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

And the next chapter comes...

Chapter 31

She couldn't breathe.

There were dark spots hovering in her eyes and the lake around her seemed strangely grey. Fleur knew her spell would take her to surface, that she just had to hold on, but the impulse to take a breath was so strong she wasn't sure she could resist much longer.

Gradually the dark spot swelled to cover more and more of the lake and the bursting, aching pain in her chest grew too strong to be ignored any longer. She hoped she was above the water, because she couldn't hold on any longer.

Fleur took a deep breathe.

The water was icy cold, so cold that it burnt and froze the inside of her mouth and throat as she instinctively gulped for air.

None came.

The desperate desire for oxygen only intensified, and her addled brain could only provide one solution.

If I cannot reach the air, then the air must reach me.

'Evanesco,' she croaked, pouring everything she had into the spell, desiring only that the water within and above her vanish.

A surge of exhaustion overwhelmed her and she gasped at its intensity, the cold and the wet had made her magic slow and sluggish, but her strength still obeyed her, despite the increased toll.

Sweet, blissful air rushed into her lungs.

In an instant the black spots were gone and she could think again. She half-wished she could not.

Fleur was still rising, but the lake was returning to reclaim its victim. The water she had vanished had left a ten metre high cone of air above, but the black water was returning faster than she was rising.

She took one last deep breathe as the walls of water rushed to meet her and hoped that the impact didn't hurt too much.

The water hit hard, from both sides, spinning her around like a doll and leaving her dizzy. Amazingly her wand remained in her grasp, and, though most of the air had been knocked out her, the urge to breathe was nowhere near as overwhelming as it had been before.

All she had to do was swim up.

Fleur kicked upwards, towards the dark surface of the water only to stop when a stream of silver bubbles sank down from her nose and lips, past her chin towards the bright depths of the lake.

Bubbles don't sink, Fleur realised.

Fleur turned herself around, swimming as fast as she could up towards the light, the surface, air and life.

She burst to the surface, gasping with relief, and taking deep lungfuls of air.

For a minute she floated there, kicking water, revelling in her ability to breathe normally, then events caught up with her.

Gabrielle.

Her sister was still down at the bottom of the lake, her only hope of rescue lying in the hands of Harry Potter. Fleur wanted to believe that he would take Gabrielle with her, she needed to believe it.

Harry was noble, and he was like her; he would understand what Gabby meant to her and bring her back. She was sure that he was not cruel enough to deliberately and knowingly take her sister away from her. There was no reason for such an action.

He knew what he was doing when he caused the distraction that let Krum hit me.

It was an ugly thought, but it was true. Harry had put the tournament and winning before everything else, indirectly preventing her from saving her sister. For a moment she had truly hated him for it.

If he did not save Gabrielle, then he had as good as killed her, and Harry had no real obligation to save her younger sibling. Fleur had come to the conclusion that his returned inability to notice her was not a coincidence, and it hadn't taken much thought to work out why he might be acting distantly towards her. She had kissed him and then avoided him, reached out to him and snatched her hand away.

Some equal I was.

None of that, however, mattered as much as Gabrielle.

If she is gone…

Fleur could not even finish the thought, her stomach and heart twisted all up and around one another, and her eyes grew hot. She had to know if he had saved her.

Striking out towards the shore, forcing the last of her magic to keep her warm, she swam as fast she was able. Her route back across the lake surface would be quicker if she could keep the cold from seeping in and as long as she persevered; she might even arrive back before Krum or Harry did.

When they returned with their hostages, Fleur would know if she had lost her sister or not.

Please let Harry have saved her, she begged of anything that might be listening.

The family would be nothing without capricious, clever Gabby and her playful nature. A hard lump formed in her throat and her eyes prickled violently.

Fleur Delacour does not cry, she tried to remind herself, but for the first time in years her pride failed to catch the tears before they fell and warm trails began to trace their way down her cheeks and into the lake.

By the time she reached the finish she had cried herself into exhaustion, and the cold of the lake had settled into more than her muscles. Fleur could not even manage to drag herself up onto the platform, the mediwitch, Madam Pomfrey, had to levitate her and then hold her up before she could collapse.

'Come with me, Miss Delacour,' the stern witch ordered, already casting warming charms.

'Gabrielle,' Fleur managed to say, shaking her head and looking around desperately.

There was no sign of any of the other champions.

'Anyone who comes out of the lake will be brought straight to this tent,' Madam Pomfrey told her kindly. 'You will see you sister quickest if you come this way.'

Fleur was too weak to escape the witch's firm grip on her arm and could only hope that she was right.

There were three full beds in the medic tent, the three furthest from the door, and a shirtless Krum, whose torso was covered in hundreds of small bite marks. Gabrielle was not among the occupants of the tent and Fleur's tears threatened to return.

'Sit,' the mediwitch commanded, pushing Fleur towards one of the beds. She traced her wand over her lips and lower face, eliciting a spike of pain. Fleur flinched away from the unexpected discomfort, earning a tut from Madam Pomfrey, but she didn't care. The condition of her face did not even come close to how important her sister was.

The pain gradually faded away to a dull throb, and then to nothing as the nurse cast several spells upon Fleur.

'Stay on the bed,' she instructed, once she had finished with Fleur's face. 'You're exhausted, and your body temperature has fallen well below what it should be.' She cast an array of warming charms that Fleur barely noticed and pushed something thick, sticky and sweet into her mouth. It tasted like marzipan and Fleur gratefully choked it down. 'You'll feel much better soon,' the nurse encouraged her. Fleur doubted she would feel anything of the sort until Gabby was here in the tent with her.

Madam Pomfrey strode across the room to Krum, muttering about the insanity of subjecting children to trials like this.

His bite marks were healed within moments, none of them had been deep and whatever had bitten him had clearly not been poisonous.

'They are still sleeping,' he told Fleur in his heavy, Eastern European accent. 'The enchantment used to keep them asleep and breathing underwater is meant to last for the full hour and no matter what, so they will not wake for a few more minutes.' He shifted uneasily, looking guilty, and tapped his forefinger against his lips. 'I am sorry for the curse,' he apologised. 'I was angry, things got out of hand.'

'What happened to Gabrielle and Harry?' Fleur asked, not caring about his apology in the slightest. Krum had done nothing outside of the rules, so if Gabrielle was fine she would not care. If her sister was still in the lake, the it would not matter how sorry he was; Fleur would hate him until he died for destroying her veil and stopping her from saving her sister.

'Your sister,' Krum gave her an apologetic look, 'when I left she was still a hostage of the Merpeople. Harry has not yet returned, he swims slower than me, and I had a head start.'

A silver cat suddenly bounded in through the flaps at the entrance, sitting up on its haunches to murmur in the distinctive Scottish accent of stern looking Hogwarts teacher of transfiguration.

Fleur could not make out the words, and when she tried to stand up and get closer she swayed and fell back onto the bed.

'Drink this,' the nurse commanded, thrusting the same peppery smelling, pick-me-up potion she had forced down the throats of all the champions after the first task. Evidently the food had not been enough.

Madam Pomfrey was gone out of the tent before Fleur had finished the concoction.

'She must have gone to get Potter,' Krum deduced, eyeing his two rivals, thoughtfully. 'I hope he is ok, I owe him revenge for all the bites in the next task.'

'The bites?' Fleur repeated absently, staring at the flap in the tent. Her stomach was twisting and turning in anxiety as she prayed that the nurse would return with Gabrielle.

'He transfigured all the pebbles around me into aggressive fish,' Krum laughed. 'They had very sharp teeth. I owe him a curse or two, I think.'

'He's only fourteen,' Fleur reminded the Bulgarian, slightly worried for Harry.

'He was holding his own against me for several minutes before you came and disarmed him, and I think he was holding back, every spell he cast was a minor curse or hex. He hit me a couple times, had he used some of the more powerful curses he knows I would still be in the lake.' The Durmstrang student seemed quite upbeat about being matched in a duel, even one in such unusual conditions, by a fourteen year old.

'I wonder what our scores will be?' Cedric Diggory had awoken. 'Did you guys all make it there and back?'

'Yes,' Krum answered curtly.

'No,' Fleur confessed, very quietly.

Gabrielle.

'Oh,' Cedric fell silent. 'Where's Harry?'

'The nurse went to get him,' Krum replied, pulling his robes back on now he was healed. Fleur did the same, dragging her Beauxbatons uniform from the end of the bed and slowly dressing herself. She felt like all her fingers had suddenly become thumbs, fumbling with the buttons, and belt.

The flaps of the tent parted and Madam Pomfrey stepped inside, she was smiling slightly, but the only girl floating behind her was Katie Bell.

He left her.

Fleur's heart collapsed, leaving her chest hollow and sore. Harry had left her baby sister to drown.

Harry Potter ducked through the entrance, turning sideways to brush the flap out of the way with one arm. His face was blank and unreadable, but Fleur thought she caught a slight tremor of despair there.

She pushed herself off the bed to demand why he had not saved Gabrielle too, but then he turned, and cradled in his arms lay her precious, younger sister, sleeping peacefully with a small smile on her lips.

'You saved her,' Fleur whispered. Her heart rose from the ashes of her disconsolation.

Harry placed Gabby gently on the bed next to his and accepted the proffered Pepper-Up potion from Madam Pomfrey with resigned, wry smile.

'I do not expect, Mr Potter,' Madam Pomfrey lectured, 'to see such a dangerous use of self-transfiguration in all the rest of my life. You turned your lungs into some horrible parody of gills, restructured the entire musculature of your chest and thought it would have no consequences.'

Harry nodded, then turned away to cough violently into this hand. Fleur glimpsed a spatter of crimson upon his palm before Madam Pomfrey sat him down.

'You put far too much strain on your lungs,' she muttered, running her wand over his exposed chest. 'I've fixed you as best I can, but you'll have that cough for the next week or so anyway. Maybe it will remind you that we can't just put you back together every time you try something so reckless.'

Harry looked like he wanted to object, but bent over to cough into his hand. It was a deep, painful, wet sounding action that made Fleur shift uneasily and Cedric wince.

He had been fine under the water when she had seen him by the hostages, and Fleur somehow knew that it had been swimming with the weight of both Katie Bell and Gabrielle that had put too much strain on whatever he had done to his lungs.

A flurry of guilt struck her as she remembered how much she had hated him in the brief moment between losing her veil and having to head for the surface.

'Thank you,' she surged off her bed onto her feet, with every intention of throwing her arms around him and kissing him again. She didn't particularly care that he was fourteen, not when he acted so maturely and was so noble, and she certainly did not care what anyone else thought.

He caught her right hand between his own, grasping it an impromptu shake, before swiftly releasing it.

'That's ok, Fleur,' he responded cheerfully. 'It's what anyone in my situation would have done.' He flashed her a bright, charming smile.

Fleur recoiled.

The smile was warm, but it never rose far enough to melt the ice in his green eyes. He knew what she had been going to do, he knew, and he had deliberately prevented her from touching or reaching him. He hadn't involuntarily flinched from her like he did from all close contact, he'd coldly dismissed her gratitude and affection in a way he knew only she would recognise.

How could he be so cruel?

Something had changed in him since the Yule Ball. The Harry she had spent the evening with had gazed up at her with clear eyes and told her she was beautiful, lost himself, when she had kissed him, but this Harry wanted nothing to do with her. He seemed to loathe even the idea of touching her.

Fleur's heart lurched once more, and her eyes filled with hot, angry tears. This was not how her equal was supposed to treat her. This was not how the wizard she was afraid she might love should act towards her. He was different; somehow she'd ruined everything between them with her indecision.

Neither the warmth of the smile, nor the ice in his eyes dissolved as he stepped back from her, but she caught, as he turned away, a flicker of something else, something cruel, and his smile curved up on one side into genuine amusement.

He knows his rejection hurt, she realised, stunned, and he enjoys it.

The noble, understanding Harry Potter, the one that must still exist somewhere for him to have saved Gabrielle, was not the face he turned towards her anymore.

'The scores are being announced,' Krum told them, peering out through the flap.

The four champions moved outside to where they could see the judges' stand, leaving the still sleeping hostages in their beds.

Something sparked angrily inside of Fleur at the sight of the peacefully breathing Gryffindor girl. Katie Bell had been his hostage, despite being someone Harry should no longer sorely miss. The girl must have come back to him after the Yule Ball, when she had not been sure what to do, and poisoned Harry against her.

Fleur's hand snapped to her waist, unable to resist her desire to curse the unconscious girl, but her wand was gone.

'Forty,' she heard Cedric grin's rather than saw it, 'after my Bubble-Head charm exploded I feared I would do the worst.'

'You were there first?' Krum asked, surprised. 'I did not see you.'

'I used the Bubble-Head Charm and transfigured some seaweed into flippers so I could swim faster, but my adaption to the charm failed and it still exploded when a Grindylow burst the bubble,' the Hogwarts champion explained.

'Ah,' Krum realised. 'You lost points because you did not return to the finish, but surpassed the rest of us elsewhere.'

Behind the two of them the judges were conjuring a new set of numbers, hers.

'Thirty six,' she counted, disappointed but not surprised. Her enchantment had been the perfect solution, but she had not saved her little sister.

'For an innovative and exceptional piece of transfiguration,' she heard Bagman announce, 'and for being one of only two champions to return with their hostage, we award Mr Potter forty points.'

A murmur of surprise came from the spectators and champions alike. Harry's face was fixed in abject fury, his gaze settling in icy rage upon Barty Crouch who had conjured the number four from his wand.

'Had Mr Potter not interfered with the hostage of another champion I would have no reason to remove points,' the head of the Department for International Magical Cooperation announced cooly. Harry's hand twitched towards his wand, his composure shattered, and she was sure she glimpsed a glimmer of green from beneath his fingers.

Fleur felt her heart sink a little lower. Harry was paying the price for defying the rules and saving Gabby, no wonder he had chosen Katie when everything she did seemed to cause him trouble or pain.

'The winner of the second task, and new highest scoring champion, is Viktor Krum, whose brilliant piece of transfiguration and swift return with his hostage grant him a score of forty four.' Ludo Bagman seemed disgusted by the turn of events, turning to argue angrily with his fellow judge Barty Crouch.

Krum grinned, though he seemed a little put out by Harry's score. Fleur imagined he wanted to beat everyone at their best. He seemed that sort.

'Eighty six,' Cedric said contemplatively, pointing at Krum, 'eighty two, eighty and seventy four.' He indicated Harry, Fleur and himself in turn. 'We are all close enough for the last to task to decide everything.'

'Yes,' Krum nodded, 'I owe you for those fish.' He grinned at Harry rather viciously. Harry returned the expression with an equally savage smile of his own, but his eyes never left the form of Barty Crouch.

'I'm much better above water,' Harry warned him good-naturedly, tearing his eyes away from the judge. They were just as competitive as each other, as determined to win as she was. Cedric Diggory seemed slightly less motivated, but only by the slenderest of margins.

'Aren't we all,' Fleur muttered. She would certainly be better off in the last task. Cedric Diggory was right. They were all close enough together for things to go anyone's way. She was determined to make sure it was hers.

The idea of winning, however, of beating Krum, Diggory and Harry was no longer quite as brilliant as before. Any victory over Harry would be tainted by the knowledge that he might only have lost because he chose to save Gabrielle, and she could not, in good conscience win because of that, but not could she ever hope that he had not saved her.

How did things get so much more complicated?

Before Christmas there had only really been the Triwizard Tournament to consider, now there was Gabrielle, winning, Harry and more. She knew, of course, exactly the moment at which things had become more complex.

I wish I had never kissed him.

It wasn't true. Fleur still wanted to kiss the talented, empathetic wizard who had captured her interest, her attention, and then more, but Harry Potter had changed. The bright, false smile he vanished behind was half-real and a touch of cruelty had crept into his eyes.

She spared the young wizard a glance, only to flinch away immediately. His bright, cold green eyes were already fixed on her, his face twisted with a unidentifiable, tangled mass of emotions.

Suddenly her mother was by her side, squeezing Fleur's hand and talking very fast. She couldn't seem to hear any of the words that she was saying.

Fleur blinked, shook her head free of thoughts of Harry and focused.

'You can still win,' her mother was assuring her. 'Four points is nothing, there will be ample opportunity to outdo them in the next task. You did well, Fleur, especially in such an adverse environment.'

'If it had been real, Gabrielle would be gone,' Fleur said woodenly. It had been Harry that saved her sister, not her; she had failed.

'Gabby was never in danger. When they asked us who you would be most determined to save your sister volunteered. We were assured that she would be in no danger.' Her mother gave her a reassuring smile, one she recognised from the years she had spent asking why she was different, the times she had failed to cast a spell successfully her first time, and when she had struggled to learn to control her allure. Her confidence swelled a little stronger at the sight of it.

'Only me,' Fleur smiled, relieved.

'You nearly drowned,' her mother whispered, squeezing her hand very tightly.

'The Triwizard Tournament is dangerous, maman,' Fleur told her tiredly, 'I knew that when I entered.'

'I do not think you really realised it,' she responded, 'not until now.'

'I'll still win,' Fleur declared. That was how she would do it. She'd do so well in the final task that it wouldn't matter Harry had lost points saving Gabrielle as she had pleaded him to. Fleur would beat him, Krum and Cedric by such a margin that it wouldn't matter. Her pride glowed at the thought of her holding the silver trophy, but the image in her mind showed Harry looking up at her and smiling proudly.

Fleur knew that that would not be the case. He would hate her for winning, hate even more than he already did for having to save her sister and costing him points.

It isn't fair.

His anger felt so petty, so unnecessary and unlike the young wizard she had seen. The Harry who had dismissed Katie Bell to keep her company would have never resented losing points in the tournament for saving the life of Gabrielle. He would have been angry at Crouch for taking them away when Harry had simply been doing the right thing, but he would have never hated her for it.

Katie Bell.

The girl had turned him against her. She must have. Sometime in the weeks since the Yule Ball, when Fleur had foolishly left him alone and exposed to the insidious advice of others, she had come to him and whispered her malice into his ear.

Fleur tugged herself free of her mother's hand and stepped forwards to face the youngest champion.

'She is lying to you,' Fleur hissed angrily. 'Whatever she has said is not true.'

'Who is she, Miss Delacour,' Harry's tone was cold, but curious, 'are you, perhaps, referring to yourself in the third person?'

Fleur's next words died somewhere on her tongue, frozen by Harry's voice.

'If you are,' Harry continued, icily polite, 'it would have been best to warn me before I believed you.'

'Katie,' the girl's name stuttered from Fleur's tongue, 'Katie Bell.'

'She has not said a word to me since the Yule Ball,' Harry responded. Some of the cold had thawed from his voice; he was confused.

'Then, then why?' Fleur asked in small voice. Her angry, prideful confidence suddenly seemed a very long way away and she felt exceedingly tiny in his eyes.

'I'm afraid I don't understand,' he smiled, with perfectly portrayed charm, but there was a faint flicker of something hopeful in his eyes that the expression couldn't conceal.

Why are you so cold to me? Why have you changed? How could a few weeks make so much difference? Why wouldn't you let me kiss you?

None of her questions made it out of her mind and over her lips, they simply froze in her throat, caught on the lump of emotion that stuck there.

The flicker faded from his eyes with painful slowness and Fleur could do nothing but watch as they hardened, freezing over as the smile extended its icy reach all the way across his face.

'Harry-' she began, but he cut her off.

'I wish you luck with the next task, Miss Delacour.' His hand twitched ever so slightly towards her, but he turned away, still smiling, to stride in the direction of the castle, and she was only able to stare after him.

Her mother caught up to her, patting her on the shoulder in slight bemusement and then leading her away back towards the medical tent and Gabrielle. Fleur let herself be led, vaguely aware that Bagman and Crouch, the only person Harry seemed more angry with than her, were still arguing.

Madam Pomfrey, Hogwarts' stern nurse, was ushering a rather cheerful Cedric Diggory and his date from the tent. They were followed by a beaming Katie Bell, who without sparing Fleur so much as a glance, took off towards Harry's retreating back.

You don't deserve him, she wanted to scream, and the tears almost returned.

Fleur Delacour does not cry.

The thought was filled with self loathing instead of pride. Perhaps, if Fleur Delacour cried and begged and betrayed like Katie Bell, she would have got what she now knew she wanted.

AN: Please read and review, thanks to everyone who does. I hope the balance of the chapter seems right. It felt like there could have been a flood of emotion, next to nothing, or everything in between, so I'm not sure how realistic it will feel for you guys.