Golden Haze, Act Three, Scene Six
AN: Fight Scenes are fun, just fyi. Hopefully you guys enjoy this chapter and take the time to tell me so!
I have to say this right now, the French in this chapter might be a little… terrible. If anyone reading this speaks French, please tell me if I'm saying completely stupid things that make no sense.
Also BIG BIG BIG thank you to S, who has reviewed and corrected some French errors! You, sir/madame/porpoise, are awesome.
Music of the Story: Joseph LoDuca – Leverage OST, plus Lady Gaga – Americano (GO DOWNLOAD BORN THIS WAY RIGHT NOW! I DO NOT CARE WHAT ANYONE SAYS GAGA IS AMAZING – don hate.)
Veela magic was different than the magic that humans learned at Hogwarts or Beauxbatons. There was no control, just the feeling of what was very right and what was very, very wrong. They were empathetic beings, veela, and very much ruled by both their own emotions and that of those around them. The mania and the wild magic that took her at the moment she lost control was enough to drive her mad, should she not constantly struggle against the veela's magic and control. Her grandmother told her that this was her own fault. Fleur knew that had she not so completely divided her identity from that of the veela, if she had remained more comfortable with the fact that she was, indeed, part magical creature, that she would not have so much trouble with her control. She did not want to, and yet she had to.
Fleur Delacour had lost herself in that wild magic. The magic of the veela, so harsh and different from the human magic that Fleur had grown up on, had somehow changed her perspective on things. It pulled her after the dark and willowy Madame Park, through twists and turns of magical signature and apparation points along the way, her body moving in time – in step – with her foe. She would catch her and kill her for Hermione's honor. That was the veela's goal, and she would do anything to achieve it.
Fleur paled at the realization that she was willing to kill. It was the veela's dedication and determination, not her own, that had forced her to arrive at this conclusion. She could bring herself to feel differently. She wanted to kill to find Hermione, she wanted something, anything, that would make the ache of Hermione's absence feel better in her heart.
Her feet pounded on pavement, through snow, across fields long asleep in the wintry chill. Hermione was not in the row house, she gathered as Park lead her further and further away from London. Fleur wondered how she had been so easily able to sense her mate's presence in the house. She had been there, probably right up until the point where Fleur had apparated after Madame Park. And now they were all being led away, and she was giving the fastest chase.
Hermione, she thought desperately, raising her wand and pointing it at the flickering image of Park before her. If she timed it right, she'd be able to stop this retreat fully. Determination was the one tenant of apparation that Fleur had never had a problem with, and she knew that to change her destination in the middle of such a spell would like splitch herself. She concentrated, her wand outstretched, and stopped the spell.
She landed in a long corridor. At first glance it appeared to be a hospital, but Fleur narrowed her eyes and saw the locks on the doors and the padding on the walls. This was no hospital for those who were merely ill. The fear gripped her; she'd seen places like this in muggle horror films with friends over summers long-past. These were places where villains that had tormented her nightmares as a child had resided – before she had real evil to have nightmares about. Now she had to defend herself in such a place.
She gulped, and pressed forward.
Her shoes made a harsh tapping sound as she stepped forward hurriedly. This was a bad place to duel; there was no cover, nothing that she could use to defend herself. She did not trust her spell work and no matter how hard she pushed against the veela's iron control, she could not break it. The veela was an emotional being and it functioned on the drive of those emotions. She could not be defeatist at this point, or the veela would lose what little power it had.
"Why must you be so persistent?" Park demanded, wand moving in a complicated motion that she didn't recognize. William had mentioned that they were all duelists in some form or another, Park was good with spell creation like Fleur was.
Naturellement.
She threw up a shield charm and stood her ground, watching with narrowed eyes. "You 'ave taken something that belongs to me," her voice came out as a hiss, full of power and hurt and anger. Fleur swallowed, terrified of what she had become. Hermione could not see her like this. Hermione did not fully understand what she was, even though she had said she did not care.
Veela were terrifying creatures ruled by emotions that Fleur could not even begin to explain to an outsider. Fleur feared the creature as she always had, but now she had become what she had been so afraid of.
Doubt clouded her vision, and she sent a hesitant stunning spell forward, wondering if the spell that Park had cast was a shield charm of some sort. She had never seen a spell motion like that, and she did not want to take any risks. She had followed Park, even though she'd been trying to follow the thread of Hermione's consciousness that still pressed, terrified, against the back of her mind. Fleur knew that she was running out of time, and that she had to get to Hermione before the veela did something foolish that they would both regret for a long time after this current predicament was over. She wanted, oh how she wanted, to lunge forward past Park's shielding spell and choke the life out of her. Fleur knew she could do it, it would be so easy, Park would be easy to overpower in a physical fight.
You cannot do that. Fleur thought desperately, she was speaking to herself, to the veela, to their shared consciousness. You cannot dishonor Hermione by taking needless life.
"She deserves to die." Fleur caught herself speaking then, "They all do."
Park looked up, her thin face clouded with a dark emotion that Fleur had seen many times during the war – murderous intent. The woman before her stepped forward, pushing past the spell that Fleur could just barely see at the corners of her vision and standing unprotected before the spell. "You are one of them, aren't you?" the woman's voice was cruel and emotionless. Fleur flinched as she spoke, her words cutting deep into Fleur's consciousness, full of the same hatred that Fleur had felt for herself for so long. "You are a creature that came into this world unnaturally; you don't deserve to be here!"
"I think my mother would object to your saying that I was born unnaturally," Fleur quipped, her hand steady despite the fear that was clearly evident in her voice. She had to defeat Park at her own game, get the location of Hermione out of her, and rescue her lover before it was too late. William and the others would be looking for her, for Hermione, for any trace of either of them.
Hermione had never been in that row house that they'd been watching. She had been close, but certainly not in the house.
The veela's magic took her then, and Fleur began her attack. She sent three cutting spells in quick succession, all non-verbal save the last. They went to different trajectories with hopes that Park would not notice the casting of multiple spells in the same general vicinity. As Park dropped to the ground and all three hit the wall, Fleur realized that she'd seen through the attack and that her shield charm was quite powerful.
"Deep freeze," Fleur muttered to herself in French, knowing an elemental spell might not be the best choice here, but knowing that the cold that she was about to introduce into this long corridor would slow down Park's reaction time enough that she might actually be able to get a hit in. Fleur exhaled, and slashed her wand downwards quickly and then off to the left in a loop, watching as ice spread from the base of her feet down the length of their dueling ground.
Fleur flicked her wand upwards and cast the strongest warming charm she knew over herself before moving once again onto the offensive. Her clothing was thin, and ill-suited to the cold weather outside, she had to be as war as possible.
Dueling had never really been her strongest suit. There was time for creativity in dueling, but spell creation was more of Fleur's speed. She could work her way through a problem before she actually had to implement it in real life, dueling was not like that. Too much was done on the fly and there was so much potential for error that Fleur did not dare actually start to think more creatively than spells she had already mastered.
Her hair fell into her eyes, clouding her vision with a white-blonde glow as she stepped forward across the frozen room. The spell had been far stronger than the one that she had initially thought it was going to be, and she was a little taken aback by how much energy she had poured into the spell. She would have to be careful, she did not have the endless magical reserves of a child and the offense she was thinking of taking required quite a bit of magical energy.
"Where is 'ermione?" Fleur asked evenly, sending two stunners followed closely by another cutting spell down the hallway in the direction of Mrs. Park.
The woman's black hair was the only part of her that was left in the space where Fleur's spells hit, her body hitting the floor and quickly rolling to the side and firing off her own spells. Fleur recognized the pale blue spell light and turned, the stinging hex passing just inches before her face. The cold air was slowing the magic down, and the warming charm was giving her enough time to properly react.
She had to stop this, she had to end this, she had to get to Hermione. The veela's mind was singularly obsessed with the idea of it – Fleur had to find a way to stop it, to make it so that Hermione would never be hurt again.
Park's shield charms had to have a weakness. She was using the seventh point method. The spell framework was obvious and visible every time one of Fleur spells hit it. She'd hit the points and the seams so far, and her spells had fallen uselessly by the wayside. She tried to remember how to place the emphasis that she needed to in order to break through, there had been something about this in a lesson she'd taught her seventh years just a few weeks ago. She couldn't remember, the veela was clouding her mind, she couldn't think.
The magic came to her mind and her hand moved before she had even thought the action through. There was a breaking charm that she'd used in the tombs in Egypt and Jordan with William before the war started. The wand motion was complicated, but the spell was fairly obscure so Fleur was almost positive that Park would not recognize it. She moved her hand in the first downward slash and began the incantation.
Ancient Hebrew was not her strongest suit on a good day, but shivering in the cold of this dingy corridor and cowering behind her own hastily erected shielding spells was not the best place to try and recall such an old language from memory. The veela was confident and Fleur could do nothing but watch with wide and horrified eyes as her hands moved of their own accord, completing the spell that she herself did not have the will to complete.
She drew her arm upwards, in the preamble to a rude gesture and then pushed outwards. The golden light of the curse erupted from the end of her wand and Fleur lowered herself behind her shields, crouched and ready. "Maqtiním," the word sounded harsh and guttural across her lips, shrink.
The purpose of that spell, had Fleur been in a teaching sort of mood, was to take down the size, substantially of stronger and large-area protection spells. It was commonly used in wizarding archeology and among certain communities of goblins, but was not in common use among wizards outside of academia and had not been for some centuries. One of the benefits of studying spell creation after completing the seventh year examinations was the fact that one got to research such spells and look for ways to modify them to bring them back into vogue.
Park's shield charm was no match for such an old and powerful spell. It shrank to the size of a dinner plate even before Fleur was able to send several stunners and a paralytic charm of her own invention in the general direction of Park. Casting so many offensive spells in such quick succession had completely winded Fleur. She knelt on the broken tile floor of this long-abandoned hallway and gasped for air. Park was paralyzed, she'd hit her – she had to have, the woman's shield had fallen with one well-placed stunner to the apex.
"What did you do to me?" Park demanded as Fleur finally pulled herself unsteadily to her feet and advanced across the frozen hallway, wand outstretched. Her shield spells were following her, but she'd considerably reduced the power in order to carry them with her and still have enough magic to attack if need be. "Is this some sort of veela trickery?"
Fleur paused, wand at the ready, debating her words carefully. "If you are thinking that this is something I 'ave fabriqué, than, oui, I 'ave." She stepped forward, her face hovering just inches before Park's own, frozen as it now was. She knew her face was contorted into an angry and hateful expression, and yet she could not help but elaborate, "But that is a mastery of spell creation, certainly not a trick of the veela."
Park spat on her face.
The veela lashed out, nails raking along Park's face, drawing blood as she slowly dragged them across the soft flesh there. "Ne m'insultez pas," Fleur growled. Her hand was covered in blood now, the cuts had opened a flow of blood that was flowing freely down Park's face. "Now, you 'ave one question to answer, if you tell me what it is that I want to know, I will leave you to the aurors and that will be that."
Park made a move to spit again, but Fleur's wand was quicker, and langlock was a fantastic hex no matter the application. It was a non-traditional application of the spell, but Fleur was rather adverse to getting spat upon again. "As I was saying, if you do not, I will kill you."
"I do not fear death," Park said as Fleur's low powered spell wore off. "Do it. I will not betray the others."
Fleur tutted under her breath and reached out, clawed hand closing around Park's throat. "I would recommend that you reconsider, Madame Park. I do not mean to kill you in the wizarding way." Her allowed her eyes, pupil-less and dangerous, to flash the gold of the veela – this much she had control over at least – before continuing, "My way is decidedly more barbaric. And you 'ave stolen my mate."
Fleur Delacour had never been a violent person, even during the war her magic had been far more focused on the defense, rather than the offense. At the time, this had been to her advantage, as William was far better with attack spells than he was with shielding charms, despite his top marks at Hogwarts. Because of this, the people that Fleur had ended up killing during the war had been entirely acts of self-defense. She had no context for attacking someone in so violent a manner, and all she knew was to push and push until finally the other broke.
"Where is Hermione Granger?" Fleur demanded, speaking as clearly as she could, her control gone. Her voice was not her own, her hands were not her own. She could do nothing to spare this woman the wrath of the veela and she did not want to. The woman deserved to die and to burn for what she had did, and if Fleur was the one who sent her to that demise, then all the more power to her. She had been prepared to do this the moment she'd seen Hermione's patronus.
The law stood with the veela in situations like this, they were always in the right because they were not in their right mind. She did not want to kill Park, she did not even know if she could, but her body filled with a longing that she could not quite explain. She had to have this woman's life for what she had done to Hermione.
Park laughed then. "Harry Potter's friend?" Her eyes narrowed, and Fleur wished that she'd managed to include a paralyzing agent in the spell for that as well. Park had a very distinctive way of moving her eyes that was putting Fleur on edge. She didn't trust herself around those eyes, and she need the information. "She needed to be silenced. That law cannot pass, it allows for humans to be indiscriminately raped by magical creatures."
Fleur sighed, "You 'ave been misled. Magical creatures are sentient, therefore they can consent to be intimate with 'umans, and wizards – or muggles – can certainly consent aussi." She pointed her wand at Park's face. The woman's brown hair and willowy form seemed to fan out and tremble under the gathering of power at Fleur's wand-tip. "If one were to fall in love with a veela or a banshee, or even a vampire, it would not be wrong, merely different."
Park scowled, dark eyes flashing dangerously and Fleur lowered her wand to rest between the woman's narrowed eyes.
"If you do not tell me where 'ermione is, I will say the words and you will die." Fleur moved the wand in a small circle, beginning the blasting spell she had been gathering power for. Her reserves were nearly tapped, she would not be able to fight any more of them if she had to use this spell. "Do you wish for death, Madame Park?"
Park turned her head away, Fleur's wand dragging across her temple to rest against her ear. "I do not," the woman said quietly, her voice shaking. Fleur could not help the satisfied smile that spread across her face as Park conceded defeat. "You should go to the northeast safe house, it's just outside of London. In the suburbs. We've left her there."
Fleur stepped away, and concentrated hard on the moment that Hermione had come to her on the Astronomy Tower, their bonding, and spoke the patronus charm. She told the silvery bird of prey to find William, and vanished once again, leaving Park to the aurors. She hoped that they would have a fate in place for her that was fitting.
x
The room was cold, and Fleur's warming charm was starting to wear off. She had found the place easily enough, finally able to relax enough to apparate close to where she sensed Hermione's magical signature. Park had implied heavily that Hermione was alone. This was good, it meant that Fleur could get her out with little resistance. Her magical reserves were greatly depleted thanks to the duel and Fleur wasn't sure that she could survive another fight.
The house was quiet and inconspicuous, a light dusting to snow covering the yard and driveway. Fleur picked her way carefully through the neighborhood that lead up to the house at the end of the road. It looked as though no one had lived there in several years, the shrubbery was uneven, leafless as it was, and the grass in the lawn had obviously gone to seed.
Fleur could sense the wards on the place from the end of the road. They were strong feeling, but the same sort that Fleur had cast over and over during the war around herself and William.
So common, and yet so foolish. Fleur thought darkly, speaking the most common passkey and passing through the first level of wards without a problem. The second level was much the same, and by the time she'd tapped her wand on the door and whispered, "Alohomora," Fleur had realized quite a bit about their enemies.
Their operation was small, they used foreclosed upon or abandoned houses as their safe houses, and they did not much care for those who had veela blood. All facts where interesting and relevant, but as she stepped into the house, Fleur could feel Hermione's rising panic. Hermione must have been left alone in this place ever since she was taken.
The place was freezing, and Fleur shivered as she stepped into the house. The door swung close behind her and Fleur lit her wand nonverbally and held it above her head. "'allo!" she called into the gloom of the foyer. There was a thumping to her left and it took all of Fleur's willpower to not run towards the sound. She had to be careful, there could be traps, curses on the very floor she was standing upon.
Fleur flicked her wand and whispered the incantation several wide-area scanning spells. She was looking for the magical residue that was commonly left behind when one was casting wards or cursing objects. She did not move from her place on the welcome mat until the scans were finished and were negative save for a particularly strong series of locking charms on a door in the general direction of the thumping noise that Fleur had heard when she had called out into the empty house.
Hermione, she thought darkly, her face grim. She didn't know if she would be able to break through all of those charms in her current state. The shield-breaking spell that she'd used on Park had taken so much out of her, all she wanted was to go and sleep for a week – she'd be alright then, but Hermione needed to be rescued first.
Her steps were uneven as she tried doors down the hallway off to her left. One opened to a closet and another to a kitchen. The final door was stuck and covered in spell runes that Fleur had never seen before. She knocked on the door hesitantly, grateful that the spell did not prevent her from doing that.
Her hand sounded hollow as she tapped on the door, "'ermione?" she called, her voice shaking slightly. So many emotions were swirling around in her head, she could not stomach them all. She was so afraid that Hermione would be hurt beyond repair, or that she would not be able to break through the wards on the door. "'ermione es-tu là?"
There was silence on the other side of the door and then Hermione's voice could be heard, muffled by the door. "Fleur? Is that you?"
Fleur could not speak, a feeling of extreme relief crossed her face and she exhaled happily as Hermione spoke from the other side of the door. If she could talk, she was probably unharmed.
"Who's there?" Hermione's voice had become more frantic, and Fleur found herself pulled away from her musing. She had to respond, or Hermione was bound to think that she had gone completely crazy and that was simply unacceptable.
Fleur's brow furrowed, staring at the wards. She knew that the runes could easily be reversed, but she had half a mind to simply blast her way through the door and rescue Hermione that way. The rest of the spell work did require the blasting spell she so longed to use, so Fleur supposed that she was in luck. She exhaled, staring that the runes that so clearly said that she should not be able to blast though them, knowing that she could. "C'est moi, 'ermione," her voice was low, but loud enough that she was sure that Hermione would be able to hear her.
The blasting spell was complicated enough that she did not really comprehend Hermione's happy sigh of relief. She drew the magical energy that she would need in towards herself and began the wand motions, half and eye on the door and that runes, hoping she could create a strong enough blast to get through the wards. The runes were rather problematic, but Fleur was confident as she began the spell. Her voice sounded like the harsh hiss of the veela as she spoke, "Get away from the door, I am going to break the wards."
Hermione did not move right away, and Fleur held the spell as best she could, the magical energy at bay as Hermione spoke, her voice desperate and pleading, "Fleur, Fleur you have to get me out of here."
"I am working on it," Her teeth were tight together, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. Hermione had to be gone, the spell was so difficult to control if she held it at the point where she currently had it for too long. "Are you clear?" she asked, her voice quiet.
"Yes." Hermione sounded like she was shouting.
Fleur exhaled, "Alright." She swung her wand upwards in a short slashing motion and quickly pulled it across her body before twisting it downwards. Blasting spells had always come easily to her despite the complicated wand movements that went along with them. Fleur had always reasoned that the skill with them came from the veela's deep-seeded need to destroy things, starting with Fleur's personal life, and moving on from there.
The magical energy that she'd been holding back burst forth through her wand, pausing for a moment before pushing past the relatively weak wards. Fleur watched with satisfaction as the runes, written in chalk as was customary stood their ground for a moment before bursting into flames and dissolving into nothing. The door was completely gone, her magic had destroyed it, leaving nothing but two rusting door hinges in its place.
Fleur stepped into the room, her lover's name on her lips as she hurried towards the hunched form against the far wall of the small room she'd managed to break into. ""ermione," Fleur said, staring at her lover, who weakly pulled herself to her feet. Fleur stood there for a moment, wondering what it was that she should be doing. She wanted to go to Hermione to pull her into a tight embrace and never, ever, let go. Her control was only just beginning to return and she didn't trust herself to not throw Hermione to the floor of this evil room and take her then and there.
Veela understood the language of sex far better than any other. The concept of one who had been stolen away from the veela's protective gaze without sex was not something that Fleur completely understood. She knew how a human would react, but the human within her body's control was so weak that it was all she could to to prevent herself from throwing Hermione to the floor. She tried, French the only language that would dare cross her lips, "Je vous ai cherché." I looked for you. Fleur stepped forward, her hands now resting on the gentle slope of Hermione's shoulders. Hermione looked up at her with wide and fearful eyes.
There did not seem to be much else to do in such a situation, and Fleur was certainly not one to pass up the opportunity to kiss her mate. She leaned down, her fingers trailing along Hermione's jaw, slowly turning from the sharp talons of the veela to the soft fingers of the veela, nails worried down to nearly nothing. Her lips pressed against the cold and chapped lips of her lover and Fleur exhaled quietly, pulling away to meet Hermione's dark-eyed stare with a piercing blue of her own. "Je vous ai trouvé."
I found you.
Hermione flung her arms around Fleur's shoulders. She was shaking, and Fleur could feel her fear as though palpable as their breath fogging in the cold air of the room. "Fleur," Hermione breathed as Fleur wrapped her arms around her lover and steadfastly held on. Until Hermione wanted to let go, Fleru was not going to let her go. She clung to Hermione as though her very life depended on them never separating again.
Fleur knew she was crying, the tears were hot reminders flowing down her face as she stood, resolute, and holding Hermione to her. Hermione's voice seemed equally choked with sobs as she muttered into Fleur's sweater, "I was so scared. They took my wand. I couldn't fight, I couldn't do anything."
"We will get it back," Fleur promised, thanking Merlin that Hermione kept a spare. She was smarter than some of Fleur's muggleborn classmates, who did not have spares and had been caught without a wand in potentially dangerous situations. She reached down and tilted Hermione's chin upwards, her fingers playing along her lover's jawbone, unaware of how much of this simple touch she had missed during Hermione's brief absence. Her skin was chapped by the cold, and she was shaking, but Fleur loved every inch of Hermione Granger. "'arry and the others are looking for Park, and the aurors will probably arrest Jones too." Fleur continued, hoping that knowledge that her kidnappers were about to be arrested would brightedn Hermione's spirits.
Hermione nodded into Fleur's chest. "Good," Her voice was muffled in the silent room, trapped by the way that Hermione had cemented herself against Fleur's chest. Fleur twisted her body slightly trying to make it so that they could both be heard and understood. Veela did not need verbal communication as much as humans did, but it was still vital to humans and Fleur understood how important it would be to hear the rest of this conversation.
They stood there, their bodies pressed tightly together, fearful of letting go. To let go was to face the world once again, and now they were together, happy, reunited, and the world could not stand against them when they were together.
Hermione exhaled, her breath fogging the air between them as she spoke. Her words came off as pensive, "Fleur… can we go home?"
There was a silent, unspoken question that Fleur understood implicitly. Do we need to stay here in this awful place?
William would find them, he had always been good with them.
"To The Burrow?" Fleur asked, wondering if Hermione wanted to be back in the familiar and comfort of Molly Weasley's hope and hospitality.
Hermione shook her head, "No, home. Shell Cottage."
Fleur laughed then, for the first time in days. It felt good, almost cathartic.
Shell Cottage was a dowry, a gift from William's wealthy great aunt. She couldn't consider it home, she wasn't free to live there now that she and William had dissolved their union, or at least that was how she thought the law worked. She did not honestly know any more. Everything was changing so quickly and British wizarding law was convoluted at best.
She exhaled, tilting Hermione's chin upwards and saying earnestly, "It is not really my 'ome, 'ermione."
Hermione frowned, "I want to go there."
I feel safe there.
"Alright." Fleur conceded and took Hermione's hands in her own. "Come with me, love."
