Life Debts: a challenge and a new story in one. This is how it goes, after the second task Harry is taken aside by Fleur and Gabrielle to explain what they owe to Harry, A life debt. But they aren't the only ones, and Harry will take life into his own hands by exploiting these debts.
Challenge :
Fleur and Harry/ Harry and Gabrielle pairing or Harry/Hermione pairing as main pairing
Fleur must be the one to tell Harry about the life debt
Ron must get jealous about the Harry/Fleur and Harry/Gabrielle or Harry/Hermione pairing
If Hermione is not paired with Harry then she is not to be paired with Ron
Fleur must alert Harry to the fact that most of the wizarding world owes Harry a honor debt for saving them once from Voldemort. Honor debts, family debts, and life debts all must feature in your fic somewhere.
Life debts: Occur when one wizard saves the life of another (James saving Snape)
Honor debt : Occurs when a wizard does something honorable and you owe them whatever is in your power to grant.
Family debts: when one family swears fealty to another or one family is defeated by another a family debt is put in place. I made this one up so use your immagination as to who owes family debts. (I'm saying Draco owes Harry a family debt for not showing up when he challenged Harry)
Now on to the fic
Harry couldn't believe his fellow Gryffindors. Just before the second task many had decided without proof that he had cheated his way into the tournament, and now they had thrown him a party and thought that would make up for it? He was tired, tired of the flip-flop way the wizarding world seemed to treat him. Tired of Ron thinking that one apology made up for being a jealous prick whom didn't even bother to tell him about the dragons.
Hermione was the only one who seemed vaguely smart about the whole thing, having given him a real apology and trying her best to help with a second task that no one knew about. He supposed it was just his luck, whenever something good happened, Fate the bitch decided that he didn't deserve it and it was rudely yanked away.
"Haree, we ave found ou at last!"
Harry turned, mildly surprised to see Fleur standing behind him, her sister in tow, how long had she been standing there?
"What do you want?"
"Non, we cannot speak here, not where there are so many ears to hear." She grabbed him by the hand, and somewhat forcefully dragged him through the halls of hogwarts until they came to a portion of the school he had never seen before. She walked back and forth three times, and a door opened. Harry was roughly shoved into a squishy armchair in front of a merrily crackling fire.
"Whats going on Fleur? Where am I?"
"Harry, this is the room of requirements, it changes to suit your needs. I needed a quiet place to talk and so we are here."
Harry noticed she wasn't talking in that weird half *french accent, "Okay, what is going on?"
"Just listen Harry, and don't interupt." she smiled as he nodded, "The first thing you should know is that I brought you here because not many people know about it, and its private. The second thing you should know is that we are here because we owe you. Gabrielle owes you a life debt Harry, and I, I owe you an Honor Debt."
Seeing the confused look on his face, she continued, "You see Harry, Life Debts are exactly what their name entails, when you save the life of another witch or wizard they owe you their life and must repay with whatever they feel is equal to the debt. In our case, it gets more complicated due to Gabbi's veela status. Veela's only take one mate in life, their mate is chosen after their first transformation, but with Gabbi here her first transformation should not have been until much later in life. Veela's are creatures of fire however, and Gabby **transformed to keep herself from drowning. When you saved Gabrielle her veela half recognized you as her mate. That with the life debt will prevent her from seeking any other mate. I'm sorry Harry, but you and Gabrielle are now mates with all that entails."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"You could end the mating, but it would kill her." seeing the shocked look on his face, she sighed, "That's not all Harry. When you saved my sister it created an Honor Debt between House Potter and House Delacleur. An Honor debt is like a life debt, however instead of owing you my life, I owe you an honorable deed. In this case, explaining all this to you, and my veela half has claimed you as my mate."
"So let me get this straight, Gabrielle here is my mate because I saved her life and she owes me what her magic feels is equal payment. You are my mate because I did something honorable and your veela half has claimed me as payment of that debt. What I want to know now is what am I supposed to do about it? I can't be married, not with Voldemort always after me."
"That's where you are wrong Harry. When Veelas choose a mate, it is recorded in the Ministry Of Magic, it is a binding thing that you cannot get out of unless you want us both to die. But it need not be a horrible thing. We have political connections, and money. With that we can help you do whatever you need to do."
Harry looked like he was thinking, "Okay," he smiled "***First things first, where are Life Debts and Honor Debts recorded?"
End chapter
* I hate writing that fake accent Fleur has, so I'm just not doing it. We'll say that she does it as part of her 'public' image, somewhat like Guilderoy did the whole teeth whitening thing.
** I'm going out on fanfiction limb to say that Gabrielle as a creature of fire could not withstand the lake, but Dumbledore wouldn't want anyone knowing so he cast an illusion that made it look like she had not.
*** Harry is a bit ooc here, just accepting all this, but its my story so in it I'm having Harry accept his more Slytherin tendencies, including politicking.