair to slide down my shame-filled face while I let my other arm stay limp over my waist, completely in disbelief that Hermione would do this to me…why…why…

Why can’t she muster the courage to tell the world to fuck off so she could be happy with me…?

If she couldn’t find the courage within herself, then I just needed to keep pounding it into her with my perseverance… my defiance to have her in my arms without fears because I know I could keep them all away from her. A second chance, perhaps…

A chance I failed at with my own daughter… our daughter…

I scrambled to my feet and stood at her door, nearly leaning on it while I kept my elbows and forearms against it. My fists were balled and my face was plastered on the surface, facing the direction where I knew her bed lay. Or maybe she was on the door like me, just listening…

She still listens to me… I know she loves my voice and my declarations… I know she does…

“I will make me a willow cabin at your gate…and call upon my soul within the ‘ouse… I will write loyal cantons of condemned love and sing them loud even in the dead of night… I will ‘allow your name to the reverberate ‘ills… and make babbling gossip of the air cry out ‘Ermione…!”

I felt my body being pulled back, but her door opened. I saw her just barely poke her head out, but my head was swimming with an orgasm that was not normal. Just to see her, even with Draco holding me down, made me want to moan and glare shards at her at the same time. Because she had this…this POWER over me…

My reflection kept berating me in the china in a large row of shelves against the wall. A bookcase of reflections. But Hermione kept looking at me with bloodshot eyes and a quivering lip. She edged out from her room and stepped upon the shards without flinching. But I still heard a fog in my head. A tune of demise and despise and derise…

My breaths grew shallow while I let the false sounds of her laughter ring in my head. Or was she really laughing? Was she really grinning at me? My tears were making her distorted, weren’t they? She was laughing in my face…she was laughing…

Laughingstock…

“Go a‘ead…laugh, it’s okay… If you want to laugh, laugh. What’s so funny?”

I broke Draco from me and held my ground on my own with my fists clenched at my sides. My voice sounded so distant, even with her inching closer to me. My eyes were showing me that she looked petrified, but my mind was showing me that she was…cackling at me…

My legs went over to her stupid bookshelf of china while my eyes went out of focus, but I still kept looking at her. Her desirable, lustrous body that did not belong to me…

But it did…it did… My hands slowly moving to this…bookshelf…they know her body inside and out…

“I know it! I’m funny…! HAAA HA HA! HA HA HA HAAA! HAAA HAAA! HAA HAA HA HAAAAA HA HAAAAAA!!!”

And, in my mind, in slow motion, downwards went the china and the cabinet and the WHATEVER the hell they were right in front of my feet, stopping her in her frightened tracks, all the while making my eyes sting and burn and fry with tears of…delusion…

I let the tears burn me because I wanted her hands to burn down my body instead. I sobbed and wailed because I wanted to hear her cry and scream and shout and moan with pleasure and arousal from ME… Because I am the only one who could ever please her so! NO ONE ELSE! But she doesn’t want to fucking believe that…

Because she doesn’t…remember anything… nothing at all…nothing, nothing, nothing…

“’Ermione, you…y-you made me a promise eighteen years ago… You promised me that you would return to me… I asked you before over and over but I am going to ask you again now… Meet me…at our lighthouse…please… I’m going insane without you, don’t you see…?

“B-but you cannot refuse me anymore… I’m going to drive myself crazy, and at this point, it’s not that far away… I need you to meet me at our port…in Otaru… I don’t know ‘ow but I will make everything better… Please ‘Ermione… on that same day, March eleventh, I need you to meet me there… I’m so tired of this…”

Her head nodded to me. She told me yes. She told me yes…she promised… She promised she would… I calmed my breaths and willed my body to sigh while I nodded back. All I could do was mouth a thank you before disapparating from her and Draco.

I don’t know how…but I will get her to remember… I will…