Written For:

- February Event: Teamwork Exercise: (dialogue) "You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love till it kills you both. You'll fight and you'll shag and you'll hate each other till it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends.", (colour) Magenta

- Gringotts Prompt Bank/Scenarios: One night stand and falling pregnant

- Gringotts Prompt Bank/Literature Quotes: "You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how." – Margaret Mitchell, Gone With The Wind

- Gringotts Prompt Bank/Poems Porn: "I wish I could have stayed in your life, but I was too much and not enough at the same time."

- Word Prompt Express: Young

Word Count: 1,968

I
TORMENT
"She's the kind of girl a guy meets when he's too young, and he fucks up because there's too much living to do. But later, he realises that she's perfect."

They had barely made lives for themselves, when Fleur and Charlie came together. Fleur had only just settled into married life with Bill, and Charlie was still recoiling from the loss of his younger brother, Fred. They were hurting from the wounds that the war had left them, both mental and physical.

Fleur just needed someone to pour her feelings into. She felt isolated and alone, a thousand miles away from her husband. Bill had become distant in his own anguish, and nothing she could say would get through to him. She knew that he needed time to recover, but she needed him too. He didn't seem to realise, whilst he was grieving for Fred, that Fleur was hurting too.

Charlie was lonely, as well. He had always felt estranged from his family, but now he felt so even more. He had been in Romania for so long, and felt as though he hadn't spent enough time with Fred before he had died at such a young age. George had made a crass comment about this, during Fred's funeral. Charlie knew that George was just upset and angry, but his words had burned Charlie worse than any of the dragons he had ever tamed.

"What are you even doing here, Charlie?" George had scoffed, tears burning thickly in his throat. "You never cared about Fred—you weren't around for any of us while you were buggering about in Romania!"

It was harsh, and George had later apologised, promising that he hadn't meant his vicious words. But they clung to Charlie like a dirty, slimy film.

Everything that started between Charlie and Fleur happened in a blur. Charlie had come up to Shell Cottage to visit Bill and his sister-in-law, as he no longer felt comfortable gracing the Burrow with his presence. He had discovered Fleur, sitting alone at the kitchen table in the dark, with a large bottle of Firewhiskey and a glass at her side. Bill had left earlier in the evening, muttering something about spending the night at his mother's, leaving Fleur alone. Once again.

Charlie sat opposite her, and she found herself spilling her sorrows to him. He felt her pain, mirrored it, and drank with her. Soon, he was pouring out his own problems, and before long they were sobbing into each other's arms. The hours had worn on, and by the time Fleur realised that she needed to go to bed, it was three in the morning.

She accepted Charlie's offer to help her to bed, and the pair of them staggered up the stairs to the master bedroom. She kicked off her shoes on the way, and struggled out of her cardigan. By the time she reached the foot of the bed, she was only wearing her pinafore dress and the shirt underneath it. She was about to sit down on the edge of the bed, but her gaze met Charlie's piercing blue one.

Slowly, he reached behind her head and took hold of the clip in her hair, before unfastening it. Her long, silvery-blonde hair tumbled around her face, shoulders and down her back. He threw the clip across the room and took a handful of her hair between his fingers, pulling it towards his nose and inhaling.

The slowness of his movements made Fleur's breath hitched, and she suddenly felt an unusual warmth spreading through her lower stomach. She could see herself reflected in Charlie's deep, sad eyes. "I don't want to be alone tonight, Fleur," he murmured, his breath brushing against her lip. Her stomach lurched—she hadn't realised that he had gotten so close to her. "Don't make me leave you alone, either."

That was all it took. Two small sentences to melt Fleur's heart, and suddenly she had grabbed his head, pulling his face to hers. Their mouths crashed together and they kissed urgently, desperately. Fleur grabbed at the front of his shirt, tearing it open and sending buttons ricocheting around the room, and Charlie reached down to her behind, pulling up the skirt of her pinafore dress so that he could gain access to her buttocks. They undressed each other quickly, never breaking the kiss for more than a second.

Fleur dragged him down onto the bed once their clothes had been removed, and he crawled up the length of her body, leaving scorching kisses everywhere his mouth touched. Fleur cried hotly into the darkness, threading her fingers through his hair as he brought her nipple into his mouth, then moved across to the other one. He reached down between her legs with his free hand, rubbing his fingers across her centre gently, and Fleur arched up into his touch.

She didn't want him to be gentle and delicate with her. She was hurting; he was hurting. She wanted to feel something.

He moved his hand between them, and Fleur felt her insides squirming with pleasure as he brought his fingers into his mouth, making eye contact with her as he tasted her. Bill never acted so passionately in the bedroom—he was a wonderful man and a great husband, but he was shy when it came to sex. Any intercourse between them was hurried, quiet, and with the lights out.

Charlie was nothing like his older brother. He exuded passion and lust; it seeped out if his pores and glistened on his skin in his sweat. Fleur wanted to rake her nails into his back and rip out that passion and take it all for herself.

When Charlie positioned himself above her and sunk his head into the hollow of her neck, Fleur thought she was going to faint. His lips nibbled and sucked roughly on her skin, sending jolts of sensation to her nether regions. She knew she was ready for him, and she told him so by running her hands down his back and digging her fingernails insistently into the flesh of his rear.

He was trying to draw out the evening, but Fleur could no longer wait. When he finally obliged her and ground his hips deeply into hers, she screamed out in ecstasy, her blissful cries melting into the sounds of the ferocious waves outside.

II
SICKNESS
"In a room full of art, I'd still stare at you."

Twelve weeks passed by in a haze, and Fleur continued to see Charlie secretly, though she never fell into bed with him again. Although they never spoke of their endeavour, both of them knew that the other was thinking about it, and sparks were beginning to flourish between their private relationship.

When they were alone, Charlie would cup Fleur's cheek and kiss away every tear that threatened to fall from her eyes. She had grown weary and ill in the past few weeks, and Bill was still spending most of his time at the Burrow to notice. Charlie had taken to looking after Fleur, and when Bill learned of this, he shrugged it off. After all, Charlie was his brother and best friend - he was just doing the best for his sister-in-law.

Knowing this made both Fleur and Charlie feel extremely guilty, but they couldn't deny their feelings for one another.

"Just leave him," Charlie probed one evening as he sat at Fleur's bedside. "Just leave him and move to Romania with me."

"I cannot," she breathed, fear evident in her voice. She was terrified of what people would say; what people would think. She wasn't ready to face the truth yet—that she no longer loved Bill Weasley. "Why do you want to be wiz' me, Charlie?"

Charlie leaned forwards and captured her mouth in his, leaving a long, lingering kiss on her lips. "You deserve to be kissed and often, by someone who knows how," Charlie took hold of her hands and pressed light kisses to each of her knuckles, one by one. "I love you."

"I love you, too," Fleur replied, her eyes filling with tears. "'Zat is why...I 'ave something to tell you." Her face flooded with colour, turning almost magenta with obvious embarrassment. Charlie waited for Fleur to compose herself, and then listened to her speak. "Charlie...there is a reason I 'ave been so poorly for the last few weeks." She lapsed into a silence, and realisation blossomed in Charlie's cerulean eyes.

"You're...you're pregnant?" he whispered, his voice barely a breath. She nodded, her gaze dropping to her hands.

III
AGONY
"It eventually gets better, without any sort of explanation; you just wake up one morning and you're not as upset anymore."

Fleur had just gone twenty weeks, and was only just beginning to show the signs of a small, protruding pregnancy bump, when she built up the courage to tell Bill that she was pregnant with another man's baby.

But not just that. She had finally worked up the determination to leave England with Charlie. She cupped a hand over her stomach - it was the best thing to do for her and her baby.

Surprisingly, Bill didn't seem as angry as Fleur expected him to be. He sat at the kitchen table, his hands clasped around a steaming mug of coffee that Fleur had just brewed for him, and turned his gaze away from her. There was something dark in his eyes, and Fleur knew that he just couldn't bear to look at her.

"Why?" he asked, after an eternity of silence had passed between them. "Why him?"

Fleur took a moment to reply, struggling for the right words. "I...I do not know. 'Ee as been a good friend to me-"

"He is not your friend!" Bill suddenly snapped, standing up suddenly and sending his chair flying backwards. "You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love till it kills you both. You'll fight and you'll shag and you'll hate each other till it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends." He glared at her, a new, different look burning in his eyes—hatred. He hated her.

Knowing this should have hurt Fleur more than it did, but she realised that it barely scraped her surface. She deserved for Bill to hate her, for what she had done to him. There was no point in denying it.

"You are right," she whispered, trying her hardest to keep her eye contact with him. "'Ee is not my friend. I love Charlie. I'm sorry."

"I can't even look at you right now," Bill hissed, and Fleur noticed tears welling up in his eyes. More realisation hit her - she was causing him even more pain than he was already suffering with. But it was too late to back out now. Before she could reply to Bill, he was grabbing his coat from the hook on the wall, and storming out of the cottage.

She waited until she heard the distinctive 'pop!' of him apparating just outside, and then sat down at the other side of the table, sinking her face into her hands. The hard part was over, now. She had done what she needed to do, and she knew that Bill would go on and find someone to spend the rest of his life with—someone who could love him as much as she could. With a sigh, Fleur summoned some parchment and ink, and set to writing out her last words to Bill—the words that she hadn't been able to say to his face.

"I wish I could have stayed in your life," she wrote in her swirly, elaborate font. "But I was too much and not enough at the same time."

And with those final parting words, she left Shell Cottage for the last time.