The streets of London were bustling with Christmas shoppers. Lights hung from trees, and the windows were bursting with sparkling snowflakes and children's presents. There was an air of excitement. Toddlers were being tugged along by parents through the crowd (or, more often than not, the other way round), and groups of people gathered in front of displays, taking pictures.
But not one of the shoppers noticed when, into a small side alley along Charing Cross Road, a loud crack heralded the appearance of a young woman. Beautiful, with light blonde hair and a graceful walk, Fleur Delacour stepped from the alley into the street, elegant coat flapping behind her. She tucked her wand into a pocket and a strand of hair behind her ear.
She approached an area of the street, a little way along from the alley, which held a steady stream of unrelenting traffic. Nobody stopped outside the small pub to one side, nor did they so much as give it a glance.
The door swung open in front of her, and Fleur crossed the threshold into the Leaky Cauldron for the first time in her life. As she entered, a jet of light shot across the room and one of the tables turned into a chicken.
A second spell crossed her path, and the chicken proceeded to turn into a large umbrella with nothing more than a disgruntled 'cluck'. Spell after spell lit up the room, the table turning into a lobster, a giant ball of yarn, then a balloon, which proceeded to tie itself into... Fleur stared. That wasn't a shape for a children's party. The transfiguration stopped as the barman yelled "What have I told you about transfiguring the furniture for bets?! And- let's keep it PG, people." One of the two men at the bar grinned sheepishly by way of an apology as the other slid a handful of coins across to him.
She was used to the stares, so ignored the looks she received from the wizards at the bar, as well as from a group of wizards sat at a table and a witch sat with her friend. Ducking under a jet of light aimed at the statue and returning it to its original table state, she opened a door on the other side of the room and moved through it. Tapping a brick in the opposite wall with her wand, she stared with more than a little admiration as an archway formed.
The scene on the other side of the wall was nothing like she had expected. There were no modern shops as there were in the city, no towering buildings. The shop fronts here were quaint, more like those found in small villages back in France, but the streets were just as bustling as in the Muggle world. It wasn't surprising how little it resembled the larger city, given how odd the British wizards were about adopting Muggle technology and culture. Small children here were also being tugged along by parents. It reminded her of her own trips to the wizarding shops in France.
At the age of ten, she and her parents had taken a public portkey from a wizarding town near her home. The forest in which they landed was beautiful; the leaves on the magical trees were translucent and multi-coloured, making it seem as though the sun was shining through stained glass. Fairies flitted through the undergrowth, tugging on visitors' hair and clothing and taking anything they pried loose to build their nests from. Nestled in the branches of the trees were the shops. Ladders led up to places where you could buy schoolbooks, wands and broomsticks as well as more unusual wizarding supplies: magical diaries which could record your day at a single touch, stuffed animals that would respond affectionately to their owner just as real pets would, magical one-size-fits-all clothing which adjusted to the owner's body shape and size… Enchanted vines wrapped around the wizards and witches in the trees, ensuring that any fall would not be too disastrous. The shops all had open windows, and birds flitted in and out of them. Platforms led between the trees, with signposts carved into the bark and enchanted to different colours. Down on the ground there were streams with naiads draped on rocks, pulling anyone who leered at them into the stream for a thorough dunking.
Diagon Alley was beautiful, although in a very different way. She passed window after window advertising their winter supplies, with magical snow falling on top of merchandise, tiny Father Christmas figurines riding sledges across the displays and the warbles of Celestina Warbeck emanating from nearly every shop.
Fleur hurried up the steps to Gringotts, briefly admiring the elaborate façade before pausing at the huge carved doors. The hall inside was huge. Goblins sat at high desks, some holding quills and poring over parchment, others inspecting coins. At her entry, a group of witches and wizards talking to one side of the door glanced over.
One of them, an olive-skinned woman wearing a hijab decorated with magically drifting blossoms approached Fleur slightly apprehensively, blushing and stuttering a greeting.
"Um, are you… Miss Delacour?"
Fleur smiled, trying a reassuring approach while hiding her own nerves.
"I am," she said. "I 'ave been offered a job 'ere, and was told to come today to introduce myself and be… uh, shown ze ropes?"
The woman nodded, still blushing furiously. "I'm, um, I'm called Sara. I'm one of the curse-breakers here. I can… I can take you to his, um, Mr Gracktook's office?"
"Zat would be… very 'elpful. Thank you," said Fleur. She followed the witch across the bustling hall, towards a small wooden doorway at the back. The office behind it was small and tastefully decorated. A goblin sat at the table, weighing gold in an old-fashioned pan. He peered over a small pair of glasses at them as they entered.
"Mr Gracktook, this is Fleur Delacour. She's just got a job here."
The goblin nodded and Sara left, the door closing behind her. Fleur tried to calm her breathing as the goblin surveyed her.
"Fleur… Delacour." He took a piece of paper from one side of the desk and glanced over it. "Excellent grades, tri-wizard tournament, highest praise from Madame Maxime, wonderful references… yes, that all seems to be in order. I'll pair you up with one of the more experienced curse-breakers." He pulled out another piece of parchment from a pile. "Bill Weasley seems to be lacking a partner at the minute. I'll tell him to show you the ropes." He looked back up at her. "Curse-breakers work in pairs, due to their unusual ability to get themselves into trouble.
"Well, everything seems to be in order." He finished. He seemed unsurprised that Fleur had done nothing but stand silently. He grabbed one of a number of pipes attached to a wall and spoke into it, "Gornook, bring Weasley to my office," before turning back to Fleur.
"I suppose all that remains is, good luck."
The door opened behind Fleur, and as she turned she recognised one of the wizards who had been talking near the entrance. He was tall, with bright red hair. She looked up at him. The tips of his ears turned slightly pink as he introduced himself.
"Hi, I'm Bill Weasley. Sounds like I'm gonna be helping you along and showing you how everything works."
Fleur was uncomfortably aware of the fact that last time she had seen Bill, she had spent most of the time staring quite conspicuously at him. His dragon fang earring was still there. His hair was now down to his shoulders. She promptly decided that she regretted nothing about their last encounter and would, if uninterrupted, stare at him until her eyes watered. Nevertheless, she smiled widely at him, pushing her hair over her shoulder, and held out a hand to shake his outstretched one.
"Fleur Delacour. Eet is an honour to meet you again," she said. She followed him out of the door, thanking the goblin as she left. Bill strode over to the group from earlier and introduced her: "Everybody, this is Fleur Delacour. She'll be my partner. In, y'know, curse-breaking, that is. Fleur, this is Darcy," he pointed at a blonde witch with long hair and a pointed nose, "Jon," he pointed at a dark-skinned wizard, "Hugh," a pale-skinned, sneering wizard who glared at her upon introduction, "Taura," a woman with pale brown skin and slanted eyes, "And you've met Sara." Sara, blushing brightly again, waved awkwardly at Fleur. She smiled in turn at each of them.
"Pfft, another one hired for looks rather than brains, then," muttered the pale wizard.
Fleur turned to him. "Excusez-moi?" she said, arching an eyebrow at him.
"You heard me," he retorted. "I'm supposed to believe you're going to be any good at the job? You're just here 'cause of your pretty face."
"Hugh," said both Sara and Bill, in warning voices.
"Are we supposed to pretend differently? She's gonna be a liability. Gringotts wants a nice, attractive, dumb public face."
Fleur stepped towards him, drawing her wand from her robes as she did so. Everyone else drew back as, with a flick of her wand, a jet of rope, alight with flames, shot from the end of her wand and tied itself around his midriff, binding his arms to his sides. "Eef you ever speak to me or anyone else like zat again, I will make sure ze flames aren't as 'armless next time. And," she said, turning fiercely to the rest of the group, "eef any of you 'ave any doubts about me being able to do my job because of 'ow I look, I look forward to proving you wrong." She turned to Hugh and, with a jerk of her wand, the ropes released him, tripping him up as they did so, before vanishing. Her rage slowly died down as she realised she might have overreacted.
The group were staring at her in awe. Hugh picked himself up. He scowled at her, but seemed to think better than to say anything.
"Right," said Bill, trying to defuse the tension. "I think it's time I took you on a tour."
He pulled her towards the huge gates at the back of the hall, obviously trying to hide a grin.
"About time someone took him down a peg," he murmured to her. "Just because he's good at his job he seems to think he doesn't need manners."
Fleur nearly sighed with relief at that, and they moved through the gates and towards a cart waiting. He sat down first. She stared at it apprehensively. Heights had always terrified her.
"Is it… safe?"
"Oh yeah, we've only had, like, twelve people die in the last week." Bill responded, with a grin.
At her stare, he added "That was a joke. We'd get way too many complaints. One death a week, max. We get told off if we kill too many customers. We stick to the ones who complain."
She laughed and perched on the seat beside him.
"The exits are here, here, here and… here" said Bill, pointing at the huge drops each side of the cart.
As the cart set off, Bill pointed out the various features in the huge cave. He seemed to notice her discomfort with the height. As the cart jerked suddenly, her face went pale and she found herself gripping onto his arm for dear life. She blushed and released it as the cart began to slow down, but he wrapped an arm around her shoulders reassuringly. She was shaking, but managed to stutter an apology.
"Hey, it's fine. We've had all sorts on here. People who've fainted, people who've thrown up, people who've thrown up then fainted…"
The cart halted with an unnerving shudder.
Bill and Fleur exited the cart, and he proceeded to show her around some of the lower-security vaults. They walked downwards along narrow pathways towards the less accessible vaults, and into a huge cavern in which lay a sleeping dragon. Its breathing was slow and wheezing.
Fleur stared at the chains around its ankles, the bald patches where its scales had begun falling out and the scars and marks on its hindquarters.
"You keep zis creature for… for security? You torture it? Zat is…" she shook her head, unable to find the words in English. "I cannot believe… in zis day and age… you mistreat animals like zis?"
She was outraged to see that Bill was smiling at her. "Don't you dare smile at me while zis poor creature lies zere waiting for its next… its next torture!"
"No, no," said Bill, hastily. "That's not… I was smiling because…well, that's exactly the reaction I have every time I'm here. I've been protesting against the use of dragons in security since I started. The old-fashioned pureblood families seem to like the idea, and the goblins aren't too receptive to new ideas, but a bunch of us got together and demanded that they not capture or breed any more for this. I've stopped them… uh, basically from hurting the dragons, too. They couldn't release the ones left, they… well, they were all pretty badly treated. They wouldn't survive. I got my brother, Charlie – he works with dragons in the wild – I brought him here to treat some of these ones, and he agreed. I know it doesn't make it right," he added, "but… soon there won't be any. They'll have to find other ways of securing the vaults. More humane ones."
She stared sadly at the dragon as they moved off into the vaults, Bill explaining the various security measures in place, charms, magical locks, duplication spells…
The tour lasted most of the day. She and Bill got on, she thought, exceptionally well. He recounted his first few jobs as a curse-breaker – the time he got kidnapped by skeletons that, according to him, seemed to be in pairs for the sole purpose of doing the tango together, the time he had failed to notice a charm that made a huge block of jelly attack him from the ceiling, the curse that caused his nose hair to grow so long and fast that it could have rivalled Dumbledore's beard. From the sounds of it, his first months on the job had been disaster after hilarious disaster. She, in turn, told a few stories from her time at Beauxbatons. The time she had been humming while walking along a corridor when a wood nymph, from the group who lived in the grounds and sang during their meal times, turned her hair into leaves for being out of tune. The… unfortunate incident when she thought she had been alone in her bedroom and had subsequently had to bribe the girl borrowing her scarf not to recount just what Fleur had been doing. The time in her first year when her attempt at a bat-bogey hex aimed at a girl making snide comments about Fleur's appearance missed and hit a teacher.
As they returned to the cart, he held out his hand for her to take as it sped off. She gripped it tightly. She managed a strained smile at him as the cart began to slow down, and nearly tripped over with relief as she clambered out. He caught her and led her carefully away from the cart.
They wandered back through the hall and to the entrance of the bank.
"Thank you very much for today, Bill. I… I look forward to working wiz you." She grinned at him. "Eef you ever require saving from a block of jelly in future, I shall bring a spoon and some ice cream." He laughed at that.
"I suppose… I'll see you tomorrow, then?" Bill said to her.
"I suppose so," she responded. She held out her hand and he shook it, smiling at the formality.
She turned and walked back along Diagon Alley, towards the Leaky Cauldron. The street was quieter now, the darkness broken by the candles in the windows illuminating the stock. She moved briskly, the chill embracing her as she passed back through the arch and into the welcome warmth of the bar.
Back inside the darkened room (devoid, this time, of Greek statues or lobsters) she requested a room for the night from the barkeeper, who introduced himself as Tom. Once inside her room, she shut the door, collapsed fully-clothed onto her bed, and dropped instantly into a deep, dreamless slumber.