Hi Everyone!
Thanks for the reviews on the previous chapter. I'm having a lot of fun writing this work, and it's good to know that people are enjoying it as much as I am writing it. As ever, reviews are massively appreciated, and the biggest reason why I'm writing these chapters as quickly as I have been. Well, the reviews and Lib (IFYKYK).
Again, massive thanks to the Flowerpot Discord for the inspiration. I urge you all to check them out.
Thank you to Michal for the beta-work, or Honorversefan on FF. I urge you all to check out his writing as it's great. As ever, French translations and general emotional support from the excellent Raph.
Hope you enjoy, and let me know what you thought!
Despite the inherent tension of such a place, with a millennium's worth of its students' accumulated anxiety ringing through the walls and Madam Pince breathing down their necks, Harry found himself feeling lighter as he entered the Hogwarts library. Such lightness was not even swayed by the frown he found Hermione wearing, either.
She was not in her usual place and he soon came to learn why, as when he looked over to their usual haunt, their table had been taken by a crowd of Ravenclaw students from the year above.
"You're smiling," Hermione said, with only half a moment spared to take him in before she returned to her work.
"No I'm not," Harry said, smiling.
Hermione huffed beneath her breath. "Yes you are," she asserted. "It's unsettling."
"My smile is unsettling?"
"Yes, it is," Hermione agreed. With the nib of her quill, she trailed along her essay, searching for errors that were quite clearly not there. "Your face isn't good at it."
Harry slunk into the chair across from her. "What is it with people and my face?"
"I have no idea what you're on about."
"Just something that Aimée said."
Hermione scratched away at a word; somehow, she'd managed to spell 'nomenclature' wrong. "Which one of your new, beautiful friends is Aimée again?" she asked, parsing a hand through her hair. "I just find it hard to keep track."
"You didn't seem to mind when Andrea was concerned," Harry replied idly. They held a soft-spot for one-another, Harry had come to learn, shared in science-fiction and awful music they both found fascinating.
"That's because Andrea is lovely," Hermione admitted easily. "And Andrea made an effort to make friends with the rest of the house, rather than solely taking your company."
"I'm sure I could say something clever about friendship being a two-way street, but I'm not clever so I won't," Harry said with a smile, amusing himself. He set about going through the motions of retrieving his own work from his bag, though found the act of retrieving his textbooks to be a minutes-long exercise. "I'm sure this would all be easier if you and Ron hadn't decided to hang me out to dry."
"Hearing diatribes on how excellent you are gets tiresome after a while," Hermione told him, entirely ignoring his truest point. "And I like for my lunch to be one of the few times in the day I'm not tortured with the Yule Ball." She did finally look at him properly. "Merlin, it's all anyone talks about!"
Harry saw it fit to go without telling her that she was then only proving her own point.
"It's the only interesting thing happening at the moment," Harry replied instead.
Hermione recoiled slightly, her hair thrown backward as she did. "What's changed for it to go from awful to interesting?"
"Nothing," Harry replied quickly. "And I'm not saying it's interesting; I'm saying other people think it's interesting."
Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. "Something's changed," she stated. Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
"Nothing's changed," Harry further insisted, before sighing. "Okay, so something may have changed."
Hermione pointed her quill at him. "I knew it!" she said, in a hushed sort of yell. "Who is it then?"
"I never said it was a someone; just a something," Harry added. "I could've gotten permission to skip the ball entirely. Sirius could've been proven innocent. Malfoy could've spontaneously combusted. You don't know."
"I do know," Hermione further added. She took a hair-tie from her wrist and set about tying her hair into a ponytail. "If Sirius had been freed, I would have heard about it. If Malfoy had exploded, I would've definitely heard about it." She gave up on her attempt, snapping the elastic between her hands. "And, even if you didn't have to attend, you still would because there's a someone ."
"You're not really demonstrating a lack of interest here, Hermione," Harry replied. "You seem very stuck on this idea, anyway. Is it because you have a someone?"
"Absolutely not," Hermione dismissed. "Stop trying to squirm out of this."
"I'm not," Harry said, his hands up. "I'm just saying, it seems like you have a touch of the Yule Ball fever."
"You're going to have a touch of the 'I-Just-Got-Hexed fever' if you don't shut up," Hermione retorted. "So, who is it?"
"No-one," Harry argued, though even to his own ears his words were wearing thin. "I promise you, I don't have a date."
"But that isn't the same as not having a someone," Hermione countered. "So, is Harry Potter in-love at last?"
Harry rolled his eyes. "Will Hermione Granger realise that not everything is her business?"
"So there is definitely a someone," Hermione said, barrelling on. "The only question is who?"
"You don't get to know," Harry told her. "You don't get to avoid the ball and still learn all the gossip. Can't have your cake and eat it too."
"So, it's someone there'd be gossip about, hmm?" Hermione pondered. Absently, she pushed away her work and rested her elbows upon the table, her head in her hands.
Thankfully, Harry was reprieved from any further questioning by the approach of a girl; one of the girls, Harry and Hermione both recognised immediately, who had taken their table from them. Such was the affront too, that it was only moments after that Harry realised it was Cho Chang that stood before them.
From the corner of his eye, Harry saw Hermione fold her arms and allow a frown to fall onto her face.
"Hi," Cho said, with a small, awkward wave. She attempted to smile at Hermione, though thought better of it and turned to address Harry and Harry alone. "Can I talk to you?"
"Sure," he replied. "What's up?"
She cast a worried glance at Hermione. "You're setting people up, right?"
"Yeah," Harry agreed tentatively.
"I tell you what, Cho," Hermione cut in, already beginning to stand. "If Harry pairs away your lonely soul, we get our table back."
" Your table?" Cho asked.
"Our table," Hermione agreed. There was no denying it, either. On its underside, the words 'Property of HJP, HJG & RBW' were carved into the wood courtesy of Ron and a penknife he'd stolen from George in their second year; it was later confiscated by Percy, of course. "Deal?"
"Erm, okay?" Cho agreed, with a glance cast backwards to her friends, who sat staring at the scene with bated breath.
"How did you find out about my…thing, anyway?" Harry thought it necessary to ask. He didn't utter the word 'matchmaking', though he did think it.
"It's the only other thing people are talking about," Hermione muttered, in-between compiling her parchments, her books already stuffed into her arms.
"Jay told me," Cho added helpfully.
"Jay?"
"You know," Cho said, stretching her arm far above her head. "Tall, long hair, tanned?" Oh, so Jay was his name, thought Harry. "He said so."
A reminder of the boy was, in turn, a gentle reminder of the day upon which he met him, which in turn brought Fleur upon the forefront of his mind and a smile at the forefront of his face. He fought against it, of course, as he could feel Hermione's eyes upon him and didn't wish for her to get any ideas.
"I fancy Cedric," she began and forgot the tension of the room entirely the moment she spoke Diggory's name. "And I think he likes me too, but he hasn't asked me yet and I'm worried he might never do it."
Hermione rushed away from the table and their conversation, already forcefully taking back their table. Her absence allowed Harry the peace of thought necessary to realise just how odd his current circumstance was. Had it been last year, the thought of helping Cho date someone else would've been hellish. Yet it was then at worst a minor inconvenience.
"We know he hasn't asked anyone else yet," Harry said. If he had, it would've been the talk of the school. "So how do you know that he likes you?"
"Well, we've been pen-pals for years," Cho said. beginning to grin. "And he sends me flowers for my birthday; has done since I was twelve." Her eyes lost their focus. "He always remembers to send yellow dahlias, because they're my favourite."
He found himself very glad then that he'd forgotten his crush, for a multitude of reasons, though the most apparent then was that he wouldn't have stood a chance.
"I really don't think you need my help," Harry told her. Yet, Cho was so lost in her memories that she took a while for his words to register.
"Are you sure?" she asked, after a moment.
"Very," Harry replied. "People only really write letters for people they care about. And people only send flowers to people they definitely care about."
Her hands passed along her braided hair. "If you see him, could you just ask about me?" Cho allowed her voice to ask, before rushing to add. "You don't have to if you don't want to, but could you?"
He nodded. "If I see him, it'll be the first thing I say," he told her.
Over her shoulder, Hermione had by-then fully commandeered their place, shooing away the last of Cho's friends, and sprawling her research across the table in familiar fashion. Cho then rushed to re-join them herself, with one last, polite smile and another awkward wave her parting gifts.
His intention in spending time in the library was to make some progress in solving the clue for the second task, and cautious of the fact that any free time spent with Hermione would result in yet more inquiry, he set about doing just that. In a rare spate of admittedly duress-induced productivity, in hours he studied the past tasks of the tournament, and even magical noises, though without any luck, his soundtrack the scratching of Hermione's quill and the distant tutting of Madam Pince.
"I never did get to understand why on Earth they ask you of all people about dating," Hermione said, breaking their concentrated peace. Though her words were as blunt as ever, there was a levity to her tone that had not existed before. She was a creature of habit, Harry knew. Most happy to return to that which she knew and there were few things she knew better than the table they sat on then. "It's not as if it's due to a wealth of experience."
"My exceeding emotional maturity of course," Harry told her, fighting against a yawn. "They look into my eyes and they know that I know what they need."
"I don't think I've ever liked you less than I do right now," Hermione replied idly, her words holding an odd fondness that only the deepest of friendships could cultivate.
Harry laughed. "Yeah, I don't know either," he did then reply. As with most things apparently, it was probably his face.
"They do realise that you've never even been on a date before, right?" Hermione continued to ask.
Harry shrugged at that, then attempted to fight the deluge of yawns again, though failed and stood up. "On the subject of dates; do you happen to know what's going on with Ron?" he yawned once more, stretching his arms above his head as he did so. "I can never get a straight answer out of him."
Hermione laughed at him. "I do know, yes."
"And?
"And I know," Hermione finished. "Oh, you wanted to find out?"
"That seems to be how questions work, yeah," Harry informed. "Last I checked, anyway."
Hermione gave him a smug smile. "Guess you'll just have to wait and find out, won't you?"
Harry heaved the weariest of weary sighs.
"I'm off for a walk."
"And you're still not going to tell me who your someone is?" Hermione asked, in one last attempt, though the smugness that her face held belied her expectations.
"No, and definitely not now," Harry said, his hands winding his scarf around his neck. "If there is a someone, which I'm not saying there is, you can find out at the Yule B-" He stopped suddenly, meeting her smug smile with one of his own. "Oh wait, you can't."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Nice scarf."
Harry looked down, though he didn't need to in order to know exactly which one he wore; Fleur's scarf, of course. His skin darkened, his cheeks growing hot, and he left her without another word.
Try as he might, Harry truly could not think of much beyond Fleur after their time together. She was a pleasant thought too; one far brighter than any other he could find himself summoning. And, most oddly, it seemed that she appeared in his life far more than she had before.
In most weeks, she had existed on the edges of his awareness. Of course, it was difficult not to see the crowds that always flocked to her, yet he and her existed like two streams feeding into a greater river, connected and yet separate.
And yet, in mealtimes and in all of his free moments, she was there, either in front of his eyes or in the forefront of his thoughts. Under the light of the sun, she was the only thing he wished to see. She was the only thing in any room she was ever in, and Harry had never been more acutely aware of her.
His eyes drifted to her in moments of absentmindedness. His gaze did not linger, yet he so often wished them to.
"Are you alright?" Aimée asked, having watched his newest epiphany form before her. "You seem different."
"Different?" Harry asked, mostly as he found himself so distracted that he could only recall the last word that she spoke.
"You look happy," Aimée told him, unknowingly repeating Hermione's own words. "You wear it oddly."
"Am I not allowed to have a single emotion without being criticised?" Harry asked of her, though of the world mostly, his voice louder than it ought to have been and so calling forth the interest of others.
"Not critique; comment," Aimée amended. "You look ill-practised." She bowed her head slightly. "Perhaps that was a critique."
Harry chanced a look at Fleur, over Aimée's shoulder. Rather than her time-honoured tradition of glaring at her suitors until they left, today she ignored them entirely, eating without a single glance at any of them. "Maybe in time, I won't be."
"And what do you mean by that?" Aimée asked.
He gave yet one more look at Fleur; he found her doing the same.
"Nothing," he said. Despite the distance, Harry could see the slightest, tiniest quirk of her mouth upward. Then, before he forgot himself fully, he turned to look at Aimée once more. "Has Neville asked you to the Ball yet?"
Aimée brightened immeasurably. "He did, with flowers from his own garden," she said, her eyes travelling along the table toward the boy in question. Neville had even forewent bringing a book to his meal, instead chatting quietly with Andrea. "I had begun to think that I might have to ask him."
"Because you're so against that, of course," Harry commented, bemused.
"It is more romantic this way," Émilie told him, her voice soft, airy. "To be asked; to show your care. To show how much they want you."
Harry doubted that truly, though he found himself happy over the news. In the time since they'd first talked, Neville had begun to stand taller. He spoke more in classes, too, and had even found it within himself to glare furiously at Snape in lessons whenever the Professor attempted to bully him.
"So Justin did ask you then?" Harry asked.
Émilie nodded, sighing dreamily. "He composed a song for me, and played it on his piano," she said. Harry thought what was most striking of all, was that it was his piano. Not the school's, but his. "He said that his voice was not worthy of my ears, and so played music for me instead."
"That's quite the line," he said, quietly enough so that only Aimée could hear. She nodded, mute.
"And when he found out I played Quidditch, he bought me a broom!" She announced, her voice loud enough to carry to the Hufflepuff table and cause Justin to lift his nose into the air proudly.
"Is he richer than God?" Aimée asked Harry.
"Apparently so," he whispered.
Émilie was then lost to her reverie; a reverie only broken by the arrival of Justin himself, who led her away from the Gryffindor table and onto his own house's. Ernie McMillan, however, left the hall entirely, his stride quick as he sought to go anywhere but there.
Harry watched him go with a frown; his expression only broken by the sound of Aimée's voice.
"Do you still wish to know more about Madame Maxime?" she asked, her eyes drifting toward her departed friend. "Émilie mentioned that you were asking."
Harry shook his head. "No," he said quickly. "I think I've got it all covered."
"If you're sure," she added. "I do not think I would've been much help, I must admit. I don't think I've ever spoken to her."
Harry stopped in his tracks. "Aren't you taking Charms as a NEWT?" .
Aimée nodded. "Still," she said. "She lectures, and then Professor Toulalan teaches the practical lessons."
Fleur stood up then; Harry saw it from the corner of his eye, though it may as well have been the centre of his gaze for the focus it drew from him.
"What's she like as a teacher?" Harry asked, even his voice belying his distraction.
"She loves her subject, I think much more than she loves teaching," Aimée replied. "Beyond that, I'm still not sure."
As Fleur walked from the hall, she gave one last glance back to Harry. And, with the smallest of gestures, she crooked her finger toward herself, drawing Harry in.
And he followed.
"Thanks," Harry said, already standing, haste in his actions and his dessert still upon his plate, untouched.
"Of course," Aimée said, though by then he'd already turned away.
Perhaps he ought to have felt ridiculous, and yet he did not. He didn't feel a great deal of anything, with the exception of his startling desire to speak to Fleur once more. There was an utter blindness to his being then; blind to all but her.
And perhaps he ought not to have been so pleased to see her again, waiting for him, but he was. Inordinately so.
"Why did you come?" Fleur asked of him, her arms folded across her chest, a smile tugging at her lips.
"Why did you ask me to?"
"Because you still owe me secrets," she replied, and only then began to speak in French again. He'd missed being able to speak it too, despite it having only been a matter of a day or so since he'd last done so.
"Secret," Harry corrected, grinning in the way he'd not allowed himself to do so in front of any others. "And I didn't realise you were quite so fascinated with me that it was worth all of this."
"You mistake my desire for fairness as interest, 'Arry ," Fleur said, and there was just something in the way that she spoke his name then; like it was a secret in itself. Her voice sent fractals of lightning flying upward and downward upon his spine. " Allez ."
Harry blinked. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"Since you've been so slow in deciding what to give to me, I've decided for you," she said. "You claim to have had adventures, and to have seen everything there is to see." She paused. "Prove it. Take me on one of your adventures."
"But that's not the same thing as a secret," Harry said, though his mind had already begun to spin with the possibilities.
"Feel free to tell me a secret then, if you wish," Fleur said before her voice grew teasing. "If your life is not as adventurous as you claim."
Harry rushed in-front of her, and then turned, meeting her eyes and offering her his hand. " Allez ."
And though her face remained as poised as ever, there was a wondrous surprise in her beautiful eyes, and she took his hand without hesitation.
"So where are we going?" she asked, trailing along beside him.
"It's an adventure, Fleur," Harry said. "You'll just have to trust me."
Hand-in-hand, they ran through the familiar halls and corridors of Harry's truest home. They passed statues and disused classrooms, paintings and dorms of days gone past. He had seen them all before, of course, and yet with Fleur by his side, they felt brand new all over again. All the better, too, that the paintings took great offence of their running in the halls and shouted at the two of them all along each and every floor that they spent together.
He and Fleur laughed together then, as they were rebuked by depictions of some of the greatest witches and wizards of British history for running in the corridors of all things. They laughed and ran together until they were breathless, and yet still laughed and ran breathlessly until they reached their destination.
Only then, as Fleur stood still, gasping for air with great difficulty as the laughs still came, did she gain awareness of where exactly they were.
"I've been here before," she said, airless. "This is the Headmaster's office."
Harry nodded. "Observant as ever, Fleur."
"It isn't an adventure if I've already been here."
"That's where you're wrong," Harry argued. He pointed to the office's door, as ever guarded by its gargoyle sentries. "I'm going to introduce you to the best game that Hogwarts has to offer."
She looked upon him speculatively. " Allez ."
Harry grinned at her. "For as long as there's been a Headmaster's office, every student here has tried to break in," he began. "And your challenge made me think you might like to give it a go."
It was something of a Christmas tradition for Harry, in so much as he had tried to get in every year he'd spent at Hogwarts. He'd first attempted to get in under his invisibility cloak in his first after a Gryffindor seventh-year had mentioned the game to him and Ron. However, he soon came to realise that just because he could not be seen in getting in, that did not mean he could actually get in.
"I thought your adventures were more gallant than this," Fleur said, idly. "More saving the world and less minor larceny."
"The world only occasionally needs to be saved. So, in other times we have to make do with what we have," Harry replied. "Only here, we're not making do at all. This adventure even has the prize to prove it."
"And what might this prize be?"
"It might be anything," Harry said, letting go of her hand for all of a moment to inspect the walls that surrounded the Headmaster's office. Nonetheless, Fleur found herself following him along. "No-one's been able to do it for as long as Dumbledore's been Headmaster, but apparently any person that succeeds is given one of Dumbledore's inventions."
In one of their odd conversations, Dumbledore had remarked that the game was perhaps the single greatest test of Hogwarts' own defences. After all, nothing was quite as ingenious as the collective mischief of a school-full of teenagers.
"Only 'apparently'?" Fleur queried. "So this entire effort could all be for nothing?"
"You're really not the adventuring type, are you?" Harry asked, turning to look at her for a moment. "It's all about the journey, not the destination." He returned to his perusal, to turn the handle of the door so as to ensure that it was actually locked. Thankfully, it was. "A dance begins and ends at the same point, but when the music stops, you don't say you've achieved nothing, do you?"
Fleur took a step toward Harry; once more, it was all he could think about. "And are you the dancing type, 'Arry?"
Harry drew a sharp breath to settle himself. "Not sure yet," he said, allowing himself only a single look at her. "But I am the adventuring type, so let's get on with it."
Fleur, however, was not so stringent with her gaze, and so Harry could only feel her gaze upon him. "Of course," she said. "And when we do end up breaking into his office, and all that happens is you getting detention, you will still owe me your secret."
"Glad to see you're confident about us succeeding."
Fleur retrieved her wand. "How could I not be?" she asked. "I am me, you know him better than anyone else alive. The office does not stand a chance."
Harry was so excited by the prospect that he didn't correct her.
"Now, all we have to do is out-think the greatest wizard in the world," Harry said, lightly. "Obviously, none of the normal spells for opening doors or even breaking them will work. The stone is charmed resistant against all magic, and even if you did, somehow, manage to make it through, there's an alarm that sounds the moment an intruder passes the threshold."
"And we have to do all of this before we are no-doubt caught by Albus Dumbledore himself."
Harry smiled. "That won't be an issue," he said. "He always spends Monday afternoons in London, and then the evenings at his brother's pub recovering from his time in London."
Fleur shook her head, disbelieving. "I cannot believe you know all of this about Albus Dumbledore," she told him, saying the Headmaster's name as though it were a title or an accolade, rather than just a name. "So is this all your life is, then?" She muttered a charm that sent a yellow light along the wall beside the door, and frowned when nothing resulted. "Just jumping from one adventure to another, with tea-breaks with Dumbledore in the interim?"
"More falling than jumping," Harry commented absently. "Why are you so fascinated by the Headmaster, anyway?"
"I'm not," Fleur quickly denied.
"You've said his name so many times it's started not sounding like real words any more," Harry said. "Albus Dumbledore, Albus Dumbledore, Albus Dumbledore. See?"
"It is a secret," Fleur said, quietly, though there was something strange about her voice as she said it; a shyness he'd not heard from her until then.
He stopped his efforts immediately. "It isn't one that I can gain for a secret of my own, is it?"
Fleur shook her head. "No."
Harry nodded. On a whim, he took her hand in his for a moment, his thumb brushing over knuckles.
"He's a huge fan of muggle art," Harry said, for equally whimsical reasons. "I once mentioned that I'd been to the National Gallery on a school trip and he spent an hour telling me about Monet and Impressionism." Harry let out a laugh. "Dumbledore spent a month with him about ninety years ago in Giverny."
Fleur did not speak for a moment; a moment that stretched long enough so that Harry found himself looking at her in slight worry.
"His taste suits his stature, then," she did say, after a moment's pause. "He knows that the only truly great art comes from France."
"He never said that."
"But he did not talk your ear off over Constable or Turner, did he?" Fleur asked, with a quiet sort of smile.
"I'm beginning to regret bringing it up," Harry replied. "I don't even know who Constable is. Or Turner."
"Yet you know who Monet is," Fleur said, with a sense of victory in her voice that made Harry roll his eyes. "And we are speaking French now, and not English, because it's a far nicer language."
"I wouldn't go that far."
"Perhaps, it may not sound so wonderful when spoken by you, but it is," Fleur said. She returned her wand to its holster. "I do not think we will get to know of a way of getting through that door very soon."
Harry nodded. "Yeah, we're not making much progress here," he said, though he smiled as he did.
"And this is the only entry point?" Fleur asked.
"Other than the Floo, but that's restricted," Harry noted, before adding. "Well, there's the-"
"Window," they both announced in unison; their harmony bringing them to meet each other's eyes.
They both rushed to speak, though Fleur got there first.
"It does open, doesn't it?" she asked, the wheels beginning to turn.
Harry nodded. "Fawkes likes to stretch his wings sometimes," he said. "But it only opens wide enough so that a phoenix could get in and the office is at the top of the castle, hidden away between two towers. So, even if I could fly us to the window, I'd never be able to get through it."
"Unless you got smaller," Fleur said, clicking her fingers.
They met eyes.
"Do you trust me?" Fleur asked.
Harry took her hand. "Definitely," he said. "Do you trust me?"
"Let's find out," she said, and they were off once more.
They were joined then too, in the castle, beyond their paired hands and the lightning that Fleur sparked through him. They were bonded in purpose, in those moments.
"Seeing as how we're definitely doing this, I'll tell you the secret now anyway, but only so you don't have anything to complain about afterwards," Harry said, though both of them knew from the moment that he said it that it wasn't true, that if the veracity charm was upon him he'd be struggling to stand. He glanced at his hand, as though waiting for the pain to come.
"That makes this whole affair pointless," Fleur said, and she too looked to their hands. She smiled suddenly. "So, secrets."
"Secret," Harry corrected. "I've been studying Ancient Runes."
"And how is that a secret?"
"Because I'm not taking the class for it," Harry explained. "About halfway through last year, I realised that I'd sorta messed up with taking Divination and wanted to change, but by then it was too late. But, I asked Professor Babbling if she would give me the tests everyone else took, provided I studied it in my free time, and she said yes."
"But why keep it a secret?" Fleur asked, giving a glance to him, as they meandered through the peculiar halls of the castle, in corridors where even the familiar felt lost. "Is that not something you wouldn't mind people knowing?"
"I wanted something for me," Harry said, easily though quietly. "Like you said, pretty much everyone knows my life story. Everyone knows that I like Quidditch, and that I'm good at defence and what happened with my parents and I just-" He stopped. "I just wanted something that could be mine and mine alone." He sighed. "Well, mine and yours now."
Fleur allowed silence to hold the air, sound absent save for their footfalls.
"Are you good at Runes?" she asked, her voice soft.
"I'm alright," he said, with a laugh. "Not great, not awful." He smiled. "It's a lot of fun though, learning another language."
"I never took the subject," Fleur told him. "There was never enough practical use to me."
"Do you not think warding is practical enough?"
"I have no desire to ward buildings for the rest of my life."
Harry looked over to her. "What do you intend to do?"
She gave him a smile that made his brain fog over for a moment. "Hopes and dreams, 'Arry," she said. "Not yet."
Despite how suddenly it came upon him, Harry had rarely wanted to know anything more. But he was patient, especially for things as important as this.
The moment they arrived outside, the cold air struck them fiercely.
" Accio Firebolt ," Harry said, and then with a glance toward Fleur, added. " Accio jumper ."
With the distance of travel required, for a moment there was nothing in the world except the two of them shivering. Until, suddenly, a bundle of wool hurtled toward them. Harry picked them out of the air, and flung them toward Fleur.
"It's for you," Harry muttered, his eyes still sweeping the sky to watch his broom come from his room, growing from a blot amongst the cloudy sky to a distinguished shape in a matter of moments. "Can't have you cold when you're casting spells at me."
"But won't you be cold?" Fleur asked.
"I've gotten used to it," Harry said again, his voice distant as his entire energy was focused upon watching his broom sweep toward him. He raised his hand into the air, just in time for the polished wood of his broom to meet his palm with a slap. "Besides, I need to be as small as possible to get through that window."
Harry looked to Fleur then. She had no hesitation in putting on his clothes, already bundling within his Gryffindor jumper.
She noticed his interest, her mouth lifting into a teasing smile. "How do I look?"
She looked better in his jumper than anything he could've ever imagined. "Warmer," he said, though, his cheeks warming against the cold. "Ready?"
" Allez ," she said, her hand gesturing to his broom. He mounted it immediately, the action familiar, seamless.
Time seemed to slow, then, as Harry felt more than saw Fleur sit behind him upon his broom, her arms slowly, carefully, winding themselves around his waist, her hands gripping fistfuls of his t-shirt. He was enveloped by her, then. He could feel her breath against his neck, her nose brushing against his hair and he could scarcely contain his own lungs from bursting out of his chest.
His nerves had never been so frayed upon a broom before. Not when he was being chased by a dragon, not in any Quidditch game, not even as his old broom attempted to kill him. Not ever.
"Are we going to stay standing still forever?" Fleur asked, her lips beside his ear. "Or do you intend for us to fly?"
Harry grinned, though Fleur could not see it. He pulled up on the Firebolt and they were away, soaring through the sky, their only companions the clouds that floated above, the snow that fell down below and the birds flying beside them.
Their purpose decided that their flight would be direct, though Fleur's gasps as he brought them higher and higher told Harry that the next time they flew together, he would show her all that was possible. Her cries of wonder as they slalomed through the towers and soared above the highest rooms in the castle only proved his point.
Harry stopped them perfectly, the moment they were in front of the window, the perfection of his broom altering their moment instantaneously.
"How was that?" Harry asked, to a gasping Fleur.
She pulled her out her wand once more. "Passable," she told him, before pointing her wand at the small window. " Alohomora ."
To their shared surprise, the window cranked open with resistance. It was tiny, of course, wide enough to fit Fawkes' chest and little more, but it opened all the same.
"Is that not a security risk?" Harry found himself asking. They sat perfectly still in the air, without him ever needing to spare a single thought to their stability; the Firebolt was just that good.
"If an intruder is capable of bypassing Dumbledore's defences, this window is the least of your worries," Fleur told him. "Now, all we must do now is get you inside, and ensure that in doing so we do not set off the alarm you mentioned."
"The alarm is only triggered by the door," Harry informed her. "That way, Dumbledore and the staff don't get alerted any time somebody comes through the fireplace, seeing as how the only way they'd be allowed to get in was if they were invited anyway."
Fleur nodded. "Now comes the hard part," she said. "Human reduction is supposed to be tricky, but I am quite good, I assure you."
Yet despite her words, she released her fierce hold of his waist to wring out her hands, her wand appearing clumsy under her control.
"Do you want to talk me through the process?" Harry asked, turning to watch her. "Just so I know what I'm getting into."
Fleur nodded, drawing a deliberate breath. "Well, normal reduction is a simple charm. You cast the spell, and the magic makes the object smaller. Simple, without a great need for willpower or creativity," she began, her eyes closing for a moment in recollection. "However, a person is animate, obviously, and so if I'm to do this properly, I must take into account your internal energies as I cast the spell."
"And how do you do that?" Harry prompted.
"By altering the wand motion," she said, in a settling voice. "So that not only is your mass and volume reduced but your energies too so that you don't-" She paused, meeting his eyes. "Explode."
Harry's heart skipped a beat. "Explode?"
Fleur nodded. "It is unlikely though," she rushed to add. "According to spell-crafting theory, it is as unlikely as a levitating charm suddenly causing an explosion."
Harry's mind was cast back to his first ever Charms lesson, where exactly that happened no less than five times in an hour. "And you're confident?"
"Of course," Fleur insisted.
Harry grinned brightly. "Then this sounds fun," he said. "Whenever you're ready."
Fleur drew a deep breath, and Harry could feel her tense as she focused.
" Reducio ," Fleur incanted, and Harry was met with the familiar feeling of magic covering him once more. Then, he watched his hand shrink as they held onto his broom, and then his arms, and then his legs until he appeared half one third the height he'd been only moments before.
Yet still, as he held onto the broom, his strength did not feel as though it had diminished. His legs still appeared to fit the upper half of his body, and his head did not feel any heavier upon his shoulders.
Fleur sighed, relieved. "I can't believe that worked," she said, shocking herself with her honesty. "You're so little."
His mind was cast back momentarily, to the first time she'd described him so. "Again, excellent observation," he returned. With his new size, he found himself capable of spinning on the broom so that they could face one another, though even with both of them sat down he still had to look up steeply to meet her eyes.
"You're cute."
Harry's face grew as red as the jumper she'd borrowed from him. "Come on, then," he mumbled. "Let's get on with it."
He lifted himself off of the broom, and tentatively took hold of the open window. At first glance, the window looked delicate, formed of stained glass, and yet the moment Harry touched it, he knew it could withhold any force he'd be able to muster.
He cast one more glance to Fleur. "Don't break my Firebolt when I'm gone," he said, before leaping through the window and meeting the floor of the Headmaster's office with a dull thud.
Harry had imagined the impact would hurt less than usual given he weighed less, but it still hurt just as much as it always did. The pain, however, was soon overwhelmed by the utter triumph that filled him.
The office was cast in a warmer glow to his eyes, its familiar contents brilliant once more. He felt as though he was there for the first time, all over again.
Yet, conscious of the fact that the eccentric Headmaster could arrive at any moment, routine be-damned, Harry rushed to take a piece of the Headmaster's free parchment, stealing a quill from the drawer that he knew that Dumbledore kept them in. He inscribed a short message:
Nous étions là
Amitiés,
Harry Potter et Fleur Delacour
Harry found himself grinning as he placed it upon the Headmaster's desk, and grinning yet more stupidly as he climbed out of the window once more to see Fleur on his broom once more.
"You're still alive," Fleur remarked upon seeing him again, though her eyes were drawn to his smiling mouth. "I take it that you were not caught."
"Clearly," Harry replied. "I can't believe we did it."
"It seems rather trivial, I must admit," Fleur replied, carefully pushing herself back along the broom so that Harry could return to it comfortably. "I cannot believe no-one managed to do it before us."
"We're quite a good team, you know," Harry said, looking over his shoulder. They shared a smile.
"I assume most are not foolish enough to allow themselves to be shrunk," Fleur teased, nudging him in the side with her wand. "Are you finished being miniature?"
"Definitely."
Fleur nodded. "Luckily, the engorgement charm is my speciality, so you'll have no worries here," she said before her voice grew playful. "I must admit I'll miss you being pocket-sized, but alas." Fleur trained her wand on him. " Engorgio ."
And, with absolute precision, Harry was returned to his own form once more. His hands, as they always had been, his legs as long as they always were. The return to his original mass forced Fleur to hold onto him tighter, though, which he did not mind in the least.
For her teasing, Harry took them the long way around on their way back to the ground, flying through air as quickly as his Firebolt allowed the pair of them to go, taking delight in the shocked shrieks she let out as she hung on for dear life, in how she held her breath as he directed the broom toward the ground only to pull up at the last moment. How, upon reaching the ground, she nearly fell over herself to get off his broom as quickly as possible, casting him a sharp glare.
"That was not funny," she asserted, watching him laugh at her misfortune.
"Seemed pretty funny," Harry replied, still smiling. He placed his broom beneath underneath his arm, and set about walking inside again, the cold growing too great to ignore. Though she grumbled, Fleur followed him along too. "It's like you've never flown before."
"I haven't flown with someone as stupid as you," Fleur returned. "If you'd been a second later when you pulled up, who knows what could have happened."
"If you'd been even slightly wrong with your wand motions, I would've turned into a bomb," Harry said, before offering her a warm smile. "But I trust you."
"Then I suppose it's only fair that I trust you too," Fleur told him. "If only in adventures."
In time, Harry hoped that might extend elsewhere.
"So you don't suppose that I could tempt you into another flight anytime soon?" Harry asked.
She shook her head. "I would have to be running for my life, and only then barely," she told him, bluntly.
"With how my life usually goes, that might very well be the next time we speak."
Fleur drew breath to respond, but before she could they became aware of, oddly enough, Cedric Diggory. Harry had made a habit of meeting the older boy at some of the worst moments of his recent history; Halloween, the world cup, the dementor attacks. He half-expected the Hufflepuff to come with a letter saying he'd been expelled.
"Cho," Harry said, upon clapping eyes upon the other Hogwarts champion, the word spoken as though it were an epiphany.
Cedric looked at him with wide eyes. "How did you know?"
"What?" Fleur asked, her eyes switching between the pair of them. "Are you talking in code?"
Harry shook his head quickly. "No, not at all," he rushed to say to Fleur, before turning toward Cedric. "Just ask her."
"Are you sure?" Cedric asked, a shyness about him that contradicted the image people so often placed on him.
"Definitely," Harry said at once. "She wants you to ask."
Cedric nodded in reaction to Harry's words, though mostly to himself. "If you're sure," he added, fairly unnecessarily.
Harry nodded his head toward the nearest door. "Go, before she gets worried that you never will and accepts someone else's offer."
Cedric took off immediately, at a pace halfway between a walk and a sprint. "Thank you!" he called out, over his shoulder.
Fleur came to stand beside Harry, the edges of their knuckles touching as she did. Despite them having returned to warmth, she still wore his jumper; the thought warmed him.
"His date," Harry filled in. "Or who's about to be his date, anyway."
Her hands played with a loose thread of wool absently. "And have you given that any thought?" she asked, and his heart skipped a beat.
"Secrets," was Harry's only response. "And you?"
"Secrets," Fleur replied quickly. "It would be foolish to think of that when we have not helped my Headmistress and your Groundskeeper."
Harry clicked his fingers. "I knew we've been forgetting something," he said. "I suppose other things got in the way."
Fleur looked to the door; the door Cedric had flown out of in his haste. "I think we've done enough for one day, though," she said. "And we have a while yet."
"That we do, Fleur," Harry agreed. Yet, upon the sound of her name, her eyes snapped to his and she offered him a look that made him want to ask her to stay.
Before he knew it had happened, she took his hand in hers. "Do tell me what Dumbledore has given us when he decides," she said. Her thumb brushed over his. "I wouldn't want today to have been for nothing."
She looked down to the jumper that she wore; his jumper. But before she could offer to return it, Harry spoke. "Keep it, if you want," he said easily, before adding, in a knowing voice. "It suits you, anyway."
Fleur thought for a moment. "I think I will then," she told him. "Perhaps it is just my imagination, but wearing it has been the warmest I've felt in months."
She gave his hand one more squeeze, before letting go. Harry missed her the moment she left his touch.
They waved goodbyes, and Harry trailed his way toward the Gryffindor tower, with satisfaction in his heart, and the thought of Fleur wearing his jumper warming him all the way.
Nous é tions l á = We were here
Amiti é s = Regards
Allez = Come on/Go on (Should be noted that this is perhaps not entirely accurate, and probably too formal for the context. However, as an author I made the stylistic choice otherwise as I prefer the sound of Allez to vas-y)
Thank you, as ever, to Raph for being great.
There it is!
Let me know what you thought!