Harry and Elena had been incredulously watching Fleur for the best part of the past half an hour. The young witch had just made short work of her third helping of Harry's delicious carrot cake and she showed no signs of ever wanting to stop. For a brief moment, Harry had a Ron-flashback; the ever-hungry redhead stuffing himself with a generous portion of fried sausages and Hermione not-so-gently chastising him for eating way too much, and his eyes filled with tears upon remembering his two fallen friends, surrogate sister and brother.

"Enjoying yourselves?" The blonde object of their undivided attention inquired, with only a slight edge in her voice, after wiping the crumbs off her lips with a paper napkin and leaning back in her chair. She saw Harry reach unwillingly into his pocket and hand over a glistening golden coin to his girlfriend which she victoriously flipped into the air several times.

"I bet you wouldn't last past the second helping," Harry grudgingly admitted, nonverbally summoning the coin out of the air and hiding it in one of his fists behind his back.

Elena laughed merrily. "Thanks for winning me a galleon, Fleur. I seem to have bet on the right horse by giving you more courtesy than loverboy here." She made an attempt to reclaim her prize by occupying Harry's lap and trying to pry the coin out of his hand. That she, in the process, pressed herself - air-tight – against her boyfriend didn't seem to bother either of the two. A few minutes of heated struggle followed, spiced with heavy snogging, and the coin having been hidden in jeans pockets and cleavages changing owners several times.

Fleur followed the battle of sexes with a huge grin on her face. "You seemed to give up too soon, Harry, against an unarmed witch," she commented cheekily when Elena's victorious yell indicated that her target had been acquired and destroyed, Harry finally having succumbed to her charms.

"Easy for you to speak, you haven't just been a second away from being suffocated between two gorgeous boobs," Harry muttered, trying to look cross and failing miserably. Not that he had any reasons to complain, though; in fact he did enjoy his short-lived imprisonment. Fleur wasn't about to grant him an easy death, however. Twisting the proverbial knife further, she grinned heartily at the culprit.

"If I were you, mon cher, I still would have tried to enjoy the situation as long as I could. Just imagine, what a way to go!" She sniffed theatrically into the air, enjoying the sight of Harry slowly turning turnip-red. "Ewh! You two reek of hormones! Get a room and deal with your mutual… situation! In the meantime, I'll help myself to another slice of cake."

"Truly a food-obsessed wench," Harry retorted half-heartedly, exaggeratedly winking at his friend. He shifted on the chair and Elena, sensing his wish, slid off his lap. Standing up, he made his way to the opposite side of the table and knelt beside Fleur, losing himself in her bluebell-colored eyes for the briefest moment. "You are my second best birthday present ever, Fleur. Don't ever change; I love you the way you are."

Reaching for her hand, with his other hand around Elena, he pulled the two girls close. "Since it's my birthday today, I'm planning to do something fun, after all. Cornelia showed me once some photos of the castle of a Hungarian king, King Matthias. It's in a place called Hunedoara and, if I'm not mistaken, it's less than 200 miles from here, so I can probably side-along the both of you. We are going to do some sightseeing and you have exactly 5 minutes to dress until I pack up a few sandwiches."

# # #

The three did have an enjoyable afternoon and evening roaming the half-ruined castle which, even in its somewhat dilapidated state, was a majestic sight in itself. This complex, heavily fortificated structure dating back to the 13th century was the birth home of Matthias Corvinus, who became King of Hungary and Transylvania in 1458 at barely 15 years of age and until his untimely death in 1490 successfully defended his country against the Ottoman invaders.

A huge group of tourists from the capital poured out of a coughing Ikarus bus stopping on the parking lot, and the trio moved closer, seeking temporary cover behind some bushes. Being just the slightest bit too paranoid, they quickly performed several sophisticated magic detection charms; had a wizard been among the tourists, he could have easily uncovered their nature, something they wanted to avoid at all cost. Their scans proved negative and, thanks to the complex charms providing them with faux identities and the perfect knowledge of Romanian and a weak, but effective mass Confundus charm, the three youngsters effortlessly blended into the group. They attentively listened to the tourist guide, an elderly, silver-haired and poorly dressed lady, who properly amazed them with her seemingly endless well of knowledge about the castle and its environment, its owners in different times, its history, as well as several scary anecdotes about ghosts that were supposedly roaming the empty halls.

They visited the surprisingly intact inner court with the marvellous Renaissance loggia, the graceful Knight's Hall built by Matthias' father Ioan, the dungeon where Matthias kept the renegade baron Vlad 'Dracul' Tepes imprisoned for seven long years. Locked or barricaded doors offered no resistance to the magically skilled youth; low-powered, wandless and undetectable Alohomora charms whispered under their breath offered them easy access even to the most secretly guarded secrets of the castle that they were all too eager to discover.

Somewhat after 8 pm, shortly after a few neatly folded banknotes landed, unbeknownst to the tourist guide, in her pocket in a rather mysterious and inexplicable way as a token of the youngsters' appreciation for the interesting tour, the bus stuffed with exhausted, but content tourists left the castle. The trio – Harry in the middle, his left arm around Elena - sitting on the perch of the highest bastion with their feet dangling above the abyss, followed the battered vehicle with their eyes as it slowly descended from the Castle Hill, until it disappeared behind a sharp turn. When the sound of the engine died away in the distance, a veil of silence descended onto the castle and the darkness of Night slowly claimed its rightful domain from the light of her sister Day. The three were tired but satisfied at the same time, and none wanted to break the silence, their mind replaying the impressions and emotions they had faced throughout the day.

"What a strange day…" Harry started in an uncharacteristically dreamy voice, his eyes scanning the starry sky while slowly chewing at an apple. "I'm not sure whether I should curse my own idea of coming here today or love it. On one hand, it's an amazing place I had the pleasure of visiting with two beautiful companions and I've really enjoyed myself. On the other hand, however, I've been having the strangest feeling of déjà vu ever since we're here, and with Hogwarts, my real home for the past seven years, burned to ashes and all my friends murdered, it isn't a very pleasant feeling, to say the least. I've been honestly expecting Peeves to appear any moment and throw a few dung bombs at us. Or running into the Greasy Bat. Or chatting up Draco and his entourage. Stupid me!" he suddenly slapped his forehead in feigned surprise. "That can't have happened, of course. I blew Goyle's stupid head off myself with a Reducto. Made a right mess, I did."

The girls, wisely, didn't interrupt his soliloquy. Neither knew all events and horrors of the Battle of Hogwarts in all detail, the forced casuality in Harry's trembling voice as he relayed his story about taking the life of a fellow student as if it were the most commonplace thing in the life of an 18-year old spoke for itself, however.

Elena's heart ached for her boyfriend, wishing she could take at least some of his pain away which still gnawed at him every waking – and sleeping – moment of the day, and she was determined not to let him fight his fight against those demons alone. Her arm tightened around him, drawing him closer, as he spoke and he flung the half-eaten apple into the black nothingness, freeing his other arm to pull his girlfriend to himself, both searching and finding much-needed comforting in the simple gesture.

"You saved Luna's life, Harry," Fleur interjected as-a-matter-of-factly, not letting him board Guilt Express again. Goyle was beating life out of the blonde Ravenclaw when Harry's well-placed curse made sure he would never hurt any of his friends again. It was a question of killing or being killed, that fateful day, she knew that. She also knew that Harry had chosen to use that curse against a human being only as a last resort, to prevent more horrible things from happening to their friends and comrades. "You gave her another chance to survive the Battle, and she would have, had things turned out as you had planned."

"And the dozen Death Eaters I reduced to ash with the Ring of Fire Bill had taught me?" Harry gulped heavily.

"Hmmm… let me see…" Fleur spat the words, counting on her fingers, "they killed my Papan, Maman and Grand-Mere and raped and killed my little sister Gabby. I lost Bill and our daughter. Had I not been sent away to Bulgaria on that little scouting trip, I would have died as well. Do you honestly expect me to shed crocodile tears for those bastards?" Upon receiving no answer from her friend, she smirked. "Thought so. So, Mr. Potter, quit your guilt trip; you did the right thing and I can never thank you enough for it."

In a much softer voice, she continued. "This place is beautiful and I'm really glad you'd brought us over here. Actually, we can stay here overnight in one of the chambers; we have sandwiches and the remainder of your birthday cake and we can perform undetectable magic as well to conjure fire, beds and blankets. And, you know what?" Her mischievous wink was lost in the darkness of the night. "Tomorrow we will play ghosts and scare the shit out of those poor tourists Nadia will bring in in the morning. King Matthias' Castle will be haunted tomorrow."

"Who are you and what have you done with Fleur Weasley-Delacour?" the other two chorused breaking into hysterical laughter. Scanning the part of the sky where Harry knew the Dog Star to be, he silently added, "This one is for you, Sirius, Fred and George. Prank in peace wherever you may be now."

# # #

"You are evil."

"Why thank you for the nice compliment, Monsieur," Fleur made a deep, gracious curtsey that wouldn't have misstood in the court of King Louis XIV. Elena, still unable to stop giggling, mirrored her movement, Harry acknowledging the two young Veelas with an exaggerated d'Artagnan style bow.

"Are you absolutely sure that poor woman didn't get a heart infarct?"

"Absolutely," Fleur snorted, plopping down into a faux Renaissance armchair. 'I Confunded her afterwards that it was just a film projected onto that window Nadia uses to spice up her tours with. Still, it was pretty satisfying to hear her scream like a pig; she was downward nasty to that little boy who just happened to step on her foot. He was scared too, for a moment, but he was even more curious. Imagine him telling all about it to his friends tomorrow!" She lowered her voice barely above a whisper, imitating the boy. "And then, the ghost of the Princess came through the window and winked at me before scaring that old hag!"

After having spent the night as planned in what used to be Princess Beatrice of Naples' bedchambers on conjured beds with Hermione's signature Bluebell Flames providing light and warmth in the otherwise freezing cold room, the three spent the bigger part of the morning and the day with some more roaming around the castle and discovering its many secrets, doing their best to make the visit of the new tourist group somewhat memorable, as promised.

Some tuned-down howling, a flickering bluebell flame in one of the doors slightly ajar, the sound of a creaking floorboard amplified by a weak, wandless Sonorus charm; all harmless deeds they found just perfect to boost the mysticism of the ancient place so that it could, at least in part, live up to its reputation. Their pranks never turned nasty bar this one occasion when all three of them unanimously deemed the annoying woman worthy of being taught a lesson. And teach her they did.

"All in all, it was a rather memorable birthday," Harry nodded, grinning, as they bode their retreat towards the same spot they had Apparated in yesterday. "It most certainly didn't beat last year's, but I think we all enjoyed ourselves. By the way, I did pick up a faint trace of magic before conjuring up our beds in Beatrice's chambers, but it seemed some fairly ancient magic. I wonder whether she'd been a witch, what with the sudden changes in the King after he married her. Even if she were, she must have been a Light one, though; it was most definitely not a Dark signature."

Having been married to a curse breaker, Fleur understood Harry's thoughts at once. She knew Bill had been teaching him quite a few of the finer pieces of his art, in those weeks before Hogwarts' fall. However, it was Elena who spoke first.

"Paranoid much, my love?"

Casting a somewhat apologetic glance at Fleur, Harry pulled his girlfriend to himself and kissed her hard on her lips. Then, he reached for the two girls' hands. "I rather not take any chances, let's put it this way. Although, I'm quite positive that everybody would be paranoid in my place if they were lucky to have two such lovely ladies in their lives. I love you both, albeit differently, and I would give my life for either of you in an instant. Now, it's your Captain speaking. If you would be so kind as to buckle up and enjoy the flight."

Barely had his words registered in the girls' brains before the whirlwind of their Side-along Apparition whisked them away, to safety.

# # #

"Good to see them on the mend," Bill nodded, watching the three take off.

Standing beside her eldest brother on a cloud and taking his proffered arm, Ginny nodded profusely. "Yeah, Fleur seems alright now and Elena is a nice enough girl, too. Damn, I would have never thought I would cheer for another girl to get Harry for herself."

"You do realize this is only a temporary situation, don't you?"

"I guess so," Ginny muttered, deep in thoughts. "After all, we do know what Fleur and Harry really feel for each other; it's them who had Obliviated the hell out of themselves, having deemed those feelings not suitable for the time being. It's just the question of time… and then I will feel sorry for Elena. She loves him, you know, she really does."

"Maybe, just maybe, there's a solution to this, you know, by not breaking the heart of any of them," Bill grinned. "Come on, let's walk back. Mum and Dad are expecting us for dinner and we'd rather not miss it. Mum's Howlers are scarier than any Egyptian chief priest."

"You'd been a good teacher to them, though; those were some pranks," Ginny giggled. "Too bad Gred and Forge couldn't be here to see this; they would have had a laughing fit about those poor Muggles scared to death." Sighing heavily on the thought of her two brothers lost forever, she snuggled closer to her brother. "Lead the way, please. I'm as hungry as a proper Weasley ought to be."