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Fleur is the main character we deserve.
fleur delacour falling in love with bill weasley because he sees her. his youngest brother looked and went hair-eyes-teeth-legs, thought body, thought sex. her whole life, men have been looking and seeing a thing, not a girl. since she turned thirteen and bud-breasts pressed up against her shirts and boys at school wanted to sit close, men back home lingered too long in hugs.
until she was fifteen she dressed herself in shame before she put any clothes on at all. wore everything a few sizes too big, a few inches too long. draped herself in thick fabrics to hide the body beneath them. never learned that hot eyes on her were the fault of their owners, not her. took the uncomfortable stares and the endless flirtation as a fact of life. was fourteen the first time she dared to say “stop looking!” and met only laughter.
it’s not until she’s nearly sixteen and her sister is turning ten that she sees eyes begin to slide over her and to gabrielle. a friend of their father’s, not even that deep into a bottle of wine, caresses a child-round cheek and murmurs a line from lolita, eyes too bright and lips too dry. gabrielle flickers a panicked glance around the room. that look is so familiar. the same hour fleur switches her baggy sweatshirt for a crop top and rolls her skirt over two inches.
they will look at her. never at her sister.
at school, the same. at home, the same. slowly, she learns to be less ashamed of the looking. to play to the object they expect her to be. she comes to scotland and she’s the centre of attention. they hear her name pulled out of the goblet of fire and all anyone wants to talk about is her legs in that skirt. she defeats a dragon and boys whisper all the dirty things they want to do to her just moments after they finish comparing cedric’s charmwork to krum’s reflexes to harry’s flying. they watch her pass in the hallways and their eyes glaze over like she’s a thing put there for their pleasure.
fleur lifts her head high and lets the stares keep coming.
then she meets bill weasley, and not long after he asks her how she’s doing. asks it like he really means it, like it matters to him that she still gets nervous going around blind corners, that vines make her skin crawl and that the green flash of a hex makes her mind go too blank with fear to defend herself. he brings her a bottle of his favourite whiskey and sinks deep into it, tells her about his life and his job and asks about that night in the maze she doesn’t think about. he doesn’t look at her legs even once.
the next time she brings him her favourite wine and they share it. she’s giggling and silly by the end of the evening and he laughs with her, laughs at her like an equal and not like a thing he wants to fuck. he takes her to her door and leaves her in the care of her friends and he doesn’t do it because he thinks it’ll make scoring easier next time. doesn’t decide his actions based on which will result in sex the fastest.
he doesn’t ask her out until he’s laid himself bare for her, doesn’t even touch her until she reaches down and presses her fingers into his. the first night she feels brave enough to go home with him he keeps her up at the kitchen table until three am telling her all the things he likes about her. her physical appearance doesn’t even make the top one hundred. he says, how much you love your sister. how fierce you look when i take the last croissant. that funny french way you roll your ‘r’s. how you try to tell me jokes but laugh too much to finish them. how you know exactly how many children you want, and the precise shade of blue you’ll use to decorate your nursery. the bravery of you. the way your mind moves so fast sometimes i can’t keep up with it. the fact that i think you could do my job ten times as effectively as i can. they fall asleep on top of his covers, fully clothed, and the next morning fleur has to say yes i want this i am sure that i want this ten times before he starts to undress her.
his family call her all the things she’s heard a million times before. fleur lifts her head high and lets the insults keep coming. his brothers still sometimes look at her like they’ve forgotten to see a person, his mother mutters under her breath about fleur’s lack of suitability, his sister takes every opportunity to express her dislike. they see her beauty and they think they know her. they watch her move and they think she’s nothing more than her body and face.
but bill weasley sees her. and fleur will not let anything—not a war, not lycanthropy, not a disapproving family—take him away from her.
#tw: rape #rape # tw: sexual assault
When I was 13 years old and curious about sex and love, I asked my mom if she had had sex before marrying my father (of whom she is still married to, and has been since before I was born). She said that that wasn’t really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. I said ‘sure it is, you’ve either had sex before him, or you haven’t’. She brought me onto the couch and sat me down and told me about the boy she liked when she was young and how one night she snuck into his house while his parents were gone and they were kissing and he said they should have sex and she said that she wanted to save sex for marriage and he laughed and basically took all her clothes off and he raped her and as my mom was telling the story she cried and this was the second time I had ever seen my mom cry. She was 12 when it happened.
In grade 8 I got a call from my friend in the middle of the night and she was drunk in the park crying and told me that she went out that night with some other friends and they drank a little and her guy “friend” starting flirting and yes she laughed at first but then he tried to pull her shirt over her head and she pulled away and he ripped her shirt and it was her favourite shirt and then he pushed her to her knees and HIS BEST FRIEND HELD HER JAW OPEN WHILE HE FACE FUCKED HER. And so I went to the park and picked her up and took her home and slept in her bed with her except we didn’t sleep because she just cried and her mouth bled and this was four years ago but I still have to be the one to bring her items to the till it the cashier is a man, and she still has anxiety attacks and she’ll get a rash all over her body and I just want to kill those boys but instead they are still walking around. And I’m in the bathroom with her, dabbing at her skin with a warm cloth until it returns to its regular colour.
And in grade 9 one of my closest friends was kinda seeing this boy and so they hung out one night and then she said that she really had to be getting back home and he said that she wasn’t going anywhere until she gave him what he wanted and he parked the car and took off her clothes and she said no and he ignored her and so she laid in the backseat totally limp and just cried and it wasn’t even sex, he just masterbated by using her body instead of his hand and she came to school the next day with vodka in her water bottle and she drank all day and I had to fight her to get the alcohol away from her and she just cried and threw up and I skipped class while I held her hair back and that same boy texted me a month later, asking if I ever wanted to hangout sometime.
And in that same year my very best friend who has never even kissed a boy, confessed to me that when she was 9 years old, her 12 year old cousin made her give him a hand job and he told her that was what cousins do and he gave her a chocolate bar afterwards and she told me that he probably doesn’t even remember it but that it’s something that she’ll never have the luxury of forgetting.
And in grade 10 I knew a girl who invited her best friend over to watch Disney movies and then he started to put his hands down her pants and she said no but she is 130lbs and he is 220lbs and he called her a tease while she tried to fight him but he used one hand to hold her down, and the other to put inside of her and i was the one to push her inside of a classroom and stand in front of her while calling the police when he showed up at our school looking for her and she was so damn scared.
And a few months later I skipped class and was in the car with a guy who i had had unprotected sex with in the past while under the influence of cocaine but this time I was sober and I insisted we use a condom but he told me he couldn’t feel anything while the condom was on so he ripped it off and I said I refused to have unprotected sex again and so he just grabbed me and forced himself into my mouth and I was crying and he pulled me onto him and I just came saying “stop” over and over like a broken record but he must’ve heard something different because he went until he came and I just sat naked in the backseat while he drove me back to the school and said “we should do this again sometime”. And I had five showers that night and I scratched at my skin so hard to try and rip his fingerprints off of me, I still have the scars.
And I found out soon afterwards that that same guy had raped a classmate of mine, 5 months earlier and she told me about how he brought her McDonald’s first, and how he said they could take things slow and she told me about how he didn’t listen to her either. And he goes to our school and so after she told me about her incident and I told her about mine, we decided to report it to the police and the trial is currently still going on and he told people about it, except in his version we are just “asking for attention” and all his friends talk about how bad they feel for him. As if HE is the one that still wakes up screaming. As if HE felt like his skin no longer was beautiful, no longer belonged to him. And I held her in my arms as she bawled after giving the police her statement. And she did the same for me.
And I met a woman a year ago in a paint store and she had a service dog and I asked what the dog was for and it turns out that she had been so brutally raped and abused in her life, that the dog is literally trained to keep men away from her.
And I’m so FUCKING SICK AND TIRED OF THIS WORLD WE ARE LIVING IN. How many rape victims eyes have I already looked into? How many more will I? And how many more friends will I hold while they shake? Because I don’t know how many more I can take. And who the fuck still has the nerve to make rape jokes? And… Something just has to change. Please, someone just start being that change.
-16 year old girl
A good doggo patiently waiting for their human! (via)
I find it kind of funny that human babies are so fragile and helpless and useless that natural selection went like HARD-hard on humans finding babies cute. This thing is a wailing messy resource sinkhole so please find other reason to enjoy it. And the humans that did find baby cute and invest time in them, the crazy bastards?? Lived!!
And now there’s so much spill-over from “baby cute” gene that humans see literally any “baby” creature that even slightly resembles us, like
and we’re like 😍🥰🤩🥺🥺🥺 I wanna love you so bad. I wanna make so many images of you, you are so small, just baby. I’m inventing new emotions as we speak bc I love you so much.
Like, I’m almost convinced humans didn’t even domesticate dogs bc we thought they’d be useful, we saw some puppies and it activated our Big Boi Primate Baby buttons, it wasn’t even logic time baby, it was 🥺 time.
Masha The Hero
to put it simply, the right people will get you. you will not have to fight for breadcrumbs of love. you will not have to beg for attention. the right people will love you freely and easily, and will carve out space in their life for you. the right people will check up on you on your bad days & laugh with you on your good. you will find friends who embrace every part of you, and who will push you to grow. someday, any trace of those who hurt you will be filled with warmth from those who never will.
🐯🥺
Monk feeding and being kind to a bird
(Source)
smh