Chapter 6
Lucky Men
In which Potters host Luc, and Luc follows Harry
Luc Bennet considered himself a lucky man.
Sitting in the back of the car, with his two boys bouncing in their seats in excited impatience, he could only appreciate that fact. The dirt drive down to the tucked away Potter manor house was long, and his boys wanted to run, waited to bail out and hit the air to find their uncle. He rolled his eyes and cracked a grin.
"Just go," he said, stopping the car with a thought, and they were out the door in an instant, brooms in hand. He let the car roll forward again, deciding on a more mundane approach to the house, to gain points with the madame Potter if nothing else.
He returned to his thoughts, this summer trip to Harry Potter's house could have very easily never happened. He considered the man his best friend, but that was not always set in stone, it could actually have been described as improbable in the early stages of their school days…
-o-o-o-
Luc Bennet was a lucky kid.
He was born of wealth, he received the blessings of a pureblood family of pedigree, as little as blood status meant in Europe. It was not so important how pure your blood was, but rather how full your vaults were, and how many of your fathers stood in the conflicts of the last few hundred years, and on which side. Nevertheless he arrived at Beauxbaton well groomed, and with every expectation of success.
Everything in his life changed when he met Harry Potter. More accurately when he befriended Harry Potter, which didn't happen for a few more years, but looking back on pivotal moments like that can be tricky, people usually ascribe it to the most dramatic moment over the most accurate.
He arrived at school with a few friends in his year already. Beauxbatons students are awarded more freedoms in housing than the other schools to his knowledge. The dorms behind the school had an array of suite styles, from sprawling eight person suites with four bedrooms and a communal area. To single bed bunks, barley more than a closet with a mattress. The only real stipulations were that all first years had to remain on the first floor in the eight person suites, and that you had to be seventh year with your apparition license to live off campus.
Those first few days, he watched Harry Potter, who joined him and his two friends in their suite. It did not occur to Luc that Harry Potter was unaware of how housing worked here, not for many years. No, at the time he was just annoyed because the big famous Harry Potter wouldn't take the hint that he isn't wanted here. They did their best to exclude him, and within a few days he seemed content to be excluded, which was just all the worse.
Then Fleur Delcour had to pull the upset of the century. She was famous around school, cold and beautiful and better than you. Just waiting for the opportunity to show you all three. She went up to the shunned English boy and elevated him up to a status above them all with a single barked order. Suddenly he was eating on the third floor, and more often than not found in the presence of Delacour, who seemed to make exceptions to every one of her rules for him. And worst of all he visibly benefited from her friendship, suddenly he was strolling around looking down his nose at people, dressing better and being better, and he didn't understand how things could be this wrong.
Luc Bennet only really wanted one thing, one thing for himself, one thing that was not his father or mothers wish. He wanted to play quidditch. He stood behind Potter as he got on his broom that second day of flight training, and watched excellence be born. It was the start of a soon to be time honored tradition of being behind Potter. He was next in the relay, setting off when Potter destroyed the school's time record, invalidating both of his teammates' efforts simply because their chances of losing this race had just vanished. He was drafted onto the Aigles reserve team despite this, and that was fine, it was maybe 1/100 second years that went straight into a starting spot. He chose to change positions, because if he kept going for seeker he'd never see any real play. After scraping a win for the team when Potter was taken out, he figured he'd have a decent chance of his name at least coming up for a chaser vacancy.
Just such an opportunity arose in his third year, he was no longer behind Potter, he was alongside him. They were teammates. In reality he was just so far behind he couldn't see through the haze. Their team suffered that year. Jacques, Tori, and Jean were all sixth years, they were increasingly preoccupied by their upcoming exams. That was keeper and both beaters only half in it, one of their chasers had graduated to give Luc the seat, and the other two were fourth years barely less green than him. They were absolutely demolished in the first game of the season.
The score came out 200 to 250, but accounting for the snitch caught by Harry, they were sitting soundly at a 200 point deficit when their seeker pulled the plug on them. Luc could not be mad at Potter this time, he'd done the right thing, and taken two bludgers for it, but he was very mad, he just never expected Potter to be the one to voice it for him.
The locker room was sullen after the game. Jacques would normally be doing post game review notes but he knew that they did so bad because he'd played so poorly. Everyone started to strip out of their heavy quidditch robes in silence, everyone except Harry Potter, who seemed to be trying to chew his own tongue and contain himself.
He failed.
Luc, who was too busy watching to see if Potter would storm over and punch Jacques like he looked like he wanted to, was the only other person not in a partial state of undress when the young boy finally exploded.
"What the hell was that out there Jacques?! Are we just going to pretend we didn't just get stomped on by the Corbeaux? We beat them four months ago!"
"Give it a rest Potter," Jacques said, sounding tired "There are more games in the season."
"More ga- are you fucking kidding me?" He sounded quietly enraged. "Right, listen up you three," he said turning his glare to include Tori and Jean "If you can't handle tests and quidditch, then just resign. Let the reserves in and take a year, or retire to focus on your careers entirely. Because I don't give half a shit about my exams, so I damn sure care less about yours. I'm here to play quidditch and I don't intend on stopping after school."
No one had heard him say so much in a single sitting, and even though they were a month and a half into term this was the moment when Luc and many others realized that Harry Potter had come back a different person this year. "My shots at getting scouted aren't going to get blown up because you three would rather think about goblin wars than do your jobs. I'll quit and form my own team before I let that happen." He did not change out of his quidditch gear, he turned on his heel and marched toward the door.
"I'll be at the Gate, anyone still interested in giving a damn about this team is welcome to join me." Luc was the first one out behind him, and suddenly that had a different connotation. He viewed it differently to be following Potter by choice and that was enough. The beautiful Fleur Delacour was there, just outside the door waiting for her Potter. He seemed unwilling to vent his rage on her, and then she put a hand to his face and seemed to deflate him. She cast suspicious annoyed eyes on Luc, and tried to pull Potter away but he just shook his head.
They shared soft words with each other that Luc couldn't hear because Delacour's multiple glares had driven him away. She left, unwillingly it seemed, after only a few short exchanges and only after she fixed his cloak and hair and touched his face again. It was weird, they acted like a couple, but didn't.
Once she was gone Harry turned to him, and he did look calmer now, almost relaxed. He gave a jerk of the head in the direction of the gate. "You ready?"
Luc was so ready. He had never been up there, just like he'd never been on the third floor balcony. As a full member of the team he had a right to both, but they were traditionally invited affairs. It didn't matter that the person inviting him was a fellow third year, in matters of the Gate he was two years his senior.
Potter seemed paradoxically calmer up there. Luc sat on his broom, because that felt more steady than his feet on the admittedly small and anti climactic rock. "Well come on then," Potter said, sounding amused. "You can't jump from up there."
"Jump?"
"Yeah you got to, or you'll never be able to stand up here." He looked so confident there, firmly standing at the top of the world. "Follow me." And then he threw himself backward off the edge of the mountain. Luc did follow, on broomstick, to see over the edge. He could track the tumbling figure, he was doing back flips all the way down. He got far closer to the ground than Luc would have dared before he threw a leg over his broom and shot off and up. Luc touched down on the rock, because he didn't want Potter to make it back up before he managed to jump.
He followed Harry Potter off that cliffside willingly, and he spent the rest of his life following Potter. To victory, to the professional leagues, to the national team, to the world cup. He found most of his life's greatest moments in the wake Harry Potter made when he took the quidditch world by storm.
-o-o-o-
Luc bobbed in front of the middle hoop, watching the four kids battle for quaffle dominance in the field. His boys were older than the Potter girls, and Jean-Luc was on the reserve team his second year due to start as chaser in the coming year just like his father had. With the two adults playing keeper it should've been a relatively clean victory. That was before accounting for the hidden Potter weapon.
At seven, on a miniscule training broom and barely big enough to hold a quaffle, Arianne Potter should not have been much of an obstacle. But she'd been training personally for years with arguably the most feared quidditch player of all time. She was like chaos given form. Her little training broom couldn't go as fast as the others, but it was shorter so it could cut corners they couldn't. She flitted around his boys like a hummingbird, flipping and spinning around them tighter and closer than they could combat and kept getting her hands on the quaffle as they passed. She couldn't really do much with it and her older sister didn't really care for quidditch, so the youngest Potter's brilliance was largely wasted. It was a stalemate that was nevertheless enjoyable for the kids, if uneventful for the parents.
Harry seemed lost in thought himself, staring off toward the house. Arianne had just snatched the quaffle out of the air during an impossibly short pass, she caught a glance at her distracted father and darted over to bounce the ball off his head with a shouted:
"Stop staring at maman!"
Luc roared with laughter, Arriane was her father's daughter to the bone, she'd be wresting control of a quidditch team from its poor captain in no time, just like he had…
-o-o-o-
Nothing was the same after he jumped off that cliff. It was something like a right of passage for Beauxbatons flyers, something like a proving ground too. How long could you fall before you got on your broom and flew back to safety? That was the question that mattered. No one fell further than Potter, but Bennet was not that far behind him. He knew immediately why Harry did it, knew that they were of the same caliber, birds of a feather. The sensation was unlike flying, unlike anything else, falling. Like a controlled fear, with absolute peace. The two of them spent hours- days probably, up there over the course of their time at school.
Jacques, Tori, and Jean didn't resign from the team, but it quickly became apparent that Harry was the captain now. They maintained the usual practice schedule, but Harry was suddenly calling the drills and working on plays. The workload removed was evidently enough for Jacques, or at least the dressing down hit home, because the three of them were on top form for their final game of the first term. Working chaser plays he and Potter devised; they clawed out a 40 point lead before the snitch was caught, 260 to 70. They weren't guaranteed a spot in the finals, but they'd at least made up for the point loss from their first game.
Off the field Potter and Bennet became something of an iconic duo. Luc always wanted to move through life with the air of detached confidence he saw in his new friend, but never quite got there. In their fourth and fifth years, when their inevitable rise to quidditch stardom was truly apparent, they developed quite the following of fellow players and witches. While Luc couldn't manage the cool dismissal and roguish charm Harry gave the witches around them in equal measure, he definitely benefited from it. More than one of Luc's school extracurriculars came directly off the back of a rejection from his friend, and he was fine with that. It never could've happened with Fleur around. The local vultures knew better. They tried to swoop when she left for the Triwizard Tournament, but her talons stretched across the channel and they found the shadow of Fleur Delacour was never not cast over Harry Potter.
In truth their third year Luc didn't spend much time with Potter outside of quidditch and their trips to the Gate, which happened weekly at minimum. Harry ate every meal at a table for two on the balcony, and Luc did manage to spend a couple free periods up there with the older kids a few times that year, but he didn't become a regular until Fleur left for England. If he wasn't in class or sitting at the little table with her, he was in the library at a table in the back that was all but labelled the Potter-Delacour common room.
That was when he learned of Harry's plans to leave school after fifth year, he spent more time buried in books than a sixth year the week before exams. He told Luc, who joined them a couple times at the table to Fleur's supreme annoyance, that he should do the same. He had it in his head that he would get drafted right out of fifth year, win a championship in his first year in the leagues, and make the National team for the '98 world cup. Luc never told him how ridiculous it sounded, and considering it did end up happening he was glad for that. He did decide then that he'd try and drop seventh year too, but someone had to be captain if Potter was going to be gone sixth year.
Harry's unconcerned certainty that he would be a professional seeker, the best professional seeker, had a way of propping up those players around him. Luc had come into school determined to play quidditch because he had the child's dream of going pro. He never expected it to happen, he expected to warm a bench for a few years and get to be seeker in his last few years, and he'd finish school and go work with his father. By the end of his third year he was pushing himself as hard as Potter in their morning runs, working just as hard with the beaters on weight training, and beginning to seriously consider the possibility of a career in the sport.
-o-o-o-
The quaffle smacked him straight in the face. Not hard, it barely moved him, but the shock of it made him reel back and only decades of practice kept him on the broom.
"You're not even trying!" A tiny voice yelled and Arianne shot toward the ground in a way that made the father in Luc balk. He looked around and saw the other kids following the youngest of them at a more sane pace, Harry was chuckling as he drifted over.
"Yeah I think it's best we call it a day, before one of us gets grounded." Luc agreed, his youngest was a hellion in the air.
"Gabrielle's over for dinner," Harry said, too casually as they made an easy pace to the house behind the kids. Luc glared over at his friend.
"So she's told you eh?"
"Just that she wrote to you after Christmas and you have corresponded." He laughed when Luc shoved him. He just let himself spin all the way round to be back upright. "I'm sure she's been in there all afternoon getting all the gory details from her sister."
Luc put on an indignant front, "What gory details? I'm a saint."
"The objective truth of that aside," he said sardonically "What matters is how Fleur tells it, and I'm pretty sure she blames you for the advent of the Potter Passover."
Luc gauped at him, trying and failing multiple times to find something to say. "What- how- but that's not fair!" He exploded "I was an unwitting accomplice at best, and besides, I always caught you... well most times, but those were your fault not mine!"
He was nodding wisely. "Too bad she doesn't see it that way." He cracked a grin at his old friend. "Let's go see how much damage she's done, nothing a few more poems won't fix. Eh?" He laughed and shot away leaving Luc to dread what was waiting in the house.
-o-o-o-
Fleur was sitting at the kitchen table staring out the window at the six little figures bobbing around the yard. It was out of habit more than any real concern at this point, but the little figure of her husband was looking her way, and he returned her wave when she gave one. Their daughter punished him for his priorities, even though he was guarding her end of the field, and she could only laugh. Watching the youngest of them grow increasingly frustrated by her fellow flyers' disinterest in playing quidditch she came to accept a little more than her daughter would play at school. Probably jump off that stupid rock, and fly around standing on her broom to show she could like her father did before her.
It was always going to be like this, a very slow, very painful process of accepting it. The wards flared, alerting her to Gabby's arrival by floo.
"Hello~" She called from the living room.
"In here!" Fleur returned from the kitchen.
"Got any coffee? I'm dead tired." Fleur picked up her wand and waved it, opening a cabinet for Gabby and setting the beans on the process of grinding and steeping.
Gabrielle took it without cream, which Fleur thought was weird, but with just the same seven or eight teaspoons of sugar she required. Hot drink prepared and sweetened, she joined Fleur at the table. She followed her sister's gaze out the window to the players.
"Well go on then, what's the tea?"
"What, the coffee?" Fleur laughed.
"No," Gabrielle sighed, "Something the muggles say, means spill the dirt, the steaming hot gossip, you know." She shrugged "You went to school with them, what was he like?"
Fleur snorted. "Are you sure you want my account? I thought you liked him…"
-o-o-o-
Luc Bennet was the bane of her existence.
She didn't care that he'd called her a Veela whore, he was just a jealous child. When he started tagging along after Harry like some kind of barnacle, he offered an apology for it and she accepted because it seemed sincere. She did care that he'd hit Harry but, by all accounts Harry swung first, and he was part of Harry's little team now so she supposed she had to accept him in her life by proxy to some extent.
No, Luc Bennet was the bane of her existence because he was a bad influence. Her sixth year was a stressful one, a blur really of exam prep and terrifying quidditch games which only seemed to get more brutal the more time Harry poured into his quidditch obsession. She knew Luc Bennet was going to be a problem the moment he followed Harry out of the locker room after the first game of the year.
She was waiting, irritable, because he'd been hit in the ribs and shoulder by that damnable ball as he caught the snitch to end the game. Then he went straight down to the ground and stomped off without seeing someone about it the bruises sure to be blossoming across his torso. He came out, still dressed in flying leathers and fuming, but he just stood before her breathing hard and glaring evilly at the grass behind her. He looked furious and terrified, and at the time she remembered that standing out to her, his mixed anger and fear, she didn't know why he was afraid. Her allure could not tell her much in the way of why people felt things but she tried it anyway, turning his head toward her with two fingers under the chin.
"What's wrong?" He relaxed a little, enough to unclench his jaw and look at her anyway.
"I lost," he said hatefully, she flinched at his black tone. The door opened behind him and Bennet came out, she threw a glare at him out of habit, but he stalled upon seeing them. He grimaced at her look and shuffled a few steps away, maybe to give them privacy, but he was clearly lingering waiting to talk to Harry.
"Come, I will heal your bruises." She said, turning and pulling him toward the dorms. He resisted her tug, she narrowed her eyes at him, tugging again. He shook his head.
"I'm going up to the Gate to cool off, really I'm not hurt." He gave her his best attempt at a smile, but it was pretty tight and stopped far short of his eyes. She threw another glare at Luc sure this was his fault, then turned fully back to face Harry, inspecting his still tense form.
"Okay," she said testily, "Well don't forget your Charms paper," She fixed the hood of the quidditch robes so it sat on his back straight "or your extra History readings if you really want to sit the test next year." She aggressively smashed down his fly away hair, and his lips twitched into a more genuine grin under her unnecessarily rough ministrations.
"Yeah, see you at lunch tomorrow." Finally the smile he gave was real, so she nodded and left with a pat on the cheek with which she tried to steal away his inexplicable fear. She locked eyes with Luc and glared daggers as she left, he grimaced and hurried past after Harry who was walking out toward the mouth of the valley.
That was the start of it all. During moments of downtime, when she was busy, he would invariably be with Luc and she attributed that to his growing cocky quidditch player persona. She wasn't at school for the worst of it, but that year it was starting to show up. He got this smirk on his face when he and Luc were surfing around the lawn between the dorms and school, standing on their brooms and zipping around at chest height. They always attracted a little crowd, sometimes others would try and keep up with them, Fleur didn't know the particulars of it beyond that a lot of people had difficulty standing on their brooms. She didn't care to know more. It was the little girls grouping around and giggling up at the two of them that Fleur didn't like.
In the spring of that year the signature quidditch-stud-style was developed. It consisted of the Beauxbatons standard grey vest, with the sleeves of the shirt rolled up to just above the elbow, no coat, and quidditch boots, unlaced if you could manage it without them falling off. The boots looked ridiculously large and out of place over the tailored slacks but that was the point, looking back it was stupid but at the time…
-o-o-o-
Fleur blushed slightly and her sister laughed.
"Yeah don't worry, they were still doing it in my day too, I get it."
"You know how he was when he came home that year," She said in annoyance, and saw her sister was nodding with a dreamy look on her face.
"Yeah, hot." Fleur rolled her eyes, she was seven, no older than Arianne, when Harry started taking quidditch seriously. She was twelve, the same as Liliane, when he won his first world cup. She looked up to him with the same hero worship their younger daughter did half the time.
"He was a cocky prat." she corrected.
"Fleur-" She groaned with a heavy eye roll, "It doesn't matter- he was good at quidditch."
"I don't see your point."
"You've never understood boys," She said with painful patience, "they were fanciable because they were cocky prats with the skill to back it up."
"I understand boys just fine, it's little girls I could never fit in with." She stood and pushed a finger into her sister's forehead to upset the careful balance she was maintaining on the hind legs of her chair. She had to flail not to fall back as Fleur took their cups to the sink. The cocky prats in question were making their way inside.
"But I suppose it's a good thing you fancy cocky prats, because as I said, it's all Luc Bennet's fault my sweet little Harry turned out this way."
AN Hope you guys like Luc, I've grown rather fond of him in my writings, you'll see more of him in the coming chapters. If you're in the discord server, you'll recognize I've been promoting him with my nickname. Gotta rep my OCs. If you're not in the discord: discord . gg / uqEeHRhTk7 Join us! It's a pretty great place to be, I can be found in there, usually named after one of my characters, trolling around and posting sadboi drabbles.
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