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Fleur De Lis Ch. 3
🕑 Added 2023-03-12 02:40:26 +0000 UTCContent Warnings: Teasing.
Fleur pulled the silk cloak around her tighter as she stepped out of the carriage. The thin fabric did nothing to ward off the cold English air, but it was the only protection she currently had. Her sister hopped out of the large carriage next to her, seemingly unconcerned by the winter chill. But then, very few things in life bothered Gabrielle Delacour.
There were times she wished she possessed her sister’s confidence.
“They’ve arranged them like little children come to greet their relatives for Christmas,” Gabrielle whispered, a quiet giggle escaping her lips.
Fleur craned her neck to peek over the small crowd of Beauxbatons students gathering behind their Headmistress, her lips twitching at Gabrielle’s description. All the Hogwarts students, from the first year to the seventh, stood in front of the massive open doors of the castle, clearly waiting to greet their guests. “Be nice,” she scolded with a smile. “They’ve been standing out in the cold for Merlin knows how long just to welcome us.”
They followed their Headmistress obediently as she walked up to the wizened man at the head of the Hogwarts delegation. He had started to clap, the rest of the school quick to follow.
Good choice, Fleur mused. She wondered if the man had previously dealt with Madame Maxime. Their headmistress, while a highly accomplished witch, had a reputation for being prickly when it came to her own being and sense of pride.
She watched as Madame Maxime extended an olive-skinned hand, the Headmaster bending slightly to brush his lips against it.
“Madame Maxime,” he murmured, his electric blue eyes sparkling with mirth. “It is my distinct pleasure to welcome you to Hogwarts.”
“Dumbly-dorr,” Madame Maxime drawled, and Fleur hid another smile. She knew for a fact that her Headmistress spoke flawless English. Using a thick accent was a trick Fleur had picked up from the woman, who seemed to use it whenever she wanted someone to underestimate her. “I hope you are well?”
“Excellent, thank you.”
“Has Karkaroff and the Durmstrang delegation arrived yet?”
If Dumbledore noticed the sudden disappearance of her accent, he did not comment on it. He simply shook his head and smiled, “he should be here any minute now. Would you like to wait in the castle and warm up?”
“Oui. That would be…” Madame Maxime’s imperious eyes traveled over her wards. Most of them were shivering, and Fleur would see Louis trying very hard to stop his teeth from chattering. “That would be optimal, yes. But what about my horses? It was a long journey, and they require care.”
“I assure you they will be in good hands. Our Care of Magical Creatures professor will be over the moon at a chance to take care of them.”
Madame Maxime looked dubiously at the assembled professors. “I do not think they will be up to the task, Dumbly-dorr.” The accent returned, the woman clearly trying to mitigate any insult the Hogwarts staff might feel by passing herself off as a simple, ignorant Frenchwoman. “My steeds are very strong.”
“I assure you, Hagrid is more than up to the task.”
Fleur spotted a brunette lean in to whisper something to Harry, both of them breaking out into grins.
“Very well then. Tell him they must be fed apples and that they will only drink single-malt whiskey.”
“Your horses are in safe hands, Madame,” Dumbledore said, bowing slightly. He turned around to study his students, clearly searching for someone to guide them inside the castle.
Fleur panicked. The idea of spending an entire year with a group of people she did not know (or worse, did not like), would do nothing for her anxiety. She was there to win the Tournament and prove that she was just as much a witch as any human around her. She could already spot more than one hungry look directed at her and Gabrielle. One man in Green robes had tried to lean towards them as much as possible, only to land face-first into the mud.
“Harry!” Fleur said brightly, deciding she needed to break protocol if she wanted to spend the year concentrating on the tournament instead of warding off unwanted advances from a different fool every day. Better they think she already had a friend in the castle.
It’ll be even better if they think you’re taken. She shoved that thought into the deep recesses of her mind. Harry was her friend. She wasn’t about to ruin that by making the mistake of thinking he would be interested in dating her.
She pushed through their delegation, walking over to the sea of red where her new friend stood. The entire school watched as Harry slipped to the front, accepting her kiss on his cheek with a deep blush. “I missed you. You stopped writing.”
Harry cleared his throat, very aware that half the school could hear them. “My owl is under the weather. I didn’t want to stress her.”
Fleur frowned. “I hope she is on the mend now.” She had grown fond of the regal snowy-white creature. Hedwig, Harry had called her in one of his letters.
“Mr. Potter, would you like to escort our guests into the castle?” Dumbledore asked. She could detect a hint of curiosity in his voice, but the older man was tactful enough to say nothing more. As for her Headmistress… she didn’t even have to turn to know the tall woman sported a massive scowl on her face. It didn’t matter. Fleur had accomplished what she set out to do.
Harry nodded, taking a second to compose himself before he turned and walked into the castle. Gabrielle ran up to join Fleur and the two sisters walked next to him, followed close behind by Madame Maxime and the rest of the delegation from Beauxbatons.
Harry led them into the Great Hall, decorated as lavishly as it was at Christmas. A thousand candles were suspended in the air, flickering and flooding the room with light. The roof was enchanted to give a view of the night sky, the Milky Way stretching from one end of the Hall to the other. The banners of all four houses covered the wall behind the teacher’s table.
Gryffindor. Ravenclaw. Hufflepuff. Slytherin.
She knew a lot about the school from Harry’s letters, and even more from her own research.
Fleur ignored the glare Madame Maxime directed at her as the woman walked up to the teacher’s table and occupied one of the extra chairs added to it for the occasion. She and Gabrielle followed Harry to the table at the very end of the room, the trio occupying places on the bench far away from the rest of the Beauxbatons delegation. Fleur didn’t protest at the seating arrangement. It wasn’t like she had a close friend in the group anyways. A part of her had been extremely relieved when Gabrielle had their father arrange for her to be included in the delegation as well, despite not being twenty-one, and thus not actually able to participate in the tournament.
“Votre petit ami est adorable,” Gabrielle said, casually running her finger along the rim of the golden plate in front of her.
“Fermez-la!” Fleur hissed, heat rising in her cheeks. She was sitting close enough to Harry that their knees kept brushing, not that she (or he, for that matter), was complaining. She was saved from the embarrassment of having to explain her sister’s words by the arrival of the brunette she had spotted earlier, Harry’s questioning gaze turning from her to his friend.
“What happened? Where’s Ron?”
“Going crazy?” Hermione flopped onto the bench next to Gabrielle. “Viktor Krum is part of the Durmstrang delegation. Last I saw him, he was fighting Parvati for her lipstick.”
“Tu as de la concurrence, ma soeur,” Gabrielle said in a sing-song voice, tapping the empty dishes in front of her as if she could will the food into existence.
“Tu es une peste,” Fleur kicked Gabrielle under the table before turning to Harry and Hermione. “You must be Hermione,” she said, switching to perfect (if slightly accented) English.
“Fleur? Harry won’t stop talking about you.” Hermione grasped the extended hand and shook it for a second. Next to her, Gabrielle cackled.
“This unmannered brat is my sister. Gabrielle.”
Gabrielle turned to Hermione, her eyes sparkling. “Pleasure to meet you. Say, Hermione, are you dating someone?”
Hermione glanced at Harry, clearly taken aback at the question. Harry simply shrugged in response.
“Uh… n-no. Not currently…” Hermione murmured, flustered. She ran a hand through her messy brown hair, brushing stray strands away from her face. “W-why do you ask?”
“You have gorgeous lips. I wanted to know who I’d piss off if I kissed them,” Gabrielle replied casually, all while scooping buttered potatoes onto her plate from a dish in front of her.
Hermione’s face turned the color of the Gryffindor banner, the girl wordlessly opening and closing her mouth.
“If you want to know why we Veela have bad reputations, Harry,” Fleur muttered, rolling her eyes at her sister’s antics. “It is entirely because of my sister.”
Harry chuckled. “She sounded like she meant it,” he responded, holding up a platter for Fleur while she picked what she wanted.
“I did.”
“Gabby, do not talk with your mouth full.”
“Sorry about the letters,” Harry murmured, passing a bread roll to Fleur. “Hedwig has been making a lot of journeys overseas… I have a… relative who is traveling all over Europe,” Harry explained, reluctant to blatantly lie to his friend. “She’s been exhausted and under the weather and I wanted her to rest as much as possible.”
“We are friends, non?” Fleur asked with a warm smile. Her first real friend. At least, her first real friend who wasn’t related to her by blood.
“Yes.”
Fleur rested her hand on his knee, a sudden warmth rising up in her cheeks. She ducked her head, letting sheets of perfect platinum blonde hair obscure her face. “Friends do not apologize for such trifling things, Harry. I was simply worried about you.”
Harry cleared his throat, feeling awkward all of a sudden and for no particular reason. “T-thank you,” he murmured, his blush growing deeper as Gabrielle’s mirthful eyes rested on both of them.
“What about Harry, Hermione? Who would be mad if I kissed him?”
“Gabby!”
“Uhm…” Hermione glanced at Harry for permission. Harry shrugged again and busied himself with the mashed potatoes on his plate, his cheeks a dark red. “Nobody currently. Although given what I know about Parvati… yeah, you’d probably make her a little mad. She doesn’t exactly like her exes dating people who are uh… you know… uhm…”
“Sexier?” Gabrielle suggested casually.
Hermione spluttered, looking to her best friend for help. None could be found, for Harry had followed Fleur’s lead and devoted his entire attention to eating, leaving her to her fate.
“Uh… yeah. More gorgeous than she is,” Hermione mumbled, certain she would spontaneously combust if the Veela kept looking at her like she was. The attention felt nice, she admitted to herself (and only to herself). For a change, someone was paying attention to her for something other than her brains, even if the Veela seemed more than happy to flirt with anyone on two legs. “You… you want to kiss me and Harry?”
“What is the saying? Ze… Variety is the spice of life,” Gabrielle answered. “We really could do with more spice on this table,” she added, poking at the potatoes on her plate.
Fleur coughed and passed her sister the Bouillabaisse, hoping it would shut her up.
“I... apologize for my sister,” she whispered, resting a hand on Harry’s knee and leaning closer so they wouldn’t be overheard. “She enjoys the attention she gets when she is outrageous.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Harry murmured, a small smile on his face now that he had gotten over the initial shock and the mild effect the Allure had on him. “Hermione certainly doesn’t seem to mind.” He nodded to his best friend, who was sharing the Bouillabaisse and engaged in quiet conversation with the younger Delacour.
The rest of the students had finally started streaming into the Great Hall along with the Durmstrang delegation, followed close behind by the teachers and an uncouth man in a goatee who kept looking around at everything as if he was trying to determine what he could sell the fixtures for.
Harry flagged Fred, who was passing him to go sit with the rest of the Quidditch team.
“Where’s Ron?”
“Georgie had to take him to the hospital wing,” Fred replied, sighing softly.
“Why?”
“Parvati hexed him when he wouldn’t return her lipstick.” Fred shrugged before walking over to sit in between Angelina and Alicia.
Harry chuckled. He glanced over to the Slytherin table, where Viktor Krum was sitting next to Malfoy and looking like he would rather be anywhere in the world but there. He didn’t blame the man’s surliness. Having to spend an entire dinner stuck next to the ferret would have made him unreasonably murderous, Krum could be forgiven for being justifiably grumpy.
Dumbledore had taken his place at the podium that stood in front of the teacher’s table. He greeted everyone with his trademark smile and started with a somewhat bland speech about welcoming their new guests. While some listened, most students ignored their Headmaster in favor of discussing the upcoming tournament or simply taking the opportunity to make new friends. Or, in the case of one Gabrielle Delacour, going far further.
“Is that not your girlfriend?” Fleur was surprised by the tone of her voice. Why did she sound… angry?
She chalked it up to her past. In her experience, women did not like their boyfriends to be friends with a Veela, and she wasn’t eager to lose her only friend in the castle.
That, she told herself, was the only reason she did not like the idea of Parvati still being in Harry’s life.
“Ex,” Harry answered, breaking another roll of bread into two and sharing it with her. “We dated last year after being paired up in Divination. It was fun for a while but… keeping up with her and Lavender started to feel like a chore after some time.” He shrugged and reached out to brush a stray crumb of bread from Fleur’s shoulder. “We broke up over the summer. Why do you ask?”
Fleur flailed around for an excuse, before coming up with something she felt sounded plausible. “I was just worried that you’d have to choose between your girlfriend and your best friend if they fight,” she mumbled, stuffing her mouth with bread to avoid having to speak further.
“To be honest, even if we were dating, there wouldn’t be much of a choice. Ron fucked up. Everyone knows you don’t mess with Parvati’s makeup supplies. I’ve seen her hex a girl for trying to steal her eye shadow.” Harry chuckled. “Plus, with the Krum thing, Ron really should have known better.”
“Khrum thingh?” Fleur followed her own advice about not talking with a full mouth and swallowed a mouthful of dry bread, immediately regretting her decision to eat it in the first place. She poured herself a glass of pumpkin juice and downed it in a single swig.
“She has a thing for Quidditch players.”
Hermione tore her attention away from Gabrielle just long enough to chime in, “I hear she’s dating Davies now. Doubt he’d be happy with her fawning over Krum like every other bloody person in this castle.”
“Not my problem anymore,” Harry replied happily, watching as the food on the plates in front of them disappeared, only to be replaced by every conceivable dessert known to man. It was obvious that considerable effort had gone into trying to impress their guests.
Harry helped himself to a generous serving of treacle tart, the four of them lapsing into silence as they sampled the various delicacies in front of them. Harry and Fleur kept bumping elbows as they passed each other dishes to taste, stealing the occasional glance in between only to blush and look away almost immediately.
Once the golden plates were wiped clean they turned on the bench to face each other, both of them sporting shy smiles on their faces.
“So…” Harry murmured. “The tournament.”
“The tournament. Papa told me about it the minute they decided to revive it.” Fleur nodded, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I told you we would meet again, Harry Potter,” she teased, her smile morphing into a teasing grin.
Harry’s however, disappeared and was replaced by a scowl. “I guess you’ll get to fulfill the other part of your promise too,” he muttered. While Fleur was facing him and the back of the Great Hall, he had turned toward the Teacher’s table.
“What do you mean?”
Harry nodded in the direction of the two new arrivals who were taking their seats on either side of Dumbledore.
Fleur turned to follow his gaze, her expression hardening at the sight of Barty Crouch Sr. quietly conversing with the Headmaster. “Why is he here?”
“If I had to guess, he’s here in his official role as the Head of the Department of Magical Cooperation,” Hermione responded. She placed a restraining hand on Gabrielle’s shoulder. The younger Delacour sighed and flopped back on the bench.
“If there ever was a man wholly unsuited to his job…”
“Well, Harry, if there was any justice in the world he’d have been fired for his treatment of Fleur and Winky,” Hermione growled, her expression eerily similar to Gabrielle’s. Both girls were enraged, with Hermione doing a slightly better job of hiding her utter disdain for the man they were all staring at.
“Winky?”
“The house elf… his house elf. The one we found clutching my wand,” Harry whispered, watching Dumbledore walk up to the podium once more. The Headmaster began narrating the history of the tournament, not that any of them were paying any attention.
“The one they think cast that mark in the sky?” Fleur asked, rolling her eyes. “Surely they changed their minds upon investigating further.”
“They didn’t investigate further,” Hermione growled. “Crouch simply freed her on the spot and declared the matter closed, and everyone had to go along with it. Mr. Weasley said Crouch is blocking all attempts by Amelia Bones and the DMLE to investigate the incident and find out what really happened.”
Fleur and Gabrielle both winced.
“You know, I thought good riddance,” Hermione muttered, glaring at Crouch. “Until Dobby-”
“He’s a friend,” Harry interjected. “He took us to meet Winky. She works here now… in the kitchens.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I thought she’d be like Dobby-”
“Dobby wanted to be freed, Mione. Winky didn’t.”
“Yeah. She’s a mess. And it’s all his fault.”
Fleur nodded sympathetically. “Most house-elves love their families. They’re symbiotically joined to them, and sometimes, even to their houses. She wasn’t freed, exactly, Hermione because she was never bound. Only a few families actually bind their elves to them. She was cast out in the cold by the man she thought of as her closest friend. It must have been just as traumatic as… losing a limb. He must know that.”
“He’s a monster.”
“Won’t disagree with you there, Mione,” Harry muttered darkly. His… even Amos Diggory’s treatment of Fleur still rankled. If his friend had been a less important Veela, he had no doubt she would still be languishing in a cell somewhere in the bowels of the Ministry.
A smattering of applause broke the four of them free from their thoughts. They turned their attention from Crouch to Dumbledore, who was smiling as he peered out at the students through his half-moon glasses. A goblet lay atop a roughly-hewn casket on the podium, although Harry had no idea what it was for. The goblet, much like the box it had been stored in was made of wood and was roughly hewn, and Harry would have discounted it as a shoddy piece of workmanship had it not been full to the brim with dancing blue-white flames.
“And with that.” Dumbledore beamed around the Great Hall, “I officially declare the Triwizard Tournament to be open!”
Notes:
So, instead of going the usual route, I plan to write a very different tournament for this fic. You'll see what I have in mind in the next couple of chapters. A few of you who have joined my Discord (Link in the pinned post!) share cool ideas, and these inspire me to tweak my stories and explore tropes and ideas not done before, so that's exciting! I like this idea of making Fleur more reserved and shy because of her experiences, while Gabrielle is more outgoing and flirty because she was protected from all the bad experiences Fleur had to suffer.
Comments
FallenSage
Oh ok
R. Collins
It's an AU where Hogwarts starts when they're older cause I wanted to write a more mature story with wizarding politics and what not! If you're here from FF I think I forgot to mention it there, I'll do it now.
FallenSage
Did you make a mistake when saying they had to be 21 to enter and not 17
R. Collins
I can confirm that this is happening! It's a splendid idea tbh.
tornadoboy
I like the idea of Hermione being bottom to a girl younger than her. Though it's not necessary to have top/bottom dynamics. I just find the idea hilarious. And Gabby certainly has potential for it
Matlef
Hermione/Gabrielle sideship? Or just a friendship that could be really entertaining.
adorsey
Can’t wait for the next chapter!!
