AN: We have cover art! Special thanks to the artist, L3dpen over on the flowerpot discord, for making it for our lovely story!
Chapter 4
Fight or Flight
In which I say the name of the thing in the thing
Liliane was home for the summer holidays and, like they so often did now, she was regaling her little sister with all the fantastic tales school could provide. It was the early afternoon and Fleur found herself bored. With no work she needed to catch up on, nothing needing cleaning, no kids wanting attention, and no husband to tease. She set down the latest issue of Transfiguration Today when she finally admitted that her head wasn't in it. She could only reread the words so many times without comprehension before she gave it up as a bad job. Even if they were McGonagall's.
She thought about going upstairs and collecting her little chicks, perhaps they could go into Paris and do some shopping, but she paused as something out the window caught her eye. A lone figure hovered over the field in front of their house, stationary in the warm midday sun. She smiled a little, involuntarily, as she took him in. He was laying back on his broom with the lazy grace only he could possibly have. Her little eagle. He couldn't even lounge on the ground, always in the air.
She realized he was asleep as she approached. His fingers were laced together and resting on his stomach, one leg crossed over the other so it wouldn't hang down. He napped in the afternoon sun, four feet off the ground. Her love for this man choked her up then, for some reason she felt tears pulling at her eyes. She leaned over and woke him with a kiss.
"Good morning, little eagle," She said, still close to his face. He almost fell as he smiled at her still half asleep, but decades of practice alone kept him in the air.
"Good morning lily flower." They were their oldest pet names for each other, rarely used now. They felt innocent and better stored away safely in the heart, from a time before they even really knew what love was. Their eldest daughter's name also made for confusing conversations if used in passing.
"I'm bored," She informed him, and he adopted a stricken look of grief.
"Oh no." She nodded dejectedly at his despair "Should I rally the kids to take maman to Paris?" She smiled because he knew her too well.
"Non-"
"Milan, maybe?" It was tempting, she bit her lip but shook her head.
"No, I was thinking you should scoot over." A fire ignited in his eyes and she leaned back quickly so he did not collide with her as he jerked upright. He slid down to the tail end of the broom, seated side saddle with his legs facing her. She struggled onto the broom beside him, shaky until his arm came around behind her to grip the end of the broom. She leaned into his arm and side, resting her head on his shoulder, and he set off across the field. Only a few feet off the ground and no faster than a jog.
"I was thinking about what you said, about how you knew you loved me after your first race."
"Oh yeah?"
"Do you know when I knew I loved you?" He thought about it for a minute.
"The second task of the tournament?" She laughed.
"No silly eagle, not so late…"
-o-o-o-
Harry was not in the library when Fleur got there on the second weekend of October. This wasn't altogether unusual anymore, he was the newest and youngest member of the Aigles. They had him running laps at dawn and team drills three nights a week. He often ate his breakfast long after the rest of the students, when his exercising was done. It was unusual however, that he was still nowhere to be seen as it moved closer and closer to noon. She left her studies to eat, determining that she would find her little eagle too. He was nowhere on the third floor or balcony, she almost sat at their usual table in the corner to order something to eat but paused. She didn't know why but something felt off, she glanced around and realized what it was.
Fleur was used to stares, she was used to whispers and heads turning to follow her, this had been the norm for a few years now. That was what felt off, she noticed it subconsciously but had to look for it to pick up on it. She was still getting stares and whispers, but they were furtive, secretive. She was not being admired or envied as she passed, she was being gossiped about. That combined with Harry's absence was deeply unsettling.
She found the back of his head easily in the banquet hall, and it put a weight in her stomach. He hadn't eaten here since his first week of school. His jacket was draped over the back of his chair, he was reading and idly stirring a cup of tea. She had to appreciate her handy work, he stood out amongst these students, he looked … regal, even at twelve years old. She approached until she was standing directly behind his chair, people had given up gossiping behind their hands and stealing glances now. They stared unashamedly. He seemed to notice because he closed his book with a sigh.
"Bit dumb to think I could just avoid you," he sounded … congested? Like he was sick or had been crying.
"Why were you trying to?" She was surprised by how much this hurt. He stood and pulled on his jacket, fastening the buttons and fixing the sleeves of his shirt in the cuffs before he retrieved his bag. He did this all while carefully avoiding looking at her. "Harry, what's going- Merde!" She gasped. He turned to face her and gave her a half grin. His lip was split open on the left side of his face with a nasty matching black eye.
"What happened to you?" Her shock was quickly giving way to rage. Whoever had done this- she clenched her firsts but he was just shaking his head.
"Come on, let's go to the library." She suspected it was more about getting away from so many prying eyes than anything else. She didn't have anything to say, so she just followed in step beside him. It was clear he didn't want to talk in front of people but she found it surprisingly difficult to contain her outbursts. Who had attacked him? Why was he avoiding her? And where was her blushing excited little eagle?
"I got in a fight with Luc Bennet." He said unprompted, sitting at their usual table in the back of the library. He seemed less put together here, alone with her, and where normally she might've playfully corrected his bad posture now it brought her relief. A sense of rightness, like he was still in there.
"An ugly little boy." She spat with venom , she did not know Luc, he was one of Harry's roommates and they had never interacted. It brought the ghost of a smile to his lips though, and that had been the whole point. "Why did you fight him?"
"He's just jealous," he deflected, because that wasn't an answer "because he's in the reserve team and I'm starting seeker."
"So you fought him because you are better than him?" A twitch of the lips again, the faintest blush. She went in for the attack. She reached over and took his hand, pulling it into her lap to hold in her own. His knuckles were warm and red, swollen from the blows. The action got him flushed, and finally he looked at her fully instead of staring off into the shelves being surly.
"What did he say to provoke you?"
"He called me gay." She almost laughed, almost, but her lips hovered around a near smile. He went redder and looked away, trying to pull his hand free. She squeezed it in apology, not letting go.
"That is not a very good reason to fight someone." She said, he shrugged, and she had to fight down her frustration. "Did you win?"
He sent a small smug little smile up at her. "Yeah, he's got two black eyes." She snorted, more at the furtive pride than anything, and she turned his face up to look at her fully with a gentle hand under his chin. She did something she so rarely did, and had never to him, she reached out with her allure and brushed against his mind. She sent calm and openness down that bridge, a desire to share.
"Why did you beat up a stupid boy for telling silly lies?" He looked adorable sitting there melting in the embrace of her Veela magic. His mouth was open slightly and his eyes unfocused as they drank in her face.
"He said I dressed too well, that no normal boy would match his socks to his tie and cufflinks." He was resisting her efforts. Even as he blushed and unconsciously shifted toward her, his mind was trying to hold in the truth, she could feel it.
"Luc Bennet will find he cares a lot more about his appearance, when he finally realizes girls do. But you did not hit him for that reason."
"No."
"Tell me." She purred, leaning in slightly still cupping his chin, like she was going for a kiss. She felt the last of his defenses crumble. His will to fight her was washed away by the flood of his desire to tell her whatever she wanted to know.
"He said of witches and snitches everyone knew which I preferred, and any boy had to be gay to spend so much time around a Veela whore without getting laid." He said it in a detached way, his eyes staring through her and a smile on his lips. Her lip twitched in a snarl, and his brow furrowed in anger immediately, mimicking her emotion because she still held him in her allure and she'd momentarily lost control of it.
She severed the connection and he blinked like he'd just been flicked in the forehead, his eyes cleared and refocused on her. He went beet red and tried to pull away, but she kept her grip on his face.
"Thank you for beating up Luc Bennet for me," She said with some difficulty. There was a feeling bubbling up in her chest as she looked at this little boy, a feeling she wasn't ready to address just yet. It got in the way of her throat and made it hard to speak. She leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his damaged lips. "Now you can say you have kissed the Veela, something they can only dream about."
-o-o-o-
"You just have a soft spot for battered and bruised things don't you," He teased, ruining the moment.
"Only you, and I did my best to keep you out of the infirmary, if you recall." He chuckled and leaned down to kiss her temple and she turned when he was done to allow him a real kiss.
"A valiant effort it was," he agreed, "anyone else and you would have succeeded." She hummed her agreement and cuddled closer.
They rose a few additional feet off the ground to clear the fence and she clenched his shirt as they fell back to their barely off the ground altitude. After decades of rare flights with him the little action still brought a fluttery feeling to her stomach. She imagined it was how he felt when he performed stunts that no one else dared.
"So, if you charmed me into telling you my secret reason to fight then you must've felt I loved you then." She shook her head, giving him a half hearted eye roll when she found him smirking down at her.
"You were a little boy, I kissed you twice that year and it still took two years for you to kiss me back, what is love to a twelve year old?"
"I think it consisted of following you around, thinking of reasons to hold your hand, and trying to win every quidditch game I played because you always hugged me after."
"You think I hugged you because you won?" Incredulity dripped off the question…
-o-o-o-
The following Saturday Harry was late again to the library, but Fleur didn't have to go find him. He showed up not fifteen minutes later in a bustle of excitement.
"Fleur come on." He was pulling her out of her seat before she'd even really realized he strode up to her.
"What- why?" He was wearing his half cloak, a piece of the Beauxbatons uniform only required for formal events or cold weather. The bruise around his eye was faded and his lip was mostly closed up.
"The first quidditch game of the season, come ooon." She had very little interest in sitting in the uncomfortable stands in chilly mid October to watch people bounce balls off each other. She went because he was tugging at her hand and she was already aware of a troubling inability to deny him when he was so excited.
Beauxbatons as a whole did not take quidditch too seriously. It was the player-run league that turned recruiting and training into such important affairs. The rest of the school was largely indifferent, it was at its core an arts school after all. The stands were filled with the teams, and an assortment of hangers-on that Fleur realized now included her. Mostly friends or significant others of team members made up the smattering of spectators there to watch the game. Some of Harry's other teammates had brought people too and they all sat together in the stands to study their rivals in the air. Harry led her to them and then waited for her to pick a spot, she chose one on the edge of their group closer to the stairs. She felt his cloak drape her shoulders before he sat, ever the gentleman, so she pressed into his side to share the warmth. It was not cold, it rarely got cold at Beauxbatons, but the air had a chill to it that warranted cloaks to the students spoiled by warm weather.
She saw Luc Bennet, a face she would not have recognized were it not for the twin black eyes that were faded to sickly yellow. She caught him sneaking a glance her way and she put her arm around Harry's shoulders for his benefit. Harry did not mind in the slightest, hardly realized it, his eyes stayed fixed into the sky. The little boy turned away looking sour, and it seemed to Fleur that he was so much younger than Harry. Everyone around her groaned and chuckled, Harry had winced, and it drew her attention back to the game.
"What happened?" Harry pointed, and her heart jumped into her throat, someone was falling.
"Hit by a bludger," He told her as they watched a teammate swoop down and grab their friend, the opposing team scored with two thirds of their offensive players preoccupied. She barely heard him, she was too busy imagining the girl that had fallen from her broom was actually a little boy with messy black hair. Even though that boy sat beside her, under her arm. She wished she could fold him up and put him in her pocket and take him far away from this awful game.
"She could have died!" She hissed venomously as everyone, including Harry, seemed to forget about the girl and go straight back into the game.
His brow furrowed in confusion at her words, or maybe her tone, but his eyes stayed on the game. "Nah, she's fine, besides there's cushioning charms on the ground. It doesn't feel good but no one falls to their death in quidditch."
"How do you know?" She demanded angrily, and it was enough to pull his attention away from the game.
"It's in the rules-" He was going to say, head tilted up at her in confusion.
"How do you know what the cushioning charms feel like?" She bit out, ploughing through his sentence.
He grimaced slightly. Guilt clear across his face. Caught red-handed. The stands around them exploded into cheers, he attempted to avoid answering by turning to see who'd caught the snitch. The arm around his shoulders tightened, he looked down at it as if just noticing, but then her other hand gripped his jaw, turning his face back to her. She dug her nails into his cheek, just forcefully enough to flirt with pain.
"Answer me Potter."
"It was nothing Fleur, really-"
"I will be the judge of that, when was this? Were you hurt? Where did you land? How far did you fall?"
He knew better than to interrupt her when she got like this, just as he knew that she expected an answer to every one of her questions. Woe unto him if he forgot one. The captain of the team, a boy named Jacques in her year was saying:
"That new seeker of theirs caught the snitch too fast for my liking…" As the team stood to go down to their locker rooms and talk strategy. She kept him firmly in his seat while she awaited answers.
"Last week at practice," he said, sounding every bit the defeated child he was, "I landed on my back, it's just a bruise, really Fleur I'm fine."
"From. How. High?"
He grimaced at her tone, or perhaps the answer, as the stands emptied.
"Just fiftee- er, twenty-" He sighed, giving up as her glare and the proximity of their faces sapped all the confidence he needed to muster up a lie. "Fifty feet." He mumbled it so low she almost couldn't hear. Fifty feet!?
"But I'm fine, see? The charms work fine, you didn't even know it happened!"
"That is the problem! You are developing a bad habit of hiding things from me, little eagle. Stop it before I put a stop to it." She warned ominously, but vaguely, she didn't really have any way of doing it. She supposed she could wrap him up in her allure, convince him to quit the team, and then keep him dazed and happy for the rest of his life so he wouldn't hate her for it. But that was a last last last resort.
"Potter, come on! Bring Ms. Delacour if you want but we have to get down to headquarters!" Jacques was back at the top of the stairs now, looking impatient. She stood with him and kept her arm tight around his shoulders, not letting him from her side throughout their little meeting. She would make him show her the bruise. And she would roundly abuse him verbally for it before healing it. These plans and more she made while they talked beater strategy and seeker disruption.
-o-o-o-
Harry laughed, "Jacques told me later that he was standing at the top of the stairs the whole time, too nervous to interrupt you."
She laughed too "I knew I always liked him for some reason."
"You did not!" He said indignantly, they were drifting over their little house now, and she just realized how high up they'd gotten. It did not instill panic, he had a way of disarming her fears and letting her feel the thrill of flying. "You hated all my friends." He did not sound upset by it, he had a teasing gleam in his eye, he probably just wanted to keep her in the air.
"That is untrue," She told him haughtily. "I liked Jacques, and Luc, and Gabby."
"Your sister doesn't count" He told her dryly.
"I don't see why not," She said, taking offense for Gabby.
"Gabby was never my friend, she was always my little sister." He told her like it was obvious.
"Well, she is still on my list, three is better than two, it's not my fault you hung out with idiots." He shook his head but there was a slam from the house behind them, he banked around rather than answer and by the time they had about faced a silver haired blur was streaking through the air.
"Maman you're flying!" Arianne was ecstatic to see her mother in the air. It made Fleur realize that she hadn't in a few years, Arianne was probably too young to remember.
"Oui little chick, I do from time to time." She said.
A mother could do nothing but smile when their child was this happy. She was willing to go much, much faster than Fleur was. In fact she seemed unable to go slow, she buzzed around them like a fly, and somehow Fleur was less afraid for their daughter seeing it up close like this. Maybe it was because she felt close enough to reach out and snatch her if she fell. Or perhaps because she knew her husband would not let her daughter get hurt, just as he would not let her fall. Probably though, the reason she didn't demand Arianne land and then tear into her husband for teaching her to do back flips and barrel rolls was the look on her daughter's face while she did them. She looked as comfortable on her broom as her father, as in control and as skilled as he was. There was something in the way real flyers held themselves over their brooms that she saw in her daughter for the first time then. They didn't clutch their brooms and hang on, they almost seemed to be the ones holding the brooms aloft, not the other way around. She was forced then to accept that her little Arianne would uphold the family legacy. She was her father's daughter, and she wouldn't rest until she was the best.
"I never should've let you buy that broom," She told him, but there was a smile on her face.
"Which one?" He laughed, "My first, or hers?"
"Both."
He just squeezed her tighter, and to everyone's surprise Liliane joined them over the cottage, looking much less shaky than she'd ever seen her eldest on a broom. Those cursed flying lessons at Beauxbatons, she thought, hellbent on turning her whole family against her.
"You put your allure to good use that year, now that I think about it," She blushed in response to her husband's observation.
"I had to, didn't I? You were completely unmanageable."
He smirked at her, "The library, to make me talk" he said, counting it on his fingers. "The hospital room, to make me sit still-"
"I do not remember it like that, you are intentionally misrepresenting me."
"Oh yeah, what are your excuses then?"
"The library to get you to open up to me, so I could help you. The hospital to keep you calm, so you would heal." She said with supreme ease, and he didn't dare contradict her assessment, just kissed the top of her head.
"Arianne, come over here and let me tell you about the first time quidditch put your papa in the hospital." She called, having been reminded by his list. Arianne, who shed her mom's attempts to scare her away from quidditch like a duck sheds water, flew over happy to listen.
-o-o-o-
The Aigles won the first tournament bracket by failing to lose a game in the first term.
Harry won their first game for them in early November, against the Corbeaux, Fleur had never paid such close attention to quidditch as she did in that game. Her eyes were glued to the little white and blue figure, in fresh team uniforms, playing for the first time. It was rather uneventful to be honest, five goals were made in the ten or so minutes before her eagle went into a dive by the hoops nearest her. She did not pay them any mind, and did not glance at the scoreboard once. The other team's seeker was too far, and he didn't have to dive much, the invisible golden ball leveled out and he snatched it. Ending his first game 180 to 20.
Their second game was against the Valkyries, right before the winter holidays. It was a bold statement, what the opposing team did that day, they marked Harry in front of everyone as a real and present threat no matter his age. He might not have caught the snitch, but his team won, putting them in the end of year finals by default as the undefeated champions of the first bracket.
The Valkyries were a vicious lot. The Aigles were too, to be fair, but as that was Fleur's new proverbial home team she could forgive them this. The Valkyries though, they were beyond redemption, she would never forgive them nor any associated with them. The last game of term, the second weekend of December, was cold and miserable. A light snow dusted the ground, earlier than usual for their rare snowdays.
From kickoff there was a person on Harry, they did not give him a solitary moment in the air, always flirting with foul in the bumps and shoves they gave him. He was faster, and more agile, but between three chasers, two beaters, and a seeker someone else would just flit over to him when he shook the last. It was clear they had no intention of letting him find the snitch without a tail.
So she thought at least. Really they were just distracting him. Five minutes into the game Robst, a beater that had jumped the Gate with him his first time, knocked a bludger at him with all the strength a sixteen year old had. The Valkyrie seeker, a girl a year older than Harry who she thought was called Emmaliene, seemed to have been coached on this move. She was between Robst and Harry, and she continued to bump shoulders with him until the last possible second. When she pulled up in a fast loop he didn't even see the ball coming.
Fleur maintained, decades later, that she could hear his neck break. It didn't matter that he hadn't broken anything. That moment, watching his head jerk to the side and his figure slump off his broom broken and limp, that moment haunted her the rest of her life. Stored carefully away with the other brutal personal offenses quidditch had yet to commit against her, they came out at night to taunt her in her dreams.
The Aigles subbed in Luc Bennet as seeker, and with righteous rage in their veins began a brutal counter attack. It did not matter how many foul shots they gave the Valkyries, they scored two to three for every free shot they gave. And Luc Bennet did catch the Snitch first, an hour later, ending the game 280 to 70.
Fleur knew none of this, because she was leaping down stairs the moment he fell from his broom. Someone must've caught him and lowered him safely, because a seventh year with the red cross of a medic was just levitating him as she made it onto the field. She wanted to beat away the older girl's hands when she reached them, but all she could think to do was smooth his hair and paw at the blood soaking the side of his head. A drastically less effective tactic than the actual magic the apprentice healer was casting over him. So she followed worriedly demanding answers from the girl and getting little. She stubbornly refused to leave when the head healer tried to hint at treating him in private, and out right glared defiance at him when he tried to insist on it.
It was Saturday afternoon he'd been knocked out of the game, and Sunday morning he woke up in the hospital bed. His head pounded and he couldn't open his right eye, he groaned as consciousness found him and pain claimed him. Then there was a squeeze against his hand and he turned to see a goddess sitting at his bedside. She was a blur of light, and the feeling of peace and happiness, and then he blinked away sleep and the daze of potions and goddess was Fleur again.
She was using her Veela magic on him. It was the first time he felt it and knew it consciously. He felt like he was sinking into something, his bed maybe, and a warm blanket was being wrapped around his mind. Every thought and feeling he had that wasn't content and pleasurable was carefully picked away leaving him dazed and smiling at her.
He wanted to ask what happened, but her eyebrows… they were so straight and thin and as silver as her hair. He needed to know who won the game, but her hands were so warm in his and on his chest, her warmth seeped into him and made him feel… dumb. He struggled to form thoughts as she smothered all but the desire to lay still and stare at her. He would get her back for this moment later, but that thought was short lived too, because why would he want to get her back? She was so pretty, kind, and smart. She was right about most everything, look what quidditch had got him.
"Who- won?" He managed to croak by sheer force of will, and her beautiful face was marred by a scowl that he felt down their bond as much as saw.
"The Aigles, not that it matters, you will not be playing again."
He managed to chuckle weakly. "Course I will." He assured her, "We're going to finals."
"Hush little eagle, we'll talk about this later," She assured him, and her attempts to sedate him worked. He relaxed back and she stroked his cheek with the hand that wasn't holding his and the action sent him back to sleep.
-o-o-o-
Telling Arianne this of course did nothing to quell her excitement at the sport. She was begging for details of the finals game before they'd even touched back down on the ground. Liliane was looking at them funny, and Fleur did not need her Veela senses to know that their eldest daughter was seeing her parents as people for the first time. Getting swept up in the cuteness and romance of the story like they were characters in a book rather than her boring and gross parents. Neither of her daughters seemed to take it for the cautionary tale it was, but that was okay she supposed. The sun set, and they all made their way inside, her husband going to start something for dinner. Her youngest daughter sat on the counter next to his cutting board, the better to ring more quidditch stories from him. Her eldest sat at the table, to be around her family while she got ahead on next year's reading, and Fleur poured two glasses of wine and sat on the other side of her husband's cutting board. Interrupting her husband's tales as a second year seeker, to embellish his injuries and highlight his suffering. Not for the first time, quidditch aside, she had to admit that if her daughters found a boy half as good as hers, they would all be pretty lucky.
AN This is probably my favorite chapter I've written so far, I get a dumb smile on my face when I'm trying to proof read it, and I'm too into my own story to properly edit, so sorry if there's mistakes. I really enjoy writing stream of consciousness POVs as people fall into allure, like not realizing it as your thoughts become not your own anymore. IDK leave a review. or don't. still not your boss.