Gold Petals

‘Tomorrow I’ll be going back to Arles.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Will you miss me, Nymphadora?’

‘Don’t call me that!’

‘Pourquoi?’

‘Because I hate my name.’

‘Why? It’s beautiful! Nymphe d’or, nymphee dorée, golden nymph.’ Fleur kisses the knuckles of the other girl’s hand. ‘Are you a Golden Nymph?’

Tonks thinks that the skin inside Fleur’s thighs has the same velvety feel of rose-petals beneath her fingers. Red roses, flowers that are shaped like hearts. Heart flowers. Fleures de coeur. And because all roses have thorns, when Fleur sinks her teeth on her nipple, Tonks hisses in pain and pleasure. And since when were those two feelings ever apart?

‘Are you my Golden Nymph?’ Fleur asks, as she lets her mouth travel down the other girl’s naked body, over her stomach, her navel, between her thighs. ‘Es-tu ma Nymphee Dorée?’ she hisses, making Tonks whimper and arch her back like a broken stem.

Tonks picks up her wand and opens the door of the cupboard, revealing a full-length mirror. She places herself behind Fleur, turns them to the mirror and sneaks a hand down her body.

‘Look at us, Fleur,’ she whispers, ‘look at you.’

She twists her faces and turns into a copy of the other girl. Fleur’s eyes widen in awe, because suddenly, in that room, there’s a Fleur fucking a Fleur, that is fucked by a Fleur, fucking a Fleur, and she lets out a groan that makes her sound more like a beast, than like a woman, a flower.

When Tonks changes back, the two girls lie on Fleur’s bed naked, two mirror images in all their asymmetries.

‘You never answered.’

‘To what question?’

‘If you will miss me when I’m back in Arles, Nymphadora.’

‘Will you miss me, Fleur?’

‘No.’

‘Then why do you ask?’

* * *

The next day, Tonks wakes up to an empty room. When she gets down, she finds only Mrs Weasley in the kitchen of her ancestors’ house.

‘Tonks, dear, you just missed Fleur. Bill took her back to France. She didn’t want to wake you up, but sends you her regards,’ the older witch says. ‘Oh, and dear, thanks for letting her stay in your room last night. A foreign young lady, alone in a room, in a house full of men, that just would not do. It wouldn’t be proper.’

The girl nods. No, not proper at all.

When she gets back to her room, Tonks notices a single rose lying on the sheets of her still neatly made bed. A single red rose, a heart-shaped flower, a heart flower, une fleur de coeur.

She thinks that the rose’s petals have the same velvety feel of the skin inside Fleur’s thighs beneath her fingers, and wonders if she was ever her Golden Nymph. Carefully she shreds the petals one by one, heart by heart, until all that’s left is the stem, with its untrimmed and untouched thorns, which she lays back on the sheets.

It’s getting late, and she has to go back to work.