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Power Plays Chapter 32
🕑 Added 2024-03-08 16:59:01 +0000 UTCThe young witch who’d informed Harry of the situation released his arm as they settled on the ground in the streets of Paris. They were in Place Cachée, the magical section of Paris in the Montmartre district, which was north of the Ministry. She’d apparated them in an alley right near the Moving Statue that acted as an entrance to and exit for the Place Cachée. Dozens of people, likely those who were too panicked or ill to apparate safely, were fighting to get out.
Elwyn and Zacharias and their teams apparated in next, thanks to the help of a pair of French Aurors. Immediately, they all fanned out effectively on opposite sides of the narrow alley they were standing in.
The streets of Place Cachée were far wider than Diagon Alley was. Shops, cafes, and market stalls lined the cobbled road. Each building stood several stories tall with large windows and lanterns attached to the brick walls. Given the fact that Paris was only an hour ahead of London, the sun was still illuminating the streets beautifully.
An explosion sounded off in the distance, followed by the sound of shattered brick and stone clattering down the streets. Harry peered around the corner into the main stretch of road that ran the span of Place Cachée. Destruction was evident everywhere with storefronts smashed in, hunks of rubble littering the street, and bodies cast haphazardly around.
“Elwyn, take the west,” Harry ordered him. “Zacharias, the south. Try to make contact with Mr Delacour or his Aurors and then continue to sweep through Place Cachée until you’ve dealt with every Death Eater and dark witch or wizard in sight.”
“Understood, boss,” Elwyn nodded sharply. “Lads, with me.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Zacharias told Harry as he led his group away.
Harry turned back to the young witch who’d helped him get here. She looked terrified out of her mind—she was just a receptionist, not an Auror.
“Get back to the Ministry,” he told her gently. “We’ll take it from here.”
She couldn’t even speak; she just turned on her heels and apparated away.
Sighing, Harry stretched his arms out to relieve the tension in them. He was glad he’d chosen to wear lighter robes today, knowing that France’s weather was less harsh than Britain’s. It would make his manoeuvrability that much smoother.
Arrogantly, Harry walked out into the middle of the street. On either side of him, Elwyn and Zacharias were carefully leading their teams alongside the storefronts as they raced towards the sounds of the fighting. They were trying to maximise their cover as they moved, but Harry did the exact opposite. He wanted to stand openly as a target in order to draw the Death Eaters towards himself.
His magic pulsed within him, and for the first time since his duel with Bellatrix, Harry felt that untapped power within him bubble up to the surface.
Even though the Resurrection Stone was lost in the Forbidden Forest, the Elder Wand was locked away in Dumbledore’s tomb, and the Cloak of Invisibility was hidden in his home, they still influenced his power. It was something that rarely came to the fore, but when it did, Harry felt unstoppable.
He strode down the street, bypassing any debris in his way while his eyes scanned the world around him. He could hear fighting coming from various alleyways, but there were others where only screams were heard.
Suddenly, a killing curse came flying his way. He sensed it coming from behind him before he saw it and stepped to the side a moment before it would have struck him. Then, he spun around and caught a glimpse of a dark cloak fleeing down into an alley.
Harry gave chase, moving quickly to close the gap between him and the person who’d attacked him. He rounded the corner and was met with another bolt of green spellfire coming his way.
With a flick of his wand, Harry summoned a big chunk of stone from the street behind him to his defence. He brought it around himself and threw it into the spell, causing both of them to explode.
“Stop!” Harry shouted at the figure as he returned fire with a disarming charm.
The figure, evidently not expecting their killing curse to fail a second time, was caught off guard and hit by Harry’s spell. His wand went flying into the air, but before it could even land, the figure threw their shoulder into a nearby door and crashed into one of the buildings.
Harry dashed forward, wand at the ready, only to see the figure passed out with a young witch standing over top of them with a sly smirk.
“Foolish,” she muttered just as Harry came into view. Then, her wand snapped up instinctively, but her eyes widened upon recognising Harry.
Harry didn’t recognise her, but he saw the brown French Auror robes she had and lowered his wand.
“You’re with Mr Delacour?” Harry asked her.
“Yes,” she replied quickly, and Harry realised that his pin wasn’t translating her words; she was simply speaking English. She had a tinge of a French accent, but it was just barely there. “He sent me here to track down the Death Eaters that ran into this building.”
Harry nodded. “Then I’ll join you.”
He barely made it a step forward before the young witch stepped into his path. She had a smirk on her lips as she leaned towards him, staring up into his eyes.
“You don’t recognise me, do you?” She asked, amusement evident in her tone.
Harry didn’t let a visible reaction show on his face, but his mind was racing in an attempt to place her. The most striking thing about her was her beauty, but her brown hair, brown eyes, and otherwise unremarkable appearance left Harry feeling like he was missing something.
The woman pointed her wand at her face, and a jet of silvery light left it. Then, her face began to melt like rain running down a window. The brown in her hair washed out, and it turned a silvery-white. Her eyes shifted into a dark blue colour like that of the ocean. Finally, the shape of her face shifted slightly.
She brushed her long hair back over her shoulders and looked at Harry expectantly. “Do you remember me now?”
Harry narrowed his eyes. She looked like Fleur only…
“Gabrielle Delacour,” Harry said as it dawned on him.
“I suppose it might have been easier for you to tell if we were at the bottom of a lake,” she joked lightly. “But then again, I didn’t exactly want to be recognised. It’s easier to walk the streets on duty if I don’t stick out like a sore thumb as a Veela and the Head Auror’s daughter.”
Gabrielle truly did look like Fleur. She was a bit shorter than her elder sister but no less beautiful. Her Auror robes clung to her lithe frame, but they still emphasised her natural curves. Her eyes were full of amusement and joy, and the smile on her lips was terribly infectious.
“Fleur is going to be so jealous,” Gabrielle giggled to herself. “Harry Potter has come to save me again.”
“From the look of things, you didn’t need much saving,” Harry said, gesturing to the unconscious Death Eater at their feet.
“I won’t tell if you won’t,” she winked at him. “Besides, it’s fun to rile Fleur up.”
“And why would this rile her up?” Harry asked.
Gabrielle’s grin widened. “No reason, of course,” she said innocently. “I’m sure that she’ll be overjoyed that her younger sister is safe in her saviour’s arms once again.”
Suddenly, Gabrielle fell forward into him, and Harry’s arms instinctively caught her.
“You see,” she giggled again. “Now it’s not even a lie.”
“Right,” Harry rolled his eyes at her. He wasn’t so obtuse to mistake her flirting for anything else, but he wasn’t going to feed into it anymore than he already had. They had a job to do right now, and anything more could be handled later. He gently pushed Gabrielle back onto her feet. “You said that your dad sent you here to search the building for Death Eaters?”
“They ran upstairs,” Gabrielle nodded, regaining a more professional demeanour, and pointed to a bloodstain on the wall beside the stairs.
They were just in the lobby of the building with flats on either side of them. The staircase spiralled upwards in a wide rectangular shape, leading to multiple landings above. Harry could see all the way up to the very top of the building through the gap in the middle of the staircase, but he saw no signs of anyone watching them.
“Homenum Revelio,” Harry muttered, waving his wand. He didn’t receive any indication of anyone nearby.
“I tried that already,” Gabrielle informed him. “This floor and the next must be clear, but there are three more floors above that.”
“Got it,” Harry nodded as he glanced up the stairwell. It’d be all too easy for the Death Eaters to set up an ambush up above. With the cover from the railings, they could fire spells down at him and Gabrielle easily, and it’d be pretty difficult to attack them back unless they took out the floors or relied on some other types of magic.
Suddenly, a thought popped into his mind.
While Harry had never been as naturally talented at Transfiguration as his father or Dumbledore had been, he’d become much better at it in his years as an Auror. Without saying a word, Harry spun his wand in a tight, looping circle as he focused his intent on conjuring just the right creature.
Gabrielle leapt back in surprise as a long, brown rattlesnake appeared on the ground in between her and Harry.
“Climb the stairs and rattle loudly if you see any humans up there,” Harry ordered the snake in parseltongue. He purposefully ignored the slight shiver that ran down Gabrielle’s spine.
The rattlesnake turned its head towards Harry and bobbed up and down once before it started up the stairs. It was slow going at first, but it used the bannisters to help it climb faster.
“It’ll warn us if there’s an ambush,” he informed Gabrielle. “Until then, we wait.”
“Clever,” Gabrielle replied. “But slow. We could have handled anyone hiding upstairs.”
“Maybe,” Harry agreed, but his mind couldn’t help but dwell on what had happened to Susan. He’d thought that they’d been fine back then too, even as outnumbered as they were. He didn’t know if Gabrielle was a good fighter or not, and he wasn’t willing to risk another one of his comrades dying on his watch. “But it’s safer.”
“I don’t think any of the Death Eaters are clever enough to try anything too difficult for us to unravel,” Gabrielle hummed.
“Is this arrogance a Veela thing or does it just run in your family?” Harry asked with a teasing tone.
Gabrielle narrowed her eyes at him. “First of all, it’s not arrogance; I’m just certain of it. Second, it’s both a Veela thing and it runs in my family.”
Harry laughed. “I figured as much. I bet your dad loves trying to boss you around at work.”
“He tries,” Gabrielle grinned. “But he’s wise enough to listen to my ideas and to know that they’re always pretty good. Maybe you should take a page out of his book.”
“Oh?” Harry raised an eyebrow at her. “And what would you have us do?”
“Storm upstairs and take the Death Eaters before they can try to escape!” Gabrielle exclaimed. “You can shield, and I’ll pick them off as they show their scrawny heads.”
“And what happens when they blow the stairs out from under our feet?” Harry asked.
“Then you can catch me and make Fleur even more jealous,” Gabrielle said cheekily. “And a slowing charm wouldn’t hurt either.”
“Leaving us wide open as we wait to fall to the floor below,” Harry pointed out.
“Not if I take them out first,” Gabrielle argued back. “Trust me, my counters are legendary in our duelling practises.”
A gentle thud drew Harry’s attention back up above, and he caught sight of his conjured snake coming back down the stairs. It met Harry’s gaze and gave a slight shake of his head, so Harry dispelled it.
“Looks like they must be hiding out in one of the flats,” Harry told Gabrielle.
“You see,” she exclaimed. “We would have been fine.”
If he’d been alone, he would have agreed. Harry would have stormed up the stairs, trusting in his ability to keep himself safe. But he wasn’t willing to risk Gabrielle’s safety.
“We couldn’t have known that until now,” Harry replied as he started for the staircase. “Let’s get going.”
“Finally,” Gabrielle grinned as she came up behind his right arm. “Remember, you shield, and I’ll take them down.”
The two of them climbed the staircase carefully, much to Gabrielle’s annoyance. Harry took his time scanning for any traps that the Death Eaters might have left behind, but they still moved at a fairly steady pace. They went up one flight of stairs and then a second before Gabrielle swished her wand in the air.
“No one on this floor or the next,” she told Harry.
“They must be on the top floor then,” he said, “unless your dad was wrong and no Death Eaters came this way.”
“Please,” Gabrielle rolled her eyes. “Papa is never wrong.”
They continued up the staircase, and just before they reached the top floor, Harry heard several angry voices speaking over each other in one of the flats. The door to it was closed, but that wouldn’t deter him.
As Harry reached the landing, he moved into position behind a nearby wall for cover. Gabrielle was just cresting the top of the staircase as he reached his position.
“Alright, we’ll start with—” Harry began to speak, but his words became worthless the second that Gabrielle blasted the door inward and started casting spells.
Harry threw himself in front of her, dropping to one knee, and brought up his shield just in time as five hastily-casted spells came soaring their way. The multicoloured spells crashed against his shield as Gabrielle continued to fire around it. She wasn’t speaking, so he could only guess her spells based on their colour. Regardless of what they were, they seemed to be doing the job well. Two dark-cloaked men went down in an instant, and another was forced to leap behind a sofa for cover.
“Left!” Gabrielle shouted.
Harry twisted just in time for a Killing Curse to soar straight past him. It crashed against the wall on the opposite side of the stairwell loudly but not quite as loud as the caster being smashed against the wall by Gabrielle’s Bombardment Spell.
There were only two more Death Eaters left, and although Gabrielle seemed to have them well in hand, enough was enough. Harry stood up and stalked forward as he batted away some identifiable curse from a quivering Death Eater. He could see the fear in their eyes as all of their allies dropped around them, and having the man who killed Voldemort approaching only heightened their fear. Whatever spells they cast were of poor quality due to their lack of clear focus, and Harry blocked them all easily.
It was clear to Harry that these weren’t the cream of the crop Death Eaters. Whichever ones had fled Britain after he’d killed Bellatrix were surely only the lowest of the low, and if these were new recruits that Cyrus had managed to rope into his schemes, then his cause must be even more dire than Harry imagined it to be.
Harry stunned one of the two remaining men with a stunner that was so fast that even Harry had trouble tracking it. The other threw his wand down in surrender, and Harry quickly bound him with the Incarcerous Spell.
As the dust settled, Gabrielle followed him into the room with an angry expression on her face.
“I had them!” She shouted at him loudly.
“And?” Harry replied uncaringly.
That only seemed to infuriate her more. “You stole them from me!”
“Do you really care more about how many people you capture on a mission than whether or not it gets completed?” Harry asked her.
“I still would have completed it if you’d left them to me!” Gabrielle argued.
“You’re a hothead,” Harry pointed out. “And you’re reckless. You started the fight without warning me first.”
“Because I knew that you could handle it!” Gabrielle exclaimed, throwing her arms out wide for emphasis. “You’re Harry Potter! You can do anything!”
Harry snorted. “Really? That’s your excuse?” Merlin, she was brattier than Fleur.
“It’s not an excuse, it’s a fact,” Gabrielle retorted.
“Need I remind you that while I’m here on this joint assignment with your dad, him and I are the ones in charge of this entire operation,” Harry said with a pointed look. “While you may not be under my direct command, you are expected to listen to me and follow my lead when we are working together, right?”
Gabrielle muttered something under her breath that Harry didn’t quite catch. “You’re right,” she eventually admitted under his stare.
“Then next time, don’t jump ahead on me like you did today,” Harry told her. “We need to work together on these things. I don’t care how sure you are that this will be an easy job. You never know when complications may arise, and recklessness can turn complications fatal in an instant. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Gabrielle replied before taking a deep breath. Then, she put her charming smile back on her lips. “Does this mean we get to partner up again?”
“Merlin, save me,” Harry mumbled.
As if hearing his prayer, the Death Eater that was currently bound up with thick ropes from Harry’s spell started trying to squirm away. It was a pathetic attempt, and one that saw him moving only a few centimetres before Gabrielle put her boot on the man’s neck.
“Stop that,” she told the man.
Harry crouched down next to the Death Eater and rolled him over onto his back. The man looked terrified, and Harry hoped that’d come to his advantage here.
“Are there more of you nearby?” Harry asked him sternly.
“N… no,” the man answered in English, trying to shake his head.
“You’d better not be lying,” Gabrielle glowered down at him.
“I’m not!” He squeaked out. “We were the only ones that ran this way! The rest left or ran somewhere else.”
Harry was sorely tempted to use Legilimency on the Death Eater’s mind, but if Gabrielle, Sebastian, or anyone else from the French Auror Department noticed it, he could stir up some trouble since Legilimency technically wasn’t legal to use on suspects in Britain or France.
It didn’t matter really. This man would break easily enough under questioning. All they had to do was bring him back to the French Ministry and they could take it from there.
There were two other Death Eaters in the room who were stunned and two who were unconscious from Gabrielle’s explosive hexes. They looked to be breathing, but Harry wasn’t sure what internal damage had been done to them. Regardless, he wasn’t going to have them die on his watch. Terrorists or not, they were more useful alive for his investigation.
“Round up the rest and bring them down into the street,” Harry ordered Gabrielle as he stood up.
She sneered down at the man they’d been intimidating and pulled her boot off of his neck. Harry could sympathise with her anger towards the man, but now wasn’t the time for it.
“Yes, sir,” she nodded before walking off.
With a simple flourish, Harry floated the bound man into the air alongside the man he’d stunned. Gabrielle collected the other three Death Eaters, and they led them out of the flat and into the stairwell. They floated them down the middle as they took the stairs.
Place Cachée was quiet as they reemerged onto it. Harry’s head swivelled back and forth as he scanned the road, but the only Death Eaters he saw were those already captured. Red-robed Aurors flooded the street, both French and British, and upon seeing Harry and Gabrielle step back out into the sunlight, four Aurors rushed to meet them.
“We’ll take them from here, sir,” one of the women told Harry, his pin translating her words. Then, her gaze landed on Gabrielle, and Harry picked up on an underlying hostility in the way her expression changed.
“Will you be taking mine as well?” Gabrielle asked sweetly in French.
The woman opened her mouth to say something but clearly thought better of it as her eyes flickered back over to Harry. “Frederick, please take Auror Delacour’s captives,” she told one of the men at her side.
Gabrielle had a big, pleasant smile on her lips as Frederick took the captives from her without a single word. As soon as the four Aurors left to move the captives to the group with all of the others, Harry turned to face his companion.
“What was that about?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Intra-departmental politics,” Gabrielle answered succinctly. “Needless to say, there’s more than a few people who don’t like me. Part of it’s because I’m a Veela. Part of it’s because I’m better than them.”
“And part of it’s your attitude, right?” Harry asked jokingly.
Gabrielle stuck her tongue out at him.
“Ah, Mister Potter,” Sebastian said loudly in English as he crossed the street to them. He had a serious look on his face as he shook Harry’s hand. “Your Aurors were a big help today.”
“Just call me Harry,” Harry told him. “And so were yours. I was surprised to run into Gabrielle out here, but she proved to be a very effective Auror.”
“Really?” Sebastian raised an eyebrow at him. “All of my Senior Aurors complain about how bratty, demanding, and self-centred she can be.”
“Papa!” Gabrielle whined.
Harry laughed and offered Sebastian a shrug. “We managed a bit of an understanding today, I think. But even with all of those faults, she’s still a brilliant duellist.”
“That she is,” Sebastian smiled fondly at his daughter.
“I get it from my mum,” Gabrielle whispered loudly towards Harry, making sure her dad overheard every word.
Sebastian just ignored his daughter’s words. “My team and I will wrap up things here. Since your two teams linked up with two of mine, I’ll have my Aurors handle all of the reports for today’s incident. You and your Aurors should go back to the Ministry. One of my aides will see to it that you all get set up in your accommodations and get settled. Hopefully we’ll have some actionable information in the coming days that’ll help us figure out where to go from here.”
“Understood,” Harry nodded in reply.
Gabrielle gave a dramatic sigh. “You’re happy to agree with him just because you don’t have to do any paperwork.”
“Paperwork is a skill that any good Auror needs to learn to do,” Sebastian chided his daughter gently. “And I’m certain that Harry has had plenty of experience dealing with it already. You’re not going to pawn it off on anyone else this time.”
“Fine,” Gabrielle huffed.
“Everything aside, I’d like to invite you to my home for supper tomorrow night, Harry,” Sebastian said, surprising him. “Fleur’s been begging me to invite you over ever since she heard that you’d be in France for this mission, and Apolline would love to meet you as well. Besides, I’d like to get to know the man I’ll be working alongside for some time a bit better.”
“That sounds wonderful to me,” Harry said honestly. It’d been a long time since he’d last seen Fleur, and having a home-cooked meal sounded lovely. He was sure that he was going to get sick of the menu at the hotel they were staying at before long.
“Excellent.” Sebastian clapped his hands together. “We can leave together after work tomorrow.”
“I’m invited too, right?” Gabrielle asked hopefully.
“Of course,” Sebastian replied immediately. “We told you when you moved out that you’re welcome home anytime.”
“Perfect,” Gabrielle practically purred as she winked at Harry.
Clearly, supper wasn’t the only thing she had on her mind for tomorrow night.
Comments
Kevin Thunder
Well, this is certainly a different take on Gabrielle.
jp9901
This has the makings of a great buddy cop fic!
