AN I don't like to do AN before chapters, but I just wanted to do a quick thank you to everyone at the flowerpot discord, its the massive support of chapter 1 that's making me want post the second so soon, don't get used to it though. If anyone reading this happens to have found it organically and isn't in the discord go check it out, its a great place for support. Special thanks to x102reddragon and contramundi01 for making this boomer that can't discord feel at home. On with the story!
Chapter 2
Flight School
In which a star is born, and a legacy passed on
"I can't DO IT!" Arianne's frustrated shout devolved into a childish scream of rage and indignation. For the fourth time in a row she'd shot across the field, pulled up hard to go into a backwards loop, and then bailed around the point her broom went vertical. She landed in the grass with force and chucked her little training broom onto the ground.
"Arianne!" Harry scolded, coming to land beside her. "Never treat your broom that way! They let us fly, so we treat them well." She was sulky, but she trudged over to the fallen broom and picked it up, dusting clumps of dirt and grass out of its tail twigs. She muttered a quiet apology to it that he wasn't supposed to hear.
"Here let me see," He held out his hand for the broom and she passed it over glumly. He stuck the broom out and let it hang in the air, waiting. "Come on, hop up." He slid back on his own broom, a Stargent, France's response to Britain's Firebolt QF. She swung into place in front of him, and she was so small she could grip the broom with hands and knees and sit like a real rider while he leaned over her and did the same. He set off across the field low enough that they could reach out and brushed the waving grass.
"Has your mother ever told you the story of the first time I jumped the Gate at Beauxbatons?"
"No, what's that?"
-o-o-o-
First year students at Beauxbatons were given flying lessons starting after the Christmas holidays. If they were distinguished enough, they got to be on a first year circuit team and compete against each other on the school's limited learner brooms. Being on this team was the entrypoint for any racing or quidditch careers a student wished to have in the following years. It was possible to get on a team later, if no one did particularly well the year before or a lot of people graduated out, but some years team tryouts weren't even held because the rosters were full up to the last reserve. A lot of students coming in had broom experience beforehand too, even the ones with no real interest in them beyond short distance transportation. So it was a measure of precaution to assume that at least some of them had been taught bad habits at home, therefore broom safety and basic aptitude was taught to all.
Harry had no such pre-practice, so it was with a simple curiosity that he entered that first lesson. As soon as the broom jumped up in his hand at his command he knew that that was changing. That first lesson he rose shakily, drifted in some loose slow circles and jerkily touched down. His heart was pounding in his ears as he landed though, and it didn't matter how tame and uneventful that first flight was. That flight, and every flight that would come, was exhilarating.
Harry was a decent student, one could not spend so much time in the library with Fleur Delacour and not be. She expected the same level of academic excellence in him as she did in herself, because she associated with him. He never quite lived up to that standard, his teachers told him he had a natural talent for transfiguration, and before he got on a broom he'd intended to follow Fleurs footsteps in the dueling clubs. But that all fell away during that second flying lesson.
They were to fly down the main drive to a buoy just past the edge of the gardens, turn around and come back. He waited impatiently in line, bouncing on his toes and gripping and regripping the handle of his broom. He shot off before the whistle even blew.
-o-o-o-
"And I raced down the drive." He told his daughter as he flew across the field probably about as fast as he had then, which was a leisurely stroll on this high end broom.
"And when I got to the buoy…" He passed the fence line sectioning off their property. "I flipped around and…" He pulled up hard on the broom, raising it to vertical, then kicked the tail out so that they were almost falling backward now and twisted so that they came out on top when the broom fell horizontal. They were facing back toward the house across the field. "I shot back!" He ripped across the field faster than those old school brooms ever could have, throwing a few zigs and zags in the mix and his daughter screamed with laughter. Now that she was distracted he continued his tale innocently, all the while pushing them a little bit further on the broom.
-o-o-o-
Fleur hated it. Those last few weeks of winter she would just stop talking if he brought up flying. She never left, but if he mentioned the upcoming announcement for who'd made the Freshman race team she was suddenly much more interested in whatever book she was reading, or needing to order dessert again. Harry, being eleven and completely enamored with this new found facet of wizarding life that he excelled at, didn't notice.
The lists were posted, and to no one's surprise but at least one person's misery, Harry's name was first on the list. He exploded into the library that Saturday morning, shouting for Fleur. The librarian was on him before he'd even made it to her but he paid her no mind.
"I'm a team captain!" He lept at her and caught her in a hug "Hundred meter dash-and-back and I start the valley relay!" This wave of shouting got them forcibly removed but he couldn't be bothered.
"That's- great." She said, and he didn't even notice the trepidation in her voice or the pink in her cheeks, he was in his own whirlwind of excitement and possibility.
"Yeah! I have a real shot of making a Quidditch team with this!" Fleur blanched at this, and Harry did notice this time, because she stopped in the middle of the hall. This caused him to come to a sudden halt, because he'd had her hand clamped in his dragging her down the hall without realizing. His excitement was so pure and bright he didn't even have the presence of mind to blush and drop it, he just tugged at her arm, wanting to get out and in the air.
"No Harry, you can't join a Quidditch team, promise me!"
"What?"
-o-o-o-
"What?" His daughter echoed his own reaction at the time. "How can papa not play Quidditch?" She asked like she thought her maman was being silly suggesting it.
"I know, I know, but I'll tell you a secret." He responded, and Arianne was so enveloped in the mystery of it all that she'd yet to realize they'd made three arching backwards loops through the air and were now flying upside down in a lazy sloth grip.
"Maman is scared of flying." She laughed, because the idea was a foreign one to her, who had been on some form of a broom before she was potty trained. She seemed to realize then what was happening, she gasped.
"Papa we're doing it!" She yelled "go faster!" But at that moment a magically enhanced and manically deranged voice boomed across the field.
"My daughter better not be on that broom with you Potter!"
"Uh oh," Arianne groaned.
Uh oh indeed.
-o-o-o-
Arianne, in many ways, was Harry's greatest weapon in his battle with Fleur over flying. The stunts he'd pulled in the field that afternoon were nothing, and he himself had been doing them at Beauxbatons within months of getting on a broom. She was very, very, selective however when it came to what her husband was allowed to show their daughter. The problem with this front in their ongoing battle, was that while Fleur could dismiss anything positive he could say about flying by citing the numerous injuries he'd received over the years, she could not so easily crush that wild excitement in her daughter.
She bitterly conceded to allowing them their time in the air, and she anxiously watched almost every second of it from the kitchen window. She did this, because she knew she had about as much power to keep her daughter on the ground as her husband. Less even, almost certainly less. Worst of all, everyone knew it. Threatening that they wouldn't be allowed to go out again was an empty threat. But it was the only arrow in her quiver with her daughter. Her husband was more manageable, her big doe eyes and a touch of allure would get her most things still, two kids and thirty odd years later, but in a few years Arianne would be old enough to realize that she could do whatever she wanted as long as she waited for her mom to go to sleep. The thought gave Fleur ulcers.
"What's jumping the Gate maman?" Her precious, delicate, little chick asked at dinner that night. Harry choked on his chicken as Fleur turned stiffly to her husband, eyes going dark blue and bleeding to black around the edges.
"What. Have. You. Been. Telling. My. Daughter?" She punctuated each word with a jab from her fork, aiming for whatever part of him was within range.
"He told me you wouldn't let him play quidditch!" She said hotly, trying to defend her dad and making things worse in the process.
"Oh he did, did he?" Fleur hissed, not even facing her daughter. She was fully turned in her seat, better to flay the man she married.
"Yeah-" She started even as Harry tried to head her off.
"Arianne, sweety-"
"But I don't understand, I thought papa swept you off your feet and onto his broom, and that's how you fell in love. Why wouldn't you let him play?"
Harry let that silence play out, nervously side eyeing Fleur as she visibly reigned in her ire.
"That is how we got to together little chick, we fell in love long before that, when he and all the other stupid little boys were still doing stupid things like 'jumping the Gate'." She pumped as much derision into those three words as she could before giving her daughter a begrudging explanation.
"Stupid boys at Beauxbatons like to be mean to each other and make them do stupid things…"
-o-o-o-
Fleur tried to support her friend, she really did. Late in the spring, after months of practice and most of the real races over with, the freshman races were held. Older students liked to pretend to be grown ups for this event. Anyone on a team to any degree, down to the lowest reserve seat, would strut about talking of scouting this person or that. The more serious team captains, in their final years, would try to snipe promising kids to their team, or otherwise cut deals with other team heads for future players. It was not at all uncommon for gold to exchange hands to ensure that that boy would come over to the Eagles as a beater, or this girl was off limits to the Quidditch teams, she was a racer.
Fleur knew all this, and she knew that Beauxbatons had a rich tradition of grooming players for the international leagues. She knew that the success of the flying program's members was in large part due to how seriously the student run teams took their sport. She knew that this was a big opportunity for him, and worst of all she knew that he would be great the moment she watched him in those races.
Most prominently, on the list of offenses broomsticks presented in her life, Fleur had trouble with things that were out of her control. She didn't like them. And now Harry was on a path she could not follow on pain of death, she could not fly. Still, as she watched him destroy his opponent by several meters on the dash she was happy for him. He finished first of every first year racer by almost a full four seconds, and there were sixth years coming up to him to congratulate that when he landed. Because he was Harry, he just stood there grinning and blushing, somehow looking mortified and elated simultaneously before he spotted her and slipped through the crowd to her side.
He didn't say anything, just stood beside her as they set up for the slalom. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and he was bouncing in place, torn between beaming up at her and out where the next competition would take place. She felt bad for being so unenthusiastic.
"You did very well." That was all it took. He exploded into nervous laughter and seized her hand. He was practically buzzing with excitement.
"Thanks," Toothy shy grin. Ugh, boys.
The slalom was too short lived, and to her eyes much safer and enjoyable. Why couldn't he do that? Of course after that came the big finale, the pièce de résistance, the valley relay.
She had seen it done before of course, unlike him. And unlike her he'd drank in the description of it with hunger burning in his heart where hers held only dread.
Starting on the roof of the school, the first racers went south to where the valley closed off into mountains and then climbed. Two hundred feet up to the peak and then followed the rocky ridgeline down the east arm of the valley. Three hoops they had to pass through, each barely big enough to fit a person, each a choke point for stupid competitive boys to try and knock each other down the mountain to be first through. The second one was almost halfway down the valley, on a little rock outcrop that stuck out of the ridge. The third one was almost directly below it, a hundred foot dive to the finish.
After they made it through that third ring the next person on their team had to finish the ridge to the mouth of the valley and hit rings on either side of the Gate. Finally the third came back up the western arm of the valley and ended it back on the roof. Fleur could not have cared less what the latter two courses were, nor who was flying them. Her interest ended at that little wooden hoop at the bottom of a hundred foot drop, where she was sure Harry's life would also.
It came as very little shock to her that he did everything to validate her fears. She stood on the roof with most of the other onlookers, the first leg was the most exciting. In geography alone it had most people drawn, the only people that really saw the rest were out on brooms too, to scout the prospects.
The whistle blew and he, another boy, and a girl kicked off and shot up. It was neck and neck to the peak, and down the ridge Harry kept the best line on the first hoop, so the other two were on either side trying to edge their way in. Fleur wanted to curse them out of the air. If they pushed into the ring and sent him smashing into it and tumbling out of the sky she would curse them. But they didn't have half the skill nor a tenth of the stupidity that he did. As the ring approached and they grew desperate they both swayed wide to try and swing back in and shoulder their way to the middle. He dropped to soar inches over the rocky ridge, boulders that could snag his boot and rip him out of the sky scraped by his toes. Above him the two combatants collided, and the boy won out being half again as heavy as the girl. The two of them careened to the right and Harry shot through the hoop without even so much as slowing down to line it up.
Fleur's gasp was a choked gargle, but others around her were whooping and clapping. His opposition was essentially out of the race. Both had to double back having passed the ring, and they lost all the speed of the first descent for it. Unopposed Harry laid down on his broom and closed the near mile to the second hoop in less than a minute. He was barely visible out there, until one of the sixth year quidditch boys cast a spell that made the air shimmer before the crowd and then magnify like a giant floating screen displaying 'POTTER' on his back.
This feeling, this moment, of horror seeping from every part and pore of her body while she watched the name POTTER fly around in the air. She was dimly aware, even then, that she would feel it for years. There would be no convincing him otherwise after this. With a growing sickness in her stomach she watched him blast through the second ring, rip the broomstick up, spin in a tight flip that spat him out straight toward the ground. Even still he leaned into it, forcing speed out of the broom even as gravity provided everything he needed to turn into pink goo on the rocks below. He sailed through the last ring easily, pulling out of a dive that should've killed him, like he was popping up from a nap. The students around her roared their approval, he pulled up and up from the last ring high above the valley. Then he was upside down and hanging off his broom by his hands and legs, a mile above the valley floor as he drifted back toward them. He spun around, right side up, and shot at the school, both hands off the broom in triumph as the students cheered his return. He broke through the telescoping charm with a pop and landed in a run, straight through the crowd and into her. The other two first leg racers were just finishing.
Maybe he expected her to catch him in a hug, because he staggered when she went limp in his arms. The rest of them crowded in, trying to pound his back and ruffle his hair, and half of their efforts ended up accosting her.
-o-o-o-
"That was the moment I knew I loved maman," Harry cut in, giving his daughter a sage nod. She was wide eyed, what looked like tears glistened there at the sheer awe of such an amazing race.
"That is not true," Fleur said venomously, because she did not like the gleam in her daughter's eye. "I know the exact moment you finally caught on, it wasn't for years."
"No, no, it's true. Maybe I didn't quite realize you were a girl then." He made the face Arianne made when talking about boys. "Or that it was a good thing you were a girl. But when the crowd got off us, and I saw you as red as you make me, with your hair more a mess then I'd ever seen it. I knew we were in it together."
"You thought I was as excited as you were by it all." She deadpanned.
"Of course I did!" He laughed "I was up to my ears in my first ever diver's high. I didn't know which way was up or where we were, but I flew right to you didn't I?" He gave her a smug little smirk that chipped away at some of her anger, loath as she was to admit it.
"Oui, and you're lucky you did, because I've never hated you more than I did in that moment, and if you'd flown at any other witch, all of this…" She gestured around at the house and herself and made a pop with her lips.
He just maintained his smile and leaned over to run his finger down her nose, she played at trying to bite it and he flicked her forehead before retreating. "Honestly, who else could there be?" And she finally gave him a little smile in return.
"Juuuumping the Gaaatte." Arianne whined over her parents' odd flirting and Fleur sighed.
"Well, at the mouth of the valley, did you see the two big rocks that mark the end of the ridges when we dropped your sister off? Non- you were crying…"
-o-o-o-
"Fleur pleeaaase."
"Absolutely not."
"Please, I have to go, first years never get invited to stuff like this."
"So go, see if I care." She poured every bit of 'I care; don't you dare' into that hiss as she could.
"I can't go alone, you have to come with me."
"You will not be alone, you will have Robst, Jacques, Toby, and Rosalind with you."
"I need you there." The treacherous little bastard knew he'd struck a vein. He swung again before she could regroup. "This is huge, more important than the races probably. I can't do it without you." She gnashed her teeth and balled her fists and raged in her own mind at him but aloud she said.
"Fine, but you owe me, and I will collect." He was nodding, not even listening.
"Of course. Anything you want, come on!" He was pulling her out of the foyer and onto the drive. She climbed on his broom behind him, and she was crushing his ribs between her arms before they even left the ground. She trembled like a leaf the whole way, not once opening her eyes or even unsticking her face from between his shoulder blades. He realized very soon how completely and utterly terrified she was, around the time he realized he'd never flown with her or even seen her fly.
"Fleur"
"Do not talk to me, just focus on flying!" She snapped, muffled against his back, and mercifully he listened. He positively puttered across the valley, taking ten minutes to travel what he'd done in two earlier that day. The Gate was the mouth of the valley, where the two ridges ended in fifteen-hundred foot sheer rock faces about a half a mile apart.
"Hold on," he said quietly. Unnecessarily. And he lifted them straight up. Rising like that, without tilt or pitch, it almost felt like they weren't moving at all. Until he landed on solid ground and she stood on shaky legs and was on a flat slab of rock the size of a large bed and half a kilometer off the ground. The others, all her age or older, looked dumbfounded to see Fleur Delacour here with the little Potter first year. But then again, a first year jumping the Gate was almost unheard of, as was his performance that day.
They got over their shock when she staggered to the center of the plinth and sank to her knees, they turned to Potter to talk about stupid things and Fleur focused on trying not to let a gust of wind knock her off the face of the earth. She tried laying down, and the fear of tripping off the edge abated. It felt as if the world was spinning and with each rotation the rock beneath her shifted a little. Growing less flat, more angled, and she would slide off at any moment.
She felt hands on her face, and a soft voice next to her.
"Fleur come on, let's go."
"Just go!" It was hard to force the words out, opening her mouth felt like an invitation for her stomach to empty itself.
"No, Fleur come on, I'm taking you down."
"Harry just jump off the fucking rock and get. Me. Down. From. Here."
"Fl-"
"Do it Potter!" She didn't dare open her eyes, but she could hear him do it. The shuffle of feet all around. The sound of boots running over loose rock.
Crunch-crunch, crunch…
Echoing up from the valley below a solitary wordless shout of elation. Followed shortly by the four stupid teens around her.
-o-o-o-
"Whoa- what's it feel like?" Arianne's question, full of wonder.
"Amazing." Her husband, equally reverent before she managed to lock his tongue with a withering glare.
"I can see my story telling has not impressed the point on you." She held up a hand to stall both their interjections, they both knew better than to cross her at this stage of anger. "So let me make myself clear. If I ever find out that you have done that when you go to school, I will be withdrawing you that very same day, you will be home schooled, and I will burn every broom in this house. Oui?" These two beautiful people, two thirds of her whole reason for existence, shared a look that so clearly said: she won't find out.
"Oui."
"Oui maman."
AN should I be dating these? I'm up to the Triwizard Tournament, and there's a definite A/B story developing a la princess bride, lmk if you want dates, I had to map out the timeline last night to make sure everyone's ages make sense so I could go back and add them with relative ease. next time: Its christmas for the potters, but its summer break for the Delacours!