Disclaimer: Nothing is mine; everything is J K Rowling's.

Next chapter is up, still managing to keep things on schedule, though my muse has sadly abandoned me and things aren't quite coming as easily as before. It took me five hours to write this, which is twice as long as normal. I blame the muse. I shall have to find another one who's more devoted ;)

Chapter 29

It was Fleur's least favourite day of the year. The day where everything in her life that she could not stand became far worse. Saint Valentine had a great deal to answer for in her opinion.

By now everyone at Beauxbatons knew that Fleur Delacour did not go anywhere with anyone on Valentine's day. That didn't stop some of the more susceptible wizards from asking her, however, and it didn't come anywhere near quelling the glares she got should her aura affect someone's date, so Fleur normally went home, or remained in her room.

Everything was fine when she could go home and be with her family or just her sister, but when she could not Fleur began to feel the hollowness of isolation. Nobody should spend an entire day shut off from the world; it wasn't right. At the first signs loneliness she would always throw herself into whatever magic she was studying. Valentine's Day was often one of her most productive days.

This particular Valentine's Day was worse than any other so far. Fleur could not go home, she was not at Beauxbatons with Gabrielle, and her only company until the evening was the unenchanted veil across her lap. It was more lonely than she remembered it being on previous years.

She twirled her rosewood wand around her index finger, disconsolately staring out of her carriage window. It was somewhere between lunchtime and the evening. Fleur had heard, a little while back, the movement of several of the other girls in the direction of the Great Hall, but had decided not to accompany them. There would be a lot of people there, and there were only three, maybe four, who Fleur really wanted to be with. Her mother and sister, half of the people she felt close to, were arriving this evening, after Gabrielle had finished school and her mother returned from work at L'ingrédient Parfait, the potions shop in Carcassonne. Her father was too busy to come, as he'd profusely apologised for many times before she left. Fleur wished he could, but did understand. A head of department of government was always busy. The last was, of course, Harry. He would understand her isolation, he wouldn't be affected by her passive magic and was more than comfortable in his company.

In the days that had led up to this one Fleur had on occasion considered asking Harry to once more be her date. Only this time it was different. Fleur was not taking an interesting, potential equal who was both disinterested in her and resistant to her allure. She would be inviting a wizard she had kissed, one who was only fourteen, out on Valentine's Day, and consequently she had never managed to work up the courage to speak to him. It probably would not have mattered, because, once again, he seemed to be unable to notice her.

They had crossed paths in the library multiple times, and each time Fleur had frozen, unsure of how to act around him, but Harry had never looked up from whichever book he had been buried, or he'd always be watching something else. He too was focused on the second task and from his choice in reading material Fleur assumed that he and Viktor Krum were both using some form of self-transfiguration to survive underwater.

In fact the only champion she had not seen in the library at least once a day was Cedric Diggory, but she knew from overhearing the same group of Ravenclaw girls, one of whom had been his date to the Yule Ball, that Hogwarts' champion already had his solution perfected.

Some cruel part of her rather hoped he had chosen the Bubble-Head Charm.

Harry and herself worked away in their respective, opposite corners of the library, quietly concentrating on their solutions. Viktor Krum had laid claim to one of the tables near the entrance and, along with Hermione, his date, and former friend of Harry, spent as much time conversing with her about Hogwarts and Britain as he did about transfiguration.

The no longer bushy-haired girl knew a frightening amount of trivia about Hogwarts and the magical community of the British Isles. Fleur was daughter of an influential, well-respected member of the Bureau d'Magie and she knew less than half as much about France. She reassured herself that as the majority of Hermione's knowledge seemed to encompass things of small import that she was not really at a disadvantage. Fleur knew when she was outmatched, the girl clearly had a memory second to none, but she was wasting so much of it on such useless pieces of information. Viktor Krum had probably learnt a lot of things that might be useful for the tournament, but she doubted they'd ever be so applicable again.

Fleur had benefitted from the girl's knowledge too, so she was hardly upset. Hermione had casually spouted everything a foreign champion could hope to know about the Black Lake at just a single question from the Bulgarian Seeker.

There were Merpeople in the lake, there was also a giant squid, and just about every magical creature native to the waterways of Northern Europe, but the Fleur was only really concerned with the former. It was the Merpeople who would be guarding whatever was taken from her.

Unfortunately nobody had ever tried to map the lake's interior, aside from the wreckage of the sunken ship there, so Fleur had no clues where exactly to begin her search.

She did have to admit that Viktor Krum had chosen his date well. Attractive, intelligent, if a little disloyal to her friends and school, though Fleur had the distinct impression that the girl probably only had had a few friends. She seemed a little overbearing at times, studious to the point of obsession and uninterested in most of the things a girl her age would normally be. Viktor Krum seemed to both respect and appreciate her intelligence, however, and they made an odd, but seemingly happy pair. She imagined they were probably still there even today. Hermione seemed the sort to spend Valentine's Day in the library and Viktor Krum was probably as fond of the Valentine's Day as Fleur was.

Harry might be up there too.

She ignored both the desire to go to the library and the twist of anxiety her stomach now seemed to perform every time she thought about him. It was, she decided after further thought, unlikely.

The day before he had replaced his ever-growing stack of books and left in a hurry. He had been talking with someone shortly before leaving about Gillyweed, a magical plant that would provide almost the perfect solution to their problems, if only it was not so rare in Northern Europe. Gillyweed was predominantly grown around the Dodecanese and Corsica. The former was the largest, but most of its harvest went around the Mediterranean. Her mother had to order the plant by request from Corsica because there was little demand for it in potions, or for swimming in the horribly cold waters of the Atlantic and North Sea. She hoped Harry had not decided to change tactics, because it was incredibly unlikely that he would get his hands on enough of the plant to survive underwater for an hour.

Harry will be fine, she told herself.

Really she shouldn't be so concerned about a rival at all, especially one who might actually have a chance of beating her.

If he was our age we might not stand a chance.

Fleur preferred to think he was simply maturing and growing early, but if he continued to be so much more prodigious than his peers he would be truly frightening when he came of age. It was hard to estimate just how powerful a wizard would be. The ancient bloodlines were capable of producing exceptionally gifted wizards when the right characteristics combined, but for every one of those that was born there were a dozen others that that were no better than any other. France was perfect proof that the bloodlines were not completely responsible for magical puissance. The revolution had ended almost all of the oldest, purest families and Grindelwald's war had extinguished the rest, but despite that the country was still a pre-eminent magical power. It had no Albus Dumbledore, no Grindelwald and no Voldemort, but frankly that seemed to be for the best. There were few other countries that retained as many bloodlines as Britain. The magical communities of most of the former magical powers had been devastated by war or revolution since the Stature of Secrecy had ended all but a handful of international, magical wars. France, America, China and India were among the new generation of countries who had a higher number of above average wizards and witches, but no exceptional ones. Britain remained the country with the most powerful wizards, and the mightiest of all the magical communities, but it hardly mattered. The magical world was united and Great Britain's dominance over the magical world had faded to the influence of a few individuals like Albus Dumbledore.

Perhaps Harry is the next such wizard.

He was already famous enough and potentially powerful enough to if you listened to the rumours. The smart and sensible members of the magical world had feared what Voldemort's leadership of Britain would bring. The strongest nation led by a muggle-hating, power-craving dark wizard. It had been enough to make its nearest neighbours tremble, France included. Provided there was no interference from the non-magical world, where her father told her the balance of power was different, there wasn't much that could stand in the way of a united magical community of Britain. It was why Voldemort's death had been celebrated across the world and should Harry ever leave Britain he would find himself just as unable to escape his fame.

Fleur hoped that he wasn't. Mainly because she knew that Harry would loathe the attention that came with his power. He would enjoy being strong, for a while, but then he would find himself tied to and involved in almost every dispute. Albus Dumbledore had buried his head in Hogwarts to escape, resigning from almost all of his positions, Harry was too noble for that. Any wizard that would sacrifice the chance to rebuild a relationship for keeping someone that he hardly knew company would not be able to walk away. He would be worn away to nothing.

Of course, if he was that powerful, then Fleur's chances of winning the Triwizard Tournament significantly decreased, and there was no way she was going to accept that.

Fleur returned her attention to the gauzy strip of material that lay across her lap. Her solution to the imminent second task of the tournament. Truthfully she could have attempted to finish it some time ago, but something had kept drawing her back to the library to re-read books, or look further at the issue.

It seemed a bit silly now that she considered it. The last few times she'd spent the day there all she'd done was listen to Hermione ramble and agonise over whether she should speak to Harry.

She spun the slim piece of rosewood around her ring finger until it struck her thumb.

There really was no reason for her not to finish it now.

Enchanting was not like casting a spell, not when you advanced beyond the most basic elements to contemplate the intricacies of the matter. Goblins made the best enchanted items, their magic lent itself well to creating things that lasted, it was possessive and stubborn. Fleur's magic was neither, but she was still considered one of the bet enchantresses to come through Beauxbatons in the last few decades. It had led to more than one article entitled with some variation of enchanteresse enchanteur. The only work of journalism that Fleur hated more was the article that Rita Skeeter had concocted about her and Harry.

She still had a copy of that particular paper, several, in fact. The other girls had been kind enough to keep providing her with them, or to leave them lying around the communal area.

Fleur's hope that Harry had not seen the article was short-lived. Possibly the oldest, most tattered, grey owl she had ever seen had collapsed in front of him midway through breakfast only a few days ago. It had been clutching a copy of the article and a letter that Harry had clearly not been expecting.

Fleur hadn't been able to decide if he found what he read humorous or infuriating, his expression had seemed to convey both, but he'd deposited the unconscious bird in front of the idiot red-head who had tried to ask her to be his date to the Yule Ball. She supposed she owed the moron a thank you, if anything, had he not attempted to goad Harry into asking her she would never have had such an enjoyable night. He would not, of course, be getting any such sign of gratitude from her.

She ran the tip of her wand along the length of the veil, murmuring the incantations to the spells she wanted to enchant the veil with. The trick to enchanting was not to push magic into the item to force the spell to adhere to it, but to weave the enchantment within the object. Her magic, affected as it was by her veela nature, was slightly more fluid and subtle than most, and so manipulating it to do so came more easily to her.

There were a total of eleven spells that she had to cast on the piece of gauze. None of them were overly complex, but several of them had principles that conflicted and required some clever exploitations, such as casting them on either side of the veil where they could not interfere with one another, to work.

The strip of gauze had adopted a sort of shimmer to it when she finished. A glimmer of ethereal light along one edge and a haze along the other. Which, as Fleur was quite happy to note, was exactly how it was supposed to look. She loved it when she got things right first time.

It still needs testing, she reminded herself. It wouldn't do to get too carried away now only to drown during the second task.

Filling the sink in her bath room she waited for the water to still, tapping her wand idly against the side of the basin, then gently placed the veil in.

It took a few moments, but soon a long, thin bubble formed along the upturned side of the gauze. It was about the length of her little finger and, when she poked it with her wand, displacing the original bubble, it reformed in moments. Fleur left it in the sink just to make sure. If there was still a bubble when she came back from meeting her mother sister later than it would definitely not fail her in the lake.

Now, though, she had nothing to do and ever so slowly the creeping feeling of isolation began to return.

Fleur could only ignore it for so long and was soon unable to resist the urge to check the time. She hoped that it was not too long until she had to leave for Hogsmeade to meet her family, because the moment she knew the time she could be counting seconds.

It was just after five o'clock.

Her mother and sister would be arriving by portray at six, but it only took half an hour to walk there, and that was if she purposefully went slowly.

Maybe they'll come early.

She straightened her uniform, tucked her wand into the belt at her waist, and carefully scrutinised her room.

There was nothing to tidy or adjust. She'd already spent an hour so carefully arranging everything as neatly and perfectly as possible.

I shall have to walk very slowly, she realised, disillusioning herself and stepping out into the corridor.

The communal room was full. Fleur knew from what she had overheard and from what normally happened that the girls were either going out with their dates from the Yule Ball, or together. Apparently the best place to get ready and chatter was the communal room. She supposed it was better than it could have been, none of them were paying any attention to the door, and there were no new copies of the Daily Prophet article on her and Harry lying around. Hopefully that meant they had run out of copies.

It was cold when she stepped outside. The sort of sharp, clear cold that came with cloudless skies mornings of white frost. It was by far the best weather that they had had so far, even if Fleur did hate the cold. After all, casting a warming charm was much less inconvenient than warding off the rain.

Fleur cast three warming charms. One to make the cold bearable, and then two more so it felt like she was in the spring of the South of France.

Warm, and anticipating the arrival of her family, she began to wander as slowly as she could in the direction of the apparently quaint, little village. Fleur had never been to Hogsmeade before, she'd never been to Britain before either, but she hoped to find somewhere a little more refined than Hogwarts.

There was really only one room that Fleur admired in the Scottish school and it hadn't felt right to return there without Harry. It was his room. The way he had shown it to her had implied that it was a secret of his, somewhere precious. It certainly made a perfect place to escape to.

Hogsmeade was every bit the medieval magical community. The buildings looked like they had not been touched since the village had been constructed, only the interiors had changed. Fleur could appreciate the attraction of such an atmosphere, even if she preferred the slightly more modern communities in France.

The French Revolution and the three wars that had been fought across French soil since had rather ruined the majority of anywhere similar in France. Most of the surviving settlements were from the renaissance era like Beauxbatons and the newer ones had been built in the same style out of nostalgia and tradition.

The main street was lined with a handful shops and the two inns that Fleur had often heard referenced by Hogwarts' older students. Most of the shops were closing, or closed, and only the inns and a rather horrible looking tea-shop remained busy.

Fleur eyed Madam Puddifoot's with distaste. There was such a thing as too much pink and Madam Puddifoot had eclipsed that point quite spectacularly within just a few feet of the door. She supposed that if you discounted the horribly overdone colour scheme and the aura of slightly overzealous romance it wasn't such a bad place. It was full. There were almost fifty couples crammed in and only a handful of them looked uncomfortable - normally the male halves of the pairs who felt out of place submerged in Madam Puddifoot's personal vision of romance.

She somehow suspected that there was not a Mister Puddifoot given the witches dedication to the romance of others.

Halfway down the street she caught sight of Katie Bell, the girl who had tried to steal Harry away to dance when they had been leaving, she was arm in arm with another Gryffindor. For a second Fleur's heart plunged at a flash of black hair and she turned away to grind her teeth, her disillusionment charm collapsing at her loss of focus, but then her pride returned in full force and she drew herself up confidently. Whomever Harry decided to spend his time with was not really any of her concern. She took another quick glance anyway, just to make sure that he was happy and wouldn't prefer the company of anyone who might better understand him than Katie Bell could.

It was not Harry.

A swooping, flood of relief carried Fleur's heart back up where it was supposed to be.

Merde.

She knew enough about relationships to know what it meant when a witch really didn't want to see a wizard with another girl, especially one he might have been more than friends with. Fleur was not stupid enough to try and pretend that she was not fond of the English boy, but, of course, he was only fourteen, no matter how old his eyes seemed.

I can't keep avoiding him, she realised. There was no way she could allow him to be alone, not when it would be so easy for him to find another person to be close to. The worst part about her imagining Katie Bell on Harry's arm was that it could so likely be true.

Katie Bell and her dark-haired female companion disappeared into the Hog's Head and Fleur decided to hold off on her exploration of Hogsmeade's inns. She didn't want to walk in after that girl only to find Harry was there waiting for her after all.

Her mother and sister were portkeying to just outside of Hogsmeade's Post Office, which was back down the street she had followed to where it crossed Hogsmeade's other main thoroughfare and left. She had glimpsed it crossing the road from Madam Puddifoot's.

'Tempus,' she muttered. It was still ten minutes until they were supposed to arrive.

Fleur began to walk in that direction regardless. It would take her a few minutes to reach the Post Office and so she would not be waiting overly long, not unless they were late.

She smiled to herself. He mother had picked up her father's sense of prompt timing, albeit to a lesser extent, and Fleur was normally quite punctual, but the concept seemed entirely lacking in Gabby. She was capable of making the whole family late, even when her parents and older sister organised everything they could for her.

They were both already waiting for her outside the small building when Fleur turned the corner.

How did maman manage to get Gabrielle here early? Fleur wondered. She knew her sister would be here on time, Gabby was as attached to her elder sibling as Fleur was to her younger, but she was very disorganised. She always thought that she was ready to leave, but nothing really ever seemed to occur to her until the very moment of departure.

'Fleur!' Her not-so-little anymore sister let go of her mother's arm and covered the distance between in a matter of moments. She hit Fleur hard, wrapping her arms round her sister's chest and pressing her face into her collarbone.

'Hello, Gabby,' she laughed, patting the top of her baby sisters head and internally marvelling at how much she had grown since the beginning of the year.

Gabrielle, like Fleur, had inherited the abilities of veela magic and now, midway through her fourth year, she was enduring the late surge of puberty that came as part and parcel of being veela. She'd grown three inches since Fleur had last seen her, her head no longer tucked neatly under her older sister's chin, and she had definitely lost most of her childish figure.

'I look like you now,' she beamed, stepping back and twirling for Fleur to see. 'We can pretend to be twins in a few months.' Fleur blinked. Gabby spoke very fast, especially when she was excited, and unless you concentrated words seemed to disappear into one another and vanish.

'You'll still be my baby sister,' Fleur cooed, patting Gabrielle on the cheek.

She scowled adorably, but then giggled and glanced back at their mother who was approaching at a much more dignified pace.

'I got your letter,' she smirked, pushing her collar down far enough to reveal the corner of the envelope.

Merde.

Fleur gulped. She had forgotten about that letter, or, more honestly, she had forgotten exactly what Gabrielle might do with that letter when the mood struck her. Her baby sister was every bit a capricious as the stories about veela said, compassionate and shy one moment, only to be loud and cheeky the next.

'Perhaps I could look after it,' she offered, extending a hand out of sight of their mother. Gabrielle's only response was a look of pure innocence, one that was rapidly spoiled by the glint of mischief present in her eyes.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does!

P.S. I fixed my slight dates issue from the last chapter in case anyone is confused. I meant early February rather than mid-January, I thought the second task was the fourth, rather than the twenty-fourth, but that's all sorted now.