Author's note: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

Warnings: Grief, loss, canonical violence (Battle of Hogwarts)

Stacked with: MC4A; Shipping War; Hogwarts

Individual Challenge(s): Hola, Bonjour, Jambo; Gryffindor MC; Beauxbatons MC; Seeds; Golden Times; Old Shoes; Themes & Things A (Love); Themes & Things B (Loss); Rian-Russo Inversion; In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux

Word Count: 652

Shipping Wars

Ship (Team): Fleur Delacour/Bill Weasley (Winged Wolf)

List (Prompt): Summer Big List (Forehead Touching)

When it's Over

They were amongst the last to leave the ruins of what had once been Hogwarts.

Fleur was exhausted in more ways than she could count. So tired that her head felt dizzy and nausea was settling in her stomach. She had been awake for over twenty-four hours, she had watched a dozen people she knew fall, she had spent the Battle's short truce scrambling in their make-shift infirmary to assist Madam Pomfrey as best as she could, and when the dust had settled a shocked Kingsley Shacklebolt had revealed that her final number, her kill count as it were, was nine Death Eaters.

So yes, Fleur was tired.

But more than that, she had watched Bill scramble. She had watched him fight, watched him move bodies with care and resilience, watched him see his brother laying in the Great Hall lifeless, watched him hold his sister through it all, watched him sit by another one of Fenrir Greyback's victims and hold their hand, watched him process the sight of the boy his family had all but adopted dead for a moment, watched him help to clean up the castle and organize search parties for missing fighters, hold his mother, level with his father, comfort a sobbing Percy, reunite with Ron, take care of sending an owl to Charlie, talk to Kingsley about this and that and emergency governance…

And as she'd watched him run around, Fleur had felt more and more of her energy drain away as he spent his. She hadn't said much, had sat by an injured girl whose parents were en route and held her hand so she wouldn't be alone. She hadn't wanted to be in the way—this was not her school, nor was it her country as she was always reminded, nor was it her Ministry. She still felt somewhat like a stranger in England, though she felt a new kind of peace dawn on her now that Cedric's murderers were dead and her family was finally safe. Now that Voldemort's regime had lifted, perhaps the French Ministère de la Magie would lift its travel ban and she could return home to visit, too…

Eventually, a new quietude had settled over the castle. The Aurors had done their bit and gone, and Healers had come to take away most of the wounded and the dead.

Fleur found herself watching quite a serious conversation between Kingsley, Hestia, Arthur, Harry, and Bill. She had no idea what it was about, but when their little huddle broke apart, Hestia and Kingsley left the grounds in a hurry.

Bill saw her, and just as stone-faced as he'd been all night, came to see her.

"Mum and Dad are going home," he said. "They're bringing George, Percy, Gin, and the trio with them."

Fleur nodded. "Are we going home too?"

"Yeah," Bill said. He put a hand on the small of her back. "Let's say goodbye for now and go home."

And so they did, and then they walked to Hogsmeade hand-in-hand, quietly. Aberforth Dumbledore offered them a drink but they declined, and instead Apparated back to Shell Cottage.

The sea air felt impossibly good to Fleur as soon as they were back home. She looked up to Bill who still seemed such as stoney and tense, faraway and worn and…

"Bill?" she said quietly. "Mon coeur?"

Bill turned towards her. She put a hand on his cheek, stepping in closer and guided them so that their foreheads rested against one another.

"It's over," she said. "It's done. Your family is taken care of. You've done everything you can. It's just you and I, now."

And when she said it, Bill's lower lip quivered for a second before he burst into tears and crumpled. He slid down, and she knelt in the sand with him, holding him against her chest as he let go of everything that he hadn't cried about yet.