A/N: This chapter has a fair bit of introspection. The next ones should be more bumpin'

Thanks to theimmortalhp, Zombie, Halt, Jolly Rancher, Seyllian, Smutley Do-Wrong, and The Moon Potato for their betawork/input on this chapter. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

-xXx-

Chapter 2: Arisen I

The apparition hurt.

His chest—had a troll stomped through his ribs? He kept his breathing short, iron crawling down his tongue, each breath dragging it down, down...

Consciousness struck him, head spinning. He was slung over Selwyn's broad shoulder like a sack of old potatoes, insides feeling oozy and rank enough to climb out his gut. Rope tied his limbs together. Blinded his eyes.

He cried out in frustration; sound didn't come.

With an effort, he slowed his breathing and focused on the senses available to him. Fresh wind indicated civilization was distant, and there was salt, but that could've been his blood. Two pairs of feet rustled through short grass, birds squawked in the distance—seabirds.

There was a sudden shift from summer warmth to ice, a sinus-buzzing and clinical sense of cold.

His body hit the ground shoulder-first.

Bindings tightened, crushing him. Sound like a dial tone began in his ears. He felt more than heard another body crash beside him and then the ropes flaked into nonexistence, freeing his face, his lungs filling so fast he choked.

Utter blackness.

He couldn't see. They'd taken his eyes. Voldemort—was this it? Fear nestled heavy in the pith of his throat. His eyelids fluttered against the dark and his awareness plunged, dead tone on crescendo, cool press of stone against his cheek vanishing, the magic veining the floor beneath constricting, flow building—

His vision adjusted. The ringing drained until it rested at calm silence, that moment of preternatural power slipping along with it. Darkness, that was all it had been. He still had eyes, hell, he even had his glasses.

With care, he forced his body to sit upright, flesh and bone heavy as anvils. Nausea swelled.

They were in a cell, that much was obvious. Purple lighting faintly suffused throughout the dungeon, bringing the shadowy forms of three figures into relief. When the pregnant woman might've joined them, he couldn't say. Their postures, their calm faces, spoke of this whole process being old hat; a method already forged out of its flaws.

Their cell could've been a small guest room in a medieval castle. Cozy, but still a cell. On the fur-laden cot sat a young girl staring at her hands, dark hair veiling her face. There was a table, a wooden bookcase, a green banner emblazoned with a family crest—

He exhaled. This was Selwyn's dungeon. Voldemort was nowhere in sight.

Lingering in the air was something that ran his nerves raw. It sang in duet with the sub-zero chill. He drew his robes tightly about himself.

"Finite," Selwyn said, gaze covetously fixed to Harry's face as the silencing charm dropped. Intellectually, Harry understood it was an intimidation tactic, but there was a feeling about the man that unnerved him on a deeper level. His hand opened and closed, grasping for a wand that wasn't there.

Harry reared forward, intending to stand, but Fleur pulled him back.

"You've made a big mistake," Harry seethed at the trio looking down at them through the bars. Fleur shushed him through her teeth.

Selwyn's pearly smile would've been endearing on anyone else. "Have I? I think capturing you was one of my smarter moves. I barely had to use my wand." He twirled the slim red wood between his fingers and pocketed it in one smooth movement. "You know what else I think? It's said starving dogs bite unfamiliar hands, so perhaps some introductions are in order. I would like us to be friendly."

Fleur cut off Harry's retort. "Everybody thinks zey are smart—until zey are dead!" she said. "Our families will come for us!"

Harry masked his surprise.

"She's a biter, I can tell," Selwyn said, eyes lighting up like a child's on Christmas Eve. "I'll have to warn Macnair. He'll love it."

"Why would we ever be friends with you?" Harry asked.

"You'll remember I said friendly." The edges of the man's eyes crinkled. "You see, no matter how any one of us behaves, the two of you are set for unfortunate endings. Now, that's not me being mean, it's just a fact. So, I say, why not be pleasant with each other? It makes the experience much less stressful for everyone involved. Marcus, would you do the honors and introduce us?"

Half-hidden behind the woman was a shorter man whose cheeks were ruddy, presumably from the journey. "I-Isidore Selwyn," he said, gesturing while keeping his eyes peeled to the floor. "And my sister—"

"—Half," the woman said.

"My half-sister, Altheia."

Selwyn patted a shying Marcus on the shoulder. "Well done."

"Thank you." Fleur haughtily glared up at Marcus. "My retribution will be easier to take, knowing their names."

Selwyn made a sound of exasperation and nudged his wife. "I prefer—"

"Stop it, Isa." The woman placed a hand over her swollen belly. The rings guarding her fingers sparkled in malicious tandem. "So, this the Boy-Who-Lived? He's not very impressive."

Neither was she, but Harry bit his tongue.

Altheia was severe rather than beautiful, and very golden. Ringlets fell to the small of her back like a rush of galleons and her robes were cloth-of-gold. But Harry imagined her perfectly comfortable garbed in a nun's habit, eagle-sharp eyes scouring for naughty kids to lob chalk at.

His breath began to mist in front of his face. He didn't cross his arms. He wouldn't give Altheia the satisfaction of seeing him uncomfortable.

"How did you know I was in Diagon Alley?" Harry asked roughly.

Selwyn and Marcus were wearing plain black robes in pristine condition. They must've apparated into a back alley and then apparated with Harry and Fleur back out. No spells could've kept them safe from the deluge of magical smoke, paint, and glittery fairy dust plaguing the parade.

A wave of despair nearly bowled him over. No. Oh no, no

Selwyn's forced expression cemented Harry's suspicion. He'd felt something earlier when they first came in but it had been too dark to see. One of the cells, he now noticed, wasn't a cell at all. Cells didn't move, didn't wear tatty cloaks, and didn't breathe like Mordred himself was squeezing their windpipes like tubes of toothpaste.

"Despicable," Fleur whispered.

Selwyn deserved a standing ovation—he'd successfully recreated Hell.

Harry hopped to his feet, shrugging off the negative energy. As a third year, he'd faced a hundred dementors. This was laughable.

"Yes, my love." Selwyn said. "And Potter—"

"Please, call me Harry." His grin was all teeth.

Selwyn took a half-step closer. "We were simply in the right place at the right time. You can hide your scar, but everybody knows your face." Harry's brows drew together. "As an aside, neither of you will address my wife directly. Conversing with half-breeds and mudbloods dirties her tongue."

"Zat," Fleur said, "is no terrible loss."

The woman stabbed at Fleur with her wand, a blinding blue flashed—

—Fleur gasped, eyes rolling back into her skull. Her head thumped against the floor, body shuddering, convulsing like her veins had been transfigured into rushing live wires.

Harry's fists tightened and white-hot pumped in his chest, his breath growing heavy. He couldn't look at her. He would do something stupid—

The table went smashing into the metal bars with the ferocity of a giant throwing a baseball. Harry scurried back, silverware raining around him—he thought for moment it had been a burst of Fleur's magic, but he looked to the girl on the cot, to her bloodless clenched fists.

Fleur curled on her side, facing the wall.

Selwyn plucked the wand from the snarling woman's fingers and swished the furniture upright before sticking it back in her grasp. She gave her husband a crisp look.

"Shall… shall I alert the Dark Lord that we have Potter?" Marcus asked, brushing his sleeve up to reveal the black tattoo of a serpent curling out of a skull.

Selwyn rolled his eyes. He pushed up his own sleeve to bear pale, unblemished forearm. "Do you see that mark on my skin? I have no obligation to tell him anything. Neither will you, not if you don't want to end up in a cell." Selwyn punctuated each statement with a prod to the man's chest, each tap coming harder than the last until Harry knew there was no chance Selwyn wasn't leaving bruises. "I will handle everything. Do not interfere."

"If you want money, I've got a vault full of it," Harry said. "You can have it."

Marcus glanced at Harry. "But—"

"—Be silent, you're giving me a headache," Altheia snapped, pressing the tips of her fingers to her temples and clickity-clacking away.

"That's a kind offer, but I'll have to decline," Selwyn said, attention lingering on Fleur, before he left with a snap of his robes. Marcus trailed after him, staring at his feet.

A barrier of magical silence fell in front of Harry. No longer could he hear the dementor.

"You okay?" he asked Fleur, who was shuddering for breath.

Ignoring him, she repositioned herself against the wall and pointed her chin at the silent brunette girl on the cot. "You! Who are you?"

The girl couldn't have been more than eight or nine. At her continued silence, Fleur leveraged the wall against her back and got to her feet.

"Don't. You need to rest." Harry steadied her stumbling first steps—and nearly jerked back. Intense heat radiated from her body. Was the hex still in effect?

"Non. Escort me to ze bed, please," Fleur replied as she threw her arm over the breadth of his shoulders, sagging onto him. His muscles, still aching from having carried home groceries that morning, strained. She was heavier than she looked.

At some point one cot had multiplied into three, each bedecked in sheaves of animal pelts. He lugged her to a seated position on the cot beside the girl's. Fleur wouldn't have it. She maneuvered to sit next to her. The kid shied away but Fleur clutched her jaw in sudden recognition, forcing her eyes up.

"Mon dieu. Valentina? Valentina Goretti?"

The girl nodded weakly, burying her face in a tangle of arms and knees.

A sob broke from Fleur's throat. She tenderly wrapped herself around Valentina, pulling her close when the ashen girl gave no resistance, brushing aside overgrown fringe to better see her. Fleur's features briefly twisted in distress. With the heel of her palm, Fleur wiped a tear from her own flushed cheek.

Fleur smiled at him but her words came out strangled. "I've found her. We 'ave Valentina." She cradled the girl against her, kissing the top of her head. "Brave Valentina. Is this where you've been? Do not worry, I will return you to your mama and papa. They 'ave been so worried. They love you so much, Valentina."

She rubbed the lengths of the girl's arms. "'Arry, she is so cold." Valentina's robes, stylish summer couture, were thin and not exactly fit for a stay in someone's dungeon.

More unwilling than he'd ever admit, Harry shuffled off his robes, which at some point had been spattered with yellow paint. The chill bit deeper into him. "Here." Left in Dudley's cast-offs, he tossed Fleur the article of clothing and wrapped himself in what seemed like a wolf pelt. It didn't really help. "They're charmed to be comfortable in any temperature, but I've got no idea how they'll hold up against a dementor."

Fleur draped it across Valentina's shoulders shawl-style—the compact mirror fell from a pocket and clattered to the floor. Harry quickly retrieved it. The girl clutched the robes tightly. Thick sloped brows gave her a perpetually sad look.

Without Selwyn, Altheia, and Marcus hogging the spotlight, he found himself inspecting the greater dungeon area. The structure was circular and entirely made of stone, a sconce of purple fire hanging above each of the twelve cells. Magical fire only turned that color when it itself felt cold. As the flames danced a certain way, unmoving silhouettes were unveiled but for a moment—most Hogwarts-aged kids, if he had to guess by their statures.

"She is ze daughter of the Undersecretary to the Italian Minister of Magic. She has been missing for a month," Fleur said.

"A month?" Harry whispered. He cleared his throat. How long would it take before Selwyn handed him off to Voldemort? Or Fleur to Macnair? "What do you think for? Ransom?"

"Perhaps. It could be for insurance. To make ze Undersecretary do as our hosts please."

He opened the compact with a soft click, expecting to see his own reflection. Instead, the glass shone bright green. It must've broken during the apparition. Harry's voice was steel. "We're getting out of here and we're taking everyone with us. I'm not leaving anyone behind."

Fleur gave him a curt nod.

-xXx-

With a moment to himself, Harry couldn't help but mull over the day's events. It started with Aunt Petunia waking him at the first blush of dawn, had a dollop of grand theft auto, and ended with getting kidnapped by Selwyn who while wasn't a Death Eater himself, made it abundantly clear Voldemort was going to be involved somehow.

He was trapped in a maelstrom of crises, one after the other, no space between them to breathe, and to top it off he felt off-kilter. He suspected that back in Knockturn Alley, Fleur used some veela voodoo on him, which would explain why, when Marcus attacked them, Harry's reactions were clamoring rather than sharp. Why he laughed at her terrible jokes.

But he couldn't explain why she'd done it—he had nothing she couldn't have gotten from him willingly, and nor did he believe she… well, wanted him. Her eyes were on Bill Weasley.

Despite it all, his thoughts were plagued by her. As she slept, his eyes were drawn to the contours of her face, the angular jaw, the dark gold eyelashes casting shadows down her cheekbones. Other times, he'd go to check if she was still breathing like a damned mother hen. He wasn't a worrier by nature. He couldn't unscramble if this was natural or not—if other guys did this around girls they liked, or if it was induced by her veela heritage. Maybe it was all just one tangled knot.

He supposed being locked in with Fleur would solve that mystery soon enough.

Thoughtlessly, his fingertips grazed over his left forearm, at the tough, braided flesh there where the basilisk had driven her fang into him.

Running on jittery fumes, he couldn't help but think, think, think.

Had Nott destroyed the diary like he'd threatened? Surely getting abducted within plain view warranted an extension on Harry's time limit.

Did Nott tell anyone what happened? He doubted it. His friend's defining characteristic was stereotypically Slytherin: self-preservation. Nott's family was Pureblood stock, capital 'P', with a lineage that more resembled the wiring of a tennis racket than a tree. Hell, the last thing Nott's mother said to her son while boarding the Hogwarts Express for the first time was, "I'll skin you if I hear you've been talking to that Harry Potter boy."

And Nott never let him forget it.

The thought of Theodore Nott rapping on Dumbledore's door was silly enough to chase some of the cold from Harry flesh. He imagined his classmate staring disgustedly at the butterflies winging across the Headmaster's robes, promptly deciding then and there that saving him wasn't worth subjecting his eyes to that. Nott had his uses, but this situation was beyond him.

It was up to Harry and Fleur to get—no, it was up to him.

Lost in thought, he'd forgotten why he was waiting until Fleur fell asleep in the first place. Harry breathed out, kicking off his place at the wall. He wasn't one to welsh on a promise but they hadn't exactly shaked over it; she simply made a demand and expected him to obey.

That wasn't how things worked with him.

They needed information. Now. How long until Selwyn delivered them both on a silver platter? A month? Tomorrow? Valentina seemed perfectly normal to him—well, not normal, she was staring blankly—content enough to map foggy whorls onto a plate with her finger. Maybe she was a glass doll, barely holding it together, nonetheless, Harry wouldn't break her.

He knelt beside the Italian girl. Keeping his voice whisper-soft, "Valen—"

"'Arry!" Fleur snapped, twisting to glare at him. Still awake, then. Even upset, she was unbearably beautiful.

Harry ran a hand through his hair. He wanted to snidely tell her 'keep it together, I wasn't doing anything,' but didn't have the heart, because he had indeed been about to do something. Sighing, he said, "Go back to sleep, Fleur."

She looked at him inscrutably before her head plummeted back down. It wasn't Valentina, but Fleur, who needed a break. Well-deserved, but he didn't need her by his side just to ask Valentina a few questions.

He was torn.

As much as he wanted to pretend otherwise, if relationships were vast oceans, his friendship with Fleur was the painting of one; the water appeared real, but it didn't smell of salt, couldn't carry a boat, wouldn't kill on a bad day. Had they even had a true conversation before? Going over Fleur's head would turn her against him, something he really didn't need.

So, he busied himself with other activities.

The next hour saw Harry poking, prodding, lifting, and stomping. One thing was abundantly clear: their cell was pristine. Not a dust speck to be seen, not on the fur pelts, not on the silver dining set, not over here, not over there, not anywhere. No loose stones in the masonry, no convenient crawl-sized vent behind the twining mermaids of the Selwyn banner. Nothing.

Literature in the bookcase fell into one of three categories: useless, very useless, and infuriatingly useless, so unless reciting old Phoenician poetry had the power to summon a mythical beast of yore, they were out of luck.

Harry rubbed at his lightning bolt scar while he paced. Rubber soles scuffed against stone, oddly muted. Thirst scrabbled in his throat. He bypassed a daydreaming Valentina to snatch a goblet off the table, icy metal nipping his fingers. He thumbed foggy condensation from the motif ribboning the cup, little bumps like braille under his finger—pegasi foals charging and gliding over each other in a happy game of leapfrog. He wondered, at the beginning, for how long they'd kept Valentina preoccupied.

A sip later, as he watched the water rise back to its original level, he resumed treading foot.

-xXx-

Harry slumped to the ground, skull lolling against numbingly cold stone. His leg muscles burned unpleasantly, carrying a sick, tired weight, urging him to sit and rest, to sleep, to lay down and never get back up.

It was a nasty wonder, the power of a dementor.

"What's Azkaban like?" Harry had once asked of Sirius as he shoveled pub food into his mouth. Hagrid's non-explanation of it being 'far worse than anything yeh could e'er imagine' had just deepened his curiosity.

He wasn't worried about offending Sirius. If his godfather wasn't comfortable he'd tell Harry to shove off.

"It's not so bad," Sirius said in a scratchy voice.

Harry's furrowed his brows. Grey eyes shone with mirth.

"You know how dementors behave since you've fought off a few before—which I still can't believe. A patronus at what? Thirteen? James definitely couldn't do that." Sirius took a sip of his drink. His next words came a bit crisper. "My life's been no party but I can handle it being spit back in my face. What I couldn't deal with..."

Sirius shook his head. "I spent thirteen years in that forsaken place and I can't remember most of it. Feels like one long, bad dream. When I saw that copy of the Prophet, when I saw Peter, I was so furious that I just… I just woke up! The oddest feeling. Dementors swarmed me for days. Tried to suck out my consciousness like it was some tasty drink. Of course, by then I knew I had to get out no matter what."

"Why didn't you try to escape before? When you were first put in?" Harry hedged, hoping Sirius didn't catch the underlying question: 'Why didn't you get me from the Dursleys?'

His godfather had scratched at his knuckles then. "Wasn't skinny enough. More tea?"

A deathly chill brushed over Harry. He resisted the urge to swipe a fur from Fleur's hoard. Cold was good. The dementor was a good thing. Fear, dread, it all helped; he was at his best under duress. This way he'd never get complacent.

Wandless magic was beyond his skills, but there was, well, his half-baked animagus form. At the end of his third year, he'd started the journey, practicing gramarie, the art of soul manipulation, night and day to properly bond the ghost animal with his own soul. But he'd been experiencing difficulties.

The stupid mongoose did not want to merge with him.

After his last wrangle with the ghost a few weeks ago, compounded with Sirius being unhelpful in his letters, Harry quit. He had fully intended to let the creature live in a perpetual half-merged mesh until he died, but beggars couldn't be choosers. If anything could plausibly squeeze between those bars it was a mongoose.

Harry stared at the goblet, brilliant green irides glittering back at him. His heart lodged in his larynx. It was dangerous but—

—he concentrated, bringing up that thing that rested in his soul. It eagerly clawed up his throat and stuffed its head into Harry's. In the reflection, pupils flattened and brilliant green blinked orange.

A slow yawning, stitches pulling undone, started in his core. Harry blanched and tamped the creature back down. It rabbled and squirmed, fighting, but quick fear lent Harry the strength to shove it home.

Why couldn't it just behave? If only animal souls could affect their hosts beyond affording them a keener sense of smell or hair in unwanted places—then he could blame it for his sudden personality shift too. Neat and tidy. All his problems in one place.

His breath fogged over a flash of tattered black on the cup's surface. Goosebumps ran down his arms. Goblet burned frozen cold in his grasp. The dementor aimlessly wandered closer, its scabbed grey hand extended forlornly; Harry gripped the cup tighter, ready to throw it if the hand tried to breach the bars.

Bloody hell. Where did Selwyn get a dementor? Didn't Azkaban have a roster for the damn things?

More discomfiting than its appearance was its missing death rattle, deafened as Harry was to what laid beyond their cell.

"Kill the spare."

Green light exploded. In the sodden grass, grey eyes stared as blank and expressionless as windows of a deserted house. Cedric's mouth laid half-open in surprise. A high, cold laugh rang through rows of gravestone.

His scar seared.

"Go on," Harry hissed. "Shoo!"

"'Arry?" Fleur asked drowsily.

Harry debated letting her go back to sleep. Another biting current of air stole that last bit of kindness from him. He coaxed his protesting body to her bedside. She trembled upright.

"We can question Valentina tomorrow," he offered, adjusting a pelt that had begun to slip over the side of her bed. Harry tried to push the whole veela magic issue out of his head. It wasn't relevant. "But you and I have got to get some ideas on the table."

Harry gave her a rundown of his fruitless review of their cell before offering up a feeble solution, an enchantment-breaking technique he'd learned the theory of in Flitwick's class.

"Disruption is the best thing to come to mind, but—"

"We 'ave no wands," she finished, leaning back on her palms. She turned her head to look at Valentina.

"I don't suppose we could make one out of the bookcase and one of your hairs?" He was only half-joking.

Fleur snorted, rolling her eyes. "Any other solutions come to mind?"

He took that as a no.

"...My godfather escaped Azkaban in his animagus form," he admitted slowly. "There's no way this place is more secure than Azkaban. I'm thinking the same loophole applies here too."

Blue eyes sharpened on him. "Sirius Black?"

Harry nodded. Irrationally, he felt a shade of guilt. Sirius wouldn't care.

Silence stretched. "I see," she said at last. "I do not 'ave an animagus form. Do you?"

"Half-way. I started practicing after my third year. I know what I am, but I haven't fully transformed yet—that's the dangerous part. Sirius didn't want me doing it without him."

"What is your form?"

He laughed bitterly. "A mongoose."

"You don't seem pleased," she said.

Harry gave a one-shoulder shrug. "A snake-killer. It's poetic, I guess. I'm just tired of being paired against Voldemort—" she flinched "—I mean, our wands are brothers, I've got a curse scar from him, my blood runs through his veins now—I almost hoped I'd be a penguin or a cat, you know?"

Fleur's lips parted to comment but he couldn't stop speaking.

"Make no mistake, I want the bastard dead. And I want to be the one to do it. But my entire life has been defined by him and what he's done to me. Even this situation," Harry gestured around him, "I wouldn't even be—be valuable if I wasn't the bloody Boy-Who-Lived. I feel like I survived just to suffer," Harry paused, tips of his ears reddening. But it was relieving to just say it. "You too—if I wasn't—you wouldn't—"

"I could not do it," she whispered. "I could not take it, having You-Know-Who's attention like zat. You are strong, 'Arry."

Harry chuckled mirthlessly. "We're getting off-topic."

"I am glad I was taken with you," she said.

He froze. Fleur continued, "This is more than one person can handle. Together, we can do this, no?" The unadulterated expression in her voice made warm bands tighten around his chest. A monumental weight unshackled from him and the backs of his eyes burned.

Digging his nails into his arm to keep from blubbering, he said, "Selwyn's unfortunate that he kidnapped two Triwizard champions. We're not going to go easy on him, are we?"

The stress of keeping an iron-control for the last two years ruled his life. He could split his existence in two parts: before Ginny Weasley's death, and after. Every waking moment had to be monitored lest someone get the idea he was a budding Dark wizard or Merlin forbid, Lord Voldemort himself. And then with Cedric's death… Harry had been spirited away to the Dursleys before any major fallout could land on him; before someone decided to connect Ginny and Cedric, both dead by implausible means, with Harry Potter as the sole witness.

Even if Fleur had her own agenda for saying what she did, for doing what she had done back in Knockturn Alley, he was so pathetic, so hungry for someone to be on his side, that he was willing to take it.

Skin beneath his nails began to sting.

"Of course not," Fleur said, lip curling. She heaved off the pelts and lurched to the cell bars. Fingers tightened white around them. "I do not think we have the time for clever gambles." A small pause. "I cannot transform like full-blooded veela but I am not so 'elpless either. Perhaps this is a time for brute force."

He wondered what she meant by that—surely she didn't mean to pry the bars open with her bare hands? Even vampires weren't that strong. His doubts silenced when her eyes narrowed to slits and heat, wonderful, terrific heat, radiated off her, expelling the bone-deep shiver inside him and continuing until the cold seemed a far-away memory.

Metal groaned in her fists, iron raging white-orange, melting, a pooling hot liquid drip at her olive suede ankle boots. Sweat glistened down the elegant curve of her neck.

Harry knit his fingers together and pressed his lips to it, a flutter in his belly. If she kept at it, in half an hour they might have a hole large enough to tumble through. But that train of thought died at sight of seared palms, gooey skin, burnt blood.

His voice was pitched high. "Fleur—!"

She pulled back but not because of anything he said. Where the bars melted was a slight opening, yet in a slow, crawling motion they flawlessly restitched themselves. Fleur screamed in frustration. Lambent flames engulfed ruined fists—she hopped a step back and hurtled a fireball at the barrier, then again, and again and again and the entire grate of bars glowed. She kicked at the hot weakened metal and didn't stop until it returned to its original gunmetal-grey.

Fleur spit through the bars.

"Zis is unacceptable!" she shouted, delivering another kick to the bars. "'Ow dare zey do zis to us? Cowards, all of 'zem! Face me in a duel instead of creeping in shadows!"

Awe and fear lodged in his throat. "We'll find another way." She hadn't unleashed this power during the Tournament. She'd done nothing with fire at all—in the Second Task she nearly died fighting grindylows, water creatures with a mortal weakness for fire. Why didn't she?

"Maybe t'as pas de couilles? Va te faire foutre! Connard."

No one could hear them behind the charms. "Come on. It's not worth it."

When flames began to lick up her forearms again, he realized there was a serious problem. The skin beneath her eyes shimmered like a thousand little pearls and a two-toned snarl tore from her throat.

"Fleur, please!"

White fire slammed forth. Nauseating burnt muscle stench permeated the chamber.

The robes he'd given Valentina were on the floor. The girl was peering at Fleur with her trademark unreadable expression, except now her hands trembled, just as they did when she accidentally magicked the table at Altheia Selwyn. If she did that again, she'd kill Fleur.

Or Fleur would kill her.

"Good to see you, Val," Harry said, overly loud; Fleur was attached to the girl, wanted the best for her, so he hoped that Fleur remembering Valentina's presence would override her anger.

"What is wrong with her?" Coming from Valentina's deadened face, the teary, petulant voice was unsettling. But as if by magic, Fleur drew back at the sound of it, fire declining to a languid vanishment. Fleur's features were unnaturally still, a marble mask, but her eyes projected abject fear. Naked terror. In an isolated motion, she mechanically furled her hands into the damask-patterned sleeves of her robes, secreting them away.

Heavy silence blanketed the room.

"I thought I could do it." Fleur's tone ended any further discussion. She glanced at Valentina, then peered up at him from beneath the fan of her lashes. "Waiting for tomorrow is pointless," she said, near silent. "We should question her now."

He stuffed his fists into his denim pockets, turning to the girl. Valentina clutched her silver plate like it was some precious object. Where he once felt eager to interrogate the girl there was now a bereft wasteland that stretched from one end of his being to the other. Harry didn't even want to have the conversation now, but he was too well-trained to put feelings over rational necessity.

"How are the robes? Any good?" he asked with a grin.

She blushed and scrambled to pick the apparel from the ground, pulling it back around her shoulders.

How did one start a conversation like this? "If you would, please, I need you to tell me how you got here. Everything you know."

"I—I was… stolen from mamma," her high soprano lilted in a heavy Italian accent. "We shopped in Il Centro Fiore and Signora arrived to steal me away."

"Apparition?"

Valentina seemed confused for a moment before shaking her head. "Signora had a… anello."

Harry looked to Fleur, who was watching their interaction with an expression of light distaste "Ring?" he asked her.

Fleur nodded.

"Right. So, a portkey?"

"I suspect so," Fleur said, shaking her head. She crossed her arms—a gesture that couldn't be comfortable, but she betrayed no sense of pain—and asked of Valentina: "Did zey blind you? What did you see, chéri?"

Valentina cast her gaze downward. It wasn't a 'yes' or a 'no'. Harry prepared to reword the questions, but Fleur had apparently seen something definitive in her reaction.

"Trees? Alberi?"

The girl shook her head negatively.

"You said Signora," Harry said. "Did you mean Selwyn's wife? The tall woman?"

Valentina said, "Yes. Her."

Things were beginning to click in the murk of his thoughts. As though they were two halves of a larger mind, Fleur caught onto his line of thinking and articulated it.

"Why did she portkey instead of apparate like her brother and husband? A month ago, she could only 'ave been carrying for four or five months, safe enough for apparition." The furrow between her brows smoothed. "It is a clue to our location. We are somewhere too far for apparition from Italy, but close enough to do it from Britain. 'Arry, from how terrible our own apparition was, it must have been already international."

A few of the leaps in her logic were a little lengthy for Harry to be comfortable blindly trusting in. "Mrs. Selwyn could simply dislike apparating. Plenty of people never learn for one reason or another."

"I know that type of woman," Fleur said dryly. "Fear would simply strengthen her resolve to do that thing. Especially if her husband can do it. If Isidore Selwyn can apparate internationally so can she; she is skilled enough with magic, she has the capability for it. She portkeyed because it was ze only way. Because of distance." Her eyes hardened, features clouding. "A possibility is Iceland."

Harry, who had very little experience with apparition, was confused, but kept stoic. "Why do you say that?"

"We were in the Rind for thirty seconds. We are nowhere near Britain," she said.

"The Rind?"

"Ze place between places?" Fleur cocked her head. "You do not know it?"

"I've heard of it." Harry let his response linger before steering the subject. "You really think we're in Iceland? They've had loads of dark wizards try to take power recently—Selwyn would have a hard time trying something like this there."

Fleur huffed. "It does not matter where we are. Just zat we are too far for 'elp to find us."

He recalled what Fleur had said before, a small eternity ago. "Won't your family try to find you?"

"My maman instructed me not to write so much." She laughed a little. "She will be 'appy I am living life instead of slaving away in front of paper, as she says. Aliénor and Vivien? I will be shocked if zey notice my absence. What of your relatives?"

Harry scarcely wanted to think of how upset the Dursleys must be. Hopefully, they hadn't burned his things to a crisp—he had worked rather hard on his summer homework, and his invisibility cloak was quite a useful item. "If they ever met Selwyn, they'd probably start worshipping him for having caused me so much trouble."

Her mouth set in grim disdain.

"Family is family," he said wryly.

Fleur struggled to speak. "If they… the Dursleys... were in trouble, and they asked for your help, would you help them?"

He didn't really have to think about it. "If it was something I could do easily, yes—"

"But if it was not?"

"...No," he decided to say. "They've hated everything about me since I was dropped on their doorstep. If they wanted my help, they should've treated me better. I don't owe them anything."

"What if they did treat you well?"

Harry laughed a bit. "Then I'd be the first one on my hands and knees asking what I could do for them. I imagine you'd know, right? You've actually got a decent family."

She stuck her tongue out at him, a very non-Fleur move. "It would be so, if my mozzer stopped trying to feed us her terrible cooking." Her face sobered. "You know, her food is not so bad. I would like to eat it again."

"How are we going to leave?" Harry asked to the ceiling. "Aside from finding our way out of the cell, there's a bit of walk before getting here. Probably means the area's covered in anti-apparition and anti-portkey jinxes. Not to mention it's not just us, but… there's twelve other cells, so assume another thirty-six people. If we're in a remote area there won't be any form of government we can easily contact. You can't apparate all of us—and I can't apparate." Admitting the last part was like pulling a tooth. Fourteen-year-olds weren't even legally allowed to apparate, but Harry wanted Fleur to see him as an equal and not a lowly child.

Fleur huffed. "When we find a way out of our cell, there will be no one to chase us. We can somersault out of 'ere once I have finished with them," she said darkly.

"But after?" he pressed.

She answered without a second thought. "The portkey. It can transport everybody. With a wand, I can reverse ze spell and have it transport us to the last place it was activated from. But we have to remove it from Signora first."

Harry couldn't quite recall what Mrs. Selwyn looked like. Golden, tall, dressed expensively. But there had been too many specifics to remember. Had she been wearing a ring?

Fleur held up her left hand, conscious to keep her palm facing herself, and tapped at her ring finger. "Anello di diamanti?"

Valentina, who had been scratching the floor, nodded at that. "Yes."

-xXx-

A/N: Hope you guys enjoyed it! Because I've been getting questions, 'gramarie' was made up by me. It's a middle english word meaning occult learning/magic, which I've repurposed. If its function seems a bit confusing now, don't worry, it'll get cleared up later.

On a tangent, I'm adding in Daphne Greengrass to the story in the future, but I'm stuck at what personality I want to give her. Obligatory ice queen? Messy drama bitch? Emo? What do you guys think?