Chapter 10
Pretty Little Pidgeon
In which Gabby catches an eagle, and Fleur catches a dove.
Gabrielle loved flying.
It was closely associated with her brother in her mind. She had been five years old when her sister brought Harry home the first time, and he spent half his life in the air. She could fly too, he'd taught her from a young age because it came naturally to him. At eleven he could have taught grown witches and wizards a thing or two.
She could fly well enough, well enough to fly laps around her sister at the very least, but she'd always preferred the back of a wizard's broom to her own. It led to a lot of angry girls and soon-to-be-sad boys in her school days. She had developed a taste for a certain kind of fear on the back of Harry Potter's broom and she went through potential boyfriends like her brother went through brooms looking for it. They were all so tame.
Luc Bennet had been forged between the anvil of the Gates of Beauxbaton and the hammer of Potter himself. Every ounce of sense and self-preservation had been carefully flattened out, and then the blunt technical skill ground to a razor's edge. There was nothing tame about his flying. She'd told him not to go easy on her, warned him half-jokingly that this was the beach so many hopeful little boys had died on. He smirked that cocky quidditch star smirk she'd watched ensnare her sister all those years ago and her stomach gave a flip.
Not long after she got on his broom, her stomach was somewhere around her knees, and she was clinging to him for dear life. He shot down the drive to his house like a bullet from a gun and when he could squeeze no more speed from the broom he wrenched it up into a straight vertical climb. She screamed all the way up, half laughing half terrified until she couldn't anymore, but he did not stop when her shouts did. They climbed through the clouds, up and up and up until she was well and truly afraid and the land was a little patchwork quilt of fields below.
"You asked for this, princess." He told her, at the top of the world, and then he stepped off his broom and they began to fall. She screamed again, she was clinging to his back like a tick; legs and arms wrapped around him as he dove toward the ground holding his broom to the side. They broke through a cloud and he splayed his limbs out and they slowed, falling into the wall of air that roared past their faces and tried to whip away his laughter before she could hear it. The fear fell away at the beauty below her, slowly rushing up to meet them. She started to let go of him, wanting to float freely in the air like he was, wanting to spin and flip and fall. He gripped her arms as they started to slide away from his neck.
"On the next one," He told her, shouting to be heard, and he remounted his broom and suddenly their fall was a dive he was pulling out of. He leveled out just over the tops of a little copse of trees and they flew past it faster than she'd ever moved in her life.
She made him do it a dozen more times that afternoon until she could do flips and cartwheels through the clouds without fear. She fell in love with Luc Bennet a little bit there, though she would hold off acknowledging that for quite a while, she'd finally found the flyer that wouldn't bore her.
"So when did you discover that? Your sky falling thing." They were sitting on the back porch of his house, drinking whiskey and looking out over the orchards as the sun set.
"Skydiving." He corrected "The muggles do it out of their flying machines, and sooner than I should have." He told her with a laugh. "Harry got bored of the Gate by the end of our fourth year-" He paused and looked at her shrewdly for a second.
"I'm not entirely sure if your sister knows about that, best not to mention it, yeah?"
Gabby laughed because there was no way Fleur had seen her husband do that and let him back on a broom.
"Your secret is safe with me." She promised and they clinked glasses conspiratorially. "Tell me a story about school?" She asked as the last sliver of sun sunk slowly into a sanguine sky. He hmm'd thoughtfully, unbeknownst to her he was picking through stories trying to find one that didn't end in a witch's bed, or otherwise with him making a fool of himself for the benefit of one.
"Oh!" He laughed, "Okay, I've got one..."
-o-o-o-
Madeleine Garnier was truly beautiful. With soft blonde hair and large blue eyes and a pale complexion that blushed prettily. She was arguably the most beautiful girl in the school now that Fleur Delacour had graduated, and more importantly, she had the wherewithal to step into that Veela shaped ice queen hole left in the school. The only thing missing in her ascendancy to Beauxbatons royalty was her quidditch king.
She did not throw herself at, nor fawn over, Harry Potter like the other girls. No, she was never one of the bodies vying for front row seats to his and Luc Bennet's jousting matches in the quad between the dormitories and the school. She did not beg him for rides on his broom, or linger outside the balcony timing her trip to class to coincide with his. Madeleine had marked Harry their third year and studied him before he caught on to how fanciable he was. She chose him to be the one by her side because she knew how great he would become one day, and she knew what he wanted in a woman because she saw the one he padded after throughout their childhood.
Well, Fleur Delacour was gone now, and she had every intention of filling that Veela shaped hole in the school.
It started in fourth year, slowly, beginning with her attending quidditch matches and sitting with the Aigles whenever they observed the other team's face off. She only got two opportunities, because they won all of their games, but she took them. She magically straightened her naturally somewhat wavy blond hair, and she spent two afternoons sitting stiffly with that pretentious regal air Delacour always projected, and she got herself seen if not fully noticed. That was fine, she hadn't planned on having him alone until fifth year anyway, everything she did while the Veela was in England was just a bonus.
Her fifth year at Beauxbatons started anticlimactically. He was, naturally, obsessed with quidditch and study. She learned he'd already tested out of multiple classes that autumn when he stopped showing up to History of Magic and panic set in when she realized that her timeline had just shrunk dramatically. So she took a more aggressive stance, she began to show up in the little circle that would form in the quad.
The quidditch boys, because the girls never seemed to feel the need, had started a new sort of sport in the quad. They would stand on their brooms and run at each other, trying to knock each other off in passing, in a form of quick aerial jousting. It was performed feet off the ground and required ultimate broom control to do. Harry was naturally the best, and because he was the King of the Skies she knew him to be he was often above proving it to any lowly challenger.
So she began doing her school reading on the edge of one of these jousting rings, standing a few feet from him where he lounged on his broom doing the same with his sixth year material. She brought her bag with her, so she could study whatever subject he was, and in moments when he seemed ready for a break she would swoop in and ask for help with her own homework. He was kind, so he would help instead of getting up to challenge Luc Bennet to a round, and so Madeleine began monopolizing his time.
When he came back from Christmas things were different. She knew immediately, something in his face when he looked at her the first day back from term, like he was just seeing her for the first time. She didn't do anything just yet, because she needed to wait and see what was happening, see why he was acting differently. The first weekend in the second term one of the little girls that fawned over her king asked for a ride on his broom, a usual and fruitless occurrence.
Only he said yes.
It was unprecedented. No one had been on that broom. No one. Three-quarters of the girls in the school had tried and not one had gotten a yes. Rumor had it Delacour had, years ago, but Madeleine chose not to believe that, and yet here was this- this little girl. A second-year who fumbled and blushed and stammered her way into Madeleine's place behind him.
He was not kind to her.
-o-o-o-
"He didn't!" Gabby exclaimed, horrified.
"What- Skydive? Nah, but he put her through the wringer, poor girl." He chuckled slightly. "He came back from that holiday in a foul temper."
She snorted, "Don't I know it, I was there for the fights, you have no clue." They shared an eye roll. It was oddly thrilling to talk so openly of her sister's most hated foe, like saying bad words as a kid, there was a certain shiver of what-if-someone-hears.
"So Madeleine got in line for a ride?"
He laughed…
-o-o-o-
Madeleine was furious.
She watched that little twit scream and clutch his back as he did loops and corkscrew dives over the quad and she couldn't get off fast enough when he touched down not five minutes later. He and all the quidditch people laughed as the girl fled shakily. She did not waste this opportunity. Channeling every bit of the arrogant authoritative queen he was used to being bossed around by, she cut through the crowd of boys and marched up to him.
"My turn Potter." She smirked at him, and the predatory hungry look he sent her as he sized her up excited her and scared her in equal measure. He just smiled back at her and slid forward slightly on his broom. She took it for the invitation it was and climbed on behind him.
He was testing her, and she knew this, and Madeleine did not fail tests.
He climbed twenty feet almost straight up, then fell back toward the ground, impossibly low in altitude to be going into free fall but he caught them before they thudded down painfully and shot off like a champagne cork. Straight at the school building wall. They pulled up into a climb close enough to kick out and break windows and soared into the air and over the building. Luc and a couple of the boys from their team gave pursuit as best they could, but he was on a Firebolt and they never quite caught up.
Madeleine did not scream once, not as they raced across the valley and began performing all manner of hairpin tactics. Harry put her through a brutal chase for the snitch, dodging and shaking invisible bludgers and weaving non-existent players. When none of them managed to elicit so much as a shout he started climbing higher and higher.
Luc had to grudgingly respect the girl, she did scream as she and Harry plummeted toward the ground, but who could hold that against her? She recovered fast enough though, Harry pulled them back on the broom and he dropped them next to Luc on the Gate and the first thing she did was plant a kiss on him. He was still lightheaded from the adrenaline, and she used it to her advantage, getting passionate.
-o-o-o-
"That harpy!" Gabby burst out, a knee-jerk reaction to anything to do with this particular girl. Luc cackled.
"I didn't know it was such a taboo subject at Christmas. What's her deal, she can't be seriously threatened by her?"
Gabby was nodding gravely. "Oh yes. I think Madeleine is the only girl Harry's ever really looked at as anything more than another face in the stands." There might be some truth in that, Luc thought, but they were together for a few months decades ago. He said as much to wit she responded:
"Yeah, well I don't think Fleur is worried she's going to turn up and snatch her husband from house and home but… you remember that last match of his last year?"
Luc nodded.
"You didn't see her in the stands with us, Fleur came out to watch the big game and Madeleine made sure she knew Harry was taken. Stupid little bint is lucky to be alive really…"
-o-o-o-
Harry's last season of school quidditch was legendary.
He was developing the foundation of a style of play that would shake up modern quidditch forever. Snitch manipulation. The snitch followed a pretty straightforward set of pre-programmed rules, at the core of which was its ability to sense people near it and act to avoid them.
In the first game of the season, Harry started the entire reserve team, to the indignation of Luc and the other starters. He let them play for two hours, and they racked up 100 points and were 60 points behind before they switched out for Luc and the others. It wasn't until an hour and a half later when the enemy seeker found the snitch and began his pursuit that everyone realized what was happening.
Harry cut into his chase, and like a sheepdog herding a flock, he buffeted the snitch away from the other seeker and let it get lost again. He was running up the clock, letting his offensive line play, purely to watch the score go up. The game went long past the autumn sundown, eight hours in total, the longest Beauxbatons game in memory. The other team was forced to swap out their starters for the reserves just to give them a rest, and the Aigles crushed them brutally, when Harry caught the snitch the score was 600-290.
That was the first of a series of experiments Harry began performing on the snitch. In the following games he developed what he called corkscrew climbs, a method of corralling the snitch and forcing it into a vertical lift. At the top of the spiral, he could reach out and casually snatch the golden ball from the air. More often than not immediately followed by a stomach-turning switchback dive and a beeline for Luc, with who he had a fondness for colliding in victorious hugs designed to bruise ribs.
There was of course the Potter Passover, which saw its first use in that final match of the season against the Valkyries. The Potter Passover was, to some, a suicidal move of desperation. To others, it was a brilliantly crafted method of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. It was in essence a way to win when the other seeker was about to beat you, and it relied on a third player, usually Luc, to snatch you out of the air before you plummeted to the ground.
Really the name came to mean any move in which Harry Potter leaped from his broom in pursuit of the snitch, a move he kept well polished and ready in his playbook, and by that definition, he'd actually used it in the finals of their fourth year. It didn't get named and recognized though until his final scholastic game when Gautier caught sight of the snitch before him and gave chase. Harry saw, and based on where they were in the stadium he went left, and tried to head them off rather than follow a straight line at them. He whistled to Luc as he passed, a summons they'd practiced, and despite their fierce competition with the enemy chasers, Luc split off to tail them.
Gautier was weaving players and a hastily sent bludger, arm outstretched, and so focused on his target he failed to realize that they'd circled around half the pitch and were rapidly approaching a collision with Harry. The Aigles seeker dived low, as if to pass under his opposition, and jerked up into a climb that nearly sent Gautier flying into him. The snitch climbed fifteen rapidly to get out of Harry's way and then doubled back the way he'd come. Harry shot up after the ball and when he couldn't turn his broom fast enough into a sloth grip he simply jumped.
The effect was that he caught the golden ball as he soared through the air over his fellow seeker and the Potter Passover was born. He snatched the ball and won them the game and then plummeted thirty feet before Luc managed to dip down and snag him out of the air.
-o-o-o-
"That's what you remember-" She told him, "glory and quidditch and all that, what I remember is a little blonde head standing down by the locker rooms…"
-o-o-o-
Gabby saw Beauxbatons for the first time at nine years old. It was Harry's last year at school, a fact she was very put out by because he was supposed to be in his last year for her first year. Now that Fleur was gone she'd demanded they go to his games, and be afraid for her while he played quidditch, so she got her first look in the fall of his fifth year.
Watching him play quidditch was amazing. He held his broom like a paintbrush, his art the trail he carved through the air. He was like a leaf on the wind, flitting between people, bludgers, and stands with ease and speed unrivaled.
Fleur made it out to the last game of the year, she was recently graduated enough that she drew a crowd of schoolmates close enough or otherwise brave enough to sit around her and her family. It was the first time Gabby had been around Fleur in public- or rather around peers- because the streets of Paris didn't count. In those days, her knowledge of Veela puberty was limited to the few attempts her mother had made to begin broaching the subject. That and watching the transformation that took over her sister, both physically and socially.
She studied her as they waited for the game to start, and Fleur studied the field, straight-backed and supremely unaware of the little crowd gathered around her. Because Gabby had her eyes on Fleur she saw the moment Fleur's façade cracked. Her eyes went glassy, and then rapidly dilated until iris' were blown out and all black and she was clenching her fists in her lap.
Gabby followed her gaze, all the way down to the field below, where the Aigles were just exiting their locker room. A certain indiscernible blond head had just pounced on her brother and locked him in a kiss that was identifiable as passionate even from up in the stands.
Fleur had come home for Easter weekend when he should have been home.
After their disastrous Christmas showdown, in which Fleur tried to force Harry to talk to her and he told her to get stuffed, they had avoided each other. It made for an awkward week, considering it happened on her first night home, but Fleur had confided to Gabby that she was just punishing him for the awful way he'd treated her. She reassured Gabby that they would be made up in no time, and be all the better for this misunderstanding.
Then he got himself a girlfriend and did Easter with her family.
It was the first time he had left Beauxbatons for anywhere other than the Delacours', barring that brief stay with his awful relatives. It was the first time any of them had seen Fleur go full Veela since the accidental transformations of her youth. She exploded into feathers and fire, and only their mother's allure and commandeering presence beat back her best attempts to burn the house down around them. She raged for days, ruining Easter but Gabby hardly minded that. It was better than any book, watching her siblings blunder through young love.
So, she looked up at Fleur as Fleur looked down at them kissing, and hoped privately that Fleur would bird-out here in front of everyone. She didn't, and that was commendable because only a few minutes into the game the girl appeared at the top of the stairs in their section of the stands. It was no coincidence, that became clear enough when she found her seat directly in front of them.
Their parents were completely oblivious to the silent war happening next to them, but Gabby wasn't, Fleur was stiff-backed and cold-eyed, staring dutifully into the sky. The girl was half facing the pitch and half turned their way. She kept tossing half-glances up toward Fleur with smug looks. As the game wore on, and she failed to catch Fleur in one of her little victorious taunts, she changed tack. She began to use turning to speak to her neighbors as an excuse to toss her hair over her shoulder. Every time she did it hit Fleur's knee.
For two hours Gabrielle watched in mounting excitement, not at the game, but at her sister. She never took her eyes off Harry, and she never let an ounce of anger show on her face, but Gabby could see her knuckles getting whiter and whiter, and her eyes darker blue, dangerous signs the girl was not picking up on. It finally broke with the climax of the game, the seekers were moving, and the quaffle was reaching the box. The blood was in the water and the crowd could smell the end coming, the Aigles scored and everyone jumped to their feet and cheered as the seekers drew closer to each other.
In all the commotion, the girl had flipped her white-blonde hair again, and quick as a snake Fleur had caught a good chunk of it. She twisted her wrist repeatedly and wrapped the length of the girl's white-gold locks around her fist so that she held the back of the girl's head by a handle of hair close to the scalp. She leaned down, still seated, and pulled the girl half up out of her seat to bring her ear to her mouth. She whispered something Gabby could not hear while the girl whimpered and clutched at the wrist and fist that held her up painfully.
Quick as it started she released the girl's head and shoved her back into her seat, no one else had seen any of it happen, and Gabby stood with Fleur, grinning from ear to ear to make their way down and toward Harry.
-o-o-o-
Luc laughed. "I'd pay to hear what she said to her." He said wistfully and Gabby grinned.
"How much?"
"You know?" He asked hopefully.
"For the right price." She teased, eyes glinting dangerously in the night. He weighed his desire to know what Fleur had whispered into Madeleine's ear at Harry's last quidditch final.
"Prada." He offered, as an opening bid. Gabby, who had been mostly joking, blinked in shock before she could shoot him a dazzling smile.
"Oh, you." She admonished, and swatted his knee. "Keep talking like that and I think I might be in trouble." She scooted her chair over to be right up next to him and she leaned in conspiratorially.
-o-o-o-
Fleur seized the stupid little pigeon by the tail feathers and pulled her up to hiss at her.
"Are you listening, little dove?" She murmured, and then gave her collection of hair a painful jerk until her prey mewled pathetically and tried to nod. "I will allow him his little distractions, only remember that he can have you only as long as I allow it, you do not have him." She gave the girl's head a little rattle. "Do not think you have beat me, he will never be yours." She threw the girl's head away, releasing her hair as she did so, and stood to lead her family out of the stands.
-o-o-o-
Luc felt a little bad for Madeleine now, but he would never admit that outright to a Delacour.
"And then Harry broke it off that night." He said sympathetically.
"He what?!" Gabby exclaimed. For months after that day in June Fleur and he had shuffled around each other all mad and sad before finally colliding and putting an end to the collective Delacour misery.
"Yeah," Luc chuckled. "He got that audition to the Quirberon Quafflepunchers and severed that tie a few hours later."
"I thought he was on the Chomelix Sharks from his first year?"
"Oh yeah, he turned down the Quafflepunchers, it was the scandal of the century in the French leagues. Harry wanted to be at the next world cup, he had one season to win a championship and hope to make the National team for the next. He picked the lowest team in the league and took it over, just like he did our team in third year, and won them their first national league ever."
Gabby could only smile because her brother's quidditch career was a fond staple of her early life. Going to the big games in the good boxes. Going out with Fleur, getting their photos taken while shopping in the streets of Paris, or leaving games with him. Bringing boys to meet their idol and watching Harry do his best to scare them off, her dad actively deploying Harry on intimidation duty.
"How'd you get on the team then?" She had never really thought about it, Luc and Harry were in the same year, but Luc didn't graduate for another year, after taking exams with the rest of the sixth years.
"He made it conditional to his own contract."
"What? He negotiated your position in his contract?"
Luc nodded with a fond smile. "Yeah, crazy little bastard he was back then." He went to take a drink and found his glass empty, the sun had long since set now and night reigned. He gestured inside and they stood to make their retreat.
"I almost had a heart attack when he turned up at Beauxbatons during the spring of my last year. Told me I had to go audition for the National team, that he was seeker, and he convinced them he needed me for his best plays. Well, he was part of the audition, and he mostly ran seeker plays we'd worked on all the last year, it was the kind of stuff they wanted from him anyway so I got on just like that."
Luc took her glass and gave them both a cursory rinse, leaving them in the sink for now. Gabby waited patiently for him to finish his little chore and then tugged him up out of the kitchen by his sleeve, saying:
"Come on let's get to bed, you owe me a trip to Paris tomorrow." He followed without complaint.
AN Loved Loved Loved writing that little scene between Maddy and Fleur, such fun to let the talons come out a little bit. Cute Gabby/Luc moments, I know some people hate seeing Gabby with him and others love it, I personally enjoy their relationship, but I wrote it soooooo yeah, next ones a big one! That's all I'll say :hehehe: