(31st December, 2014) Some minor revisions to wording & punctuation. Author Notes added.

(12th January, 2015) A few further minor revisions to wording and one correction of capitalization. Author Notes expanded slightly.

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following is assembled from the perspectives of a number of characters during the events of the latter months of 1995 in an initially similar-to-canon universe. Where a character's name appears as a heading, events are from that character's perspective until another character's name appears as a heading. This piece is in the main slightly frivolous and identified as 'humor', but has a tragic twist at one point and is also identified as 'tragedy'. This piece is rated 'M' on account of strong language and implied adult themes in places. This is a one-shot.

Monsieur Delacour:

"The British Ministry naturally is ignoring the rumours currently circulating. They find it convenient to believe that a teenage boy who was so very obviously seriously injured must have hallucinated or made up the whole thing, and that Albus Dumbledore is using this for his own ends. The fact that the Malfoy galleons are rumoured to be whispering so sweetly in the Minister's ear may be a contributing factor too. However: it is necessary, that magical France understand exactly what is going on in wizarding Britain right now – especially if it involves an actual return of their last dark lord. Which is where you come in:" Monsieur Delacour sighed. "We need people over there, observing what is happening. I gather from contacts in the aurors that Albus Dumbledore may be starting up some sort of 'vigilante group', similar to one which he ran in the British Wizarding War of the 1970's. Ideally, Fleur, I need you to make yourself agreeable to this organisation, to achieve at least peripheral membership of it, and to report back to me on what it is apparently doing and finding out. Do you understand, my dear-one?"

"Yes, papa." Fleur nodded.

Severus Snape:

Severus Snape eyed the part-veela girl with mistrust. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore may well trust and welcome the chit of a young woman as 'one of our continental allies' with open arms (to the point where he'd invited her here to an Order of the Phoenix meeting in Grimmauld Place), but Severus Snape knew a fellow spy when he saw one, even if she was currently a hopelessly inexperienced and naïve one. And apparently Albus had plans to add her to the Hogwarts staff in some capacity…

Oh well. As usual there was nobody else bothering to do anything about one Severus Snape's misgivings, so he was just going to have to handle this one himself.

Unfortunately the most logical way to deal with it was to adopt one particular element of the modus operandi of James Bond.

Not that Severus Snape had anything against James Bond – had he been both real and a wizard, he was sure that the man would have placed in Slytherin, on account of his preparation to ruthlessly do whatever was necessary, and to never fail to take advantage, in a dirty manner (excepting Bond's unfortunate weakness, at least in the original novels, to dislike killing even a proven enemy in cold blood) – but Severus had preferred to remain chaste and devoted to the memory of Lily.

Oh well, one more sacrifice of expediency on the altar of this bloody war.

Monsieur Delacour:

Monsieur Delacour was in a state of despair. He'd sent his daughter to England to find out what the 'Order of the Phoenix' was up to, not to write back long reports about her attempts to flirt with a man who was supposedly Dumbledore's chief spy, though might just as easily be Voldemort's – although granted if she did ever make any inroads with him she should be ideally positioned to get at least one side's version of what was going on.

And there was the possibility which bothered him; that rather than Fleur playing this 'dark and brooding' Professor Snape, it might be the older man who was playing Monsieur Delacour's daughter, letting her think she was the one doing the entrapping.

Monsieur Delacour just hoped that the potions master was so typically English he'd be incapable of any such wiles.

Severus Snape:

The new school year at Hogwarts commenced with the introduction of new staff-members to the school; Fleur Delacour as an assistant in the potions classrooms, and a ministry official that Severus rapidly mentally labelled as 'the pink thing with the kitten fetish' who was apparently at the school for the express purposes of sabotaging defence classes and to ensure that nobody was saying anything publicly which was anti-Ministry. The zeal of the latter for 'theory only' classes indeed prompted her to attempt to suggest to Severus within a couple of days of the new school year getting underway that potions classes would 'benefit' from adopting the same approach to education as her defence classes.

Whilst Severus would have appreciated a whole year (or however long the pink thing's tenure and influence at the school lasted) without brewing accidents, unfortunately once the policy ended the delinquents (and their somewhat rarer but no less dangerous counterparts) would be back to brewing – and several times more accident prone in consequence of having got out of practice.

He smoothly dealt with the pink thing's suggestion by appealing to the logic she was using in her own classes:

"Madam Umbridge: I understand that you teach in defence that there is no need for pupils to actually practise spells, because the Ministry will be there to protect them from dark wizards; is the Ministry also intending to brew boil-cure potions for every adolescent who has become unfortunately afflicted, or to supply essence of murtlap for every household with children who graze themselves whilst at play? If so, then I will gladly discontinue the practical side of brewing classes."

The pink thing hastily withdrew her suggested policy of 'theory only' potions classes.

Albus Dumbledore:

It was now over a month into the new school year, and it was quite clear to Albus Dumbledore by this point that certain things which had been going on had by now regularized themselves, instead of simply petering out or blowing up spectacularly. Like the Minster's under-secretary, they appeared to have become a fixture of current school life, albeit with effects nowhere near as currently detrimental to the school as the woman from the minstry's endless meddlings.

Still: at this point, as a conscientious employer, he considered it necessary for him to make some sort of comment, and so he had invited Professor Snape into his office for a little private chat one Saturday afternoon.

"Severus. Whilst I must confess that I am pleasantly surprised to find you doing so much to further what I trust are friendly foreign relations, I am nonetheless surprised that you are doing so." Albus peered at his potions master with an expression of abstract mild curiosity. "I must also question the wisdom of your doing so with the delightful madam Umbridge in the school?"

"As a classroom assistant to my potions classes, Miss Delacour has every reason to be in the school, and as a recent student herself, she has every reason to be in my quarters every night discussing lesson-plans for the next day." Severus Snape responded in a manner which suggested that he had been thinking very carefully how to answer in a situation such as this. "The fact that accidental cauldron meltings are down by forty-seven percent at present this school year on the same period as for last year more than justifies her actual presence in my classes, I believe. Miss Delacour is apparently much better equipped to handle insecure pupils who lack confidence than myself – and even Minerva has expressed her gratitude for Miss Delacour's presence."

"Minerva," the headmaster said, "is unprepared to credit that every evening you and Miss Delacour might be, as muggles might put it, 'shagging each other senseless'."

"Since the start of the school year, anything which – hypothetically – might be happening along those lines would only be happening on Friday, Sunday, and Wednesday nights." Severus responded, without batting an eye. "Friday nights because it's the end of the school week, Sunday nights during our review of lesson plans for the upcoming week and she says it helps her to concentrate, and Wednesday nights because she's an insatiable quarter-veela whom it would be unduly cruel to force to wait until Friday. And on other evenings, the focus would be purely academic, bar the occasional outbreak of light flirting. All this entirely hypothetically, of course."

"Ahem, quite." Albus said.

"And do you really mean to tell me, headmaster, since you refuse to teach Potter occlumency yourself, that you would prefer me to be attempting to do so, instead of Miss Delacour? We both know which of us Potter would find it considerably easier to trust, and gainfully learn from, but Miss Delacour being who and what she is, she needs to be firmly anchored to be able to handle Potter in a professional, objective, manner. Which requires, from your perspective, an Order member, here in this school, which means – given the way that Miss Delacour is inclined – me."

"Ah. That's very far-sighted of you, Severus… Although I must admit to be beginning to have second thoughts about the occlumency project for Harry, given the progress Miss Delacour reports him to be making, since if he succeeds in being able to keep his mind closed to Voldemort, it may be to the detriment of his ability to learn random thoughts back the other way through the connection. Still, best on balance, I believe, if Mr. Potter can keep the connection closed…"

"Which reminds me, headmaster, that Miss Delacour has been speculating upon just why Mr. Potter might exhibit just such an unusual connection to the Dark Lord and has been wondering whether you have any thoughts I can pass on to her at the moment?"

"Alas, Severus, only theories, not worth mentioning, and certainly not potentially worth confusing anyone else with."

Albus certainly had theories about what was ailing Mr. Potter, but he judged that they were theories which in no way, shape, or form were suitable as matters currently stood to be expressed to anyone save for the headmaster's own brother right now – and though Aberforth detested Albus on a good many counts, he would not speak a word of those theories to anyone, whilst Albus still lived.

"Very well then." Severus said. "Is there anything else, headmaster?"

"How is Lord Voldemort taking your association with Miss Delacour?"

"He believes I am seeking to recruit foreign allies, and/or looking to distract you from the fact that I am spying on you for him with a little romantic adventure."

"Well, it is certainly distracting me and concerning me to some extent, I must confess." the headmaster said.

"Sufficiently to order me to stop?" Severus quirked an eyebrow in challenge.

"Hmm. Perhaps not. I shall just have to try to live through it." the headmaster said. "Especially since that will allow you to report to Lord Voldemort with something akin to veracity your successful employment of this technique to 'throw sand' in my eyes."

All things considered, it probably was a net positive for Severus to be distracting himself with this little romantic adventure, Albus concluded – a safe and relatively harmless (to anyone) pastime…

"Oh, and Severus:" the headmaster added as an after-thought, as the potions master stood up to leave. "The instructions which I gave to you regarding madam Umbridge before the start of this school year still stand, let me be quite clear."

Fleur Delacour:

Fleur Delacour said a very strong and very irate-veela-like word, once Severus had relayed to her during the latest Saturday evening rendezvous in his quarters what he considered it essential for her to know of his most recent conversation with the Hogwarts headmaster.

Fleur had no guarantee that Severus wasn't lying through his teeth of course – he was lying to at least one wizard much older and considerably more knowledgeable than herself who also happened to be a master of the arts of legilimency – but she suspected he found coping with said wizards (and what contact they forced him to have with Harry Potter) took so much effort that he couldn't be bothered to lie to her, but only selectively left things out.

As apparently Albus Dumbledore was doing in refusing to comment on the unusual connection which Harry exhibited with the Dark Lord.

"Okay:" Fleur said. "We will review – again – what we know of the situation with Mr. Thinks-He's-So-Cool-With-French, and see if anything significant strikes us this time. He claims to be descended from Salazar Slytherin and is a Parselmouth. He has studied extensively the dark arts and travelled widely. He marks his most loyal followers with a tattoo which may or may not be related to the protean charm, and which allows him to an extent to communicate over some distance with them. He was struck by a rebounding killing curse on Hallowe'en, 1981, which instead of killing him reduced him to some sort of spirit form, from which he believed that a drink made with the Philosopher's Stone could in some way help to restore him. He had at some point created a diary in which he stored copies of his schoolboy memories which was able to create a bond with a first year pupil here, which allowed the diary to control her and purportedly almost to exchange the first year's life for some form of higher state of existence for itself."

"The diary was immune to lesser attempts at destruction – including being flushed down a toilet – but was susceptible to a basilisk's fang in a rather remarkable way." Severus intervened.

"Right." Fleur frowned. "Almost as if it were a being, not a charmed object. Could he have possessed his own diary and been driven out by contact with a fang of the serpent of his purported forebear?"

"It would seem unlikely, if he did, that he would have exhibited solely the knowledge and capabilities of a schoolboy during what Potter reported of the confrontation in the chamber." Severus countered.

Fleur frowned a while longer, then shrugged and went on.

"With the assistance of Peter Pettigrew he was able to obtain for himself a very basic body, with which he was able to use his own wand again, and later, with the assistance of a ritual, he was finally able to gain something like an adult form and to effectively have returned to full power. He is apparently currently trying to discover the full version of a prophecy which he believes may hold information vital to him and may also explain what happened with his and Harry's wands in the graveyard. His presence in Harry's vicinity causes Harry pain in the scar on his forehead, and when Mr. Thinks-He's-So-Cool-With-French is in a particularly strong emotional state, Harry is apparently able at times to sense what he is doing. We do not know, at present, if Mr. Thinks-He's-So-Cool-With-French is aware of what Harry is doing when Harry is in a particularly strong emotional state, but Albus Dumbledore considers it a matter of some urgency that Harry learn occlumency." Fleur frowned again. "There is something which I feel that I am missing, Severus. Something which I once read or heard. Pleasure me, please."

"It's a Saturday." Severus mildly objected.

"That is true, but I think so much better and more clearly during the act, and this is important."

"Very well then."

"Horcruxes!" Fleur gasped almost half an hour later. "Soul jars and anchors!"

Severus Snape:

Severus Snape was in something of a pickle. Whilst Fleur didn't know much about the devices known as 'horcruxes', what she had been able to recollect was highly disturbing and made them sound precisely the sort of things which in Severus' estimation Lord Voldemort would find highly appealing to manufacture/employ. The fact that the Hogwarts library had a complete absence of material on such items (although they were not so obscure that the Beauxbatons curriculum hadn't mentioned them) rather suggested to Severus that someone had removed all the reference material from the Hogwarts library – most likely the headmaster, which in turn implied the headmaster had already reached a similar conclusion regarding what steps Voldemort had taken to attempt to achieve immortality, yet for one of a number of possible reasons was keeping his theories to himself.

That Harry had a piece of Voldemort's soul attached to him (either intentionally or accidentally placed there by Voldemort) was unfortunately also all-too-credible a theory, and had some rather unpleasant potential implications – not least in that removing the piece of soul might prove highly difficult. The shortage of research material on horcruxes and the like was something of a problem to any potential such attempt too; in his own private book collection Severus had come across a mere two brief mentions of the subject, neither of them exactly illuminative on the nitty-gritty of how such things were created, operated, or might be unravelled.

In theory, confronting the headmaster with the hypothesis that Voldemort had manufactured at least one horcrux – the diary – and that a piece of his soul was attached to Harry, and suggesting that more heads might make better work of the potential problems ahead would be the most logical course to take.

In theory.

The thought of actually doing so gave Severus considerable misgivings, however, not least in that he could see that the headmaster might consider it an unacceptable risk that Severus be privy to such sensitive information in case Voldemort should ever suspect Severus of treachery and during an interrogation discover inadvertently that the headmaster knew about the diary and the fragment of soul in Harry. For that matter, Lord Voldemort (if the piece in Harry was there accidentally) himself might not even know that it was there at present, and may discover some way to exploit it, if he became aware of the fact.

Tricky.

Doing absolutely nothing about the situation clearly wasn't an option though…

Fleur Delacour:

Not yet six months out from completing her own formal education, and already Fleur Delacour was in almost suicidally over her head. The situation uncomfortably reminded her of how she'd felt that winter's day earlier in the year when faced with the task of trying to rescue Gabrielle from the depths of the Black Lake, and been driven back by those water-demons.

Harry Potter had rescued her little sister, of course, but now Harry Potter was caught up in a web involving political intrigues and a dark wizard who refused to die. The dark wizard refused to die presumably because he had had at least one horcrux other than the diary still extant, besides the fragment of his soul buried in Harry. (From her occlumency sessions with Harry, Fleur herself was convinced that the piece of the dark wizard's soul in Harry could only have ended up there by accident; and following on from that it was obvious to Fleur that the English dark wizard must thus have at least one additional horcrux besides the diary, otherwise having learned of the diary's destruction, he would by now be wondering just why he hadn't gone *poof*, being still a bodiless spirit at the time of the destruction of the diary).

To Fleur's mind, almost from the moment that she'd recalled what they were, it had seemed beyond any possible reasonable doubt that the English dark lord had cheated death by means of horcruxes, very definitely plural. It fit too much of what she knew, or guessed at.

The fact that she was still alive, having identified the use of horcruxes, rather suggested to her that wherever Severus Snape's loyalties lay, they were not currently primarily with the English dark lord. Well either that, or the English dark lord wanted her alive for some reason more important to him than preserving the secret of how he had achieved 'immortality', which latter seemed admittedly unlikely. A man wouldn't call himself 'Voldemort' and then not be either extremely brazen or extremely paranoid about his means of preserving his existence, to Fleur's mind, and since the English dark lord had never once (as far as she knew) publically used the 'horcruxes' word, she had to assume that his own were something he would likely torture and kill to keep secret.

Thus Severus Snape had not told the English dark lord that Fleur even suspected the existence of horcruxes – could not have told him.

She hoped that her logic was correct. It had been one of her top subjects at Beauxbatons, although the textbook exercises she had studied at school bore little resemblance to this tangled thicket.

Oh, and best not to make any mention of horcruxes to her father when she next reported to him – just make some vague mention of how she was 'pursuing possible leads'. This was the sort of information which could be fatal to anyone who knew it, and Fleur did not want her father dead because she passed this news on to him and then someone in France (whom he considered himself honour-bound to pass it on to) was less-than-discreet with it.

Severus Snape:

The term was passing, further information on horcruxes or stray pieces of soul was still in short supply, and the pink thing with the kitten fetish was being annoying again. The only reason that Severus Snape had not yet practised his technique for extracting internal organs with a piece of wire upon her – as Egyptian priests engaged in mummification (albeit of dead personages, which Severus had no intention of allowing the pink thing the privilege of being if he ever did it to her) had been wont to do – was the headmaster's very specific standing orders not to do so.

"I wonder, Professor Snape, if in the time that you've been working with her if you had noticed anything unusual? About your current classroom assistant?" the pink thing simpered.

She had 'insisted' on this one-to-one interview, which apparently this time was to be on the subject of Miss Delacour. There had been much speculation in the staffroom of late (naturally only when the pink thing was absent) that the pink thing must have been issued with a time-turner to be able to pop up in so many places to be obnoxiously bureaucratic at the rate that she managed; either that or she was taking potions to skip on sleep, which if overused would drive her around the bend in the end (presupposing she wasn't already half-mad to start with).

Severus Snape considered the pink thing's question very carefully for several moments, before answering.

"Yes."

The pink thing waited. And waited. And then coughed.

"Hem, ahem."

"That sounds an unfortunate cough, Professor Umbridge. Would you like me to see if I can brew up something to alleviate it for you?"

The piece of wire might be forbidden, but the headmaster had yet to bar Hogwarts' potions master from reducing the pink thing to a quivering boneless mass of steaming jelly if she were foolish enough to request he provide her with any kind of concoction for her personal consumption. Possibly because even the headmaster considered that the pink thing had more sense than that.

"You didn't answer my question."

"I did. You asked if I had noticed anything unusual about assistant-professor Delacour. I replied to indicate that I had. And then I asked you, since you exhibited a cough, if you required my assistance with it, to which you have still not yet answered in either the negative or affirmative."

"No I do not require anything for my cough, Professor Snape." the pink thing said, a touch hastily. Apparently she did have some sort of survival instincts. A pity that. "I was coughing because I wanted you to tell me more of what unusual things you might have noticed about Miss Delacour."

"If that was your intention, it would have been helpful if you had said so. I'm not a mind-reader, Professor Umbridge." True, he might be highly proficient in the art of legilimency, but that was more a matter of inspecting memories rather than what a person was currently thinking – although granted a highly skilled practitioner could often make some educated guesses…

And besides, there was the matter that it might be technically illegal to use legilimency on the pink thing – and the rather more important consideration, as far as Severus Snape was personally concerned, that he had strictly no wish to forage around in the seedy recesses of what passed for the pink thing's mind, unless absolutely necessary.

There was another lengthy pause and then the pink thing started to get a bit tetchy.

"Well." she snapped. "What exactly have you noticed about Miss Delacour that might be unusual?"

"Her intellectual abilities appear to be greatly above those of what I would expect to find in the average witch or wizard of her age just-out-of-Hogwarts. She doesn't ask questions about matters to which the answers should be apparent to even an idiot with just a mere two moments of thought, and she exhibits unusually high levels of common sense. She has a rather strikingly pitched scream in moments of high excitement, an unusually wide range of vocabulary in multiple languages when it comes to expressing a sentiment to the effect of 'je devrais comme certains plus, s'il vous plait, professeur' and has actually read the original Latin version of Paracelsus. And she dislikes snails prepared for the dining table, which I gather that some might consider unusual in anyone coming from France."

Severus had been keeping a careful eye on the pink thing, as he slipped a couple of the latter items into the list, but discerned no kind of reaction to them. Apparently, whatever capabilities the pink thing might possess in the low-cunning department, she had been somewhat short-changed when it came to higher mental faculties. Anyone with half a brain and the basis of a more-than-rudimentary education ought to have noticed that Severus had hinted that he was having outrageously wild sexual encounters with mademoiselle Delacour – he was sure that even Potter would have noticed it, though the thought would have no doubt horrified the latter sufficiently that he would have immediately discarded it, and possibly asked his friend Miss Granger to subsequently obliviate him of even having momentarily considered the notion – but the pink thing had completely failed to react.

"Had it occurred to you that Miss Delacour might be anything less than human, I mean?" the pink thing leaned forward and asked, urgently.

"Well if I were a particularly superstitious man, given to ridiculous religious fancies," Severus said, carefully affixing a sneer on his face that surely even the pink thing would take as being indicative that he was not, "then I might be prepared to entertain the idea that she might be an angel in disguise from heaven, but since such things do not exist clearly she cannot be; although if they did exist, that would make her more than human, surely? Although, of course, if you believe in angels, Professor Umbridge, that is by no means to cast any aspersions upon your beliefs." He added the latter hastily, sneer removed, in a superficially respectful fashion. He was fairly certain that the pink thing would have no such beliefs though.

"Good gracious, no, I do not subscribe to such outrageous and primitive muggle notions." the pink thing said, horrified at the merest suggestion. It took her several moments to recover her composure. Then she remembered that she had asked a question which had had a purpose. "What I meant, Professor Snape, was as to whether Miss Delacour might be part-veela?"

It was with the greatest regret, since this interview was clearly coming to an end, that Severus discarded a number of flippant responses that would have been grossly irresponsible to leave the pink thing to specifically ponder upon.

"Since she is French, and the daughter of a senior French official, and I have no wish to get involved in any diplomatic incidents, I do not concern myself with such matters, Professor Umbridge. I do not have the luxury of your rank and ministerial favour."

There. He hadn't said anything that the pink thing might find useful in pursuing any racist agenda she might have against mademoiselle Delacour, and had given her a reason why he was not being helpful that she ought in fact to consider herself – not that she necessarily would.

Fleur Delacour:

It took the menace-in-pink several days after the interview with Severus to get around to tackling Fleur head-on. Fleur had no idea how Severus could be so blasé about the menace-in-pink – well not beyond that as either a Death Eater or an ex-Death Eater spy, he had probably seen things much worse, which actually probably explained a lot…

But any rate, those were several days which the menace-in-pink should not have taken to getting around to Fleur; not if she had expected to remove Fleur from Hogwarts.

The menace-in-pink had cornered herself alone in a room with Fleur now, clipboard out like a shield which she didn't realise that she needed yet, and quill positively quivering with eagerness.

Fleur handed her a folded piece of parchment, before the woman had time to start tiresomely gloating.

"What's this?" the menace-in-pink asked.

"My maternal grand-mére has been to see Minister Fudge." Fleur said, trying to restrain a disdainful curl of her lip. "Apparently he had a broomstick which goes to Alpha-Centauri, which he was most anxious that she ride. Whilst he was busy demonstrating it to her, he was kind enough to sign a piece of parchment – and several copies in case of accidental incineration or other circumstances of loss – to the effect that my heritage is no reason for me not to be in this country, nor positioned as an assistant teacher of potions at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry until the end of the current school year."

The menace-in-pink opened the parchment, and looked over it and went white with fury.

Fleur didn't doubt that the woman now considered herself her enemy.

She also didn't doubt that right now there wasn't the slightest thing, of any note, that the other could actually do about it. Not with her precious Minister Fudge's signature against it, and several backup copies to the same effect – or not that she could do without exposing him to public ridicule.

Monsieur Delacour:

Monsieur Delacour simply didn't understand how the British Ministry of Magic could be burying their heads in the sand like this; what had happened to Broderick Bode, putting him in a St. Mungo's ward, was suspicious to Monsieur Delacour, but might perhaps understandably be dismissed as a 'workplace accident'. But what had happened to Mr. Arthur Weasley ought to be screaming out at them that something, to borrow from the English 'bard', was distinctly rotten in the state of Denmark. A man who worked for the Ministry killed by poison on Ministry premises – by all the signs from the bite of a very large snake – and they were simply trying to sweep it under the carpet? Sacré bleu!

Severus Snape:

He would have preferred to have avoided Order headquarters over Christmas, as the demise of Arthur Weasley cast something of a shadow over the yuletide proceedings. In fact it was probably safe to say that it completely eclipsed the festivities. It seemed impossible to move anywhere at Order headquarters without encountering a grieving or otherwise shocked Weasley. Even the one who'd joined the Ministry turned up; apparently all it took to convince him that there might have been something to the rather wild blurtings-out that Potter had made at the end of the Triwizard Tournament – and that said Weasley had been something of an ass – was the demise of his father.

Severus wanted to avoid Weasleys right now as much as possible. They were grieving and they were dangerous and they wanted very-much-to-know just what the Dark Lord was up to and what was going on? Severus took recourse in the chain of command, redirecting any and all Weasleys with questions to his immediate superior in the Order, Albus Dumbledore. Severus himself knew pretty much the entirety of what was going on at present, at least as far as what the Weasleys required to know went – and he could make informed guesses as to the rest – but he wasn't really the sort able to offer comfort to the bereaved, and besides he preferred to leave it to Albus Dumbledore to explain in person that there were unfortunately, at this time, things which must remain secret.

And he also had the coming New Year to worry about. Severus was expected to attend a masked ball at Malfoy Manor and to take along Fleur so that the various Death Eaters who currently had the outward appearance of respected members of society – and who would be amongst the guests – could assess her.

The headmaster seemed to think that Severus and Fleur's attendance would be a good idea.

Severus had doubts about it. Without making it clear exactly where his own allegiances lay, he would have to somehow ensure that potentially multiple personages did not conclude that Miss Delacour was in Albus' camp and mark her down for either immediate or imminent extermination-with-extreme-prejudice.

Oh well, one more tricky problem to be solved…

Author Notes: (Posted 31st December, 2014; expanded 12th January, 2015)

This piece came about because, at the time that I started writing it, there was a shortage of Fleur/Severus pairing stories on this site. Initially I considered for posting only the scene involving Severus Snape and Dolores Umbridge discussing Fleur and the subsequent scene between Fleur and Dolores, but with some work was able to fill out some extra scenes to give some context.

It seems to me plausible that a magical government in France might take notice of events going on across the Channel in Britain – especially of any rumours of the return of Lord Voldemort. In this story Monsieur Delacour (assumed to work in this universe in the French magical government) concludes it is not a potential problem which he can ignore, and so he sends his daughter to 'investigate' and to liaise with Albus Dumbledore and his organization.

With Fleur Delacour having been selected (as in canon) as a Triwizard Champion for Beauxbatons, it seems to me plausible that she is the kind of young woman who might be acquainted with the principles of occlumency - and thus in this universe she is. Since she was so conveniently to hand for Albus Dumbledore, and since Harry Potter lacked the animosity for Fleur that he has for Professor Snape, Albus put Fleur on teaching Harry occlumency right from the start of the 1995-1996 school year.

It seems to me plausible that by late 1995 Albus Dumbledore might have confided his various plans and theories regarding Lord Voldemort to somebody, just in case something unthinkable happened to Albus. It also seems to me that if he did so that it might be to someone that nobody would suspect, such as to his estranged brother. (To some extent in this I am inspired by the chapter 'The Missing Mirror' in the original novel of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in which it seems to me that Aberforth Dumbledore hints to Harry that he knew rather a lot about his brother's various schemes.)

This iteration of Fleur is not an uncontrollable nymphomaniac. She simply set out casting herself in the role of a seductress to try and charm information out of Severus Snape, and ended up carried away in the danger and excitement by the role that she'd set out to play and the highly skilled and intelligent company into whose presence she'd put herself. To some extent she's become addicted to danger, to excitement, and to living life on the edge, even when the only obvious enemy to hand is the 'menace-in-pink'.

As with occlumency, it seems possible to me that Fleur, a Triwizard Champion calibre of former student might have heard of at least the basics of horcruxes.

Fleur Delacour's maternal grandmother is a 'full' veela. With Dolores Umbridge known to be prejudiced against 'half-breeds' it seems to me reasonable that sooner or later her eye would fall on Fleur and that she'd try to get her out of Hogwarts.

In the meantime, in the background of this story, Voldemort's plans and goals involving obtaining the prophecy have been playing out, pretty much as in canon, not much changed up until the end of this piece by the fact that Fleur is at Hogwarts. That meant that Nagini was sent to scout around the Ministry, and had the canon run-in with Arthur Weasley. Since Harry has been more successful than in canon, under Fleur's tuition, in blocking his connection with Voldemort, Harry had no idea that Arthur had been attacked, didn't give a warning, and Arthur died before anyone came looking for him. (Presumably, on the other side of the scales, if Harry continues with the occlumency then Voldemort will either never make the attempt to lure Harry to the Department of Mysteries by visions, or will attempt it but fail, possibly resulting in Sirius lasting out the 1995-1996 school year.)

This piece, as it says in the story summary, is a one-shot.

Update, 12th January, 2015:

Regarding this universe's version of Severus Snape and his knowledge of James Bond, Severus Snape did grow up in a household in non-magical society, with a non-magical father, and by 1971 (when Severus Snape started to spend much of the year away at Hogwarts), all of Ian Fleming's original James Bond stories had already been published – and indeed most of the Sean Connery films had been made.

On a different topic, just to be clear, Severus informed Fleur as soon as possible how the conversation with Professor Umbridge about Fleur had gone, giving Fleur the opportunity to make it almost impossible for the under-secretary to remove Fleur from Hogwarts for the time being.